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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On Monday, in the Palestinian city of Hebron over 100 armed Jewish settlers, no doubt believers in the Talmud teaching, decided under the watchful and protective eye of the Israeli army to take over and occupy a Palestinian house with the intended purpose of making it a memorial to Jewish soldiers who died killing Arabs.
Of course the news should not be news since Hebron’s Jewish settlers, for the most parts Jewish misfits from Brooklyn and Jersey, with no purposeful employment, have a habit of taking over and claiming Palestinian property as their own using the Talmud and Torah as their real estate guide in taking over stolen Palestinian property.
Of course these unemployed settlers, who also happened to be student of the Torah and Talmud (there is so much similarity with the young Talibans in the Madras in Pakistan), have hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of US dollars, in generous funding from the American Jewish community to go out and commit grand larceny of stealing Arab homes and buildings. These criminal settlers they claim according to the spokesman of the Hebron Jewish community, that the house belonging to the Palestinian Mohammed Al-Baradei was “bought for over $700,000 through a complex transaction” in Jordan and that these Jewish settlers have the deed for the house. No doubt the deed was issued in heaven by G-d Himself though the house belong to El-Baradei who have the deed in his possession and made copies available to the Jewish Army and Police who of course promised to “investigate”
One has to wonder if stealing and robbing homes is a Jewish value, or a Talmudic value or a Zionist value of simply a criminal act of trespassing and larceny. How could any religion, even a Jewish religion could ever justify the theft of property and land.
It is so interesting that in the Palestinian City of Hebron with some 500 Jewish settlers have made life a living hell for the Palestinians in the city. The Israeli Army well known for its racism and hate of Arabs, made sure they put over 100,000 under permanent curfew to make the streets safe for the 500 Jewish settlers.
More interesting about these Jewish settlers is the fact that they are all over the place in the West Bank, stealing and robbing and committing acts of larceny even they steal olive crops and have poisoned score of sheep. Of course all the while protected by the IDF and funded by some very rich American Jews who happens to make their millions of dollars out of very poor American playing Bingo.
While Israel is building hundreds of thousand of housing units on stolen Palestinians properties there are over 20,000 demolition orders in the process of execution against Arabs who happens to build an additional room to accommodate an additional member of the family, or have waited for years for a permission from the Israeli army to build a house. This is of course at the same time where a Jew can simply walk over to Palestinian house, point a gun and take over the house. It is that simple and it seems this is part of the Jewish and Talmudic values of modern day Israel.
One has to see these settlers on the very well known PBS program Frontline and one can see what danger these people are to Israel and the Palestinians.
One of the very many reader’s posts in today’s Haaretz tell the story. The reader posts the questions and asks how many ways can an Israeli enter and Arab home? And he answers with “ bulldozers, with an Arab-child as a human shield and of course with a deed from G-d”.
I always wanted to understand what makes these people who happened to read and study the Torah and the Talmud to do what they do and I could never find an answer. Perhaps they find the answer in the Torah and the Talmud.
I am sure these people could not get away with it in George Bush’s country. I am sure that will shoot them with a double barrel shot gun will plast them to pieces making a paste out of them on doors and walls, whether they have a deed from G-d or not.
The question is when Israel and behind it the Jewish community at large will put an end to such criminal trespassing and simply thuggery and simple criminal behavior? Not soon since the money to do these things keep flowing from the US Jewish community, all in the name of populating God country with his people as if the Palestinians are simply a mistake and with no God of their own. I am sure that true Jewish values and tradition is far, far from what these people are committing in crimes. The Jewish Settlers are the Brown Shirts of Zionism.

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For the last 40 years ever since the military take over by Israel of Jerusalem and the West Bank, and with substantial financial and political support from the Northern American Jewish community Israel has been on a robbery spree unprecedented in history, taking over Palestinian land and property left and right under all pretexes making sure there will be no Palestinian state in any final settlement, if any. And of course doing all of this in the name of G-d.
I am not so sure if there is a God, or G-d that gives any one the rights including Jews to take over another person property and land and making them refugees. In addition to the hundreds of thousands exiles and expelled back in 47/48, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been stripped of their properties in order for Jews to take over the land, build on and ending on the auction block in Teaneck Synagogue in New Jersey of all places.
The Israel Settlement movement has nothing to do with God or religion and it has every thing to do with political and Jewish Zionism, which advocates and carries on the expropriation of Palestinian lands all in the name of G-d, through fraud, and of course the power of gun and generous funding from the US. One has to wonder what kind of G-d is that that will allow, permit and advocate open robbery and theft. For sure it must not be a Jewish G-d.
It is interesting to note that the majority of the 250,000 Jewish settlers living on stolen Palestinian lands hail from the US mostly from New York and New Jersey. There must be something about these two states that makes their Jewish citizens hate them so much that they take the steps and become thieves and robbers of course all in the name of G-d.
No where in history has any occupational force taken over the “native” lands like the Israeli Army, a criminal enterprise that is the key sponsor and supporter of an expanded policy of settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and of course we must not forget Hebron, where some 500 criminal Jews have taken over the city putting some 100,000 in constant curfew and of course making life hell for all Palestinians resident of the city of Hebron. I may add most if not all Hebron settlers are American Jews. It was an American Jew who broke into the Abrham Mosque and shot to death dozens of Muslim worshipers. To celebrate his crime, a shrine was built in his honor.
Rabbi Steve Pruzansky, the chief Rabbi of Congregation B’nai Yeshurun so sure of what he is doing and so confident of the right to trade in stolen property that he is holding the event in the inner sanctuary of the synagogue to make his point that he is doing G-d bidding of trading and selling stolen property for an on behalf of Amana Settlement Movement.
The Rabbi and Congregation B’nai Yeshurun is so engaged in the stolen Palestinian property that it is asking American Jews to buy the stolen property for some $125,000 an apartment and turning around and renting them to these criminal settlers. Of course non-Jews do not qualify to purchase G-d stolen property. Only those who believe that G-d gave the Jews the right to the land can apply.
Well, if that is the case and the good Rabbi is so sure of his legal case, then I as an American citizen with property in the West Bank town of El-Bireh invite the Rabbi and his congregation, in fact I invite all the Jews of the world to present a valid deed signed and sealed by G-d witnessed by Moses, even Mohamed or Jesus and meet me in US Federal Courts and if such a deed pass mustard in any US Federal Courts, then I will give up any rights to such property and will hand over all of the properties I have. I must note here that we as US citizens have a number of properties stolen by Israeli settlers, perhaps some of them Jews from NY and NJ. Too bad our government does not see any thing wrong with that.
Perhaps it is time for us Palestinian American, in fact all Diaspora Palestinians to take on all those thieves and take them to courts all over the world and make them pay for what they have done. Recover the property stolen,and corresponding compensation just like the Jews, and rightly so, did in Europe when they went after governments and individuals who stole Jewish property during the Holocaust. I always believed in the rights of Jews, including “Arab” Jews, those who left to Israel from the Arab countries to recover their properties and get compensation. It is only right, and the same is true for the Palestinians, they have the absolute right to recover their stolen property in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Yaffa, Acre, Safad, and West Jerusalem and of course in all of the West Bank.
I have been advocating this course of action for over 30 years, however Arafat and his PLO were not interested in such actions but were interested in Oslo which accelerated the process of property theft. If Jews can recover their property any where in the world, I do not see any reason why the Palestinians could not do the same. I am sure G-d agrees with me. I could never think that the Jewish G-d could ever sanction such theft.

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Just finished watching the noon news on Ajazeera International (that first-rate international station boycotted by all major cable networks that refuse to carry any station that tells the other side of the story. So much for First Amendment Rights in the US). In any case the leading story was the just completed meeting between Secretary Rice of the US, Olmert the Israeli Prime Minister and Abbas of the Palestinian Authority under Israeli Occupation. The interesting story out of this meeting is the fact that Rice instead of moving thing forward toward final status negotiation is going back to several years ago and asking for the first phase of the Road Map, that proved nothing more than a license for Israel to build its Apartheid Wall and steal more lands for settlement and continue its ethnic and religious cleansing of Arab Muslims and Christians from the City of Jerusalem. Read the rest of this entry »

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Ever since Israel took total control of East Jerusalem and it declared annexations as the “eternal capital of the Jewish state, of course in total violations of international law, Israel with active and generous financial support from the American Jewish community began a very active and well organized campaign of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Jerusalem.
Over the years, Israel not only tore down the wall that separated West Jerusalem from East Jerusalem, before the 67 War, but began to build a new wall of Jewish settlements chocking and strangling the Arab city of Jerusalem and putting in place laws, remnant of Nazi Germany, that makes it almost impossible for the Arab residence to stay and live in East Jerusalem. Introducing residency restrictions that make it almost impossible for any Arab (Muslim or Christian) to continue to have residency in Jerusalem.
The American Jewish community through its active political and financial support of the Israeli Settlers movement became actively engaged in committing large scale acts of fraud buying and selling Arab properties in the city, making sure that Jews form the majority of the city residence and of course illegally depriving the Arabs of their rights to their properties within the city, of course not to mention using guns and bullets to get rid of Arab resident of the city. Zionism was intent on changing the entire demographic of the city, making sure the Arabs have a hard time staying.
Moreover, the Israel entire legal system from land and property registration up to the Israeli Supreme Court and the Knesset allowed and permitted to the Israeli government to commit acts of outright theft of Arab properties, with the most active individual is Nathan Sharansky, that Russian immigrant whose campaign to ethnically cleanse the city of its Arabs earned him the most distinguished honor American could bestow on any citizen. George W. Bush in recognition of Sharansky’s acts and support of apartheid and ethnic cleansing awarded him the Congressional Medal of Freedom.
Many rich and well influential American Jews became actively engaged in large scale fraud providing hundreds of millions of dollars to criminal settlers allow them through fraud and guns to take over Palestinian properties in Jerusalem and of course in Hebron.
Israel at the moment is continuing what it has been doing for the last 40 years of changing the nature of the cit buy destroying entire Arab neighborhoods and substituting Jewish neighborhoods. One can understand the renovation of the old Jewish quarter within the old city, but making sure that it changes the entire ethnic make up of the city. Israel as not to be satisfied with stealing so many Arab properties within West Jerusalem but is making sure it continue its theft well into the 21st century
As if stealing Arab property is not enough for Israel, and under the pretext of keeping Israel safe from Palestinian suicide bombers and terrorists, continue to build a new wall. Unlike any other wall in the world, The Israeli Apartheid Wall, put the Berlin Wall built by the communist into shame. It snakes through the Arab city, dividing families from their neighbors, and diving Arab families from their properties and business, dividing Arab school children from their schools and most important depriving Arabs of their properties. The Israeli Apartheid Wall, supported by the US Administration and members of Congress, is made up in some areas 500 meters deep of concrete and barbed wires with the concrete supplied by senior officers of the Palestinian Authority. Within the Arab city, the Wall is some 8 meters ( 23 feet high) tall with Arab families forced to travel miles and go through many check points when they can simply walk over in minutes to their schools and businesses.
More dangerous than the Wall, is the fact that Israel is making it an official policy of depriving Arab Muslims and Christians of the right to worship freely in their holy places. Every week and every day, Israel deploys its border guards at the entrance of the city making it almost impossible for any Palestinians to have free access to the holy places.We all want a united and open Jerusalem, a Jerusalem for All We want a Jerusalem that is Jewish, a Jerusalem that is Muslim, a Jerusalem that is Christian, a Jerusalem that is international, but we do not want nor accept a Zionist Jerusalem. However Israel over the last 40 years have proven that it is unfit, unqualified and does not deserve the moral and legal rights to manage an open city for the benefits of Jews, Christians and Muslims. Israel and its supporters within the US administration, Congress and within large circles of the American Jewish community is too racists and too full of hate to have total sovereignty over such a holy city like Jerusalem

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As an American Arab with private property stolen by Jewish settlers, I am willing to give up any rights I have if these criminal thieves can prove in any US federal or state court that they have the rights to such property and that G-d gave it to them. These Israeli Jewish settlers are nothing but thieves and trespassers. Very interesting article by a very brave Israeli Jew. If only Tom Lantos and Nancy Pelosi knew what these people are doing, they will stop funding these criminal Jewish settlers.
Sami Jadallah

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 09:40 07/01/2007
The greatest settler
By Gideon Levy
Among the many obituary notices published by various groups after the death of Teddy Kollek, one group’s notice was conspicuous in its absence: the Yesha Council of Jewish Settlements. It is a bit difficult to comprehend this ingratitude by the settlers toward the person who brought approximately 200,000 Jews to the occupied territories - perhaps more than any other person. The settlement enterprise owes a great historic debt to Kollek. Neither Rabbi Moshe Levinger nor Hanan Porat nor Aharon Domb nor Ze’ev “Zambish” Hever are responsible for settling so many Israelis beyond the Green Line as Kollek, the enlightened Viennese liberal.
The fact that most of the eulogies for the former Jerusalem mayor left out this detail and that Yesha did not embrace the mega-settler Kollek is no coincidence. Israeli society has adopted sundry and strange codes to whitewash the settlement enterprise. The settlement of the occupied territories in Jerusalem has never been considered hitnahalut (the term used for Jewish settlement in the territories). And the gargantuan neighborhoods of the capital, which were built during Teddy’s term and span extensive Palestinian territory, have never been considered a controversial issue.
The fact that almost no one in the world recognizes this enterprise and the new borders it charts does not change a thing: In our eyes, but only in our eyes, not every settlement is the same and each settlement has its own moral code. But this is a game we play with ourselves. Every home built beyond the Green Line - in Yitzhar or Itamar in the West Bank, in Nov in the Golan, or in French Hill in Jerusalem - is built on occupied land and all construction on occupied land is in violation of international law. Occupation is occupation. Not everything is legal, even if it is anchored in Israeli law, as in the case of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem.
The Israelis invent patents for themselves, but this sophisticated semantic laundering will not meet the legal and ethical test. The Ramot neighborhood is a settlement. There is no difference between the “neighborhood” of Pisgat Ze’ev and the “settlement” of Givat Ze’ev. This artificial distinction does not end with the Jerusalem region. In the West Bank, distinctions are also made between settlements and “illegal outposts,” another virtuoso but groundless exercise in semantics with regard to an enterprise that is entirely illegal. There are also no settlements (hitnahaluyot) in the occupied Jordan Valley, but rather yishuvim, a generic word for settlements, unrelated to the 1967 borders. An ethical blemish has never been attached to the residents of these Jordan Valley settlements. Why? Because this is the way it was determined by Labor governments at the time, when they established moshavim and kibbutzim in the Jordan Valley - not “settlements.”
Does this make any difference from the perspective of international law? Certainly not. Were the moshavim in the Jordan Valley not built on the land of residents who were disinherited? Have they not crushed the surrounding residents?
With regard to the Golan Heights, we went up another level in the word game we play with ourselves. There are no hitnahaluyot there at all. Why? Because we decided so. There are towns, kibbutzim and moshavim, just like in the Jezreel Valley. But no word game or Knesset legislation can alter the unequivocal fact that the Golan Heights is occupied Syrian land and all of its residents are settlers and that international law regards them as criminals.
This phenomenon reached its peak in Jerusalem, which will celebrate 40 years of its “unification” this year. This act of unification was an act of occupation and the fact that a charming and charismatic figure like Kollek presided over it does not change a thing. Kollek demolished a neighborhood in the Old City and built the new neighborhoods on Palestinian land for Jews only - apartheid at its worst - and this should also be remembered in the balance of his considerable achievements.
The Jerusalem mayor Kollek left behind is a divided and wounded city, despite and because of its enormous development, replete with explosives that will yet explode in our faces. In fact, it was never unified. Like any colonialist city, there is a dark backyard for the natives. To this day, most Israelis do not set foot in Palestinian neighborhoods and the Palestinians avoid Jewish neighborhoods. The city remains divided, despite all of the lofty words about its unification for eternity. Regarding equality, there is nothing to say of course. It is sufficient to travel to the Shuafat camp or even to Sheikh Jarrah to note the outrageous disparity between the services in the eastern and western parts of the city.
Societal neglect, piles of garbage, no playgrounds or community centers, no sidewalk and no streetlights. Gaza in Jerusalem, all on the basis of abominable ethnic discrimination. This did not begin with Ehud Olmert nor with Uri Lupolianski. This began with the wily Kollek. A city whose rule in the Palestinian section is conducted through the strength of arms, with surprise checkpoints and hundreds of violent Border Policemen routinely patrolling the streets, and whose residents are subject to prohibitions that violate their fundamental liberties, is not a “unified” city. Teddy is responsible for this.
The history of the occupation, which has already lasted more than twice the amount of time than the years the state existed without it, is full of “men of peace” from the “left” who are responsible for this injustice. What would the settlement enterprise be without Yigal Allon and Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir and Yisrael Galili and, of course, Shimon Peres? Kollek must now be added to them, belatedly. He brought the wide world to Jerusalem but only to its Jewish part. He loved his city very much, and built and developed it in an impressive way, but on the downtrodden back of half of its residents. Moshe Amirav wrote in his article on Thursday (”Division, where unification failed”) that Kollek said to him in his waning years: “We failed to unify the city. Tell Ehud Barak that I support dividing it.” Better late than never, but why did we not hear a word about this in the lofty eulogies?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/810113.html

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