The case "against" Israel

Since the Gaza 2014 massacre, I've endeavored to inform myself to the best of my ability on this issue to help inform others. I've come across writers of grace and fluidity and others of clunky perseverance all of whom have assisted me in confirming that everything I had been told about this "conflict" was wrong.

Here are a few of the most helpful links, articles and websites I've come across and compiled throughout the years, though there are certainly an infinite number of ways to approach this. Israel is the worst kept secret in modern history! It is tolerated because it serves the interest of power.

The irony is breathtaking and heartbreaking.

@bds @freepalestine @stand with israel @apartheidisrael


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UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION VIOLATIONS:

Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention Declaration 

“Agree to…the illegality of the settlements in the said territory and of the expansion thereof and of related unlawful seizure - See more at:

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NGO Reports:

International report on casualties from Gaza 2014
Israeli Physician report:

United Nations Report on Gaza 2014
OCHA

Very Explicit DC analysis concerning the Leahey Law - US ban on weapons sales to states with a history of human rights concerns.

The Hill War Crimes:

Breaking the Silence Gaza 2014- IOF targeting of civilians was normal rules of engagement say soldiers

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NUCLEAR ISRAEL:

Took a lawsuit to get this one. Report is called "Critical Technology Issues in Israel and NATO Countries," written nearly three decades ago. It is not classified.Critical Technology Issues in Israel and NATO Countries,1987 - Released in 2015

How the US helped Israel with H-bomb - 1980s report declassified - RT

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THOSE DARN VIOLENT SETTLERS

Watch Stone Cold Justice - Israeli Settlers

Documentary concerning the UNICEF Report Below. Australian crew shooting footage what would not be allowed into the United States due to Zionist Control.

Notables:
19:11 - Zionist Extremist Settlers beating up Palestinian children as IOF soldiers look on.

19:40 Settler Fires live ammunition hitting Palestinian Youth in the Side of the Head

26:35 - Israeli Children accused of stone throwing are abducted in the middle of the night, taken to an Israeli prison (against international law of transporting juveniles across borders) kept imprisoned without telling the parents where child is located are shackled and hung up on crosses, feet just touching the floor, sometimes  left for 5 hours, “specialist” psychologist brought in to threaten them with rape and murder to break them down so they will talk. To have hungry snarling attack dogs eat lunch meat off his head and crotch.

Report on above:

UNICEF Children in Israeli Military Detention 2013:


Settlement Study:

"Trigger Happy in the West Bank". Amnesty International - A sickening look at the hyper violent Israeli Settlement culture. Lots of breathtaking youtube vids on line concerning this as well.

World Council on Churches -EDUCATION UNDER OCCUPATION, 2013

Human Rights Watch - Violence against Palestinian Women and Girls, 2006:

Settler Violence- Burned to death in the West Bank:

An 18-month-old Palestinian baby has burned to death after settlers set fire to his family house in Duma village, south of Nablus city, in the occupied West Bank.
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HISTORY:

Jewish Land Ownership 1945:

Myth Of UN Creation of Israel 

Reports all confirm what a terrible terrible idea it would be to give away the Palestinians homeland to the European Jewish Zionists for theirs.

The running sore was foreseen!

Churchill White Paper: AND

Peel Commission Report: AND

British White Paper: AND

King Crane Commission:
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MISCELLANEOUS:

TEARS OF GAZA, documentary 2013. Required viewing  for every United States taxpayer. Sweet dreams.

< Film: Birds Fly Trailer:

A heartbreaking documentary film during Operation Cast Lead. The mot terrifying moment occurs at. The family candlelight shimmers as the girl’s eyes avert upward as the Israeli Air Force begins bombardment of Gaza 2009.

Young Turks
Watching the UN official break down in tears detailing Israel’s intentional targeting of civilians in shelters and schools is unnerving. Essential Feinstein viewing.

Bibi Step down!

200 generals call for Bibi’s ouster? You’d think this would have amounted to some media attention?

Israeli occupation training of US Police.

Israeli army's use of Human Shields:

Israel's poor forgery of a "Hamas" human shield how-to

NON MUSLIM TERRORISTS CARRIED OUT MORE THAN 90% of Terrorism in USA

Palestinian Natural Gas:
But in 2007, a year before Operation Cast Lead, Ya'alon's concerns focused on the 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas discovered in 2000 off the Gaza coast, valued at $4 billion.

CIA recommends dumping Israel Tomorrow!

Former CIA Agent Michael Schemer lays down the case that Israel is not in America’s best interest. Notable quotes at.

"I’d dump the Israelis tomorrow:"

Norwegian Dr. Madds Gilbert risks his life at Al Shiffa hospital every couple of years when Israel decides it’s time to ‘mow the lawn’. Witnessed the use of banned weapons such as flechette cluster munitions and white phosphorous.

"Mr. Goldstone cannot be trusted."

Enlightening post Goldstone report interview with Richard Goldstone by International Bar Association in which Goldstone reveals the Israelis had set their sights on taking him down. Only post-Goldstone-Report-retraction I am aware of.

Don't punish Palestinians for Israel's war crimes

Ridiculously blatant bullying of the PLO by Israel, not to petition the ICC on behalf of War Crimes during the 2014 Gaza slaughter. Israel withheld Don’t punish Palestinians for joining ICC:

Always useful grasp of the the incitement and escalation source.

Israel’s History of Breaking Ceasefires:

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Quotes:

Interesting quote that seems to indicate that 80 years prior to 1922 - Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in peace in Palestine.

A special Commission, headed by Sir Walter Shaw, a retired Chief Justice of the Straits Settlements, investigated this outbreak. The Shaw Commission observed:

"In less than 10 years three serious attacks have been made by Arabs on Jews. For 80 years before the first of these attacks there is no recorded instance of any similar incidents. It is obvious then that the relations between the two races during the past decade must have differed in some material respect from those which previously obtained. Of this we found ample evidence. The reports of the Military Court and of the local Commission which, in 1920 and in 1921 respectively, enquired into the disturbances of those years, drew attention to the change in the attitude of the Arab population towards the Jews in Palestine. This was borne out by the evidence tendered during our inquiry when representatives of all parties told us that before the War the Jews and Arabs lived side by side if not in amity, at least with tolerance, a quality which to-day is almost unknown in Palestine". 87/

Compilation OF  all links seen here.

Ceasefire Violations: Six decades of Israeli impunity, incitement and escalation

Despite Clinton’s repeated assertions that “Hamas provokes Israel” to defend itself, frequently referring to her 2012 brokered ceasefire between the two as Secretary of State, the record is quite the contrary.

Since Israel's creation in 1948, Israeli political and military leaders have demonstrated a pattern of repeatedly violating ceasefires with their enemies in order to gain military advantage, for territorial aggrandizement, or to provoke their opponents into carrying out acts of violence that Israel can then exploit politically and/or use to justify military operations already planned.

Though fighting never really "ends" there are periodic ceasefires, all of which are violated by Israel. Let’s begin with that much touted “Clinton-brokered” ceasefire.

2012 - On November 14, two days after Palestinian factions in Gaza agree to a truce following several days of violence, Israel assassinates the leader of Hamas' military wing, Ahmed Jabari, threatening to escalate the violence once again after a week in which at least six Palestinian civilians are killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli attacks.

Israel’s uses Hamas’ retaliation as pretext for launching offensive “Operation Pillar of Defense”.

2012 - On March 9, Israel egregiously violates an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire and assassinates the head of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, sparking another round of violence in which at least two dozen Palestinians are killed, including at least four civilians, and scores more wounded. As usual, Israel claims it is acting in self-defense, against an imminent attack being planned by the PRC, while providing no evidence to substantiate the allegation. Following the assassination, Israeli journalist Zvi Bar'el writes in the Haaretz newspaper:

"It is hard to understand what basis there is for the assertion that Israel is not striving to escalate the situation. One could assume that an armed response by the Popular Resistance Committees or Islamic Jihad to Israel's targeted assassination was taken into account. But did anyone weigh the possibility that the violent reaction could lead to a greater number of Israeli casualties than any terrorist attack that Zuhair al-Qaisi, the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, could have carried out? "In the absence of a clear answer to that question, one may assume that those who decided to assassinate al-Qaisi once again relied on the 'measured response' strategy, in which an Israeli strike draws a reaction, which draws an Israeli counter-reaction."

Just over two months prior, on the third anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, Israeli army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz tells Israel's Army Radio that Israel will need to attack Gaza again soon to restore its power of "deterrence," and that the assault must be "swift and painful," concluding, "We will act when the conditions are right."

Christian Science Monitor

MARCH 9, 2012
Gaza militant assassinated by Israel, sparking fears of wider violence
Israeli confirmed its targeted assassination of Zuhair al-Qaissi was the chief of the Popular Resistance Committees, a pro-Hamas militant group that has threatened retaliation.

GAZA CITY, GAZA — An Israeli air strike today killed the chief of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a pro-Hamas militant group that today declared it will no longer honor the tenuous cease-fire with Israel.

2011 - On October 29, Israel breaks a truce that has maintained calm for two months, killing five Islamic Jihad members in Gaza, including a senior commander. The following day, Egypt brokers another truce that Israel proceeds to immediately violate, killing another four IJ members. In the violence, a total of nine Palestinians and one Israeli are killed.

2008 - In November, Israel violates a ceasefire with Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups that has been in place since June, launching an operation that kills six Hamas members. Militant groups respond by launching rockets into southern Israel, which Israel shortly thereafter uses to justify Operation Cast Lead, its devastating military assault on Gaza beginning on December 27. Over the next three weeks, the Israeli military kills approximately 1400 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including more than 300 children. A UN Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone subsequently concludes that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the fighting, a judgment shared by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

2002 - On July 23, hours before a widely reported ceasefire declared by Hamas and other Palestinian groups is scheduled to come into effect, Israel bombs an apartment building in the middle of the night in the densely populated Gaza Strip in order to assassinate Hamas leader Salah Shehada. Fourteen civilians, including nine children, are also killed in the attack, and 50 others wounded, leading to a scuttling of the ceasefire and a continuation of violence.

2002 - On January 14, Israel assassinates Raed Karmi, a militant leader in the Fatah party, following a ceasefire agreed to by all Palestinian militant groups the previous month, leading to its cancellation. Later in January, the first suicide bombing by the Fatah linked Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade takes place.

2001 - On November 23, Israel assassinates senior Hamas militant, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud. At the time, Hamas was adhering to an agreement made with PLO head Yasser Arafat not to attack targets inside of Israel. Following the killing, respected Israeli military correspondent of the right-leaning Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Alex Fishman, writes in a front-page story: "We again find ourselves preparing with dread for a new mass terrorist attack within the Green Line [Israel's pre-1967 border]... Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line..." A week later, Hamas responds with bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa.

2001 - On July 25, as Israeli and Palestinian Authority security officials meet to shore up a six-week-old ceasefire, Israel assassinates a senior Hamas member in Nablus. Nine days later, Hamas responds with a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem pizzeria.

1988 - In April, Israel assassinates senior PLO leader Khalil al-Wazir in Tunisia, even as the Reagan administration is trying to organize an international conference to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The US State Department condemns the murder as an "act of political assassination." In ensuing protests in the occupied territories, a further seven Palestinians are gunned down by Israeli forces.

1982 - Following Israel's invasion of Lebanon in June, and after PLO fighters depart Beirut under the terms of a US-brokered ceasefire, Israel violates the terms of the agreement and moves its armed forces into the western part of the city, where the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila are located. Shortly thereafter, Israeli soldiers surround the camps and send in their local Christian Phalangist allies - even though the long and bloody history between Palestinians and Phalangists in Lebanon is well known to the Israelis, and despite the fact that the Phalangists' leader, Bashir Gemayel, has just been assassinated and Palestinians are rumored (incorrectly) to be responsible. Over the next three days, between 800 and 3500 Palestinian refugees, mostly women and children left behind by the PLO fighters, are butchered by the Phalangists as Israeli soldiers look on. In the wake of the massacre, an Israeli commission of inquiry, the Kahan Commission, deems that Israeli Defense Minister (and future Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon bears "personal responsibility" for the slaughter.

1981-2 - Under Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel repeatedly violates a nine-month-old UN-brokered ceasefire with the PLO in Lebanon in an effort to provoke a response that will justify a large-scale invasion of the country that Sharon has been long planning. When PLO restraint fails to provide Sharon with an adequate pretext, he uses the attempted assassination of Israel's ambassador to England to justify a massive invasion aimed at destroying the PLO - despite the fact that Israeli intelligence officials believe the PLO has nothing to do with the assassination attempt. In the ensuing invasion, more than 17,000 Lebanese are killed.

1973 - Following a ceasefire agreement arranged by the US and the Soviet Union to end the Yom Kippur War, Israel violates the agreement with a "green light" from US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. According to declassified US documents, Kissinger tells the Israelis they can take a "slightly longer" time to adhere to the truce. As a result, Israel launches an attack and surrounds the Egyptian Third Army, causing a major diplomatic crisis between the US and Soviets that pushes the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war, with the Soviets threatening to intervene to save their Egyptian allies and the US issuing a Defcon III nuclear alert.

1967 - Israel violates the 1949 Armistice Agreement, launching a surprise attack against Egypt and Syria. Despite claims Israel is acting in self-defense against an impending attack from Egypt, Israeli leaders are well aware that Egypt poses no serious threat. Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli army during the war, says in a 1968 interview that "I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it." And former Prime Minister Menachem Begin later admits that "Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."

1956 - Colluding with Britain and France, Israel violates the 1949 Armistice Agreement by invading Egypt and occupying the Sinai Peninsula. Israel only agrees to withdraw following pressure from US President Dwight Eisenhower.

1949 - Immediately after the UN-brokered Armistice Agreement between Israel and its neighbors goes into effect, the armed forces of the newly-created Israeli state begin violating the truce with encroachments into designated demilitarized zones and military attacks that claim numerous civilian casualties.

Finally, between Clinton's much ballyhooed ceasefire treaty in 2012 leading up to the latest, and most deadly Gaza incursion by Israel, Operation Protective Edge, Israel racked up 191 ceasefire violations as reported by Counterpunch.

From November 2012 through July 7, 2014, Visualizing Palestine tallied 191 Israeli violations to 75 Palestinian violations. The Israeli violations were far more deadly. Israel was responsible for 18 fatalities and dozens of injuries, while Palestinians were responsible for 0 fatalities and 3 injuries.

With such gross bias', disregard for parity, justice and human rights in Palestine, Clinton's support from African American and Latino Civil Rights leaders remains a mystery.

Do Palestinian lives matter? Not to Hillary

Just when you thought colonial dehumanization was going out of style, here comes Bernie on Palestine. 

Here Bernie is heralded for his "bravery" and "unprecedented" moxie for daring to suggest Israelis be made to treat the Palestinians with respect and dignity. 

Heaven forfend!

As somebody who is 100 percent pro-Israel, in the long run -- and this is not going to be easy, God only knows, but in the long run if we are ever going to bring peace to that region which has seen so much hatred and so much war, we are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity.

God only knows it is going to be a lot to ask, Sanders conveys. Please Bernie, let's leave God out this time. That was the whole problem in the first place. 

Yet as 'revolutionary' as his "recognize Palestinians and human beings" policy, Bernie fails to tell us that Gaza and the West Bank are essentially "one Palestine". What happens to one population happens to all four million Palestinians collectively. 

Which would have put together the recent spate of stabbings and Hamas rocket attacks as reactions to continued and expanded settlements throughout the West Bank in direct contravention of international law. 

This would have shed further light on Israel's alleged "over reactions" and "disproportionate" response in context of being used against a displaced and dispossessed people who resist.

The introduction of these 500,000 heavily armed and guarded Zionist extremists onto land designated as the future Palestinian State could be classified as "incitement", some would argue.

Now, if you're asking not just me, but countries all over the world, "was that a disproportionate attack," the answer is that I believe it was, and let me say something else. 

"I believe it was. Shhhhh"

Remarkable state of affairs when the same former secretary of state who counts as one of her heroes South African Apartheid Leader Nelson Mandela is content that Israel has complied with the US's own Leahy Act which bars weapons sales to countries that have a track record of human rights abuses.

In fact, Clinton - an alleged gun violence activist - had no problem helping Obama beat the Bush Administration in arms sales. In fact, the Obama admin in its first five years - of which Clinton belonged for four - sold more weapons than any US Administration since World War II.

There is enough evidence to convict the state of Israel three times over for war crimes in the last three Gaza incursions alone. The PLO, as a cosignatory to the Rome Statute, was last reportedly making such an appeal to the International Criminal Court over the 2014 Israeli incursion "Protective Edge".

The massacre over which the two were sparring over Israel's disproportionate use of force. In which 1500 civilians including 500 children were murdered. A massacre brought on by Israel breaking the ceasefire Hillary Clinton negotiated after Israel's 2012 "Pillar of Defense" assault.

Links to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and UN reports.

Clinton succeeded in blocking the most famous - the (Richard) Goldstone Report on Operation Caste Lead 2008-2009).- at the UN was followed by a brisk and ruthless Israel-led character assassination of the respected S. African Jurist.

The report, released on 15 September 2009, concluded that both sides had committed violations of the laws of war. It stated that Israel had used disproportionate force, targeted Palestinian civilians, used them as human shields and destroyed civilian infrastructure. Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups were found to have deliberately targeted Israeli civilians and sought to spread terror in southern Israel by mounting indiscriminate rocket attacks. The report's conclusions were endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council.[63]

After a barrage of precise personal attacks, Goldstone - a Jewish Zionist - recanted his report in an embarrassing and confused op-ed in the Washington Post almost two years later. 

Some commentators have endeavored to prove by parsing his words that Goldstone did not actually recant. While there are grounds for making this argument on a technical basis, such a rhetorical strategy will not wash. Goldstone is a distinguished jurist. He knows how to use precise language. If he did not want to sever his connection with the Report he could simply have said “I am not recanting my original report by which I still stand.” He must have known exactly how his words would be spun and it is this fallout—not his parsed words—that we must now confront.

Yet these are not the concerns of Hillary or Bernie.

War crimes charges would automatically shut off the $3.7 billion/year military aid to Israel.

That would set off a chain of catastrophic events that would hit US and Israeli weapons manufacturers hardest. The subsidies are cash cows for the Master's of War who depend on the establishment for their taxpayer blood.

What are we to make of Hitler's admiration of the "American Holocaust" - the extermination of the natives of the Americas. And his attempt at same with the Jews? 

And of Israel's settlement of the West Bank?

No Hillary, it's Israel not Hamas that violates ceasefires

Click for study

In order to get anywhere in the Israel - Palestine debate, there is one thing that must be made clear.

This is not a normal conflict.

Typically when imagery is called to mind of one side "raining down rockets" on the other, the casual reader tends to visualize a traditional somewhat symmetrical conflict. Complete with opposing armies.

Not the struggle of a people under occupation.

We can split hairs about Geneva Four all day long, but those protections are in place to guard against prolonged occupation. If the occupying power is responsible for not only the health and well being of populations - in this case, the roughly 4 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza - and uncontroversially disallowed to annex land and transfer populations, long term occupation would be highly avoided.

Which is precisely the point.

So despite Hillary Clinton's wife-beater-shielding assertion that Israel "does not want this" and the Palestinians and their leaders "incite violence" by playing the aggressor, the record seems to indicate the contrary. With no-one to play the arbiter, Israel can fire into Gaza without accountability, provoke a response and then claim self-defense after using disproportionate force. That is the history.

Because the Palestinians are accountable to Israel and Israel can decimate with impunity using the most powerful state of the art weaponry in the region as explained by Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of The Jerusalem Fund.

Munayyer's organization tracked all Israeli ceasefire violations SINCE Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state,  negotiated the end of the 2012 Gaza slaughter known as "Pillar of Defense":

From the 2012 ceasefire Israel violated the [Clinton brokered] agreement 120 times in one year. More importantly, in an analysis of the New York Times' coverage, 87 of these violation were not covered at all. The ones that were, alleged the offensives were made in self-defense.

So how have these cease-fire dynamics been covered? We’ve tracked New York Times coverage of the cease-fire during this period. The New York Times is representative of the mainstream and extremely important for shaping public discourse on events and thus an important window into broader mainstream coverage. The Times also has multiple reporters covering these events including a bureau in Jerusalem and a correspondent in Gaza. Finally, we simply can’t track everything so the Times, with its easily searchable history, is an effective example to use.

Of the nearly 120 Israeli cease-fire violations during this period the New York Times reported on 17 of them. Additionally, most of these stories (eleven) came either during the first week of the cease-fire, when the issue was still fresh in readers’ minds, or since the escalation on December 20th. That means for the bulk of this period, during which Israel committed 87 cease-fire violations and causing some 91 Palestinian casualties over nearly a one year period there were only six stories on the topic. This represents a systematic failure to cover Israeli cease-fire violations.

Israel says it wants Hamas to control projectile fire from other factions and yet it persistently violates the truce putting Hamas in a position of having to defend Israel’s violations. By targeting groups other than Hamas and by expecting Hamas to crack down on their responses, Israel is playing a dangerous and deadly game of divide and conquer in Gaza that will likely lead to the unraveling of the cease-fire. Once again, Israel has proven security is not its aim, subjugation is. 

One more consideration. As if drone assassinations of Hamas leaders and mass incarceration without charge of hundreds of Gazans at will without consequence, both Gaza and the West Bank are to be considered "one" Palestine.

Click to watch

In fact, the Bill Clinton brokered disastrous Oslo Accords - in which Arafat was manipulated into signing away almost everything but the deed, which he refused to do - stipulated the two areas were to be geographicaly connected.

This vision died when Israel build it's famous "apartheid wall" separating the west bank from Gaza and West Jerusalem from East Jerusalem and settlements have quadrupled since 1993.

Still, the concern remains. With land expropriation and home demolition in the west bank on the rise, a military response from Gaza is warranted under international right of self-defense. What happens to one half of Palestine happens to all of Palestine.

But continued settlement expansion - now complete with some 500,000 specially protected Jews in the West Bank - somehow went unchallenged in the New York debate as they have gone unchallenged by the United States.

Click for "Trigger Happy in the West Bank"

When we look at causal factors in this ongoing destructive conflict, we must not ignore Israeli impunity, whether raiding or bombing Gaza or defying international law by continuing illegal settlement building on land set aside for a free Palestine, as a continued source of instigation.

Clearly Clinton's 2012 negotiated ceasefire between Hamas and Israel - will go down as yet one more success for Israeli foreign policy, one more colossal blunder for US credibility.

Shah of Iran Discusses Israel Lobby influence on US, 36 Years Ago - 60 minutes 1976

Bernie Sanders Did Confuse Numbers of Dead and Wounded in Gaza War, but Israel’s Mass Killing of Civilians Is a Fact

Posted by Sitting Bull on Sunday, April 10, 2016

The worst 'human shield' guide ever made by Israel

The IOF oftentimes, make up Human Shield Manuels and then attribute them to Hamas - poorly. https://t.co/5tgmXbpaex https://t.co/2KyZoVGhng

— Thermite (@OtEasybrown) April 10, 2016

Oh Hillary, please move to Israel and run for the Knesset. You would be better placed to serve your masters. pic.twitter.com/ML2zV4N8Jp

— Thermite (@OtEasybrown) July 7, 2015

Trump foreign policy mirrors nation's own: We do what we want.

It may come as a shock to the Bernie-Bros and Shillary-bots, columnists, foreign policy, political and military experts but, though they may be able to run circles around him in foreign policy theory, the Donald has a clearer grasp of US military practice than any of them.

And he need not bother to "expand" what's on the books. We do what we want.

While punishing pundits and ham-handed hand-holders joined together to gnash their collective teeth in righteous indignation at Trump, a CIA insider reassured us:

Former CIA director Michael Hayden, who also served as a four-star Air Force general and the director of the National Security Agency, sees a remedy: The military would save us from Trump’s excesses if he somehow gets elected. “If any future president wants . . . to waterboard anybody, he better bring his own bucket,” Hayden has said. The Pentagon would never let him get away with war crimes: “The American armed forces would refuse to act,” he told HBO’s Bill Maher recently. “You are required not to follow an unlawful order.” 

Hats off to Maher for not cracking up and sending a cascade of spittle over Mr. Hayden. While you get the sense he would get the irony, Maher is still a "truther" after all, in that he believes the "truth" that Islam is an inherently violent religion  bent on destruction of the west.

Almost 25-years-ago to the day of Trump's latest foreign policy "tough talk", on February 26 and 27, 1991, the White House demonstrated no need to "expand" existing law or even pass bogus legal memos as in the torture fiasco.

For it was on this day the US incinerated tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers in a fiery massacre known as the "Highway of Death". The soldiers were withdrawing from Kuwait in compliance with UN Security Council Resolutions.

U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles on two major highways in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. "It was like shooting fish in a barrel," said one U.S. pilot. The horror is still there to see.

In short, rather than accept the offer of Iraq to surrender and leave the field of battle, Bush and the U.S. military strategists decided simply to kill as many Iraqis as they possibly could while the chance lasted. 

The pretext for massive extermination of Iraqi soldiers was the desire of the U.S. to destroy Iraqi equipment. But in reality the plan was to prevent Iraqi soldiers from retreating at all. Powell remarked even before the start of the war that Iraqi soldiers knew that they had been sent to Kuwait to die. Rick Atkinson of the Washington Post reasoned that "the noose has been tightened" around Iraqi forces so effectively that "escape is impossible" (February 27, 1991). What all of this amounts to is not a war but a massacre.

The massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Common Article III, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who are out of combat. Additional war crimes are added for intentionally targeting civilians, of which there were busloads caught up in traffic jam.

But this is just not permissible to say.

Even Rosa Brooks, professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a former Pentagon official, overlooks the forest so shaded is she by the trees. While she is clearly troubled by his comments, she can't quite move the ball past the torture extravaganza at Abu Ghirab, Guantanamo and various other 'black sites' post-911.

Think back to the first few years after the 9/11 attacks. The Pentagon initially planned to treat Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners in accordance with the rules laid out in the Geneva Conventions, but the White House considered this inconvenient. (Under those rules, prisoners can’t be detained secretly and with no review process, and they most definitely can’t be waterboarded.) So the White House found some unusually compliant Justice Department lawyers, and by January 2002, the department’s office of legal counsel was instructing the Defense Department that Geneva Convention protections did not apply to Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters.

She is concerned, given the Bush administrations manipulation of "torture memos" - which in effect said what we're doing to captured Al Queda folks isn't torture, therefore it isn't subject to the Geneva Conventions - Trump may do the same thing.

Missing from her post-911 abuse of power critique of Bush is the war crime of invading and bombing Afghanistan at all. We were not attacked nor were we under threat of attack at any time from the sovereign state of Afghanistan. We were not immune to it's charms however, or of our desire to insert ourselves back into that part of the world in a permanent way. All but two of the highjackers were Saudis and none were from Afghanistan.s

US airstrikes in that country, extremely precise "errant" strikes against Doctors Without Borders Hospitals and Saudi led US-weaponized and supported attacks on civilian markets in Yemen are the rule, not the exception. The fact these atrocities and war crimes pass without pause is a testament to our sanctified view of those illegal activities versus the activities of "others."

Or of course we need look no farther than Hillary Clintons favorite war, Iraq III, for which she voted as perhaps the crime of the century. Surpassed only by Hiroshima, Iraq 2003 was a supreme war crime, crime against humanity - more than 1 million Iraqis were killed - and disabused the world of the notion the UN retained any legitimacy whatsoever.

Should I go on? Please. Do your own research and get back to me.

Russian versus US "aggression": Keep Ukraine NATO neutral

Both Bernie Sanders​ AND Hillary Clinton​ share enthusiasm for this amazing feat of creative cold war politic. WTF?

Gen. Philip Breedlove in the Latvian capital Riga come a day after the Pentagon said it would begin continuous rotations of an additional armored brigade of about 4,200 troops in Eastern Europe beginning in early 2017.

“We are prepared to fight and win if we have to ... our focus will expand from assurance to deterrence, including measures that vastly improve our overall readiness,” Breedlove said following talks with Baltic region NATO commanders.

“To the east and north we face a resurgent and aggressive Russia, and as we have continued to witness these last two years, Russia continues to seek to extend its influence on its periphery and beyond.”

Crimea, Ukraine and how "your land is my land, Putin!"

Let's see. This is a country on Russia's border "threatening" to open ties with the EU, effectively "cutting" ties with Mother Russia. Namely and most threateningly, the Ukraine's gesture to join the west's killing apparatus, NATO, might have raised an eyebrow.

Perspective: Imagine if Canada or Mexico were undergoing revolution and threatening to join the Warsaw Pact. Do you think we would tolerate such a thing? Could we be blamed for responding? Are you kidding me? We would nuke Canada into next Winter before we would allow it to join the Warsaw Pact!

Russia, however, was openly hostile to Ukrainian membership in NATO.

Ya think? Given the collective's recent bloody history is it any wonder?

Though a more persuasive case that by far the most concerning global aggressors are the United States and, when cover is warranted,  its NATO lackeys "coalition", such an objective observation comes with and dangerous prerequisite: that we reject the notion "our" aggression serves a greater good, one of "progress" and "democracy" and "civilization" while "theirs" serves the interest of tyranny and conquest.

These are the warmed over Cold War ideologies that continue to permeate the national discussion despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as observed by pretty much the rest of the world.

All told, 24 percent of worldwide respondents chose America as the greatest threat to world peace. Coming in second, with a whopping 8 percent, was Pakistan.

No mention of say, Iraq? The completely "illegal under international law" invasion and subsequent occupation (permanent military bases) to dominate western oil interests in the region.  Libya anyone? How about the West's "non-involved involvement" in Syria?

Both interventions of which among other things, could be deemed part of "the greater Israel project": a series of military interventions sold as, among other things, making sure Israel feels safe in its self-created "bad neighborhood". Israel has dreamed of a "post-Saddam" Iraq for at least 20 years.

Oh, that's right. International Law, like international terror, is something that applies to "them", not "us".

At least Hillary and Bernie are upfront about their NATO bloodlust. Trump so far, is the only one bold or reckless enough to call for dismantling the dangerous Cold War relic.

That means we are protecting them, giving them military protection and other things, and they’re ripping off the United States. And you know what we do? Nothing,” Mr. Trump said at a subdued rally here on the outskirts of Milwaukee. “Either they have to pay up for past deficiencies or they have to get out.” 

“And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” he concluded.

From the mouths of babes.

So the only feasible 'win win' situation appears to be quite simple and rather obvious. Ukraine should remain neutral. Advocate ties with the west all day long, just leave the murderous terror affiliation behind, as pitched by Noam Chomsky:

Now, in the case of the Ukraine, again, whatever you think about Putin—think he’s the worst monster since Hitler—they still have a case, and it’s a case that no Russian leader is going to back down from. They cannot accept the Ukrainian move of the current government to join NATO, even probably the European Community. There is a very natural settlement to this issue: a strong declaration that Ukraine will be neutralized, it won’t be part of any military alliance; that, along with some more or less agreed-upon choices about how—about the autonomy of regions. You can finesse it this way and that, but those are the basic terms of a peaceful settlement. But we have to be willing to accept it; otherwise, we’re moving towards a very dangerous situation. I mentioned before that the Doomsday Clock, famous clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has just been advanced to three minutes before midnight. That’s very close. Midnight means we’re finished. That is the highest, closest it’s reached since 1983.

Seems like the surest way to avoid armageddon in this lifetime.

Do you agree with German politician Dr. Alexander Neu?

Dr. Neu also mentioned that it was the West, not Russia that sparked the coup in Ukraine. "I don't see that [Moscow] poses a threat to the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. This is why this threat is imaginary." 

The latest Pentagon's announcement, according to the German politician, could indicate that the US is trying to contain Russia because Moscow does not want to follow what the West wants it to do.

Food for thought.