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A personal and political history of Zionism in Einstein's words

 

This is a chronology starting with a summing up of medieval anti-Semitism and finishing in 1955, when Einstein died. The words are his, from letters and speeches. His views changed often, with events, but in the end he bequeathed his estate to the Hebrew University.

He was as much pro-Jew (even though an atheist) as he was anti-war. The collection of historical pix used to illustrate the story is fantastic. The sequence of letters and statements places Einstein’s famous and much-quoted anti-Israel letter to the NYT in context and shows that in general he supported Israel.

 


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Obama, the shabbos goy

 

V fine writing from Christopher Hitchens, uncompromising on the attitude of Israel's right wing to peace overtures from the US. Obama's role is neatly summarised in this situation as that of "the shabbos goy".

US President Barack Obama (L) makes remarks to the press with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Click image to expand.

The mathematics of the situation must be evident even to the meanest intelligence. In order for any talk of a two-state outcome to be even slightly realistic, there needs to be territory on which the second state can be built, or on which the other nation living in Palestine can govern itself. The aim of the extreme Israeli theocratic and chauvinist parties is plain and undisguised: Annex enough land to make this solution impossible, and either expel or repress the unwanted people. The policy of Netanyahu is likewise easy to read: Run out the clock by demanding concessions for something he has already agreed to in principle, appease the ultras he has appointed to his own government, and wait for a chance to blame Palestinian reaction for the inevitable failure.

The only mystery is this: Why does the United States acquiesce so wretchedly in its own disgrace at the hands of a virtual client state? A soft version of Rabbi Yosef's contemptuous view of the gentiles is the old concept of the shabbos goy: the non-Jew who is paid a trifling fee to turn out the lights or turn on the stove, or whatever else is needful to get around the more annoying regulations of the Sabbath. How the old buzzard must cackle when he sees the gentiles actually volunteering a bribe to do the lowly work! And lowly it is, involving the tearing-up of international law and U.N. resolutions and election promises, and the further dispossession and eviction of a people to whom we gave our word. This craven impotence will be noticed elsewhere, and by some very undesirable persons, and we will most certainly be made to regret it. For now, though, the shame.

Read more at www.slate.com

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Aid flotilla (New York version) aims to free Hebron for the Jews

 

Given that this event is being held to raise funds for the conquest of an Arab area - particularly given the theme and imagery it has chosen - are they not inviting international terrorists to make a landing and shoot nine passengers dead?

Amplify’d from mondoweiss.net
hebronflotilla

JEWISH COMMUNITY OF HEBRON TO HOST NYC FUNDRAISER
- CONTINUED BUILDING CELEBRATED IN JUDEA & SAMARIA (WEST BANK)
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NEW YORK, October 20, 2010 – The Hebron Fund announced today they would host a fundraiser on Tuesday November 16th at 6 PM aboard a ship holding 1000 people. The event is entitled “The Hebron Aid Flotilla.” The boat will leave from Pier 59 at Chelsea Piers.

The Hebron Fund Annual dinner, which last year was held in Citi Field stadium amidst much controversy and protest, takes on special significance this year as many are celebrating the continued construction of Jewish settlements, after Israeli Prime Minister bowed to world pressure and stopped building temporarily.

“We are thrilled at the expansion of Jewish life in all areas of the so called West Bank and we decry the anti-Semitic attempts to curb that expansion. After the world absurdly condemned Israel for a boarding a terrorist flotilla, we decided to hold our fundraiser on a ship. Our flotilla will support peace and life!”

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Mogul with sights on the LA Times, which he sees as nauseatingly pro-Palestinian

 

This is a long but rewarding, even riveting, read about one of the world's richest men, who happens to be driven by power and ambition in the world of American and Israeli politics and the media. He is a close friend of the Clintons and the Democratic Party's largest private donor. He has also been negotiating to buy 50% of Al-Jazeera (though that is not mentioned in the article).

The Influencer

An entertainment mogul sets his sights on foreign policy.

Haim Saban, a

Haim Saban, a “former cartoon schlepper,” at home in Beverly Park. A major political donor, his greatest concern is to protect Israel. Photograph by Martin Schoeller.

Saban is not given to modest ambitions. Sixty-five years old, with a broad, dynamic countenance and slicked-down wavy black hair, he is known in Los Angeles as the man who brought the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers from Japan to America; the chairman and part owner of Univision, the nation’s leading Spanish-language media company; a staunch supporter of Israel (he has dual citizenship); and one of the largest individual donors to the Democratic Party. “Haim is a force of nature,” his friend Barry Meyer, the chairman and C.E.O. of Warner Bros., said. As a youth in Israel, Saban attended an agricultural boarding school where, he says, immigrants like his parents sent children they could not afford to feed. When he was expelled for being a troublemaker, he began attending a night school, where the principal told him, “You’re not cut out for academic studies; you’re cut out for making money.” The prediction seemed to come true in 2001, when Rupert Murdoch and Saban sold their joint venture, Fox Family Worldwide, to Michael Eisner, the C.E.O. of Disney: Saban made one and a half billion dollars. It was—and still is, he points out—the biggest cash transaction by an individual in the history of Hollywood. In March, Forbes estimated his net worth at $3.3 billion.

Perhaps Saban’s greatest asset over the years has been his remarkable ability to cultivate, charm, and manipulate people. “Being charming and analytical is quite a combination,” said Shimon Peres, the President of Israel, who has been a close friend of Saban’s for more than twenty years. “Charmers from time to time get lost.” But Saban, he continued, “isn’t floating in the air.” As a way of disguising his shrewdness and his mental agility, Saban is often self-deprecating; he describes himself as a “former cartoon schlepper.” English is one of his six languages, and his adversaries are sometimes disarmed by his linguistic stumbles, but he uses words very skillfully.

Although Saban has lived in the United States for nearly thirty years, he remains deeply connected to Israel. He watches Israeli news shows, via satellite, throughout the day, and is a devout fan of the Ha’gashash Ha’chiver (Pale Pathfinder), a popular Israeli comedy troupe that performed for decades. “He knows every sketch of theirs by heart, and he uses their language very often when he speaks Hebrew,” his friend Dan Gillerman, the former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, said. His hundred-year-old mother and his brother live in Israel, and Saban travels there frequently. Through the years, one of his closest advisers has always been an Israeli and, in business meetings with others on his team, the two would occasionally slip into a side conversation in Hebrew.

He remains keenly interested in the world of business, but he is most proud of his role as political power broker. His greatest concern, he says, is to protect Israel, by strengthening the United States-Israel relationship. At a conference last fall in Israel, Saban described his formula. His “three ways to be influential in American politics,” he said, were: make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets. In 2002, he contributed seven million dollars toward the cost of a new building for the Democratic National Committee—one of the largest known donations ever made to an American political party. That year, he also founded the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C. He considered buying The New Republic, but decided it wasn’t for him. He also tried to buy Time and Newsweek, but neither was available. He and his private-equity partners acquired Univision in 2007, and he has made repeated bids for the Los Angeles Times.

By far his most important relationship is with Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 2002, Saban donated five million dollars to Bill Clinton’s Presidential library, and he has given more than five million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. In February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a major policy address at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, co-sponsored by the Saban Center. And last November Bill Clinton was a featured speaker at the Saban Forum, an annual conference attended by many high-level Israeli and U.S. government officials, which was held in Jerusalem. Ynon Kreiz, an Israeli who was the chairman and chief executive of a Saban company and Saban’s closest associate for many years, attended the conference, and when I commented that his former boss appeared to be positively smitten with Bill Clinton, Kreiz replied, grinning broadly, “No! No! I remember once Haim was talking to me on the phone, and he said in Hebrew, without changing his tone so Clinton would have no idea he was speaking about him, ‘The President of the United States, wearing his boxers, is coming down the stairs, and I am going to have to stop talking and go have breakfast with him.’ ”

Read more at www.newyorker.com

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Israelis determined to silence all dissent, especially from Palestinians

 

Harsh, unjust, outrageous treatment of a protester who they admit is not violent - but more of the world is watching now and that is what Israel really needs to worry about. Once its ludicrous justifications no longer stick, Jews will be looking at another tragedy in a long history of tragedies - this one brought upon them by no-one but themselves (or at least by their fascist leaders).

Military Prosecution Demands More Than Two Years Imprisonment for Bil’in’s Abdallah Abu Rahmah

The sentencing phase in the trial of Abdallah Abu Rahmah, the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, began yesterday at the Ofer Military Court. Abu Rahmah was convicted of organizing illegal marches and of incitement last month, but cleared of the violence charges he was indicted for – stone-throwing and a vindictive arms-possession charge for collecting used tear-gas projectiles and displaying them.

The prosecution demanded Abu Rahmah will be sent to prison for a period exceeding two years, saying that as an organizer, a harsh sentence is required to serve as a deterrence not only for Abu Rahmah himself, but to others who may follow in his footsteps as well. This statement by the prosecution affirms the political motivation behind the indictment, and the concern raised by EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, that “the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahma is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a non violent manner.”

Read more at palsolidarity.org
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In case "peace" doesn't quite work out

 

Business as usual between the world's biggest war-mongers who also pretend to be interested in peace.

Gov't officially approves deal to buy F-35 fighter jets
Photo by: Associated Press

Gov't officially approves deal to buy F-35 fighter jets

  09/16/2010 19:36

Deal worth $3b. will bring 20 of the American made stealth planes to Israel; PMO: The purchase will significantly strengthen Israel's military.  

A fifth-generation stealth jet, the F-35 is said to be capable of evading all radars and anti-aircraft missile systems.

“The F-35 will provide Israel with continued air superiority and help retain its qualitative military edge in the region,” Barak said last month. “The plane will provide the air force with improved capabilities in ensuring Israel’s security when operating near and far away.”

 

Read more at www.jpost.com

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A jaw-dropping account of justice, Israeli-style

 

"Must read" (cick pic for link) on the Corrie family's action against the Israeli government

-- a story not even covered by Israeli media (consider what that says about Israel)

-- involves a pathologist called Dr Yehuda Hiss who sounds fictitious but comes right out of the Mengele lab

-- shows courage runs in the Corrie family



"The Corries are saddled with a judge who is said to have never ruled in favor of any plaintiff in a civil rights-related suit. And the defense has claimed unspecified state security concerns in its successful bid to avoid revealing the full contents of the investigation into Rachel Corrie's killing -- the family's lawyers have only been allowed to view a summary . . ."

And this sounds like parody but unfortunately it's not: a pathologist called Dr Yehuda Hiss(!!) carried out the autopsy. Back-note (supplied by the indefatigable Blumenthal): he was the chief pathologist of Israel for a decade and a half, implicated by a 2001 investigation by the Israeli Health Ministry of stealing body parts ranging from legs to testicles to ovaries from bodies without permission from family members then selling them to research institutes . . . Hiss admitted that he harvested organs if he was confident relatives would not discover that they were missing. He added that he often used glue to close eyelids to hide missing corneas.

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Australia's new PM is a fervent Zionist

 
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Poster found on Antony Loewenstein's blog, essential reading on the lobby and Zionist tendencies in Australia. The Palestinian viewpoint is seldom heard in this country but Loewenstein is a tireless and fearless agitator and in spite of all the flak he gets I have never seen him dejected.

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The Genocide Project

 

(featured photos all edited and presented by activist AnomalousNYC in a project on Palestine)

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Former CIA staffers Kathleen and Bill Christison:

It matters little what you call it, so long as it is recognized that what Israel intends and is working toward is the erasure of the Palestinian people from the Palestine landscape.
Israel most likely does not care about how systematic its efforts at erasure are, or how rapidly they proceed, and in these ways it differs from the Nazis.

There are no gas chambers; there is no overriding urgency.
Gas chambers are not needed.
A round of rockets on a residential housing complex in the middle of the night here, a few million cluster bomblets or phosphorous weapons there can, given time, easily meet the UN definition above.

Children shot to death sitting in school classrooms here, families murdered while tilling their land there; agricultural land stripped and burned here, farmers cut off from their land there; little girls riddled with bullets here, infants beheaded by shell fire there; a little massacre here, a little starvation there; expulsion here, denial of entry and families torn apart there; dispossession is the name of the game.

With no functioning economy, dwindling food supplies, medical supply shortages, no way to move from one area to another, no access to a capital city, no easy access to education or medical care, no civil service salaries, the people will die, the nation will die without a single gas chamber.
Or so the Israelis hope.


Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst who has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years and the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. Bill Christison was a National Intelligence Officer and a Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis.

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