Wednesday, December 31, 2008

BAMN says: "What Israel is doing is racist. We have to put a stop to this..."




"Thousands gather in Dearborn to protest Israeli airstrikes"


By Khalil AlHajal

Tuesday, 12.30.2008

On the ARAB AMERICAN NEWS, at:

http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=Community&article=1837


Second demonstration scheduled for Friday, 5 p.m. in front of Dearborn City Hall.


DEARBORN – Several thousand demonstrators marched, chanted and waved flags, signs and banners along Warren Avenue in Dearborn on Tuesday, protesting Israeli airstrikes in Gaza that have killed more than 370 people since Saturday, including at least 64 civilians, according to U.N. figures.


Protestors wave Palestinian flags during a demonstration in Dearborn opposing the Israeli offensive in Gaza on Tuesday. PHOTO: Nafeh AbuNab


Protestors stretched from Chase Road to Schaefer Road on the north side of Warren, chanting "One, two, three, four, stop the killing, stop the war," "Free, free Palestine," and "Bush and Olmert, you can’t hide, you are guilty of genocide!"

While the crowd included primarily Arab Americans from Dearborn and Hamtramck, Jewish peace groups from Ann Arbor and diverse activists’ groups from Detroit and other cities also participated.


"That’s exactly what we need. This isn’t just an Arab issue. It’s a human rights issue," said Suhaib Al-Hanooti, a student activist who helped organize the gathering.


He said the high turnout despite the cold was inspiring.


"It’s better than expected. It’s amazing… I see media around here, so hopefully it will have an effect –and it helps people get their frustrations out."


Activists from the group By Any Means Necessary call protest chants alongside Arab Americans during a demonstration in Dearborn on Tuesday against Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. PHOTO: Khalil AlHajal/TAAN

Members of the group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) chanted "Black, Latino, Asian, Arab and white, by any means necessary we will fight!"

"We’re out here supporting the Arab American community. We believe in what they’re fighting for… What Israel is doing is racist. We have to put a stop to this," said BAMN organizer Xavier Carr, of Detroit.


"I thought the cold weather keeps people in doors but obviously that’s not the case here," he said. "Just the fact that we’re out here shows that we give a damn."


Carr said he hopes people across the country will see demonstration on television news and get motivated to gather and protest the violence.


"We’re very upset about what’s going on in Gaza," said Phil Booth, 78, of Ypsilanti, who protested alongside his wife Lee Booth, 76.


Protestors march against the Israeli offensive in Gaza on Tuesday along Warren Avenue in Dearborn. PHOTO: Nafeh AbuNab


The two said they’re part of the group Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, which stages weekly demonstrations in Ann Arbor opposing Israeli occupation and policy toward Palestinians.

Jack Seman, a Chaldean from Farmington Hills, said he is working with local Muslim and Jewish leaders to push together for peace and unity in the Middle East.


"It’s our duty, as Christians, Jews and Muslims to stop the bloodshed," he said. "The Middle East is supposed to be the land of milk and honey."


State Sen. Martha Scott attended a gathering at Byblos Banquet Hall after the protest.


"I’m here with you because I feel your pain," she said. "I’ll always be with you because I understand."


Protestors demonstrate Tuesday against the Israeli offensive in Gaza. PHOTO: Khalil AlHajal/TAAN


Hasan Newash, of the Palestine Office, said such demonstrations serve to bring the community together in a way that encourages prolonged, continued activism for long-term impact.

He said communities can create change over time when each person, one at a time, takes on the attitude that "it’s important for me to do my part."


"That’s how South African apartheid fell," Newash said.


He said large, loud demonstrations also facilitate the influence of community leaders on government leadership.


Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News and organizer of the protest speaks to a crowd outside Byblos Banquet Hall near the end of the demonstration Tuesday. PHOTO: Nafeh AbuNab

Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News and spokesman for the Congress of Arab American Organizations, which organized the protest, said he believes the demonstration will have a wide impact.

"When the media is present, it transfers the feelings and the emotions and the presence of the people – the message goes farther than Dearborn," he said. "And we have to continue to press on."


He said another demonstration, a candlelight vigil, is scheduled for Friday at 5 p.m. in front of Dearborn City Hall.


Members of the group Jewish Voice for Peace demonstrate along Warren Avenue in Dearborn on Tuesday. PHOTO: Nafeh AbuNab


Siblani said the group also raised money through the events Tuesday to put up billboards along Detroit-area highways, "sending a message of peace for the new presidential administration."

"A new year’s wish for peace in the Middle East or peace in Palestine," he said. "We hope the message of change that we heard during the campaign goes beyond our borders."


The Bloomfield Hills-based Jewish Community Relations Council has expressed support for the Israeli strikes on Gaza, calling the campaign "a measure of self-defense," in response to rocket attacks into Southern Israel.


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Zionist Butchers, what do you say?

How many kids did you kill today?




Click on cartoon to enlarge it.

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Israel blows up Major University in Gaza;

The Arab-Hating Campus Media is Universally Silent about it.



"Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?"

Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who organized the petition, has been silent, as have his co-signatories from Princeton, Northwestern, and Cornell Universities, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most others who signed similar petitions, like the 11,000 professors from nearly 1,000 universities around the world, have also refrained from expressing their outrage at Israel’s attack on the leading university in Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which organized the latter appeal, has said nothing about the assault.


While the extent of the damage to the Islamic University, which was hit in six separate airstrikes, is still unknown, recent reports indicate that at least two major buildings were targeted, a science laboratory and the Ladies’ Building, where female students attended classes. There were no casualties, as the university was evacuated when the Israeli assault began on Saturday.


Virtually all the commentators agree that the Islamic University was attacked, in part, because it is a cultural symbol of Hamas, the ruling party in the elected Palestinian government, which Israel has targeted in its continuing attacks in Gaza. Mysteriously, hardly any of the news coverage has emphasized the educational significance of the university, which far exceeds its cultural or political symbolism.


Established in 1978 by the founder of Hamas — with the approval of Israeli authorities — the Islamic University is the first and most important institution of higher education in Gaza, serving more than 20,000 students, 60 percent of whom are women. It comprises 10 faculties — education, religion, art, commerce, Shariah law, science, engineering, information technology, medicine, and nursing — and awards a variety of bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Taking into account that Palestinian universities have been regionalized because Palestinian students from Gaza are barred by Israel from studying either in the West Bank or abroad, the educational significance of the Islamic University becomes even more apparent.


Those restrictions became international news last summer when Israel refused to grant exit permits to seven carefully vetted students from Gaza who had been awarded Fulbright fellowships by the State Department to study in the United States. After top State Department officials intervened, the students’ scholarships were restored — though Israel allowed only four of the seven to leave, even after appeals by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “It is a welcome victory — for the students,” opined The New York Times, and “for Israel, which should want to see more of Gaza’s young people follow a path of hope and education rather than hopelessness and martyrdom; and for the United States, whose image in the Middle East badly needs burnishing.”


Notwithstanding the importance of the Islamic University, Israel has tried to justify the bombing. An army spokeswoman told The Chronicle that the targeted buildings were used as “a research and development center for Hamas weapons, including Qassam rockets. … One of the structures struck housed explosives laboratories that were an inseparable part of Hamas’s research-and-development program, as well as places that served as storage facilities for the organization. The development of these weapons took place under the auspices of senior lecturers who are activists in Hamas.”


Islamic University officials deny the Israeli allegations. Yet even if there is some merit in them, it is common knowledge that practically all major American and Israeli universities are engaged in research and development of military applications and receive money from the Pentagon and defense corporations. Weapon development and even manufacturing have, unfortunately, become major projects at universities worldwide — a fact that does not justify bombing them.


By launching an attack on Gaza, the Israeli government has once again chosen to adopt strategies of violence that are tragically akin to the ones deployed by Hamas — only the Israeli tactics are much more lethal. How should academics respond to this assault on an institution of higher education? Regardless of one’s stand on the proposed boycott of Israeli universities, anyone so concerned about academic freedom as to put one’s name on a petition should be no less outraged when Israel bombs a Palestinian university. The question, then, is whether the university presidents and professors who signed the various petitions denouncing efforts to boycott Israel will speak out against the destruction of the Islamic University.


* This article originally appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Reposted with author permission.


--Neve Gordon is chair of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and author of Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press, 2008). Jeff Halper is director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. His latest book is An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel (Pluto Press, 2008). Read other articles by Neve.


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Zionists see Palestinians as Wolves, to be pushed aside by Settlements, or simply slaughtered:



President Washington meets with the Seneca Chief, Red Jacket, 1792, in Philadelphia.
Click on image to enlarge it.


By 1805, Red Jacket had to give this history of a genocide that sounds very close to the genocide against Palestine:


"There was a time when our forefathers owned this great island. Their seats extended from the rising to the setting of the sun. The Great Spirit had made it for the use of the Indians. He had created the buffalo, the deer, and other animals for food. He'd made the bear and the beaver, and their skins served us for clothing. He had scattered them over the country, and had taught us how to take them. He had caused the earth to produce corn for bread. All this He had done for his red children, because He loved them. If we had any disputes about our hunting grounds, they were generally settled without the shedding of much blood.

"But an evil day came upon us. Your forefathers crossed the great waters and landed on this island. Their numbers were small. They found friends and not enemies. They told us they had fled from their own country for fear of wicked men, and had come here to enjoy their religion. *They asked for a small seat.*

"We took pity on them, granted their request, and they sat down amongst us. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison in return.

"The white people had now found our country. Tidings were carried back, and more came amongst us. Yet we did not fear them. We took them to be friends. They called us brothers. We believed them, and gave them a large seat. At length their numbers had greatly increased. They wanted more land; they wanted our country. Our eyes were opened, and our minds became uneasy. Wars took place. Indians were hired to fight against Indians, and many of our people were destroyed. They also brought strong liquors among us. It was strong and powerful and has slain thousands.

"Brother: our seats were once large, and yours very small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets. You have got our country, but you are not satisfied; you want to force your religion upon us...

"...Brother: we do not wish to destroy your religion, or to take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own.

"Brother: you say you have not come to get our land or our money, but to enlighten our minds..."


Source:

http://www.americanindians.com/RedJacket.htm


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1783: Robbing the Natives and Calling them "Savages"--


Where is the difference between the U.S. genocide against the Native American nations, and the Israeli Genocide against Palestine?

George Washington writing in 1783, sounds exactly like today's Zionist peaceniks, who forcibly defend their White Settlements, and their White State, while cooing about how nice peace is:

Washington writes, about the Native Americans, that they are savages, beasts, wolves in human form:

"when the gradual extension of our settlements will as certainly cause the savage, as the wolf, to retire; both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape."


Source:

* Washington's letter to James Duane, September 7, 1783, on the Web here:

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=359


and also here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=wDJ2AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA485&lpg=PA485&dq=%22george+washington%22+%22both+being+beasts+of+prey%22&source=web&ots=szBIfH96xz&sig=albnxbCn8Su6wAfYswDytsTJEOI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result



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1776: Robbing the Natives and Calling them "Savages"--


Note also that the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, and adopted unanimously by the Congress on 4 July 1776, refers to Native Americans as "merciless Indian savages".

Source:

http://www.constitution.org/usdeclar.htm


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2008: Robbing the Natives and Calling them "Savages"--


Even today, you see U.S. policy makers fervently explain their kinship with the Zionists.

Both are settlers and mass-murderers of the Earth's original peoples, and can still invent "progressive"-sounding excuses to rob the planet:


"The New Israel and the Old:
"Why Gentile Americans Back the Jewish State"


by Walter Russell Mead

In "Foreign Affiars", the July/August 2008 issue, at:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080701faessay87402-p30/walter-russell-mead/the-new-israel-and-the-old.html



U.S. settlers felt that only those who would improve the land, settling it densely with extensive farms and building towns, had a real right to it. John Quincy Adams made the case in 1802: "Shall [the Indians] doom an immense region of the globe to perpetual desolation ... ?"

And Thomas Jefferson warned that the Native Americans who failed to learn from the whites and engage in productive agriculture faced a grim fate. They would "relapse into barbarism and misery, lose numbers by war and want, and we shall be obliged to drive them, with the beasts of the forest into the Stony mountains."

Through much of U.S. history, such views resonated not just with backwoodsmen but also with liberal and sophisticated citizens. These arguments had a special meaning when it came to the Holy Land. As pious Americans dwelt on the glories of ancient Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon, they pictured a magnificent and fertile land -- "a land flowing with milk and honey," as the Bible describes it.


But by the nineteenth century, when first dozens, then hundreds, and ultimately thousands of Americans visited the Holy Land -- and millions more thronged to lectures and presentations to hear reports of these travels -- there was little milk or honey; Palestine was one of the poorest, most backward, and most ramshackle provinces of the Ottoman Empire.


To American eyes, the hillsides and rocky fields of Judea were desolate and empty -- God, many believed, had cursed the land when he sent the Jews into their second exile, which they saw as the Jews' punishment for their failure to recognize Christ as the Messiah. And so, Americans believed, the Jews belonged in the Holy Land, and the Holy Land belonged to the Jews. The Jews would never prosper until they were home and free, and the land would never bloom until its rightful owners returned."


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1819: Robbing the Natives and Calling them "Savages"--


Ex-President John Adams wrote, in 1819, to Major Mordecai Noah:


"...Farther I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites . . . & marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the dominion of it. For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation."


Adams wrote that this would "wear away some of the asperities and peculiarities" of what Adams imagined to be the Jewish character, and would cause Jews to convert to Christianity.


Source:

http://www.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=221



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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Just how Racist are the Zionists?

Read these quotes, and see for yourself:


Hebrew essayist Achad Ha-Am, after paying a visit to Palestine in 1891:
"Abroad we are accustomed to believe that Israel is almost empty; nothing is grown here and that whoever wishes to buy land could come here and buy what his heart desires. In reality, the situation is not like this. Throughout the country it is difficult to find cultivable land which is not already cultivated."

Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine,Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry:
"Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."

The Balfour Declaration to Baron Rothchild, on the 2nd of November, 1917:
"His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

Lord Sydenham, Hansard, House of Lords, 21 June 1922:
"If we are going to admit claims on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down."

Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923:
"Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, be continued and make progress only under the protection of a power independent of the native population - an iron wall, which will be in a position to resist the pressure to the native population. This is our policy towards the Arabs..."

Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism (precursor of Likud), The Iron Wall, 1923:
"A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!... Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important... to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot - or else I am through with playing at colonizing."


David Ben Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985:
"We must expel Arabs and take their places."

Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department in 1940. From "A Solution to the Refugee Problem":
"Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries - all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left."

Israeli official Arthur Lourie in a letter to Walter Eytan, director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry (ISA FM 2564/22). From Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-49", p. 297:
"...if people become accustomed to the large figure and we are actually obliged to accept the return of the refugees, we may find it difficult, when faced with hordes of claimants, to convince the world that not all of these formerly lived in Israeli territory. It would, in any event, seem desirable to minimize the numbers...than otherwise."

David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben- Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978:
"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai."

David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157:
"We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget."

Yitzhak Rabin, in his memoirs, about the violent conquest of Lydda, in 1948:

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" (From the leaked censored portions of Rabin’s memoirs, as published in the “New York Times”, 23 October 1979).

David Ben-Gurion, one of the father founders of Israel, described Zionist aims in 1948:
"A Christian state should be established [in Lebanon], with its southern border on the Litani river. We will make an alliance with it. When we smash the Arab Legion's strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo... And in this fashion, we will end the war and settle our forefathers' account with Egypt, Assyria, and Aram"

Albert Einstein, Hanna Arendt and other prominent Jewish Americans, writing in The New York Times, protest the visit to America of Menachem Begin, December 1948:
"Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created State of Israel of the Freedom Party (Herut), a political party closely akin in its organization, method, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties."

[Note: Menachem Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir, who were members of the party, became Prime Ministers.]


Martin Buber, Jewish Philosopher, addressed Prime Minister Ben Gurion on the moral character of the state of Israel with reference to the Arab refugees in March 1949.
"We will have to face the reality that Israel is neither innocent, nor redemptive. And that in its creation, and expansion; we as Jews, have caused what we historically have suffered; a refugee population in Diaspora."

Moshe Dayan (Israel Defense and Foreign Minister), on February 12 1952. Radio "Israel.":
"It lies upon the people's shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire."

Martin Buber, to a New York audience, Jewish Newsletter, June 2, 1958:
"When we [followers of the prophetic Judaism] returned to Palestine...the majority of Jewish people preferred to learn from Hitler rather than from us."

Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. Quotation from "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas:
"We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters"

Aba Eban (the Israeli Foreign Minister), quoted in the New York Times, June 19, 1967:
"If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 votes to 1 in favor of Israel returning to the armistice lines [the pre-1967 borders]…Israel would refuse to comply with that decision.”

Dr. Israel Shahak, Chairperson of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, and a survivor of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Commenting on the Israeli military's Emergency Regulations following the 1967 War. Palestine, vol. 12, December 1983:

"Hitler's legal power was based upon the 'Enabling Act', which was passed quite legally by the Reichstag and which allowed the Fuehrer and his representatives, in plain language, to be what they wanted, or in legal language, to issue regulations having the force of law. Exactly the same type of act was passed by the Knesset [Israeli's Parliament] immediately after the 1067 conquest granting the Israeli governor and his representatives the power of Hitler, which they use in Hitlerian manner."

Golda Meir, March 8, 1969:
"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."



Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969:
"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al- Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."


Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969:
"There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed"

Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972:
"The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war."

Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972:
"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."

Joseph Weitz, Director of the Jewish National Fund, the Zionist agency charged with acquiring Palestinian land, Circa 194. Machover Israca, January 5, 1973 /p.2:
"The only solution is Eretz Israel [Greater Israel], or at least Western Eretz Israel [all the land west of Jordan River], without Arabs. There is no room for compromise on this point ... We must not leave a single village, not a single tribe."

Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979:
"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out'"

Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982:
"[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs."

Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983:
"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."


Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot, 13 April 1983; New York Times 14 April 1983:
"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."


Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983, as quoted in The Hidden History of Zionism, by Ralph Schoenman, Chapter 4:
"We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves."

Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, speaking to reporters about the occupied Palestinian population, in the New York Times, April 1, 1988:
“As Israel prepared to lift a three-day blockade of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir warned today that rioters would be crushed ‘like grasshoppers’… In remarks aimed at Arab rioters, the Prime Minister said: ‘We say to them from the heights of this mountain and from the perspective of thousands of years of history that they are like grasshoppers compared to us.’ ”

Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, inferring that killing Palestinians isn't really murder:

New York Times, June 6, 1989:
“Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg had offered biblical justification for the view that the spilling of

non-Jewish blood was a lesser offense than the spilling of Jewish blood. '’Any trial based on the assumption that Jews and goyim are equal is a total travesty of justice,’ he said.”

The politically powerful Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in The Independent (UK), April 10, 2001:

Ma'ariv newspaper said that the rabbi pleaded in his sermon to God to defeat Israel's Arab enemies, declaring that ‘it is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must give them missiles, with relish - annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones’.”


Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, tells students at Bar Ilan University, From the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989:
"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990, Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service:
"The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the Jordan River for future generations, for the mass aliya [immigration], and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country."



Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France-Presse, November 15, 1998:
"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."

A “high-ranking source close to Ehud Barak”, quoted in the Jerusalem Post, Aug, 30, 2000:
“…if an agreement is not reached, the Palestinians will be like crocodiles: ‘the more you feed them, the hungrier they get.’ ”

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000:
"If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force...."

Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001:
"There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies? Not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy."

Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio:
"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."

"Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum":
"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.

Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department, quoted in Israel: an Apartheid State, by Uri Davis, p.5:
"There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. I tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary."



Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, by Norman Finkelstein, appendix on page 280:

“Indeed, right after issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the Jewish state proposed by Ben-Gurion, for example, included not just the whole of Palestine, but all of present day Jordan as well as wide swaths of Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt.”

(Footnotes include Shabtai Teveth’s book Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War [New York, 1985], pp. 34-35.)

For the official Zionist map, circa 1919, staking out similar territorial claims, see Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York, 1972), p. 85, and Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York, 1987), p. 17.

Also on page 280, of Finkelstein’s book:

". . . both Weizmann and Ben-Gurion saw partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole of Palestine. . . . [Ben-Gurion] wrote his son Amos: '[A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning. . . . Our possession is important not only for itself. . . through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state. . .will serve as a very potent lever in our historical efforts to redeem the whole country.'"


Vladimir Jabotinsky (the founder and advocate of the Zionist terrorist organizations), Quoted by Maxime Rodinson in Peuple Juif ou Problem Juif. (Jewish People or Jewish Problem):
"Has any People ever been seen to give up their territory of their own free will? In the same way, the Arabs of Palestine will not renounce their sovereignty without violence."


David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister) quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), p.121:
"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"

New York: Marchers demand boycott against Israel



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New York Demonstration, Dec. 29, 2008



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"NYC Marches Again to Demand End of Massacres in Gaza and Boycott of Israel:

"For the second day in a row, over a thousand New Yorkers marched through midtown Manhattan."


December 30, 2008

On Indymedia at:

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/12/102590.shtml

By Adalah-NY

For the second day in a row, over a thousand New Yorkers marched through midtown Manhattan, chanting and carrying signs and Palestinian flags, to voice opposition and demand an end to Israel's assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In the last three days, Israel's bombing of Gaza has killed over 360 Palestinians. Reports indicate that at least 60 of those killed were women and children.


The Monday evening protest, which drew a diverse and noisy crowd of more than a thousand and substantial media, began at 5 PM with leafletting and chanting at Union Square and Herald Square.

The energy grew during a symbolic funeral procession for Gaza's dead from Herald Square to Bryant Park, as marchers carried aloft two stretchers covered in black shrouds and flags, similar to those used in Palestinian funeral processions. The march culminated with loud chanting at the Israeli Consulate at 8:30 PM. It comes on the heels of a Sunday afternoon Manhattan march that drew over two thousand protesters, and will be followed by a Tuesday evening protest at the Israeli Consulate beginning at 5 PM.

Rush-hour pedestrians were handed thousands of flyers calling for an end to the massacre in Gaz and a boycott of Israel, and were greeted with chants, including:

"Obama. No more aid.
Stop the funds for deadly raids;" and

"While you are shopping, bombs are dropping."

Riham Barghouti from Adalah-NY explained, "New Yorkers are out in the street because they're angry that the US government is providing Israel with the planes as well as the hundreds of tons of bombs that Israel is dropping on 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians who are packed together in the world's largest open-air prison. Silence in the face of such crimes is complicity. That's why people worldwide are stepping up the non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to halt its human rights violations. With our government here in the US refusing to act, it's up to us as citizens to mobilize to hold Israel accountable."

The assault follows nearly three years of a tightening Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip which began, with US support, after Hamas emerged victorious in democratic Palestinian elections in January, 2006. More recently, Israel has almost totally sealed off Gaza to the outside world, preventing shipments of food, fuel and medical supplies from reaching Gaza's civilian population, resulting in skyrocketing levels of unemployment, poverty and hunger. Israel has also conducted frequent assassinations and aerial attacks on Gaza, killing approximately 1500 Gazans since 2006 alone. Israel's siege of Gaza's civilian population and assaults against Gaza's residents constitute grave breaches of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention. Some observers believe Israel's attacks were timed to coincide with the holiday season, when most people turn their attention away from world events.

The flyers distributed to passersby provided information on Israel's attacks and called for support for the growing international campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel - similar to the worldwide campaign that helped end Apartheid in South Africa - in order to hold Israel accountable for its crimes.

Over the last year, Adalah-NY has carried out a successful boycott campaign against Israeli diamond mogul, settlement-builder and New York real estate developer Lev Leviev.


For photos of the protest: http://adalahny.org/index.php/photo-galleries/272-gaza-funeral-procession

By Adalah-NY http://www.adalahny.org


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Dearborn Demonstration:

"Stop the Holocaust in Gaza"

"Protesters rally against Israeli airstrikes with human chain in Dearborn"


by Karen Bouffard / The Detroit News (Detroit, Michigan)


DEARBORN -- Hundreds of people lined Warren Avenue for about a mile in a human chain Tuesday afternoon to protest Israel's bombings of Gaza and what they consider inhuman treatment of Palestinians who live in the region.


The mostly Arab-American demonstrators were joined by religious leaders from other faiths, as well as members of the Green Party and other political groups in protesting the Bush Administration's handling of the Middle East conflict and support of the state of Israel.


The protest, which ran from Chase Street to beyond Scaefer, was put on by the Congress of Arab American Organizations-Michigan. While local police say about 1,000 people attended the event, organizers pegged the turnout at about 5,000.


Many of the protesters waved the red, black, green and white flag of Palestine while holding large signs showing photographs of burned and maimed Palestinians injured in the air strikes against Hamas that have gone on for the last four days.


Iman Jafin, 48, of Dearborn, helped hold a sign saying "Stop the Holocaust in Gaza" and led the crowd in a chant of "Down, down, Israel. How many children you killed today."


"I have two daughters in Palestine, one of them has three children -- two girls and one boy -- and all of them are there," Jafin said. There is no medicine. I reached them on on the Internet two days ago. I'm crying every night. I don't know what happened to them now.


____________________________________________

New York Demonstration:

"Yes! We Can Save Gaza. Boycott Israel Now!"



Photo: "People in New York demonstrate against Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip"


PARIS (AFP) — Protesters denouncing Israel's deadly bombardment of the Gaza Strip returned to the streets in demonstrations around the world to keep up the pressure for an end to the violence.


As Israel, under increasing diplomatic pressure, mulled a proposed 48-hour truce and the death toll from its onslaught rose to at least 373 Palestinians, the protesters made their voices heard again.


In France, more than 7,000 protesters marched in a dozen cities across the country to denounce the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip , which continued for the fourth day running Tuesday.


In Paris, around 3,500 people according to police -- 5,000 according to the organisers -- marched towards the French foreign ministry on the Quai D'Orsay by the River Seine, shouting slogans and carrying banners denouncing Israel.


Police said another 700 marched in the western city of Nantes, while demonstrations in at least a dozen cities and towns across the country each attracted hundreds of protesters.


In London, between 200 and 300 demonstrators protested peacefully outside the Israeli embassy, after the two previous days' rallies had descended into violence.


This demonstration was smaller than on Sunday and Monday, when scuffles erupted between police and protestors against Israel's air raids, leading to a total of 17 arrests over the two days.


Iranian demonstrators stormed the British diplomatic compound in Tehran Tuesday evening to protest London's stance towards the Israeli onslaught, state news agency IRNA reported.


"A large group of people and students entered the Gholhak gardens, which are occupied by the British embassy to protest at Britain's policies in supporting the Zionist regime and put up the Palestinian flag there," IRNA said.


A media officer at the British embassy in Tehran confirmed the report.


In Washington, between 2,500 and 5,000 people protested outside the US State Department chanting slogans like "Stop the Killing, Stop the War, Stop the Genocide of Palestinians" and with some carrying banners saying "Stop US Aid to Israel".


In Los Angeles, around 500 protestors and pro-Israel activists faced off peacefully near the Israeli Consulate.


At a separate demonstration attended by around 100 protesters in Westwood, actor Mike Farrell, a star of the hit 1970s television series "MASH", said he was "one of those people horrified by Israel's over-response."


"Not that I'm in favor of Hamas by any means, because firing rockets into Israel is not the way these things get resolved in a productive way," he said.


In Tunis, hundreds of lawyers and trade unionists joined opposition activists to defy a police ban and protest the bombing of Gaza, several sources reported.


As some protesters shouted slogans denouncing the lack of response from Arab countries in general and Egypt in particular, police headed off the demonstration as it headed towards the courthouse, said witnesses.


Tunisia's government has already condemned the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.


Saudi Arabia's interior ministry denied a report by Shiite news website Rasid.com that hundreds had demonstrated Monday afternoon in heavily Shiite Al Qatif, just west of Dammam, leading to several arrests.


Shiite news website Rasid.com reported that police had fired rubber bullets to break up the demonstrations Monday afternoon, which were attended by hundreds of people. But an interior ministry spokesman told AFP there had been no such demonstration.


Demonstrators in the Yemeni port city of Aden briefly broke into the Egyptian consulate to protest Cairo's response to the Israeli offensive, a security official said.


The protesters, mostly students from the university of Aden, "vandalised furniture before they were removed peacefully from the building," the official said, asking not to be identified.


Egypt has come in for strong criticism from Islamists and their sympathisers around the Muslim world for not fully opening its border with Gaza in the face of Israel's devastating air blitz.


In Algeria, about 100 people staged a protest in the capital Algiers after a call from politicians and editors of writers' and artists' magazines. They observed a minute's silence in memory of the dead.


In Panama City, around 200 people protested outside the Israeli embassy to condemn Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip.


In the Bulgarian capital Sofia, about 200 protesters called on the Bulgarian government to support the peace efforts. Demonstrators carried pro-Palestinian banners and others denouncing Israel.


Earlier Tuesday, about 200 people carrying flowers and candles offered a one-minute prayer in front of the Israeli embassy, with a Buddhist monk ringing a bell for the souls of the victims.


"This is nothing but a bloodbath," organiser Hiroshi Taniyama told demonstrators, who included Arabs living in Japan.


______________________________________________


Worldwide Protests against Israeli Massacre of Gaza:

"I can recognise fascism when I see it and this is really what Israel is doing. "


"Protest demos slam Israeli aggression"


DAILY TIMES (Lahore, Pakistan)

Monday, December 29, 2008


On the Web at:

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\12\29\story_29-12-2008_pg7_23


KARACHI: Separate protest demonstrations were held in the city on Sunday to condemn the Israeli military operation in Gaza Strip that killed around 271 Palestinians.



Hundreds of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) activists staged a protest demonstration outside Jamia Mosque Binoria Town.



The protesters carried banners and placards inscribed with slogans against Israel, the US and India, and chanted slogans. JI Central Secretary General Syed Munawar Hussain, JI Karachi Amir Muhammad Hussain Mehnti, JI Karachi Secretary General Hafiz Naeemur Rehman and other JI office-bearers addressed the protesters. Addressing the participants of the protest demonstration, JI leader Munawar Hassan condemned the air strikes by the Israel and criticised Muslim rulers for not raising any strong voice against the killing of innocent Palestinians.


He maintained that Palestine is surrounded by the Muslims states but despite this, Israel is committing its atrocities.



JI Karachi Amir Muhammad Hussain Mehnti lamented that Israel has besieged Gaza and halted water supply besides stopping medicines and other treatment facilities to the people while the UN is playing a role of silent spectator. He maintained that world community, which raised voice over the Mumbai attacks, should also raise its voice against the Israeli atrocities. Meanwhile, the Palestine Liberation Foundation Pakistan (PLF) staged a protest against Israeli aggression in front of the local press club. Hundreds of protesters chanted slogans and torched flags.


ppi/staff report.


_____________________________



"Gaza protests planned for weekend across UK"


31 December 2008



Yesterday, in the third consecutive day of protest within shouting distance of the Israeli embassy in Palace Green, London, numbers had diminished to around 200 and there were no arrests. The protests are planned to continue tomorrow and on New Year's Day. A rally will be held at the Egyptian embassy in London on Friday to demand that the country's border with Gaza be opened, while the capital's larger rally will assemble on the Embankment at 12.30pm on Saturday.


Sarah Colborne, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: "Thousands will be demonstrating all across the country. People are very angry, some of them are making spontaneous demonstrations. Everyone is building up for the Saturday protests now."


Around 100 police officers watched yesterday's protesters, who had been cordoned off in a section of Kensington High Street. Commander Bob Broadhurst, in charge of public order policing for the Met, said: "We are very mindful of the deeply passionate response this conflict causes for some people.


"There will be further demonstrations this week. The Met is committed to and will always facilitate lawful, legitimate protest. We are working closely with the organiser of the demonstrations being held until New Year's Day to ensure they can make their point safely, whilst we minimise any disruption in that area."


He added: "I would urge anyone else planning to hold a demonstration to come and work with us. What the Met will do is support lawful protest, but ensure all steps are taken to deal with those who break the law, or attempt to disrupt legitimate demonstrations."


On Monday, seven protesters were arrested and mounted police moved in to disperse the crowds. Yesterday, as temperatures fell, the mood was quieter and attendance more sparse.


Violetta Thomson, 73, from London, said it was the first day that she had attended. She said she could not watch anymore on television without doing something. "I was brought up in fascist Spain and came here 30 years ago. I can recognise fascism when I see it and this is really what Israel is doing. The Israeli people are not fascists, I don't think they really see the carnage their government is responsible for," she said.


Beside her, Vicky Scarlett, 75, said: "Human instincts say you must do something about this, it shouldn't be going on. In the most moderate of terms it is unjust. It's an abomination for the world to stand and watch this happening.".


Protests have also been organised for Saturday in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Portsmouth and Hull.


_________________________________________________


In Dearborn: 1,000 protesters march against Israeli massacre of Gaza;

Hundreds more protest in New York.



"Hundreds in Mich., NYC protest strikes on Gaza"

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — Close to 1,000 Arab-Americans and others marched through the Detroit suburb of Dearborn on Tuesday evening, waving Palestinian flags and shouting slogans to protest Israeli military strikes against the Gaza Strip.


Protesters braving 30-degree weather filled eight blocks of a major thoroughfare in Dearborn, widely seen as the heart of Arab America. Hundreds more gathered in New York City outside the Israeli consulate.


Since Saturday, 374 Palestinians have died in the Israeli air onslaught against Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers. Most of the dead were members of Hamas security forces but the United Nations says at least 64 civilians have been killed.


The offensive came shortly after a rocky six-month truce expired. Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets and mortars at Israel before and during the Israeli offensive.


Marchers in Dearborn waved flags and carried signs condemning Israel and showing pictures of casualties of the fighting. One group of protesters carried a mock coffin decorated with pictures of dead and injured children and labeled "U.S. Tax Dollars at Work" and "Victims of Zionism."


Some marchers chanted in English, "Gaza, Gaza don't cry, Palestine will never die" and "Israel is a terrorist state."


Others chanted, in Arabic, "God is Great" and "a martyr is beloved of God."


One protester carried a sign saying "Dearborn, take your shoes off!" a reference to the action of an Iraqi protester who threw shoes at President George W. Bush during his recent visit to Iraq.


Southeastern Michigan is home to around 300,000 people with roots in the Arab world, the result of more than a century of immigration.


About 50 people gathered Tuesday on the University of Michigan-Flint campus to protest the Israeli attacks, The Flint Journal reported.


Outside the Israeli consulate in Manhattan, protesters Tuesday waved Palestinian flags and chanted "Free Palestine."


Demonstrator Dalia Mahmoud said she was "shocked" at Israel's actions and that it was "punishing an entire population for the actions of a few."


Police barricades separated the protesters from a smaller pro-Israel rally across the street, where one demonstrator carried a sign reading "Israel must defend itself."


A few miles south at City Hall, Israeli Consul General Asaf Shariv met with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, displaying for reporters an exploded rocket that killed an Israeli woman out for a walk.


"We are obligated to defend our people, and that is what we are doing," Shariv said.


Bloomberg voiced his support.


"I can only think what would happen in this country if somebody was lobbing missiles onto our shores or across the border," he said.


The Dearborn protest was organized by the Congress of Arab American Organizations. Group spokesman Osama Siblani, who is also publisher of the Arab American News, said it was the first in a series of actions being planned in response to the Gaza fighting, including a candlelight vigil for peace and a petition calling for a cease-fire.


"There is disappointment and anger in our community and we need to express it toward the current U.S. administration that has given a blank check to the Israelis," Siblani said.


A memorial service for victims of the fighting scheduled for Tuesday was delayed because the reception hall could not fit all the protesters.


________________________________________


Zionist beasts ram into Gaza relief boat, collapsing part of its roof:


"Gaza relief boat damaged in encounter with Israeli vessel"


December 30, 2008

On CNN at:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.aid.boat/?iref=hpmostpop


(CNN) -- An Israeli patrol boat struck a boat carrying medical volunteers and supplies to Gaza early Tuesday as it attempted to intercept the vessel in the Mediterranean Sea, witnesses and Israeli officials said.


The Dignity arrives in Tyre, Lebanon, after it was reportedly rammed by an Israeli military vessel Tuesday.


The Dignity arrives in Tyre, Lebanon, after it was reportedly rammed by an Israeli military vessel Tuesday.

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CNN Correspondent Karl Penhaul was aboard the 60-foot, Gibraltar-registered pleasure boat Dignity when the contact occurred. When the boat later docked in the Lebanese port city of Tyre, severe damage was visible to the forward port side of the boat, and the front left window and part of the roof had collapsed.


The Dignity was carrying crew and 16 passengers -- physicians from Britain, Germany and Cyprus and human rights activists, including former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney -- who were trying to reach Gaza through an Israeli blockade of the territory.


The captain of the Dignity said the Israelis broadcast a radio message accusing the vessel of being involved in terrorist activity. But Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor denied that and said the radio message simply warned the vessel not to proceed to Gaza because it is a closed military area.


Palmor said there was no response to the radio message, and the vessel then tried to out-maneuver the Israeli patrol boat, leading to the collision. Video Watch Penhaul describe the boat damage »


Penhaul said at least two Israeli patrol boats had shadowed the Dignity for about half an hour before the collision, moving around the vessel on all sides. One of the patrol boats then shined its spotlight on the Dignity while the other, with its lights off, "very severely rammed" the boat.


The captain of the Dignity told Penhaul he received no prior warning. Only after the collision did the Israelis come on the radio to say they struck the boat because they believed it was involved in terrorist activities. Video Watch the chaos in Gaza and Israel »


The captain and crew said their vessel was struck intentionally, Penhaul said, but Palmor called those allegations "absurd."


"There is no intention on the part of the Israeli navy to ram anybody," Palmor said.


"I would call it ramming. Let's just call it as it is," McKinney said. "Our boat was rammed three times, twice in the front and one on the side. Video Watch Cynthia McKinney discuss the collision »


"Our mission was a peaceful mission to deliver medical supplies and our mission was thwarted by the Israelis -- the aggressiveness of the Israeli military," she said.


The incident occurred in international waters about 90 miles off Gaza. Israel controls the waters off Gaza's coast and routinely blocks ships from coming into the Palestinian territory as part of an ongoing blockade that also applies to the Israel-Gaza border. Human rights groups have expressed concern about the blockade on Gaza, which has restricted the delivery of emergency aid and fuel supplies.


The collision was so severe, Penhaul said, that the passengers were ordered to put on their life vests and be ready to get in lifeboats. The Dignity began taking on water, but the crew managed to pump it out of the hull long enough for the boat to reach shore.


Palmor said the vessel refused assistance after the incident.


The boat was carrying boxes of relief supplies, volunteers and journalists to Gaza, the Palestinian territory now subject to an intense Israeli bombing campaign.


Israel launched airstrikes against Gaza on Saturday in what Defense Minister Ehud Barak called an "all-out war" against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has ruled the territory since 2007.


The Palestinian death toll has topped 375, most of them Hamas militants, Palestinian medical sources said Tuesday. At least 60 civilians have been killed in Gaza, U.N. officials said.


Hamas has responded with volleys of rocket fire aimed at southern Israeli towns, which have left six Israelis dead -- five of them civilians.


Hamas has vowed to defend Gaza in the face of what it calls continued Israeli aggression. Each side blames the other for violating an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, which formally expired December 19 but had been weakening for months.

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Arizona Demonstration against the Israeli Massacre of Gaza--



CARAMA

Coalition of Arabs and Muslims in America

Arizona Chapter

CARAMA movement in coordination with other local and student Arab/Muslims organizations has organized a mass protest today December 28, 2008, at the busy intersection of Camelback and Central St, in Downtown Phoenix. This protest, according to local senior members in the Arab/Muslims community was the largest Arab/Muslims protest ever in Arizona.

More than 350 protesters continuously for two hours chanted slogans like "Palestine will be free from the river to the sea", "free free Palestine" and "free free Gaza"

قامت حركة تحالف العرب والمسلمين في امريكا (كرامة) وبالتعاون مع عدد من المنظمات المحلية والطلابية العربية والمسلمة بتنظيم مظاهرة هي الاكبر من نوعها في تاريخ الجالية العربية والمسلمة الصغيرة نسبياًَ في أريزونا والتي لا يتجاوز عدد أفرادها بضعة ألاف.

حيث تجمع أكثر من ثلاثمائة وخمسين متظاهراًَ على تقاطع طرق كامل باك مع سنتر ستريت المزدحم في وسط مدينة فينكس عاصمة الولاية للتنديد بالعدوان الإسرائيلي الغاشم على قطاع غزة، وقد رفع المتظاهرون لافتات تدين الدعم الامريكي للكيان الصهيوني وأخرى تتهم "إسرائيل" بشن حرب إبادة شاملة ضد أهلنا في قطاع غزة، كذلك ردد المتظاهرون طوال ساعتين كاملتين شعارات وطنية مثل "فلسطين حرة من البحر إلى النهر" و"عاشت فلسطين" و"الحرية لغزة"


Pictures from the protest--

Click on each photo to enlarge it:


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