John McCain, Hard-core Zionist and War Criminal:

Click on cartoon to enlarge it.

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Somerville Divestment Committee demands action against Apartheid Israel;Zionists want Iran's blood ("Turn Tehran into a parking lot." )

Photo: Celebration, after 45% of Somerville voted for Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homes, and 31% voted for sanctions against Israel.

Photo on the Web at: http://www.divestmentproject.org/SDP_news.shtml

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"Anti-Israel group returns to ballot"

SOMERVILLE JOURNAL (Somerville, Massachusetts)

July 29, 2008

On the Web at:
http://somervillenews.typepad.com/the_somerville_news/2008/07/anti-israel-gro.html

By George P. Hassett

The Somerville Divestment Project is back. The polarizing group that has brought hundreds to City Hall to protest and support Israeli policies in the Middle East, is pushing another non-binding ballot question to city voters in November.

The resolution would direct State Rep. Denise provost, D-Somerville, to “vote in favor of a non-binding resolution calling on the federal government to support the right of all people, including non-Jewish Palestinians of Israel, to live free from laws that give more rights to people of one religion than another.” Provost’s district covers roughly two-thirds of the city.

A similar measure calling for the “right of all refugees, including Palestinian refugees to return to their land of origin,” failed with 45 percent of the vote in 2006, according to SDP organizer Ron Francis. Another 2006 question called provost to support “all governmental entities of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to sell any investments they hold either in Israel Bonds or in companies that supply Military equipment to Israel.” That measure failed with 31 percent of the vote.

SDP has divided Somerville citizens over a seemingly far away conflict in another part of the world since 2004. That year, on Nov. 8 hundreds crowded City Hall to support and oppose an SDP resolution that all city investors sell their Israel bonds along with their stock in six companies – including General Electric – that build Israeli weapons. The crowd that night had their backpacks and packages checked by eight city police officers at the front entrance of City Hall.

The measure gave mayor Joseph A. Curtatone the opportunity – in front of a crowd in the Aldermanic Chambers that filled all 90 seats, lined the walls three and four deep and overflowed into the hallway - to weigh in on the foreign conflict.

“Fair and just treatment of the Palestinian people residing in the territories is essential to building peace in the region. However I also support Israel’s right to defend itself and safeguard it’s people,” Curtatone said. “The Retirement Board’s Chief responsibility is to secure the highest rate of return possible for the fund. In rare exceptions, the moral imperative is so clear and unambiguous as to warrant divestment. This is not such a case.”

Curtatone said if passed he would veto the resolution. The public hearing that followed featured a former Israel soldier being hissed at and accusations that opponents of the measure had “the blood of dead Palestinians” on their hands.

Since that meeting, SDP has alienated some of its own members by stepping up their rhetoric and describing the policies of the Israeli government as “apartheid.”

SDP member Bob Cable said this time around, “controversy is inevitable,” and he expects some opposition.

Posted at 06:00 PM in News | Permalink

"Comments

"Besides Iraq (thanks to US); Isreal is the only real democracy in that area and a true friend. We need to support them 110%! I would prefer to see these misguided fools at SDP direct Provost to back a resolution to strike Iran immediately. Turn Tehran into a parking lot. We can not allow Islamicfacists like Mr. of Iran to have nukes."

"Posted by:Imux | July 29, 2008 at 10:22 PM "

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"Gaza unemployment is highest in the world"

"UN Report: At 45%, Gaza unemployment is highest in the world"

Ha'aretz
July 28, 2008

On the Web at:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1006282.html



"The unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip now stands at 45 percent, higher than anywhere else in the world, according to a report released recently by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

"Nearly 95 percent of all factories operating in Gaza have been closed down in recent years, says the report. Israel's year long economic blockade on the coastal territory and repeated closure of electricity and fuel sources have also contributed to the humanitarian crisis.

"According to a separate report published by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the unemployment rate in the West Bank reached 25 percent between July and December 2007 - double the average rate in the Middle East and North Africa region."

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Obama to AIPAC: Jerusalem "Must Remain Undivided"

Obama to AIPAC: Jerusalem "Must Remain Undivided";

Palestinians Appalled by Obama's Comments.

On YouTube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CYg5oRjbnE



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Congressman Dingell: "...during my 50 years in Congress, I have proudly supported more than $300 billion dollars in aid for the State of Israel..."

Congressman John Dingell.

"...during my 50 years in Congress, I have proudly supported more than $300 billion dollars in aid for the State of Israel. ..."

--Congressman John Dingell, at:

http://www.house.gov/dingell/documents/press_releases/109th_Session2/08-02-06.htm

[Click on letter to enlarge it.]

[Click on letter to enlarge it.]

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Video:Don't Vote for Lowenstein. She defends the Apartheid State of Israel.How will she judge you, if she is elected as Judge?

To see the video, click below, at:

http://tinyurl.com/5lec4z

Stop Raping Palestin e. Stop Voting for Lowenste in.

* Lowenstein's fierce defense of the Apartheid State of Israel is well known.

--Even after Israel dropped 4 million cluster bombs on Lebanon.

* So is Lowenstein's public attack on the national conference to divest from Israel, at the University of Michigan. See her quote, in the Michigan Daily:

http://media.www.michigandaily.com/media/storage/paper851/news/2002/10/11/News/Hillel.Rally.Urges.Campus.To.Take.Stance-1412995.shtml

* So is Lowenstein's famous refusal to face any criticism of Israel while on City Council.

(Lowenstein turned her BACK, and her CHAIR, to show her backside to a Palestine human rights advocate, while he stood at the microphone and tried to speak to City Council).

* You remember Lowenstein's unfortunate crack about the Muslim hijab.

(It was during the Boycott-Israel campaign, at the People's Food Co-op.)

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More calls for sanctions against Israel:As Palestine suffers "ethnic cleansing, occupation, detentions and assassinations of civilians..."

"Israeli academic boycott:
" 'Sanctions, not connections' "

In "The Guardian" (U.K.), at:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/mortarboard/2008/07/israeli_academic_boycott_sanct.html

July 25, 2008

Gordon Brown's speech to the Knesset left me unsure whether to laugh or cry, says Sue Blackwell of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP).

I laughed at his pompous declaration that "the British government will stand full-square against any boycotts of Israel or Israeli academics and their institutions." After all, the University and College Union has not yet voted for a boycott: merely that "colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions". This modest call to conscience has induced apoplexy in both the British and Israeli cabinets. Clearly we have struck a raw nerve.

I also laughed, rather bitterly, at Brown's inability to perceive his own ironies. For instance, his reference to 1948 as the year when "the centuries of exile ended", whereas for thousands of Palestinians it was the year when exile began; or his pledge to "show those who would give licence to terror... that the path to a better future runs not through violence, not by murder, and never with the killing of civilians." Coming from one failing prime minister with blood on his hands to another, this was a bit rich.

There wasn't a lot to laugh at: mostly I cried. I cried at our prime minister's utter lack of historical awareness. As my colleague Dr Ghada Karmi put it: "He is either ignorant of or indifferent to the facts". His praise for Israel's achievements in "draining the swamps in the 20th century" was an uninspired variant on the "making the desert blossom like the rose" theme. He only managed to introduce the word "Palestinian" two-thirds of the way through his speech.

I cried at his abject hypocrisy in praising Israeli achievements in the face of "war, terror, violence, threats, intimidation and insecurity". Where was his praise for Palestinian achievements in the face of ethnic cleansing, occupation, detentions and assassinations of civilians, an illegal wall through the West Bank and the siege of Gaza? When he said "the people of Israel have a right to live here, to live freely and to live in security", which people of Israel did he mean? Did he include the Arab citizens of villages like Dar El-Hanoun, whose roads and playground were demolished by the Ministry of the Interior because the village was "unrecognised"?

Brown drew attention to Israeli achievements in medicine, academia, the arts, sport, music, science and technology. BRICUP is currently campaigning for boycotts in each of these spheres.

The Israeli Medical Association is a pariah because it fails to investigate allegations that its members condone torture during interrogation. The Israeli football team gets picketed because Israel has repeatedly prevented the Palestinian team from travelling and has destroyed Palestinian football pitches. Musicians, artists and writers intending to appear in Israel are being urged to treat Tel Aviv like Sun City in the days of South African apartheid.

Architects are called on to stop underpinning the occupation. Scientists and academics are challenged about their institutions' complicity with the military establishment.

So when Brown announced grants for joint initiatives through the Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership, BRICUP urged British and Israeli academics of conscience not to participate. This is an attempt to continue "business as usual" and we should have no part in it. As Ghada Karmi puts it: "Israel needs sanctions, not appeasement."

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