Molten Lead in Gaza

EditionJanuary 2 - 4, 2009
How Israel is Multiplying Hamas by a Thousand

Molten Lead in Gaza

By URI AVNERY

EJUST AFTER MIDNIGHT

, Aljazeera’s Arabic channel was reporting on events in Gaza.

Suddenly the camera was pointing upwards towards the dark sky. The screen was pitch black. Nothing could be seen, but there was a sound to be heard: the noise of airplanes, a frightening, a terrifying droning.
It was impossible not to think about the tens of thousands of Gazan children who were hearing that sound at that moment, cringing with fright, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the bombs to fall.

* * *
“ISRAEL MUST defend itself against the rockets that are terrorizing our Southern towns,” the Israeli spokesmen explained. “Palestinians must respond to the killing of their fighters inside the Gaza Strip,” the Hamas

spokesmen declared

.
As a matter of fact, the cease-fire did not collapse, because there was no real cease-fire to start with. The main requirement for any cease-fire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours now and again. The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water.
Those who decided to close the crossings – under whatever pretext – knew that there is no real cease-fire under these conditions.
That is the main thing. Then there came the small provocations which were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into the Strip “in order to destroy a tunnel that came close to the border fence”. From a purely military point of view, it would have made more sense to lay an ambush on our side of the fence. But the aim was to find a pretext for the termination of the cease-fire, in a way that made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians. And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and – lo and behold – the cease-fire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas.
* * *
WHAT WAS THE AIM? Tzipi Livni announced it openly: to liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza. The Qassams served only as a pretext.
Liquidate Hamas rule? That sounds like a chapter out of “The March of Folly”. After all, it is no secret that it was the Israeli government which set up Hamas to start with. When I once asked a former Shin-Bet chief, Yaakov Peri, about it, he answered enigmatically: “We did not create it, but we did not hinder its creation.”
For years, the occupation authorities favored the Islamic movement in the occupied territories. All other political activities were rigorously suppressed, but their activities in the mosques were permitted. The calculation was simple and naive: at the time, the PLO was considered the main enemy, Yasser Arafat was the current Satan. The Islamic movement was preaching against the PLO and Arafat, and was therefore viewed as an ally.
With the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987, the Islamic movement officially renamed itself Hamas (Arabic initials of “Islamic Resistance Movement”) and joined the fight. Even then, the Shin-Bet took no action against them for almost a year, while Fatah members were executed or imprisoned in large numbers. Only after a year, were Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his colleagues also arrested.
Since then the wheel has turned. Hamas has now become the current Satan, and the PLO is considered by many in Israel almost as a branch of the Zionist organization. The logical conclusion for an Israeli government seeking peace would have been to make wide-ranging concessions to the Fatah leadership: ending of the occupation, signing of a peace treaty, foundation of the State of Palestine, withdrawal to the 1967 borders, a reasonable solution of the refugee problem, release of all Palestinian prisoners. That would have arrested the rise of Hamas for sure.
But logic has little influence on politics. Nothing of this sort happened. On the contrary, after the murder of Arafat, Ariel Sharon declared that Mahmoud Abbas, who took his place, was a “plucked chicken”. Abbas was not allowed the slightest political achievement. The negotiations, under American auspices, became a joke. The most authentic Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, was sent to prison for life. Instead of a massive prisoner release, there were petty and insulting “gestures”.
Abbas was systematically humiliated, Fatah looked like an empty shell and Hamas won a resounding victory in the Palestinian election – the most democratic election ever held in the Arab world. Israel boycotted the elected government. In the ensuing internal struggle, Hamas assumed direct control over the Gaza Strip.
And now, after all this, the government of Israel decided to “liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza” – with blood, fire and columns of smoke.
* * *
THE OFFICIAL NAME of the war is “Cast Lead”, two words from a children’s song about a Hanukkah toy.
It would be more accurate to call it “the the Election War”.
In the past, too, military action has been taken during election campaigns. Menachem Begin bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor during the 1981 campaign. When Shimon Peres claimed that this was an election gimmick, Begin cried out at his next rally: “Jews, do you believe that I would send our brave boys to their death or, worse, to be taken prisoner by human animals, in order to win an election?” Begin won.
Peres is no Begin. When, during the 1996 election campaign, he ordered the invasion of Lebanon (operation “Grapes of Wrath”), everybody was convinced that he had done it for electoral gain. The war was a failure and Peres lost the elections and Binyamin Netanyahu came to power.
Barak and Tzipi Livni are now resorting to the same old trick. According to the polls, Barak’s predicted election result rose within 48 hours by five Knesset seats. About 80 dead Palestinians for each seat. But it is difficult to walk on a pile of dead bodies. The success may evaporate in a minute if the war comes to be considered by the Israeli public as a failure. For example, if the rockets continue to hit Beersheba, or if the ground attack leads to heavy Israeli casualties.
The timing was chosen meticulously from another angle too. The attack started two days after Christmas, when American and European leaders are on holiday until after New Year. The calculation: even if somebody wanted to try and stop the war, no one would give up his holiday. That ensured several days free from outside pressures.
Another reason for the timing: these are George Bush’s last days in the White House. This blood-soaked moron could be expected to support the war enthusiastically, as indeed he did. Barack Obama has not yet entered office and had a ready made pretext for keeping silent: “there is only one President”. The silence does not bode well for the term of president Obama.
* * *
THE MAIN LINE was: not to repeat the mistakes of Lebanon War II. This was endlessly repeated on all the news programs and talk shows.
This does not change the fact: the Gaza War is an almost exact replica of the second Lebanon war.
The strategic concept is the same: to terrorize the civilian population by unremitting attacks from the air, sowing death and destruction. This poses no danger to the pilots, since the Palestinians have no anti-aircraft weapons at all. The calculation: if the entire life-supporting infrastructure in the Strip is utterly destroyed and total anarchy ensues, the population will rise up and overthrow the Hamas regime. Mahmoud Abbas will then ride back into Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks.
In Lebanon, this calculation did not work out. The bombed population, including the Christians, rallied behind Hizbullah, and Hassan Nasrallah became the hero of the Arab world. Something similar will probably happen this time, too. Generals are experts on using weapons and moving troops, not on mass psychology.
Some time ago I wrote that the Gaza blockade was a scientific experiment designed to find out how much one can starve a population and turn its life into hell before they break. This experiment was conducted with the generous help of Europe and the US. Up to now, it did not succeed. Hamas became stronger and the range of the Qassams became longer. The present war is a continuation of the experiment by other means.
It may be that the army will “have no alternative” but to re-conquer the Gaza Strip because there is no other way to stop the Qassams – except coming to an agreement with Hamas, which is contrary to government policy. When the ground invasion starts, everything will depend on the motivation and capabilities of the Hamas fighters vis-à-vis the Israeli soldiers. Nobody can know what will happen.
* * *
DAY AFTER DAY, night after night, Aljazeera’s Arabic channel broadcasts the atrocious pictures: heaps of mutilated bodies, tearful relatives looking for their dear ones among the dozens of corpses spread out on the ground, a woman pulling her young daughter from under the rubble, doctors without medicines trying to save the lives of the wounded. (The English-language Aljazeera, unlike its Arab-language sister-station, has undergone an amazing about face, broadcasting only a sanitized picture and freely distributing Israeli government propaganda. It would be interesting to know what happened there.)
Millions are seeing these terrible images, picture after picture, day after day. These images are imprinted on their minds forever: horrible Israel, abominable Israel, inhuman Israel. A whole generation of haters. That is a terrible price, which we will be compelled to pay long after the other results of the war itself have been forgotten in Israel.
But there is another thing that is being imprinted on the minds of these millions: the picture of the miserable, corrupt, passive Arab regimes.
As seen by Arabs, one fact stands out above all others: the wall of shame.
For the million and a half Arabs in Gaza, who are suffering so terribly, the only opening to the world that is not dominated by Israel is the border with Egypt. Only from there can food arrive to sustain life and medicaments to save the injured. This border remains closed at the height of the horror. The Egyptian army has blocked the only way for food and medicines to enter, while surgeons operate on the wounded without anesthetics.
Throughout the Arab world, from end to end, there echoed the words of Hassan Nasrallah: The leaders of Egypt are accomplices to the crime, they are collaborating with the “Zionist enemy” in trying to break the Palestinian people. It can be assumed that he did not mean only Mubarak, but also all the other leaders, from the king of Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian President. Seeing the demonstrations throughout the Arab world and listening to the slogans, one gets the impression that their leaders seem to many Arabs pathetic at best, and miserable collaborators at worst.
This will have historic consequences. A whole generation of Arab leaders, a generation imbued with the ideology of secular Arab nationalism, the successors of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yasser Arafat, may be swept from the stage. In the Arab space, the only viable alternative is the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism.
This war is a writing on the wall: Israel is missing the historic chance of making peace with secular Arab nationalism. Tomorrow, It may be faced with a uniformly fundamentalist Arab world, Hamas multiplied by a thousand.
MY TAXI DRIVER in Tel-Aviv the other day was thinking aloud: Why not call up the sons of the ministers and members of the Knesset, form them into a combat unit and send them off to head the coming ground attack on Gaza?
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

CounterPunch

Diary of 2008

January 2 - 4, 2009

You Remember It, Don't You? An Incredible, Hope-Filled Year

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Hope is the fuel. Hope the feds will bail you out of your foreclosure, hope you’ll get a job, hope you don’t get sick and go bankrupt, hope your money manager didn’t give your trust fund to Mr Madoff. Bury 2008 and write its epitaph, "I question why I never questioned it. I believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled story."
This was the forlorn wail of the literary agent who bought the latest fake memoir to have embarrassed the publishing industry – the story of Herman Rosenblat who claims in Angel at the Fence that he met Roma Radzicky, his wife of 50 years when he was a kid in a Nazi German concentration camp. He says a little Polish girl fed him apples through the barbed wire and that they met on a blind date in New York in the Fifties and fell in love.
Funny thing is, Herman WAS in a concentration camp and he did meet Roma on a blind date in New York. She had been a child in Germany, and had come to the States via Israel. They have been married for 50 years. So theirs is a truly a hope-filled story. But not hope-filled enough in today’s market. Not hope-filled enough for Berkley Books and Oprah. Some time in the 1990s Herman, a retired tv repairman living in Miami, began to improve on reality, to the the fury of his and also Roma’s family who knew perfectly well what he was up to. He decided he met Roma through the wire of Schlieben, a subcamp of Buchenwald. Berkley bought his book and Oprah had him on her show, twice. Investigators finally demolished Herman’s fantasy, saying the layout of the camp would have made it impossible for Roma to throw the apple that far. Herman, 79, has fallen back on the hope defense: "I wanted to bring happiness to people. I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world."
Kenneth Waltzer, director of Jewish studies at Michigan State University, who investigated and exposed Herman and Roma’s fables, told Wyatt Mason of Harpers on the last day of 2008:
“Herman erased his own compelling story. His three older brothers took an oath never to part from him. They fed him in the camp and they lied about his age to protect him. Herman wrote his brothers out and substituted a fantasy tale about meeting a young girl at the fence. Roma, the compliant wife, erased her own compelling story. She was part of a family group from Krosniewice that survived–and few survived from that town–by dint of special cunning, forged documents, and luck. She also reconstructed her family as a family of four when there were five. The third sister, too young, too dark, to pass in hiding as a Polish Catholic, was, sadly, left behind.”
So Herman and Roma decided, in evening of their lives, to repackage their survival as a love story of the death camps, “the single greatest love story... we've ever told on the air" Oprah Winfrey.)
As the late Raul Hilberg, great historian of the Nazi extermination of the European Jews wrote in his often acrid memoir, The Politics of Memory, published in 1996. “If counterfactual stories are frequent enough, kitsch is truly rampant… The philistines in my field are truly everywhere. I am surrounded by the commonplace, platitudes, and clichés….The first German publisher of a small volume, containing my introduction and documents about the railroads [viz. their role in the destruction of the Jews] inserted a poem for which, he said, he had paid good money, describing human beings in freight cars including children whose eyes glowed like coal… . The manipulation of history is a kind of spoilage and kitsch is debasement.”
Israel, Gaza and the U.S.
President-elect Obama is getting whacked by the left for declining comment on Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, but his prudent silence is just as discomfiting to the Israeli government and its allies here, in the United States. They wanted a ringing endorsement of their onslaught. There were also hints in their demeanor on television that Obama’s senior aides like David Axelrod were not overly delighted with Israel’s state propagandists for headlining Obama’s remarks on a visit to Israel in the summer that "If somebody shot rockets at my house where my two daughters were sleeping at night, I'd do everything in my power to stop them.”
On the campaign trail and, indeed, since he reached the U.S. Senate in 2005, no politician was more sedulous that Barack Obama in ensuring that the Israel lobby here had no cause for disquiet. On arrival in Washington, he instantly selected Joe Lieberman, known informally as the senator from Israel, as his mentor. At the annual conference this last summer of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Obama drew criticism from across a broad political spectrum for his groveling.
“Israel should get whatever it wants and an undivided Jerusalem should be its capital,” Obama assured the American Jewish delegates, many of them influential Democrats from across the U.S. The next day, one of his foreign policy advisors hastily issued a clarification to the effect that Obama believes "Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties" as part of "an agreement that they both can live with." The aide refused to rule out such possibilities as Jerusalem also serving as the capital of a Palestinian state or Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods.
Noam Chomsky remarked recently. “With Obama, Israel and less than 2 per cent of the American population is now in full control of the American government.” So, is there any evidence that when he sits down in the Oval Office, Obama will try to set a new course?
It’s certainly true that the minute the new Obama administration made any move, however tentative, deemed “anti-Israel” by the massed legions of the Israel lobby – stretching from vice president Biden’s office, through Obama’s own Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to about 98 per cent of the U.S. Congress, the major newspapers and TV networks, the think tanks in Washington, the big Democratic Party funders – political mayhem would break loose. The White House would see its prime political enterprise, the economic recovery program, immediately held hostage.
It’s also true that both Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have in the past evinced sympathy for Palestinian aspirations: the former was photographed with his wife Michelle in what was obviously an amiable meeting with the late Edward Said, America’s best known Palestinian, and Hillary Clinton publicly embraced Yasir Arafat. It seems safe to say that, unlike Bush Jr., neither Obama nor Mrs. Clinton have any rootedly ideological or religious commitment to the Zionist cause. Political self-preservation and advancement form the leaven in their loyalty to Israel and will remain predominant.
But if the power of the Isrel lobby , here in the U.S.A., is as obstructive as ever to the formation of any equitable U.S. policy to address Palestinian aspirations the international situation does offer opportunity. Although ruthless and horrifying Israel’s onslaughts on Gaza are evidently an expression of weakness, in a quest for military credibility forced by the imminence of elections in Israel, just as Shimon Peres, in similarly dire straits, launched Operation “Grapes of Wrath” against Lebanon before an election (which his party lost) in 1996. Bombardment, as always, unites the population on the receiving end and rallies it around its political leaders, assuming they don’t run away.
In the end, Israel will stop the bombing and what will it achieve beyond another exhibition of futile strategy, like the attack on Lebanon in 2006? The last time Israel had an effective military campaign that could be called a victory was 27 years ago, in the 1982 attack on Lebanon. Hamas has been greatly strengthened by the current attack and the status of President Abbas reaffirmed as a spineless collaborator with Israel,;Mubarak likewise; Syria and Turkey alienated from Western designs; Hezbollah and Iran vindicated by the world condemnation of Israel’s barbarous conduct. For months Israel besieged Gaza, starving its civilian inhabitants of essential supplies with no effective international reproach. It’s hard to take dramatic photographs of an empty medicine bottle, but easy to film a bombed out girl’s dorm or a Palestinian mother weeping over the bodies of her five dead daughters, featured on the front page of the Washington Post this week.
Israel’s current crop of leaders are second-raters, and conditions ripe for a forceful push from the U.S., assuming that the new administration has the requisite modicum of courage and ingenuity – a very, very long bet, as bitter experience for nearly forty years instructs us.
In the dying moments of his administration, Bill Clinton nearly brokered a deal between Barak government and Arafat. Hilary Clinton certainly knows that the story of Arafat walking away from “the best possible deal” is a myth fostered by Israel and that it was Barak, facing elections who collapsed the deal at the Taba summit. Everybody knows what the contours of a settlement should be. Olmert, on his way out, put it flatly in his famous October interview in Yediot Aharonot: "We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the essence of which is that we shall actually withdraw from almost all the territories, if not from all the territories … Anyone who wants to keep all the territory of [Jerusalem] will have to put 270,000 Arabs behind fences within sovereign Israel. That won't work."
In that same interview Olmert said of his previous 30 years as a politician, apropos the Palestinian question, “I was not ready to look into all the depths of reality." Will Obama and Clinton confront reality? America’s changing and weakening circumstances prompt them to do so. If Obama wants to be judged as anything more than a partisan of the Israel lobby, he will have to make the attempt. That said, no one who has followed US policy in the Middle East with any attention since the Six Day War in 1967 should discard profound pessimism as the anchor for all assessments.
For those who want to get a taste of Hamas’ outlook, where better to turn than to the interview in our latest newsletter with Hamas’s leader, the Damascus-based Khaled Meshal. Last May CounterPuncher Alya Rea and yours truly were among a party of Americans sitting down with Meshal and some aides in a house in the suburbs of Damascus. Meshal himself is an alert and humorous man who looks to be in his early 50s, born in a village not far from Ramallah. He was trained as a physicist, has visited the U.S. a number of times and speaks good English.
In this same bumper edition subscribers get the definitive rundown from the grerat Indian journalist P.Sainath on a prolonged spasm of terrorism which has probably claimed in total well over 200,000 lives. I refer to the neoliberal onslaught on Indian farmers which drove some 17,000 farmers to suicide last year alone, many of them not too far from Mumbai. In this instance the sponsors of terror are not to be found in Pakistan but in economics departments in Chicago, Harvard and Yale and the headquarters of the World Bank.
Talking of academe you’ll also find in the newsletter gratifying testimony to the vile conduct of Harvard Law School during the McCarthy witch-hunts as the School tried to force famed attorney Jonathan Lubell and his twin brother David to Name Names. Finally, in the newsletter There’s an excellent probe by Steve Higgs into the possible environmental causes of autism and a homage by yours truly to the late great English environmental writer Roger Deakin. Subscribe Now!
So let’s turn now to politics as kitsch, and the campaign year just concluded, with hope’s (and Oprah’s) candidate triumphant.
January 1
It’s time to take stock of the landscape. The American political system, as conditioned by corporate cash, legal obstructions to independent candidacies, the corporate press, is designed to eliminate any substantive threat to business as usual. In the case of the Democrats, the winnowing process is working well. Mike Gravel, by far the most vivacious and radical of the party’s candidates on substantive matter of the war and empire, was swiftly marginalized. I’ve seen very few Gravel buttons.
Dennis Kucinich seemss to have a lock on those Democrats prepared to say true to a hopeless outsider. I don’t understand this loyalty to the Ohio congressman. The point of hopeless outsiders is to give us hope. It’s a dialectical thing. They convince us that their cause is not hopeless, is worth fighting Kucinich gives me no hope. He has barely shouldered his way into single digits. His signs and buttons and tickers already look as though they’re collectibles on e-bay.
The three major Democratic contenders for the nomination are all unalluring. John Edwards is offering us a populist package, with homilies on fair trade, gaps between rich and poor, corporate greed and so forth. Decent people including many labor organizers are working for him. I don’t believe a word he says. His substantive record on war and empire is bad. He has poor judgement. Why spend $400 to have a hairdo that makes you look like a slick lawyer with a fancy haircut?
Barack Obama? I can’t remember a single substantive statement he’s made. In terms of political philosophy and pragmatic intention his platform is like the Anglican clergyman’s answer, when asked for his conception of God: an oblong blur. When pressed, Obama’s positions on war and empire are usually very bad.
January 3
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is now fighting for its life after a shattering defeat last night in Iowa at the hands of the black senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. Also on life support is the candidacy of the Mormon Mitt Romney, trounced in Iowa's Republican caucuses by Mike Huckabee, the folksy and decidedly Christian former governor of Arkansas.
Confounding all expert predictions, the turnout on the Democratic side doubled from 2004 and Obama can fairly claim he was the reason. His vague calls for change held huge allure for Democrats and independents in every age group, except among women over 65 who stayed true to Mrs Clinton.
Obama won in the cities and in rural counties. Among young people Hillary won 11 per cent of college voters. Obama won 60 per cent. Young people simply didn't care for Hillary. In their cohort, Hillary's 'likeability' scored a desolate 17 per cent.
The parlor wisdom in the press has been that the war in Iraq is no longer an issue. It turned out that the three main issues on voters' minds were, in descending order, the war, the economy and health care. Obama led in all three.
For the party establishments - Democratic and Republican - it was a bad night, as their favoured candidates went down to severe defeat.
The Clintons' calculation had been that Obama would never be able to match their fund-raising. Wrong. Obama raised huge sums from small-sum contributors, who can continue their support. A lot of Hillary's big financial backers have already reached their legal limits.
Mrs Clinton had the big feminist organizations in her corner and a good chunk of organized labor. They didn't deliver, any more than the Democratic machine supervised by campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe and super-pollster Mark Penn. They thought they could sink Obama withDecember's slurs about drug use, Islamic heritage and color. The slurs backfired.
On the Republican side Mike Huckabee sank the hopes of Mitt Romney and the Republican establishment in part because of his version of economic populism, far more persuasive than that of the Democrat John Edwards, whose run now seems doomed.
Ron Paul scored 10 per cent, a respectable performance for an anti-war candidate running in a pro-war party. The Iowa results have brightened the landscape by overturning the official apple cart.
January 8
The women of New Hampshire saved her. Hillary Clinton, confounding premature expectations of her political demise, won the Democratic primary by a narrow two per cent, 39-37. The prime reasons for her victory over Barack Obama were a) women and b) the lower profile in New Hampshire of the war in Iraq.
In New Hampshire, Hillary got 47 per cent of the women's vote, 34 per cent going for Obama. The Clintons learned, how to calibrate an assault on Obama. That was Bill Clinton's role. His carefully prepared outburst the day before the primary, assailing Obama for lies and malicious slanders on his own character, was an eerie reprise of his furious outbursts during the Lewinsky affair.
As in Jacobean tragedies, the time is coming for the stage hands to haul the dead and dying off the stage. Gone: Fred Thompson (one per cent of the vote in New Hampshire, after an incredible amount of press); Mike Gravel, 396 votes; Dennis Kucinich, 3,800 votes, the same number of UFOs Shirley MacLaine sees on a clear night; Bill Richardson, 12,845 votes, or five per cent.
Giuliani? It doesn't look good for him. This is the north-east, his quarter of the Homeland.
January 11
On January 10 Moody’s, in concert with the other main bond-rating firm, Standard and Poor’s, gave the United States its top AAA credit rating. The terrorist blackmail threat came in the form of a demand by Moody’s that the US government “reform” Social Security and Medicare. “In the very long term, the rating could come under pressure if reform of Medicare and Social Security is not carried out as these two programs are the largest threats to the long-term financial health of the United States and to the government’s Aaa rating.”
Today, the world’s credit system is strained to bursting point by such financial scams as CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) which are bundles of debt instruments, ranging from junk bonds through subprime mortgages. Moody’s and the other rating agencies have played a crucial role in putting the CDOs together in the first place.
If Moody’s is going to present itself as a major political player presuming to dictate national policy down the barrel of a financial gun, its executives and analysts should be hauled into the star chamber. Let’s have a rendition of these Moody’s executives before a special investigative committee of Congress with full subpoena power. Ask them to explain their own role in causing the financial upheavals afflicting the planet right now, due to the collapse of the housing bubble and its impact on the home mortgage market.
January 21
He's a smart fellow and so Barack Obama surely knew what was in store for him if he ever looked like taking the Democratic nomination away from Hillary Clinton.
Obama's charmed life came to an end with his Iowa caucus victory. In New Hampshire, Hillary's campaign manager Billy Shaheen warmed up voters by reminding them Obama was unelectable because of his past "drug use" as a pot-smoker and a cokehead. Hillary snarled that whereas the black Martin Luther King was a merchant of dreams it took a white president, Lyndon Johnson, to get the Civil Rights bill through Congress. Andrew Cuomo, a prominent New York Democrat, said he was tired of Obama's "shuck and jive".
Bob Johnson, America's first black billionaire and a big Hillary supporter, stood next to Hillary on a campaign platform in South Carolina and said the Clintons had been fighting for black justice while young Obama was still "doing something in the neighbourhood" ie doing drugs behind the schoolyard fence.
Racial decorum is paper-thin in America, and already the gloves are halfway off. Obama's home preacher and spiritual counselor, Jeremiah Wright, told a huge and applauding congregation in his church in Chicago that "some argue that blacks should vote for Clinton because her husband was good to us. That's not true! He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky."
Now Clinton and Obama are locked in a desperate struggle for the South Carolina vote on January 26. It won't be long before the Clinton campaign circulates some of Rev Wright's sermons linking Zionism with racism. Already they're trying to link Wright's church to the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Jackson can predict accurately to Obama what will happen next and those speeches praising Senator Lieberman won't help.
January 31
McCain’s victory in Florida on Tuesday is a measure of the terrible shape the Republican Party now finds itself in. They have a front-runner that no faction in the party really likes. He’s old, short, bald, with a history of serious skin cancer and a record of psychological instability. He is favor of a war deeply disliked by about 70 per cent of all Americans and has publicly proclaimed that the U.S. may well be in Iraq for a hundred years. With the country is poised on the lip of recession he calls for budget cuts. In Michigan he told distraught auto workers, – many of them “Reagan Democrats”, that their jobs were never coming back. In Florida he said he didn’t know much about economics but that Social Security would have to be fixed – i.e. privatized. Over half the people voting in Florida’s Republican primary were over 60 and the Arizona senator’s blithe endorsement of privatization would have scarcely been encouraging as they read the slumping bottom lines on their private 401K retirement accounts.
February 1
Politics offer many sagas of lowness acting in the service of decent achievement. Richard Nixon was a low character but presided over the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and passage in 1973 of the Endangered Species Act, the single most significant piece of legislation in American environmental history. Bill and Hillary professed noble intentions endlessly. Page upon page in Sally Bedell Smith’s book, For the Love of Politics, even amidst scandal and impeachment, has them raptly discussing constructive “public policy.” If mere information was the key to political success, the Clintons would have rivaled FDR and Eleanor.
Bill Clinton had “typically had a half-dozen books going at any one time.” His briefing primers “ran more than one hundred pages.” He “liked to devour the Department of Agriculture’s acreage-planted reports.” But the gabfests went round and round in circles because very early in Little Rock, Arkansas, Bill and Hillary had also learned conclusively that a hundred worthy position papers, each a thousand pages long, weigh less in the balance of forces than a single phone call from the CEO of Georgia Pacific or Tyson Chicken or Wal-Mart.
The book echoes with the stunned gasps of astounded friends, long-term political supporters and lovers, as the Clintons’ knives sank between their shoulder blades. The most vivid of Bedell Smith’s pages portray a man operating well beyond the norms of rational or civilized behavior. His Georgetown professor had told him great men could do without sleep, and so he tried to get by on four hours a night. His eyes would glaze in important meetings. Jolted awake, he would abuse his subordinates in endless, profanity-laden tirades.
“Some aides,” Bedell Smith writes, “thought his eruptions were pathological … Years later, Bill explained that he was able to live ‘parallel lives,’ which he described as ‘an external life that takes its natural course and an internal life where the secrets are hidden.’ He traced his identity as a ‘secret keeper’ to his troubled upbringing, when he hid the chaos of his household behind a sunny persona. He had difficulty, he said, ‘letting anyone into the deepest recesses of my internal life. It was dark down there. He admitted that over the years his own anger ‘had grown deeper and stronger.’”
As president, he kept everyone waiting, including a group of elderly concentration camp survivors huddled for two and a half hours in a tent during a rainstorm until they finally left. Terrified of open conflict and desperate for approval, he drove his staff mad by vacillation in reaching any decision, followed by abrupt switches in direction.

February 10
At the end of last week, Ann Coulter, the Saxon Klaxon, announced that if McCain gets the nomination she would not only "vote for" Hillary, she would "campaign for her if it's McCain” because Clinton "is more conservative than he is".
On Super Tuesday the dirigible of drivel himself, Rush Limbaugh, told his vast radio audience: “If I believe the country will suffer with either Hillary, Obama or McCain, I would just as soon the Democrats take the hit rather than a Republican causing the debacle. And I would prefer not to have conservative Republicans in the Congress paralyzed by having to support, out of party loyalty, a Republican president who is not conservative.”

February 14
Hillary Clinton’s biggest mistake was not divorcing Bill in 2001 and then pressing forward into the presidential campaign as Senator Hillary Rodham, He’s a millstone and the campaign thus far has exploded the claim that Bill Clinton is still magic as a vote winner. Many Democratic party regulars have very hard feelings about him. Clinton was not good for the Democratic Party when he was in the White House. As Barack Obama pointed out in a speech in Virginia Beach, “Keep in mind, we had Bill Clinton as president when, in ’94, we lost the House, we lost the Senate, we lost governorships, we lost state houses.”
On top of that Bill Clinton infuriated blacks in South Carolina by mildly race-baiting Obama. Clinton’s little slaps, designed to ghettoize Obama, produced huge black majorities for the purveyor of Change and angered many white liberals too.
Hillary as divorcee would have had real panache, a woman high-stepping into freedom on the ashes of her past, like Eva Peron. As things stand she can’t even offer Obama a deal whereby she’ll accept the vice presidency. Who would want Bill scampering in and out of the Old Executive Office Building, ogling the interns.
But if Hillary’s in bad trouble, the Hillary-haters are in even worse shape. The conservative movement is finished. Rush Limbaugh, is flaming out, like the zeppelin Hindenberg. For years now the liberals have loved to tremble at Limbaugh’s malignant powers. But it turns out Rush couldn’t get a dog-catcher elected. For months he’s urged the dittoheads to rally to a true conservative. He’s worn himself hoarse denouncing McCain as a traitor to the cause. With each daily dose of raillery from Limbaugh McCain’s cause flourished.
The prophets are discredited because their cause has failed. The conservative movement has splintered, victim of lethal saber slashes from the neocons, who plunged the country into an unpopular and hopeless war; from George Bush, who rewarded the conservatives with the No Child Left Behind Act and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, both of which could have been put forward by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
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Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq "1,297,997"
Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In U.S. War And Occupation Of Iraq 4,221
Cost of U.S. War and Occupation of Iraq
$585,175,492,533For more details, click here.

Key Articles
Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President
The president's real goal in Iraq
The Project for the New American Century.
The Plan is for the United States to rule the world.
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Will Iran Be Next?
Memo: Bush made intel fit Iraq policy
Secret Downing Street Memo
UK Ministers Knew WMD Was "Excuse"
Leaked Cabinet Office paper
Poll: U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006
Does Iran's President Want Israel Wiped Off The Map? - Does He Deny

The Holocaust

?

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Raw Video Footage: Israel Bombs Gaza Market
WARNING

This Video Shows The Reality Of Israel's Attack On Gaza. It Should only

be watch by a mature audience. Continue
Israel Bombs Mosque In Gaza Kills ElevenBy Al JazeeraAt least 11

Palestinians, including one child, have been killed after Israeli forces struck a mosque during prayers in the town of Beit Lahiya, north of Jabaliya in the Gaza Strip. Continue
Live Video Report From GazaAl Jazeera English Live Video Coverage Of

Israel's Attack On Gaza. Continue
The True Story Behind this War Is Not The One Israel Is TellingBy

Johann HariTo understand how frightening it is to be a Gazan this morning, you need to have stood in that small slab of concrete by the Mediterranean and smelled the claustrophobia. Continue
US Weapons 'Killing Innocent Civilians' in GazaBy David Edwards and

Muriel KaneAs Israeli warplanes continue to bomb Gaza, attention is turning to the role of American-made weapons in the deadly attacks, which have now killed over 400 and wounded 2000, including many civilians. Continue
Israel Needs its Usual Friends to Help AgainDaily Star EditorialIsrael

needs help again. It needs reasonable people who share the faith of most of Israel's citizens to rescue them - and their Arab neighbors - from a degenerate political class that is leading all of us to disaster. Specifically, it is moderate Jewish Americans who can be the most helpful by taking back control of the so-called "Israel lobby" from the zealots who have made it the swamp of militaristic racism that it is. Continue
Bush a “Total Failure” Says Former Iraqi PMBy Scott HortonFormer

U.S.-installed Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has denounced the policies of President George W. Bush as an “utter failure” that gave rise to the sectarian venom that ravaged his country… Allawi found fault with American management of Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 as well as the government of present Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki... Continue
Child killed by Israeli tank fire in Gaza: A Palestinian child was killed by

Israeli tank fire in the Gaza Strip late Saturday, becoming the first victim of a ground offensive against the Hamas stronghold, medics said.
462 Palestinians killed, 2300 wounded in 8 days of Israeli offensive on

Gaza: official: The chief of emergency and ambulance services in the Palestinian health ministry, told reporters that the death tolls include 76 children and 38 women, and among the injured, 600of them are in critical conditions.
30 Israelis soldiers killed or wounded: Hamas says that five Israeli

soldiers have been killed and 25 wounded while it says that the Palestinian resistance is ready to fight a long battle.
Israel bars ICRC entering Gaza: For a second day running, Israeli

authorities have barred a Red Cross medical team from entering Gaza to help treat residents injured in bombings.
Israel bans foreign journalists from entering Gaza: Despite court order to

let them in
Bush calls for pressure on Hamas: "I urge all parties to pressure Hamas

to turn away from terror, and to support legitimate Palestinian leaders working for peace," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
U.S. Branch of Amnesty Calls on Rice to Drop "Lopsided" Stance: The

U.S. section of Amnesty International sent an "urgent" letter Friday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, calling on her to end what it called Washington's "lopsided response" to the ongoing Israeli air strikes on Gaza that have reportedly killed more than 400 Palestinians, including scores of unarmed civilians.
Barak warns Lebanon: On Saturday, the Secretary General of Hezbollah,

Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, addressed a crowd of Lebanese supporters in a videoconference, saying that "Our brothers in the resistance in Palestine know that it is by inflicting the biggest possible losses on the Israeli enemy during the ground confrontation that they will win the battle,"
Arabs increasingly accuse Egypt of being complicit in Israel's war on

Gaza : As the Palestinian death toll pushes past 420, much of popular anger throughout the Arab world has been directed at Egypt - seen by many as complicit in the Israeli campaign.

Egyptian authorities clamp down on Gaza protests: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a U.S. ally who fears the rise of militant Islam in his country, has kept the Gaza border crossing in the town of Rafah sealed even as television images show bloodied Gazans being carted away from blast sites.
Protests around the world over Gaza attacks: Protests were held in Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey as the Israeli offensive entered its second week, and before Israel confirmed ground forces had entered Gaza.
southwest Pakistan yesterday, an official said.
.

Israel Rejects Ceasefire, Hits PM OfficeIranian Students attack UK

Embassy By Juan ColeCompelling video of Tuesday's bombardment from the cell phone of one of their correspondents in Gaza. Continue
Civilians Take Brunt of 7th Day of Attacks On Gaza By Nidal al-

MughrabiOne missile killed three Palestinian children aged between eight and 12 as they played on a street near the town of Khan Yunis in the south of the strip. One was decapitated. Continue
The Reality In Gaza 4 Minute Video A doctor from Norway details the

reality of Israeli attacks on Gaza. Continue
Israeli Violates International Humanitarian LawBy Prof. Richard

FalkUnited Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war. Continue
The Politics of An Israeli Extermination CampaignBackers, Apologists

and Arms Suppliers By James Petras Israel’s totalitarian vision is driven by the practice of a permanent purge of Arab Palestine informed by Zionism, an ethno-racist ideology, promulgated by the Jewish state and justified, enforced and pursued by its organized backers in the United States. Continue
Israel Has No Intention of Granting a Palestinian State If Hamas Did Not

Exist By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN Let us get one thing perfectly straight. If the wholesale mutilation and degradation of the Gaza Strip is going to continue; - if the cowardly, obsequious and supine Arab States are going to stand by watching their brethren get slaughtered by the hour while the world’s bullying Superpower eyes them threateningly from Washington lest they say something a little to their disliking; then let us at least tell the truth why this hell on earth is taking place. as otherwise how can the crisis become a global fiasco? Continue
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More than 425 killed as another 3 children killed in Gaza attack:

Palestinian sources in Gaza reported that three children, all members of the same family, were killed in an Israel Air Force strike in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis Friday afternoon.
Hamas vows 'painful response' to commander's death: Hamas lawmaker brands killing of top leader earlier Thursday 'dangerous development' that will lead to strong response. Sources in group say Rayyan's death will not affect Hamas operations
Gaza invasion appears imminent: An Israeli ground invasion of Gaza looked increasingly likely last night as a hospital in Ashqelon, 10km from the Gaza Strip, was evacuated to make way possibly for mass casualties from a ground assault, Israeli television reported.
Hamas Has Secret Anti-Israel Weapon, Says Iranian Cleric: Hamas

possesses a "new weapon" to face Israeli armor in case Israel decides upon a ground invasion into the Gaza Strip, a senior Iranian official and ranking cleric told worshippers in Tehran today.
'Israeli tanks can't break Gaza resistance': Citing that Hamas's newly-

developed home-made rockets are capable of destroying Israeli tanks and hit targets deep in the southern parts of the occupied territories, Rafsanjani said that Israel is covered with fear and enjoys no peace of mind.
Goal of Gaza assault is not to topple Hamas: military: 'At the end of the

operation we will have created a new security reality for the communities in the south - that is our goal. We have no intention whatsoever to reconquer the strip or to topple Hamas,' he said.
'They say they have the right to shoot at us and kill us': 3 Minute Video:

Reporter Clancy Chassay meets Samir who lost his brother and two footballing friends during Israeli rocket and shell attacks on their playing fields

Israel imposes general closure on West Bank: Israel's defense establishment on Thursday night decided to seal off the West Bank for two days.
Egypt refuses to open Rafah border: Talking to reporters in Cairo on

Thursday, the Egyptian top diplomat reiterated that Cairo cannot open Rafah unless Abbas' Palestinian Authority --which runs the West Bank -- controls the crossing and international monitors are present.
Protests against Gaza attack sweep across the world: From Jakarta to

London, a wave of protest erupted across the world today against Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Americans Closely Divided Over Israel’s Gaza Attacks: Fifty-five percent (55%) of adults, however, believe the Palestinians are to blame for the current situation in Gaza, while 13% point the finger at the Israelis. Nearly one-third (32%) aren’t sure.
Roseanne Barr: Israel is a 'Nazi state': Former television star Roseanne Barr has denounced Israel's military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, labeling Israel a "Nazi state
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9 Muslim Passengers Removed From Jet: Officials ordered nine Muslim

passengers, including three young children, off an AirTran flight headed to Orlando from Reagan National Airport yesterday afternoon after two other passengers overheard what they thought was a suspicious remark.
Gazans Fight Cold and Hunger as Supplies Run DryBy Azmi Keshawi in

Bureij, Gaza StripTheir windows smashed in the dead of winter by bomb blasts, Jihad Hamed, his wife and seven children huddle together every night in one bedroom of their freezing house, trying to keep warm and as far away as possible from the next explosion, wherever it might come from. Continue
Stop US Money Going To Israel

US Military Aid Underpins Gaza Offensive
1 Minute VideoIsrael receives billions of dollars in military aid from the US each year, much of it spent on American weaponry which US law says must only be used in self-defence. But experts say there is little chance of cuts in aid to Israel despite its military operation in Gaza.

Continue

The Truth About Those Hamas RocketsBy Dennis RahkonenFive years

ago, the Bush administration lied about weapons of mass destruction to dupe us into supporting an illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq. A few days ago, Israel trotted out only an infinitesimally more credible excuse -- the Hamas rockets case -- as justification for its own murderous shock and awe in Gaza. Continue
McKinney to Obama:
“Say Something” About Gaza Humanitarian Crisis By BAR"I would like

to ask my former colleagues in the United States Congress to stop sending weapons of mass destruction around the world," Continue
So What Have The Palestinians Got To Complain About?To portray

as a conflict between equals requires some imaginationBy Mark SteelCondoleezza Rice, having observed that more than 300 Gazans were dead, said: "We are deeply concerned about the escalating violence. We strongly condemn the attacks on Israel and hold Hamas responsible." Someone should ask her to comment on teenage knife-crime, to see if she'd say: "I strongly condemn the people who've been stabbed, and until they abandon their practice of wandering around clutching their sides and bleeding, there is no hope for peace." Continue
Gazafollowing is the text of his speech: Continue
How Hypocrisy on 'Terrorism' KillsBy Robert ParryIsrael, a nation that

was born out of Zionist terrorism, has launched massive airstrikes against targets in Gaza using high-tech weapons produced by the United States, a country that often has aided and abetted terrorism by its client military forces, such as Chile's Operation Condor and the Nicaraguan contras, and even today harbors right-wing Cuban terrorists implicated in blowing up a civilian airliner. Continue
Satire

Israel Attacks USBy Jerry GhinelliIn an operation termed “Friendly Enemy,” hundreds of Israeli F-16 fighter jets streaked across the Atlantic in precise formation and fired surgical air strikes at alleged terrorist strongholds in densely populated Muslim communities all along the northeast corridor of the United States. Continue
2009 - Time to wake upBy Omran Al SharhanAs conscious human-

beings who care about humanity and still maintain hope for a better world, the recent global protests for Gaza should strengthen our faith in creating that better world we all dreamed of. A world in which no country is above International Law, a world with no occupied territories, a world where justice prevails, a world that does not remain quiet when a whole nation is being horrifically imprisoned for decades. Continue
The Worker-Capitalist ConWall Street's Collapse and the Ownership

SocietyBy PAM MARTENSWe’ve arrived at the finish line in the race to the bottom and it’s clear there are few winners: once the little fish were eaten, the big fish fed on each other (Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and assorted hedge fund frauds against the wealthy). Now the big fish have no where else to feed but at the government’s bailout trough, transferring the debt-ownership society to our children. Continue
Gaza death toll rises to 399; 1925 injured: A Palestinian medic was killed

and two others wounded when a missile struck next to their ambulance east of Gaza City, Palestinians said.
UN: 25% of those killed in Gaza civilians: "A minimum of 25% of all those

killed are civilians and it may well be far higher," UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness told AFP.
Hospital in Gaza City Engulfed by Suffering: Rawiya Ayad lay in a bed on

the ground floor of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital on Tuesday, connected to a respirator. A bandage covered her head, and dried blood scarred her face. Shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike was embedded in her brain, poisoning her blood. She was in a coma.
UN Security Council fails to pass anti-Israel resolution, again: The US, a

permanent UNSC member holding veto power, has been quick to remove the circulated draft on accounts that it was 'unbalanced' as it did not condemn the Palestinian Hamas.
Hamas accuses senior Palestinian aides of spying for Israelis: Mr

Barhoum alleged that Fatah had formed a cell with the purpose of "contacting various Fatah followers in Gaza to collect information on secret Hamas locations and on the whereabouts of the leadership" that is hiding from the Israeli military. The cell was under the leadership of a senior Abbas adviser, Tayeb Abdul-Rahim, and information gathered would be passed on "through the channels of security co-operation with the enemy," Mr Barhoum added.
Robert Fisk: The self delusion that plagues both sides in this bloody

conflict: Hamas is not Hizbollah. Jerusalem is not Beirut. And Israeli soldiers cannot take revenge for their 2006 defeat in Lebanon by attacking Hamas in Gaza – not even to help Ms Livni in the Israeli elections.
IDF recommends major, but brief Gaza ground offensive: The General

Staff believes that more pressure must be put on Hamas to make it agree to a long-term cease-fire under conditions more favorable to Israel.
Obama's Gaza silence condemned: Is the US president-elect "complicit" in Israel's Gaza raids by remaining silent?
Israel ordered to let international media into Gaza: Israel's supreme court today ordered the government to allow the international media into Gaza to report on the effect of the air strikes on Palestinians.
John Bolton: I would use Military Force against Iran Now! : John Bolton Spreads the propaganda on behalf of Israel
U.S. Sells GBU-39 Bunker Busters to Israel: The Israel Air Force used a new bunker buster missile that it recently received from the United States in strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, The Jerusalem Post learned on Sunday.
on

Civilians Are Paying the Price in Gaza’By Haider RizviInternational aid groups, including several United Nations agencies, are warning of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza if Israel does not stop its military action there immediately. Continue

Communiqués de l'UJFP | Attaque terrestre contre Gaza : Les dirigeants israéliens devront répondre de leurs crimes.

le 4.01.2009
Après des années d’un blocus inhumain, après une semaine de bombardements qui ont tué 450 personnes et blessé des milliers d’autres, l’armée israélienne vient de lancer ses troupes terrestres (samedi 3 janvier) contre la bande de Gaza. Ce crime était annoncé de longue date. La rage et la colère de ne pas avoir pu l’empêcher n’en sont que plus grandes.Ainsi donc en 2009, une des plus puissantes armées au monde peut attaquer un territoire surpeuplé et y massacrer impunément qui bon lui semble.Le crime a été rendu possible par un consensus tragique dans la société israélienne. Tous les partis sionistes ont été avertis à l’avance de l’attaque contre Gaza et tous l’ont approuvée. Seule une petite minorité d’anticolonialistes continue inlassablement de s’opposer, de manifester, de témoigner. Cette situation de l’opinion est le résultat d’une propagande permanente en Israël visant à « déshumaniser » les habitants de Gaza ou le Hamas et à rendre licite ou normal leur assassinat. Le crime a été rendu possible par la complicité de l’Union Européenne. La décision du Conseil sous présidence française du « rehaussement » des relations entre l’Union et Israël alors que la classe politique israélienne est lancée dans une surenchère électorale guerrière a été comprise comme un « permis de tuer ». La réception de Tzipi Livni à Paris par Sarkozy et Kouchner était un encouragement à l’agression.Le crime a été rendu possible par la complicité des Etats-Unis qui n’ont jamais cessé de surarmer Israël et de le renflouer financièrement et par celle enfin de certains dirigeants arabes qui, comme Moubarak, ont donné leur accord à cette invasion. Le crime a été rendu possible en raison de l’impunité des dirigeants israéliens, civils ou militaires, qui violent sans arrêt le droit international et se rendent coupables régulièrement de crimes de guerre et de crimes contre l’humanité.Dans le monde entier, des manifestations d’une ampleur rare ont eu lieu contre l’attaque israélienneisraélienne, notamment aujourd’hui. Aussi bien dans les pays arabes qu’aux Etats-Unis, en Grande-Bretagne, ou même à Tel-Aviv. Dans toutes les villes de France, des manifestations gigantesques ont mobilisé des forces nouvelles qui s’engagent contre cette barbarie. L’Union Juive Française pour la Paix s’honore d’avoir participé à ces manifestations. Elle dénonce la tentative du CRIF d’enrôler tous les Juifs de France derrière la politique criminelle de l’Etat d’Israël. Il y a urgence, il faut continuer la mobilisation et les manifestations.Pour arrêter le massacre en cours, il faut exiger du gouvernement français, de l’Union Européenne et de la communauté internationale qu’elles cessent immédiatement leur complicité avec l’agression. Elles doivent exiger l’arrêt immédiat de l’invasion. Elles doivent mettre en place une politique de boycott, désinvestissement et sanction contre Israël, à l’image de la campagne qui a fait céder autrefois l’Apartheid en Afrique du Sud. Elles doivent exiger que les dirigeants israéliens soient traduits en justice pour répondre de leurs crimes.

Le BN de l’Union Juive Française pour la Paix ,

3 janvier 2009