LowerCaseRepublican

Saw this on Fark and had to post it. Israel says all militant leaders Marked for Death, no one is Above the Law. Israelis are Out For Justice, Militant Leaders are Hard to Kill. Arafat still Under Siege, Palestinians Under Siege 2. All of Middle East is On Deadly Ground.

I really suspect that that photo was photoshopped. I wonder if this is on Snopes yet. If you guys and gals want to see a lot more photos that are not so inflammatory as the ones posted here before check out www.indymedia.org As for ANSWER, http://www.authoritarianopportunistswhocoz...s-forpeace.org/ My bad, it's not the IWW but the Workers World Party.

I believe this is the 3rd person from the administration saying the exact same thing. Either they are all lying in order to sell books and discussing seeing the exact same things during their time in the administration or something is rotten in Washington DC. Given the Orwellian doubletalk (see Rummy's recent appearance on 'Face the Nation' and how he lied saying that he never said Iraq was an imminent threat...one of the journalists on the show then threw it in his face showing him a quote of Rumsfeld's saying Iraq was an imminent threat. Rummy was speechless) of the current administration, I'm apt to believe the people coming out and exposing it.

I think the PA takes some of the blame in feeding the violence that is continually going on...radical fringes just like the extreme right wing Likud party in Israel. It's true that the majority of the people in both countries...the Jews aren't big fans of the Likud party (there was a recent vote of no confidence in Sharon that almost won) and a lot of Palestinians are not big fans of HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsas Martyrs Brigade, etc. It's just the dire straights that has played so many people into the respective groups. It's difficult to give a percentage saying that they are responsible for this quantified amount but I'd say it's about 30% Palestinian fault if I had to put a percentage amount out there. (then about 45% Israel and then 25%US etc.) As for the suicide bombings, I don't condone them but I understand why they happen. I can see the mindset of a person pushed to the edge enough to want to do something like that...almost like the kid who brings a gun to school and shoots up his cafeteria. Strictly militarily, the Palestinians can't fight Israel at all (thanks to so much US aid to Israel) so they are forced to resort to stone throwing and suicide attacks. I don't condone it but with the economic dire straits they are in and the active role that Israel is playing to not help them out (even going around Arafat to help everyday Palestinian Joe Schmoes), I understand the reasons that there can be a deep seeded hatred for Israel...just like many Likud-niks hate Palestinians.

I have to wonder if that photo of the I ::heart:: NY wasn't photoshopped. I mean, it was done with the Kerry/Fonda sharing the stage to try to discredit him. Color me a little bit skeptical. If it was real it was probably either the Maoists or the Spartacus League. They're quite marginalized in the leftist activist community. A lot of people also are against ANSWER because of a lot of the stances that the IWW (ANSWER is essentially affiliated with the IWW) has taken on certain issues especially re: their support of Tienenmen in 1989 and their current support of the suppression of Falun Dafa in China.

Yeah, it's really difficult to have him stop them when they have him walled up in a building with no electricity, no food and no running water yet demand that he end all the terror attacks when he has no contact with the outside world and they won't let him leave.

This is dripping with irony. You sound exactly like the people who think the Holocaust didn't happen.

I4E, I cited internationally recognized human rights organizations, academic journals...every time I cite something you claim it is anti-Israel because it f***ing takes the time and has the balls to criticize the BLOOD SOAKED THUGS in the Likud party of Israel. I've cited plenty of sources that show the human rights abuses of Israel. I do believe it is you who doesn't cite any sources and makes outrageous claims in order to dismiss sources. Projection much? I4E, again, show me the quotes where I say that I hate all Jews. I'd really like to see this. You know, I'm asking a big task...for you to actually prove one of your baseless claims but I want f***ing proof if you're gonna say I hate ALL Jews.

Tex, there is a lot on the Oslo Accords of the mid 90s that I have posted before and is on my webpage (PM me for the link) to get a side of the debate not shown here. This entire thread and the other one that ballooned from 16 pages to 20 is hysterical to read. Everybody's made statements like: "Zionists collaborated with Nazis during World War II." I4E's response makes it seem like the sentence reads "Zionism blah blah nazis..." and then he flies off the handle. And billions in aid to Palestine? Don't make me laugh and fall off the f***ing stool. The U.S. gives $15,139,178 per day to the Israeli government and military and $568,744 per day to Palestinian NGO’s. The data is from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. As for the comment of what should be done in the region... Stop blowing up apartment buildings with missile attacks causing extreme amounts of collatoral damage (85% of the victims in Israeli attacks on Palestinians are civilians and there are 4x the amount of Palestinian civilians injured than Israeli civilians) Stop random offensive murders and causing indiscriminate injuries that have been noted by Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights and B'Tseleem (I think that's the name...it's 3 am and I'm sorta tired)...At the same time demand disarmament of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsas Martyrs Brigade. Proceed with moving the settlements out of the occupied territories and assist in rebuilding the Palestinian economy without going through Arafat. Rebuilding the infrastructure and not murdering random people for the f*** of it might just stop people from wanting to get on a bus and waste anybody they can. But that's just my common sense kicking in. If the PA is asked to get rid of Arafat for being a terrorist, then boot Sharon the f*** out too. The guy is a war criminal for what he ordered in Sabra and Shatila. Putting into power people who don't go for weapons be they vest bombs or Hellfire missiles immediately is absolutely key. Policing the fringe IDF thugs that commit random acts of violence needs to be done just as much as the corralling of the fringe Palestinian groups. Giving Palestinians citizenship and allowing them to go about their daily lives without having to jump through f***ing hoops could be a start in the decreasing of their dislike of Israel. Israel has a right to exist, it's just sad seeing a war criminal asshole and a sickening doctrine like Zionism leading the country straight down the toilet. The Department of State’s annual human rights reports have documented for many years a depressing litany of extra-legal human rights abuses perpetrated against the Palestinian people by Israel: countless home demolitions, land confiscations, arbitrary arrests, and widespread torture. Similar practices have also been reported in detail by numerous Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights organizations for years. But it may come as an unpleasant surprise for the American public to learn that for over 30 years, Israel has also repeatedly detained, tortured and incarcerated Americans of Arab origin, without suffering any sanctions or even a public reprimand from Washington. Responding to a question in the April 2, 2002, press briefing, a State Department spokesman confirmed that Israel was holding at least 18 American citizens on “security” charges, and had detained at least 22 more since “the current violence began last fall.” He also noted that “we have no way of knowing for certain the numbers of American citizens who may have been detained for short periods and released.” Since it is a legal obligation of every host government to notify the local diplomatic mission within 48 hours of the detention of a foreign national, this is an alarming admission. In addition, Israeli and international human rights organizations have gathered evidence that such prisoners are routinely denied family visits for long periods and deprived of access to legal counsel. Their interrogations routinely include torture. Such cases are heard by one military officer at a hearing conducted in a settlement on the West Bank, which enables authorities to deny the detainee a civil trial. The detainee is not allowed to challenge the charges or offer a real defense. I first learned of the detention and torture of American citizens in 1998, when the case of Hashem Mufleh was brought to my attention. He was an 18-year-old, third-generation American born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After attending high school in the West Bank village where his grandmother lives, he went to Ben Gurion Airport together with his mother and brother to return to Albuquerque to attend university. There Israeli authorities seized him. Partners for Peace launched a nationwide effort to bring the facts of his situation to public attention. Sadly, he was severely tortured and was jailed for more than a year before he was expelled from the country. Other cases were soon referred to me and I have since been able to document a total of 13, two of whom remain in prison. Jamil Sarsour Jamil Sarsour, now 51, was naturalized as an American citizen in 1983. He lives in Wisconsin where he has extensive business interests. He is married and has eight children. In October 1998, Sarsour was detained upon arrival at the Ben Gurion Airport and taken to Moscobiya Prison (two blocks from the U.S. consulate general) where he alleges he was subjected to interrogation and torture, including “shabah,” a standard Israeli procedure for dehumanizing prisoners. After being handcuffed and having their feet chained, they are forced to sit in a tilted small chair tied to the ground, leaving them totally unable to move. They are then hooded with a filthy small bag which is very hard to breathe through. Meanwhile, very loud music blasts overhead. Sarsour was also denied the use of a toilet or shower for long periods. The questioning centered on alleged transfers of funds to “illegal organizations” such as Hamas. Sarsour denies making such transfers but admits that he has helped to support a widow with four children who is a member of his extended family. He also acknowledges that he had $10,000 in cash on him when he arrived in Israel, but it is not uncommon for Palestinian-Americans to travel with large quantities of cash when returning to their ancestral homeland where they will share their good fortune with gifts for family and friends. Sarsour’s brother Emad says the family notified the consulate of the detention 10 days after he was first detained, but he did not receive a consular or family visit until after 101 days of incarceration, when an American consul finally came. His wife was allowed to see him two weeks after that, but only on a non-contact basis. It was 60 days more before Sarsour’s attorney visited him, and the two men were never allowed to meet in private. When the attorney visited him again, he was accompanied by a delegation of four American officials: a female U.S. district attorney from Chicago, a male DA from Milwaukee, an FBI or CIA agent, and a counterterrorism official. They interrogated Sarsour and wanted him to sign an agreement to cooperate with them by telling about a terrorist network in the U.S., saying that would help his case. When he refused, the delegation warned him that if he did not confess to providing money to Hamas he would be jailed “forever.” He says they also showed him pictures of his home and those of his relatives back in the States, indicating they knew how to implicate them with the same charges. Although the physical torture stopped once he received a consular visit, Sarsour was then moved from solitary confinement to a cell with Palestinians who he says tried to get him to incriminate himself and beat him when he refused. After many postponements over a period of almost three years, his trial was finally held on Aug. 8, 2001, and he was convicted of channeling funds to Adel Awadallah, a top Hamas fugitive and mastermind of past suicide bombings in Israel. (Awadallah was killed in an Israeli raid.) Sarsour was sentenced and imprisoned at Ashkelon Prison, but his family hopes he may be home by Feb. 11, 2003. However, he missed the wedding of his oldest daughter last September, and neither his wife nor any other family member has been allowed to visit him since September 2000. Consulate General Jerusalem routinely sends a local staff person to visit American prisoners approximately once per month. Amjad Ahmad Farah Kur’an Amjad Ahmad Farah Kur’an, a 21-year-old who was attending Bir Zeit University and living with his father who had retired to the family home in Al Bireh, adjacent to Ramallah, is also still in prison. Amjad was picked up in June 1998 as he was on his way to Bir Zeit University and alleges he was tortured for a week in the Moscobiya Prison before anyone from the consulate was able to visit him. Amjad was charged with “stone-throwing, an act against public order, providing chemicals for explosives and seven different materials, conspiring to break prisoners out of prison and membership in an illegal organization,” according to the official charge sheet. He signed a confession obtained during torture. Mr. Farah, his father, claims the charges against his son, based on Amjad’s purchase of kerosene for the space heater for the family home, were ridiculous. He points out that there is no way Amjad could reach a prison to assist in any breakout. When he asked his son why he had confessed to things he claims he did not do, Amjad reluctantly told him it was because he couldn’t endure any more torture. In addition to subjecting him to shabah, the interrogators had thrown hot water on him, pulled his hair, deprived him of food and threatened to pull out his fingernails. His family has told me he is in fragile condition; he only weighed 155 pounds at the time of his detention and lost 15 pounds in the first month of detention. Amjad was transferred to Megiddo Prison, an extremely overcrowded tent prison located between Haifa and the Lebanese border, far from his West Bank home. It is a common practice of the Israeli security establishment to jail Palestinians outside their home area, a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention. After two years of imprisonment without any trial he was sentenced in July 2000 by an Israeli military officer to 52 months at a hearing held in an Israeli settlement on the West Bank. He was also ordered to pay a $2,000 fine. Initially, Amjad’s mother and a sister were allowed to visit him by making arrangements with the Red Crescent Society, but now they have not seen him in almost two years. His father has been allowed to visit only once (before the beginning of the September 2000 intifada). On his way to the prison, Mr. Farah says he was stopped at a checkpoint where the guard took his American passport and stomped on it. The guard said, “I could kill your wife and son and the U.S. government couldn’t do anything.” He was held at this checkpoint for five hours of harassment and taunting. (Keep in mind that this is a man who earned a B.A. degree and an MBA in the United States, then ran his own business in Youngstown, Ohio, before selling it and moving to the West Bank.) And when he and his family reached the prison, the guard required Mr. Farah and other Palestinian visitors to clean the latrines before they were allowed to see the detainees. When Mr. Farah complained to a consular representative about conditions in the tent prison and the fact that his son was being bitten by rats, he was told there was nothing the American officials could do. He also visited the consulate in Jerusalem and the embassy in Tel Aviv in the early days of his imprisonment seeking help for his son, but never managed to talk to an American officer. (In interviewing other detainees and family members, I have found it is a general practice of the American consulate to refer Arab-Americans to local employees when they make inquiries of any kind.) At the embassy, FSNs who identified themselves only as “Sandra” and “George” blamed Mr. Farah for his son’s situation because he had sent him to a Palestinian university. 40 Days In Hell Among the many other Palestinian-Americans who have suffered similar mistreatment but been released are Anwar Mohamed and Yusif Marei. Since both men returned to the United States immediately following their ordeal, I have had the opportunity to interview them extensively. Anwar Mohamed’s brother, Hassan Mohamed, called me to advise me of his brother’s detention. Anwar was born in Silwan to an American citizen, Ahmad Mohamed, now deceased. He grew up in America and was the manager of a pizza restaurant when he decided to go to the West Bank to visit his aunts, the only family members remaining there. His sister is married and lives in Amman. Anwar decided to visit her before returning home and was detained at the border, handcuffed and chained and taken to “another place” where he says the soldiers taunted him when he presented his American passport by saying, “We are all Americans here, but we hate Americans.” A Department of State official in Washington admitted that a Jerusalem employee of the consulate visited Anwar and observed that he had been beaten. After two weeks of torture Anwar refused to sign a confession and was remanded by a “judge” to 16 more days of “interrogation.” The following is an excerpt from his detailed account in his own words, tape recorded as soon as he returned to the United States. “I spent 40 days in hell. There are no words to describe what I went through. All kinds of torture was practiced on me, from food and sleep deprivation, beatings, inhuman confinement in a concrete box of 6-by-4-feet, isolated for 19 days with no windows and a hole in the floor as a toilet; with disgusting odors, spiders and roaches [crawling] over my face. This box is known as ‘The Coffin.’ Threats of death, deprivation of clean, warm clothing and my medicine (I have a chronic ear condition), psychological mistreatment and torture. The chair where I was handcuffed and chained with my head covered with a filthy bag, stretched into a contorted position for days at a time, caused my hands to swell as a balloon and they lost all sense of feeling. I lost 40 pounds. I was in agony. All of this was going on while the American consulate was located just a few blocks away from me, and our American flag was flying high in the sky on top of it!” Yousif Marei was born in a village near Jenin in 1955, immigrated to the United States in 1978 and became a U.S. citizen in 1996. On April 26, 1999, after completing the haj (pilgrimage to Mecca), he traveled to Jordan. He and his wife were detained at the Allenby Bridge crossing point to Israel as they were traveling to the home of his parents on the West Bank. They were held in separate areas, and he was extremely agitated about the welfare of his young bride, who had never been to the Middle East. After 14 hours he was handcuffed and taken to Jalameh Prison near Haifa. Here is a short excerpt from his detailed account of this experience. “One interrogator used the method of shabah against me for three hours [at a time] to force me to lie against myself. Many times they kept me for long hours in a small cell between the interrogations. That cell was the size of my body. I called it the living grave cell. The Israelis never charged me with anything. The American consul from Tel Aviv visited me on the second day of my arrest. That was a big relief for me. It was the first time after my arrest that I received news about my wife. The consul was sympathetic. I thought he was going to take me with him and free me and let me go to my family. He told me that the Israeli authorities were concerned about my human rights conditions. He told me that the security issue is ”a matter between you and the Israeli authorities,“ and he couldn’t get involved in that. He offered me two magazines together with some printed pages but the guard didn’t allow me to have the printed pages. Maybe the papers explained my rights as an American citizen. I appreciated the visit but I wish that he had done more for me than give me a magazine.” Both Yousif Marei and Anwar Mohamed were finally released after 36 to 40 days of detention and torture without any charge ever filed against them, and no explanation or apology. Anwar was required by the Israelis to get a Palestinian passport (which he did not want) and then apply for an exit visa before he was finally allowed to leave. Again, when Anwar sought help from the American consulate, he was told that he had to “follow Israeli rules.” Presenting Their Case Few Arab-Americans are willing to go public with the details of their torture in Israeli prisons once they gain release and return to America, fearing that they will be targeted by the FBI as so many Arab-Americans have been, or reviled by their fellow citizens as possible security risks. Fear of U.S. reprisal has only increased in the aftermath of Sept. 11. But three men (Anwar Mohamed, Yousif Marei and Bishar Saidi) who endured this experience came to Washington twice to present their cases to the Department of State, Congress and the public. I regard them as brave because Shin Bet officials told them as they left Israel, “Don’t cause us any trouble. We can get you wherever you are.” The State Department refused to give them an appointment when they came to Washington the first time, suggesting that they mail their affidavits. However, the Washington Post ran a story about them and the same day I received a call from the office of Thomas R. Pickering, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, offering time for an appointment with staff from Consular Affairs the following day. Those officials expressed concern, but there was never any follow-up to the requests made by the three men which included obtaining the release of the Americans still held in prison by Israel. They recounted their experiences at a press conference held at the National Press Club and the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, among others, published articles. CNN produced a 17-minute documentary about Anwar’s experience and aired it worldwide. Partners for Peace has repeatedly raised this issue with congressional offices, the Department of State and the White House. Congressional offices are largely totally unresponsive. From State, we have received boilerplate replies that express regret but are not responsive to our requests for action. President Clinton responded with the usual acknowledgment of “an obligation to protect all American citizens, regardless of where they may happen to be,” and an assurance that this problem has been raised in the human rights report. He also said that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had raised the issue at the highest levels, including Prime Minister Ehud Barak, whose response was that Israel had “no intention to humiliate or to intimidate any Arab citizens, be they Israelis, Americans or from other countries.” Note that this is not a reply to the charge of torture. My work during the past four years and the evidence I have compiled suggests that these cases are but the tip of the iceberg. All these young men — and women — are extremely proud to be American and have been deeply offended by the official U.S. attitude in the face of their trauma. As Anwar Mohamed said, “I cannot believe that my government was powerless to take action on my behalf. Is it because I have an Arabic name?” The Special Relationship The origin of the unwritten policy permitting these abuses — commonly called the “special relationship” — cannot be pinpointed. But after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, following the Six Days War, there was a subtle but clear shift in U.S. policy, particularly with regard to the reporting from the consulate general in Jerusalem. That post has had a unique independent status since official U.S. policy deems Jerusalem an international city, not the capital of Israel. Initially, this status provided the basis for offering a different voice to Washington, one that reflected American officials’ unique opportunity to observe both sides of the conflict on a day-to-day basis. But by the end of the first decade of occupation, Israeli sensitivities were already increasingly reflected. This new pattern was “codified” in the handling of a series of reports of Israeli torture, including the torture of two American teenagers as reported in an airgram (Jerusalem A-19, dated Oct. 9, 1978), filed by junior officer Alexandra Johnson in 1978. The brothers, Gamil Khalid, 15, and Gamal Khalid, 16, were subjected to beatings and thrown to the ground. In a written statement Gamil Khalid reported as follows: “They took me to a room and said to me, ‘Sign this paper, and if not we will do to you like we did to Munzer [another detainee] and hit you in the eye and swell it up like his. We will bring border police and beat you in front of your father with a stick on any part of your body, and put the stick into your rear.’ So I agreed.” The boys were eventually given several hearings (usually called a military court but devoid of any of the usual rules of evidence), and the “trials” were attended by two American consular officers. As Ms. Johnson’s airgram reports: “One of the two was present at every session of the trial. It is the opinion of both of these consular officers that the Israeli military authorities made no real effort to investigate the charges of mistreatment. Indeed, both the military judge and the prosecutor made it clear throughout the trial that they considered the questions of mistreatment and coercion to be irrelevant and trivial. They also made it clear from the start that the trial’s result was preordained.” According to the airgram, the consular section of the consulate general had sent over 40 reports on Israeli mistreatment of Palestinian political prisoners in Jerusalem and the West Bank to the State Department. In two later cables (Jerusalem 1500 and 3239, sent on June 3, 1978, and Nov. 30, 1978, respectively), Ms. Johnson detailed the treatment of Arab prisoners on the West Bank. She received commendatory letters from Arthur Houghton, an aide to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance; Pat Derian, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, and Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, but was denied tenure in 1979 and left the Foreign Service. (I have been unable to locate her.) The report dated Nov. 30, 1978, was approved by both the consul general and his deputy, with the following note appended: “The post fully understands Israel’s legitimate concern over security on the West Bank and accepts the premise that a military occupation regime may necessarily supercede the basic civil and human rights which are expected in a free democratic state living in a state of peace.” Evidence from Other Observers It should perhaps come as no surprise that Israel treats Arab-American prisoners so brutally given the way it treats Palestinian detainees. A number of NGOs, including some in Israel itself, have documented these abuses. For example, B’Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) reports the following: “Since 1987, the General Security Service (GSS) interrogators have tortured thousands of detainees, intentionally inflicting severe pain and suffering. The torture was neither extraordinary nor limited to ‘ticking bombs.’ Quite the opposite: torture was a bureaucratic routine; there was standard equipment for inflicting torture, and careful recording of the times the pain and suffering were inflicted. Even the state’s response in petitions against torture repeated, paragraph after paragraph, the routine justification for what were supposedly extraordinary acts. Supervision of the GSS did not succeed in preventing torture in Israel from becoming routine, systematic and institutionalized.” A report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel defines the issue this way: “Israel’s 32-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given rise to patterns of legal proceedings that undermine the rule of law and the democratic values of the state of Israel. According to the latest official estimate, during the Intifada period alone (1987-1993), 30,000 Palestinians were interrogated by the GSS. Those mass arrests led to illegal interrogation, which usually included submitting the detainees to physical and mental pressure and torture and which, from the start, contradicted the Israeli Penal Code and the Israeli Basic Law of Freedom and Dignity. Moreover, this behavior has continued to take place with total disregard to the fact that in August 1991, Israel ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which prohibits and denounces actions deliberately causing “suffering or severe pain.” According to Miftah (an Arab NGO headed by Hanan Ashrawi), since 1967 the Israelis have carried out over 600,000 arrests or detentions. Both Miftah and B’Tselem concur that between 90 and 94 percent of those arrestees have been tortured. Even if we halve that number, that still means that some 270,000 individuals have been tortured. Or to put it another way: if that proportion were applied to the U.S. population, it would mean that more than 25 million cases of torture had occurred in the past 35 years. The Israeli Response Even though it is well documented that the practice of torture began soon after Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the Israelis deny any use of torture at all. With the creation of Israel as an independent state in 1948, the Israeli Knesset adopted the 1945 Defense Emergency Regulations of the British. In the Occupied Territories this law allows detention without trial. The Fourth Geneva Convention permits such detentions on a limited basis, but with clear stipulations limiting the use of the power and calls for the safeguarding of basic human rights. Israel asserts that both detention and “moderate physical pressure” are justified since the country remains on a wartime footing and use of any and all means necessary to extract information and save Israeli lives is required. After the press conference in September 1999 in Washington, D.C. featuring the three American victims of torture, an Israeli Embassy spokesman was quoted as saying, “We don’t do torture.” But a few days later, the High Court of Israel (comparable to the U.S. Supreme Court) acknowledged that torture was a tool that had been routinely used by the state and ruled that certain forms of “moderate physical pressure” must be abandoned since these actually constituted “torture.” This was a great victory for Israelis who had been fighting for years in court for such a ruling, and for a few months there were no new reports of torture. However, within six months, credible reports of a continuation of the operations of the General Security Services were surfacing, including interrogation methods explicitly outlawed by the High Court. Time to Reassess Our Policy There is clear evidence that the United States government has known for at least 24 years that Israel uses torture during interrogations of Palestinians and that the practice was widespread. Furthermore, the U.S. had evidence that American children were also subjected to this abuse. Yet, over more than two decades, no effective action has been taken by the United States to halt this practice. Furthermore, the United States took great care to avoid any public admission that Americans had been tortured. The special relationship offers the United States the opportunity to have enormous influence on the state of Israel. In addition to giving enormous amounts of aid to Israel, the U.S. has provided military resources that have helped make it the fourth most powerful fighting force in the world. Yet rather than using this special relationship in a constructive way, U.S. policy has become “Israel, right or wrong.” Even when the lives of American citizens are at stake the U.S. does not intervene effectively to safeguard them. How can this disregard for our citizens be justified? This is not a question of guilt or innocence of the individual detained. The issue is torture. Israel was founded on the premise that it would be the “light of the world,” a tiny democracy thriving through hard work in the midst of “a desert.” Israel has, instead, become a country that tortures. That is, however, only the worst of its many human rights abuses, acknowledged and detailed in the Department of State’s Human Rights Reports for years. And now we see a ferocious, brutal attack on Palestinian civilians by the massive Israeli military, supposedly to root out terrorists. Let me be clear: Nothing can possibly justify suicide bombings carried out against innocent civilians in pizza parlors, hotels or bus stops. But nor can anything justify the brute force Israel has used to maintain its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has attempted to hijack the U.S.-led war on terrorism by claiming that Palestinians resisting occupation are equivalent to al-Qaida, and asserting that it is merely doing what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan: protecting its citizens. But the differences are self-evident. The U.S. has not been occupying Afghanistan for 35 years. We have no American settlements in Afghanistan. And so I ask: Who are the terrorists in the Middle East? Don’t decades of torture practiced on a wide scale by an occupying power qualify as being terrorist? Are the Israeli government demolitions of homes not terrorist actions? Do the attacks on civilians in the Jenin operation mean there will be fewer Palestinian terrorists? How long can moderate governments in the region continue as American partners in the “war on terrorism?”

Attached is a feasible plan, just for you IlliniBob First thing's first. Take the money we give to the Star Wars program (sorry, a global missile defense shield wouldn't have stopped the box cutter on 9/11), take the money from Plan Colombia, take the money from the military aid to right wing thug Ariel Sharon (and don't get your knickers in a twist I4E, economic experts say they can get the same amount of money if Israel raised its income tax on their own population 5% a year)...take that money and invest it in foreign aid. Right now, we spend .01% on foreign aid and the American public, when polled, believes we spend too much on foreign aid. Take this money and use it to rebuild the infrastructure of Afghanistan, Iraq...After our proxy war with Russia in Afghanistan through the 1980s, our leaving the Afghans on their own in their war torn land is known throughout the mid-East as "The Great Betrayal". Take all that money and create a new Marshall Plan-like idea for those countries and the war torn, economically dire old Soviet republics. In a lot of these countries, there are still multitudes of old Cold War era weapons that we gave the Moujhadeen and other groups to use during the proxy war with Russia etc. They have open air markets in many of the old Soviet republics where they are desperately starting to sell the weapons to damn near anybody so they can get some food because they are starving. Why not take some of the money from the military budget (there's more than enough to cut) and buy up these weapons en masse and destroy them? We neutralize that threat and these people get fed. Not only that, but rebuild the school systems and the such in the Mid East. The reason that Wahabbi fundamentalist Islam is spreading so fast is because of madrasas. These are the schools that teach it. They are springing up faster than Starbucks because so many countries have sacrificed their school systems in order to pay for their military (and in some cases IMF/World Bank loans) These schools are nicely built and feed the kids warm food compared to the public schools with missing windows, no food etc. In the school, the kids gets inundated with Wahabbi sect fundamentalism and whammo...instant right wing religio-nut is created. Let's take foreign aid money and fund their schools so parents won't be forced to send their children to madrasas. Take the leftover money...go to airline security in the United States. Let's create planes like El Al Airlines has as the industry standard. They have numerous protections in their airline that put American Airlines etc. to shame. In line they have trained experts look through luggage and they know exactly what to look for and where. This beats the random guy from the Jiffy Lube looking through your stuff and getting paid s***ty wages and isn't that well trained. (This whole trained experts thing paid well by the government is done in a lot of European countries so it has been done before) A bill having this sort of thing was introduced and shot down by House Republicans and condemned by Bush because it would eat into corporate profits. Don't give pilots guns. Instead, follow El Al's lead and put a plain clothed armed specialist who has been trained in breaking up hijackings on an airplane. Even the airplanes they have are f***ing amazing. They are so reinforced that if an altitude triggered bomb went off, the plane might not go down. They also have reinforced bulletproof doors to the cockpit so it's damn near impossible for people in the cabin to get into the cockpit and take control of the plane. Also on the home front, cut the Pentagon budget 15% (still more than enough money for military programs etc.) and use that to create ourselves health care and adequately fund the NCLB, Head Start etc.

Oh f***, there goes my bracket. I had him going to the finals.

Violence excecuted by either side that targets civilians is unacceptable. I don't care the mental state or rhetoric it is couched in. On one side you have a population that has lost the right of self-determination. A generation that does not have access to its own water source, but rather must negotiate across ethnic and political lines to have this basic need met. On the other side you have a population that has been gripped in fear of violence, the violence it recieves as a backlash against policies of its government that is often driven by right wing fanatacism and reactionism.

As has been the case in a lot of school districts where the creationist push is strongest, they do not want evolution to be taught or mentioned, so it is stifling that. Also, I think religion and religious doctrine should be kept out of the classroom and let people learn about it at the church/mosque/temple/synagogue of their choice (as a scientific theory...I'm not saying there shouldn't be religious studies classes or anything...I got a friend majoring in religious studies) Those classes don't look to indoctrinate, just give the facts about the ideology.

I congratulate Israel for fighting terrorist fringe groups. I just have to wonder if this short sighted foreign policy of missiles is going to wreak more damage on Israel than actual negotiations with the mass populus of Palestinians would have. Seeing this turning into a bloodbath in 3....2....1...The Likudniks should celebrate this victory but it'll probably be short lived. Odds are they'll be picking up body bags for some time to come unfortunately.

Show some sources to discount the claims of various international human rights groups that are non-partisan and well respected in the realm of human rights instead of just discounting them as fiction in your Zionist mindset. Your claim that it's false does not carry any weight where the findings of different human rights groups that have done research and have the data to back up their claims. Calling it fiction doesn't make it so. Like Lincoln said "How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." Top Zionists collaborated actively with the Nazis. It happened. Deal with it. Well hey, if you wanna talk ancient cultures...the Romans controlled Israel for a time so why doesn't Italy and the Vatican get control of the nation? Your wanting to systematically annhilate a race of people is sickening and so very dripping with irony.

Good movie. Sorta predictable but still good. I liked the effects though. Pretty damn funny at times. I wanna found out who sang the lounge version of "Down With the Sickness" though, haha.

I'm going to see it in about an hour. It looks pretty good.

Acutally I can, there is a book "51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis" by Lenni Brenner (a Jew) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846 There's the book on Amazon. I've backed up the Israeli human rights groups finding the wounds inflicted by the IDF to be IDF offense, not defense. Every human rights group that has examined Israel's practices has documented systematic and deliberate use of violence targeted at unarmed Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces. Physicians for Human Rights USA which investigated the high number of Palestinian deaths and injuries in the first months of the Intifada, concluded that: "the pattern of injuries seen in many victims did not reflect IDF [israel Defense Forces] use of firearms in life-threatening situations but rather indicated targeting solely for the purpose of wounding or killing." [source: http://www.phrusa.org/research/forensics/i...commentary.html] This finding was based on "the totality of the evidence" the investigators collected about: "the high number of gunshots to the head; the volume of serious, disabling thigh injuries; the inappropriate firing of rubber bullets and rubber-coated steel bullets at close range; and the high proportion of Palestinian injuries and deaths." The findings of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch confirm this pattern. Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has documented and condemned the targeted use of violence against Palestinian civilians and has found evidence of systematic torture of thousands of Palestinian detainees, including children. Is that enough proof for you?

It's not a comparison. It actually happened. Read the historical record: Leading Zionists collaborated actively with the Nazis. It's not made up, it's right in the historical record.

You should read about the documentation of how leading Zionist Jews collaborated with the Nazis. It's all in the historical record during WW II. Your refusal to separate an everyday Palestinian from the fringe minority that engages in the PA shows your blatant racism. Israel has only been in a constant state of self defense because it was created where a nation already was and didn't take into consideration the people that were being displaced. This is continuing with walls that will create ghettos, banning them from their government and doing everything they can to exert their military might over the Palestinians with rocket attacks, shooting innocents (read the human rights reports documentation done by even Jewish human rights groups) and bulldozing homes. They do all this in the name of fighting terrorism but there were no rocket attacks at the home of Baruch Goldstein and others who were Israeli terrorists who opened fire with automatic weapons in a mosque shooting indiscriminately. These men have been lauded by the Israeli government, had their names honorarily given to parks and best selling books about their "heroics" have been written. Their houses were not bulldozed. That is the actions of the Likud-niks who make up a fringe group in Israel. There are a lot of Israelis who see that their government's insane actions are playing an integral role in the continual violence and condemn both Palestinian and Israeli violence because they are rapt together in the continual chain of violence. ad hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason...i.e. calling people idiots and racists instead of dealing with the argument they made. Perhaps you've heard of the book that has contributions by various Jewish authors called "The End of Zionism and the Liberation of the Jewish People"? It entails how only by ending Zionist doctrine will there be peace in the Mid-East and it details exactly how. Now, I suggest reading the book before you go off with your reactionism, I4E.

I4E, way to not attack the point he made. Ad hominem suits you. And speaking of "defense", how is shooting kids for sport as noted by Jewish human rights organizations and how the majority of wounds suffered by Palestinians are to their backs and have been deemed clearly "offensive" not defensive wounds inflicted by the Israeli "Defense" Force. You sit there and demean the entire Palestinian people as sub-human yet call anybody who critiques rabid Zionism as an anti-Semite and a racist. Projection much? And I doubt King would know that Zionism would be used to create ethnic ghettos, erect Orwellian "security fences" and be used to justify illegal settlements and creating offensive wounds to murder and maim innocent civilians because the IDF has become a group of thugs. I think he would have saluted the 13 members of the Sayaret Metkal who have refused to serve in the occupied territories because they've seen that their usage is nothing more than being used as offensive thugs.

Now, I know this is pretty antithetical to your modus operandi but show me some proof of where I am a racist. Simply because I am a critic of Israeli state policy that is nothing more than glorifying thugs like Ariel Sharon does not make me a racist. One can be a critic without being a racist. I'm a critic of Bush's policy, does that make me racist against all white people? Your knee jerk reactionism is funny yet scary that you actually believe it.

Our college campus chapter of PRIDE hooked me up with a copy of it and I posted it on my web page.

Did I miss the mandate that every kid had to check the book out of the library?

Yes...Daniel Pipes speaks the truth You know, the truth if you're a right wing Zionist. His comments are thinly veiled racism. And way to deflect dealing with any of the actual claims made by calling me a "liberal pussy". I guess you learned a lot about the structure of debates.