Thursday, March 8, 2007

What is the Mossad?

The Mossad is the Israeli intelligence agency, that was developed in 1949 after the recommendation was made by Reuven Shiloah to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Ever since, the Mossad has been involved in covert operations that comprised of kidnappings and assassinations to ensure "National Security". The agency has been internationally criticized for some tactics that have been frequently used in foreign countries.

Failed operations
  • In July 1973, Ahmed Bouchiki, an innocent Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, was killed while walking with his wife. He had been mistaken form Ali Hassan Salameh, one of the leaders of Black September, the Palestinian group responsible for the Munich massacre, who had been given shelter in Norway. The Mossad agents had used fake Canadian passports, which angered the Canadian government. Six Mossad agents were arrested, and the incident became known as the Lillehammer affair.
  • In 1997, two Mossad agents were caught in Jordan, which had signed a peace treaty with Israel, on a mission to assassinate Sheikh Khaled Mashal, a leader of Hamas, by injecting him with poison at a pro-Hamas rally in Amman. Again, they were using fake Canadian passports. This led to a diplomatic row with Canada and Jordan, and Israel was forced to provide the poison antidote and release around 70 Palestinian prisoners, in particular the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in exchange for the Mossad agents, who would otherwise have faced the death penalty for attempted murder. In March 2004, 7 years after he was released, the handicapped Yassin was killed in an Israeli helicopter airstrike.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

The numbers in the US-Israel relationship

Israel has been a long time recipeint of US aid. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, the United States has provided roughly $90 billion. Of which, over $60 billion went to the military (IDF and Mossad).

The United States is known to provide aid for many foreign countries (From the span of 2000-2006):

Nigeria = $700 million
Chile = $17 million
Mexico = $533 million
Israel = $18,000,000,000!!! (Thats $18billion for those having trouble counting those zeros)
*Based on statistics from USAID.gov

That's a large sum of money, meaning that US taxpayers are all pitching in. Support for Israel has cost America dearly- well over than $10,000 per American!!!

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Breif History of Israel

1517 AD : The Ottoman Turks of Asia Minor defeated the Mamelukes, with few interruptions, ruled Palestine until the winter of 1917-18. The administration of the districts was placed largely in the hands of Arab Palestinians, who were descendants of the Canaanites. The Christian and Jewish communities, however, were allowed a large measure of autonomy.
1845 Jewish in Palestine were 12,000 increased to 85,000 by 1914. All people in Palestine were Arabic Muslims and Christians.
1897 the first Zionist Congress held Basle, Switzerland, issued the Basle programme on the colonization of Palestine.
1904 the Fourth Zionist Congress decided to establish a national home for Jews in Argentina.
1906 the Zionist congress decided the Jewish homeland should be Palestine.
1914 With the outbreak of World War I, Britain promised the independence of Arab lands under Ottoman rule, including Palestine, in return for Arab support against Turkey which had entered the war on the side of Germany.
1916 Britain and France signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Arab region into zones of influence. Lebanon and Syria were assigned to France, Jordan and Iraq to Britain and Palestine was to be internationalized.
1917 The British government issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, in the form of a letter to a British Zionist leader from the foreign secretary Arthur J. Balfour prmissing him the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.
1917-1918 Aided by the Arabs, the British captured Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. The Arabs revolted against the Turks because the British had promised them, in correspondence with Shareef Husein ibn Ali of Mecca, the independence of their countries after the war. Britain, however, also made other, conflicting commitments in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement with France and Russia (1916), it promised to divide and rule the region with its allies. In a third agreement, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain promised the Jews a Jewish "national home" in Palestine .
1918 After WW I ended, Jews began to migrate to Palestine, which was set a side as a British mandate with the approval of the League of Nations in 1922. Large-scale Jewish settlement and extensive Zionist agricultural and industrial enterprises in Palestine began during the British mandatory period, which lasted until 1948.
1919 The Palestinians convened their first National Conference and expressed their opposition to the Balfour Declaration. 1920 The San Remo Conference granted Britain a mandate over Palestine. and two years later Palestine was effectively under British administration. Sir Herbert Samuel, a declared Zionist, was sent as Britain's first High Commissioner to Palestine. 1922 The Council of the League of Nations issued a Mandate for Palestine.
1929 Large-scale attacks on Jews by Arabs rocked Jerusalem. Palestinians killed 133 Jews and suffered 116 deaths. Sparked by a dispute over use of the Western Wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque ( this site is sacred to Muslims, but Jews claimed it is the remaining of jews temple all studies shows clearly that the wall is from the Islamic ages and it is part of al-Aqsa Mosque). But the roots of the conflict lay deeper in Arab fears of the Zionist movement which aimed to make at least part of British-administered Palestine a Jewish state.
1936 The Palestinians held a six-month General Strike to protest against the confiscation of land and Jewish immigration.
1937 Peel Commission, headed by Lord Robert Peel, issued a report. Basically, the commission concluded, the mandate in Palestine was unworkable There was no hope of any cooperative national entity there that included both Arabs and Jews. The commission went on to recommend the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a neutral sacred-site state to be administered by Britain.
1939 The British government published a White Paper restricting Jewish immigration and offering independence for Palestine within ten years. This was rejected by the Zionists, who then organized terrorist groups and launched a bloody campaign against the British and the Palestinians.
1947 Great Britain decided to leave Palestine and called on the United Nations (UN) to make recommendations. In response, the UN convened its first special session and on November 29, 1947, it adopted a plan calling for partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an international zone under UN jurisdiction.
1947 Arab protests against partition erupted in violence, with attacks on Jewish settlements in retaliation to the attacks of Jewish terrorist groups to Arab Towns and villages and the massacres in hundred against unarmed Palestinian in there homes.
15 May 1948 British decided to leave on this day, leaders of the Yishuv decided (as they claim) to implement that part of the partition plan calling for establishment of a Jewish state. The same day, the armies of Egypt, Transjordan (now Jordan), Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq joined Palestinian and other Arab guerrillas in a full-scale war (first Arab-Israeli War). The Arabs failed to prevent establishment of a Jewish state, and the war ended with four UN-arranged armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
The small Gaza Strip was left under Egyptian control, and the West Bank was controled by Jordan.
Of the more than 800,000 Arabs who lived in Israeli-held territory before 1948, only about 170,000 remained. The rest became refugees in the surrounding Arab countries, ending the Arab majority in the Jewish state.
(palestinehistory.com)

Also, a quick breakdown of the Jewish population over a span of 339 years:

YEAR_____ARAB POPULATION*_____JEWISH POPULATION
1600 __________250,000 _________________ 5,000 _________
1850 __________ 480,000__________________17,000 ________
1890___________530,000_________________ 43,000 ________
1922___________ 590,000_________________ 84,000 ________
1931___________ 760,000_________________ 174,000________
1939___________ 900,000_________________ 450,000**______

*Arab Population includes 8-10% christian population
**Notice the dramatic increase in the Jewish population in Palestine, as a result of the German Holocaust

Sunday, March 4, 2007

How Nazi occupiers demolished "illegal" Jewish home in shtetl

Interesting article from Norman G. Finkelstein's website...

Israeli military demolishes seven Palestinian homes in south Hebron district
02.14.2007 International Solidarity Movement / Christian Peacemaker Teams
by Christian Peacemaker Teams

AT-TUWANI - Israeli soldiers demolished homes in three Palestinian villages near bypass road 317 on February 14, 2007. Starting in Imneizil at around 9am about forty Israeli soldiers with two bulldozers demolished one home, an animal pen and a stone bake-oven. At noon the soldiers moved to Qawawis where they demolished the homes of five families and one bake-oven, then on to Um Al-Kher where they demolished one home and damaged a wall of another home.At Imneizil several young children were in their home eating when the Israeli military arrived; the soldiers gave the family time to get out, but did not give them time to remove their personal belongings. The animal pen was demolished with a few animals inside; two lambs were injured. The Palestinian family began immediately to build a makeshift pen for the animals as the majority of the sheep were just returning from grazing in the fields.In the village of Qawawis one of the demolished homes was over sixty-five years old, and sheltered two families. Photos of the families amid the rubble are on the CPT photo galleryhttp://www.cpt.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album93The Israeli military, in concert with Israeli settlers, has been trying to force the Palestinian residents of the south Hebron hills to leave their homes for years. Due to harassment from the nearby Israeli outposts several of the young families of Qawawis moved to a nearby town; when the Israeli army then forcibly evacuated the remaining families, a court ordered that the families could return to their homes. According to a lawyer representing the families, the Israeli army now claims that this court ruling allows only the last inhabitants of Qawawis to return, not their children who earlier fled the assaults of the Israeli settlers."Our children need homes," said one villager. "What do they want us to do?"The Israeli army said, "Twenty illegal structures were destroyed after demolition orders were issued, and offers were made to the owners to pursue the available options before the planning organizations. The supervisory unit of the civil administration will continue to operate against illegal building activity in the area, and to implement the steps mandated by law against this illegal activity." The Israeli military made no provisions for shelter for the families whose homes they demolished. The families asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide them with tents.The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions said, "A building permit is unavailable there [in the south Hebron hills]." The preceding day three Israeli peace activists and two internationals, including CPTer Sally Hunsberger, joined approximately fifty Palestinians in working on their land near Imneizil. The Palestinian men, women and children planted 600 olive trees in fields that they had been afraid to walk on for the past four years due to threats of settler violence. During the action, soldiers and settlers watched from a distance, but did not interfere with the tree planting.