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Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:34 EST
 An innocent blindfolded Palestinian woman sits detained inside an Israeli army jeep in the West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron)
Few people in our technologically developed, yet morally bankrupt Western world possess even a basic understanding of just how horrible life in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories is. Gaza is a small strip of land about 7 miles wide by 30 miles long. It is completely fenced in by the Israeli military, with the vast majority of its 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants (making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world) denied the right to leave. Ever.
It is not surprising then that the Gaza strip has been compared to a giant open-air prison, because that is exactly what it is. In fact, there is a more exact phrase to describe urban areas like Gaza that have been turned into prisons for the inhabitants, it is a phrase that was made famous during the Second World War - 'Concentration Camp'.
Similar to the concentration camps in WWII, the inmates of the Gaza strip are often summarily shot in cold blood, by the Israeli camp guards, for no reason other than to "maintain order" in a pre-emptive way. Sometimes entire families are massacred and Palestinian houses are regularly demolished by Israeli tanks for the same reason. Gaza fishermen, desperate to make a little money risk coming under fire from bored Israeli gunboat captains by putting out to sea. Curfews are imposed as Israeli tanks rumble along the tattered streets of the Gaza strip, firing indiscriminately at nothing and everything, sometimes they kill something, sometimes not. Soon after every such incursion, news wires dutifully disseminate the Israeli military's version of events, you may have heard them before:
"during an operation to root out members of (insert name of Palestinian resistance group) in the Gaza strip, the Israeli military returned fire when they were shot at by Palestinian terrorists".  | | ©Palestine Today | | Israeli troops arrest a Palestinian boy in March 2006 near Hebron as his mother attempts to stop them |
Periodically, and for their own diversion, Israeli government ministers will give the order to prohibit food supplies from reaching the men, women and 750,000 children of Gaza. As Israeli adviser to the prime minister's office Dov Weisglass cynically joked last year on one such occasion, "it's like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die." Of course, like the Jews of Nazi Germany, Palestinians do die when you starve them, and they did die last year as a result of their "appointment" with the Israeli "dietitian", particularly the old and the very young.  | | ©Palestine Today | | A Palestinian mother attempts to comfort her 8 year old daughter who was shot (deliberately) in the face with a rubber coated steel bullet by Israeli troops. |
The other section of the occupied Palestinian territories, the West Bank, fares little better under illegal Israeli rule. This area of about 100 miles long by 40 miles wide, was occupied by Israel after the 1967 war between Israel and several Arab armies including Egypt, Jordan and Syria. As a result of the capture of this internationally recognised Palestinian territory, the area is today peppered with illegal Israeli settlements, their extensive boundary areas policed by the Israeli military.  | | ©CPT | | Innocent Palestinian men being led to interrogation rooms by Israeli troops |
In one West Bank city, Hebron, home to 150,000 Palestinians, around 450 fanatical Israeli settlers, backed by large numbers of Israeli troops and tanks, have moved in and essentially taken control of the city, forcing the Palestinian population to endure curfews, verbal and physical attacks and general dehumanization. In Jerusalem, the story is much the same. In the aftermath of the 1948 Arab Israeli war, a war fought by Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations AGAINST the occupation of Palestine by Zionist forces, Jerusalem was split down the middle with the Western half given to Israel and the Eastern half given to the Palestinians as their future state capital. In 1981, however, Israel annexed Palestinian East Jerusalem claiming that it did not recognise the Internationally-sanctione d division of the city, essentially claiming all of Jerusalem as Israeli territory. Today there are 185,000 Israeli Jews living illegally as settlers in East Jerusalem, their presence there being assured by the Israeli military. Palestinian residents there are treated as second class citizens. In the aftermath of the Six Day War, United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 22, 1967. Resolution 242 is a binding resolution, technically leaving any party that refuses to comply with its dictates open to coercive action to enforce compliance. The text of the resolution states: The Security Council; Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East, Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security, Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter, 1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles: (i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
ii)Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
Since the adoption of resolution 242, the Zionist state of Israel has consistently violated its dictates. Far from "withdrawing from territories occupied in the recent conflict", Israel grabbed more. Far from withdrawing its "armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict", Israel extended its military invasion and occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Israel also, in 1982, invaded and occupied parts of Lebanon and deliberately ignited a "civil war" in that country that raged for 15 years. While generally referred to as a civil war, the conflict in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990 involved many elements external to Lebanon, most notably Israeli and American forces, both of whom were responsible for exacerbating the conflict. In contravention of Resolution 242, International Law and the fourth Geneva Convention, the Israeli government has built thousands of new homes on Palestinian land throughout the West Bank. Today, there are 260,000 illegal Israeli settlers spread across dozens of illegal Israeli towns and cities. These illegal towns and cities include: Adora, Alei Zahav, Alfei Menashe, Almog, Almon (Anatot), Alon Shvut, Argaman, Ariel, Asfar, Ateret, Avnei Hefetz, Barqan, Bat Ayin, Betar, Beit Arye, Beit El, Beit Ha´arava, Beit Horon, Bqa´ot, Bracha, Carmel, Chemdat, Dolev, Efrat (Efrata), El´azar, Eli (town), Elkana, Elon More, Enav, Eshkolot, Etz Efraim, Ganim (evacuated), Geva Binyamin, Gilgal, Gitit, Giv´at Ze´ev, Giv´on Ha´hadasha, Gush Etzion, Gva´ot, Haggai, Halamish, Hamra, Har Adar, Hashmonaim, Hermesh, Hinanit, Homesh (evacuated), Immanuel, Itamar, Kadim (evacuated), Kalia, Karmei Tzur, Karnei Shomron, Kedumim, Keidar, Kfar Etzion, Kfar Ha´oranim (Menorah), Kfar Tapuah, Kiryat Arba, Kiryat Netafim, Kochav Ha´shachar, Kochav Ya´akov, Ma´ale Amos, Ma´ale Efraim, Ma´ale Levona, Ma´ale Michmash, Ma´ale Shomron, Ma´on, Masu´a, Matityahu, Mechola, Mechora, Metzadot Yehuda, Mevo Dotan, Mevo Horon, Migdal Oz, Migdalim, Mitzpe Shalem, Mitzpe Yericho, Modi'in Illit, Na´ale, Na´ama, Nahaliel, Negohot, Netiv Ha´gdud, Neve Daniel, Nili, Niran, Nofei Prat, Nofim, Nokdim, Ofarim, Ofra, Oranit, Otniel, Pedu´el, Petzael, Pnei Hever, Psagot, Rechelim, Reihan, Revava, Rimonim, Ro´i, Rosh Tzurim, Rotem, Sal´it, Sha´arei Tikva, Shadmot Mehola, Shaked, Shani (Livne), Shavei Shomron, Shilo, Shim´a, Shvut Rachel, Susiya, Talmon, Telem, Tene, Tko´a, Tomer, Tzofim, Vered Yericho, Yafit, Yakir, Yitav, Yitzhar. Many Palestinian homes and entire villages have been and continue to be demolished, their olive groves uprooted, to make way for these illegal settlements.  | | The entire area outlined here is Palestinian land. Light purple represents closed Israeli military areas. Dark Purple represents illegal Israeli settlements. The black line represents the Israeli apartheid wall. Everything left of the wall has been annexed to Israel. The yellow areas are main Palestinian population centers, although Palestinians live throughout the area of the West Bank. |
 | | Graphic showing the illegal annexation of Palestinian land from 1948 to 2000. Since 2000, the green areas of Palestinian land have undergone further annexation to Israel. |
According to a 2006 study by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, there are approximately 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank. This figure is corroborated by the CIA factbook and several other sources. Interestingly, a study by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group, also conducted in 2006, claimed that there are just 1.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. 1.1 million Palestinians 'wiped off the map', figuratively of course...for now. In attempting to justify its illegal and inhuman treatment of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for the past 60 years, the Zionist state of Israel has relied on the claim that since UN resolution 242 demands the: "termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force". And, since successive Palestinian governments have either refused to accept Israel's 'right to exist' or have maintained a 'belligerent' stance towards the Zionist enterprise, both of which constitute a technical violation of Resolution 242, any Israeli government is not therefore required to abide by Resolution 242. The deception in this stance is in the fact that, in 1967, the statements of Resolution 242 referring to "termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force" was directed largely at Israel because it was Israel that had annexed so much Palestinian and Arab land, not the other way around! And given that since that time Israel has expanded its control and occupation of Palestinian land, there is no possible way that a Palestinian government could EVER not take a belligerent stance towards Israel because Israel is and continues to be the aggressor! If a person comes and occupies part of your home, and then claims that to achieve peace, YOU must recognise his illegal occupation of part of your home and if you do not then YOU are the bad guy who does not want peace, would YOU consent to such an agreement? Would YOU recognise the "legitimate right to exist" of a person if that meant recognising the legitimacy of their theft of your house and oppression of your family? This is exactly the situation in Israel/Palestine today, and that is the true source of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  | | ©Palestine Today | | Palestinian Schoolgirls run from tear gas fired at them by Israeli troops. |
What quickly becomes obvious is that Israel's ability to continue to exert control over the Palestinian people and their destiny is entirely dependent on the appearance of a continued threat to Israel's existence from groups representing the Palestinian people. If the Palestinians were ever to decide to renounce violence and pursue their goals by entirely political means, it would be a very bad day for Israel. Are we to assume then that this simple understanding has eluded the Palestinians all these years? Israel's position of primary aggressor in the conflict places it in a precarious position. During the 1990s, several Middle East peace initiatives were tabled. Towards the end of that decade, international awareness of the plight of the Palestinians continued to grow, and it was clear to all those with even a basic understanding of the conflict that the Palestinians had moral right on their side. Something had to be done.  | | ©Palestine Today | | A Palestine boy proves to an Israeli soldier he is not wearing a "bomb belt". |
In September 2000, then opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the al-Aqsa Mosque compound at the so-called 'Temple Mount'. The site is in Palestine East Jerusalem and is the third holiest in all of Islam. Understandably, Sharon's visit was seen by Palestinians as a deliberate provocation. On September 29, 2000, the day after Sharon's visit, following Friday prayers, large riots broke out around Old Jerusalem during which at least five innocent Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli security forces, and 200 others were wounded. The same day, demonstrations and riots broke out in the West Bank. In the days that followed, demonstrations erupted all over the West Bank and Gaza. The violence quickly escalated and in the first six days of the Intifada, 61 Palestinians were killed and 2,657 were injured by the Israeli army and police. In October, thousands of Jewish Israelis participated in violent acts in Nazareth and Tel Aviv, throwing stones at and attacking Arabs, destroying Arab property and chanting "Death to Arabs". BBC News reported that that year's "Yom Kippur will be infamous for the violent, racist outburst by Jews against Arabs within Israel". Sharon's provocation ultimately gave rise to the second Palestinian 'Intifada' or uprising (literally 'shaking off'), but all of it was clearly part of a carefully laid Zionist plan.  | | ©Palestine Today | | Israeli Troops |
From the point of view of Israel's need for a new and convincing stick with which to beat the Palestinians, it was no surprise that less than a year after Sharon's provocation and the beginning of the second Intifada, the 9/11 attacks occurred. As we explain in our book, 9/11: The Ultimate Truth, the attack in New York and Washington was the quintessential Israeli false flag operation, and the ensuing bogus "war on Islamic terror" played directly into the hands of the Israeli government, giving them carte blanche to increase their persecution of Palestinians under the banner of fighting terrorism. Like the U.S. war on Islamic terror, the history of the last 6 years of the second Intifada is defined by the inhumanity of the Israeli and American governments towards the Arab populations of the Middle East. Somewhere in the region of 1 million Iraqi civilians and tens of thousand of innocent Afghans have been murdered by U.S. military forces. In Iraq, the Israeli Mossad is hard at work helping covert American and British agents create 'civil war' by way of bombings and mass murders that are blamed on Iraqi insurgents or the mythical 'al-qaeda' as need dictates. Meanwhile last week, the U.S. Airforce began bombing civilian neighborhoods of Baghdad, and the U.S. government knows exactly where Osama is. In Palestine over 100 'suicide bombings' have been carried out by covert Israeli intelligence groups against innocent Israeli citizens and blamed on Palestinian groups in order to justify Israel's continued occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. Recent attempts by Hamas and Fatah to unite against the Zionist aggressor have been largely thwarted by teams of Israelis disguised as Palestinians who attack members of both Fatah and Hamas in an attempt to sow discord and set the Palestinian people at each other's throats. Disguised Israelis kill militants in West Bank raid Wed Feb 28 2007 JENIN, West Bank (AFP) - Israeli commandos disguised as Palestinians killed an Islamic Jihad commander and two militants in Jenin on Wednesday during a crackdown in the north of the occupied West Bank. Israel also relaunched a massive hunt for 'militants' in Nablus, south of Jenin, sending around 100 jeeps and armoured vehicles in, just 24 hours after withdrawing from the West Bank's second-largest city after a two-day siege. The undercover force in Jenin opened fire on the car carrying the militants, killing Ashraf al-Saadi, 25, a senior Jihad leader in the West Bank, and Alaa Breiki, 26, Palestinian security sources said. A third militant, Mohammad Abu Naasa, 22, was wounded in the shooting, but a soldier finished him off with a bullet to the head, witnesses said. "The soldiers came to the car, opened the back door, saw that one of the guys was injured in the back. One of the soldiers took out his pistol and shot him in the head," said one witness, declining to be named. [...] "The troops opened fire and killed them," the source said, adding that the trio was "involved in planning and carrying out attacks against the army and planning suicide bombings." [...] A radical Islamist movement considered close to Iran, the Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for most of the suicide attacks in Israel over the past two years, including the January 29 blast in the Red Sea resort of Eilat that killed three Israeli civilians. [...] The Palestinian Authority has warned that the crackdown in Nablus was threatening U.S.-led efforts to rekindle the long-stalled peace process.
Just for the sake of clarification, any Palestinian who resists Israeli oppression is a "terrorist" as far as the Israeli and American governments are concerned, and fit for nothing but a bullet in the head. And last months "suicide bombing" in Eilat was missing a suicide bomber. Militant dies in Israeli ambush BBC News
21/02/2007 Israeli troops have killed a commander of the militant Islamic Jihad group in the northern West Bank. Mahmoud Abu Obeid was driving through Jenin when undercover agents sprayed his car with bullets, witnesses said.
The Israeli army had no immediate comment. The death comes a day after police said they foiled a planned suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Israeli Radio said the Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin - a militant stronghold - had dispatched the suspected bomber. Witnesses quoted by Associated Press said an Israeli combat helicopter was seen in the area at the time. An Islamic Jihad official has confirmed that the group had been planning to carry out the Tel Aviv attack, three weeks after its last attack in the southern Israeli town of Eilat. Israel periodically sends undercover agents dressed as Palestinians to carry out military operations in the occupied West Bank. As I have already noted, part of these "military operations" includes the recruitment of Palestinians to act as dupes in the perpetration of "suicide bombings". A scenario that has played out on more than one occasion goes something like this: A Palestinian is recruited by undercover Israeli agents, or "musta'ribeen" in Arabic, i.e., "those who appear to be Arabs". These recruits may be ordinary, if naive, Palestinians who are lured with the promise of money or a job or they may be selected from any of the more than 10,000 Palestinians languishing in Israeli prisons, many on no charge other than being Palestinian. Once recruited on false premises, the patsy is instructed to go to a specific area of Tel Aviv or another Israeli town like Eilat to meet with a contact at, say, a restaurant or nightclub. He may also be told to board a specific bus on a specific route at a specific time. Once the Palestinian dupe reaches the specified location, Israeli agents, watching from nearby, detonate a bomb that has been carefully placed previously. The result? Instant "Palestinian suicide bombing". That this scenario is very likely the reality of the most if not all of the bombings blamed on Palestinians over the past 6 years can be understood by looking at the results of such bombings. On every occasion: Palestinians were further demonised as "terrorists" by all; International opinion turned against the Palestinians and their cause; Israeli Jews' hatred for Palestinians and support of their government's brutal oppression of Palestinians increased; Arabs in general were demonised as "crazed suicide bombers" thereby lending credence to the lie that Arab suicide hijackers carried out the 9/11 attacks. How then, in the end, to make sense of all of this? Israel, funded to the tune of $billions per year by the US government, is pushing for a Middle Eastern war that will radically reshape the entire region. In 1948, the state of Israel was founded on a brutal injustice against the Palestinian people. Since then, rather than atone for this injustice, successive Israeli governments have actively increased the oppression and brutality meted out to the people of Palestine. The leaders of Zion do not want peace, they want only that their insane, inhuman vision of Greater Israel should come to fruition, and if the Palestinians refuse to lie down under the boot of their Israeli overlord, then there is no place for them in the future.  | | ©Palestine Today | | An Israeli soldier pushes his gun into the stomach of a Palestinian girl as he prevents her from reaching school |
In 2002, Israel's former Attorney-General Michael Ben-Yair left no doubt when he said:
"We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one - progressive, liberal - in Israel; and the other - cruel, injurious - in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day." Watch the documentary "The Iron Wall" to understand that the Palestinian people currently live under conditions that are the same, if not worse than those experienced by the Jews and others in Nazi Germany. Think now about this recent news item:
Extremist rabbis call for return of animal sacrifice JERUSALEM (AP) -- A fringe group of extremist rabbis wants to resume the biblical practice of animal sacrifice at an explosive religious site in Jerusalem, members said Wednesday. The request defied centuries of religious bans and triggered a stiff protest from a Muslim leader. Now a group, called the "Re-established Sanhedrin" after the Temple-era religious high court, has decided to buy some sheep and try to find one that is ritually perfect for sacrifice, with an eye toward resuming the practice at the Jerusalem site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount. The site is the most hotly disputed in the Middle East, home today to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. [...] The 71 members of the "Re-established Sanhedrin" say they want to begin sacrificing animals again, despite the absence of the Temple, the ritual altar and all the required implements listed in the Bible. Rabbi Dov Stein of the group admitted that it won't be any time soon. "We want to do the sacrifice, but we have political problems," Stein said. "We hope there will come a time when the government will agree. We will push for that to happen." These "extremist" rabbis are not so extremist, at least not when compared with the political leaders of Israel. Both are gripped by a messianic fervor, it's just that the Rabbis have nothing to lose by exposing it too early. The Jewish feast of 'purim' begins on March 4th. It was during 'Purim' that the illegal US invasion of Iraq began in 2003. Purim is a celebration of the murder of the Persian Prime Minister, Haman 2,500 years ago, for supposedly plotting a conspiracy against the Jews as related in the Old Testament. Haman, it is said, was hung along with all of his ten sons, and 75,000 hapless Persians were slaughtered. Jewish Rabbis, in concert with American Evangelica ministers, claim to have organised 6 million Christian children around the world to pray for Israel and another attack on an Iranian leader. Everyone needs to consider carefully the events of the last 7 years, in particular the 9/11 attacks and everything that has resulted. Everyone needs to understand that the U.S. military, largely at the behest of the Zionist leaders, is going to attack Iran. We, the ordinary people of this world, are faced with a serious problem: the most powerful people on this planet are quite clearly 'essential psychopaths'. They are snakes in suits, human beings devoid of any humanity who relish power, domination and control for its own sake. Where do you think the world is headed with such people at the helm? Do you think there is anything they would not do to further their own insanely selfish agenda? More than anything else, and before it is too late, we need to understand our enemy and the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves. If we do not, then there is nothing left to do but sit back and watch as the darkness spreads across the globe and very soon engulfs us all. LINK
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