Saturday, September 10, 2005
Bush's Jester
Big announcement today from FEMA - they say they now have reason to believe a hurricane may have hit New Orleans. - Jay Leno
You're a pathetic arselicker, Jay... It was BUSH who denied for a week that New Orleans had been seriously damaged, and FEMA whose budget was sacrificed on the alter of "small government."
Galloway: Elements Within Government Use Terror Provocation
Steve Watson & Alex Jones - Prisonplanet
On Friday, 9/9 Alex Jones was joined on air by Member of Parliament and prominent antiwar activist George Galloway for a riveting one on one interview.
Mr. Galloway discussed the rising tide of anti-Iraq war protest, the snarling Neo-Cons' plan for world war and the possibility of staged government terror attacks to justify the invasion of more countries.
The Emerging Controlled Police State
Mr. Galloway kicked things off by asserting that the heavy-handed police state like crackdown in New Orleans has backfired on the political elite.
"The United States today looks like a country run by dangerous malevolent incompetents ... There is a stain on the reputation of your great country and by association mine," said Mr. Galloway.
We have extensively covered the purposeful incompetence of the federal response in New Orleans and the jackbooted thuggery that is being advertised all over the nightly news, forwarding the agenda to once again normalize such repressive authoritative behaviour. Mr. Galloway described the aftermath of Katrina as:
A bizarre catalogue of incompetence and malevolence and racism and all the worst things about the US today ... and now as we are beginning to pick up, there is more to it than meets the eye and it may be being seized upon as a big diversion. If it was it hasn't worked, it just compounds people's feeling that the US is run by these ghoulish, Marie Antoinette incompetents.
Mr. Galloway went on to describe the state that the Neo-Con greed and war machine has got itself into:
On the surface they appear to be gliding serenely like a swan but underneath they are paddling like hell just to stay afloat because they run the risk of being thrown out.
But Mr. Galloway was also quick to point out that you cannot slip a cigarette paper between the two opposition parties both in the United States and Great Britain. There is no opposition, both countries operate under a duopoly, both parties run along parallel lines. We have to constructively approach how we vote and who we empower.
Mr. Galloway's Respect Party, whom he represents in the London Constituency of Bethnal Green is an example of such a constructive movement. Respect knows it is never going to win a majority vote but is there simply to keep the powers that be in line, bringing them to book so to speak on important and far reaching issues that may otherwise go relatively unchallenged.
"The danger is that when the state begins to be such a miserable abysmal failure that people turn not to progressive forces of leadership but to the kind of brown shirted aggressive forces," Galloway comments.
Government Engineered Terrorism
Previously Mr. Galloway has suggested that there is a very real danger of the government engineering a situation where terror attacks can be manufactured and seized upon to forward the pre-planned agenda abroad and at home. On Friday Mr. Galloway elaborated on these comments:
There is a very real danger because you have elements within the state, you have the Richard Pearle 'axis of evil' snarling 'you're next' at this country or that country and yet the circumstance on the ground, the political collapse of the Bushites in the United States, the resistance in Iraq having taken such a terrible toll ... is making the idea of another war simply ridiculous ... and yet there are those in this Neo-Con, Zionist, Christian Fundamentalist axis that really are itching to get as much of this agenda pushed on whilst they still have the reins of power. So you cannot discount some kind of provocation being staged by those elements who want to propel the US into an even more disastrous invasion.
Mr. Galloway suggests that it is not beyond the realms of imagination for a situation to arise where the power hungry elite in the US uses staged provocation to drag Iran into a geopolitical set-to, using Israel as the hammer. If this were to happen, the consequences could be as far reaching as to start a third world war which would be devastating for humanity.
This would provide the authorities with the perfect excuse to set up a police state domestically to regulate the activities of everyone and have complete control.
"That's right, it's Orwellian, it's 1984, the permanent division of the world into warring blocs, for the profit of a few at the cost of the misery of the many, and we have to refuse this in every way we can," Galloway states.
Of course, the past masters of government sponsored terrorism were the Zionists, who created the condition in the Arab countries, and in some European countries to stampede the Jewish populations out of the countries they had been living in for many hundreds years and get them into a Zionist state, Galloway comments:
Suddenly Jewish people who had been the victims of Christian persecution suddenly saw their Synagogues being blown up, their countries being attacked and all kinds of provocations being staged so packed their bags and moved to occupied Palestine, then to be called Israel.
The Neo-Con War mentality
It's well documented that the United States has adopted such provocative "dirty tricks" before and during the Vietnam war and ever since.
It's always the case that in a big and complex State machine, there are all sorts of elements; they don't have to be endorsed by all of the political leadership, they can be people representing a trend in the political leadership.
Galloway went on to once again lambaste the disgusting Neo-Conservative war crazed movement that had recently attempted to falsify documents to implicate Mr. Galloway in the very corruption that they consistently revel in:
I've already mentioned this hideous character Richard Perle. I saw him the other day actually snarling 'you're next', threatening people with American military power, a man who couldn't punch his own way out of a wet paper bag, but ready to fight to the last with other people's last drop of blood. These people make my blood boil and they ought to make every right thinking person feel that way. We deserve better than to be governed by these gangsters.
Mr. Galloway went on to describe how it is always the elite draft dodging spoon-fed weaklings that strive for this kind of dominance over all, sacrificing the lives of others whilst swaggering around in their bomber jackets playing up to the act.
Returning to staged terrorism and Zionism Galloway pointed out that Zionism has nothing to do with Jewishness. The Zionist movement, as it is well documented, funded Hitler before World War Two and many of the figureheads of Zionism were not and are not Jews.
The reality is these people have used Jewish people, and they have used them with this ideology of Zionism, to create this little Hitler State on the Mediterranean, to act as an advance guard for their own interests in the Arab world, and we're all paying for it, the Palestinians have paid for it, the Arabs have paid for it, and now the American people are paying for it, and why should we? We don't want to live our lives in a permanent state of warfare and division.
The danger in the Arab world is that the people there know we are not evil and corrupt like our governments are, but they also know that we democratically elect our governments, Galloway goes on to decree. They are supposed to act on our behalf and that's why this corrupt version of "democracy" is being flatly rejected across the Arab world.
Mr. Galloway concluded by asserting that we do have the power to change things; we are in the majority:
The United States was a country built out of nothing and a country that went to the stars. The people of the US are great 'can-do' people and they ought to be able to use the Constitution which the founding fathers gave them to organize their political power to change things.
Steve Watson & Alex Jones - Prisonplanet
On Friday, 9/9 Alex Jones was joined on air by Member of Parliament and prominent antiwar activist George Galloway for a riveting one on one interview.
Mr. Galloway discussed the rising tide of anti-Iraq war protest, the snarling Neo-Cons' plan for world war and the possibility of staged government terror attacks to justify the invasion of more countries.
The Emerging Controlled Police State
Mr. Galloway kicked things off by asserting that the heavy-handed police state like crackdown in New Orleans has backfired on the political elite.
"The United States today looks like a country run by dangerous malevolent incompetents ... There is a stain on the reputation of your great country and by association mine," said Mr. Galloway.
We have extensively covered the purposeful incompetence of the federal response in New Orleans and the jackbooted thuggery that is being advertised all over the nightly news, forwarding the agenda to once again normalize such repressive authoritative behaviour. Mr. Galloway described the aftermath of Katrina as:
A bizarre catalogue of incompetence and malevolence and racism and all the worst things about the US today ... and now as we are beginning to pick up, there is more to it than meets the eye and it may be being seized upon as a big diversion. If it was it hasn't worked, it just compounds people's feeling that the US is run by these ghoulish, Marie Antoinette incompetents.
Mr. Galloway went on to describe the state that the Neo-Con greed and war machine has got itself into:
On the surface they appear to be gliding serenely like a swan but underneath they are paddling like hell just to stay afloat because they run the risk of being thrown out.
But Mr. Galloway was also quick to point out that you cannot slip a cigarette paper between the two opposition parties both in the United States and Great Britain. There is no opposition, both countries operate under a duopoly, both parties run along parallel lines. We have to constructively approach how we vote and who we empower.
Mr. Galloway's Respect Party, whom he represents in the London Constituency of Bethnal Green is an example of such a constructive movement. Respect knows it is never going to win a majority vote but is there simply to keep the powers that be in line, bringing them to book so to speak on important and far reaching issues that may otherwise go relatively unchallenged.
"The danger is that when the state begins to be such a miserable abysmal failure that people turn not to progressive forces of leadership but to the kind of brown shirted aggressive forces," Galloway comments.
Government Engineered Terrorism
Previously Mr. Galloway has suggested that there is a very real danger of the government engineering a situation where terror attacks can be manufactured and seized upon to forward the pre-planned agenda abroad and at home. On Friday Mr. Galloway elaborated on these comments:
There is a very real danger because you have elements within the state, you have the Richard Pearle 'axis of evil' snarling 'you're next' at this country or that country and yet the circumstance on the ground, the political collapse of the Bushites in the United States, the resistance in Iraq having taken such a terrible toll ... is making the idea of another war simply ridiculous ... and yet there are those in this Neo-Con, Zionist, Christian Fundamentalist axis that really are itching to get as much of this agenda pushed on whilst they still have the reins of power. So you cannot discount some kind of provocation being staged by those elements who want to propel the US into an even more disastrous invasion.
Mr. Galloway suggests that it is not beyond the realms of imagination for a situation to arise where the power hungry elite in the US uses staged provocation to drag Iran into a geopolitical set-to, using Israel as the hammer. If this were to happen, the consequences could be as far reaching as to start a third world war which would be devastating for humanity.
This would provide the authorities with the perfect excuse to set up a police state domestically to regulate the activities of everyone and have complete control.
"That's right, it's Orwellian, it's 1984, the permanent division of the world into warring blocs, for the profit of a few at the cost of the misery of the many, and we have to refuse this in every way we can," Galloway states.
Of course, the past masters of government sponsored terrorism were the Zionists, who created the condition in the Arab countries, and in some European countries to stampede the Jewish populations out of the countries they had been living in for many hundreds years and get them into a Zionist state, Galloway comments:
Suddenly Jewish people who had been the victims of Christian persecution suddenly saw their Synagogues being blown up, their countries being attacked and all kinds of provocations being staged so packed their bags and moved to occupied Palestine, then to be called Israel.
The Neo-Con War mentality
It's well documented that the United States has adopted such provocative "dirty tricks" before and during the Vietnam war and ever since.
It's always the case that in a big and complex State machine, there are all sorts of elements; they don't have to be endorsed by all of the political leadership, they can be people representing a trend in the political leadership.
Galloway went on to once again lambaste the disgusting Neo-Conservative war crazed movement that had recently attempted to falsify documents to implicate Mr. Galloway in the very corruption that they consistently revel in:
I've already mentioned this hideous character Richard Perle. I saw him the other day actually snarling 'you're next', threatening people with American military power, a man who couldn't punch his own way out of a wet paper bag, but ready to fight to the last with other people's last drop of blood. These people make my blood boil and they ought to make every right thinking person feel that way. We deserve better than to be governed by these gangsters.
Mr. Galloway went on to describe how it is always the elite draft dodging spoon-fed weaklings that strive for this kind of dominance over all, sacrificing the lives of others whilst swaggering around in their bomber jackets playing up to the act.
Returning to staged terrorism and Zionism Galloway pointed out that Zionism has nothing to do with Jewishness. The Zionist movement, as it is well documented, funded Hitler before World War Two and many of the figureheads of Zionism were not and are not Jews.
The reality is these people have used Jewish people, and they have used them with this ideology of Zionism, to create this little Hitler State on the Mediterranean, to act as an advance guard for their own interests in the Arab world, and we're all paying for it, the Palestinians have paid for it, the Arabs have paid for it, and now the American people are paying for it, and why should we? We don't want to live our lives in a permanent state of warfare and division.
The danger in the Arab world is that the people there know we are not evil and corrupt like our governments are, but they also know that we democratically elect our governments, Galloway goes on to decree. They are supposed to act on our behalf and that's why this corrupt version of "democracy" is being flatly rejected across the Arab world.
Mr. Galloway concluded by asserting that we do have the power to change things; we are in the majority:
The United States was a country built out of nothing and a country that went to the stars. The people of the US are great 'can-do' people and they ought to be able to use the Constitution which the founding fathers gave them to organize their political power to change things.
Friday, September 09, 2005
A Culture of Greed
The Real Costs of a Culture of Greed
By Robert Scheer
The Los Angeles Times
8 September
What the world has witnessed this past week is an image of poverty and social disarray that tears away the affluent mask of the United States.
Instead of the much-celebrated American can-do machine that promises to bring freedom and prosperity to less fortunate people abroad, we have seen a callous official incompetence that puts even Third World rulers to shame. The well-reported litany of mistakes by the Bush administration in failing to prevent and respond to Katrina's destruction grew longer with each hour's grim revelation from the streets of an apocalyptic New Orleans.
Yet the problem is much deeper. For half a century, free-market purists have to great effect denigrated the essential role that modern government performs as some terrible liberal plot. Thus, the symbolism of New Orleans' flooding is tragically apt: Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Louisiana Gov. Huey Long's ambitious populist reforms in the 1930s eased Louisiana out of feudalism and toward modernity; the Reagan Revolution and the callousness of both Bush administrations have sent them back toward the abyss.
Now we have a president who wastes tax revenues in Iraq instead of protecting us at home. Levee improvements were deferred in recent years even after congressional approval, reportedly prompting EPA staffers to dub flooded New Orleans "Lake George."
None of this is an oversight, or simple incompetence. It is the result of a campaign by most Republicans and too many Democrats to systematically vilify the role of government in American life. Manipulative politicians have convinced lower- and middle-class whites that their own economic pains were caused by "quasi-socialist" government policies that aid only poor brown and black people - even as corporate profits and CEO salaries soared.
For decades we have seen social services that benefit everyone - education, community policing, public health, environmental protections and infrastructure repair, emergency services - in steady, steep decline in the face of tax cuts and rising military spending. But it is a false savings; it will certainly cost exponentially more to save New Orleans than it would have to protect it in the first place.
And, although the wealthy can soften the blow of this national decline by sending their kids to private school, building walls around their communities and checking into distant hotels in the face of approaching calamities, others, like the 150,000 people living below the poverty line in the Katrina damage area - one-third of whom are elderly - are left exposed.
Watching on television the stark vulnerability of a permanent underclass of African Americans living in New Orleans ghettos is terrifying. It should be remembered, however, that even when hurricanes are not threatening their lives and sanity, they live in rotting housing complexes, attend embarrassingly ill-equipped public schools and, lacking adequate police protection, are frequently terrorized by unemployed, uneducated young men.
In fact, rather than an anomaly, the public suffering of these desperate Americans is a symbol for a nation that is becoming progressively poorer under the leadership of the party of Big Business. As Katrina was making its devastating landfall, the US Census Bureau released new figures that show that since 1999, the income of the poorest fifth of Americans has dropped 8.7% in inflation-adjusted dollars. Last year alone, 1.1 million were added to the 36 million already on the poverty rolls.
For those who have trouble with statistics, here's the shorthand: The rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting, in the ripe populist language of Louisiana's legendary Long, the shaft.
These are people who have long since been abandoned to their fate. Despite the deep religiosity of the Gulf States and the United States in general, it is the gods of greed that seem to rule. Case in point: The crucial New Orleans marshland that absorbs excess water during storms has been greatly denuded by rampant commercial development allowed by a deregulation-crazy culture that favours a quick buck over long-term community benefits.
Given all this, it is no surprise that leaders, from the White House on down, haven't done right by the people of New Orleans and the rest of the region, before and after what insurance companies insultingly call an "act of God."
The fact is, most of them, and especially our president, just don't care about the people who can't afford to attend political fundraisers or pay for high-priced lobbyists. No, these folks are supposed to be cruising on the rising tide of a booming, unregulated economy that "floats all boats."
They were left floating all right.
By Robert Scheer
The Los Angeles Times
8 September
What the world has witnessed this past week is an image of poverty and social disarray that tears away the affluent mask of the United States.
Instead of the much-celebrated American can-do machine that promises to bring freedom and prosperity to less fortunate people abroad, we have seen a callous official incompetence that puts even Third World rulers to shame. The well-reported litany of mistakes by the Bush administration in failing to prevent and respond to Katrina's destruction grew longer with each hour's grim revelation from the streets of an apocalyptic New Orleans.
Yet the problem is much deeper. For half a century, free-market purists have to great effect denigrated the essential role that modern government performs as some terrible liberal plot. Thus, the symbolism of New Orleans' flooding is tragically apt: Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Louisiana Gov. Huey Long's ambitious populist reforms in the 1930s eased Louisiana out of feudalism and toward modernity; the Reagan Revolution and the callousness of both Bush administrations have sent them back toward the abyss.
Now we have a president who wastes tax revenues in Iraq instead of protecting us at home. Levee improvements were deferred in recent years even after congressional approval, reportedly prompting EPA staffers to dub flooded New Orleans "Lake George."
None of this is an oversight, or simple incompetence. It is the result of a campaign by most Republicans and too many Democrats to systematically vilify the role of government in American life. Manipulative politicians have convinced lower- and middle-class whites that their own economic pains were caused by "quasi-socialist" government policies that aid only poor brown and black people - even as corporate profits and CEO salaries soared.
For decades we have seen social services that benefit everyone - education, community policing, public health, environmental protections and infrastructure repair, emergency services - in steady, steep decline in the face of tax cuts and rising military spending. But it is a false savings; it will certainly cost exponentially more to save New Orleans than it would have to protect it in the first place.
And, although the wealthy can soften the blow of this national decline by sending their kids to private school, building walls around their communities and checking into distant hotels in the face of approaching calamities, others, like the 150,000 people living below the poverty line in the Katrina damage area - one-third of whom are elderly - are left exposed.
Watching on television the stark vulnerability of a permanent underclass of African Americans living in New Orleans ghettos is terrifying. It should be remembered, however, that even when hurricanes are not threatening their lives and sanity, they live in rotting housing complexes, attend embarrassingly ill-equipped public schools and, lacking adequate police protection, are frequently terrorized by unemployed, uneducated young men.
In fact, rather than an anomaly, the public suffering of these desperate Americans is a symbol for a nation that is becoming progressively poorer under the leadership of the party of Big Business. As Katrina was making its devastating landfall, the US Census Bureau released new figures that show that since 1999, the income of the poorest fifth of Americans has dropped 8.7% in inflation-adjusted dollars. Last year alone, 1.1 million were added to the 36 million already on the poverty rolls.
For those who have trouble with statistics, here's the shorthand: The rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting, in the ripe populist language of Louisiana's legendary Long, the shaft.
These are people who have long since been abandoned to their fate. Despite the deep religiosity of the Gulf States and the United States in general, it is the gods of greed that seem to rule. Case in point: The crucial New Orleans marshland that absorbs excess water during storms has been greatly denuded by rampant commercial development allowed by a deregulation-crazy culture that favours a quick buck over long-term community benefits.
Given all this, it is no surprise that leaders, from the White House on down, haven't done right by the people of New Orleans and the rest of the region, before and after what insurance companies insultingly call an "act of God."
The fact is, most of them, and especially our president, just don't care about the people who can't afford to attend political fundraisers or pay for high-priced lobbyists. No, these folks are supposed to be cruising on the rising tide of a booming, unregulated economy that "floats all boats."
They were left floating all right.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
"Palestinians Must Show Their Desire For Peace" - Ariel Sharon
Let's see, 38 years of occupation, a wall, hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers on stolen lands, IDF shooting Palestinians at random, Shin Bet posing as terrorists to justify further military actions by Israel, and Sharon says the Palestinians are supposed to show a desire for peace? Please note that the recent "undercover" British soldiers who were firing at Iraqi police and had a booby-trapped car were on a secret mission. To drive a wedge between Iraqis and resistance and turn the world against Iraqi resistance. Israel has been doing this for years. Iraq story is linked at the bottom.
Sharon seems to forget that it takes two to make peace, but only one corrupt arrogant war criminal to make war. Most Zionists or supporters of Israel do not truly know the history of the nature of the country and its leaders. Actual excerpts from historical records are an indictment of a systematic racist attitude.
Here are some examples of the desire for peace by the Israelis
There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies (Arabs) not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbours here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred metres away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.
- Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, 5/10/01
The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more.
- Ehud Barak, PM of Israel 8/28/00
[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.
- Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts," New Statesman, 6/25/82
The Palestinians would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls.
- Israeli PM in a speech to Jewish settlers, NY Times 4/1/88
When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.
- Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of IDF, NY Times, 4/14/83
How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.
- Golda Meir, 3/8/69
There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed.
- Golda Meir, Israeli PM 6/15/69
The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war.
- Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 3/19/72
If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?
- David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli PM), quoted by Nahum Goldman in Le Paradoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121
We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.
- Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983
Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that ... I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.
- Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, 10/3/01, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.
We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimetre of Eretz Israel ... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.
- Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces
- Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot, 4/13/83, NY Times 4/14/83
We must do everything to ensure they [Palestinian refugees] never do return …The old will die and the young will forget.
- David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 7/18/48, quoted in Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p.157
We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.
- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff, from Ben-Gurion, A Biography, Delacorte, New York 1978
We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.
- Israel Koenig, The Koenig Memorandum
Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.
- Moshe Dayan, to the Technion, Haifa, Ha’aretz, 4/4/69
We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, ‘What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said, 'Drive them out!’
- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the NY Times, 10/23/79
We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of wood-cutters and waiters.
- Uri Lubrani, Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs 1960 - from The Arabs in Israel by Sabri Jiryas
There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbour than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument … the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish ... with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary.
- Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Dept - from Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5
Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours ... Everything we don't grab will go to them.
- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, 11/15/98
It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.
- Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aharonot, 7/14/72
Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment ... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.
- Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of Palestinians, Complete Diaries, 6/12/1895 entry
One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.
- Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, 2/27/94,: NY Times, 2/28/94, p. 1
We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own.
- You Gentiles, by Jewish Author Maurice Samuels, p. 155
Sharon seems to forget that it takes two to make peace, but only one corrupt arrogant war criminal to make war. Most Zionists or supporters of Israel do not truly know the history of the nature of the country and its leaders. Actual excerpts from historical records are an indictment of a systematic racist attitude.
Here are some examples of the desire for peace by the Israelis
There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies (Arabs) not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbours here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred metres away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.
- Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, 5/10/01
The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more.
- Ehud Barak, PM of Israel 8/28/00
[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.
- Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts," New Statesman, 6/25/82
The Palestinians would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls.
- Israeli PM in a speech to Jewish settlers, NY Times 4/1/88
When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.
- Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of IDF, NY Times, 4/14/83
How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.
- Golda Meir, 3/8/69
There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed.
- Golda Meir, Israeli PM 6/15/69
The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war.
- Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 3/19/72
If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?
- David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli PM), quoted by Nahum Goldman in Le Paradoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121
We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.
- Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983
Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that ... I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.
- Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, 10/3/01, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.
We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimetre of Eretz Israel ... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.
- Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces
- Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot, 4/13/83, NY Times 4/14/83
We must do everything to ensure they [Palestinian refugees] never do return …The old will die and the young will forget.
- David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 7/18/48, quoted in Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p.157
We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.
- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff, from Ben-Gurion, A Biography, Delacorte, New York 1978
We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.
- Israel Koenig, The Koenig Memorandum
Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.
- Moshe Dayan, to the Technion, Haifa, Ha’aretz, 4/4/69
We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, ‘What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said, 'Drive them out!’
- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the NY Times, 10/23/79
We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of wood-cutters and waiters.
- Uri Lubrani, Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs 1960 - from The Arabs in Israel by Sabri Jiryas
There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbour than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument … the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish ... with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary.
- Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Dept - from Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5
Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours ... Everything we don't grab will go to them.
- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, 11/15/98
It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.
- Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aharonot, 7/14/72
Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment ... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.
- Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of Palestinians, Complete Diaries, 6/12/1895 entry
One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.
- Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, 2/27/94,: NY Times, 2/28/94, p. 1
We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own.
- You Gentiles, by Jewish Author Maurice Samuels, p. 155
Sunday, September 04, 2005
The Most Recent US Nuclear War
Two "Green Zones"
by Dahr Jamail
by Dahr Jamail
2 September
As the US-backed Iraqi puppet government flails about arguing over the so-called constitution, Iraq remains in a state of complete anarchy. There is no government control whatsoever, even inside the infamous "Green Zone" where the puppets seem to have tangled their strings.
Why the harsh tone for the conflagrations of the so-called Iraqi government?
Because the price paid for this unimaginably huge misadventure of the neo-conservative driven Bush junta is being paid by real human beings who shed real blood and cry real tears. Because well over 100,000 Iraqis and over 1,800 US soldiers would be alive today if it wasn't for the puppeteers of Mr Bush.
"I ask you, Mr Bush, if you believe that this war is for "Our Freedom" and "Our Values" why don't you send your daughters to fight for freedom," wrote Fernando Suarez del Solar recently, who lost his son in Iraq due to the lies of Mr Bush.
He continued, "Why don't your closest associates send their children to defend these values? Why are the children of immigrant families dying? Why are children from working families who are the least privileged dying? Why Mr Bush? Why?"
Of course Suarez del Solar knows the answer. It's a rhetorical question asked of a prep school punk who has never earned nor risked anything. A smirking dimwit, who has never truly served his country, let alone fellow human beings outside of his gangster corporate crony pals who inserted him into the highest office … twice.
Today he chooses to ignore the fire which is spreading across the US as he ignores the debacle in Iraq, where the US military must leave, will leave, but are unable to leave for fear of tarnishing what is left of the now sordid reputation of the US.
I get emails daily from sources throughout Iraq … both Iraqi and American. Even inside US bases in the newest colony things don't seem to be going so well, according to an American man who is working there as support.
"I don't know how much longer I can stand working for these idiots and their brothers' mothers' sisters' cousin," he wrote me recently, "They have acres of armoured air conditioned trucks but won't pay to fix the alternators, so the drivers must use the worst of the equipment … no armour, no air conditioning … You know the heat here, now add the heat of an engine to that cab and throw in a few rockets, mortars, and IED's [roadside bombs] and it makes for a very bad day. I'm trying to expose the corruption of the Third Country National contractors by finding them a forum to send the truth. Prisoners, slaves, concubines. My life may be a contradiction, but I will not compromise with evil. The enemy is inside the wire."
Wars for empire don't change … and Iraq is the perfect example. Invading armies using slave labour (foreign in this case due to their deep distrust of Iraqis), taking advantage of those who lack privilege, the poor, minorities, to do the dirty work while the top 1% make more money than ever before.
During the previous British occupation of Iraq, the resistance began in Fallujah. As a response the British shelled half of that city to the ground, much like the US military did recently as part of their failed policy. (US soldiers are now dying in and near Fallujah again.)
It was said that if the British left Iraq civil war would ignite. Just as we are hearing today, even though state-sponsored civil war is in full swing, thanks to the occupiers.
The rule of the British Empire over Iraq went on for three decades before the Brits withdrew. Every year of that time found an uprising against the occupiers … and now less than three years into the failed US occupation, lesser uprisings occur daily.
There is a reason why a relatively recent Army survey found that 54% of all soldiers in Iraq reported either "low" or "very low" morale.
There is also a reason why, again according to the Army, 30% of all soldiers returning from Iraq develop mental health problems 3-4 months after their return.
And there is a reason why soldiers like Nicolas Prubyla come home and join organizations like Iraq Veterans Against the War.
"Up until five days ago, I had large amounts of blood in my stool," he told me recently, "I've felt tired all the time, I have had loss of hair … loss of the feeling in my right arm … I'm battling this stuff."
What he is battling is exposure to uranium munitions in Iraq. He is battling radiation sickness as the result of the most recent nuclear war waged by the United States of America. There is a reason why over 11,000 veterans from the '91 Gulf War are dead today, and over 250,000 others are on medical disability. That reason (hundreds and hundreds of tons of uranium munitions dropped on Iraq) is the same thing Prubyla is battling today.
"As the years go on this is going to affect a hell of a lot more people than we think … radioactive dust and the clouds of smoke and dust from firing the DU [depleted uranium] is getting to us now," he said, "And I know I'm not the only person in my unit — my boss got diagnosed with cancer, one of my other buddies who is 23 years old is getting rashes …every time I do more research on DU I'm seeing that I have all the side effects."
Prubyla has realized what more and more veterans understand … that the powers that be in our military plutocracy (also known as the US government) could not care less for their well being. One of the shadow members of the current plutocracy who is also an exalted neo-conservative, Henry Kissinger, has referred to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy.
People like Prubyla get this; they have had enough, and are now doing something about it.
Meanwhile in the Crawford "Green Zone," Mr. Bush chooses to ignore the resistance movement that is standing outside his fence. But that is alright, because the hundreds of people there now protesting represent tens (if not hundreds) of millions across the country who, like the Iraqi resistance, are not going to go away.
As the US-backed Iraqi puppet government flails about arguing over the so-called constitution, Iraq remains in a state of complete anarchy. There is no government control whatsoever, even inside the infamous "Green Zone" where the puppets seem to have tangled their strings.
Why the harsh tone for the conflagrations of the so-called Iraqi government?
Because the price paid for this unimaginably huge misadventure of the neo-conservative driven Bush junta is being paid by real human beings who shed real blood and cry real tears. Because well over 100,000 Iraqis and over 1,800 US soldiers would be alive today if it wasn't for the puppeteers of Mr Bush.
"I ask you, Mr Bush, if you believe that this war is for "Our Freedom" and "Our Values" why don't you send your daughters to fight for freedom," wrote Fernando Suarez del Solar recently, who lost his son in Iraq due to the lies of Mr Bush.
He continued, "Why don't your closest associates send their children to defend these values? Why are the children of immigrant families dying? Why are children from working families who are the least privileged dying? Why Mr Bush? Why?"
Of course Suarez del Solar knows the answer. It's a rhetorical question asked of a prep school punk who has never earned nor risked anything. A smirking dimwit, who has never truly served his country, let alone fellow human beings outside of his gangster corporate crony pals who inserted him into the highest office … twice.
Today he chooses to ignore the fire which is spreading across the US as he ignores the debacle in Iraq, where the US military must leave, will leave, but are unable to leave for fear of tarnishing what is left of the now sordid reputation of the US.
I get emails daily from sources throughout Iraq … both Iraqi and American. Even inside US bases in the newest colony things don't seem to be going so well, according to an American man who is working there as support.
"I don't know how much longer I can stand working for these idiots and their brothers' mothers' sisters' cousin," he wrote me recently, "They have acres of armoured air conditioned trucks but won't pay to fix the alternators, so the drivers must use the worst of the equipment … no armour, no air conditioning … You know the heat here, now add the heat of an engine to that cab and throw in a few rockets, mortars, and IED's [roadside bombs] and it makes for a very bad day. I'm trying to expose the corruption of the Third Country National contractors by finding them a forum to send the truth. Prisoners, slaves, concubines. My life may be a contradiction, but I will not compromise with evil. The enemy is inside the wire."
Wars for empire don't change … and Iraq is the perfect example. Invading armies using slave labour (foreign in this case due to their deep distrust of Iraqis), taking advantage of those who lack privilege, the poor, minorities, to do the dirty work while the top 1% make more money than ever before.
During the previous British occupation of Iraq, the resistance began in Fallujah. As a response the British shelled half of that city to the ground, much like the US military did recently as part of their failed policy. (US soldiers are now dying in and near Fallujah again.)
It was said that if the British left Iraq civil war would ignite. Just as we are hearing today, even though state-sponsored civil war is in full swing, thanks to the occupiers.
The rule of the British Empire over Iraq went on for three decades before the Brits withdrew. Every year of that time found an uprising against the occupiers … and now less than three years into the failed US occupation, lesser uprisings occur daily.
There is a reason why a relatively recent Army survey found that 54% of all soldiers in Iraq reported either "low" or "very low" morale.
There is also a reason why, again according to the Army, 30% of all soldiers returning from Iraq develop mental health problems 3-4 months after their return.
And there is a reason why soldiers like Nicolas Prubyla come home and join organizations like Iraq Veterans Against the War.
"Up until five days ago, I had large amounts of blood in my stool," he told me recently, "I've felt tired all the time, I have had loss of hair … loss of the feeling in my right arm … I'm battling this stuff."
What he is battling is exposure to uranium munitions in Iraq. He is battling radiation sickness as the result of the most recent nuclear war waged by the United States of America. There is a reason why over 11,000 veterans from the '91 Gulf War are dead today, and over 250,000 others are on medical disability. That reason (hundreds and hundreds of tons of uranium munitions dropped on Iraq) is the same thing Prubyla is battling today.
"As the years go on this is going to affect a hell of a lot more people than we think … radioactive dust and the clouds of smoke and dust from firing the DU [depleted uranium] is getting to us now," he said, "And I know I'm not the only person in my unit — my boss got diagnosed with cancer, one of my other buddies who is 23 years old is getting rashes …every time I do more research on DU I'm seeing that I have all the side effects."
Prubyla has realized what more and more veterans understand … that the powers that be in our military plutocracy (also known as the US government) could not care less for their well being. One of the shadow members of the current plutocracy who is also an exalted neo-conservative, Henry Kissinger, has referred to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy.
People like Prubyla get this; they have had enough, and are now doing something about it.
Meanwhile in the Crawford "Green Zone," Mr. Bush chooses to ignore the resistance movement that is standing outside his fence. But that is alright, because the hundreds of people there now protesting represent tens (if not hundreds) of millions across the country who, like the Iraqi resistance, are not going to go away.
© 2005 Dahr Jamail
Not Enough "Withdrawal"
An Insufficient Remedy
by Akiva Eldar
2 September
It is happening more quickly even than the doomsayers had predicted. The soldiers had barely departed from the Strip of Death, with the world still cheering the disengagers, and already the Israel Defence Forces carried out an assassination in Tul Karm and terrorists struck at Be'er Sheva. As if nothing had happened a week earlier. The only difference is that the right is accusing Ariel Sharon of giving "them" Gush Katif instead of Shimon Peres for giving "them" guns - and the left is accusing the Palestinians of once again not missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, what else?
Everyone has forgotten that the disengagement plan was, and still is, a unilateral move aimed at shortening Israel's lines of defence on its southern border and subtracting 1.3 million Arabs from the demographic balance.
Sharon himself once again is reiterating that he has no intention in the foreseeable future of opening the much more complex and important debate on Israel's eastern border, about the fate of 97 percent of the country's settlers and Jerusalem.
The pessimistic predictions about the way the Palestinians would behave during the pullout were proved wrong. The only victims who lost their lives as a result of the disengagement plan were the four residents of Shfaram who were murdered by Jewish terrorist Eden Natan Zada, and the four Palestinian laborers who lost their lives at the hands of Jewish settler Asher Weissgan. The restraint shown by the residents of Gaza during the week when the Israel Defence Forces had to invest all its determination and sensitivity in the struggle against Jewish lawbreakers took the Israeli government and defense establishment by surprise. They refuse to see the close connection between the scope of the Israeli occupation and the level of Palestinian violence.
The lessening of the burden of occupation in the Gaza Strip (Israel still maintains control from the outside) improves the chances of lowering the level of violence emanating from this area to the same extent as continuing the occupation of the West Bank perpetuates the violence that will come from the eastern sector. The Prime Minister's declarations that he has no intention of evacuating additional settlements in the West Bank give validity to Hamas' claims that the security apparatus of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is serving Israeli interests. If, from Sharon's point of view, Gaza first is Gaza last, for the residents of the West Bank, the end of the occupation in the Strip is a model to be copied.
The intention of annexing Area E1 to Jerusalem immediately dashes the hope that the West Bank's turn will come after the Strip. This time we are not referring to another few illegal caravans but rather to a plan to expropriate 1,600 dunams (400 acres) for the sake of setting up a fence that will envelope Ma'aleh Adumim and a new neighborhood where 15,000 people will live (almost the same number as in Ariel).
The moderates among the Palestinians recognize this as a plot to cut off Jerusalem from the West Bank and to thwart the possibility of setting up a contiguous and viable Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.
When it comes to a struggle between Muslims and Jews over the fate of Al-Quds (the Holy City) and the control of Haram al-Sharif (the Temple Mount), there will be no force that can get Abbas' policemen to leave their houses in order to attack the heroes of Al-Aqsa.
It is possible to achieve security, to say nothing of peace, either by a unilateral withdrawal from all of the West Bank, like the pullout from the Gaza Strip, or by reaching agreement on borders with our neighbor as we did in Sinai. Sharon does not have the faintest intention of withdrawing unilaterally to the Green Line and steadfastly refuses to begin negotiations with Abbas on a permanent arrangement in the West Bank. To say nothing of Jerusalem.
The disengagement from Gaza was a necessary but insufficient remedy for the prevention of a binational reality, if not a binationalist-religious one. A state where 40 percent of the residents under its control are not Jewish cannot be called a Jewish state.
The disengagement plan justifiably gave Sharon parliamentary immunity against initiatives of the extreme right to foil the pullout of the civilians and the soldiers who risked their lives needlessly. The time for indulging him is now over. Sharon's good deeds will be counted in his favor, while his bad deeds will be chalked up against him.
by Akiva Eldar
2 September
It is happening more quickly even than the doomsayers had predicted. The soldiers had barely departed from the Strip of Death, with the world still cheering the disengagers, and already the Israel Defence Forces carried out an assassination in Tul Karm and terrorists struck at Be'er Sheva. As if nothing had happened a week earlier. The only difference is that the right is accusing Ariel Sharon of giving "them" Gush Katif instead of Shimon Peres for giving "them" guns - and the left is accusing the Palestinians of once again not missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, what else?
Everyone has forgotten that the disengagement plan was, and still is, a unilateral move aimed at shortening Israel's lines of defence on its southern border and subtracting 1.3 million Arabs from the demographic balance.
Sharon himself once again is reiterating that he has no intention in the foreseeable future of opening the much more complex and important debate on Israel's eastern border, about the fate of 97 percent of the country's settlers and Jerusalem.
The pessimistic predictions about the way the Palestinians would behave during the pullout were proved wrong. The only victims who lost their lives as a result of the disengagement plan were the four residents of Shfaram who were murdered by Jewish terrorist Eden Natan Zada, and the four Palestinian laborers who lost their lives at the hands of Jewish settler Asher Weissgan. The restraint shown by the residents of Gaza during the week when the Israel Defence Forces had to invest all its determination and sensitivity in the struggle against Jewish lawbreakers took the Israeli government and defense establishment by surprise. They refuse to see the close connection between the scope of the Israeli occupation and the level of Palestinian violence.
The lessening of the burden of occupation in the Gaza Strip (Israel still maintains control from the outside) improves the chances of lowering the level of violence emanating from this area to the same extent as continuing the occupation of the West Bank perpetuates the violence that will come from the eastern sector. The Prime Minister's declarations that he has no intention of evacuating additional settlements in the West Bank give validity to Hamas' claims that the security apparatus of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is serving Israeli interests. If, from Sharon's point of view, Gaza first is Gaza last, for the residents of the West Bank, the end of the occupation in the Strip is a model to be copied.
The intention of annexing Area E1 to Jerusalem immediately dashes the hope that the West Bank's turn will come after the Strip. This time we are not referring to another few illegal caravans but rather to a plan to expropriate 1,600 dunams (400 acres) for the sake of setting up a fence that will envelope Ma'aleh Adumim and a new neighborhood where 15,000 people will live (almost the same number as in Ariel).
The moderates among the Palestinians recognize this as a plot to cut off Jerusalem from the West Bank and to thwart the possibility of setting up a contiguous and viable Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.
When it comes to a struggle between Muslims and Jews over the fate of Al-Quds (the Holy City) and the control of Haram al-Sharif (the Temple Mount), there will be no force that can get Abbas' policemen to leave their houses in order to attack the heroes of Al-Aqsa.
It is possible to achieve security, to say nothing of peace, either by a unilateral withdrawal from all of the West Bank, like the pullout from the Gaza Strip, or by reaching agreement on borders with our neighbor as we did in Sinai. Sharon does not have the faintest intention of withdrawing unilaterally to the Green Line and steadfastly refuses to begin negotiations with Abbas on a permanent arrangement in the West Bank. To say nothing of Jerusalem.
The disengagement from Gaza was a necessary but insufficient remedy for the prevention of a binational reality, if not a binationalist-religious one. A state where 40 percent of the residents under its control are not Jewish cannot be called a Jewish state.
The disengagement plan justifiably gave Sharon parliamentary immunity against initiatives of the extreme right to foil the pullout of the civilians and the soldiers who risked their lives needlessly. The time for indulging him is now over. Sharon's good deeds will be counted in his favor, while his bad deeds will be chalked up against him.
