Rebel Newsflash: Munir's Story: 28 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila (plus 33 more items) |  |
- Munir's Story: 28 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila
- Quran burning bid draws global outrage
- Palestinian recognition of Israel, a Jewish state – Why?
- Saudi King Abdullah Should invite Netanyahu to Riyadh?
- Edgar Steel Case Update
- Insight from the Outside: Seeing the USA from Pravda and Al-Jazeera's Eyes
- George Clooney Hits Rock Bottom (We Hope)
- In the chapel at Valley Forge
- Sexual contracted diseases on the rise in the West
- What America Left Behind in Iraq
- Is al Qaeda Still Relevant?
- Timing Is the Key to Mideast Peace
- The attack on Islam in the West Bank
- God's Humor In Promoting Taybeh?
- Even If Peace Talks Fail, Palestine's Independence Is Inevitable
- Ritual Murder, Serial Killer, or Both
- Demos' 'The Power of Unreason', and Other Ridiculous Conspiracies
- When the Israeli Jews Lose Their Moral Compass
- Imagining Palestinians as Equal
- Munir's Story: 28 Years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila
- Will Hamas Seize the Moment?
- Towards a New Public Diplomacy – Book Review
- Boycotting Ariel: Missing the Forest for the Trees
- The Magnificent Five
- Siege casts shadow over Ramadan
- Ramadan in Gaza's boundary zone
- "We need to nationalize the resistance"
- August 2010 Monthly Media Digest
- A Palestinian Rent-Boy Goes to Washington
- Democrats Will Suffer a Record Defeat this November
- Tony Blair's bloody memoir
- Kitat Kohenut and the Israeli Police State in Amerikka
- Middle East loses trillions as US strikes record arms deals
- The Cakewalk War
| Munir's Story: 28 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila Posted: 08 Sep 2010 06:10 AM PDT  This wall, adjacent to Abu Yassir's shelter is used by Shatila refugee camp tykes for playing ball and other games, unaware that some of their relatives and families' friends were among the hundreds butchered against 11 such "walls of death" 28 years ago, on September 16-18, 1982.Photo courtesy of the authorThe untreated psychic wounds are still open. Accountability, justice and basic civil rights for the survivors are still denied. Scores of horror testimonies have been shared over the past nearly three decades by survivors of the September 1982 Sabra- Shatila massacre. More come to light only through circumstantial evidence because would be affiants perished during the slaughter. Other eyewitness are just beginning to emerge from deep trauma or self imposed silence.  |
| Quran burning bid draws global outrage Posted: 08 Sep 2010 02:59 AM PDT  A US church's plan to burn copies of Islam's holy book on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks has ignited worldwide condemnation. Top US commander in Afghanistan General David Petraeus warned on Monday that the action could put the lives of American soldiers involved in wars overseas at risk.  |
| Palestinian recognition of Israel, a Jewish state – Why? Posted: 08 Sep 2010 02:31 AM PDT  Why do Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, and other Zionist leaders insist that "without Palestinian recognition that Israel is the state of the Jewish people, there will not be peace"? They have declared themselves as such. They enjoy the support of most European nations, United States of America, Canada, Australia, and many other countries in the world that have no problem whatsoever in describing the state of Israel as such. Many Arab countries – with leaders suffering from near-sighted vision – would have no problem going along with that concept. Almost every country with significant military, economic, or diplomatic power and influence either fully agrees with the description of the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people or has no real problem with it. So, why does the Israeli leadership insist on demanding that recognition from the powerless, penniless Palestinian leadership?  |
| Saudi King Abdullah Should invite Netanyahu to Riyadh? Posted: 07 Sep 2010 11:53 PM PDT  The suggestion that he should was made by Thomas L. Friedman in his column for the New York Times on 7 September. My first response was to say to myself, "That proves Friedman doesn't understand the complexities of the conflict and is at least a little bit bonkers."
But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that King Abdullah should do what Friedman suggested. In a moment I'll get to what I think the Arabs and the Palestinians especially would have to gain without losing anything, but first here's the essence what Friedman wrote.  |
| Posted: 07 Sep 2010 07:19 PM PDT
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| Insight from the Outside: Seeing the USA from Pravda and Al-Jazeera's Eyes Posted: 07 Sep 2010 04:02 PM PDT  Living in America, one doesn't tend to pay attention to the rest of the world. Among the many reasons the world hates Americans is the fact that we know the world hates us but are generally too lazy to bother investigating why. We're witnessing the twilight of an empire but are still nestled snugly enough within the empire's bosom that we remain myopic and arrogant. A massive delusion spawned from this arrogance is that if we continue to feed the rest of the world enough slogans, brand names, reality shows, and dance music, we'll melt their anti-American hatred by attrition and convert the globe into little satellite states of bling-waving couch potatoes with weight problems, cognitive deficits, and an undying love for our unique notions of consumerist freedom.  |
| George Clooney Hits Rock Bottom (We Hope) Posted: 07 Sep 2010 04:01 PM PDT  Why has The American, in which superstar George Clooney plays an international hitman hiding out from Swedish assassins in Italy, been released in early September, the Idiocracy season of the Hollywood calendar? Directed by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn, it has received mostly positive reviews from American critics. They hasten to point out that The American is not an action thriller as its trailer promises. Instead, it's a very European art film, full of abstraction, and if you find it boring, then you are a mouth-breathing American who doesn't deserve to enjoy it.  |
| Posted: 07 Sep 2010 03:53 PM PDT  Like a hard rock song, the events of the world played a constant drumbeat in my head throughout the summer as reports ranging from apocalyptic to indifferent spewed out of the suddenly dangerous Gulf of Mexico. I felt the significance of that event too deeply, in retrospect, although what I once regarded as a short term catastrophe might yet turn out to be a long term epidemic of environmental poisoning. Epidemiology is the study of epidemics, and the Gulf oil disaster is only one in a panoply of calculated aggressions meant to cloud the human species' peace of mind as it poisons their bodies. How many of these media disaster spectacles do you have to hear before you pick up the thread of the same tune being played over and over?  |
| Sexual contracted diseases on the rise in the West Posted: 07 Sep 2010 12:40 PM PDT Last month the British Health Protection Agency reported that over half a million Brits mostly youth have contracted sexually transmitted infections (STI) over the past year – a 3% increase from 2008. The women are reported to be at greater risk of developing sexually transmitted diseases. The great majority of Brits who have contracted the infection – are between the age of 15-24 year old. According to the World Health Organizaton, sexually transmitted infections are caused by more than 30 different bacteria, viruses and parasites and mostly spread by sexual contact. They can lead to chronic diseases, AIDS, pregnancy complications, infertility, cervical cancer and death. HIV and syphilis, can also be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy and childbirth, and through blood products and tissue transfer.  |
| What America Left Behind in Iraq Posted: 07 Sep 2010 11:07 AM PDT  Hundreds of cars waiting in the heat to slowly pass through one of the dozens of checkpoints and searches they must endure every day. The constant roar of generators. The smell of fuel, of sewage, of kabobs. Automatic weapons pointed at your head out of military vehicles, out of SUVs with tinted windows. Mountains of garbage. Rumors of the latest assassination or explosion. Welcome to the new Iraq, same as the old Iraq -- even if Barack Obama has declared George W. Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom over and announced the beginning of his own Operation New Dawn, and Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has declared Iraq sovereign and independent.  |
| Posted: 07 Sep 2010 09:28 AM PDT  Nearly nine years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States still has 100,000 troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan, and another 50,000 holding down the fort in Iraq. One hundred seventy-six inmates remain at the U.S. prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. A number of disturbing near-misses -- the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253, the Times Square fizzle, and various other plots -- have put the threat of terrorism back in the news. In a Gallup poll conducted in late August, 47 percent of Americans surveyed said that terrorism would be "extremely important" to their vote for Congress this year, with another 28 percent rating the issue "very important."  |
| Timing Is the Key to Mideast Peace Posted: 07 Sep 2010 08:47 AM PDT  We all know what peace between Israel and the Palestinians should look like. It should be, well, peaceful. It should be peace with honor and security for all -- and states for all too, one for the Jewish people, one for the Palestinian people. It should be reached by adhering to the "Clinton parameters" / "Geneva Accord" / "Arab peace plan" -- take your pick.  |
| The attack on Islam in the West Bank Posted: 07 Sep 2010 01:00 AM PDT  It was not anticipated that the 'autonomy' which emanated from the Oslo Accord would spread Islam, support it or make quantum leaps in endorsing Islam's practical implications toward the promotion of science, endeavour and self-reliance or striving in the way of God in all aspects of life. Nor was it expected that it would be a guide in the planning of the economy or within the social, cultural, intellectual, political, security and military arenas. Indeed the Palestinian Authority has not fallen short of our expectation as it hastened to take decisive action against the Muslims it disapproved of as the institutions run by Islamic groups. Moreover, it has not limited its attack to Hamas or Hizb ut-Tahrir but extended its hostility to include Islam itself implementing procedures that significantly and adversely affect it.  |
| God's Humor In Promoting Taybeh? Posted: 07 Sep 2010 12:44 AM PDT  I am sitting in the middle of the wilderness and most of the days I am sincerely happy that the whole world is willing to come to me. I clearly have nothing to do with this fame since my brother-in-law, Nadim Khoury, worked extraordinarily hard since the early 90's to make one of the best products that exist in Palestine. People from all of the world want to come and see how we make this great micro brewed beer, the only micro brew beer in the whole Middle East, Taybeh Beer.  |
| Even If Peace Talks Fail, Palestine's Independence Is Inevitable Posted: 06 Sep 2010 11:42 PM PDT  A Palestinian state is coming -- it's just not clear whether it will result from the current peace talks. It is easy to be pessimistic, or even apathetic, about the latest round of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. History is a witness to the lack of Palestinian accomplishments in incremental negotiations. All successful efforts to date have stemmed from secret talks made public only once a package agreement was reached.
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| Ritual Murder, Serial Killer, or Both Posted: 06 Sep 2010 05:34 PM PDT  Suspicion and interest in a jewish character named Joran Van der Sloot cropped up in 2005 with the disappearance of a young girl by the name of Natalee Holloway. Young Natalee was on a graduation trip to Aruba with a number of her friends, when she met someone who is now known to be a pathological liar and smooth talker named Joran. What should have been a joyous time of celebration, turned out to be the end of Natalie's life, and the beginning of years of unanswered questions, deceptions, and cover ups in the case of her disappearance. When Natalee Holloway went missing she was last seen with patholigical liar Joran Van der Sloot, who was picked up for murdering another woman exactly five years later in Peru.  |
| Demos' 'The Power of Unreason', and Other Ridiculous Conspiracies Posted: 06 Sep 2010 04:00 PM PDT  On August 29, the London think-tank Demos released a report called The Power of Unreason, which is "the first ever analysis of conspiracy theories in the ideology and propaganda of fifty extremist groups." These theories, say the authors, create and perpetuate demonologies, delegitimize moderation and "drive a wedge of distrust between governments and particular communities."  |
| When the Israeli Jews Lose Their Moral Compass Posted: 06 Sep 2010 01:15 PM PDT  On the first day of the Palestinian-Israeli direct negotiations, I was reading a book by Avraham Burg on Israel. Avraham Burg, a man who once was at the heart of the Israeli establishment as the speaker of the Knesset, asked the same question which I spent years trying to answer. Why the Jewish people, the yesterday's victims of Hitler and the survivors of the Holocaust do not view the indigenous Palestinians as people with possibly legitimate needs? Burg wants his fellow Jews, the victims of anti-Semitism, to establish a just and compassionate society that lives according to the principles of its Bible including: "What is hateful to thee, do not do unto thy fellow." He reminds the Jews that their "existence has not been just to the Father, the King, up in heaven, but up toward the great human calling." The moral issue of the Israeli Jews was put eloquently by one of their intellectuals, David Grossman, "I could not understand how an entire nation like mine, an enlightened nation by all accounts, is able to train itself to live as a conqueror without making its own life wretched."  |
| Imagining Palestinians as Equal Posted: 06 Sep 2010 01:03 PM PDT  If the question is, are the Israeli government and its supporters serious about addressing the issues that cause them their biggest public relations problems, the answer is no. Instead of changing its behavior, Israel's response to criticism is a simple one: Deny wrongdoing, play the role of victim, punish those who resist, and attack and destroy the credibility of those who criticize it. Earlier this year The Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank founded in 2004 by Gidi Grinstein and others, published a 93-page report titled: "Building a Political Firewall against Israel's Delegitimization". A primer in designing and carrying out a propaganda campaign (called "public relations" in the report), it is a very revealing document. |
| Munir's Story: 28 Years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila Posted: 06 Sep 2010 12:44 PM PDT  The untreated psychic wounds are still open. Accountability, justice and basic civil rights for the survivors are still denied. Scores of horror testimonies have been shared over the past nearly three decades by survivors of the September 1982 Sabra- Shatila massacre. More come to light only through circumstantial evidence because would be affiants perished during the slaughter. Other eyewitness are just beginning to emerge from deep trauma or self imposed silence. Some testimonies will be shared this month by massacre survivors at Shatila camp. They will sit with the every growing numbers of international visitors who annually come to commemorate one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century.  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2010 12:34 PM PDT  Can the resistance exploit the fake talks, re-position itself and finally 'come good'? Hamas 'vows to step up attacks on Israel', say reports in the western media. Reading further, we learn that this escalation is either "a natural response to the crimes of the occupation" or a spiteful reaction to being left out of the talks. Either way, Hamas surely knows better than to let such crude impressions be formed.  |
| Towards a New Public Diplomacy – Book Review Posted: 06 Sep 2010 12:01 PM PDT  This collection of essays could be summed up in one word: image. Other words used throughout the text range from the more benign terms of "perception" and "communication tactics" through to the harder terms of "propaganda," the military "strategic communications" and the rather laborious military phrase of "coordinated information dissemination." At its base however it wall returns to the one word, image. Image as opposed to actions, in that U.S. public diplomacy rarely if ever admits to mistakes in the grand purpose of the U.S. and will only do so under limited circumstances when media exposure catches their actions at cross purposes with their purported rhetorical ideology. The underlying assumption of all authors, some more boldly stated than others, is that the U.S. right, it is good, and therefore we do not need to change our actions, what we need to adjust is our image.  |
| Boycotting Ariel: Missing the Forest for the Trees Posted: 06 Sep 2010 11:50 AM PDT  Provoked by the recent announcement of the inauguration of a cultural center in Ariel, the fourth largest Jewish colony in the occupied Palestinian territory, 150 prominent Israeli academics, writers, and cultural figures have declared that they "will not take part in any kind of cultural activity beyond the Green Line, take part in discussions and seminars, or lecture in any kind of academic setting in these settlements". A few protestors went as far as reiterating the fact that all Israeli colonies built on occupied Palestinian land are in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and thus constitute a war crime.  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2010 04:20 AM PDT  The scene was remarkable. The place was on the White House red carpet. The characters were five giant men who walked side by side with raised heads and determined minds. The scene was magnificent and the five men, the US President Obama, the Palestinian President Abbas, the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Jordan's King Abdullah and Egypt's President Mubarak, became not less than the magnificent five.  |
| Siege casts shadow over Ramadan Posted: 06 Sep 2010 03:36 AM PDT
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| Ramadan in Gaza's boundary zone Posted: 06 Sep 2010 03:30 AM PDT
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| "We need to nationalize the resistance" Posted: 06 Sep 2010 01:53 AM PDT
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| August 2010 Monthly Media Digest Posted: 06 Sep 2010 12:45 AM PDT  This month MEMO looks at the global opinions that have emerged in the run-up to direct negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. We also follow the activities of Zionist extremists in the UK as they strengthen their ties with the racist, fascist EDL. Meanwhile in Israel, Wikipedia editing courses are established in a brazen propaganda move to promote the Zionist project while censoring opposition. Spiritual leader of Shas, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, hopes for Palestinians to be struck down with a plague and irradiated from the earth while Shimon Peres insinuates that Brits are anti-Semites.  |
| A Palestinian Rent-Boy Goes to Washington Posted: 05 Sep 2010 04:26 AM PDT  On August 25, 2010, President Mahmoud Abbas traveled to Washington to start new rounds of the so-called "peace negotiations" headed by the former negotiator of Oslo, Saeb Erekat. In engaging in these negotiations, Abbas chose to ignore the will of the majority of Palestinians, of the Popular Front, the Democratic People's Party, Hamas, independent figures and other civil organizations and factions, and to rely solely on his own decision, the corrupt Fatah central committee, the illegal cabinet, the corrupt Arab regimes in Egypt and Jordan, on the congratulations of the Saudi Royal family which heads a kingdom of illiteracy, on the League of Arab States which has no real power and is instead a front for zionist interests, and Middle East "peace" quartet composed of representatives of the United Nations, the Russian Federation, the United States and the European Union and which is the strongest ally and cheerleader of the Israeli crimes, genocide and war crimes and is headed by war criminal and presumed pederast Tony Blair.  |
| Democrats Will Suffer a Record Defeat this November Posted: 04 Sep 2010 09:49 PM PDT  An article on Politico.com reports "Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by Election Day. In conversations with more than two dozen party insiders, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the state of play, Democrats in and out of Washington say they are increasingly alarmed about the economic and polling data they have seen in recent weeks." The truth is that Democrats have made things worse. Bush dropped a subprime mortgage crisis in Obama's lap. Obama responded by squandering $787 billion on his "Stimulus Plan" which appears to have done nothing to create jobs. One million foreclosures are forecast for 2010. An average of three banks are failing every week. The real unemployment rate is about 20 percent and the admitted unemployment has reached 9.6 percent. California, Illinois and New York are on the verge of bankruptcy.
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| Posted: 04 Sep 2010 01:02 PM PDT  Tony Blair, a man who launched a criminal war with no end, declared once again today that "Radical Islam is the world's greatest threat". Blair said radical Islamists believed that whatever was done in the name of their cause was justified, including the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.  |
| Kitat Kohenut and the Israeli Police State in Amerikka Posted: 04 Sep 2010 09:24 AM PDT  For those of you who have trouble sleeping, I don't recommend reading the alternative explanation of the events in New York on September 11, 2001 offered by Nashid Abdul-Khaaliq. Nor would I recommend ex-CIA station chief Philip Giraldi's recent essay in Pat Buchanan's "The American Conservative," entitled "Mossad in America." A perpetual state of insomnia may come your way by reading these articles in conjunction with Internet releases chronicling the development of a Jewish paramilitary force in the continental United States, called Kitat Kohenut ("rapid response units"). UNM Israel Alliance's post on this New York-based organization informs the reader that a training camp is being constructed in northern Arizona.  |
| Middle East loses trillions as US strikes record arms deals Posted: 03 Sep 2010 08:37 AM PDT The internet has provided the world with, if nothing else, instantaneous access to news and in-depth information previously available only to governments and think tanks. It has also allowed for the exchange of data and analyses between groups and individuals around the globe, in part by making one tongue, English, the language of the World Wide Web. It remains to be seen whether the keystroke is mightier than the sword.  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2010 03:59 PM PDT  Six months before the invasion of Iraq, Taki Theodoracopulos, Scott McConnell and this writer launched a new magazine, The American Conservative. Goal: Convince our countrymen that invading Iraq would be imperial folly. In the first column, in mid-September 2002, I wrote:  |
For the reasons stated below, Cyndi will stay in relative seclusion for the time being. She is in the process of hiring a new attorney to protect her rights and the rights of her family (things did not work out with the attorney who was representing her before). This will give her and the family some breathing space to have active representation while they go about their lives. Now that the Feds have shown that they are not willing to prosecute the other unnamed accomplices of Larry Fairfax who are involved in this case, Cyndi realizes that taking a low profile to allow the FBI to do their job, simply will not do any good.
The Muslim festival approaches, but not the end to power cuts that have darkened the month-long Ramadan fasting leading up to the festival. Or to the agony of Gazans, made worse by the reminder that it's approaching festive time.
With power cuts up to 16 hours to full days, a soaring heat wave and unbearable humidity, the Israeli-led siege on Gaza is but one of many factors leaving Ramadan miserable for the majority of Palestinians in Gaza.
Public servant Bassem Mohammed al-Tamimi is from al-Nabi Saleh, a small village about 20 kilometers northwest of Ramallah. As coordinator of the local Popular Committee, Tamimi has played a leading role in al-Nabi Saleh's demonstrations against the nearby illegal Israeli settlement and military base of Halamish. Jody McIntyre interviewed al-Tamimi for The Electronic Intifada.
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