Ernesto Paramo - Abbas’s Presidential Guard fighting opposition to Israeli occupation

Three people were injured on Tuesday, following the deployment to the Jenin governorship last Saturday of a large PA military force, which included the US trained Presidential Guard, to squelch any resistance to the brutal and murderous Israeli occupation, in what has been called “Operation Smile and Hope”, a military operation which will encompass some 50 villages and towns.

The government of George W Bush has so far spent $28 million in training and equipment to make sure that Mahmoud Abbas is able to deliver his country and his people before the end of the year, as promised. This effort is considered vital if the US is going to be able to finalize a pace agreement by the end of the year between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

However, many international observers are still trying to fathom out what kind of agreement could be reached when Hamas and Gaza are not part of the equation. Another fundamental point is the future of the Jewish settlements, illegal under International Law, not to mention that both Abbas and Olmert [and Bush] are very week, tarnished leaders with very little time available to them.

During Tuesday’s clashes, a 20-year-old student was critically injured by a bullet to the head, according to medical and security officials. In a different incident, two other people were shot in the legs. Islamic Jihad said that two of its fighters were among the injured.

The operation began before dawn with hundreds of Abbas’s security officers swamping the town of Qabatiyeh, just south of Jenin against a stronghold of armed groups such as Islamic Jihad that have sworn to fight the Israeli occupation. Exchanges of fire could be heard all morning as Abbas’s forces tried to take control, but it is still not clear if they have managed to make any progress.

According to a Western security source “This is a clear indication of the resolve by Prime Minister [Salam] Fayyad and President Abbas to show Israel and the West that they are the people to do business with.”

On the other hand, General Thiyab al-Ali, the Commander of the Palestinian Security Forces in the West Bank, has complained that not all the equipment promised for the Presidential Guard by the US administration has been delivered. This equipment includes bulletproof jeeps and other combat vehicles, which at the moment are being blocked by the Israelis.

The Israelis want to first make sure that this kind of equipment is secure and that it will not be used against them in the future.

In another development in Israel on Tuesday, police and prosecutors submitted a request to hear testimony from a non-Israeli witness, who is thought to be at the centre of an ever-growing scandal involving Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

At the end of last week, police asked to question Olmert at short notice. Ever since, newspapers, television stations and radio networks have been full with speculation that the allegations will lead to indictment, and eventually to the Prime Minister’s resignation.

It is public knowledge that the case against Olmert involves allegations of bribery and that an American businessman is also involved. The courts have imposed a blanket ban that prevents the publication of any details.

Olmert, as many other Israeli politicians, has been investigated many times for alleged corruption, but this time, it could be the one where the prosecutors are successful. If Olmert is forced out, it could be yet another obstacle for the US-backed peace talks that were re-started in November but have produced no results.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni from Olmert’s Kadima Party, and the settlers' favourite, the hawkish former Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu from the Likud Party, await expectant for the results of the corruption investigation hoping to succeed Olmert if he should be compelled to resign.

Khalid Amayreh - Peres: The lying old man

Does Shimon Peres carry the genes of a pathological liar?

The question may sound facetious to many, but Peres’s apparent inability to distinguish between truth and falsehood makes the question quite valid.

At 84, Peres continues to dish out a daily staple of lies, including obscene lies.

This week, the “hero” of the Qana-1 massacre, told foreign correspondents based in Israel that “Hamas was standing in the way of Palestinian statehood.”

Well, this is, of course, a blatant lie, to say the least, because every honest person under the sun, Jew or gentile, knows well that the main obstacle impeding the realization of peace in the Middle East has been the intensive colonization of Palestinian land and unending expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied territories that belong to another people.

So how can we possibly buy the argument that Hamas is responsible for the building on the West Bank of hundreds of Jewish settlements, inhabited by hundreds of thousands of fascist-minded “settlers” who view non-Jews as animals in the shape of humans who should be enslaved by the “master race” as water carriers and wood hewers?

To be sure, Hamas is not an organization of angels. However, blaming the Islamic movement for the liquidation of the two-state solution is noting short of a pornographic lie.

Indeed, from its very inception, Hamas entrusted “peace negotiations” to the PLO, and said on numerous occasions that it would live with a Palestinian state covering the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Moreover, the movement, many of whose leaders have been brutally murdered by Israel, repeatedly voiced a willingness to reach a ceasefire with the Israeli occupation army on condition of parity and reciprocity.

Hence, it was Israel - not Hamas - that rejected peace, first by stealing Palestinian land from rightful proprietors at gunpoint and then, by pursuing a genocidal assault against the Palestinian people’s very existence. Needless to say, this ongoing onslaught has certain hair-raising commonalities with the Nazi onslaught against European Jewry during the Second World War.

Peres is not stupid, he knows the power of words and the magic of sound-bites. However, he often doesn’t say what he means, nor does he mean what he says, all for the purpose of eluding a world that dreads confronting Zionist lies.

Peres’s conception of “Palestinian state” is incompatible with the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, as well as being incompatible with international law and human rights.

“Mr. Peace,” as he is occasionally deceptively dubbed, would like the Palestinians to “settle for” a deformed, truncated and territorially discontinuous entity on “parts” of the West Bank, without East Jerusalem and certainly without the repatriation of millions of Palestinian refugees who were uprooted from their homes and towns and villages around this time sixty years ago, in a drama of deportation and exile that continues to this date.

Hamas, like 99% of Palestinians, does reject such a scandalous sell-out of inalienable Palestinian rights. Indeed, even Mahmoud Abbas, the Chairman of the American puppet regime in Ramallah, whom Israel views as “moderate” and an “acceptable peace partner” openly rejects such a humiliating surrender to Zionism.

A classical example of the consummate Zionist leader, Peres may think that deceiving the world and frustrating the hapless Palestinian Authority regime into capitulating to the Zionist reality will be good for the Jews and for peace.

He is absolutely wrong. Palestinians may be in a state of weakness at the present as opposed to Israel, a powerful state that draws much of its military, economic and technological superiority from its tight domination of American politics and policies. However, this anomalous situation can’t be perpetuated forever. Nazi Germany (Israel is undoubtedly an updated version of the Third Reich despite all the fanfare and hasbara to the contrary) didn’t last forever. Nor did diabolical Stalinism, which had much in common with Zionism in certain respects. A fact that is well known to historians.

Coercing the Palestinians to surrender to Zionism, either through brute force as Israel has been doing, or economic inducements as Peres is trying to do, or both, would only keep the embers of injustice smoldering thinly beneath the surface.

So, what Peres and his ilk view as “Jewish ingenuity” will eventually be proven an expression of visionless arrogance and poor statesmanship.

In addition to uttering his usual quotable but mendacious sound-bites about the Palestinians and their enduring plight, Peres is spending time these days trying to convince the world that Iran is Nazi Germany number-2 and its President Ahmadinejad is Adolph Hitler.

Well, how could any person with an iota of honesty and rectitude compare Nazi Germany, which destroyed Europe and caused the death of tens of millions of people, with Iran, a third world country whose only “crime” is its refusal to be subservient to the American-Zionist hegemony?

Besides, it is amply clear that Peres, who played a key role in introducing nuclear weapons to the Middle East via the French connection several decades ago, is utterly unqualified to lecture the world about an alleged Iranian nuclear threat.

To be sure, Israel, which possesses a huge arsenal of hundreds of nuclear bombs and warheads that are trained toward Teheran, Cairo, Damascus and Beirut (and perhaps Berlin as well), has no right to incite the west against the Islamic Republic. In the final analysis, Iran has an inalienable right to develop nuclear technology and even nuclear weapons to deter the mad dogs of Zionism, both in Tel Aviv and in Washington, D.C.

Nuclear weapons, like all weapons of mass destruction, are ugly and evil. However, America and Israel are first and foremost to blame for transforming our world into a jungle where one must be a fox, or a tiger or a venomous cunning snake in order to survive.

Israel claims that it has never threatened to decimate any country or any people and that its nuclear stockpile is for “peaceful purposes.”

But Israel has been decimating the Palestinian people for sixty years and some of its leaders who have a Hitlerian mentality are already threatening to inflict a holocaust on their victims.

For sure, had the Palestinians been strong, Israel would not have destroyed their towns, demolished their homes, bulldozed their farms before expelling them to the four corners of the globe.

In conclusion, Peres and other Zionist leaders can’t be trusted to tell the truth since Zionism and truth are inherently incompatible.

During his stint as Prime Minister in 1996, flowing the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Peres oversaw the Qana-1 massacre in Southern Lebanon when the Israeli Wehrmacht knowingly and deliberately murdered more than a hundred Lebanese civilians, including numerous children who had sought refuge at the UN peace-keeping forces’ headquarters at the village of Qana.

For those who have forgotten or don’t know, neither Peres nor Israel has had the moral courage to say “sorry.”

Obviously they both lack the moral caliber to do so. And their crimes are too colossal and too numerous to be atoned for.

Exiling Palestinians to Chile!!

Written by Adib S Kawar
We cannot but thank those who arranged for Palestinian Arab refugees who were chased out of Iraq for finding for them a path out of the hell they found themselves in, namely a desert no man's land between Iraq and Syria. I am not sure for how long they spent of their lives suffering the freezing winters and baking in the heat of long summers? The only place they found to take refuge in, Chile is the furthest away point in the world away from their homeland, Palestine.

Palestinian Arab refugees are fighting to exercise their Right of Return to their Palestinian homes and land, while Arab regimes pay them lip service by echoing this demand just like parrots, and at the same time did all possible to help in re-uproot them from their refuge in Iraq, to find themselves in this no man's land.

Is there is no place in this fourteen million square kms wide Arab homeland that was wide enough to be able to give them temporary refuge, up till a time when their problem is solved and return to Palestine!!!

Who shall we blame? The U.S., the strategic ally of the Zionist entity, (the president of which, Shimon Peres, who shall inaugurate the celebrations for the so-called 60th anniversary of the "independence" of Israel by shouting once, twice and thrice: "Thank you America", thank you America for helping in achieving the Palestinian Arab Nakbah), and thus helping more and more Palestinian Arabs to get as far away as possible from their land by expelling them from a place of refuge that is not too far away from occupied Palestine. Palestinian refugees in Arab states shall always be thinking of practicing their Right of Return, but in…………….. Chile!!! The U.S.? Which certainly had a saying in ordering its agents in Iraq to expel their Arab brethren to the far end of the world, to pay back for Israel's role in the occupation of Iraq.

Who shall we blame? Arab regimes/rulers that wants to get rid of the ever lasting Palestinian headache???

This all in spite of the warm welcome that was extended to those suffering Palestinian refugees, by the 500,000 "Chilean" Palestinian Arabs, and the Chilean officials. But out of curiosity can we ask these officials who has the strongest ties with the Zionist entity; were they also extending a service to our enemy state?

Adib S. Kawar
A Palestinian Arab still living as near as possible to his homeland…

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/CultureAndMedia/?id=1.0.2050534508

Chile: Palestinian refugees arrive to warm welcome

The first group of 38 refugees - 23 of them children - have arrived in the Chilean capital Santiago. They were greeted by government leaders and members of the 500,000-strong Palestinian community.

Santiago, 8 April (AKI) - Chile has given a warm welcome to the first group of Palestinian refugees to arrive in the country.Thirty-eight Palestinians, previously stuck in no-man's land between Syria and Iraq, arrived in the country's capital, Santiago, after a 40-hour journey on Sunday.

The refugees, which include 23 children, were greeted at Santiago's airport by around 500 Chileans, many of them of Palestinian descent who waved Palestinian flags in their honour. The group is the first of 117 refugees to be accepted by the Chilean government after a plea from the United Nations High Commission of Refugees (UNHCR) last year. Fabio Varoli, head of the regional office of the UNHCR's Latin America Programme told Adnkronos International (AKI) the refugees had lived in the refugee camp of al-Tanf, after surviving violence and hardship in war-torn Iraq.

"They lived in a desert area, about 400 metres long, inside tents, where temperatures reached minus 10 to minus 15 degrees celsius in the winter, or 40 to 50 degrees celsius in the summer," Varoli told AKI. The al-Tanf camp, located on a strip of land between Syria and Iraq, held 300 people in 2006 and now has 700 refugees.

Varoli, an Italian from the historic city of Pisa, travelled to the camp last year to help select who would be eligible for the programme."When they arrived to Chile, I was waiting at the door of the airplane to greet them, many of them remembered me, it was very moving," he told AKI.

"They were smiling and very happy. "There is a profound sense of gratitude to Chile for their solidarity with the refugees."

Upon their arrival, the refugees were transferred to the city of La Calera, 118 kilometres north of Santiago, where mayor Roberto Chahuan, himself the grandchild of Palestinian immigrants, welcomed them in front of 1,000 cheering supporters. The mayor organised a lunch while a band played typical Chilean music and performed the country's national dance, the Cueca. The Palestinian Authority's ambassador in Chile, Mai al-Kaila, and Chile's interior minister, Felipe Harboe, were also there to greet the newcomers.

"It was like a Latin-American postcard," spokesman for the Vicaria de Pastoral Social (VPS), Alberto Pando, told AKI.VPS is a Catholic aid agency based in the capital Santiago that works with UNHCR to help refugees.-

"It has been so exciting for them (the Palestinians), there has been so much love, so much joy," said Pando. The Palestinians travelled from the Syrian capital, Damascus, to Paris in a commercial airline, and after an eight hour layover they flew to Chile. "Kids could be seen playing in the escalators at the airports, because many of them were born in refugee camps and thus had never seen one," Pando told AKI. All of the refugees are Sunni Muslims and were received at the airport by an imam from a local mosque. He prayed with the refugees and also offered them advice.

Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, is reportedly sympathetic to refugees because she was one herself. She and her family sought asylum in Australia during the regime of former dictator Augusto Pinochet from 1973 until 1990. According to Pando, when Bachelet studied in the German capital of Berlin, a Palestinian taught her how to say "refugee" in German. A second group of Palestinian refugees is expected to arrive in Chile in two weeks.

Khalid Amayreh - An evil state that will disappear one day

Occupied East Jerusalem
30 April, 2008

Just as Israel inaugurated its misbegotten birth with genocidal ethnic cleansing sixty years ago, the evil brat of Zionism is marking its 60th anniversary with yet another spate of bloodletting.

On Sunday, 27 April, the Israeli “Defense” Forces (a more appropriate appellation would be the Jewish Wehrmacht) murdered a mother and her four children in Beit Hanoun, a northern Gaza suburb.

The mother and her kids reportedly were having breakfast when an artillery shell fired from an Israeli Merkava battle-tank hit their home, killing them instantly and mutilating their bodies.

The graphic, blood-splattered images of the mutilated children and their mother raised no eyebrows among Israeli leaders and the Zionist-Jewish public opinion. After all, these Nazi-minded and Nazi-hearted Zionists have been doing this for more than sixty years. And the world seems to be coming to terms with these crimes as a fact of life. This is at least how Israel views world reactions to its crimes against the peoples of the Middle East.

Anyone familiar with the Zionist way of thinking would tell you that whenever a pornographic carnage is committed by the Israeli occupation army, Israeli leaders don’t indulge in soul-searching over the barbarian behavior they engage in. Instead, they just activate their hasbara machine in order to control the resulting public relations damage and help exonerate Israel of any wrong doing before the eyes of the world.

Thus, these evil child killers have told us that their victims were killed not by Israeli artillery shells, but rather by Palestinian explosives! Well, didn’t these wicked liars claim that Muhammed Durra was killed by Palestinian snipers in order to tarnish Israel’s image?

This is of course not the first time the Israeli army murders an entire family in order to inflict “shock and awe” on a people as bent on living and surviving as Israel is bent on killing and murdering. Israel’s history, after all, has been an uninterrupted concatenation of massacres and war crimes. In fact, one would exaggerate very little by saying that Israel itself is a crime against humanity, and for that matter a continuing crime against humanity.

The latest carnage in Gaza didn’t occur in isolation. The entire Gaza Strip has been languishing under a harsh blockade that has much in common with the Nazi blockade of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland in 1943.

This is a truth that many people in Europe and North America can’t bring themselves to accept, at least openly, because it is not politically correct to do so. Well, does the West need to see a full-fledged holocaust in Palestine in order to cast the holocaust guilt off its shoulders? Must Palestinian children be slaughtered every morning and every evening in order to finally bring about the long-awaited recuperation of Europe from the holocaust complex?

As a result of barring the estimated 1.5 million Gaza inhabitants from accessing food, work, medicine and fuel, the vast bulk of the population has been forced into abject poverty and virtual starvation.

Ill people who can’t find the needed medicine and required medical care in local health facilities, are left to succumb to their illnesses. It is believed that more than 200 innocent Gazan patients have so far died as a direct result of the callous Nazi-like siege.

This happens as Israeli officials appearing on western TV screens keep assuring the mostly nonchalant or morally-apathetic western audiences that under no circumstances would Israel allow a “humanitarian crisis” to develop in Gaza. Well, what, apart from lies, do we expect from Zionism, a Godless, satanic ideology based on murder, theft and mendacity?

What do we expect from a state that sends its crack soldiers to raid and terrorize orphanages and boarding schools in Hebron in the dead of night?

What do we expect from a state that confiscates donated food for orphaned children whose parents had been murdered by the Israeli army…a state that orders its soldiers to raid inventory warehouses and steal shoes, clothes, even underwear, of orphaned children under ten years of age?

What do we expect from a state whose soldiers murder 12-year-old school kids, and then verify the kill by emptying 20 more bullets into the small victim’s body to make sure that the dead or dying little girl or boy doesn’t pose a threat to the security and safety of the heroic soldier?

What do we expect from a state whose army bulldozers crush peace activists to death and then tells the world that “ the bulldozer driver acted in accordance with outstanding instructions and did nothing wrong.”

Obviously, a sate as such is a Nazi state par excellence.

Well, I know that Israel has produced good scientists and built good hospitals and made impressive achievements in science, technology and other fields.
But this doesn’t mean much in moral terms. Nazi Germany, too, produced many good scientists, built many good hospitals and made impressive achievements in science and technology.

Besides, what is the point of inventing advanced electronic devices and then using the technology in murdering and maiming sleeping children and women and other innocent civilians?

Indeed, what is the point of building a prosperous state on a foundation of oppression, mass murder and ethnic cleansing?

Israel may appear modern, vigorous and democratic to much of the outside world. But for us, the Palestinians, Israel is and will always be a murderer, a thief and a liar.

Israel stole our country away from us, ethnically cleansed our people, destroyed our homes, bulldozed our towns and villages, poisoned our water wells lest we return, and then expelled the bulk of our people to the four corners of the globe…these are the very people Israeli leaders and spokespersons now shamelessly call “terrorists.”

Yes, Israel is militarily and economically powerful; it has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons, and pro-Israeli pressure groups control the American government as well as much of the media and show business in the United States.

So what?

Evil states, like evil people, do not last forever. And Israel will be no exception.

Legacy of Riad Hamad

Thanks very much to Colin for forwarding me this material. It tells us more about how important Riad was for his people and how his generosity changed the world for the better. He will live forever in the hearts of those whose lives he has touched.

Dear Friends and Colleagues.

A few months back I sent an email about Riad Hamad. He was the director of the Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund and the email described how his home had been invaded and searched by the FBI and all his papers, documents and computers had been taken.

On Wednesday his body was found drowned in a Lake in Austin Texas.

Riad was one of the most generous people I have been honored to have known. Thousands of Palestinian children benefited by his work. But I want to focus on the story of a young family from Lebanon who were directly supported by Riad.

When I was living in Beirut I received a phone call from Riad asking if I would visit a family in Saida, south of Beirut for him. He was sure they needed some specific equipment to help look after their two handicapped children. He also wanted me to find out about the schools that would accept the children and how much the fees would be.

I visited the Palestinian family who were supported solely by Riad. (It is not possible for Palestinian refugees to get paid work in more than 72 professions in Lebanon. The father of the family drove a taxi but this provided little enough money to cover food costs.) The family were wonderfully grateful to Riad. We sat with them for a few hours and listened to them speaking about Riad as if he were a father to them all. It was very moving and I remember writing to Riad on my return to thank him for letting me see the direct effects of his generosity. Out of his own pocket by the way.

Thousands of children have lost a dedicated fighter for their cause. As we have lost a strong comrade.

Ahmad and his family have lost their father. I am hoping to raise some funds for Ahmad’s family in the memory of Riad Hamad. I will visit them in the last week of May and give them whatever donations I have managed to raise by then.

It may help them to continue until someone with the means and as generous as Riad can support them again.

Please if you feel you can give anything contact me or Wissam (my friend in Beirut who made all the visits to the family with me and has also put out an appeal in Lebanon in memory of Riad)

UK contact: Eliza Ernshire.
eliza.ernshire@gmail.com
0044 7506174080 (mobile)

Lebanon contact: Wissam Alsaliby
wissam@lb.reser.org
00961 3025832

In Peace,

Eliza Ernshire.

The following is an extract I received from a close friend of Riad’s and apparently one of the last people Riad spoke to:

Riad Hamad, 1952-2008

"Hi, Riad." I knew it was him from the caller ID, even though the phone had never been in his own name.
"Hey, Bolos. How you doin'?" He used the Arabic translation of my name.
"I'm good. How about you?"
"I'm OK." His voice didn't have the usual energy, but perhaps he was in a place where he couldn't speak loudly.
"I sent you a couple of email messages."
"Yes, I saw them." The messages were about my role in helping with his charitable work on behalf of Palestinians. There were a few things I didn't understand about the messages, so Riad cleared them up for me. "Now it makes sense," I said.
"OK. Well, that's all I wanted to tell you." Typical Riad. Always in a hurry to get off the phone.
"Wait, I've got some good news!"
"Oh yeah? What is it?" He sounded surprised.
"We're finally getting donations here. A check for a thousand came in today."
I had set up a nonprofit account to receive donations for Riad's work."Was it from __________?"
"Hang on a second."
"Well, it doesn't matter." Still anxious to get off the phone.
"What do you mean it doesn't matter? I've got the name right here. No, it's from ____________."
"That's nice. Well, gotta go."
"OK. Take care of yourself."
"You, too, Boulos."

Those were apparently Riad's last words, spoken from his car near Ladybird Lake in Austin, Texas. At the time I had thought it slightly odd that Riad was repeating what he had already told me by email. I think he just wanted to hear a familiar voice. The police found the phone and car keys on the seat of the unlocked car. Typical Riad. He was thinking of the person who would find the car.

I wish I had told him that the person who sent the check had also written a letter thanking him for the gifts of handmade Palestinian crafts and other items that Riad had sent as a thank you for a previous donation. He had also included handmade thank you cards from his two young daughters. The older daughter, age 11 had written, "Live in peace on the world. Everybody should LOVE! I am sad because people should be nice to you, but they are not."

The younger, age 8, had written, "I hope you start to live in peace."I would have read them to him over the phone if he hadn't been so anxious to end the conversation, but I decided to send them for him to read later, and enjoy the children's drawings. The father's letter was longer and more specific in his praise for Riad's tireless efforts on behalf of Palestinians and their rights.

"I have included 2 checks for the needs of Palestinian children. It is my hope that you will use it to create hope for those oppressed. As we both see the dollar's value sink, the value of life especially in the eyes of the Creator never loses value. I extend this help to you and these children as if they were my own. We have the misfortune in living in very dark times, but in that darkness hope, love, and peace shine like the sun. To those that plant hope, they shall harvest peace."
Harvest peace, Riad.
SHUKRAN for your work and support
Salamat