from the NYT

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was clearly embarrassed at the move by his interior minister, Eli Yishai, head of the right-wing Shas party who has made Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem one of his central causes.

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Gus: Ah ah ah ah... Embarrassed??? Ah ah ah... I'm splitting my sides with laughter....

Kicking Sand

Posted by Joe Klein Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 9:35 pm

As Michael Scherer writes below, Israel's government was over-the-top outrageous in welcoming Vice President Joe Biden with the news that it would construct 1600 new illegal housing units on land the Palestinians consider their future capital in East Jerusalem. This is an act with both short- and long-term consequences. The short-term consequence has to do with the "proximity talks" just getting underway, with the U.S. shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators: this sends a clear signal that Israel does not intend to negotiate in good faith, certainly not when it comes to the territory in East Jerusalem it conquered in 1967. This is the second time in recent weeks that the Israelis have poked a finger in the eye of the Palestinians--the first was the unilateral decision to declare its intent to "improve" several religious sites--including the Patriarch's Tomb, site of a famous massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein--on Palestinian lands, over which Israel has no legal jurisdiction. The timing of these stunts is extremely significant, and depressing.

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/03/09/kicking-sand/#ixzz0hkxQSW6r

The Palestinian president appears to have called off indirect talks with Israel after the Israeli interior ministry announced it would build 1,600 new settler homes.

Quote from above:  "The timing of these stunts is extremely significant, and depressing".  "Well might we say" 'piece talks' to the revolting invaders of Palestine!

Does anyone doubt that the Zionist TAIL is wagging the US DOG?  Why oh why would anyone believe that - having created a rogue state and supplied it with all the WMD's it requires and defended that horror child in every United Nation's pitiful challenge, while trying to turn the victims of murder and dispossession into the villains of a calculated destruction of their centuries old society - the US is fair dinkum about the Palestinians going to the table of demand to do what?  "Give" what?

America and its Jewish media can say what they like but, people all over the globe seem to be waking up to what is actually going on in Palestine.

The "Morlocks" do not abide by any international or civilized laws - whether on land or sea - whether belonging to sovereign nations or not and yet - why did any responsible nation accept Zionist crimes as being in the national interests - of whom?

Even without the perfect examples of deception, lies, cruelty, murders of women and children, the largest concentration camp in the history of the world and the unprincipled use of "illegal weapons" against civilians ---why - with those examples alone, would anyone query Nazi Germany's hatred of them --- or the Romans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Spanish and English - just to mention a few.

And Netanyahu says "no one will ever hurt the Jewish people again".  Struth. 

If anything, the Palestinians have more legal right to Palestine since their ancestual Semite tribe was more likely to have once been the owners of the land of Canaan - before that Hebrew invasion.

The sublime trickery being enacted knowingly on a world without compassion, common decency or respect for human rights - is so insulting to civilized behavior that one wonders just where (if ever) these perpetual lies and wars of choice will end. Who or what will end them?

Since the US is using its obscene power to support the Morlocks, crush the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and threaten any other Semite nation who dares to honor the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (which the US/Zionist alliance will not ratify) - is the withdrawal of US invaders from Iraq intended to provide more American youth to another grinding war of choice - in Iran? Libya? Lebanon? Syria or Jordan? Take your pick.

Is the objective to have the same system as the slave country of Judah once enjoyed?

The evils of the Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld group still apply, only the names have changed.

God bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

Could the Israeli government make it any more obvious they have no intention of sharing the Over-Promised Land with its other inhabitants?

This week the Obama administration – who give Israel $3bn a year, more than they dole out to any other nation on earth – made a meek and craven request for Israelis to simply have a pause in seizing even more land, and to sit down with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with a big concrete slap: the announcement of 1,600 more homes to be built on occupied Palestinian land from which Arabs will be forcibly kept out. He has made it plain he will not loosen his grip by an inch, announcing: "Even if [Palestinian President] Abu Mazen comes along and says he's ready to sign a peace deal on the spot, we will restore settlement construction to its previous levels." No compromise. Never.

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lots of small print and lots of bulldozers in this no-clauses non-peace deal....

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sharply rebuked Israel over its recent decision to build new settlements in East Jerusalem.

She told Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu by telephone that the move was "deeply negative" for US-Israeli relations.

The BBC's Washington correspondent, Kim Ghattas, says it was a rare and sharp rebuke from Washington.

Israel's announcement overshadowed a visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden aimed at restarting peace talks.

Since then the Palestinians have indicated they will not return to the negotiating table unless the Israeli decision is revoked.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8565455.stm

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Until some sanctions such as cutting supply of arms and money to Israel from the US is enacted, the message "as loud a finger pointing as it is" will not be taken seriously.... Israel needs some serious spanking from mummy...

Zionism Unmasked: The Dark Face Of Jewish Nationalism

By Dr. Alan Sabrosky

11 March, 2010
Sabbah.biz

And I quote from CounterCurrents.org inter alia....

The differences between Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and that of other countries and cultures here I think are fourfold:

1. Zionism is a real witches' brew of xenophobia, racism, ultra-nationalism, and militarism that places it way outside of a "mere" nationalist context — for example, when I was in Ireland (both parts) I saw no indication whatsoever that the PIRAs or anyone else pressing for a united Ireland had a shred of design on shoving Protestants into camps or out of the country, although there may well have been a handful who thought that way — and goes far beyond the misery for others professed by the Nazis;

2. Zionism undermines civic loyalty among its adherents in other countries in a way that other nationalist movements (and even ultra-nationalist movements like Nazism) did not — e.g., a large majority of American Jews, including those who are not openly dual citizens, espouse a form of political bigamy called "dual loyalty" (to Israel & the US) that is every bit as dishonest as marital bigamy, attempts to finesse the precedence they give to Israel over the US (lots of Rahm Emanuels out there who served in the IDF but NOT in the US armed forces), and has absolutely no parallel in the sense of national or cultural identity espoused by any other definable ethnic or racial group in America — even the Nazi Bund in the US disappeared once Germany and the US went to war, with almost all of its members volunteering for the US armed forces;

3. The "enemy" of normal nationalist movements is the occupying power and perhaps its allies, and once independence is achieved, normal relations with the occupying power are truly the norm, but for Zionism almost everyone out there is an actual or potential enemy, differing only in proximity and placement on its very long list of enemies (which is now America's target list); and

4. Almost all nationalist movements (including the irredentist and secessionist variants) intend to create an independent state from a population in place or to reunite a separated people (like the Sudeten Germans in the 1930s) — it is very rare for it to include the wholesale displacement of another indigenous population, which is far more common of successful colonialist movements as in the US — and perhaps a reason why most Americans wouldn't care too much about what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians even if they DID know about it, is because that is no different than what Europeans in North America did to the Indians/Native Americans here in a longer & more low-tech fashion.

The implications of this for Middle East peace prospects, and for other countries in thrall to their domestic Jewish lobbies or not, are chilling. The Book of Deuteronomy come to life in a state with a nuclear arsenal would be enough to give pause to anyone not bought or bribed into submission — which these days encompasses the US Government, given Israel's affinity for throwing crap into the face of the Obama administration and Obama's visible affinity for accepting it with a smile, Bibi Netanyahu's own "Uncle Tom" come to Washington. (Emphasis added)

COMMENT:  It appears that the Book of Deuteronomy is already in play.  The Zionists began as terrorists in the British Palestine - and nothing has changed.  They then revolted against the Palestinian owners regaining their independence from Great Britain and unilaterally and illegally declared themselves a State. Then they organized an invasion of Palestine by Jews from many foreign countries, especially Poland and Russia.  Since then their crimes have increased both in cruelty and precedence.  It would be hard to find a situation in any ancient history which matches the uncivilized behavior of the "Morlocks" of Palestine.

With their wealth they have cowed the biggest terrorist nation in history and their decades of denying that they had nuclear weapons of mass destruction has been proven as just another deception.

With constant threats to the Goyim by these "Morlocks" (body part collectors) must now be countered by ruthless punishment of them - if only to prove we have thrown off legalizing Vandals and all those who would take civilization back to the "bad old days".  If the threats, including the world destroying one by Golda Meir, are to prevent any justice for those the Zionists are consistently attacking - because of the damage and possible extinction of mankind - then every nation with WMD can do the same and conquer at will.

God Bless Australia and let us keep a "weather eye" on the "Brethren" in Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

From Aljazeera by Jonathan Cook during an interview...

Question: The frequent claim by Israeli officials is that Israel is a democracy and that Israeli Arabs are afforded the same rights as other citizens. What is your view?

The widely shared assumption that Israel is a democracy is a strange one.

This is a democracy without defined borders, encompassing parts of a foreign territory, the West Bank, in which one ethnic / religious group – the Jewish settlers – has been given the vote while another – the Palestinians – has not. Those settlers, who are living outside the internationally recognised borders of Israel, actually put Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman into power.

It is also a democracy that has transferred control over 13 per cent of its sovereign territory (and a large proportion of its inhabited land) to an external organisation, the Jewish National Fund, which prevents a significant proportion of Israel’s own citizenry – the 20 per cent who are Palestinian – from having access to that land, again based on ethnic / religious criteria.

It is a democracy that historically gerrymandered its electoral constituency by expelling most of the indigenous population outside its borders – now referred to as the Palestinian refugees – to ensure a Jewish majority. It has continued to gerrymander its voting base by giving one ethnic group, Jews around the world, an automatic right to become citizens while denying that same right to another ethnic group, Palestinian Arabs.

This is a democracy that, despite a plethora of parties and the necessity of creating broad coalition governments, has consistently ensured that one set of parties (the Palestinian and anti-Zionist ones) has been excluded from government. In fact, Israel’s “democracy” is not a competition between different visions of society, as you would expect, but a country driven by a single ideology called Zionism. In that sense, there has been one-party rule in Israel since its birth. All the many parties that have participated in government over the years have agreed on one thing: that Israel should be a state that gives privileges to citizens who belong to one ethnic group. Where there is disagreement, it is over narrow sectoral interests or over how to manage the details of the occupation – an issue related to territory outside Israel’s borders.

Defenders of the idea that Israel is a democracy point to the country’s universal suffrage. But that is hardly sufficient grounds for classing Israel as a democracy. Israel was also considered a democracy in the 1950s and early 1960s – before the occupation began – when a fifth of the populace, the Palestinian minority inside Israel, lived under a military government. Then as now, they had the vote but during that period they could not leave their villages without a permit from the authorities.

My point is that giving the vote to 20 per cent of the electorate that is Palestinian is no proof of democracy if Israeli Jews have rigged their “democracy” beforehand through ethnic cleansing (the 1948 war); through discriminatory immigration policies (the Law of Return); and through the manipulation of borders to include the settlers while excluding the occupied Palestinians, even though both live in the same territory.

Israeli academics who consider these things have had to devise new classifications to cope with these strange features of the Israeli “democratic” landscape. The generous ones call it an “ethnic democracy”; the more critical ones an “ethnocracy”. Most are agreed, however, that it is not the liberal democracy of most Westerners’ imaginations.

COMMENT: Neither is America.  God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

Two Humiliations – Can Obama Live With A Third?

By Alan Hart  (from CounterCurrenst.org.)

11 March, 2010
Alanhart.net

Amazing! While in Israel, an American vice president explicitly condemns an Israeli decision to build yet more homes, 1,600 apartments, in occupied Arab East Jerusalem. “I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem,” Joe Biden said. “It’s the kind of step that undermines the trust we need”. Yes, but…

They were only words. And they call to mind a comment made by Uri Avnery, the grandfather of the Israeli peace movement, in a piece he wrote for Tikkun on 23 September 2009, after President Obama’s call for a complete freeze had been rejected by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

“There’s no point in denying it”, Avnery wrote. “In the first round of the match between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama was beaten… In the words of the ancient proverb, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Netanyahu has tripped Obama on his first step. The President of the United States has stumbled.” And Netanyahu had won in a big way. “Not only did he survive, not only has he shown that he is no ‘sucker’ (a word he uses all the time), he has proven to his people – and to the public at large – that there is nothing to fear: Obama is nothing but a paper tiger. The settlements can go on expanding without hindrance. Any negotiations that start, if they start at all, can go on until the coming of the Messiah. Nothing will come out of them.”

Whether or not Netanyahu himself had advance knowledge of the decision to humiliate Biden is not the point. It is that Biden and so Obama were humiliated, the president for a second time. And that begs my headline question – Can he, Obama, live with a third humiliation?

If the history of previous American attempts to give life to a peace process is a good guide, Obama will have no choice but to live with a third humiliation, and no doubt others, at least for a while. He knew something that all American presidents know about when serious initiatives for peace in the Middle East can and cannot be taken. (I know what that something is because one of them told me a few months after events had denied him a second term in office). Any American president has only two windows of opportunity to break or try to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress on matters to do with Israel/Palestine.

The first window is during the first nine months of his first term because after that the soliciting of funds for the mid-term elections begins. (Presidents don’t have to worry on their own account about funds for the mid-term elections, but with their approach no president can do or say anything that would cost his party seats in Congress. In Obama’s case that is going to be an extremely critical consideration because of the Democrats’ loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat, on 19 January 2010, to a Republican who had demonstrated his ability to read from Zionism’s script during the campaigning).

And that calls to mind the words of an eminent Arab-American, actually a Palestinian-American, who knew Obama very well and, before the race for the White House entered its final, decisive stage, had private conversations with him. A few months before Obama’s victory, this gentleman said to a very dear friend of mine, “Don’t expect any real pressure on Israel from Obama until he is well into his second term.”

I am inclined to the view that after the mid-term elections of a second term, Obama could indeed be the president to do whatever is necessary to bring Zionism to heel in order to best protect America’s own real interests. But the prospects of him winning as second term don’t look very good at the moment.

COMMENT:  I think that Mr. Hart has a good grasp on things.  Where I would attack the American people for what their government does, he explains quite well the obstacles which inhibit the “most powerful man in the world” from doing what he actually believes is the right thing. That’s a political fact in every media controlled “democracy”.

But this only underscores my argument, and that of many others, that the Jewish Lobby’s control of the American foreign policy is the real “most powerful “presence” in the modern world”.

With my natural cynicism, there has to be a “profit” in Netanyahu’s “never give a sucker an even break”. There is a burr under the blanket of the Middle East - remove the burr.

God Bless Australia and may some of our citizens “get back the farm” as Gough Whitlam tried to do.  NE OUBLIE.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has dismissed the idea that US-Israeli relations are in crisis amid a row over Jewish settlers in Arab East Jerusalem.

She said the two nations had a "close, unshakeable bond" but made clear the US wanted both Israel and the Palestinians to prove their commitment to peace.

Earlier, US envoy George Mitchell postponed a planned visit to Israel.

Heightened tensions in Jerusalem have led to violent clashes between hundreds of Palestinians and Israeli police.

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From now on, La Clinton should realise that Israel under its past (apart from the one who got assassinated by its own people) and present leaders want the Palestinian lands without reserve. No exclusion, no buts, no Gaza... In one hundred years, all these real estates could be absorbed into the greater Israel, by whatever crooked means, including starting some niglish wars, of couse blaming the Palestinians, till these people are pushed out to Jordan or Syria, or wiped out...

Actually I think she knows... and can't wait for this to happen...

It is surely hard to realize that, what appeared originally to be a small cancer on the Palestinian land, (while we have grown up with the wonderful stories like "The Thief of Baghdad") can really tell the self-proclaimed "leader of the free world" (that "free" is to really to exploit) to "kiss their arses".

It makes one wonder that the US media/entertainment industry, over which there seems to be no regulation, has really been brainwashing all of us.  Consider the great moviemakers - the most powerful media barons - and the wonderful religious based stories by Darryl F. Zanuck.

These are all stories and, like the poet's license, some of the issues portrayed are made to entertain not to inform.  Mostly on the Jewish series of TV entertainment there is a statement that it has nothing to do with real people.  Fair enough but are the stories shaped to increase trust in the Jewish actors? Why is there almost always a Negro in the Jewish top actors?  Am I looking for criticism, yes I am.

That could be seen as paranoiac but, I have stopped watching NCIS because of its bias of a, not real  but imaginary group of American investigators who, in real life, torture and murder as indeed do all of the US "defense" departments.

So I would sincerely like to have available to my TV set, Australian series and movies which would be however they may be hard put to equal the finances of the US models.

Money is the root of all evil.  He who controls the money is the devil or at least his disciple?

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has distanced himself from his brother-in-law's description of US President Barack Obama as anti-Semitic.

He said he "strenuously" objected to Hagai Ben-Artzi's comment and expressed his "deep appreciation" for Mr Obama's commitment to Israel's security.

Mr Ben-Artzi was responding to US criticism of Israeli approval of plans for 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem.

Later, Mr Obama said the decision had not been helpful to the peace process.

But despite the disagreement, he told Fox News that there was no crisis in US-Israeli relations and that the two countries had a special bond that was not going to go away.

see toon at top...

King Abdullah, a close ally of the US and Britain, demanded firm action to stop Israel's provocative measures and threats against Muslim holy sites

King Abdullah of Jordan added to pressure on Israel over its settlements policy today, demanding the international community take firm action over what he called the "red line" of Jerusalem.

Abdullah, a close ally of the US and Britain, demanded "firm, swift, direct and effective action to stop Israel's provocative measures in Jerusalem that seek to change its identity and threaten holy sites".

"Jerusalem is a red line and the world should not be silent about Israel's attempts to get rid of Jerusalem's Arab residents, Muslims or Christians," the king told Lady Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, according to a palace statement.

Ashton is visiting Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip tomorrow before flying to Moscow to join a meeting of the Middle East Quartet: Hillary Clinton for the US, the UN's Ban Ki-Moon, Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and Tony Blair, the Quartet's special representative.

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see toon at top.

Differences remain between Israel and the US, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington, the White House has said.

President Obama urged the Israeli PM to take steps to build confidence in the peace process, during "honest" talks on Tuesday, said spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Mr Gibbs also said the US was seeking "clarification" of the latest plans to build homes in occupied East Jerusalem.

Mr Netanyahu's trip came amid the worst crisis in US-Israeli ties for decades.

The Israeli prime minister delayed his departure from Washington on Wednesday to meet the US Middle East peace envoy, George Mitchell.

The spat flared two weeks ago when, during a visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden, Israel unveiled plans to build 1,600 homes in part of East Jerusalem, which Washington branded an insult.

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Meanwhile, in the land of the angles and the saxons, a small tit for big tats... but no mention that "assassinations are a no-no"...

The UK is to expel an Israeli diplomat over 12 forged British passports used in the murder of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the Commons there were "compelling reasons" to believe Israel was responsible for the passport "misuse".

He said: "The government takes this matter extremely seriously. Such misuse of British passports is intolerable."

Israel's ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, said he was "disappointed".

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The rats in my compost heap are better behaved... see toon at top...

from Al Jazeera

Arab leaders have expressed their total rejection of Israel's settlement policy in occupied East Jerusalem at the end of a two-day regional summit in Libya.

from Al jazeera

By Clayton Swisher

It's a strange time to be in Washington, and hard for me to come to grips with the fact that I'm witnessing the worst crisis in the history of US-Israeli relations.  It's less about the fact that a visiting Israeli Prime Minister was sneaked in to the White House to avoid the media and sent home without so much as the ritual "mutual love" press release.

No.  It's more than that.  President Obama's frustration with the status quo is now coupled with the fact that he has a new ally to help him defeat the formidable pro-Israel lobby: the US military. 

In the past week I have blogged about how General Petreus told the US Senate that Israel's actions towards Palestinians are jeopardising the safety of American servicemen and women positioned through the Arab and Muslim world.  Rather than retreat from that bombshell proclamation, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates came out with this announcement, putting Obama in the position of answering whether he prefers the land lust of Jewish settlers or the health and well being of American GI's. 

Aipac finished its annual conference with their slogan "America is committed to Israel's security," but so few begged to ask:  "How committed is Israel to America's security?"

Those in London must also be noting some strange developments.  A Mossad officer from the Israeli Embassy in London was sent packing with a terse farewell from Foreign Minister David Milliband.   Kind of reminds one of the British expulsion of, oh say, the Libyan's back in the early 80's. 

More than 3,000 European Jews, including prominent intellectuals, have signed a petition speaking out against Israeli settlement policies and warning that systematic support for the Israeli government is dangerous.

The petition's signatories include French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Greens leader in the European Parliament.

Supporters, who compare their goals to those of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel Jewish lobbying group in the United States, plan to present their position at a news conference at the European Parliament in Brussels tomorrow.

They say they hope to build a European movement that is both "committed to the state of Israel and critical of the current choices of its government".

Israeli columnist Yossi Sarid, a former Cabinet minister identified with Israel's peace movement, praised the initiative in an comment piece published in the Haaretz daily today.

I cannot forget the deception policies of the Jewish people over thousands of years.  I cannot resist the belief that, so many times they have fooled the world so easily that they could not restrain themselves from putting their dishonesty down to contempt for the Goyims who took their bait.

In short, how do you trust anything said by a close-nit race/religion who believe that they can do no wrong?  How can you rely on any promise; warranty; agreement; handshake or head nod from these people of no conscience or guilt?  Their pride is in their ability to lie and cheat while achieving awesome wealth and power.  Honor; decency and reliability reduces profit and is not catered for in their business practices.

If the shady and incomprehensible manipulation of "stupid people" (Goldman Sachs says) as instrumental in creating WW's 1 and 2 and the world financial meltdown wasn't enough to brand the Hebrew/Canaanites as being endemically dishonest then the world is in for another lesson for trusting any of them.  Leopards do not change their spots.

Judge them by what they do - not what they say.  Can you lump together each and every Jewish person in the world?  I believe you can due to their brilliance in organizing the Diaspora to their own advantage.

I previously wrote in this forum that I take anything written by Haaretz with a grain of salt because the consideration that the Nazi/Apartheid regime in occupied Palestine is about to let some "stupidly honest" media journalist to commit treason by way of opposing "Government policy" - is not bloody likely.

Remember that all Jews are "Israelites" in the eyes of the "Israeli" occupation government no matter where they live on the planet. It follows then that all of them can have at least “dual” passports if they so desire even though the mythical Israel is not a legal state - so why do we permit them here?

Protocol 12 of the Learned Elders of Zion…..

“I beg you to note that among those making attacks upon us will also be organs established by us, but they will attack exclusively points that we have pre-determined to alter.”   And….

“Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control.  Even now this is already being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world.  These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them.”

COMMENT:  Some claim that these Protocols are false or have been misinterpreted however, I personally find the actions of the invading Zionists conspicuously identical to the anti-world advices in those comprehensive documents.

God Bless Australia and protect the Palestinians.  NE OUBLIE.

Renowned US scholar Noam Chomsky has been denied entry to the West Bank by Israeli immigration officials.

Prof Chomsky, renowned for his work on linguistics and philosophy, was planning to deliver a lecture at Birzeit University.

Prof Chomsky, 82, had been trying to enter from Jordan.

An Israeli interior ministry spokeswoman said it was to trying to clear the matter up and allow Prof Chomsky to enter.

Prof Chomsky said the officials were very polite but he was denied entry because "the government did not like the kinds of things I say and they did not like that I was only talking at Birzeit and not at an Israeli university too."

He added: "I asked them if they could find any government in the world that likes the things I say."

Prof Chomsky's Palestinian host for the visit, Mustafa al-Barghouti, told Reuters: "This decision is a fascist action, amounting to suppression of freedom of expression."

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see toon at top...

From Al Jazeera

Baroness Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, yesterday issued an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel over a military court's conviction of a Palestinian activist prominent in unarmed protests against the West Bank separation barrier.

Lady Ashton said she was "deeply concerned" that Abdallah Abu Rahma was facing a possible jail sentence "to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the separation barriers in a non-violent manner".

Though acquitted on two charges – including one of stone-throwing – Mr Abu Rahma, 39, a leader of the anti-barrier protests which have taken place every Friday for five years in the West Bank village of Bil'in, was convicted on Monday on another two: "incitement" and "organising and participating in an illegal demonstration".

Israel is seeking the release of an American jailed for life for spying for the Jewish state in return for concessions in the renewed peace process with the Palestinians, including the extension of a partial freeze on the expansion of settlements in the occupied territories.

According to Israel's army radio, the prime minister's office has approached Washington with a deal to continue the moratorium for another three months in return for the release of Jonathan Pollard, a former navy intelligence analyst convicted of spying in 1987. Binyamin Netanyahu, has long pressed for Pollard to be freed, but winning his release would help him sell concessions to rightwing members of his cabinet and the settlers.

Army radio said that Netanyahu had asked an unnamed intermediary to sound out the Obama administration on the proposal, but it is not known what response was received. Other Israeli media reported that the prime minister dispatched the intermediary to approach the Americans "discreetly, and unofficially".

Netanyahu's office initially said: "We know of no query to the Americans on this matter", but later was more equivocal. Israeli officials dismissed the prospect of a deal for Pollard's release over such a short time frame but, given that Netanyahu has attempted to attach the convicted spy's freedom to earlier peace talks, it is likely that the issue is being broached.

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That is the sickest joke: a deal to extend freeze on settlement by THREE MONTHS? A freeze that is not even really respected by Israel? Distraction from the real business at hand...

An Israeli planning committee has advanced a plan to build 69 housing units in the East Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa, according to Israel Radio, despite US efforts to revive peace talks.

The Jerusalem municipality said on Wednesday that the construction project, which was built more than a decade ago and now houses 12,000 Israelis, was not new and had already passed earlier planning stages.

Palestinian officials condemned the latest authorisation as a "message" to US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is trying to revive long-stalled Middle East peace negotiations.

Har Homa is a particularly contentious area on Jerusalem's southern outskirts where construction is likely to have a serious impact on the sector's boundary with the West Bank, experts say.

Brachie Sprung, a spokeswoman for the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem, said the city planning commission had also issued building permits for 22 homes in two Palestinian-populated districts along with the 69 housing units in Har Homa.

Palestinians say Israel must stop building settlements before peace talks resume.

"Resumption of negotiation requires a cessation of all settlement activities," the Palestine Liberation Organisation said in a statement this week.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/06/201362622754731453.html

see toon at top...