DR. GOEBBELS OF ISRAELI PROPAGANDA UNLEASHES LIES AND DECEIT
The Dr. Goebbels of Israeli propaganda, Yardin Vatikai, chief of the Israeli Zionist’s propaganda office known as the National Information Directorate (NID), has his work cut out as he attempts to justify and lie Israel’s way out of accusations by the people of the world that Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon 1982.... http://eldib.wordpress.com/
Surgical strikes and careful warnings to civilians are what the IDF claims. As I learned in Lebanon, the reality is far different...
The call came at 8pm, in unaccented Arabic, to a foreign resident of the seafront neighborhood of Ain Mreisse, on the other side of the city from the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut. The voice was friendly, even though the words were not. "Beware of Hezbollah," it said. "Beware of Hamas. Think of yourselves. Don't give your support to these groups. You know what the results would be." And then it signed off, in case the listener had any doubt. "This is the State of Israel!" In 1982 there was a major disinformation campaign, THE TRUTH is that the atrocities are a direct result of the war plan, the 1982 invasion plan of IDF. Operations SPARK and IRON BRAIN....This reflects the personality of Ariel SHARON– a man whose way of thinking and actions, throughout his adult life, are clear evidence of what is called “moral insanity”, a sociopathic disorder...." Almost all the Western media repeated the official Israeli propaganda line. They entirely ignored the Lebanese side of the story, and took for fact all the "official" Israeli LIARS stories, which were manufactured for Propaganda purposes...
We do indeed know what the results would be. In 2006, more than 1,000 people died in Lebanon, the vast majority of them civilians, when Israel launched air and artillery attacks against targets including Beirut airport, bridges and highways, and established an air, land and sea blockade following Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers from the Israeli side of the border. War crimes were committed and there has been no accountability, making the next war that much easier. In Gaza so far, more than 1,200 Palestinians have died (and 13 Israelis), the vast majority of whom were non-combatants. A quarter were children, straining even Israel's definition of "terrorist" as, according to its own experts, it expands the definition of "legitimate target" and, in so doing, narrows the definition of "collateral damage".
As jurist Amos Guiora, who served as a military lawyer in Israel for 19 years, has said: "Israel declared war on an organization, and by extension on all those involved in that organization – active and passive alike. (The italics are mine.) This is how Operation Cast Lead is different from all previous Israeli operations."
Senior IDF officers have already warned that the "third Lebanon war" will be in the same vein: more "disproportionate" than the second was. A heavily rearmed Hezbollah will not be the main target. Maj Gen Giora Eiland, former head of the National Security Council, has gone as far as to say that Israel failed in 2006 because it fought the wrong enemy – Hezbollah rather than Lebanon itself. "The only good thing that happened in the last war was the relative damage caused to Lebanon's population," he said. "The destruction of thousands of homes of 'innocents' preserved some of Israel's deterrent power. The only way to prevent another war is to make it clear that should one break out, Lebanon may be razed to the ground."
In a "background paper" on "issues of proportionality" drawn up in December 2008, in the countdown to the Gaza offensive, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that "the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) makes strenuous efforts to give advance notice to the civilian population in the middle of military targets, including places used by terrorists for storing weapons and launching attacks, so that they have an opportunity to leave the area." How hollow this rings as Gaza runs with blood, and how untrue. Operation Cast Lead was unleashed, without warning, at 11.30am, when urban areas of Gaza are at their most crowded and children compelled to attend school in shifts because of the scarcity of educational resources are on the move. Would anyone with even a scrap of humanity call hundreds of dead, not to mention thousands of wounded, maimed and traumatized, "effective" humanitarian planning?
The pain of those Israelis who oppose this horrific onslaught is as palpable as that of the Palestinians trapped in Gaza. "We are darkening the world of a million and a half human beings and destroying it," columnist Yossi Sarid wrote in Ha'aretz. "We are dropping featherweight notices and a ton of a bomb ... The begetter of all this will no longer boast of the-most-moral-army-in-the-world."
Lebanon grew used to featherweight notices and pre-recorded phone calls in 2006. The calls came at all hours of night and day, to all communities. Some said, "We mean you no harm." Others were threatening: "Keep away from areas where Hezbollah men live and work." "Terror by telephone," a friend called it.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were also telephoned in 2006, according to Ha'aretz, and told: "Welcome, you and your family are requested to leave home because the IDF intends to attack it. The house is used to hide warfare or terrorists." Welcome? How bizarre is that? But no one bothered to drop leaflets on the two pick-ups packed with people fleeing from the Lebanese village of Marwaheen near the Israeli border, on Israeli orders. Had they done so, 23 people might not have died in a single, heart-stopping moment – one of them a child who was found, lifeless, still clutching a half-eaten sandwich. No one bothered to telephone the ambulance driver whose vehicle was hit on a bridge outside Sidon, leaving a female passenger dead and three paramedics wounded, one of whom lost both feet.
The phone calls from south of the border tapered off after the war but did not stop completely. Lebanese were occasionally still woken in the night by unfamiliar voices requesting that they telephone a number in London if they "know where the fighters are". But in the last week, the pre-recorded message department of the Israeli military has been gearing up again, threatening people apparently selected at random after Katyusha rockets were fired across the Lebanon-Israel border on two consecutive days, killing no one.
Hezbollah has said it had nothing to do with either incident, and Tel Aviv initially blamed Palestinians. But within days Ha'aretz ran an article claiming that Hezbollah was trying "to alter the balance of power that has existed between the militant organization and Israel since the second Lebanon war". Even if the rockets weren't Hezbollah's, it said, "it is clear that little happens in southern Lebanon without being coordinated in advance with Hezbollah." When, it asked, "will Hezbollah have a better opportunity to change the regional rules of the game than it does now, during Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza, when cross-border fire receives greater legitimacy than during quiet times?"
Most Lebanese analysts disagree: the Lebanese are due to vote in general elections in June, and Hezbollah and its allies have a strong chance of forming a parliamentary majority. Bringing new destruction down on the country would not be conducive to that end.
In 2006, Israeli planes bombed a mosque in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Israeli intelligence sources claimed the mosque had seven basements and had been "built by Iranian engineers who specialized in the construction of protected subterranean building for their country's nuclear facilities". They said Hezbollah had sealed off the area and no one could approach it. Top Hezbollah leaders had died in the attack and the party wouldn't be able to deny it for ever. Wrong, on all counts.
I biked to the mosque within minutes of the bombardment without encountering one Hezbollah checkpoint and was able to examine it at leisure, without interruption. It had one basement – not seven – and that contained only copies of the Qur'an and prayer mats. Not a single member of Hezbollah had been killed there, far less any notable.
So, next time Ain Mreisse is targeted by telephone, I'd be very obliged if the call centre in Tel Aviv would listen to the message which gives that London number. There are no terrorists in my area, and I want it on record....
The front page of the Beirut daily As-Safir said it all yesterday. Across the top was a terrible photograph of the bloated body of a Palestinian man newly discovered in the ruins of his home while two male members of his family shrieked and roared their grief. Below, at half the size, was a photograph from Israel of Western leaders joking with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister. Olmert was roaring with laughter. Silvio Berlusconi, arms on the back of Olmert's shoulders, was also joshing and roaring – with laughter, not grief – and on Olmert's right was Nicolas Sarkozy of France wearing his stupidest of smiles. Only Chancellor Merkel appeared to understand the moral collapse. No smiles from Germany....
Europe laughs while Palestinians mourn their dead. No wonder that in the streets of Beirut, shops were doing a flourishing trade in Palestinian scarves and flags. Even some of Palestine's most serious enemies in Lebanon wore the Palestinian keffiyeh in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Over and over again, Al-Jazeera television strapped headlines on to their news reports of Palestinians carrying the decomposing corpses of their dead: "More than 1,300 dead in Gaza, 400 of them women and children – Israeli dead in the war 13, three of them civilians." That, too, said it all.
All day, the Arabs also had to endure watching their own leaders primping and posing in front of the cameras at the Arab summit in Kuwait, where the kings and presidents who claim to rule them also smiled and shook hands and tried to pretend that they were unified behind a Palestinian people who have been sorely betrayed. Even Mahmoud Abbas was there, the powerless, impotent leader of "Palestine" – where is that precisely, one had to ask? – trying to suck some importance from the coat-tails and robes of his betters.
Slipping and sliding on the corpses of Gaza, these assembled supreme beings should perhaps be pitied. What else could they do? Saudi King Abdullah announced £750,000 to rebuild Gaza; but how many times have the Arabs and the Europeans been throwing money at Gaza only to see it torn to shreds by incoming shell-fire?
It has to be said that the two cowed Hamas gunmen who announced that they had won a "victory" in the ruins of Gaza were only fractionally less hypocritical. Still they had not understood that they were not the Hezbollah of Lebanon. Gaza was no longer Beirut. Now, it seemed, Gaza was Stalingrad. But whose uniforms did Hamas think they were wearing: German or Soviet?
"Israel has to understand," the good king said – as if the Israelis were listening – "that the choice between war and peace will not always stay open and that the Arab initiative (for Arab recognition in return for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders of Israel) that is on the table today will not stay on the table." He knew that "an eye for an eye ... did not say an eye for the eyes of a whole city". But how many times – how many bodies have to be pulled from the ruins – before the Saudis realize that time has run out?
The Israelis briskly dismissed land for peace in 2002 but yesterday they suddenly showed their interest again. "We continue to be willing to negotiate with all our neighbors on the basis of that initiative," the Israeli government spokesmen said – as if his own country's original rejection had never been thrown at the Arabs.
The pimp Bashar al-Assad of Syria, of course, dismissed the whole initiative in Qatar last week as dead, insisting that Israel be declared a "terrorist entity". But Mahmoud Abbas stepped further into humiliation yesterday by announcing that the "only option" for Arabs was to make peace with Israel. It was Arab "shortcomings" that led to the failure of the 2002 Arab initiative. Not Israel's rejection, mark you. No, it was all the fault of the Arabs. And this from the leader of "Palestine".
No wonder America's CIA man in Egypt – a certain Hosni Mubarak – repeated the tired old slogan that "peace in the Middle East is an imperative that cannot be delayed". And then the Emir of Kuwait invited Bashar and Hosni and King CIA Abdullah of Jordan and the other King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to have lunch together – the menu was not disclosed – to end their perpetual CIA inspired feuding....
Al-Jazeera showed the ever-more putrid bodies being tugged from beneath cross-beams and crushed concrete as these mighty potentates debated their little futile CIA inspired and orchestrated disputes. There is really an adequate comment for this charade....The continuum of the newfound Siamese twins of CIA2/MOSSAD divide and conquer eternal policies, in order to fracture the whole area into a thousand pieces and more tribes with flags...and the militarization of energy security for the USA and Israel...through additional shenanigans of the odious White House Murder Enterprises Inc, with a major subsidy based in Damascus Syria, and run by the notorious assassin Asef Shawkat...
http://newhk.blogspot.com/2008/12/uniiic-ii-report-revisited.html
Ban Ki moon is utterly pathetic...
It's a wrap, a doddle, an Israeli ceasefire just in time for Barack Obama to have a squeaky-clean inauguration with all the world looking at the streets of Washington rather than the rubble of Gaza. Condi and Ms Livni thought their new arms-monitoring agreement – reached without a single Arab being involved – would work. Ban Ki-moon welcomed the unilateral truce. The great and the good gathered for a Sharm el-Sheikh summit. Only Hamas itself was not consulted. Which led, of course, to a few wrinkles in the plan. First, before declaring its own ceasefire, Hamas fired off more rockets at Israel, proving that Israel's primary war aim – to stop the missiles – had failed. Then Cairo shrugged off the deal because no one was going to set up electronic surveillance equipment on Egyptian soil. And not one European leader travelling to the region suggested the survivors might be helped if Israel, the EU and the US ended the food and fuel siege of Gaza.
After killing hundreds of women and children, Israel was the good guy again, by declaring a unilateral ceasefire that Hamas was certain to break. But Obama will be smiling on Tuesday. Was not this the reason, after all, why Israel suddenly wanted a truce?
Egypt's objections may be theatre – the US spent £18m last year training Egyptian security men to stop arms smuggling into Gaza and since the US bails out Egypt's economy, ignores the corruption of its regime and goes on backing Hosni Mubarak, there's sure to be a "compromise" very soon.
And Hamas has had its claws cut. Israel's informers in Gaza handed over the locations of its homes and hideouts and the government of Gaza must be wondering if they can ever close down the spy rings. Hamas thought its militia was the Hizbollah – a serious error – and that the world would eventually come to its aid. The world (although not its pompous leaders) felt enormous pity for the Palestinians, but not for the cynical men of Hamas who staged a coup in Gaza in 2007 which killed 151 Palestinians. As usual, the European statesmen appeared hopelessly out of touch with what their own electorates thought.
And history was quite forgotten. The Hamas rockets were the result of the food and fuel siege; Israel broke Hamas's own truce on 4 and 17 November. Forgotten is the fact Hamas won the 2006 elections, although Israel has killed a clutch of the victors.
And there'll be little time for the peacemakers of Sharm el-Sheikh to reflect on the three UN schools targeted by the Israelis and the slaughter of the civilians inside. Poor old Ban Ki-moon. He tried to make his voice heard just before the ceasefire, saying Israel's troops had acted "outrageously" and should be "punished" for the third school killing. Some hope. At a Beirut press conference, he admitted he had failed to get a call through to Israel's Foreign Minister to complain.
It was pathetic. When I asked Mr Ban if he would consider a UN war crimes tribunal in Gaza, he said this would not be for him to "determine". But only a few journalists bothered to listen to him and his officials were quickly folding up the UN flag on the table. About time too. Bring back the League of Nations. All is forgiven.
What no one noticed yesterday – not the Arabs nor the Israelis nor the portentous men from Europe – was that the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting last night was opening on the 90th anniversary – to the day – of the opening of the 1919 Paris peace conference which created the modern Middle East. One of its main topics was "the borders of Palestine". There followed the Versailles Treaty. And we know what happened then. The rest really is history. Bring on the ghosts.....
