THOMAS PAINE’S CORNER |•

5/31/07

Probably no word better defines or underscores the Bush presidency than “terrorism” even though his administration wasn’t the first to exploit this highly charged term. We use to explain what “they do to us” to justify what we “do to them,” or plan to, always deceitfully couched in terms of humanitarian intervention, promoting democracy, or bringing other people the benefits of western civilization Gandhi thought would be a good idea when asked once what he thought about it.

Ronald Reagan exploited it in the 1980s to declare “war on international terrorism” referring to it as the “scourge of terrorism” and “the plague of the modern age.” It was clear he had in mind launching his planned Contra proxy war of terrorism against the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua and FMLN opposition resistance to the US-backed El Salvador fascist regime the same way George Bush did it waging his wars of aggression post-9/11.

It’s a simple scheme to pull off, and governments keep using it because it always works. Scare the public enough, and they’ll go along with almost anything thinking it’s to protect their safety when, in fact, waging wars of aggression and state-sponsored violence have the opposite effect. The current Bush wars united practically the entire world against us including an active resistance increasingly targeting anything American.

George Orwell knew about the power of language before the age of television and the internet enhanced it exponentially. He explained how easy “doublethink” and “newspeak” can convince us “war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.” He also wrote “All war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from (chicken hawk) people who are not fighting (and) Big Brother is watching….” us to be sure we get the message and obey it.

In 1946, Orwell wrote about “Politics and the English Language” saying “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible” to hide what its user has in mind. So “defenseless villages are bombarded from the air (and) this is called ‘pacification’.” And the president declares a “war on terrorism” that’s, in fact, a “war of terrorism” against designated targets, always defenseless against it, because with adversaries able to put up a good fight, bullies, like the US, opt for diplomacy or other political and economic means, short of open conflict.

The term “terrorism” has a long history, and reference to a “war on terrorism” goes back a 100 years or more. Noted historian Howard Zinn observed how the phrase is a contradiction in terms as “How can you make war on terrorism, if war is terrorism (and if) you respond to terrorism with (more) terrorism….you multiply (the amount of) terrorism in the world.” Zinn explains that “Governments are terrorists on an enormously large scale,” and when they wage war the damage caused infinitely exceeds anything individuals or groups can inflict.

It’s also clear that individual or group “terrorist” acts are crimes, not declarations or acts of war. So a proper response to the 9/11 perpetrators was a police one, not an excuse for the Pentagon to attack other nations having nothing to do with it.

George Bush’s “war on terrorism” began on that fateful September day when his administration didn’t miss a beat stoking the flames of fear with a nation in shock ready to believe almost anything - true, false or in between. And he did it thanks to the hyped enormity of the 9/11 event manipulated for maximum political effect for the long-planned aggressive imperial adventurism his hard line administration had in mind only needing “a catastrophic and catalyzing (enough) event - like a new Pearl Harbor” to launch. With plans drawn and ready, the president and key administration officials terrified the public with visions of terrorism branded and rebranded as needed from the war on it, to the global war on it (GLOT), to the long war on it, to a new name coming soon to re-ignite a flagging public interest in and growing disillusionment over two foreign wars gone sour and lost.

Many writers, past and present, have written on terrorism with their definitions and analyses of it. The views of four noted political and social critics are reviewed below, but first an official definition to frame what follows.

How the US Code Defines Terrorism

Under the US Code, “international terrorism” includes activities involving:

(A) “violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;”

(B) are intended to -

(i) “intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States….”

The US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism (TRADOC Pamphlet No. 525-37, 1984) shortens the above definition to be “the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature….through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.”

Eqbal Ahmad On Terrorism

Before his untimely death, Indian activist and scholar Eqbal Ahmad spoke on the subject of terrorism in one of his last public talks at the University of Colorado in October, 1998. Seven Stories Press then published his presentation in one of its Open Media Series short books titled “Terrorism, Theirs and Ours.” The talk when delivered was prophetic in light of the September 11 event making his comments especially relevant.

He began quoting a 1984 Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz speech calling terrorism “modern barbarism, a form of political violence, a threat to Western civilization, a menace to Western moral values” and more, all the while never defining it because that would “involve a commitment to analysis, comprehension and adherence to some norms of consistency” not consistent with how this country exploits it for political purposes. It would also expose Washington’s long record of supporting the worst kinds of terrorist regimes worldwide in Indonesia, Iran under the Shah, Central America, the South American fascist generals, Marcos in the Philippines, Pol Pot and Saddam at their worst, the current Saudi and Egyptian regimes, Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and for the people of Greece, who paid an enormous price, the Greek colonels the US brought to power in the late 1960s for which people there now with long memories still haven’t forgiven us.

Ahmad continued saying “What (then) is terrorism? Our first job is to define the damn thing, name it, give it a description of some kind, other than (the) “moral equivalent of (our) founding fathers (or) a moral outrage to Western civilization.” He cited Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as a source saying “Terrorism is an intense, overpowering fear….the use of terrorizing methods of governing or resisting a government.” It’s simple, to the point, fair, and Ahmad calls it a definition of “great virtue. It focuses on the use of coercive violence….that is used illegally, extra-constitutionally, to coerce” saying this is true because it’s what terrorism is whether committed by governments, groups, or individuals. This definition omits what Ahmad feels doesn’t apply - motivation, whether or not the cause is just or not because “motives differ (yet) make no difference.”

Ahmad identifies the following types of terrorism:

– State terrorism committed by nations against anyone - other states, groups or individuals, including state-sponsored assassination targets;

– Political terrorism by a private group Ahmad calls “oppositional terror” explaining further that at times these five types “converge on each other starting out in one form, then converging into one or more others.

Nation states, like the US, focus only on one kind of terrorism - political terrorism that’s “the least important in terms of cost to human lives and human property (with the highest cost type being) state terrorism.” The current wars of aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine underscore what Ahmad means. Never mentioned, though, is that political or retail terrorism is a natural response by oppressed or desperate groups when they’re victims of far more grievous acts of state terrorism. Also unmentioned is how to prevent terrorist acts Noam Chomsky explains saying the way to get “them” to stop attacking “us” is stop attacking “them.”

Ahmad responded to a question in the book version of his speech with more thoughts on the subject. Asked to define terrorism the way he did in an article he wrote a year earlier titled “Comprehending Terror,” he called it “the illegal use of violence for the purposes of influencing somebody’s behavior, inflicting punishment, or taking revenge (adding) it has been practiced on a larger scale, globally, both by governments and by private groups.” When committed against a state, never asked is what produces it.

Further, official and even academic definitions of state terrorism exclude what Ahmad calls “illegal violence:” torture, burning of villages, destruction of entire peoples, (and) genocide.” These definitions are biased against individuals and groups favoring governments committing terrorist acts. Our saying it’s for self-defense, protecting the “national security,” or “promoting democracy” is subterfuge baloney disguising our passion for state-sponsored violence practiced like it our national pastime.

Ahmad also observed that modern-day “third-world….fascist governments (in countries like) Indonesia (under Suharto), Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo - DRC), Iran (under the Shah), South Korea (under its generals), and elsewhere - were fully supported by one or the other of the superpowers,” and for all the aforementioned ones and most others that was the US.

Further, Ahmad notes “religious zealotry has been a major source of terror” but nearly always associated in the West with Islamic groups. In fact, it’s a global problem with “Jewish terrorists….terrorizing an entire people in the Middle East (the Palestinians, supported by) Israel which is supported by the government of the United States.” Crimes against humanity in the name of religion are also carried out by radical Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and others, not just extremist Muslims that are the only ones reported in the West.

In August, 1998 in the Dawn English-language Pakistani newspaper, Ahmad wrote about the power of the US in a unipolar world saying: “Who will define the parameters of terrorism, or decide where terrorists lurk? Why, none other than the United States, which can from the rooftops of the world set out its claim to be sheriff, judge and hangman, all at one and the same time.” So while publicly supporting justice, the US spurns international law to be the sole decider acting by the rules of what we say goes, and the law is what we say it is. Further, before the age of George Bush, Ahmad sounded a note of hope saying nothing is “historically permanent (and) I don’t think American power is permanent. It itself is very temporary, and therefore its excesses have to be, by definition, impermanent.”

In addition, he added, “America is a troubled country” for many reasons. Its “economic capabilities do not harmonize with its military (ones and) its ruling class’ will to dominate is not quite shared by” what its people want. For now, however, the struggle will continue because the US “sowed in the Middle East (after the Gulf war but before George Bush became president) and South Asia (signaling Pakistan and Afghanistan) very poisonous seeds. Some have ripened and others are ripening. An examination of why they were sown, what has grown, and how they should be reaped is needed (but isn’t being done). Missiles won’t solve the problem” as is plain as day in mid-2007, with the Bush administration hanging on for dear life in the face of two calamitous wars the president can’t acknowledge are hopeless and already lost.

Edward S. Herman On Terrorism

Herman wrote a lot on terrorism including his important 1982 book as relevant today as it was then, “The Real Terror Network.” It’s comprised of US-sponsored authoritarian states following what Herman calls a free market “development model” for corporate gain gotten through a reign of terror unleashed on any homegrown resistance against it and a corrupted dominant media championing it with language Orwell would love.

Back then, justification given was the need to protect the “free world” from the evils of communism and a supposedly worldwide threat it posed. It was classic “Red Scare” baloney, but it worked to traumatize the public enough to think the Russians would come unless we headed them off, never mind, in fact, the Russians had good reason to fear we’d come because “bombing them back to the stone age” was seriously considered, might have happened, and once almost did.

Herman reviews examples of “lesser and mythical terror networks” before discussing the real ones. First though, he defines the language beginning with how Orwell characterized political speech already explained above. He then gives a dictionary definition of terrorism as “a mode of governing, or of opposing government, by intimidation” but notes right off a problem for “western propaganda.” Defining terrorism this way includes repressive regimes we support, so it’s necessary finding “word adaptations (redefining them to) exclude (our) state terrorism (and only) capture the petty (retail) terror of small dissident groups or individuals” or the trumped up “evil empire” kind manufactured out of whole cloth but made to seem real and threatening.

Herman then explains how the CIA finessed terrorism by referring to “Patterns of International Terrorism” defining it as follows: “Terrorism conducted with the support of a foreign government or organization and/or directed against foreign nationals, institutions, or governments.” By this definition, internal death squads killing thousands are excluded because they’re not “international” unless a foreign government supports them. That’s easy to hide, though, when we’re the government and as easy to reveal or fake when it serves our purpose saying it was communist-inspired in the 1980s or “Islamofascist al Qaeda”-conducted or supported now. Saying it makes it so even when it isn’t because the power of the message can make us believe Santa Claus is the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

Herman also explains how harsh terms like totalitarianism and authoritarianism only apply to adversary regimes while those as bad or worse allied to us are more benignly referred to with terms like “moderate autocrats” or some other corrupted manipulation of language able to make the most beastly tyrants look like enlightened tolerant leaders.

In fact, these brutes and their governments comprise the “real terror network,” and what they did and still do, with considerable US help, contributed to the rise of the “National Security State” (NSS) post-WW II and the growth of terrorism worldwide supporting it. In a word, it rules by “intimidation and violence or the threat of violence.” Does the name Augusto Pinochet ring a bell? What about the repressive Shah of Iran even a harsh theocratic state brought relief from?

Herman explained “the economics of the NSS” that’s just as relevant today as then with some updating of events in the age of George Bush. He notes NSS leaders imposed a free market “development model” creating a “favorable investment climate (including) subsidies and tax concessions to business (while excluding) any largess to the non-propertied classes….” It means human welfare be damned, social benefits and democracy are incompatible with the needs of business, unions aren’t allowed, a large “reserve army” of workers can easily replace present ones, and those complaining get their heads knocked off with terror tactics being the weapon of choice, and woe to those on the receiving end.

The Godfather in Washington makes it work with considerable help from the corrupted dominant media selling “free market” misery like it’s paradise. Their message praises the dogma, turning a blind eye to the ill effects on real people and the terror needed to keep them in line when they resist characterized as protecting “national security” and “promoting democracy,” as already explained. All the while, the US is portrayed as a benevolent innocent bystander, when, if fact, behind the scenes, we pull the strings and tinpot third-world despots dance to them. But don’t expect to learn that from the pages of the New York Times always in the lead supporting the worst US-directed policies characterized only as the best and most enlightened.

At the end of his account, Herman offers solutions worlds apart from the way the Bush administration rules. They include opposing “martial law governments” and demanding the US end funding, arming and training repressive regimes. Also condemned are “harsh prison sentences, internments and killings,” especially against labor leaders. Finally, he cites “the right to self-determination” for all countries free from foreign interference, that usually means Washington, that must be held to account and compelled to “stop bullying and manipulating….tiny states” and end the notion they must be client ones, or else.

Referring to the Reagan administration in the 1980s, Herman says what applies even more under George Bush. If allowed to get away with it, Washington “will continue to escalate the violence (anywhere in the world it chooses) to preserve military mafia/oligarch control” meaning we’re boss, and what we say goes. Leaders not getting the message will be taught the hard way, meaning state-sponsored terrorism portrayed as benign intervention.

Herman revisited terrorism with co-author Gerry O’Sullivan in 1989 in their book “The Terrorism Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror.” The authors focus on what kinds of victims are important (”worthy” ones) while others (the “unworthy”) go unmentioned or are characterized as victimizers with the corrupted media playing their usual role trumpeting whatever policies serve the interests of power. The authors state “….the West’s experts and media have engaged in a process of ‘role reversal’ in….handling….terrorism… focus(ing) on selected, relatively small-scale terrorists and rebels including….genuine national liberation movements” victimized by state-sponsored terror. Whenever they strike back in self-defense they’re portrayed as victimizers. Examples, then and now, are legion, and the authors draw on them over that earlier period the book covers.

They also explain the main reason individuals and groups attack us is payback for our attacking or oppressing them far more grievously. As already noted, the very nature of wholesale state-directed terror is infinitely more harmful than the retail kind with the order of magnitude being something like comparing massive corporate fraud cheating shareholders and employees to a day’s take by a local neighborhood pickpocket.

“The Terrorism Industry” shows the West needs enemies. Before 1991, the “evil empire” Soviet Union was the lead villain with others in supporting roles like Libya’s Gaddafi, the PLO under Arafat (before the Oslo Accords co-opted him), the Sandinistas under Ortega laughably threatening Texas we were told, and other designees portrayed as arch enemies of freedom because they won’t sell out their sovereignty to rules made in Washington. Spewing this baloney takes lots of chutzpah and manufactured demonizing generously served up by “state-sponsored propaganda campaigns” dutifully trumpeted by the dominant media stenographers for power. Their message is powerful enough to convince people western states and nuclear-powered Israel can’t match ragtag marauding “terrorist” bands coming to neighborhoods near us unless we flatten countries they may be coming from. People believe it, and it’s why state-sponsored terrorism can be portrayed as self-defense even though it’s pure scare tactic baloney.

The authors stress the western politicization process decides who qualifies as targeted, and “The basic rule has been: if connected with leftists, violence may be called terrorist,” but when it comes from rightist groups it’s always self-defense. Again, it’s classic Orwell who’d be smiling saying I told you so if he were still here. He also understood terrorism serves a “larger service.” Overall, it’s to get the public terrified enough to go along with any agenda governments have in mind like wars of aggression, huge increases in military spending at the expense of social services getting less, and the loss of civil liberties by repressive policies engineered on the phony pretext of increasing our safety, in fact, being harmed.

The authors also note different forms of “manufactured terrorism” such as inflating or inventing a menace out of whole cloth. It’s also used in the private sector to weaken or destroy “union leaders, activists, and political enemies, sometimes in collusion with agents of the state.”

The authors call all of the above “The Terrorism Industry of institutes and experts who formulate and channel analysis and information on terrorism in accordance with Western demands” often in cahoots with “Western governments, intelligence agencies, and corporate/conservative foundations and funders.” It’s a “closed system” designed to “reinforce state propaganda” to program the public mind to go along with any agenda the institutions of power have in mind, never beneficial to our own. Yet, their message is so potent they’re able to convince us it is. It’s an astonishing achievement going on every day able to make us believe almost anything, and the best way to beat it is don’t listen.

Noam Chomsky On Terrorism

In his book “Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy,” co-authored with Gilbert Achcar, Chomsky defines terrorism saying he’s been writing about it since 1981 around the time Ronald Reagan first declared war on “international terrorism” to justify all he had in mind mentioned above. Chomsky explained “You don’t declare a war on terrorism unless you’re planning yourself to undertake massive international terrorism,” and calling it self-defense is pure baloney.

Chomsky revisits the subject in many of his books, and in at least two earlier ones addressed terrorism or international terrorism as those volumes’ core issue discussed further below. In “Perilous Power,” it’s the first issue discussed right out of the gate, and he starts off defining it. He does it using the official US Code definition given above calling it a commonsense one. But there’s a problem in that by this definition the US qualifies as a terrorist state, and the Reagan administration in the 1980s practiced it, so it had to change it to avoid an obvious conflict.

Other problems arose as well when the UN passed resolutions on terrorism, the first major one being in December, 1987 condemning terrorism as a crime in the harshest terms. It passed in the General Assembly overwhelmingly but not unanimously, 153 - 2, with the two opposed being the US and Israel so although the US vote wasn’t a veto it served as one twice over. When Washington disapproves, it’s an actual veto in the Security Council or a de facto one in the General Assembly meaning it’s blocked either way, and it’s erased from history as well. Case closed.

Disguising what Martin Luther King called “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” referring to this country, a new definition had to be found excluding the terror we carry out against “them,” including only what they do to “us.” It’s not easy, but, in practical terms, this is the definition we use - what you do to “us,” while what we do to you is “benign humanitarian intervention.” Repeated enough in the mainstream, the message sinks in even though it’s baloney.

Chomsky then explains what other honest observers understand in a post-NAFTA world US planners knew would devastate ordinary people on the receiving end of so-called free trade policies designed to throttle them for corporate gain. He cites National Intelligence Council projections that globalization “will be rocky, marked by chronic financial volatility and a widening economic divide….Regions, countries, and groups feeling left behind will face deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation. They will foster political, ethnic, ideological, and religious extremism, along with the violence that often accompanies it.”

Pentagon projections agree with plans set to savagely suppress expected retaliatory responses. How to stop the cycle of violence? End all types of exploitation including so-called one-way “free trade,” adopting instead a fair trade model like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government follows that’s equitable to all trading partners and their people. The antidote to bad policy, brutal repression, wars and the terrorism they generate is equity and justice for all. However, the US won’t adopt the one solution sure to work because it hurts profits that come ahead of people needs.

Chomsky wrote about terrorism at length much earlier as well in his 1988 book “The Culture of Terrorism.” In it he cites “the Fifth Freedom” meaning “the freedom to rob, to exploit and to dominate society, to undertake any course of action to insure that existing privilege is protected and advanced.” This “freedom” is incompatible with the other four Franklin Roosevelt once announced - freedom of speech, worship, want and fear all harmed by this interloper. To get the home population to go along with policies designed to hurt them, “the state must spin an elaborate web of illusion and deceit (to keep people) inert and limited in the capacity to develop independent modes of thought and perception.” It’s called “manufacturing consent” to keep the rabble in line, using hard line tactics when needed.

“The Cultural of Terrorism” covers the Reagan years in the 1980s and its agenda of state terror in the post-Vietnam climate of public resistance to direct intervention that didn’t hamper Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. So unable to send in the Marines, Reagan resorted to state terror proxy wars with key battlegrounds being Central America and Afghanistan. The book focuses on the former, the scandals erupting from it, and damage control manipulation so this country can continue pursuing policies dedicated to rule by force whenever persuasion alone won’t work.

A “new urgency” emerged in June, 1986 when the World Court condemned the US for attacking Nicaragua using the Contras in a proxy war of aggression against a democratically elected government unwilling to operate by rules made in Washington. In a post-Vietnam climate opposed to this sort of thing, policies then were made to work by making state terror look like humanitarian intervention with local proxies on the ground doing our killing for us and deceiving the public to go along by scaring it to death.

So with lots of dominant media help, Reagan pursued his terror wars in Central America with devastating results people at home heard little about if they read the New York Times or watched the evening news suppressing the toll Chomsky reveals as have others:

– over 50,000 slaughtered in El Salvador,

– over 100,000 corpses in Guatemala just in the 1980s and over 200,000 including those killed earlier and since,

– a mere 11,000 in Nicaragua that got off relatively easy because the people had an army to fight back while in El Salvador and Guatemala the army was the enemy.

The tally shows Ronald Reagan gets credit for over 160,000 Central American deaths alone, but not ordinary ones. They came “Pol Pot-style….with extensive torture, rape, mutilation, disappearance,” and political assassinations against members of the clergy including El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero gunned down by an assassin while celebrating mass inside San Salvador’s Hospital de la Divina Frovidencia. His “voice for the voiceless” concern for the poor and oppressed and courageous opposition to death squad mass-killing couldn’t be tolerated in a part of the world ruled by wealthy elites getting plenty of support from some of the same names in Washington now ravaging Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chomsky cites the Reagan Doctrine’s commitment to opposing leftist resistance movements throughout the 1980s, conducting state-sponsored terror to “construct an international terrorist network of impressive sophistication, without parallel in history….and used it” clandestinely fighting communism.

With lots of help from Congress and the dominant media, the administration contained the damage that erupted in late 1986 from what was known as the Iran-Contra scandal over illegally selling arms to Iran to fund the Contras. Just like the farcical Watergate investigations, the worst crimes and abuses got swept under the rug, and in the end no one in the 1980s even paid a price for the lesser ones. So a huge scandal greater than Watergate, that should have toppled a president, ended up being little more than a tempest in a teapot after the dust settled. It makes it easy understanding how George Bush gets away with mass-murder, torture and much more almost making Reagan’s years seem tame by comparison.

Chomsky continued discussing our “culture of terrorism” with the Pentagon practically boasting over its Central American successes directing terrorist proxy force attacks against “soft targets” including health centers, medical workers and schools, farms and more, all considered legitimate military targets despite international law banning these actions.

Latin America is always crucial to US policy makers referring to it dismissively as “America’s backyard” giving us more right to rule here than practically any place else. It’s because of the region’s strategic importance historian Greg Grandin recognizes calling it the “Empire’s Workshop” that’s the title of his 2006 book subtitled “Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism.” In it, he shows how the region serves as a laboratory honing our techniques for imperial rule that worked in the 1980s but now face growing rebellion providing added incentive to people in the Middle East inspiring them to do by force what leaders like Hugo Chavez do constitutionally with great public support.

But Washington’s international terror network never quits or sleeps operating freely worldwide and touching down anywhere policy makers feel they need to play global enforcer seeing to it outliers remember who’s boss, and no one forgets the rules of imperial management. Things went as planned for Reagan until the 1986 scandals necessitated a heavy dose of damage control. They’ve now become industrial strength trying to bail George Bush out his quagmire conflagrations making Reagan’s troubles seem like minor brush fires. It worked for Reagan by following “overriding principles (keeping) crucial issues….off the agenda” applicable for George Bush, including:

– “the (ugly) historical and documentary record reveal(ing)” US policy guidelines;

– “the international setting within which policy develops;”

– application of similar policies in other nations in Latin America or elsewhere;

– “the normal conditions of life (in Latin America or elsewhere long dominated by) US influence and control (and) what these teach us about the goals and character of US government policy over many years;

– similar matters (anywhere helping explain) the origins and nature of the problems that must be addressed.”

It was true in the 1980s and now so these issues “are not fit topics for reporting, commentary and debate” beyond what policy makers disagree on and are willing to discuss openly.

The book concludes considering the “perils of diplomacy” with Washington resorting to state terror enforcing its will through violence when other means don’t work. But the US public has to be convinced through guile and stealth it’s all being done for our own good. It never is, of course, but most people never catch on till it’s too late to matter. They should read more Chomsky, Herman, Ahmad, and Michel Chossudovsky discussed below, but too few do so leaders like Reagan and Bush get away with mass-murder and much more.

Chomsky wrote another book on terrorism titled “Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World.” It was first published in 1986 with new material added in more recent editions up to 2001. The book begins with a memorable story St. Augustine tells about a pirate Alexander the Great captured asking him “how he dares molest the sea.” Pirates aren’t known to be timid, and this one responds saying “How dare you molest the whole world? ….I do it with a little ship only (and) am called a thief (while you do) it with a great navy (and) are called an Emperor.” It’s a wonderful way to capture the relationship between minor rogue states or resistance movements matched off against the lord and master of the universe with unchallengeable military power unleashing it freely to stay dominant.

The newest edition of “Pirates and Emperors, Old and New” explores what constitutes terrorism while mainly discussing how Washington waged it in the Middle East in the 1980s, also then in Central America, and more recently post-9/11. As he often does, Chomsky also shows how dominant media manipulation shapes public perceptions to justify our actions called defensible against states we target as enemies when they resist - meaning their wish to remain free and independent makes them a threat to western civilization.

Washington never tolerates outlier regimes placing their sovereignty above ours or internal resistance movements hitting back for what we do to them. Those doing it are called terrorists and are targeted for removal by economic, political and/or military state terror. In the case of Nicaragua, the weapon of choice was a Contra proxy force, in El Salvador, the CIA-backed fascist government did the job, and in both cases tactics used involved mass murder and incarceration, torture, and a whole further menu of repressive and economic barbarism designed to crush resistance paving the way for unchallengeable US dominance.

The centerpiece of US Middle East policy has been its full and unconditional support for Israel’s quest for regional dominance by weakening or removing regimes considered hostile and its near-six decade offensive to repress and ethnically cleanse indigenous Palestinians from all land Israelis want for a greater Israel. Toward that end, Israel gets unheard of amounts of aid including billions annually in grants and loans, billions more as needed, multi-billions in debt waived, billions more in military aid, and state-of-the-art weapons and technology amounting in total to more than all other countries in the world combined for a nation of six million people with lots of important friends in Washington, on Wall Street, and in all other centers of power that count.

It all goes down smoothly at home by portraying justifiable resistance to Israeli abuse as terrorism with the dominant media playing their usual role calling US and Israeli-targeted victims the victimizers to justify the harshest state terror crackdowns against them. For Palestinians, it’s meant nearly six decades of repression and 40 years of occupation by a foreign power able to rain state terror on defenseless people helpless against it. For Iraq, it meant removing a leader posing no threat to Israel or his neighbors but portrayed as a monster who did with Iranian leaders and Hugo Chavez now topping the regime change queue in that order or maybe in quick succession or tandem.

It’s all about power and perception with corrupted language, as Orwell explained, able to make reality seem the way those controlling it wish. It lets power and ideology triumph over people freely using state terror as a means of social control. Chomsky quoted Churchill’s notion that “the rich and powerful have every right to….enjoy what they have gained, often by violence and terror; the rest can be ignored as long as they suffer in silence, but if they interfere with….those who rule the world by right, the ‘terrors of the earth’ will be visited upon them with righteous wrath, unless power is constrained from within.” One day, the meek may inherit the earth and Churchill’s words no longer will apply, but not as long as the US rules it and media manipulation clouds reality enough to make harsh state terror look like humanitarian intervention or self-defense by helpless victims look like they’re the victimizers.

Michel Chossudovsky on “The War on Terrorism”

No one has been more prominent or outspoken since the 9/11 attacks in the US than scholar/author/activist and Global Research web site editor Michel Chossudovsky. He began writing that evening publishing an article the next day titled “Who Is Osama Bin Laden,” perhaps being the first Bush administration critic to courageously challenge the official account of what took place that day. He then updated his earlier account September 10, 2006 in an article titled “The Truth behind 9/11: Who is Osama Bin Ladin.” Chossudovsky is a thorough, relentless researcher making an extraordinary effort to get at the truth no matter how ugly or disturbing.

Here’s a summary of what he wrote that was included in his 2005 book titled “America’s War on Terrorism (In the Wake of 9/11)” he calls a complete fabrication “based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden (from a cave in Afghanistan and hospital bed in Pakistan), outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus.” He called it instead what it is, in fact - a pretext for permanent “New World Order” wars of conquest serving the interests of Wall Street, the US military-industrial complex, and all other corporate interests profiting hugely from a massive scheme harming the public interest in the near-term and potentially all humanity unless it’s stopped in time.

On the morning of 9/11, the Bush administration didn’t miss a beat telling the world Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon meaning Osama bin Laden was the main culprit - case closed without even the benefit of a forensic and intelligence analysis piecing together all potentially helpful information. There was no need to because, as Chossudovsky explained, “That same (9/11) evening at 9:30 pm, a ‘War Cabinet’ was formed integrated by a select number of top intelligence and military advisors. At 11:00PM, at the end of that historic (White House) meeting, the ‘War on Terrorism’ was officially launched,” and the rest is history.

Chossudovsky continued “The decision was announced (straightaway) to wage war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in retribution for the 9/11 attacks” with news headlines the next day asserting, with certainty, “state sponsorship” responsibility for the attacks connected to them. The dominant media, in lockstep, called for military retaliation against Afghanistan even though no evidence proved the Taliban government responsible, because, in fact, it was not and we knew it.

Four weeks later on October 7, a long-planned war of illegal aggression began, Afghanistan was bombed and then invaded by US forces working in partnership with their new allies - the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan or so-called Northern Alliance “warlords.” Their earlier repressive rule was so extreme, it gave rise to the Taliban in the first place and has now made them resurgent.

Chossudovsky further explained that the public doesn’t “realize that a large scale theater war is never planned and executed in a matter of weeks.” This one, like all others, was months in the making needing only what CentCom Commander General Tommy Franks called a “terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event” to arouse enough public anger for the Bush administration to launch it after declaring their “war on terrorism.” Chossudovsky, through thorough and exhausting research, exposed it as a fraud.

He’s been on top of the story ever since uncovering the “myth of an ‘outside enemy’ and the threat of ‘Islamic terrorists’ (that became) the cornerstone (and core justification) of the Bush administration’s military doctrine.” It allowed Washington to wage permanent aggressive wars beginning with Afghanistan and Iraq, to ignore international law, and to “repeal civil liberties and constitutional government” through repression laws like the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts. A key objective throughout has, and continues to be, Washington’s quest to control the world’s energy supplies, primarily oil, starting in the Middle East where two-thirds of known reserves are located.

Toward that end, the Bush administration created a fictitious “outside enemy” threat without which no “war on terrorism” could exist, and no foreign wars could be waged. Chossudovsky exposed the linchpin of the whole scheme. He uncovered evidence that Al Queda “was a creation of the CIA going back to the Soviet-Afghan war” era, and that in the 1990s Washington “consciously supported Osama bin Laden, while at the same time placing him on the FBI’s ‘most wanted list’ as the World’s foremost terrorist.” He explained that the CIA (since the 1980s and earlier) actively supports international terrorism covertly, and that on September 10, 2001 “Enemy Number One” bin Laden was in a Rawalpindi, Pakistan military hospital confirmed on CBS News by Dan Rather. He easily could have been arrested but wasn’t because we had a “better purpose” in mind for “America’s best known fugitive (to) give a (public) face to the ‘war on terrorism’ ” that meant keeping bin Laden free to do it. If he didn’t exist, we’d have had to invent him, but that could have been arranged as well.

The Bush administration’s national security doctrine needs enemies, the way all empires on the march do. Today “Enemy Number One” rests on the fiction of bin Laden-led Islamic terrorists threatening the survival of western civilization. In fact, however, Washington uses Islamic organizations like Islamic jihad as a “key instrument of US military-intelligence operations in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union” while, at the same time, blaming them for the 9/11 attacks calling them “a threat to America.”

September 11, 2001 was, indeed, a threat to America, but one coming from within from real enemies. They want to undermine democracy and our freedoms, not preserve them, in pursuit of their own imperial interests for world domination by force through endless foreign wars and establishment of a locked down national “Homeland Security (police) State.” They’re well along toward it, and if they succeed, America, as we envision it, no longer will exist. Only by exposing the truth and resisting what’s planned and already happening will there be any hope once again to make this nation a “land of the free and home of the brave” with “a new birth of freedom” run by a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” the way at least one former president thought it should be.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

5/30/07

The Democrats caved in and supported the supplemental occupation funding demanded by the Bush Cabal. The arguments apparently being that they a) didn’t have the votes to overcome a veto; b) they didn’t want to be blamed for the growing death and chaos; c) the belief this keeps Iraq the Republican’s adventure; d) perhaps - because the PSAs haven’t been signed yet. Regardless, the considerations were political - not moral - not responsive to the mandate that the November elections sent. The arguments now are that they can revisit the funding issue in September - 4 months from now - 122 days from June 1 to September 31. Given a rough average daily death toll of five US troops and 50 Iraqi civilians, that makes a low estimate of 6710 (610 US troops, 6100 Iraqi civilians) deaths for buckling on the funding.

Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for a failure of will.

Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for vested corporate interests.

Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for a coward’s political strategy.

Damn the Democrats, and damn the Republicans. Their gamesmanship is being paid for in the blood of others. How dare they do this? How dare we let them do this?

This is NOT a war. It is an OCCUPATION. It is a bloody occupation to be sure, but an occupation all the same.

Once more the Bush Folk are talking about regime change - this time to clean the militia influence (Al-Sadar) out of the Iraqi Parliament. How exactly are they planning the removal of a democratically elected block of another government? Who is in charge? Is there even the illusion that the Iraqi government is independent to the U.S.?

Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives (and likely far more) as collateral damage for a political calculus that is doomed to fail no matter what.

5/25/07

This is a wonderfully refreshing examination of Canada’s role, current and historic, as supporter of and participant in the American Empire. Linda McQuaig makes accurate assessments of Canada’s current role in partnership with the United States and the ongoing development of this role historically. Unlike the regular media, she recognizes that Canada is subservient to the Americans in Afghanistan under the guise of a UN approved NATO force occupying that country. Quite clearly in her opening arguments she states that Canada’s current role has brought it “more into line with the U.S. Empire, even as Washington becomes a belligerent and lawless force in the world.”

The first chapter covers a series of mini-themes that exposes the American empire at the same time implicating Canada in its complicity with American actions. Familiar topics arise with Canada as they do with America abroad in the world: Canada’s recent implicit support of torture in Afghanistan by ‘rendering’ prisoners to Afghanis bases; military plans of attack, in this case against Canadian in the 1930’s, such that it would cause “devastation” and include “chemical warfare”; a view of American “exceptionalism”, another word for ignoring international norms, laws and institutions (illegal wars, torture, nuclear weapons double standards, UN, ICC, Kyoto, ICJ, Biological weapons); in other words a generalized withdrawal from international law and conventions.

McQuaig recognizes the incongruity of the U.S. “defending” itself against many created foes, focusing her arguments on the Persian Gulf, reiterating the American tale of woe about “vulnerability”, of America being under attack. While the majority of Canadians do not want to be a part of this militaristic exceptionalism, the “media, academic and corporate worlds – pander to Washington.” The elite see Canada as a renewed power, as an energy superpower, but what sort of superpower would give all its energy resources to another country before its own needs are guaranteed, leading to the author’s conclusion that Canada would not be viewed “with anything but contempt, as the bully’s unctuous [great choice of word – “simulation of affected enthusiasm” based on the root meaning of anointed with oil] little sidekick.”

Oil and free market economics flow via the Canadian elites “fiercely resisting such [social] planning in the Canadian national interest.” As Canada’s social services diminish and its resources are sold off liberally and cheaply, the reality is that “there is little connection between a country’s level of social spending and its ability to compete in the global economy.” Examples are evident for this, with Norway being the most successful, and with the countries of Latin America slowly turning away from the disastrously imposed free market policies.

In the second chapter, “No More Girlie-Man for Peacekeeping” the Canadian popular view of peacekeeping is explored, again exposing the elites, in this case Canada’s own copycat military-industrial-political he-man alliance, as manipulating events towards the American pre-emptive war attitude that searches out strategic control of oil and gas resources, hidden behind the hunt for terrorism, as “America’s vigilance against terrorism…just happens to coincide with its need for oil.” Once again the media come into the picture, a poorly defined picture of “distortion” that has “rendered the suffering of the Arab world invisible to us.” What is viewed in the west is far different than the view seen by others, “the ultimate horror of occupation: the powerlessness of an occupied people against an all-powerful foreign army.”

The argument then turns fully to Afghanistan where Canada is an invading army (and for those Canadian politicians ignorant of the role of oil in Afghanistan, it is a focal point for oil trans-shipment as well as having significant reserves of gas in its north-western provinces in the Caspian Basin), that has committed war crimes by “rendition” and the “collateral damage” of killed citizens. She concludes the section posing the question of security, “Because we realize our security is not actually at stake, and we sense that there is no compelling purpose to this mission….We’re not aggressors [arguable, but perhaps only semantic]. We’re just helping out the aggressor in order to protect our trade balance.”

In summary, McQuaig concludes that “Powerful forces inside the Canadian elite want to move Canada not only away from peacekeeping – as they’ve already succeeding in doing- but also away from an allegiance to the United Nations and the rule of law.” This is a strong statement that Canadians and the world need to be fully aware of.

In the next chapter the focus turns to three areas. The first is Canada’s successful promotion and signing of the land mines treaty, helped out by many NGOs, Princess Diana, and a persistent and vocal Canadian contingent led by Lloyd Axworthy and Jody Williams, the latter receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts. In contrast Canada caved on the issue of nuclear disarmament, effectively blocking “all meaningful progress on nuclear disarmament” even though Canada’s perceived status within the G8 and NATO “could have added a particular heft to the…countries trying to shine the flashlight on U.S. intransigence.” Finally there is recognition that Canada has been involved with the Palestine/Israel problem since World War II, with the outcome of its initial investigations that “Canadian support for partition” was based on the fear of “greater violence by Jewish extremists, who had shown their willingness to resort to terrorism to get their way.” This has evolved of course into recent full on support of Israel, as Canada accepted Israel’s attack on Lebanon as “proportionate”, were one of the first to deny the validity of the democratic election of Hamas, and continue to back U.S. views on Iran.

“The Most Dangerous Man in the English-Speaking World” turns out to be Lester B. Pearson, the Nobel Peace Prize winner for his efforts in the Suez War of 1956. In spite of this success Pearson “subscribed to many Cold War attitudes” and “bears considerable blame for Canada’s complicity in U.S. actions in Vietnam.” As with the U.S., evidence is given that strongly supports the idea of Canada having its own military-industrial complex accompanied by the over-hyped fear of being attacked. The latter as I have always argued could only be by the U.S., unless it was the scenario of nuclear war, in which case no amount of military preparation would do any good anyways.

Following these developments came “The Threat of Peace”, the collapse of the Soviet Union. Here the discussion turns more strongly to the UN and its role in comparison to the ideas formulated by Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfield, and the role of NATO in Yugoslavia. Canada’s role of ‘protection’ has been stretched to the arena of economic well-being, leaving the door “wide open to interventions” in order to open up other countries economies “to foreign investment and free trade,” the Washington consensus adopted in full.

Unlike many critical works, McQuaig also supplies some strong arguments that war, in spite of accepted opinion – at least in the current media –is an inevitable part of human nature; there is strong evidence to the contrary. She examines such arcane actions such as dueling and gladiatorial combat and more obvious examples of slavery and absolute hereditary monarchy, all ‘natural’ human institutions that have disappeared. The “mirage of prosperity” driven by war, needs to give way to popular opinion that will “undermine war’s acceptability.”

Finally, McQuaig returns to her beginning ideas, arguing again about Canada’s energy security (or lack thereof), the sabotage of Kyoto, the implicit acceptance of torture, contradictions in human rights arguments (Chinese prisoners versus U.S. prisoners), and the wonderful Professor Ignatieff who supports the “lesser evils” because of we are good and they are bad simplicities. The narrative ends with the recent Maher Arar case, with Canadian Justice O’Conner stating unequivocally that torture “can never be legally justified….torture is an instrument of terror,” while referring to many treaties that Canada has signed against torture.

This is a great history and current affairs book, not the kind with boring linear dates, but one that exposes thematic ideas that are not expressed in current media. By necessity it covers similar American history and current affairs, showing how Canada, against the wishes of the majority of its population, is directed by an elite “comprador class”, a plutocracy that is in full alignment supporting American exceptionalism, we are “holding the bully’s coat”. All Canadians should be challenged by this work, a challenge to their perceived image of themselves and the reality that lies behind the media and governmental spin.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews to Palestine Chronicles. His interest in this topic stems originally from an environmental perspective, which encompasses the militarization and economic subjugation of the global community and its commodification by corporate governance and by the American government.

5/25/07

I stand at the southernmost corner of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. The grand mountains underneath and behind infuse a moment of spiritual reflection unmatched in its depth and meaning. Before me is an awe-inspiring view: here the Atlantic’s frigid waters gently meet the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. They meet but don’t collide. The harmony is seamless; the greatness of this view is humbling.

I was invited to South Africa to deliver a keynote speech at the ‘Al-Nakba’ conference, held in Cape Town. The journey led me to other cities. Many speeches, presentations, media interviews later, I sat with a borrowed computer and scattered thoughts: how can one reflect without the least sense of certainty, assuredness? I ought to try.

“Where are the Black Africans?” was the first question to come to mind as a friend’s car escorted me a distance from the Cape Town International Airport. I saw very few indications affirming that I was indeed in Africa as I gazed at the exaggeratedly beautiful surroundings of the airport. My friend needed not respond however, as the car soon hurriedly zoomed by a “squatters’ camp”; no slum can be compared to this, no refugee camp. Innumerable people are crammed in the tiniest and crudest looking ‘houses’ made of whatever those poor people could find laying around. It was not ‘temporary accommodations’, but permanent dwellings: here they live, marry, raise children and die.

It takes no brilliant mind to realize that Apartheid South Africa is still, in some ways, Apartheid South Africa. A lot has been done on the road to equal rights since the Africa National Congress (ANC) along with freedom fighters and civil society activists combined forces to defeat a legacy of 350 years of oppression, colonialism and – in 1948 – an officially sanctioned system of Apartheid, a system instilled by the white minority government to ethnically cleanse, confine and subdue the overwhelmingly black majority. True, the hundreds of Bantustans or ‘homelands’ in which the Blacks were locked, only to be allowed to leave or enter White areas – as servants – with a special pass, are no longer an officially recognized apparatus. The ‘presidents’ of those Bantustans – puppet rulers hand picked by White authorities – are long discredited. Now, South Africans, of all colors, ethnicities and religions select their own leaders, in democratic elections that are, more or less, reflective of the overall desires of the populace. But it takes much more than 13 years, and uncountable promises to reconcile the calculated inequality of centuries.

Despite a hectic schedule of two weeks, I made it a goal to visit as many squatters’ camps as I could. I followed the path of ethnic cleansing that took place in District Six in Cape Town; it was a Trail of Tears of sorts, a Palestinian Catastrophe. My grandparents, mother and father where dragged from their homes under similar circumstances in 1948 in Palestine. They too were not suitable to live within the same ‘geographic radius’ with those who had deemed themselves superior. Those who were forcibly removed from District Six have finally won their land back. Palestinians are still refugees. My grandparents are long dead, so is my mother. My father, a very ill and old man, is waiting in our old home in the refugee camp in Gaza. He refuses to yield, to capitulate.

I spoke at a technical college that was erected for Whites only on the exact same spot where thousands of Colored and Blacks were uprooted and thrown somewhere else, somewhere more discreet, more acceptable to the taste of Apartheid administrators. I paid a tribute to those resilient people who refused to embrace their inferior status, fought and died to regain their freedom and dignity. I saluted my people, who stood in solidarity with the fighters of South Africa. In our Gaza camps, we mourned for South Africa and we celebrated when Nelson Mandela was set free. My father handed out candy to the neighborhood kids. When Bishop Desmond Tutu visited Palestine, Israeli settlers greeted him with racist graffiti and chants across the West Bank. For Palestinians, this was a personal insult. Tutu is ours, just as Che Guevara, Martin Luther, Malcolm X, Mahatma Gandhi, Ahmad Yassin and Yasser Arafat were and still are.

On Robin Island, where Mandela and hundreds of his comrades were held for many years, I touched the decaying walls of the prison. Food in the prison was rationed on the basis of skin color. Blacks always received the least. But prisoners defied the prison system nonetheless; they created a collective in which all the food received would be shared equally amongst them. I tore a piece of my Palestinian scarf and left it in Mandela’s cell; its chipped, albeit fortified walls, its thin floor mattress still stand witness to the injustice perpetrated by some and the undying faith in one’s principles embraced by others. I visited every cell in Section A and B, touched every wall, read every name of every inmate: Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Bantus were all kept here, fought, died and finally won their freedom together. They referred to each other as comrades. Injustice is colorblind. So is true camaraderie.

I have never felt the sense of solidarity and acceptance that I felt in South Africa. There is an unparalleled lesson to be learned in this amazing place. There is a lot to be sorted out: a true equality to be realized, but a lot has also been done. A veteran ANC fighter thanked me for the arms and money supplied to his unit, and many other units, by the PLO in the 1970’s and 80’s; he said he still has his PLO uniform, tucked in somewhere in his little decrepit ‘house’ in one of the squatters’ camps dotting the city. It was a poignant reminder that the fight is not yet over.

Amongst the many names scribbled at the fenced wall at the helm of Cape of Good Hope, someone took the time to write “Palestine”. In the Apartheid Wall erected by Israel on Palestinian land in the West Bank, the South African parallel is expressed in more ways than one. The relationship cannot be any more obvious. The fight for justice is one, and shall always be.

-Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian author and journalist. His latest volume: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press: London) is available at Amazon.com. He is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com and can be contacted at editor@palestinechronicle.com

5/24/07

This June will mark an anniversary that will live in infamy for the people affected by the event it commemorates following a far greater one 19 years earlier on May 14, 1948. On June 5, 1967, Israel launched its so-called “Six-Day (preemptive) War” against three of its neighboring Arab states - Egypt, Jordan and Syria - claiming it was in self-defense to avoid annihilation Israeli leaders later admitted was spurious and false cover for a large-scale long-planned, calculated war of aggression it believed it could easily win and did.

The New York Times quoted Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s (1977 - 83) August, 1982 speech saying: “In June, 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that (President Gamal Abdel) Nasser (1956 - 70) was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

Two time Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1974 - 77 and 1992 - 95) told French newspaper Le Monde in February, 1968: “I do not believe Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offense against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”

General Mordechai Hod, Commander of the Israeli Air Force during the Six-Day War said in 1978: “Sixteen years of planning had gone into those initial eighty minutes. We lived with the plan, we slept on the plan, we ate the plan. Constantly we perfected it.”

General Haim Barlev, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief told Ma’ariv in April, 1972: “We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day war, and we had never thought of such a possibility.”

Other Israeli leaders and generals voiced the same sentiment that in June, 1967 Israel was under no threat, yet preemptively undertook a war of aggression falsely telling the world it had no other choice. It had a clear one. It could have chosen peace, but didn’t and never did earlier or since to the present because discretionary aggressive wars of choice serve Israeli interests as they do its US imperial partner.

In 1967, it was the Jewish state’s third major aggressive war that grew out of the founding of Zionism in 1897 by Theodor Herzl aiming to establish a permanent Jewish state. He planned the first Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, became its first president, and envisioned a permanent Jewish homeland in Palestine justified by what Professor Norman Finkelstein called the “colossal hoax” Jews got there first establishing their ancestral home on “a land without people for a people without land.” It became the state of Israel in May, 1948 during the new Jewish state’s first preemptive aggressive so-called “War of Independence” Palestinians call “al-Nakba” - the catastrophe.

From it, Jewish forces seized 78% of British Mandatory Palestine establishing the state of Israel May 14 when the Mandate ended. It was 40% more territory than UN Resolution 181 of November, 1947 allowed with a 56 - 44% division that already gave Israel most of the fertile land, nearly all urban and rural territory, and 400 of over 1000 Palestinian villages their residents lost by UN mandate, with no right of appeal, to the Jewish population comprising one-third of the total at that time.

The 1948 negotiated cease-fire line became known as the “Green Line.” Egypt occupied Gaza, and Jordan controlled the West Bank. It was Israel’s moment of triumph. The war lasted six months, expelling and killing about 800,000 Palestinians. It destroyed 531 Palestinian villages, 11 urban neighborhoods, and was a clear case of ethnic cleansing international law calls a crime against humanity. Guilty Israeli leaders were never held to account for it or forced to admit what, in fact, they indisputably did according to recently declassified Israeli archival material Israeli historian Ilan Pappe used for his important new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Noted British journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger calls him “Israel’s bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.”

In his book, Pappe documented Israeli crimes including cold-blooded mass-murder; destruction of homes, villages and crops; rapes; other atrocities; and massacres of defenseless men, women and children shown no mercy. It happened because British Mandate forces did nothing to stop it, and when neighboring Arab states finally intervened, they acted pathetically without conviction against a superior Israeli fighting force easily able to defeat the small, ill-equipped and unmotivated token forces matched against it.

Israel’s second war of aggression was launched along with Britain and France October 29, 1956 against Egypt following President Nasser’s decision to nationalize the Suez Canal. Invading forces gave in to US and Soviet pressure to cease fighting eight days later, and after the Federal Reserve began selling large amounts of British pounds undermining the dollar-pound exchange rate. It ended when Israel withdrew its last troops March 8, 1957.

On June 5, 1967, Israel launched its third major war of aggression but hardly its last with another one always planned and ready to unleash on the flimsiest pretext almost no other nation could get away with. It did it for the usual reasons nations go to war when under no external threat to do it - territory, resources (for Israel Golan’s water was key), and a desire for unchallengeable regional dominance. As it always did since, Israel falsely claimed its security was threatened by creating myths Syria was shelling Israeli farmers; legitimate, non-threatening Egyptian military exercises masked a preparation for war; and that “incendiary Arab rhetoric” proved it. With plans set and a date picked, Foreign Minister Abba Eban flew to Washington May 26 to inform Lyndon Johnson of Israel’s intentions and was assured the US backed them.

The war began preemptively June 5 and proved to be an impressive display of overwhelming power with Israel destroying 90% of Egypt’s 300 + aircraft on the ground and two-thirds of the Syrian Air Force the first day. After 24 hours of conflict, Israeli Air Force (IAF) Commander Mordechai Hod announced the combined Arab air forces were destroyed, and the devastating toll on them proved it. Israel lost a mere 19 fighter aircraft while Egypt lost about 300, Syria 60, Jordan 35, Iraq 15, and Lebanon one or more. The Palestinians were about to lose much more - the remaining Gaza and West Bank parts of their nation leaving them stateless.

On day 2, Israel invaded Gaza and the West Bank; on day three Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) entered northern Sinai, devastated Egyptian brigades, captured Jerusalem, and got Jordan to surrender. On day four, the IDF invaded Haram Al-Sharif and central Sinai, and by day five had advanced to the Suez Canal, taking all of Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights. The war was practically over before it began, but Israeli forces showed no mercy using their unopposed air power to massacre thousands of defenseless Egyptian troops on the ground. It was a turkey shoot made possible largely because Washington supported it providing Israel with the latest munitions including tarmac-shredding explosives preventing undamaged planes from taking off making them sitting ducks to follow-up attacks. In addition, a US carrier group provided intelligence and communications help standing ready to intervene if needed.

Though nothing like today, even then Washington showed its commitment to Israel, and ignoring and covering up the USS Liberty incident highlights it. The intelligence ship was in the Mediterranean about 13 nautical miles off the Sinai Peninsula when Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked it with full knowledge it was a US vessel as the senior Israeli lead pilot later admitted. Thirty-four on-board were killed after which Johnson Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered an inquiry that concluded the incident was a case of “mistaken identity” despite knowing full well it wasn’t. Later, retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer said the incident was “one of the classic all-American cover-ups” for a close ally Washington has made excuses and allowances for ever since along with providing huge amounts of financial aid and modern weaponry and munitions in near-limitless amounts.

Israel used what it got then for its one-sided blitzkrieg ending June 10 with Israeli forces completing the job left unfinished following their 1948 “War of Independence.” They took the remaining 22% of ancient Palestine comprising Gaza and the West Bank, and on June 6, 2007 will have held the territories for 40 repressive years of the longest continuous illegal occupation in the world under which Palestinians (including Israeli citizens and Palestinian Christians) lost their personal, political and economic freedoms under Israeli rule affording those rights only to Jews.

Worldwide Solidarity Actions Opposing the Illegal Occupation

To commemorate this infamous anniversary, the International Coordination Network on Palestine (ICNP) was launched at the annual UN civil society conference in 2006. It supports the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people under their banner, “The World Says No to Israeli Occupation.” ICNP called for global days of protest June 9 - 10 demanding an end to the occupation; the realization of the Palestinians’ inalienable rights including their right to self-determination; their Right to Return to their homeland; and to establish an independent, sovereign Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem where it rightfully belongs.

ICNP is building nonviolent global action campaigns for boycotts, divestment and economic and political sanctions. In addition, it engages in a wide range of educational and cultural activities with the same aims in mind. It insists governments across the world stop providing Israel economic, political and military support and work instead together to end an occupation that never should have been tolerated in the first place. It wants it replaced with a “just and lasting peace.”

Hundreds of other organizations, networks and groups across the world are also mobilizing for a global protest day June 9. One of them is the “Occupation 40″ coalition calling for “six days” of actions (from June 5 - 10) marking 40 hellish years of occupation. In addition, a Global Day of Action was called for on Saturday, June 9. The coalition is comprised of grassroots Israeli groups and organizations, peace activists, artists, student groups, internal Palestinian refugees, anarchists, animal rights activists, and leftist groups including socialists and communists. There will be a six-day convergence in Israel including demonstrations, direct actions, discussions and cultural events.

“Occupation 40″ is also calling for international direct actions against the illegal occupation from June 5 - 10 including economic punishment against corporations profiting from an occupation that cost Palestinians their homeland. The planned agenda for these days is as follows:

– June 5: An international action day against militarization, wars and occupations in advance of the June G-8 summit in Germany.

– June 6 - 8: Protests against the G-8 by Palestinian and Israeli activists and Palestinian Solidarity groups across Europe where German authorities are already cracking down in advance of the June 6 - 8 summit of world leaders taking place at the German resort of Heiligendamm in the northern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommen on the Baltic coast.

Wherever George Bush travels, unprecedented levels of security are needed the result of intense worldwide anger against him and his administration showing up in mass public actions justifiably protesting his presence. As a result, the Heiligendamm resort is being turned into a luxurious armed military fortress with a huge protective wall around it costing $17 million a German newspaper called “the equivalent of a maximum security prison (in reverse) to keep people out.”

In addition, the Baltic Sea surrounding the resort will be patrolled by nine naval vessels supplementing 16,000 local police and 1100 soldiers guarding the area to keep protesters several miles from the meeting. Add to that the police state-style raids now ongoing targeting global justice and leftist organizations across the country on the phony pretext they’re involved in the “creation of a terrorist organization.”

– June 6 - 12: Protest action days against the occupation in Palestine, Israel and internationally.

– June 9: A mass rally in London along with a Global Day of Action Against the Occupation.

– June 10 - 11: A protest, teach-in and lobby in Washington, DC.

All these actions across the world are intended to send Israel, G-8 governments and all nations around the world “a message they cannot ignore.”

Life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)

IDF occupation forces continue assaulting Palestinian civilians and property daily in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and while November 8, 2006 wasn’t typical, it shows how horrific some attacks have been. It began November 1 with Operation Autumn Clouds when Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attacked Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza launching their largest assault on the territory since the late June Operation Summer Rains deadly one killing at least 240 mostly civilian men, women and children. In one November, 2006 week, 80 innocent civilians were dead, hundreds wounded, and many bodies afflicted with terribly disfiguring cuts, burns and hard to explain loss of limbs unseen before that had to have been from experimental bombs and shells likely containing radiation or other chemical materials able to burn human flesh. More on this below.

The attack culminated November 8 when Israeli tanks shelled Palestinian homes killing at least 20 and wounding 60 more in what’s now called the Beit Hanoun massacre. Ironically, or maybe intentionally, it happened the day after IDF forces withdrew following the week-long Operation Autumn Clouds operation that already devastated the town and its people. The Beit Hanoun massacre wasn’t typical. But it highlights how, on any pretext at any time, Israeli forces freely attack defenseless Palestinians with unrestrained viciousness maybe just to show they can get away with almost anything.

Mel Frykberg in the April 26 - May 2 issue of Al-Ahram Weekly reports some of the worst of what Israel is doing (unreported in the West) in his article called Israel’s lab in Palestine. He wrote about Gaza-based doctors recently reporting severe wounds clearly made by horrific experimental weapons inflicting shocking damage with graphic web site pictures painful to view:

– disfiguring burns caused by intense heat requiring amputation;

– legs sliced from victims’ bodies “as if a saw was used to cut through bone;”

– the absence of shrapnel in or near wounds but the presence of a powder-like substance on victims’ bodies and internal organs identified by lab analysis as carbon and tungsten (microscopic shrapnel) with many affected patients dying several days later; and

– internal organs severely burned in the absence of external wounds.

The article further explained Italian RAI News 24 satellite TV reported on a laboratory analysis of substances taken from victims alleging Israel used “dense inert metal explosives (DIME)” last summer in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and that a high concentration of carbon, copper, aluminum and tungsten points to a DIME weapon this time. RAI News 24 indicated military experts said DIME weapons are “carbon-encased missile(s) that shatter on impact into minuscule splinters (simultaneously exploding with) blades of energy-charged, heavy metal tungsten alloy (HMTA) powder (like) cobalt and nickel or iron, with a carbon fibre casing. It turns to dust on impact….burning and destroying….everything within a four-metre range.”

In addition to causing severe disabling and dismembering injuries, DIME weapons leave carcinogenic fallout (like depleted uranium - DU - or other toxic chemical pollutants) in areas targeted by them resulting in environmental contamination with virtually certain large increases in future cancers for people living close by and exposed.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) on the ground in the territories documents it all daily, and its weekly report ending May 17 reads like all others depending on how horrific each week is with some hugely more so than others as Palestinian victims can attest. PCHR (and other groups) publish an account of daily incursions, assaults, shootings, targeted assassinations, aircraft intrusions and attacks, arrests, torture, home demolitions, restrictions on movement, crop destruction, land theft, and countless other types of harassment and humiliations making life in occupied Palestine repressive and unbearable for its residents who somehow resist and endure.

In nearly all cases, Israeli actions are unprovoked or barely so like responding with overwhelming force to children throwing rocks or Palestinians defending their homes, neighborhoods or communities from repeated IDF incursions. Palestinians only have crude and light weapons against the world’s fourth most powerful military with nearly every imaginable modern weapon including sophisticated nuclear ones and delivery systems to use them effectively. Specifically during this one week, IDF ground forces killed six Palestinians in Gaza and a baby in his mother’s womb in the West Bank. They also wounded 36 Palestinians and a French solidarity activist.

In Gaza on May 15, IDF border forces killed a Palestinian National Security Forces officer fleeing Fatah-Hamas armed clashes with US and Israeli fingerprints all over this renewed fighting aimed at toppling the unity government. To do it, Fatah security forces were supplied with millions of dollars in funding, weapons and Egyptian-based training for this type operation ebbing and flowing with renewed fighting erupting on any pretext when cease-fires break down.

On May 16, Israeli forces killed three Executive Force members of the Palestinian Ministry of Interior. They also wounded 27 other Palestinians (including two journalists and a civilian bystander) by Israeli air attacks on a Rafah Executive Force site. On the same day, two Hamas members were killed and three others wounded by air attacks in northern Gaza. Earlier on May 10, IDF forces near Khan Yunis burnt large areas of Palestinian agricultural land in Khuza’a village in a deliberate act of military vandalism.

Also, on May 10, the IDF attacked Israeli solidarity and Palestinian civilian and international activists’ peaceful demonstration protesting the construction of the Annexation/Apartheid wall in Bal’ein village west of Ramallah wounding three Palestinian adults, one child and a Swiss solidarity activist. On May 13, an Israeli settlement guard shot from “zero range” wounding a Palestinian taxi driver.

From May 10 - 17, IDF forces conducted at least 26 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank arresting 41 civilians including seven children. That brings the number of Palestinians arrested in the West Bank alone this year to 1,164. Israeli forces also demolished one home and arrested two Palestinians in Gaza. Throughout this period, the IDF continued imposing a tightened siege on the OPT severely restricting movement including in occupied East Jerusalem and at border crossings through which essential humanitarian goods and services must have access but often don’t when most needed.

The important Rafah International Crossing Point has been closed since June 25, 2006 except for three days. Because of this and other crossing point restrictions, markets aren’t getting food, stores aren’t getting goods, and hospitals don’t have vital medical supplies, with most Palestinian patients unable to travel to them in Israel or the OPT anyway as needed. In addition, Palestinians have been prevented from fishing in the Mediterranean for nearly one year depriving them of their livelihood and the people of the food they harvest from the sea.

In recent days, Israel launched heavy air strikes against Hamas government Gaza targets killing 36 mostly Palestinian civilians and wounding 97 others through May 21 as well as destroying dozens of homes and parliamentary sites. This is on top of renewed Israeli-instigated Fatah-Hamas armed clashes in Gaza killing 47 and injuring scores more through May 19. On May 18, independent Palestinian writer Laila El-Haddad wrote on the Electronic Intifada web site of a recent “terrifying 24 hours (with) sporadic gunfire and ghostly streets.”

She mentioned a phone call from her father describing a (US-supplied F-16-caused) “tremendous explosion (sending) intense shockwaves through our house….so powerful….it blasted off the windows from my cousin’s home in the neighbourhood behind us. This attack was followed by another then another, and then another.” There were six Israeli (F-16) air strikes in one morning with “Israeli tanks….amassing at Gaza’s northern border, and unmanned Israeli drones whirring menacingly overhead in great numbers patrolling ghostly skies….preparing..for yet another strike against an already bleeding, burning, and battered Gaza” from Israeli terror attacks.

Tony Karon, writing in the Electronic Intifada May 15, notes the current conflict “has assumed a momentum of its own” Palestinian leaders are unable to contain because Washington and Israel want it that way in the wake of Hamas’ victory in the January, 2006 elections. He then adds ominously this may end up “turning Gaza into Mogadishu” just the way the Bush administration is now “busy turning Mogadishu into Mogadishu all over again.”

The “If Americans Knew” web site also publishes and keeps current shocking information on the daily toll in the OPT. Some of its disturbing figures affecting Palestinians from September 29, 2000 (the first day of the Second Intifada) to the present at the hands of Israeli forces are as follows:

– 934 Palestinian children have been killed in most cases while engaging in normal daily activities like going to school, playing, shopping, or being in their homes. PCHR reports a total of 4284 Palestinian deaths through March 23, 2007.

– A known total of 31,307 Palestinians have been injured, mostly civilians, and mostly under the same circumstances children were killed. The B’Tselem Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories reports these numbers are extremely conservative while the internationally respected Palestine Red Crescent Society reports much higher totals that are likely more accurate. In addition, these figures exclude large numbers of Palestinians who die when unable to reach medical care in time because of Israeli checkpoints, road closures, curfews and other restrictions on mobility in the OPT. Also, no accurate records are available on the large number of avoidable Palestinian deaths resulting from deprivation and/or disease following the first time ever imposition of sanctions on an occupied people from early 2006 to the present.

– The cite reports US financial aid to Israel is $7,023,288 per day, but the true number is far higher including:

- around $3 billion or more annually in direct aid;

- billions more in loans as needed;

- millions annually for immigrant resettlement;

- multi-billions in waived loan repayments;

- billions more in military aid, financial help to develop Israel’s defense industry, transfer of state-of-the-art technology and the latest US weapons, and US guarantees for Israel’s access to oil;

- $22 billion Israel got over the past 50 years through the sale of its below-market paying bonds that have financed half its development - meaning the colonization of annexed Palestinian land; military aid for its imperial aggressive wars; and still more as needed and requested.

Tiny Israel today (with six million Jews) gets more US financial aid (in all direct and indirect forms) than all other countries in the world combined.

In addition, a 2006 “Washington Report” piece by Shirl McArthur estimated the minimal amount of US aid to Israel since 1948 in an article titled “A Conservative Estimate of Total US Aid to Israel: $108 billion.” Again, the true number is far higher. Over the same period to the present, US aid to the Palestinians was “zero” except what’s supplied for “security” for Israel and now to aid quisling Fatah forces fight the democratically elected Hamas government Israel, Washington and the West won’t recognize.

– Israel has been targeted by at least 65 UN resolutions ignoring them all. The Palestinians have been targeted by none.

– One Israeli corporal is held prisoner by the Palestinians. At least 10,756 Palestinians are now imprisoned by Israel, most held on “administrative” or no charge, and according to the B’Tselem Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories the great majority of them are abused or tortured. PCHR reports from 1967 through 1994 alone, 775,000 Palestinians were imprisoned for periods ranging from one week to life.

The Israeli human rights organization HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual confirms this in an April, 2007 report it jointly published with B’Tselem titled “Utterly Forbidden - The Torture and Ill-Treatment of Palestinian Detainees. It’s based on testimonies of dozens of Palestinians arrested, interrogated and tortured by Israel’s ISA, formerly known as the General Security Service. In addition, even Israeli authorities openly admit using “exceptional” interrogation methods and “physical pressure” against Palestinian detainees that translated means “torture.” However, B’Tselem reports the State Attorney’s Office “covers up these illegal acts, thereby assisting in the breach of international law and of High Court of Justice’s prohibitions.”

It hardly needs mentioning international laws ban torture for any reason, but it never deterred Israel or the US from using it freely. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlawed it in 1948. The Fourth Geneva Convention banned any form of “physical or mental coercion” in 1949 requiring detainees at all times to be treated humanely. The European Convention affirmed this in 1950, and in 1984, the UN Convention Against Torture became the first binding international instrument dealing exclusively with banning torture in any form for any reason. Israel and the US both have contempt for international law mutually affirming the other’s right to act as it pleases with no protests heard in the West or hardly anywhere else.

– 4170 Palestinian homes have been demolished according to a B’Tselem November 15, 2004 report titled “Through No Fault of Their Own.” The Israeli Committee Against House Demotions (ICAHD) reports a far larger number calling them “the hallmark of the Occupation.” It cites the demolition of around 12,000 Palestinian homes (on their own land in their own country) since June, 1967 to the present, leaving about 70,000 Palestinians “without shelter and traumatized.”

B’Tselem reports three types of demolitions:

– 1. As “clearing operations” to meet Israeli “military needs.”

– 2. Administration demolitions of houses built “without a permit” meaning Israel won’t let Palestinians build homes on their own land.

– 3. Demolitions for punitive reasons against Palestinians “suspected” of attacking Israeli (occupying) soldiers or civilians. In many cases, adjacent homes are destroyed as well.

PCHR reports other destruction of land and property from September 29, 2000 through June, 2005 including 31,500 dunums (31.5 million square meters) of mostly agricultural land in Gaza or 10% of the territory’s arable land total. Israel seized the land for illegal settlement development. In addition, 656 businesses, factories and schools were either destroyed or damaged over this period.

– World Bank data estimates Palestinian unemployment at 40%. The true figure, however, is much higher, at least 70% and likely higher still, while available employment is grossly inadequate to meet essential human needs in most cases. It’s the result of Israeli and western political and economic sanctions imposed on the democratically elected Hamas government after January, 2006. It was the first time ever an occupied people were put under a virtual medieval siege in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention obligating the international community to protect an occupied civilian population. Instead, a state of belligerency was imposed causing chaos and mass human misery, deprivation, starvation, illness and disease so far unaddressed and worsening. Almost none of this is reported in the dominant western media.

As early as June 28, 2002, PCHR reported 40 - 50% of Palestinians were living below the internationally recognized poverty line of $2 a day with the figure in Gaza 81%. Two-thirds of them were called the “new poor,” having been impoverished since the outbreak of the Second Intifada September 29, 2000. Nearly five years later, the figures are far higher.

– Israel currently has over 400,000 Jews living in 121 Jewish-only settlements and 102 “outposts” on stolen Palestinian land violating Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention stating “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population in the territory it occupies.” The number continues growing with deputy Jerusalem mayor Yehoshua Pollack announcing in May 20,000 new homes will be built in Arab East Jerusalem on more land annexed from its legal residents Israel is systematically ethnically cleansing toward making the entire city 100% Jewish.

In addition, 500 more houses will be built in Abu Dis village, southeast of Jerusalem with new home construction aimed at creating territorial continuity between Jerusalem and “Gush Etzion” settlement bloc, south of Bethlehem, and between Jerusalem and “Beit Eil” settlement, north of Ramallah. Toward the same end, the Israeli government allocated $1.5 billion in US taxpayer aid May 13 to developing Jerusalem settlement neighborhoods to reduce an increasing Palestinian population in the city.

At the same time, Palestinians in Salama and Fqaiqees villages, east and south of “Noghohot” settlement, west of Hebron, were ordered to stop building 10 houses and a mosque on their own land in their own country. Then on May 11, Israeli settlers in “Sousia” settlement, south of Hebron, attacked Palestinian farmers on their agricultural land near the settlement without provocation.

End the Illegal Occupation Now

For 40 years under occupation on one-fifth of their original land and nearly 60 years after the “Nakba,” Palestinians are forced to endure the most appalling repression no one should have to face for a single day. Five million of them, including 1.4 million Israeli citizens, are denied all rights afforded Jews only and are subjected to daily abuse and neglect along with regular IDF assaults against which they’re defenseless. The Palestinians suffer for it, and the world community is silent except, like Israel, to shamefully call the victims the victimizers.

Then there are the five million refugees in the Palestinian Diaspora (by some estimates the number is seven million) including 260,000 internally displaced and living inside Israel. Those outside the country are denied the absolute universal “Right of Return” affirmed in UN Resolution 194 passed in December, 1948 resolving that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property….made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”

This “Universal Right” was also established in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as various Geneva Conventions Israel won’t recognize just as it ignores over five dozen UN resolutions condemning or censuring it for its actions against the Palestinians or other Arab people, deploring it for committing them, or demanding, calling on or urging the Jewish state to end them. One of them was UN Resolution 273 passed May, 1949 giving Israel UN membership conditional on its implementing Resolutions 181 of November, 1947 partitioning Palestine 56 - 44% in its favor and 194 passed December, 1948 giving Palestinians their absolute universally accepted “Right of Return.”

From 1948, when Palestinians lost 78% of their homeland, to 1967 when they lost the rest to a hostile foreign occupier, to the present, life in the OPT has been oppressive, intolerable and criminally imposed on a defenseless people helpless against it and unsupported ever since in their courageous struggle for liberation one day they’ll achieve because they’ll never give up till they have what they rightfully and legally deserve. For 40 years under occupation they have no recognized state of their own, no right of citizenship, and no power over their daily lives.

They live in a constant state of fear in the virtual open-air prisons of Gaza and the West Bank under Israel’s racist apartheid laws even the Israeli High Court shamefully upholds. They’re strangled economically and politically; denied free movement in their own country from a structure of roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences and a land-grabbing “Apartheid Separation wall” the World Court in the Hague ruled (14 - 1) is “contrary to international law” because it “destroyed and (illegally) confiscated” property, it greatly restricts Palestinian movement, and it “severely impedes the exercise by the Palestinian people of (the) right to self-determination.”

For its Jewish citizens, Israel is nominally democratic, although far from perfect at the least. For its Arab Muslim and small Christian population, it’s a daily struggle for survival under the harshest conditions of all kinds imaginable those outside the territories and most Jews in Israel can’t possibly understand and too few even try. For 40 brutal years, Israel has illegally controlled all aspects of Palestinian life in the OPT with an iron fist it freely swings on the slightest pretext. It cantonized the indigenous population under deplorable conditions in refugee camps and bantustans surrounded and cut off from all other ones. It rules defenseless people by intimidation and repressive military might. It denies Palestinian people their right to a truly sovereign independent state and won’t allow Muslims, Christians and other non-Jewish legal residents in greater Israel the same rights as Jews including the right of citizenship and safety under one sovereign nation f or everyone entitled to it.

Israel claims it wants peace but never negotiated in good faith to get it. The current so-called “road map” is a cruel hoax going nowhere. It’s as fraudulent as all other phony peace efforts before it. Beginning with Camp David in 1978, the US bribed Egypt with billions in “baksheesh” in return for peace with Israel leaving Palestinians out in the cold. The predictable result was festering anger that exploded in what became the First Intifada in 1987 killing hundreds of Palestinians that finally led to the Oslo Accords and their so-called Declaration of Principles in 1993. Under them, Israel got what it wanted giving back nothing more in return than the right of Palestinians to be Israeli enforcers in their own land. So highly touted and praised when signed, it offered no Right of Return, no independent Palestinian state, no portion of Jerusalem as a capital, and no Palestinian control over their own daily lives free from a foreign occupier. From then till now, things only got worse.

Oslo I led to Oslo II in 1995 that divided the West Bank into the way it exists today in Areas “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D”; “H-1″ and “H-2″ in Hebron; nature reserves (in the OPT) for Jews only; closed military areas; security zones; and “open green spaces” for Jewish-only housing developments in over half of Arab East Jerusalem (slowly being stolen entirely) leaving Palestinians confined to unconnected cantons surrounded by growing Israeli settlements, restricted roads, and all kinds of impediments restricting free movement preventing any semblance of normal daily life.

So-called “permanent status” talks then began in July, 2000 at Camp David resulting in another insulting betrayal. Portrayed in the West as a generous offer in good faith, it was, in fact, just another example of US-Israeli duplicity leaving out entirely what Palestinians most want - a free and sovereign state or a single multi-ethnic one with Jews and Palestinians having equal rights, the Right of Return, a portion of Jerusalem as a capital or the entire city as capital for both, and an end to foreign occupation. All that was offered in exchange for “peace” Israeli-style is what they now have - life locked down in unconnected cantons on mostly scrub land in virtual open-air prisons surrounded by expanding Israeli settlements continuing to encroach on Palestinian lands fast disappearing as Israelis take what they want dunum by dunum.

Again justifiable festering anger erupted into the Second (al-Aqsa Mosque) Intifada in September, 2000 following former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the holy al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem (the Noble Sanctuary for Muslims and Temple Mount for Jews and Christians). It became far worse following elections for Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) seats on January 25, 2006 when, fed up with years of Fatah-led corruption and betrayal, Palestinians democratically elected a Hamas government Israel, Washington and the West acted savagely against since to destroy because its leaders won’t act as a quisling government the way Fatah’s Yasser Arafat and current Fatah Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, and his powerful National Security Advisor and “Gaza warlord,” Mohammed Dahlan (controlling Fatah security forces), were always willing to do and Abbas and especially Dahlan still are. For Hamas’ courage and dedication to their people, the Palestinians have paid dearly ever since and still do. This must end.

It’s long past time people of conscience everywhere take a public stand and demand 40 years of illegal repressive occupation end so Palestinians can finally have what all people have a right to expect and demand - to live freely in their own land the way international law mandates with nations supporting it accepting nothing less.

Palestinians and their legions of supporters worldwide aren’t waiting for conflict resolution that won’t ever come unless enough committed people everywhere demand their leaders act on it. A growing effort is building to convince them by calling for an organized global campaign for boycott, divestment and political and economic sanctions against Israel the same way they developed in the 1980s against the South African apartheid state that finally brought results.

It must include a demand that the world community of nations ends the “last taboo” of silence when it comes to Israel. It must be willing to expose and denounce what no longer can be tolerated that current South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils calls worse than apartheid saying Israel “behav(es) like fascists when they do certain things (like attacking Palestinians with helicopter gunships and tanks).” What better time to do what Kasrils is surely calling for than on the 40th anniversary of the longest continuous occupation in the world that no longer can be tolerated?

Stephen Lendman is a senior contributing editor for Cyrano’s Journal Online (http://www.bestcyrano.org/). He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on The Micro Effect.com each Saturday at noon US central time.