Rioting settlers forced a Palestinian family from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah out of their home on Tuesday, after the district court denied the residents' appeal to remain on the premises.

Shortly after the verdict was passed dozens of settlers stormed into the house with hired security guards, and demanded that the family vacate immediately.

Whereas such actions on the part of the Secretary of State, and/or the US Ambassador would be unfortunate, our concern is that even if by some chance the Goldstone Report does reach the UN Security Council, the US will use its veto to prevent the Security Council from referring the report to the International Criminal Court, thereby preventing the initiation of an investigation into the allegations made in the report, as required by article 53 of the Rome Statute.

Strategically, Israel is obviously a huge burden for the US, making relations with Muslim or Arab nations much harder, and undermining any attempt to portray American intervention in, say, Iraq or Afghanistan, as beneficent rather than predatory. It’s a big drain on the Treasury, as Israel consumes a vast amount of military and non-military aid.

Anyone listening to Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas these days would think the man is a paragon of democracy and liberty. Abbas, who has remained at the helm of the PA despite the expiration of his term in office, has been exhorting Palestinians to prepare for “presidential and legislative elections” which he called a “constitutional imperative.”

However, a deeper look into Abbas’s behaviors at home shows that the PA Chairman is not really interested in holding true, free and honest elections. After all, actions speak louder than words.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, sought to deflect the anger and disappointment of pro-western Arab states today after backing Israel's position that it did not need to freeze settlement activity as a prelude to resuming peace talks with the Palestinians.

Jews took over another house in Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday in what Palestinians say is a systematic campaign to drive them out and strengthen Israel's hold on all of Jerusalem.

The house, built 10 years ago by the al-Kurd family, is the seventh this year to be awarded to Jewish settlers following legal battles in the Israeli courts, where the Palestinians say a fair hearing is impossible to obtain.

We enjoyed summer weather in Jerusalem until about a week ago. The days were hot, the evenings were cool…. but not cold. There wasn’t a sign of rain. This literally changed overnight as cold winds and rain turned the clock into winter mode.

That’s when the Israeli authorities decided to destroy the tent that an evicted family was living in.

So let's decide: Who was the victim of Operation Cast Lead, them or us?

No question - us. We Israelis were the victims and we still are. In fact, our victimhood is getting worse by the day. The Goldstone report was the real war crime. The Goldstone report, the UN debates, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross, B'Tselem, the traitorous soldiers of Breaking the Silence and the Rabin Academy - those were the true crimes against humanity. This is what's meant by "war is hell."

It is we who've been going through hell from the war in Gaza. It is we who've been suffering.

Gazans? Suffering? What's everybody talking about?

We let them eat, don't we?

That the Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen to conduct an international campaign against Justice Goldstone and his report need not surprise us. Israel refused to cooperate with the UN investigation; long before its conclusions were published, Netanyahu had set in motion a campaign to deny and denigrate them. More dispiriting, and of greater political consequence, is the pitiful and humiliating response of the Obama Administration. The "fierce urgency of now" apparently required that Washington join Tel Aviv in discrediting the Goldstone Report, and with it the UN inquiry.

Teitel is also charged with planting several explosive devices in 2006 and 2007 directed at Arabs, Christians and police; sending a bomb hidden in a Purim gift basket to a messianic Jewish family that left a 15-year-old boy seriously injured; and planting a pipe bomb in 2008 near the Jerusalem home of Zeev Sternhell, a prominent left-wing academic.

Some Israeli commentators suggested that had Teitel limited his attacks to Palestinians, Israeli authorities would have left the investigations into the attacks on Palestinians grow cold.

“Teitel’s fatal error was turning on other Jews,” Ha’aretz columnist Gideon Levy wrote Monday. “Had he been satisfied with acts of murder against the Palestinian population, he would never have been caught.”

The Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) reports that nearly 80 truckloads of goods entered Gaza from Israel yesterday through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

The majority of the trucks contained fruit, cooking oil, dairy products, flour, frozen meat, tea and coffee.

A series of controversial Israeli films are provoking outrage and plaudits in equal measure at the London Film Festival.

The best documentary award has gone to one of the year's most controversial films.

Defamation is a polemic by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. In his expose of America's Anti-Defamation League (ADL), he claims anti-Semitism is being exaggerated for political purposes. He argues that American Jewish leaders travel around the world exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to silence criticism of Israel.

However, 'sauce for the goose' etc. and I have decided that from here on out, I will identify all defenders of Israel's actions in Palestine and all those who are fighting to block the bringing of war crimes charges against Israel for Operation CAST LEAD as "Goldstone Deniers".

I feel that this is perfectly appropriate because the "Holocaust Denier" label is used to claim that the denier is trying to conceal NAZI Germany's atrocities. Therefore, those who are trying to conceal Israel's atrocities should be accorded the same treatment. After all, they are indeed trying to deny the atrocities which took place inside Palestine.

Netanyahu mentioned the steps taken by his government to this end: "We did things that have not been done by any prior government. We removed hundreds of road blocks and checkpoints. We have taken steps to ease their lives and the Palestinian economy. The result of this is unprecedented prosperity in the Palestinian Authority."

We have recently witnessed a number of Government Ministers cancel trips abroad for fear they would be prosecuted as war criminals. This is the reality of the State of Israel, it is a state that is under the control of criminals. Just what are they expected to do?

Netanyahu Scores Victory as US Abandons All Settlement Demands
Peace Process Likely Dead After Clinton Touts Israel’s Commitment

mary rizzo
Mary Rizzo will be interviewed by Lauren Booth again
on Press TV’s show about Palestine (seasonal viruses permitting!)
There are some great guests, including the absolutely wonderful
Brenda Heard of Friends of Lebanon with Hussein, a child victim of a
toy-shaped cluster bomb.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of an Israeli position that fell short of a total settlement freeze moved the U.S. closer to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stance, while leaving Palestinians unimpressed and unwilling to resume peace talks.

Following a landmark referendum, students at the UK's Sussex University in Brighton this week voted to boycott Israeli goods.

The city of Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world and it has a new defender: Texas Governor Rick Perry.

I know what you are thinking, shouldn't I be referring to these as Israeli war crimes? Well no, to do so would impugn the character of 2 million Israeli Arabs who had nothing to do with the Gaza slaughter. You see Arabs are not allowed to serve in the Israeli military.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit out Sunday at the Palestinian Authority over its demand for a complete Israeli settlement freeze before embarking on any fresh peace talks, saying he hoped the Palestinians would "get a grip" and drop this precondition.

Voters are being urged to contact their representatives (U.S. House of Representatives 202.225.3121 or www.house.gov; U.S. Senate 202.224.3121 or www.senate.gov the Congressional switchboard) to oppose H.Res.867.

"When we are in conflict with an enemy, we gather information about them," Haaretz quoted Ya'alon as saying on Saturday.

Dozens of right-wing activists on Sunday confronted a Swedish journalist who accused Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs from Palestinians, shouting at him upon his arrival in Israel at Ben Gurion airport.

The rightists waved banners bearing slogans against Donald Bostrom, who will be a guest of the Dimona Media Conference on Monday, and called for him to be expelled from Israel.

Is she on drugs or booze? ……The things she has been saying definitely indicate one or the other. Perhaps V I Ps should have their luggage checked before entering a country…. at least this one in particular.

Every time I think of 9/11
I see burning flesh dripping off the bones of Iraqi children in Fallujah
Now Gaza
I tend to memorialize the forgotten
The collateral damage eclipsing our unpunished crimes
Maybe it’s because I’ a numbers guy
Because if I had a dollar for every time an Iraqi died since 2003 I’d be a millionaire

“I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on the top they are just as intolerant and cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath. I regret this situation very much because my sympathy has always been on their side.” – Harry Truman

Many Zionist Jews are angry and frustrated these days following the ample attention given to the Goldstone report around the world.

This is why huge amounts of classical Zionist lies about the Nazi-like winter onslaught against the Gaza Strip are being pumped through the internet.

Israel's premier savoured a victory on Sunday after Washington hailed his "unprecedented" position on settlements and backed his call for peace talks to resume without the construction freeze sought by the Palestinians.

Pointing an accusing finger at the United States, the Palestinians on Sunday said Washington's backing for Israeli refusal to halt Jewish settlement expansion had killed any hope of reviving peace negotiations soon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, buoyed by new-found support from the Obama administration, urged the Palestinians to "get a grip" and drop their settlement freeze precondition for restarting talks suspended since December.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday night rejected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's demand that Israel freeze all settlement activity as a precondition to negotiations.

Stopping construction in the settlements "has never been a precondition, it has always been an in issue within the negotiations," Clinton said at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday is poised to pass a nonbinding resolution condemning a controversial U.N. report on alleged Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip that has become a major complication in Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's diplomacy in the Middle East this weekend.

An umbrella organization for Israeli Arab groups accused Israel on Saturday of perpetrating "ethnic cleansing" in Jerusalem, in the wake of Israel's quelling of riots by Arab youths on the Temple Mount.

"Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, and the defense of Al-Aqsa and of East Jerusalem is an obligation for the whole Palestinian people, and for the Arab nation," the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee said in a statement.

In the wake of the Goldstone Report and amid the nuclear threat from Iran, 10 state senators, through the American-Israel Friendship League and the National Conference of State Legislatures, are on a study tour of Israel.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says the Goldstone Gaza report paves the way for indictment of Israeli officials by international courts.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has meanwhile demanded that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights drop support for Goldstone Gaza report and spare no efforts to convince his European counterparts to oppose its adoption. His attempts have however proved futile.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Saturday demanded a total Israeli freeze on work on West Bank settlements after a "difficult" meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who is struggling to revive stagnant peace talks.

As his family clashes with workers from Israel's water authority, employed to rip up the irrigation systems for their tomato plants, and the Israeli soldiers protecting them, Yosri Jaber, a school teacher, explains: "These clashes with the Israeli authorities are a regular thing; they happen every two to three months or so.

"The Israelis don't allow us to water our plants. We pay them four shekels ($1) for every cubic metre of water.

"We have a water regulator, which we share with the eight other houses to irrigate our plants and get water to our homes. We've paid for it but we can't use it."

Local sources told PIC correspondent that in addition to singing and dancing in circles the extremist settlers performed Talmudic rituals outside the house of al-Ghawi family, who were evicted from their house by the Israeli authorities and their house given to Jewish settlers.

The extremist settlers celebrated under the protection the Israeli occupation police and special forces who also participated in the rituals.

It was not only Yitzhak Rabin that was murdered that day, it was the Oslo Agreements as well. Since that time the right wing has usurped power in Israel making the concept of a real peace nothing more than a distant dream, but one that we hold onto and work towards nevertheless.

Despite Israeli denials, Muslim officials on the ground confirm Jewish extremists are escalating plans to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque, writes Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

International human rights groups have raised concern over a proposed non-binding resolution in the U.S. House Representatives which would call on the White House to oppose any future endorsement or consideration of Judge Richard Goldstone’s "Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict."

If there is suspicion about Jews working at the CIA, it's understandable. Let's face it. If Jews, especially religious Jews, are feared to be working for Israel, we deserve it.

For we have done so much to make the suspicions seem justified.

No, I'm not talking about Jonathan Pollard. One lousy, rotten apple shouldn't spoil the barrel for the rest of us. What I am talking about is how the Jewish community has seen the Pollard case and reacted to the Pollard case.

In a word, the Jewish community's behavior has been nothing short of shameful.

The most interesting aspect of the debate surrounding the Goldstone report has attracted no attention. The cabinet and its supporters are dealing only with the question of damage control as far as image is concerned, and how to deflect international criticism. The question of what really happened in Gaza is considered to be tainted with anti-Semitism. The ever-quiet conscience of the average Israeli deflects the question effortlessly. But as time passes the legal aspect will be increasingly shunted aside, and it will be the moral dimension of the report that is etched in our consciousness and that of the world.

Everyone understands that the army's opposition to a probe of the accusations against it can have only one reason: There is something to hide.

Rep. Jane Harman , a California Democrat long involved in intelligence issues, was overheard on a 2005 National Security Agency wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

In return, the Israeli agent pledged to help lobby for Harman to become chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.

ANTI- SEMITISM in the USA is at its lowest level ever.
Survey says….. only 12 percent of Americans hold anti-Semitic views…

‘Mr. Anti-Semitism’ himself seems pleased (even takes credit for it), but it could usher in the end of his high profile, high paying job. The very man that wants Americans (Jews in particular) to believe that an anti-Semite lurks under every bed in America will soon have to find some new songs to sing…. or else…..

"The Foreign Ministry unveiled a new plan this week: Paying talkbackers to post pro-Israel responses on websites worldwide. A total of NIS 600,000 (roughly $150,000) will be earmarked to the establishment of an “Internet warfare” squad.

BRANDS & LABELS TO BOYCOTT

The UK Guardian says former Israeli premier Ehud Olmert could face arrest on war crime charges if he visits Britain. The paper quoted lawyer Daniel Machover as saying: "Neither Olmert nor Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister during the Gaza offensive..would enjoy immunity from prosecution for alleged breaches of the Geneva conventions.”

Shalev accused the council of constant and exclusive discrimination against Israel and said that more than half of the council's meetings have dealt with condemning Israel for one reason or another.

Shalev also said that the council has approved more resolutions critical of Israel than resolutions criticizing any other UN member country.

In a statement on its Web site, the Anti-Defamation League says blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ...

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has praised a UN proposal to regulate Iran's uranium enrichment programme.

What’s so complicated? I replied. Just like they threaten to sue IDF officers, we need to sue them. Every journalist who refers to us as “war criminals” or “child killers” needs to know that the next day his newspaper will be slapped with a million pound lawsuit on behalf of the State of Israel.

What will we gain from it? Someone else asked.

Newspapers don’t like lawsuits, I said. It takes time, it costs money, the paper’s insurance company raises their premium, stockholders are wondering why they got into this mess to begin with, and the editor in chief is infuriated after he discovers that he needs to waste two days on testifying in respect to an article that he didn’t even read.

Too many American Jewish groups have their heads in the sand when it comes to the damage the settlement project has done to Israel. They embrace those on the American religious right who endorse settlement as a religious principle, without realizing that the influence of these groups is declining. They talk to each other or to themselves, but not to their own children on campus who must deal with this topic every day. Yet those of us who do the actual work of making Israel's case in local communities know full well the damage the settlement issue causes in grassroots America.

The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that Israel had prevented, for the fourth time, the transfer of medical supplies and equipment to the besieged Gaza Strip.

The supplies were supposed to be allowed into the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom (Karem Abu Salem) Crossing.

The WHO added that in spite of conducting the needed coordination, Israel still prevented the entry of the desperately needed supplies.

You can tell which story is sacred and which one isn't by the reaction you get when you commit sacrilege. Nowhere in the West is anyone being brought up on charges of denying the crucifixion-resurrection. People can blithely doubt the crucifixion and the resurrection and the virgin birth and the trinity other tenets of Christianity and still work in the great universities of the West. In fact, if they don't doubt these things, they might have a harder time getting hired. Admit at a faculty luncheon that you don't doubt the resurrection or the virgin birth, and you'll get some very strange looks.

The United Nations is calling on Israel to immediately stop demolishing Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem.The UN says 60,000 Palestinians may be at risk of being forcibly evicted.Israel says the houses are built without construction permits, which Palestinians say are almost impossible to obtain.

It is not easy to remain a racist oppressor and it is getting harder to keep deflecting the critics by asking them to focus on nonexistent threats (like Iran). The Human Rights Council accuses Israel of war crimes in Gaza and the Israeli government panics and deals with it as a public relations challenge!. Israeli human rights groups challenge Israel home demolitions in Jerusalem and a UN experts’ panel names Israel as profiting from Ivory Coast blood diamonds. Heads are buried in the sand. Israeli leaders are either foregoing trips (to Europe where they may be arrested for war crimes) or going to speak and heckled and challenged by human rights activists (e.g. Olmert’s tour of the US). Israel is being called to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The PSC and BIG call for a comprehensive boycott of Israeli Goods

A personal boycott of Israeli products helps remove consumers from complicity with Israeli apartheid. As ethical consumers we can conduct our boycott ‘where we are at’, in whatever town or country. International networks and co-ordinated activities are proliferating. PSC branches engage in regular boycott activities across the UK.

Ten Palestinians including a 70-year-old woman, seven women and two journalists were attacked by Israeli forces south of Hebron on Thursday, local sources said.

The incident began when Israeli soldiers and armored vehicles demolished a water reservoir belonging to Al-Baqa'a resident Mohammad Mustafa Jaber.

Highly respected Judge Richard Goldstone, who is both a Jew and a Zionist, rightfully condemns Israel's policy of collective punishment of a people under effective occupation, destroying their means to live a dignified life as well as the trauma caused by the kind of military intervention the Israeli government called Operation Cast Lead

“Such attacks are evidently aimed at provoking renewed hostilities to undermine the security and stability in south Lebanon,” the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a news release, in which it also voiced concern at Israel’s return fire of artillery shells on Monday.