By Eileen Fleming
30 September, 2009
In defense of freedom of the press, conscience and speech; I have seized the liberty to counter Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spinning at the UN on September 24, 2009.
He is "N" and I am "E" and so it begins:
N: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen
Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland. I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.
The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events. Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth.
E: In agreement on principal and the brutal truth is:
Israel has been targeted by at least 65 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by none. [1]
"Aside from the core issues—refugees, Jerusalem, borders—the major themes reflected in the U.N. resolutions against Israel over the years are its unlawful attacks on its neighbors; its violations of the human rights of the Palestinians, including deportations, demolitions of homes and other collective punishments; its confiscation of Palestinian land; its establishment of illegal settlements; and its refusal to abide by the U.N. Charter and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. [2]
"Israel holds the record for ignoring United Nations Security Council resolutions…Since 1968, Israel has violated 32 resolutions that included condemnation or criticism of the governments' policies and actions…The resolutions Israel violated were either about its annexation of East Jerusalem or settlements in the territories. Israel also ignored UN Security Council resolutions that called for Israel to cease using harsh measures against the Palestinian population and to cease expelling Palestinians. [3]
N: Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.
E: I am no fan of the President of Iran-or any politician, for they all get addicted to power and I don't trust any of them; but it is way past time to move on from the useless canard of labeling anyone who denounces the policies of Israel as an anti-Semite.
According to Webster's New World Dictionary a Semite is: 1. a person regarded as descended from Shem 2. a member of any of the peoples speaking a Semitic language, including the Hebrews, Arabs, Assyrians, Phoenicians, etc.
Daniel McGowan, Professor Emeritus at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Founder and Executive Director of Deir Yassin Remembered, wrote:
"For more than fifty years Jewish scholars have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to document each Jewish victim of the Nazi Holocaust. The Nazis were German, obsessed with paperwork and recordkeeping. Yet only 3 million names have been collected and many of them died of natural causes. So why is it heresy to doubt that fewer than 6 million Jews were murdered in the Second World War?
"'Holocaust Denial' might be no more eccentric or no more criminal than claiming the earth is flat, except that the Holocaust itself has been used as the sword and shield in the quest to build a Jewish state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, where even today over half the population is not Jewish.
"The Holocaust narrative allows Yad Vashem, the finest Holocaust museum in the world, to repeat the mantra of 'Never Forget' while it sits on Arab lands stolen from Ein Karem and overlooking the unmarked graves of Palestinians massacred by Jewish terrorists at Deir Yassin. It allows Elie Wiesel to boast of having worked for these same terrorists (as a journalist, not a fighter) while refusing to acknowledge, let alone apologize for, the war crimes his employer committed. It makes Jews the ultimate victim no matter how they dispossess or dehumanize or ethnically cleanse indigenous Palestinian people." [4]
N: Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?
A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler's deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?
E: I cannot see that copy, but here is NO lie:
In Tel Aviv "on March 10, 1948, eleven men had a meeting in the Red House headed by Ben Gurion. The eleven decided to expel one million Palestinians from historical Palestine. No minutes were taken, but many memoirs were written about that fateful meeting. A systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns."-Dr. Ilan Pappe, Israeli born and a graduate of Hebrew University and Oxford is the author of "A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples" which documents the expulsion of Palestinians as an orchestrated crime of ethnic cleansing. [5]
N: This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie? And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie?
E: Scars are tattoos with deeper stories and "Jewish scholar, Marc Ellis, called [it] the ecumenical deal: you Christians look the other way while we bludgeon the Palestinians and build our Jewish state and we won't remind you that Hitler was a good Catholic, a confirmed 'soldier of Christ,' long before he was a bad Nazi." [6]
N: One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father's two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?
E: While my spirituality, love of story-telling and temper are inherited from my Irish, not so good Catholic grandmother, her husband was a Polish Jew and my other two grandparents were from the Ukraine and they all died before I could learn how many of my relatives may have been murdered by the Nazis because good people looked the other way for too very long and did nothing at all.
N: Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.
E: "Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you. Opposition is True Friendship." -William Blake, "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" 1796
N: But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!
E: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? What a disgrace! What a mockery you make of the United Nations as I stated above! And what a lie you perpetuate by denying the facts regarding Israel's Dec-Jan. arrack on Gaza!
One example: The rocket fire directed at Israel was practically "zero in the months preceding the attacks, [and] Hamas [made] repeated efforts to extend the ceasefire indefinitely provided Israel lifted its unlawful blockade of Gaza. Further it was Israel that had seemed to provoke the breakdown of the ceasefire when it launched a lethal attack on Hamas militants in Gaza on November 4, 2008. Israel disregarded this seemingly available diplomatic alternative to war to achieve security on its borders. Recourse to war, even if the facts justify self-defense, is according to international law, a last resort." [7]
N: Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong. History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.
E: What about Israel's Samson Option? The term coined by Israeli leaders like David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, Levi Eshkol and Moshe Dayan in the mid-1960s to describe Israel's deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons against nations whose military attacks threaten its existence, and possibly against other targets as well?
N: This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times. Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated.
E: What about this summer's proposal of a law by Avigdor Lieberman's party that would strip Israeli Palestinians of their citizenship unless they pledge loyalty to a Jewish state, essentially legitimizing Zionist racism?
On June 6, 2009, Hannen Zoubi, the first woman representative of an Arab party to be elected to the Kennest, said, "From 1948 until now, loyalty to Zionism was enforced by policy. With the introduction of the loyalty law, anyone who would say Israel is not a Jewish State and a democracy would be jailed for three years…In 1948, the Jews had 4% of the land and they have confiscated 93% more and we have 3% of our homeland…There are three times more settlements now than in 1995. Today there are 600,000 settlers and 800 checkpoints. Israel negotiates only to block a peace agreement. Hamas won because after 13 years of negotiations the people wanted a change. The rockets are stupid and illegitimate, but they carry a political meaning; we want our freedom…Resisting occupation is legitimate and our goal is not one or two states, our goal is to end the occupation. The goal is freedom, equality and justice." [8]
N: The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization. It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death. The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially. It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.
E: We almost agree; but the depth of reality is that:
"We live in an insecure, uncertain world; it is also a time of opportunity. It is a time to put aside many of the old ways and with creativity and imagination, develop new thinking, ideas, institutions, etc. Young people and women will help this process; they know that Nuclear weapons belong to the cold war thinking, and can never be used. To do so, would be immoral, illogical and destroy the Environment.
"They know our real problems, are: Poverty, Environment, unethical globalization, abuse of Human Rights and International Laws, gender inequality, ethnical/political conflict, State and paramilitary acts of terror…They know that spending trillions on weapons that can never be used, while each day over 30,000 children die of preventable disease, is immoral and unacceptable.
"We are all aware that we are living in an increasing Culture of violence, and if we are to survive we need to build a Culture of Non-violence. Choosing not to kill another human being is the greatest contribution each of us can make to peace. This is not a hard choice when through prayer, meditation, morality, or logic, we come to realize that our lives are sacred as is the life of all our brothers and sisters, and there are always alternatives to violence which work. Human beings are evolving and there is a new consciousness that we must choose non-violence and build strong relationships and community." - Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Mairead Maguire, in Hiroshima on May 2008. [9]
N: What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.
I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances – by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.
But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after a horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind.
E: And fear and paranoia also kill!
In 2007, Naomi Klein, in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism , illuminated those with eyes to see that the military industrial complex was driving Israel's tremendous economic growth, and Israel had the largest GDP growth of any Western country.
"Klein theorized that the source of Israel's tremendous economic growth in the past five years cannot be attributed simply to its encouragement of high tech entrepreneurship and basic science. Its success must be understood, rather, as a product of its ability to use the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as a laboratory for defense industry innovation -- and to showcase their wares."
After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel's economy was devastated, but then came 9/11, and "suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners…Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom--a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war…Israel now sends $1.2 billion in "defense" products to the United States—up dramatically from $270 million in 1999…That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world…Much of this growth has been in the so-called "homeland security" sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry…The key products and services are …precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror… Israel's policy of erecting walls and checkpoints to seal off the occupied territories are also "laboratories where the terrifying tools of our security states are being field-tested Palestinians--whether living in the West Bank or what the Israeli politicians are already calling "Hamasistan"--are no longer just targets. They are guinea pigs." [10]
N: That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction, and the most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?
E: Are the members of the UN also up to the challenge to demand the same of Israel that is demanded of Iran?
From Ashkelon prison in 1987, Mordechai Vanunu asked:
"Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger. Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own government, just as if they have been hijacked and deprived of their freedom and threatened…when governments develop nuclear weapons without the consent of their citizens - and this is true in most cases - they are violating the basic rights of their citizens, the basic right not to live under constant threat of annihilation…Is any government qualified and authorized to produce such weapons?" [11]
Another reason the UN is limp is due to America's exercising its veto 32 times to shield Israel from critical draft resolutions. Between 1972 and 1997, which constituted nearly half of the total of 69 U.S. vetoes cast since the founding of the U.N.
On July 26, 1973, a draft resolution affirmed the rights of the Palestinians and established provisions for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories as embodied in previous General Assembly resolutions. But, Washington killed this international effort to end Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. [12]
N: Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism? Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?
E: Many people in America believe Bush stole a presidential election too, and those who live in glass houses should not throw stones, so I say to you:
You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.- Lewis Mumford, 1946
N: Ladies and Gentlemen, the jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.
For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks.
We heard nothing – absolutely nothing – from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one. In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare.
You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent. Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties.
E: I stated above many reasons why the UN is limp, and I cannot ignore such ignorance!
Why even a little one such as me wrote in 2005:
"Since the cease-fire agreement of February 8, 2005, seventy-five Palestinians, including seventeen innocent children, and fourteen Israelis, including two innocent children, have been murdered. Two thousand Palestinians arrested; 2,306 checkpoints imposed, and 8,700 acres of Palestinian land confiscated by the Israeli government…settlers attacked Palestinians 394 times since the cease-fire agreement…[and] they are a cult that has been allowed to get out of control. The Israeli government enticed and encouraged them to settle in illegal land, and this is what it has come to! And yet, the illegal settlements continue!
"And, what a farce the so-called disengagement in Gaza was. The Israeli government still controls all access to Gaza by land, sea, and air. Dr. Mustafa Bargouthi, documented that only 25 of over 150 settlements will be dismantled, and only 8,475 of over 436,000 settlers [less than 2 percent of settlers] have been evacuated. Meanwhile, [in less than a year] 12,800 new settlers have moved into the West Bank--50 percent more settlers than were evacuated.
"This is no withdrawal, this is BS! Until Palestinians have control of Gaza's borders and a guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank, it is not a withdrawal; it's just BS propaganda! And Gaza is less than 6 percent of the occupied territories, and that leaves 94 percent of Palestinian territories under the boot of the IDF. The corruption in the PA government and hot tempers from those under occupation are a powder keg that's getting ready to blow! What's it going to take to wake the world up to the fact that most of our problems with radical Islamist fundamentalist militants leads us back to the conflict in Israel and Palestine?
"What's it going to take before the International community gets it together and insists, in unity, upon the upholding of international law as the rule we all live by? And that includes Israel and America, too, for both ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I wonder, what's the point of signing on, but then not doing it?
"What's it going to take to wake up the legions of blind U.S. Christian Zionists to their indifference to the misery of their sisters and brothers in Israel and Palestine? Their blind allegiance to the Israeli government has allowed our best friend in the world to become a big bully. What's it going to take to break through the ignorance that hard-earned U.S. tax dollars are being used to continue the occupation and apartheid wall?" [13]
And let us never forget that the most brutal acts of terrorism upon innocent people happened when America bombed Hiroshima and two hundred thousand lives were vaporized within twenty minutes!
Let us never forget that violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion which began on March 2003- is now estimated to be 1,339,771 [14]
And we must never forget that the brutal sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990's-by the UN who was flogged into acquiescence by the USA- killed more than ½ million Iraqis-mostly children-and according to UNICEF and WHO it was due to the sanctions which choked off the country's ability to produce clean water and dispense simple medicines!
N: Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers. That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas. We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave.
Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way. Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.
E: Have you no conscience?
And by the way, Jeff Halper, American-Israeli, Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions illuminated me that "Israel is not a democracy. It is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control."
And I ask just where would 1.5 million people receiving flyers over their homes and phone calls escape to when they are refused access out of their open air prison?
Israel denied "a refugee option to the civilian population trapped in the tiny, crowded combat zone that constitutes the Gaza Strip. Israel closed all crossings during the period of the Gaza War, allowing only Gaza residents with foreign passports to leave. It is rare in modern warfare that civilians are not given the option to become refugees…The importance of this issue is reinforced by many accounts of the widespread post-traumatic stress experienced by the civilians in Gaza, especially children that comprise 53% of the population." [15]
N: By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth! What a perversion of justice! Delegates of the United Nations, will you accept this farce? Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.
E: The statehood of Israel was contingent upon upholding the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights!
I can go down the list and cite the Jewish States failures, but Article 13 will suffice:
Article 13:
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
And regarding racism and Zionism, I reply by quoting Dr. Ilan Pappe:
"In 1948 the mechanism of denial and ethnic cleansing as an IDEOLOGY, not a policy but a formula began. When Zionism began in the 19th century it was meant to be a safe haven for Jews and to help redefine Judaism as a national movement, not just a religion. Nothing wrong with either of those goals!
"But by the late 19th Century it was decided the only way these goals could be achieved was by ridding the indigenous population and it became an evil ideology.
"Israeli Jewish life will never be simple, good, or worth living while this ideology of domination, exclusiveness and superiority is allowed to continue. The mind set today is that unless Israel is an exclusive Jewish State, Palestinians will continue to be obstacles."[16]
N: If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why. When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense.
E: If the UN rejects the Goldstone Report Orwellian spin will win and that body will have no legitimacy at all!
But, perhaps, Bibi hasn't read it all; for the report recommends that the U.N. Security Council require the government of Israel to launch appropriate independent investigations into the findings of the report within three months as well as Palestinian leadership to investigate alleged war crimes, for militants must also respect humanitarian law, and it calls for the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on humanitarian grounds!
N: The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us –my people, my country - of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty!
E: What a travesty of the truth you propagandize!
On December 28, 2008, Haaretz reported:
"Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about… Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
"The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops.
"While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the operation, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, that Israel had decided to strike at Hamas. In parallel, Israel continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip." [17]
N: Ladies and Gentlemen, all of Israel wants peace.
E: Then END the Occupation and honor equal human rights for ALL!
N: Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace.
E: Then END the Occupation and honor equal human rights for ALL!
N: In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples – a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it. We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers.
E: And Zionists grabbed more than they were allotted which led to 750,000 indigenous Palestinians becoming refugees, who are still denied the right to return to their homeland or be compensated for what was stolen!
"What Israel is attempting to demand is that I must be loyal to the Zionist dream. Loyalty to a state should require obeying the laws but Israel does not take our citizenship seriously. We cannot accept their Zionist dream, we have our dreams. We cannot accept the Zionist vision, we have our vision. I am a citizen of Israel but I am not an Israeli and I am not Jewish. Israel did not give me my identity and Israel cannot be a Jewish state and a democracy."- Hannen Zoubi, Arab member of the Kennest. [18]
N: Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city - in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem. We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland.
E: And Jeremiah reminded the stiff-necked people: "Peace, peace, peace they say where there is no peace!"
N: As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity. But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel.
E: END the Occupation, honor equal human rights for all and hear the truth from a member of the Knesset:
"Israel negotiates only to block a peace agreement. Hamas won because after 13 years of negotiations the people wanted a change. The rockets are stupid and illegitimate, but they carry a political meaning; we want our freedom and we do not accept the way Fatah negotiates. The dispute between Hamas and Fatah is not over power-it is about two different political ways. I cannot be pro-Hamas, but they were democratically elected and are now more powerful than in 2006. We are very critical of Abbas and we don't think he cares about the Palestinians in Gaza, he just wants to keep his position. The people know he put down spontaneous demonstrations in the West Bank in support of Gaza. Resisting occupation is legitimate and our goal is not one or two states, our goal is to end the occupation. The goal is freedom, equality and justice.''- Hannen Zoubi [Ibid]
N: That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv. We want peace. I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror.
E: Great idea, but let's not stop there! Let us evolve and demilitarize the world, abolish WMD and War and feed, house, clothe and provide health care to the poor!
N: Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them. Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.”
I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachability of mankind" is for once proven wrong. I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.
E: Churchill also said:
"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack...And never, never, never, never, ever, never give up."
So, as the only reporter in the world who has been documenting Mordechai Vanunu's FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and Conviction in the 'democracy' of Israel since it began in 2006-the very day Hamas was democratically elected, I reiterate: it is way past time that we the people in "the land of the free and home of the brave" learn this history and demand our government WAKE UP that our best friend in the world is a big bully and lies to US!
Exactly 23 years ago, to this very day-September 30, 1986, Vanunu was kidnapped from Rome by order of Shimon Peres, who ordered the Mossad, to "Bring the son of a bitch back here" because he had documented on film that Israel was manufacturing WMD underground in the Negev.
In 1963, Peres was Israel's Deputy Minister of Defense and he lied to President Kennedy during a White House meeting.
Kennedy told Peres, “You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?”
Peres repLIED, “I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first.”
In 2005, Vanunu told me:
"Did you know that President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons?
"In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.'
"Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection.
"The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona.
"The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago.
"Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.
"When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to '69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.
"Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year."
N: In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.
E: As Bob Dylan sang:
"The neighborhood bully just lives to survive. Well, he's surrounded by [politicians] who all want peace, they pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease. Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep…Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim, that he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him, He's the neighborhood bully."
But I have a radical hope that the times have already changed and bully's can be brought to their knees, and I know that the only hope worth anything at all is the hope that comprehends that "HOPE has two children. The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
It has been said many times before; if you want peace, give people justice, and as the psalmist warned:
"Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies! Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it" -Psalm 34:13-14
And I end my encounter with Netanyahu's spin at the UN with a spin of a Robert Johnson tune that has welled up within:
I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees.
I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees.
Begged the lord above for mercy, save us all if you please!
I went down to the crossroads, I looked east and I looked west,
Down at the crossroads, fell down on my knees,
Begged the lord above for mercy, Wake Us up as you please.
1. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
2. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
stats/un.html#source
3. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/scr.html
4. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1440&Itemid=224
5. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=763&Itemid=184
6. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1440&Itemid=224
7. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD
/meast/09/29/un.gaza.report/
8. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1307&Itemid=221
9. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1354&Itemid=222
10. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=860&Itemid=198
11. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1354&Itemid=222
12. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
us_ints/p-neff-veto.html
13. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1048&Itemid=205
14. http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq
15. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/
meast/09/29/un.gaza.report/
16. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=763&Itemid=184
17. http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050426.html
18. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1307&Itemid=221
Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again."-Tom Paine
Eileen Fleming, Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
A Feature Correspondent for The Palestine Telegraph and Arabisto.com
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
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