Tag Archives: gaza

A matter of perspective – Photoshopped beheading isn’t necessarily permanent

Posted on September 4, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

People tell one another, or are told, and naturally come to believe there’s something barbaric about beheading as a form of execution.  Which is merely an example of cultural brainwashing, as opposed to the reality of barbarism.  I’m trying to recall how many British nobility I could actually name who exited the vehicle by that method.  A fair lot.

And as long as the French used the death penalty, up well into the 20th Century, the guillotine was the tool of choice because headsman skills with an axe were iffy, at best.  But the while French have never been precisely non-barbaric, barbarism isn’t one of the traits everyone else likes least about them.

Anyway, so these folks in the Middle East who aren’t Israeli citizens are possibly beheading some people they want to kill instead of shooting them or blowing their arms and legs off with artillery.  That probably isn’t a defining behavior separating barbarians from non-barbarians.  As nearly as I can tell everyone in the Middle East, including Americans visiting there, US military, Israeli, Muslim, you name it, is either barbaric, or is closely related to barbarians by blood.

So, Steven Sotloff.  Maybe the what?  Islamists?  Killed this Israeli with a dual-citizenship that included the United States and stood a middling good chance of also being a Mossad agent.  Sotloff.  Maybe.

If Sotloff’s dead, and if he’s dead from being beheaded, and if it was Islamists who beheaded him, well, heck.  They thought he was an Israeli!  A Mossad agent!  What would any non-Israeli in that part of the world do if they caught a Mossad agent?  They’d be crazy not to.

But you can’t trust anything that comes out of that part of the world.  A growing body of opinion among conspiracy theorists has both of those recent orange jumpsuited beheadings as photoshopped phonies.  Among those believing that, a lot also believe the studio where the beheading video drama was created is in Israel.  And that if anyone is dead as a result, the cadavers are in Israel.

 If, in fact, these individuals are dead, then it is up to the Israeli government to return their bodies. If, as is much more likely the case, at least one or these videos is a hoax, a hoax with dead victims, a hoax with live victims, but certainly a hoax, no doubt about that, some authority inside Israel, preferably one not directly involved in the hoax itself, should investigate, should such an authority exist at some point in the future, which we find unlikely.

We have had so many hoaxes all out of Israel, all from the same people, all sent through the same scammers in the US, that getting to the bottom of this one took less than five minutes. Think “Rita Katz.”

This is the third outing for the designer orange silk “jump suits” thus far. Last year they were the rage in Tel Aviv shops, today they are all about beheadings. There is one problem, not that Alex Jones and InfoWars reporting the Foley beheading was a phony, a position the US State Department is now reconsidering as well, warned us off the story.

The problem is “Site Intelligence,” better known to insiders as “bin Laden Studios,” the Israeli video fakery group that kept turning out bin Laden videos, short fat bin Ladens, old ones, young ones, then, eventually, only audio tapes, as though bin Laden, confirmed to have died in 2001 after denying, according to the CIA, all involvement in 9/11, had magically come back to life.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/09/02/make-israel-stop-beheading-journalists/

So, the burning question is, is a fake beheading still barbaric?  Is it only barbaric if Muslims fake the video, or is it also barbaric if Israeli photoshoppers trump it up for reasons almost certainly manipulative at a level nearing barbarianhood?

Nevermind all those 40,000 people with destroyed homes in Gaza, the be-leggings and be-armings of children, women, old folks, even [gasp] regular non-Hamas men killed and maimed of late.

I’m only interested in barbarism of a particular nature.  I want it clean and well lighted, performed by Arab-looking people.

Old Jules

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Veterans Today: Israel, ISIL have a lot in common

Posted on August 31, 2014 by | 4 comments

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/08/28/israel/

By Kevin Barrett, Veterans Today Editor, for Press TV

Israel calls itself a “Jewish state”. Al-Baghdadi’s terrorist group calls itself “Islamic State.”

Both of these terrorist entities define themselves in terms of rigidly sectarian ideologies. Both are squatting on stolen land. Both brutally trample on the rights of those they consider lesser beings – simply because they hold “second-class” religious views. And both proudly commit horrendous atrocities.

The world’s Jews are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with so-called State of Israel, which purports to represent them without ever having asked their permission. (Israel defines itself as the so-called state of, by and for all Jews, and gives all Jews everywhere the automatic right to Israeli citizenship – while denying citizenship to most non-Jews, including the vast majority of Palestinians, simply because they profess another religion.)

Ex-liberal-Zionist Anthony Lerman, writing in the New York Times, has just written a political obituary entitled “The End of Liberal Zionism.” Like many other Jews, Lerman recognizes that it is becoming impossible for liberal, tolerant, reasonable Jewish people to continue to support the so-called Jewish State of Israel.

Saturday’s New York Times also featured an ad placed by anti-Zionist Jews attacking “Israel’s wholesale efforts to destroy Gaza and the murder of more than 2,000 Palestinians, including many hundreds of children.” The ad was signed by 237 survivors and descendants of survivors of the Nazi holocaust.

Last week Henk Zenoli, a Dutchman who helped save a Jewish boy from Nazis during World War II – and whose father died in a Nazi concentration camp – returned his “Righteous Among Nations” award to Israel. He said the award, given to non-Jews who helped Jews during the holocaust, no longer meant anything given the “murder carried out by the [so-called] State of Israel.”

Zenoli has felt Israel’s murderousness personally. He has lost six relatives– so far – to Zionist butchers during this summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza.

Today, the real holocaust is in Occupied Palestine.

Just as thoughtful Jews and their friends are horrified by the crimes of the so-called State of Israel, the vast majority of Muslims are appalled by the so-called Islamic State. (Unlike Israel, which still enjoys a fair amount of Jewish support, Islamic State has virtually no support from any of the world’s established Muslim nations, scholars, or religious organizations.)

Zionist propaganda outlet Fox News has been peddling the big lie that Muslims support so-called Islamic State. Media watchdog group MediaMatters.org, in its article “Muslim Leaders Have Roundly Denounced Islamic State, But Conservative Media Won’t Tell You That,” proves the contrary.

Ironically, while Jews are turning against the so-called Jewish State, and Muslims denounce Islamic State, the two terrorist entities seem to be working together. According to some reports, hundreds of ISIL terrorists have been treated in Israeli hospitals. And while the so-called Jewish State of Israel supports Islamic State’s attempts to overthrow the government of Syria, Islamic State for its part opposes resistance against Zionism while instead working to destabilize Israel’s enemies.

Since the self-styled Jewish State and Islamic State have so much in common – including sectarianism, atrocities, destabilization of neighbors, and squatting on stolen land – and share the same enemies (reasonable Jews and Muslims, and reasonable people in general) – perhaps they should merge into a single entity: ISrael. Netanyahu and al-Baghdadi could serve as co-caliphs, just as Rome sometimes had two emperors.

ISrael would be a paradise for people who like to shoot children and cut off heads. It would be a wonderful place to be a fanatically intolerant bigot loathing lesser beings who profess religious incorrectness.

In ISrael, self-styled chosen people who despise outsiders as cattle would rub shoulders with fanatics who see everyone but themselves as heretics worthy of death. The two groups would get along famously. al-Baghdadi would feel perfectly at home in an Israeli settlement, where he could occasionally venture outside the barbed wire with his rifle to shoot “heretics,” wreck their homes and uproot their olive trees. He might even be able to talk the Zionist settlers into beheading their Palestinian victims rather than just shooting or beating them to death.

While the Zionists of the so-called Jewish State and the Takfiris of Islamic State work together to make Jews and Muslims look like barbarians and war criminals, reasonable Jews and Muslims – along with well-wishers from other religions – need to work together to put an end to such nonsense.

They need not reject the notion of religious governance. If Jews wish to live according to Jewish law, and Muslims according to Islamic law, they should be allowed, indeed encouraged, to do so.

In Islamic Spain, the Ottoman Empire, and other classical Islamic societies, each religious group would organize itself according to its own laws and control its own affairs. Muslims did not force Christians and Jews to follow Muslim rules while the Christians and Jews did not impose their laws and lifestyles on Muslims.

There is no reason why similarly tolerant, pluralistic religious governance cannot happen today.

But modern states have a totalitarian outlook. They try to force everyone to live the same way and follow the same rules. That is why modern states, be they a so-called Jewish State like Israel, an Islamic State like al-Baghdadi’s, fascist or communist states like Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s USSR, or even so-called liberal democratic states like Europe and the USA, have not yet learned to grant their citizens the level of pluralistic autonomy enjoyed by the religious communities of medieval Andalusia.

Fanatical, intolerant, sectarian, human-rights-abusing “religious” regimes like Netanyahu’s and al-Baghdadi’s are simply extreme examples of the totalitarianism at the root of the modern nation state. So reasonable Jews and Muslims must abjure the siren song of monolithic secularism, even as they reject the defamation of their religions by the vicious extremists of the “Jewish” and “Islamic” states.

Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=318030

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Israeli arms manufacturer murders Arizona gun range instructor

Posted on August 28, 2014 by | 4 comments

‘Bullets And Burgers’ Gun Range Closed Indefinitely Following The Uzi Killing Of Instructor By Girl Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1438430/bullets-and-burgers-gun-range-closed-indefinitely-following-the-uzi-killing-of-instructor-by-girl/#LS3eFux5O4YiXBhg.99

Hi readers.

The Israeli manufacturers of Uzi submachine guns murdered a US citizen in Arizona recently by manufacturing and exporting to the United States instrument of his death.  The shooting instructor is evidently not of dual Israeli/US citizenship and it is not known at this time whether he was anti-Semitic in favor of Israel, or anti-Semitic in favor of Palestinians.

Israelis need to be cautioned the US will not sit by indefinitely as the target of this sort of terrorism-by-weapon-sale.  If it continues the US, the Prez should inform them, will begin sending thousands of anti-aircraft and ground-to-air missiles to Palestine to form a defensive shield similar to Iron Dome protecting Israel’s illegal colonies on Palestinian  land outside Israel.

Afterward if Israel continues assassinating US citizens who are not of dual citizenship the Prez should advise Israel we’ll send offensive weapons to Palestinians similar to the ones we sent Israel to invade and destroy Gaza.

Israeli terrorist firearms  attacks on US citizens have gone on too long.

Old Jules

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Israel Calls For Increase In U.S. Taxes To Fund Attacks On Gaza

Posted on August 13, 2014 by | Leave a comment

The Onion, News in Photos• News• ISSUE 48•46• Nov 16, 2012  

  Israel Calls For Increase In U.S. Taxes To Fund Attacks On Gaza

http://www.theonion.com/articles/israel-calls-for-increase-in-us-taxes-to-fund-atta,30423/

 

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It walks like a duck and quacks like a duck

Posted on August 3, 2014 by | Leave a comment
eagle fingers

Looks can be deceiving

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Seems more obvious every day that wossname, George Bush Sr. needed to stay the hell out of wars in the Middle East instead of waging them and giving himself a premature ejaculation.  That Desert Storm I must have been the absolutely most senselessly waged war in US history even before he pulled out and splattered the proceeds across the belly of the whole region.

That would have been a good time to sigh and notice the cold war was over and bring the troops home from Korea, Europe, and all those pestholes across the world where they don’t speak English.  George Bush was never any great shakes, but Desert Storm 1 followed by him not noticing the end of the cold war when the  USSR ceased to exist defined him.  He set the course as surely as it could be set to continue disastrous military spending and constant military adventures for the foreseeable future.

For this reason George Bush Senior qualifies as the worst president in US history until those who followed him.

There’s no need to go through the litany of tweedle-dums and tweedle-dees who came after GB Sr, identical to him in every respect aside from being lousier presidents.  They all marched to his drum and carried the country into more endless wars and a bottomless pit of national debt directly resulting from military expenditures, wars, and foreign aid to bought-and-paid-for friends we only need for more wars and military adventures.

What else he didn’t do?  He didn’t sit Israel down and insist they withdraw inside their International Boundaries as recognized by the UN and every other country in the world.  On pain of losing what eventually became $130 billion in foreign aid from US taxpayers.

Because GB Sr., had he done what any responsible president should have done, could have ended the next generation of troubles we’re experiencing as a contributory factor, today.

The US, and the US Presidents are frequently accused of responsibility for not stopping what some Roosky strongman’s doing, or some Mexican from Syria, or Iraq, or Afghanistan does or doesn’t do.  Or what some Chinaman from Japan, or Burma, or North Korea does or doesn’t do.

What a laugh!  What a stupendous irony.

The only thing in the entire world a US President might control, might influence helpfully, is the slaughter between Palestinians and Israelis.  The problem we helped create.

By insisting Israel return to inside its established boundaries and withdraw the settlements.  Cease claiming lands assigned to others, cease claiming mineral rights offshore belonging to Palestinians.

The US Presidents love to toss around sanctions against, say, Russia, or Syria, or Iraq, anywhere.  Except the one place they’d surely resolve the fundamental problem.

When people in Israel shout, “They don’t acknowledge we have the right to exist!” what they mean is, “They don’t acknowledged we have the right to take their lands designated for Palestine for our own!”

This series of duckwalking ducktalking clowns who’ve occupied the White House could probably have made two gestures to appear to be something other than the mediocre hopscotching  puppets they were .

They could have brought the troops home and sliced the military budget to something approaching what other countries have.

They could have forced Israel back inside its borders and bribed Palestine to accept things as they are with foreign aid akin to what Israel receives.

But I suppose imagination is too much to hope for in a duckwalking ducktalking politician.

Old Jules

Who’s Profiting From Israel’s Offensive in Gaza

Israeli Military Torturing Palestinian Children ~viewer discretion~

How the Jews Treat Christians in Israel – It’s Serious!

Israel’s New Racism: The Persecution of African Migrants in the Holy Land

THE TRUTH HURTS JEWS ADMIT THEY ARE NOT THE JEWS OF THE BIBLE

Shlomo Sand: Challenging notions of a Jewish People

Israelis: What do you think of settlers forcing Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem?

Orthodox Jewish woman harasses Palestinian mother

 

 

 

 

 

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Israel: “We always blamed them before and it worked. Why’s nobody fooled this time?”

Posted on August 3, 2014 by | Leave a comment

http://news.yahoo.com/latin-america-comes-force-against-israel-201551167.html

Latin America comes out in force against Israel

People take part in a demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in Santiago, Chile, on July 19, 2014, to protest against Israel's military campaign in Gaza and show their support to the Palestinian people
.

Montevideo (AFP) – Latin America’s leaders are among the most vehement in condemning Israel’s Gaza offensive — labelling the Jewish state “terrorist”, recalling ambassadors, and offering near-unanimous, unwavering support to Palestinians.

 “I can’t remember another similar situation where (all the countries in the region) have reacted practically as a bloc,” said political scientist Reginaldo Nasser, a professor at the Pontifical University in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

One of the most symbolic recent developments came from Bolivian President Evo Morales — one of the leaders of Latin America’s far left — who put Israel on its list of “Terrorist States” and eliminated a visa waiver program for Israeli citizens.

More than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed and 8,000 injured, two-thirds of them civilians, in Gaza in 24 days of fighting between Hamas and Israel. The conflict has also cost the lives of 61 Israeli soldiers, as well as two civilians and a Thai farm worker killed by rocket fire.

More than 245 of the dead Palestinians were children, UNICEF has said.

– Diplomatic recalls –

View gallery

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro holds a paper that …

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro holds a paper that has written “SOS Palestine” in supp …

Brazil President Dilma Rousseff this week called the Israeli military operation a “massacre.”

Tensions between the two countries had already escalated a week earlier, when Brazil recalled its envoy from Tel Aviv, a move that prompted Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman to call the Latin American powerhouse a “diplomatic dwarf”.

Rousseff’s condemnation did not go as far as some of her peers. Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro denounced “a war of extermination that has lasted nearly a century” against the Palestinian people. A lawmaker from his party used the term “genocide” — a term rejected by Rousseff.

Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and El Salvador have also recalled their ambassadors for consultations, while Costa Rica and Argentina, which have the largest Jewish populations in the region, called the Israeli ambassador for meetings at their foreign ministries.

The region has universally condemned the violence from Israeli military operations, urged a ceasefire and the resumption of negotiations between the two sides.

A pro-Palestinian activist prays facing a banner outside the Mexican Foreign Ministry building in Me …

On Thursday, Uruguay President Jose Mujica asked for “an immediate withdrawal” of Israeli troops from Gaza and suggested it may also recall its envoy in Tel Aviv.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor expressed “deep disappointment” over the recalls, saying they constituted “encouragement for Hamas, a group recognized as a terror organization by many countries around the world.”

Other politically leftist Latin American countries had years earlier broken diplomatic relations with Israel, including Nicaragua in 2010, Venezuela and Bolivia in 2009, after a previous military campaign in Gaza, and Cuba, in 1973, after the Yom Kippur War.

The only somewhat dissonant voice has come from Colombia, where the center-right President Juan Manuel Santos has rejected calls to recall his diplomatic representative in Tel Aviv.

– Following the people –

Political scientist Nasser, himself surprised by the nearly unanimous condemnation of Israel, suggested several reasons.

“In the first place, a country today making a declaration against Israel is no longer considered outside international norms,” he said.

There is also a link to anti-American sentiments, Nasser said, as a result of Israel’s especially close diplomatic relationship to the United States.

But official moves have also reflected public anger at the war, said political scientist Ithai Bras, of the Autonomous University of Mexico.

In recent weeks, several protests across the region, from Mexico to southern Chile, have seen thousands of Latin Americans take to the streets in support of Palestinians.

These pro-Palestinian protests have been larger in Europe and Latin America than in Arab countries, Nasser noted, suggesting the issue speaks to concerns over asymmetrical relations.

Bras said the protests are “an identification with pain, a sentiment of solidarity with what is happening in Latin America,” where feelings of oppression are widespread

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Viva La Raza – Philosophy by Limerick

Posted on August 2, 2014 by | Leave a comment

In Gaza

The Zionists’ “Viva la raza!”

Never played well in Gaza,

But mineral wealth

Left no time for stealth

So la raza turned casa to masa.

Old Jules

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Gaza’s natural gas ownership – Finally it all makes sense – Is Hamas run by the Mossad?

Posted on August 2, 2014 by | 2 comments

Hi readers.  I’ve been confused for approximately a long time wondering why a country full of people as intelligent as Israelis, and as savvy as Palestinians throughout history could not get along and live in peace.  It just never made any sense.

The last series of Israeli attacks against Gaza seemed all completely out of sinc with reality.  I knew Israel was land hungry and settling a lot of land outside its established boundaries, but there’s a limit to how far that could go.  I just couldn’t understand it.

Then I decided to learn what I don’t know, did a lot of reading and websearching.  Came across this.  Suddenly things made a lot more sense.

Follow the money.   Maybe Israel’s letting Hamas leaders have villas somewhere for cooperating by offering them an excuse to invade Gaza again.   The cost of a few rockets and everyone gets rich.

Stealing all that natural gas money belonging to Palestine naturally requires baksheese, greasing some palms.  Everyone’s used to it.    Everyone wins.

Old Jules

http://globalresearch.ca/war-and-natural-gas-the-israeli-invasion-and-gaza-s-offshore-gas-fields/11680

War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields

War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, July 10, 2014
Global Research 8 January 2009
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War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields

Five years ago, Israel invaded Gaza under “Operation Cast Lead”.

The following article was first published by Global Research in January 2009 at the height of the Israeli bombing and invasion under Operation Cast Lead.

In the wake of the invasion, Palestinian gas fields were de facto confiscated by Israel in derogation of international law

A year following “Operation Cast Lead”, Tel Aviv announced the discovery of the Leviathan natural gas field in the Eastern Mediterranean “off the coast of Israel.”

At the time the gas field was: “ … the most prominent field ever found in the sub-explored area of the Levantine Basin, which covers about 83,000 square kilometres of the eastern Mediterranean region.” (i)

Coupled with Tamar field, in the same location, discovered in 2009, the prospects are for an energy bonanza for Israel, for Houston, Texas based Noble Energy and partners Delek Drilling, Avner Oil Exploration and Ratio Oil Exploration. (See Felicity Arbuthnot, Israel: Gas, Oil and Trouble in the Levant, Global Research, December 30, 2013

The Gazan gas fields are part of the broader Levant assessment area.

What is now unfolding is the integration of these adjoining gas fields including those belonging to Palestine into the orbit of Israel. (see map below).

It should be noted that the entire Eastern Mediterranean coastline extending from Egypt’s Sinai to Syria constitutes an area encompassing large gas as well as oil reserves.

Michel Chossudovsky, January 3, 2014

War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields

by Michel Chossudovsky

January 8, 2009

The December 2008 military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.

This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.

British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon’s Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.

The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007).

The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).

The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.

The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine’s gas reserves could be much larger.


Map 1

Map 2

Who Owns the Gas Fields

The issue of sovereignty over Gaza’s gas fields is crucial. From a legal standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine.

The death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de facto control over Gaza’s offshore gas reserves.

British Gas (BG Group) has been dealing with the Tel Aviv government. In turn, the Hamas government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields.

The election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 was a major turning point. Palestine’s sovereignty over the offshore gas fields was challenged in the Israeli Supreme Court. Sharon stated unequivocally that “Israel would never buy gas from Palestine” intimating that Gaza’s offshore gas reserves belong to Israel.

In 2003, Ariel Sharon, vetoed an initial deal, which would allow British Gas to supply Israel with natural gas from Gaza’s offshore wells. (The Independent, August 19, 2003)

The election victory of Hamas in 2006 was conducive to the demise of the Palestinian Authority, which became confined to the West Bank, under the proxy regime of Mahmoud Abbas.

In 2006, British Gas “was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to Egypt.” (Times, May, 23, 2007). According to reports, British Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened on behalf of Israel with a view to shunting the agreement with Egypt.

The following year, in May 2007, the Israeli Cabinet approved a proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “to buy gas from the Palestinian Authority.” The proposed contract was for $4 billion, with profits of the order of $2 billion of which one billion was to go the Palestinians.

Tel Aviv, however, had no intention on sharing the revenues with Palestine. An Israeli team of negotiators was set up by the Israeli Cabinet to thrash out a deal with the BG Group, bypassing both the Hamas government and the Palestinian Authority:

“Israeli defence authorities want the Palestinians to be paid in goods and services and insist that no money go to the Hamas-controlled Government.” (Ibid, emphasis added)

The objective was essentially to nullify the contract signed in 1999 between the BG Group and the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.

Under the proposed 2007 agreement with BG, Palestinian gas from Gaza’s offshore wells was to be channeled by an undersea pipeline to the Israeli seaport of Ashkelon, thereby transferring control over the sale of the natural gas to Israel.

The deal fell through. The negotiations were suspended:

”Mossad Chief Meir Dagan opposed the transaction on security grounds, that the proceeds would fund terror”. (Member of Knesset Gilad Erdan, Address to the Knesset on “The Intention of Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Purchase Gas from the Palestinians When Payment Will Serve Hamas,” March 1, 2006, quoted in Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Does the Prospective Purchase of British Gas from Gaza’s Coastal Waters Threaten Israel’s National Security? Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 2007)

Israel’s intent was to foreclose the possibility that royalties be paid to the Palestinians. In December 2007, The BG Group withdrew from the negotiations with Israel and in January 2008 they closed their office in Israel.(BG website).

Invasion Plan on The Drawing Board

The invasion plan of the Gaza Strip under “Operation Cast Lead” was set in motion in June 2008, according to Israeli military sources:

“Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago [June or before June] , even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.”(Barak Ravid, Operation “Cast Lead”: Israeli Air Force strike followed months of planning, Haaretz, December 27, 2008)

That very same month, the Israeli authorities contacted British Gas, with a view to resuming crucial negotiations pertaining to the purchase of Gaza’s natural gas:

“Both Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler agreed to inform BG of Israel’s wish to renew the talks.

The sources added that BG has not yet officially responded to Israel’s request, but that company executives would probably come to Israel in a few weeks to hold talks with government officials.” (Globes online- Israel’s Business Arena, June 23, 2008)

The decision to speed up negotiations with British Gas (BG Group) coincided, chronologically, with the planning of the invasion of Gaza initiated in June. It would appear that Israel was anxious to reach an agreement with the BG Group prior to the invasion, which was already in an advanced planning stage.

Moreover, these negotiations with British Gas were conducted by the Ehud Olmert government with the knowledge that a military invasion was on the drawing board. In all likelihood, a new “post war” political-territorial arrangement for the Gaza strip was also being contemplated by the Israeli government.

In fact, negotiations between British Gas and Israeli officials were ongoing in October 2008, 2-3 months prior to the commencement of the bombings on December 27th.

In November 2008, the Israeli Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Infrastructures instructed Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) to enter into negotiations with British Gas, on the purchase of natural gas from the BG’s offshore concession in Gaza. (Globes, November 13, 2008)

“Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler wrote to IEC CEO Amos Lasker recently, informing him of the government’s decision to allow negotiations to go forward, in line with the framework proposal it approved earlier this year.

The IEC board, headed by chairman Moti Friedman, approved the principles of the framework proposal a few weeks ago. The talks with BG Group will begin once the board approves the exemption from a tender.” (Globes Nov. 13, 2008)

Gaza and Energy Geopolitics

The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law.

What can we expect in the wake of the invasion?

What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palestine’s Natural Gas reserves?

A new territorial arrangement, with the stationing of Israeli and/or “peacekeeping” troops?

The militarization of the entire Gaza coastline, which is strategic for Israel?

The outright confiscation of Palestinian gas fields and the unilateral declaration of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza’s maritime areas?

If this were to occur, the Gaza gas fields would be integrated into Israel’s offshore installations, which are contiguous to those of the Gaza Strip. (See Map 1 above).

These various offshore installations are also linked up to Israel’s energy transport corridor, extending from the port of Eilat, which is an oil pipeline terminal, on the Red Sea to the seaport – pipeline terminal at Ashkelon, and northwards to Haifa, and eventually linking up through a proposed Israeli-Turkish pipeline with the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Ceyhan is the terminal of the Baku, Tblisi Ceyhan Trans Caspian pipeline. “What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel’s Tipline.” (See Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, July 23, 2006)


Map 3

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What do Christians owe to Israel? Mocking scorn and boycott, according to Jesus

Posted on July 29, 2014 by | 4 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

If Israel were a religious, rather than secular nation, pointing out THOU SHALT NOT STEAL is a commandment.  But Israel deliberately chose to become a secular state.  A state where Christians, Muslims and Jews would all be treated equally.  Where stealing just ain’t all that big a deal if you can get by with it.  If you’ve got heavier artillery than the folks you’re stealing from.

A friend of mine, a mainline Christian of US lineage, supports Israel and always has.  He reads and believes the Israeli websites pointing fingers of blame away from Israel and carefully examining ‘what’s been done to Israel’ and the spotlighted victimized Israel loves to portray.  Along with muted Holocaust innuendo so’s to keep him from examining Israeli reality.  Using the tragedy of the camps to enrich themselves with stolen land.

Because US Christians have responded to Israel’s guilt-button pushing so long it’s almost impossible for a Christian to take an honest look at Israel without remembering Christian treatment of Jews throughout history and deluging Israel with cleansing forgiveness.  For anything.  Closing the eyes because Christians slaughtered Jews for 2000 years.

And Christians do so hope to see the Second Coming of Jesus.  Who couldn’t overlook the stealing by Israel of the land the Temple of Jerusalem sat on so’s to hasten Jesus coming back?  Stealing it back and killing any SOB Palestinian standing in the way of Jesus coming back.  Nobody likes Palestinians anyway.  Israel’s had a propaganda machine working 24/7 to make sure of that.

But that isn’t what Jesus would do, is it? Jesus don’t like stealing, even if it’s Jews doing it.  Jesus don’t like killing, even if it’s Jews doing it.

If Jesus could somehow preemptively come back today without waiting for Israel to tear down that mosque and rebuild the Temple, what do you think he’d say?

  • I think he might say Blessed are the peacemakers,
  • I think he might say, put some teeth into enforcing International Law against them, same as you’ve done in other countries,
  • I think he might say Boycott those bastards and quit selling them weapons to help them hold on to their ill-gotten gains.
  • I think he might say, Shun them
  • Because it’s the Christian thing to do.

Shunning Israel without reverting to keeping regular, honest Jews out of the country clubs or herding them into camps in the Christian countries ought to add some novelty to riding herd on International piracy by Israel.

Old Jules

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Nobody understands poor Israel – One mans terrorist is another mans Jihad

Posted on July 29, 2014 by | 8 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.  That Israeli Jihad against Hamas and the Palestinians is just another example.

Israel is confused and distraught.  Nobody seems to understand them, including Hamas, which shoots at them.  The UN and the International Community keeps telling them they’re violating International Law by occupying and putting settlements in the lands occupied.

The world just doesn’t understand.  Because the world hates Jews.

So.  What is ‘right’?  Israel is occupying land that belongs so someone else according to the unanimous view of the rest of the world.  The people who own that land consider the Israeli occupation an act of war.  They’d approve of anyone doing anything to Israel out of retaliation in hopes of eventually getting what belongs to them back.

Israel is an outlaw among nations. Declared itself to be by its own persistent behavior.  And it is perpetrating its outlawry with new settlements on stolen land, attacks on the owners, and blaming everyone but themselves.

Whatever happens to Israel as a consequence will be a tragedy.  Likely there’ll come a day when Israel will be lamented :

By the waters of Babylon there we sat down

and wept as we remembered Zion.

Israeli settlement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Israeli settlements)
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For other uses, see Israeli settlement (disambiguation).

Map of Israeli settlements (magenta) in the West Bank in 2012.

CIA remote sensing map of Greater Jerusalem, showing Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugee camps, fences, walls, etc. in May 2006.

Map of the Golan Heights with Israeli settlements in 1992.

Israeli settlements in the occupied territories[1] (commonly referred to as simply Israeli settlements[2]) are the Israeli civilian communities[i] built on lands occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and in the Golan Heights. Settlements also existed in the Sinai and Gaza Strip until Israel evacuated the Sinai settlements following the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace agreement and from the Gaza Strip in 2005 under Israel’s unilateral disengagement plan. Israel dismantled 18 settlements in the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, and all 21 in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the West Bank in 2005,[3] but continues to both expand its settlements and settle new areas in the West Bank,[4][5][6][7][8] despite being condemned by 158 out of 166 nations in one vote, and 160 nations out of 171 nations in a different vote, in the UN.[9]

The international community considers the settlements in occupied territory to be illegal,[10] and the United Nations has repeatedly upheld the view that Israel’s construction of settlements constitutes a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.[11][12] Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and communities in the Golan Heights, areas which have been annexed by Israel, are also considered settlements by the international community, which does not recognise Israel’s annexations of these territories.[13] The International Court of Justice also says these settlements are illegal in a 2004 advisory opinion.[14][15][16] In April 2012, UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, in response to moves by Israel to legalise Israeli outposts, reiterated that all settlement activity is illegal, and “runs contrary to Israel’s obligations under the Road Map and repeated Quartet calls for the parties to refrain from provocations.”[17] Similar criticism was advanced by the EU and the US.[18][19] Israel disputes the position of the international community and the legal arguments that were used to declare the settlements illegal.[20]

The presence and ongoing expansion of existing settlements by Israel and the construction of settlement outposts is frequently criticized as an obstacle to the peace process by the Palestinians[21] and third parties, including the United Nations,[22] Russia,[23] the United Kingdom,[24] France,[25] the European Union,[26] and the United States.[22]

In July 2012, according to the Israeli interior ministry, 350,150 Jewish settlers lived in the 121 officially recognised settlements in the West Bank, 300,000 Israelis lived in settlements in East Jerusalem and over 20,000 lived in settlements in the Golan Heights.[27][28] Settlements range in character from farming communities and frontier villages to urban suburbs and neighborhoods. The four largest settlements, Modi’in Illit, Ma’ale Adumim, Beitar Illit and Ariel, have achieved city status. Ariel has 18,000 residents while the rest have around 37,000 to 55,500 each.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlements

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Posted in 2014, Adventure

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