New Fatah Charter

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Abbas and Fayyad are mere figureheads. Muhammad Ghaneim and the Committee and Council run Fatah. For there to be real peace with Fatah the Israelis need to shake hands with all 23 members of a Central Committee, 80 members of a Revolutionary Committee and a 350-member General Council:
Overwhelming power is in the hands of a 23-member Central Committee, including control of Fatah’s military forces. There are few members ready for real peace with Israel. When it comes to making any big decision, Abbas and Fayyad are mere figureheads. Beneath the Central Committee is an 80-member Revolutionary Committee and, as the next level, a 350-member General Council. Most of the hardliners are supporters of Abbas. But the main reason they back him is their conviction that Abbas is weak both in character and in political base. one of the things Abbas has done to appease them has been to make Muhammad Ghaneim, perhaps the most hardline among all the committee members, his designated successor.


Nobody has noticed that a charter emerged from the August 2009 Fatah General Congress. The document was translated by the U.S. government and has just been leaked by Secrecy News.


they bothered to write down their own http://xrl.us/Taqiyya lies. Obviously they know that Obama will only see what he wants to see.


the first analysis of this charter is on rubinreports.blogspot.com

There is no word more used in this charter than revolutionary. “Let us train ourselves to be patient and to face ordeals, bear calamities, sacrifice our souls, blood, time and effort,” says the charter. “All these are the weapons of revolutionaries. You must know that determination, patience, secrecy, confidentiality, adherence to the principles and goals of the revolution, keep us from stumbling and shorten the path to liberation.
Secrecy News remarks: “The document is not particularly conciliatory in tone or content. It is a call to revolution, confrontation with the enemy, and the liberation of Palestine, ‘free and Arab.’" But then the newsletter continues:
“But what is perhaps most significant is what is not in the document. The original Fatah charter (or constitution) from the 1960s embraced `the world-wide struggle against Zionism,’ denied Jewish historical or religious ties to the land, and called for the `eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.’ None of that language is carried over into the new charter, which manages not to mention Israel, Zionism, or Jews at all.”
Now here’s an important lesson for you. When a radical group is portrayed as moderate based on some position or statement there has to be a catch somewhere. Here’s the tip-off in this case, a single sentence in the new charter:
“This internal charter has been adopted within the framework of adherence to the provisions of the Basic Charter.”
In other words, every detail of the original charter still holds; nothing is repealed, no error admitted, no explicit change of course accepted.
via rubinreports.blogspot.com








"Go forward to revolution. Long live Palestine, free and Arab!” Fatah remains non-ideological. It sees itself as a broad nationalist movement, just as when Yasir Arafat founded it more than fifty years ago. Indeed, despite the challenge from Hamas, the word “Muslim” or “Islamic” is mentioned nowhere in the charter. while Fatah sounds like some Communist party or tightly disciplined revolutionary underground, the reality is quite different. Arafat set forth an institutional culture that has always been somewhat anarchical. Cadre are undisciplined and the command structure is anything but organized. When Hamas staged a coup in the Gaza Strip, Fatah simply collapsed and didn’t even put up much of a fight. Local bosses prevail; cadre do pretty much whatever they want; indiscipline and corruption is rife. What is intriguing, however, is that there is a detailed discussion of transgressions of Fatah rules and punishments for doing so. Clearly, if members do anything the leaders don't like they are going to face severe penalties. Thus it is significant that no Fatah member has been ever disciplined for committing acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians or for making the most extremist statements. Indeed, it isn’t even clear that Fatah has the determination or ability to punish members for collaborating with Hamas against their own leaders.


the first analysis of this charter is on rubinreports.blogspot.com

Palestinian 'killed in Gaza tunnel collapse' - Israel News, Ynetnews

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A Palestinian tunnel digger was killed on Saturday when a smuggling tunnel between the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and Egypt collapsed, medics said.

The man was identified as Ashraf al-Attar, 23, who worked as a tunnel digger in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.


The impoverished territory of 1.5 million people has largely relied on a vast network of smuggling tunnels from Egypt since Israel sealed off Gaza from all but vital aid after the Islamist movement Hamas seized power in June 2007.

More than 120 Palestinians have died in cave-ins or been killed by Israeli operations targeting the tunnels since the Hamas takeover, medics say.

Egypt is currently constructing an underground steel wall on its border with Gaza to curb the smuggling of goods and munitions into the coastal enclave.

Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Sweden fails

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I have to be honest that until this year I was painfully oblivious of the bigotry coming from Scandinavia.

Latest figures from Statistics Sweden reveal that in the last 50 years the number of foreigners living in Sweden or those with two foreign-born parents has risen from four to nearly 20 percent. via thelocal.se

This interview (in Swedish) is related to the previous story about the Mayor of Malmö, who blames Israel for rising antisemitism in Sweden, and stated that Zionism is racism. Here is the reason why Jews are leaving Sweden for the land of Israel. via atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com
A Muslim rape epidemic in Sweden has ensured that it now tops the list as the European country with the most rapes per capita — 46 incidents per 100,000 residents.
via centurean2.wordpress.com
Sweden's oil dependency may be another factor in this change. In 1978, Sweden was given the opportunity of a barter deal with Norway whereby the Swedish state would buy out vehicle manufacturer Volvo and exchange a part of its shareholding in the company for a stake in Norway's recently discovered offshore oil reserves. For a variety of reasons the agreement was never ratified, and Sweden was left without any oil resources of its own. The pronounced shift in Sweden's Middle East stance largely coincides with the country's increasing dependence on oil to fuel its economy and its ever-larger oil bill.


Many foreign-born in Sweden lack work: study
(26 Jan 10)
  • Foreign grads run threefold jobless risk (8 Dec 09)
  • Immigrants fuel upswing in company start ups (9 Oct 09)


  • Sweden is no big fan of the Jews and uses Israel as a "polite way of being anti-Semitic. Do not forget, however, that Sweden was neutral in World War 2 and grew wealthy selling war materiel to Hitler. Somehow they could not come around to choosing sides between the allies and the Nazis. Sweden has taken the "Blood Libel" concept and transferred it from all the Jews to just the Israeli Jews.
    Most Swedish political figures positioned themselves between strongly condemning Israel while mildly criticizing Hamas' actions on the one hand and totally supporting Hamas and its administration in Gaza on the other.

A new report from Statistics Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyrån, SCB) reveals there are around 1.6 million foreigners currently residing in the country from a total population of 9.3 million.
Annika Klinterfeldt, SCB population analyst told The Local the numbers are not surprising, with the total now surpassing 17 percent and edging ever closer to the 20 percent mark.
“If we look at the trend over the last 50 years we can see growth in number of between 0.1-0.2 percent every year.
“Back in 1960, foreigners or those with two foreign-born parents made up four percent of the population. It’s been quite high for the last few years and we expect it to continue,” she added.
Those included in the figures are defined by having lived in Sweden for one year or more, although they do not have to be Swedish citizens.
Statistics Sweden does not differentiate between immigrants who have come to Sweden for asylum reasons and others who have moved here for love or work.
Finland has historically dominated the number of foreign settlers in Sweden and tops the table with 256,975 Finns residing across the border today.
Within Europe, Poland’s accession to the EU prompted a highly-publicised exodus from the country and a total of 78,522 Poles currently live in Sweden, the most represented country among the 27 EU nations.
There are 59,852 Germans who have adopted Sweden as home along with 22,416 from Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Included in the Asian category, but not subdivided in the yearly report, are 142,053 Iraqis, 75,175 Iranians, 44,415 Lebanese, 35,886 Syrians, 27,552 Thais, 21,322 Chinese, 20,111 Vietnamese, 18 534 Indians, 14,292 Afghans, 9,818 Filipinos, 10,831 Koreans (North and South), and 10,823 Pakistanis.
Africans make up 48,710 of the total, with South Americans accounting for 29,689.
North America is represented by 33,222 people, with 17,540 of those coming from the US.
Australia and New Zealand are combined in the Oceania category of the report, represented by 4,214 people who have presently swapped sunnier climes for the Swedish winter.
via thelocal.se

Swedish lesbians suck sperm banks dry
Sweden's fertility clinics are racking up a serious backlog of people waiting for artificial insemination, due in part to a "spike" in demand from lesbian couples for vital supplies of man juice. So bad have things got that prospective customers at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg are now forced to wait 18 months for treatment. The problem, the Göteborgs-Posten explains, is that a 2005 law change granted "female same-sex couples" the right to fertility treatment at Swedish hospitals. Previously, this privilege extended only to married women or those who were "registered heterosexual partners". Inger Bryman, Sahlgrenska's head of gynaecology and reproductive medicine, told the paper: "We had estimated an increase of around 25 couples per year after the law change. Now there are 90 couples in line." Sweden's lesbians are not the sole cause of the sperm drought. Swedish law allows kids to learn their biological father's identity once they turn 18. This hasn't done much to encourage donors. The main reason, though, is apparently duff sperm - "either related to deterioration while being frozen or to medical conditions". The upshot of the Swedish sperm crisis is that couples are increasingly looking abroad for their impregnations, principally to Denmark and Finland.
via theregister.co.uk

http://xrl.us/HaitianChainsaw or Crazy from the Heat or maybe Christiane Amanpour aka @AmanpourCNN

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Remember when Christiane Amanpour aka @AmanpourCNN blood libel tweeted that Israel was only in Haiti for organs? Well it seems some Puerto Rican doctors took her seriously and copied the idea.
...This is what @AmanpourCNN said via twitter.com: Haiti's Prime Minister just told me he has reports confirming child & organ trafficking happening here in Haiti now.

Global controversy over photos showing a group of Puerto Rican physicians who traveled to Haiti after the earthquake, in festive attitude, with bottles of whiskey, guns and even carrying a chainsaw in the middle of an operation.

This is not journalism. Christiane Amanpour is attempting to spread blood libel on CNN. She should be fired if this turns out to be false

Essentially there was an international black market that effected the whole world and the only ones who are blamed are the Israeli Government that had nothing to do with it, but that didn't stop these Puerto Ricans from throwing a drunken party.
The embarrassment was heightened by the fact that the doctors’ mission was coordinated by Puerto Rico’s Senate.
The commonwealth’s Medical Board called an emergency meeting of its ethics board for Friday afternoon and said it would immediately begin an investigation into whether the doctors involved should be disciplined.
Puerto Rico Secretary of Health Lorenzo Gonzalez called the episode “a sad situation.”
“The poor judgment of a few basically damages the beautiful effort that many others have put in place in terms of providing good medical care,” Gonzalez said. “When I saw the pictures, I was very concerned that they have taken pictures of people without any consent.”
Some of the photos, which were posted on the social networking site Facebook, show smiling doctors holding guns or toasting each other, bottles of scotch or other alcohol in their hands. Others show medical personnel in what appears to be a clinic, grinning as they attend to patients. Another shows a quake victim on a hospital bed, naked from the waist down except for a thin strip of cloth covering the genitals.
“You can’t ever take pictures of patients if you don’t have a written agreement and much less publish photos of patients half-nude,” Medical Board President Eduardo Ibarra told CNN. “This is a clear violation of the Hippocratic oath we take as medics. We’re going to take all the measures possible to correct this.”
Days after the January 12 quake tore through Haiti, the Puerto Rico Senate announced it would oversee sending more than 100 doctors to set up a field hospital near the town of Jimani, just across the southern Dominican border from Haiti. The town has been flooded with Haitians injured in the quake, seeking medical help unavailable at home.
Source: CNN via momento24.com




Gold falters as dollar strengthens

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I'm not sure why people want to further the religion of gold right now. have we learned nothing from the 80s? That was the last time Ron Paul was pushing this and the price of gold dropped. Gold prices eased slightly on as the dollar firmed a touch versus the euro, as investors shied away from riskier assets on concerns about China tightening lending and ahead of a US interest rate decision.
Gold was bid at $1,094.70 an ounce against $1,097.25 an ounce in New York late
on Tuesday. Last week, the yellow metal touched a one-month low at
$1,081.90. US gold futures for February delivery were at $1,094.70 per
ounce, down 0.3pc.
"The dollar is stronger today, and that is keeping precious under pressure," said David Thurtell, an analyst at Citigroup. "Also, a little bit of de-risking in there too."
A firmer US currency makes metals priced in dollars more expensive for holders of other currencies. The world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, SPDR Gold Trust, said its holdings stood at 1,111.922 tonnes as of January 26, unchanged since January 19.
Among other precious metals, silver prices were at $16.64 an ounce versus $16.72 an ounce late on Tuesday. “The dollar strength has put some pressure on gold,” said Bernard Sin, head of currency and metals trading at bullion refiner MKS Finance SA in Geneva. “If stocks continue to fall, people may have to liquidate their gold positions.” But Bradley George and Daniel Sacks, co-portfolio managers of the Investec Global Gold Fund said that they believe that gold has finally broken clear of the $700 to $1,000 per ounce range that dominated the last two years. "We are probably in the process of finding out where the new higher range will be established. We believe that the degree of investment demand is likely to force a peak that is nearer $1,300 per ounce over the next six months with $1,000 an ounce becoming the long-term floor." via telegraph.co.uk

China to Slow Lending as It Seeks to Avoid Inflation - NYTimes.com

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China doesn't want our debt. Perhaps that is a good thing.

HONG KONG — Chinese authorities signaled Wednesday that bank lending would slow significantly this year, the latest in a series of moves intended to forestall inflation and stave off bubbles in the stock and property markets.

Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said he expected Chinese banks to extend loans totaling about 7.5 trillion renminbi ($1.1 trillion), a decline of nearly 22 percent from the record 9.6 trillion renminbi lent last year.

“This year we will continue to control the pace and demand of the credit supply,” Mr. Liu said at a conference in Hong Kong, The Associated Press reported. He added that regulators were paying special attention to loans for local government projects and real estate. All banks, he added, had been ordered to “heighten their vigilance against an impossible, embedded credit risk.”

Stock markets in China and Hong Kong fell on the news. The Shanghai composite index, the main gauge of the mainland Chinese market, ended 2.9 percent lower, while the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong dropped 1.8 percent.

Shares in Bank of China and China Construction Bank sagged 3.4 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively, in Hong Kong, while Industrial and Commercial Bank of China fell 2.6 percent.

Still, economists said the signal from Chinese policy makers was neither surprising nor drastic and showed that Beijing was “tapping on the brakes” rather than engineering a major policy reversal.

“The 7.5 trillion renminbi target for this year is hardly an insignificant amount by anyone’s definition,” said Patrick Bennett, a strategist at Société Générale in Hong Kong, adding that he believed the market reaction had been excessive.

“Bank lending has apparently been strong in the first weeks of the year,” Mr. Bennett said, “and the recent policy moves and announcements are clearly designed to deal with that at an early opportunity.”

A government stimulus package worth 4 trillion renminbi ($645 billion), coupled with the spree of easy credit as the country’s state-owned banks were told to lend freely, helped China stave off a sharp economic slowdown last year.

The easy cash has helped drive a rapid rise in China’s stock and property markets, while feeding concerns that some of the loans extended by eager banks may turn sour.

Inflation has been on the rise as the Chinese economy has picked up speed, adding to the pressure on the authorities to temper economic activity and limit price increases.

Zhu Baoliang, chief economist for the State Information Center and a senior government official, said Wednesday that consumer price inflation had accelerated “significantly” in December and was likely to average 3 percent this year, Reuters reported.

At the same time, exports, a main driver of China’s economic growth, rebounded more quickly than expected at the end of last year, giving the authorities more leeway to unwind some extraordinary stimulus measures.

In another recent action to scale back lending, the Chinese central bank ordered state-owned banks last week to set aside a bigger share of their deposits as a reserve against failed loans — 16 percent for larger banks, an increase of half a percentage point. Smaller banks’ reserve requirements were raised to 14 percent, from 13.5 percent.

The central bank raised the rate on a closely watched interbank loan this month, and it raised the rate on its one-year bills. Analysts also expect China to start gradual increases in the benchmark lending rate — a more sweeping policy tool — though that is not expected until the second half of the year.

So far, only a handful of countries, including Australia and Norway, have begun to nudge up interest rates as their recoveries have taken hold.

Large IDF graffiti in Gaza

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No one can doubt that IDF soldiers did do some minor but unprofessional things in Gaza, like leaving graffiti behind.
Apparently, one IDF soldier decided to leave graffiti on a much larger scale - a 60 meter Star of David in a field in southern Gaza carved out by some heavy, but maneuverable, vehicle:
I'm surprised that this was not mentioned as a war crime by Goldstone.
(From the UNITAR report commissioned by Goldstone.)

All Roads Lead to Anti-Semitism in the MEDIA. Jewish Only Roads were a fiction

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Israel's Ha'aretz has opted not to adhere to journalistic norms, having consistantly refused to correct
Amira Hass

stories by journalist Amira Hass that spread the falsehood.)

After the Boston Globe and Associated Press published corrections noting that there are no "Jewish-only roads" in Israel or the West Bank, the Washington Post cleared the record with its own detailed correction:
Error (Washington Post, AP, 12/30/09): Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the military to allow Palestinians to travel on the part of a major highway that runs through the West Bank, handing Palestinians their biggest victory yet against Israel's practice of reserving some roads for Jews.
Correction (1/28/10): A Dec. 30 A-section item from the Associated Press, about an Israeli Supreme Court ruling giving Palestinians access to a section of West Bank highway previously closed to them, incorrectly said that Israel reserves some roads for Jews. The country closes some roads to virtually all Palestinians, but they are open to all Israeli citizens and to other nationals, regardless of religious background.

@GoDaddyGuy now GoFaggyGuy? Repeated Cybersquatting offender with @1938Media n @aMANdaCHAPel is swinging

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the name Go Daddy always seemed Queer to me






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Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction

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Wmd_hardware

The president's critics accuse his administration of falsifying intelligence about Saddam Hussein having the capability of building weapons of mass destruction.This stems from the claim that the president solely relied on intelligence that Saddam was trying to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapons program. These reports later proved to be inaccurate. The media failed to emphasize, however, that Saddam was already in possession of 550 tons of yellowcake uranium, which he was storing at the Tuwaitha nuclear complex south of Baghdad. That uranium was found and secured by coalition troops in 2003 after they liberated Iraq and was finally transported to Canada in July 2008. The president's critics also blast him for allegedly implementing a new policy of Iraqi regime change when in fact that policy was established in the Iraq Liberation Act, signed by President Clinton in 1998.The Act made it the official policy of the United States to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.

Here is Noam Chomsky recently on WMDs. I know he is a liar, but even he does not agree with the idea that there were no WMDs
Chomsky: "This is even sometimes discussed. You can find it in the strategic analysis literature. Take, say, the invasion of Iraq again. We're told that they didn't find weapons of mass destruction. Well, that's not exactly correct. They did find weapons of mass destruction, namely, the ones that had been sent to Saddam by the United States, Britain, and others through the 1980s. A lot of them were still there. They were under control of U.N. inspectors and were being dismantled. But many were still there. When the U.S. invaded, the inspectors were kicked out, and Rumsfeld and Cheney didn't tell their troops to guard the sites. So the sites were left unguarded, and they were systematically looted. The U.N. inspectors did continue their work by satellite and they identified over 100 sites that were systematically looted, like, not somebody going in and stealing something, but carefully, systematically looted." via Chomsky info

As someone who did not vote for G.W. Bush, I find it amusing that I have spent half a decade defending his actions. Bush was the Bunny Lebowski of politics. A political *bimbo* who prostituted the concept of "Moderate" Islam for his Saudi friends (just like Obama).  We threw out a Ringer for a Ringer(The Chomsky quote is referenced in the post so you can see the html I am quoting)

keep in mind that Saddam himself wanted the world to know he had WMDs: Saddam knew he was finished and was trying to get history to view him in a more favorable light. The man murdered thousands of his own people and was capable of just about any kind of violence and bloodshed. I don't believe he feared Iran (over which he had an overwhelming advantage at the outset of their war) and I don't believe he wanted to cowtow to the United States.
An American leader can declare war simply because there is an attempt of assassination. America can declare war because Iraq was supporting terrorism that killed American citizens. As for the WMDs I find it amusing that people thought they would just show up. did you expect them to give them to us? they found Uranium reserves south of Baghdad.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/22/to-dispel-bush-clouds/


In the coming months, years and decades, history will be the judge of what kind of leader former President Bush was, but those Americans interested in preserving his legacy must take an aggressive approach to dispel the many myths and lies that already exist.
Clearly, the most contested area of Mr. Bush's presidency will be his foreign policy, namely his decision to send troops to Iraq. For several years, numerous myths have existed about the war, and it is imperative that we correct any falsehoods for the historical record.
These myths have falsely portrayed Mr. Bush as an imperialist president who illegally invaded a foreign country to seize its oil and dominate its people.
via washingtontimes.com

the US got very little crude oil from Iraq when compared to its other suppliers, while in fact France got a much larger percentage of its total oil requirements from Iraq, and so too did Germany.
so there would be the incentive for Europe to be against a war... wouldn't there be?
If the US defeated Saddam Hussein solely to gain access to Iraqi crude oil, wouldn’t one reasonably think that the governments would have rigged the auctions so that the US could take Iraq’s crude cheaply, effectively and quickly? Exxon Mobil was the only US company that lead a winning bid team in the recent auction, winning the right to develop Iraq's West Qurna 1. Royal Dutch Shell won the right to operate the Majnoon field. The Majnoon has a production target of 1.8 million bpd, and Royal Dutch Shell’s joint bid gets it 45% of that total. Malaysia's Petronas joined Royal Dutch Shell and “won” 30%, with the rest kicked down to more and more minor partners none of which were American.

...Even now, we are hardly dependent at all upon Iraqi crude oil, for as of September Iraq ranks behind Algeria, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and of course Canada, and it is barely ahead of “mighty” Ecuador, with Brazil having ranked ahead of Iraq several times in the past six months but having ranked below Iraq in August and September...

via moneyrunner.blogspot.com

The truth however, is that Mr. Bush liberated a country from the cruelty and oppression of a sadistic dictator, returned the oil to the Iraqi people and acted in full compliance with both domestic and international law. In fact, Mr. Bush's decision to send troops back to Iraq not only complied with international law but fulfilled obligations set by the United Nations.
In October 2002, Congress authorized the president to use whatever military force was necessary to fulfill U.N. resolutions pertaining to Iraq and the Gulf war. This was because after the U.N. authorized a coalition of the willing to use military force against Iraq for its illegal invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the U.N. temporarily suspended the Gulf war in 1991 with a cease-fire agreement that imposed stipulations upon Saddam Hussein.
Saddam violated those cease-fire conditions by failing to give U.N. weapon inspectors unfettered access, which actually prompted military action from President Clinton in 1998 when he launched a massive bombing campaign against Iraq during Operation Desert Fox.
In 2002, the United Nations resolved that Saddam was in "material breach" of the cease-fire agreement and that Iraq faced "serious consequences." Because the cease-fire did not end but merely suspended the Gulf war, Saddam Hussein's continued violations of the agreement reactivated the war.
President Bush did not start a new war in 2003 that violated domestic or international law. He merely complied with Congress' 2002 vote by honoring resolutions passed by the United Nations that reactivated the original Gulf war.
The president's critics accuse his administration of falsifying intelligence about Saddam Hussein having the capability of building weapons of mass destruction. This stems from the claim that the president solely relied on intelligence that Saddam was trying to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapons program. These reports later proved to be inaccurate.
The media failed to emphasize, however, that Saddam was already in possession of 550 tons of yellowcake uranium, which he was storing at the Tuwaitha nuclear complex south of Baghdad. That uranium was found and secured by coalition troops in 2003 after they liberated Iraq and was finally transported to Canada in July 2008.
The president's critics also blast him for allegedly implementing a new policy of Iraqi regime change when in fact that policy was established in the Iraq Liberation Act, signed by President Clinton in 1998. The Act made it the official policy of the United States to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. President Bush did not implement a new policy of regime change in Iraq. He was acting in the spirit of the policy already established by President Clinton.
The decision to send troops back to Iraq in 2003 was indeed liberation and not an invasion. Investigations by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the U.S. Department of State and the British government have all found evidence that the Iraqi people lived under a regime that systematically employed methods of torture and fear. Dissidents suffered from bizarre, cruel methods of torture including dismemberment, piercing, bone-crushing, cutting, acid baths and imprisonment inside coffin-size cells.
Women accused of prostitution were publicly beheaded without a trial and male soldiers were authorized to rape women to punish their family members for political resistance. Men were often forced to watch soldiers rape their wives, sisters and daughters as a method of punishment when the female victim was innocent.
The removal of Saddam Hussein from power was not an invasion, it was liberation.
One of the most widely spread conspiracy theories about President Bush and the war is the false allegation that he sent troops to Iraq to illegally steal its oil. There is no truth to this allegation. In fact, the new Oil Draft Law under consideration by the Iraqi government proposes using "production-sharing agreements," which is the same type of oil distribution system used in Iraq for decades.
Production-sharing agreements allow foreign governments or private corporations to drill for oil and keep a small percentage of profits for their work while giving the majority of profits earned to the host country. The new Oil Draft Law will continue to implement production-sharing agreements, but the Iraqi profits will now go to the new democratic government instead of Saddam. The United States is not stealing any oil from Iraq.
There are many more myths and lies the far left has successfully perpetuated about Mr. Bush and the liberation of Iraq, but this column is not the appropriate forum to dispel them. Because these lies have been so deeply ingrained in the consciousness of the American public, those wishing to restore the president's reputation must take a pro-active, aggressive approach that exports knowledge to the people.
Merely relying on a passive institute such as a presidential library and waiting for people to learn the truth on their own will not be sufficient in this unique case. Most people who visit the new George W. Bush presidential library will most likely already be sympathetic to him and there must be a more aggressive approach used to inform all Americans.
It is perhaps one of the greatest historical ironies and tragedies that a leader who cares so deeply about human rights and the freedom of oppressed people has been falsely portrayed as an imperialist invader. It is time for those working on the former president's legacy to adequately communicate his vision of worldwide liberation to the American people. The historical record must be corrected to accurately reflect President Bush's legacy and for the honor of our country.
Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is the National Organizer of HONOR FREEDOM (www.honorfreedom.com), a nonprofit foundation dedicated to correcting the historical record about President Bush and the war in Iraq.
For those you of that read this and many other rational blogs, you quite familiar with my frustration with the lack of any investigation into the missing WMDs here and here and and as far back as 10/04 here. We know existed (just ask thethousands of families of dead Kurds). We have suffered
through the mendacity of Dhimmicarts talking points "NO WMDS" and leftwing memes to the point where the lie has become accepted the accepted "myth" (to the point where it damn near cost Bush the election) - now there is a really frightening thought.


Saddam WMD: The Mother of All Cover Ups


.So it is long overdue and long necessary that Washington step out from the Democrat's horsewhipping, and fight for the truth particularly now when Iran has all but declared war on the West. It was Syria, Iran's proxy - it's organ grinder's monkey-, that allegedly took possession of the Saddam's WMD. More Here.
- Nearly a year and a half
after a final report from American weapons inspectors concluded they
could not uncover evidence of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence has reopened the question.......

Chairman Peter Hoekstra, a Republican from Michigan, is said by his
staff to believe that it is too soon to conclude that Saddam Hussein
either destroyed or never had the stockpiles and programs to produce
biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons that Western intelligence
agencies insisted he had before the war.
In the weeks before and following the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, at least 10 facilities believed by American, European, and Israeli intelligence to be for the production and research of chemical and biological weapons were systematically looted by members of Iraq's Republican Guard, ordered by the regime's leadership to destroy and hide evidence of the programs, according to current and former intelligence officials from America, Britain and Israel. In interviews with the New York Sun, these officials reflect the position of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in the months after the war: "

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."
Mr. Ware yesterday said Mr. Hoekstra is worried that equipment or stocks of biological and chemical weapons could have been transferred to a third country or landed in the hands of terrorists.

Story here
I'll say
The former undersecretary of
defense for policy, Douglas Feith, said the question of Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction is still open. "People talk about the former Soviet loose nukes problem. The question is whether this is a loose WMD problem," also held by the State Department's chief of Iraq intelligence between 2003 and 2005, Wayne White. In an interview this week, Mr. White, said, "Just as the pre-war WMD intelligence was largely wrong, the conclusion after the war that absolutely nothing was in Iraq could also be wrong."
Even the mendacious left believes the WMD are somewhere;
Canada's Globe and Mail, Susan Rice, a former assistant secretary of state under President Clinton who would go on to become a foreign policy adviser to Howard Dean during the 2004 election season, raised the prospect of Saddam's missing weapons in terms similar to Mr. Feith. "The richest treasure trove of dangerous WMD material since the collapse of the Soviet Union is on the loose and perhaps far easier for al-Qaeda and other terrorists to acquire than it was under the control of their ideological adversary, Saddam Hussein," she wrote.
The former deputy of the Iraqi air force, General Georges Sada, revealed on
Saturday that that former dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, ordered him
during the first Gulf War to bomb Israeli population centers with chemical weapons. More here.


Why, indeed, did they stop short of Baghdad in '91?

Who can forget the entire population of Israel wearing gas masks during Saddam's SCUD missile attack during the 1991 Gulf war testimony to the House


Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, David Kay said "Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans-to-post conflict."
A former colonel for Israeli military intelligence who worked onIraqi issues, Miri Eisin, says of a transfer of weapons to Syria, "I don't know all of it, but some things went in that route. At the end ofthe day, it would be the type of things they could hide. This wouldstrike out the biological type things, but they could get chemical weapons, possibly residual missile parts."
Photo here: During Iraqi Scud attacks against Israel in 1991, school
children were trained in the proper fitting of gas masks, lest any of the missiles actually be tipped with poison weapons.
Related Articles:
Iraq's WMD Secreted in Syria, Sada Says
Saddam's WMD Moved to Syria, An Israeli Says

you might find it interesting that now that the blood for oil claim has been proven false, that many nazis on the internet are defaulting to the stance that it was all Israel's fault. here is a link to a forum that is now blaming Israel instead of the oil companies. http://ff.im/cTjr8

the story changes, but the focused hate and prejudice stays the same. Any progressives that fell for this ruse were Asses

Bin Laden Releases New Tape: Blames America For Global Warming And Urges World To Get Out Of The Dollar

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Come on Bid Laden, where's your Hope & Change?

CAIRO — Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.
In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring "the wheels of the American economy" to a halt.
He blamed Western industrialized nations for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe, and called for "drastic solutions" to global warming, and "not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change."
Bin Laden has mentioned climate change and global warning in past messages, but the latest tape was his first dedicated to the topic. The speech, which included almost no religious rhetoric, could be an attempt by the terror leader to give his message an appeal beyond Islamic militants.
The Al Qaeda leader also targeted the U.S. economy in the recording, calling for a boycott of American products and an end to the dollar's domination as a world currency.
"We should stop dealings with the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible," he said. "I know that this has great consequences and grave ramifications, but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America."
Rest Here: FOX News.
via weaselzippers.net
Joining president Obama, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and, of course, the EU, R K Pachauri, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, warning of the dangers of climate change, is that star of stage and screen ... bring on the one and only Osama bin Laden.
In his latest video to the world, he has made a plea for "drastic solutions" to global warming, and "not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change."
He blames Western industrialised nations for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe and, needless to say, the al Qaida leader has called for the world to boycott US goods, blaming industrialised countries for global warming, saying the way to stop it was to bring "the wheels of the American economy" to a halt.
In that, at least, Obama is ahead of the game, and needs no advice from Bin Liner. With the help of the IPCC and Dr R K Pachauri, he is well advanced in his plans totally to destroy the US economy, alongside his Western allies such as Gordon Brown, who are doing their best to destroy their own.
Soon enough, we can expect an outbreak of world peace as the Western leaders stand proud amid the wreckage of the economies they have so willingly destroyed.
Meanwhile, while Bin Liner will emerge from his hiding place to be elected by acclamation as the new chairman of the IPCC, ready to take the cue from the WWF advertisement (pictured above) and launch a new fleet of airliners on New York to complete the work of destruction.

The Terror and Crime of the American Task Force on Palestine

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Rashid Khalidi on CNN
with Fareed Zakaria

While America is staunchly pro-Israel, there sits at the foot of the power base of the U.S. government a radical element that wishes to change that reality. The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) is that radical element. But as elected officials gladly jump to attend the group’s affairs, ATFP leaders connected to criminal and/or terrorist activity mysteriously vanish from the group without a word of their leaving, in hope that no one is paying attention. On October 15, 2009, ATFP held its fourth annual gala – a black tie affair – in Washington, D.C. National Security Advisor James L. Jones gave the keynote address for the event; House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Representative Howard Berman provided a letter of support and commendation; and ten current United States Senators and Representatives were named as parties to the gala’s Honorary Host Committee.
This, while ATFP was allowing the participation at the gala of one of the leaders of a group the U.S. government has long considered a terrorist organization. The group was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the leader was Chief Representative to the PLO to the United States Maen Ariekat. Ariekat was part of the Honorary Host Committee and he gave the introduction to General Jones. As well, Ariekat read a letter of support from global PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas. The letter, as well as Aiekat’s gala remarks, is found on ATFP’s website.
According to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987, which was signed into law by President Ronald Wilson Reagan in December 1987, “[T]he Congress determines that the PLO and its affiliates are a terrorist organization and a threat to the interests of the United States, its allies, and to international law and should not benefit from operating in the United States.”
The Act is still in effect today, albeit it’s been hampered by signed Presidential waivers circumventing its enforcement. The waivers provide convenient excuses for politicians who wish to attend such functions as what’s sponsored by ATFP and give cover to a group that wishes to affiliate itself with extremists.
But while the U.S. President can protect ATFP when it wishes to honor the PLO, he cannot protect the group from its own leadership, a leadership that has been comprised of terrorists and criminals.
ATFP was established in Washington, D.C. in 1995, under the name American Committee on Jerusalem (ACJ). It held its “inaugural public activity” in November of that year, a briefing given by the group’s then-President, Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi had previously been identified in news reports as “a PLO spokesman” and “a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa,” (Wikalat al-Anba al-Filastinija), which Khalidi himself has described as “the P.L.O.’s news agency.”
Eight years later, the group changed its name to the American Task Force on Palestine. On the ACJ site, in August 2003, the following message was found: “ACJ is now the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP). Please visit our new website!” And the group provided a hyperlink to it, attached to a ‘thumb nail’ of the new ATFP site.
Immediately, though, the group would completely disown the ACJ. The same month, August 2003, the new website stated the following, “The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) was founded in 2003 as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization based in Washington, DC.” Yet, even the group’s current Washington, D.C. corporate status shows ATFP – as ATFP – incorporating in May 1995.
Why?
A number of the board members of the ACJ stayed on with ATFP. They included ACJ Chairman Ziad Asali and ACJ President Rashid Khalidi, who became respectively ATFP’s President and Vice President. But one name of particular interest was left off of the new board, that being Abdurahman Alamoudi.
At the time that ATFP was being “founded,” Alamoudi was coming to the end of a terrorist plot to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah using money obtained from foreign sources, including the Libyan government. On August 13, 2003, Alamoudi, while heading to Damascus, Syria, had $340,000 seized from him in London. On September 28, 2003, Alamoudi was arrested at Washington Dulles International Airport.
Alamoudi had been on the ACJ Executive Board for well over five years – of which a good part was spent involved in the terror plot – and the group’s name change could very well have taken effect due to the potential fallout from Alamoudi’s actions.
Another individual who suddenly left the ATFP’s board was Rafaat “Rafi” Dajani. Dajani was Executive Director of “both” ACJ and ATFP. That is, until he was caught robbing ATFP of over $100,000 in donations to the group and forging signatures on ‘thank-you’ letters to the donors. He was sentenced last May to eight years in prison.
And yet another was Tereq Salahi, who was named to ATFP’s Board of Directors in July 2005. Salahi served on the board for well over four years, and he and his wife, Michaele, attended functions for the group that included a number of high profile diplomats. In one photo, which was taken during a December 2006 ATFP delegation trip to the Middle East, Tareq is pictured, along with ATFP President Ziad Asali, shaking hands with Mahmoud Abbas.
However, Salahi’s bio has now been removed from ATFP’s site. Salahi and his wife are currently the subjects of a criminal investigation into how the two were able to breach security in a successful attempt to gain access to the White House this past November. If it is determined that the Salahis knowingly made false statements to the Secret Service – a felony – the two could face up to five years in prison. When questioned by the Congressional Homeland Security Committee on January 21, 2009, they refused to testify.
Much has been made in the media of the Salahis being “gate crashers” and wannabe ‘reality TV’ stars, but little to no coverage has been given to their involvement with a group that associates frequently with a terrorist organization – a group whose own co-founder, Rashid Khalidi, was in the PLO himself. Though, as of March 2005, his bio and photo have been scrubbed from the ATFP website as well.
Question: Who else will leave the ranks of the radical ATFP?
In truth, it may not matter, because it seems, regardless of all the sinister individuals involved, the American Task Force on Palestine will continue to attract those sitting in the highest echelons of government, ready and willing to be used by the terror lobby.

The Burning Bagel

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An overdone bagel forced the evacuation of Portland’s City Hall. The Oregonian reported that City Hall emptied for about 20 minutes Wednesday morning while firefighters dealt with the burning bagel in the break room of Mayor Sam Adam’s office. There’s no immediate word on who burned the bagel in the toaster oven or what type of bagel it was.
City commissioners were meeting at the time and joined those who took to the sidewalks. Adams apologized for the interruption after the evacuation.

Life in Israel: El Al's latest advertisement

The Jewish mind knows how to take advantage of every situation. This is El Al's latest ad... in the post-"tefillin bomber" era

(Hat Tip: INN)

Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Christiane Amanpour hates Jews

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not journalism.
...This is what she said on twitter: Haiti's Prime Minister just told me he has reports confirming child & organ trafficking happening here in Haiti now. amanpour.com #haiti
Christiane Amanpour is attempting to spread blood libel on CNN. She should be fired if this turns out to be false


Essentially there was an international black market that effected the whole world and the only ones who are blamed are the Israeli Government that had nothing to do with it.


ARAB YOUTHS STUDY HOLOCAUST AT YAD VASHEM

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I find this very impressive news, though it suggests there's still a ways to go before being really effective:
(IsraelNN.com) A growing number of Arab youths take part in the Holocaust Studies Program at Holocaust Museum Yad VaShem, according to the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor (MoITL). Most of these youths attend professional schools that are run by MoITL.
According to the ministry, a total of 3,800 eleventh grade students from MoITL schools are participating in the Holocaust Studies Program this year, and of these – about 1,500 are Arabs. Last year, the total number of MoITL school students who participated was about 3,200 and 1,300 of them were Arabs.
[...]
Arabs who participate in the studies have special problems with the subject matter, Birger said, including ignorance of basic Holocaust-related terms and mixed feelings including “suspiciousness toward other people's suffering and social alienation toward Israeli society.”
The Holocaust studies program for Arabs therefore treats the Holocaust first as a universal event, and only later tells the personal stories of Jews who were murdered.
This brings up some challenging questions: do they teach clearly about the Arab/Islamic role in the Holocaust, such as that of Haj-Amin el-Husseini? Because if they don't, that's buckling to political correctness! No matter what their reaction is, they have to know if a member of their society committed an act of evil, and how they can learn to avoid and prevent those kind of things from happening in the future.

George Soros warns gold

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Gold is now "the ultimate bubble", billionaire investor George Soros has declared, sparking fears that prices for the precious metal may soon suffer a tumble.
Watch the above CNBC interview with George Soros
Mr Soros, arguably the most famous hedge fund manager in history, warned that with interest rates low around the world, policymakers were risking generating new bubbles which could cause crashes in the future. In comments delivered on the fringe of the World Economic Forum, Mr Soros said: "When interest rates are low we have conditions for asset bubbles to develop, and they are developing at the moment. The ultimate asset bubble is gold."

U.N. accused of setting up Israeli officials

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U.N. accused of setting up Israeli officials

'Real danger' is that unsupported war crimes charges will develop

An organization that holds special "consultative status" with a branch of the United Nations is accusing the international body of setting up Israeli officials for unjustified war crimes prosecutions with a biased report on the nation's 2008 conflict with Hamas.

The charge is being leveled by officials with theEuropean Centre for Law and Justice, an international law firm focusing on the protection of human rights and religious freedom in Europe and worldwide.

In an evaluation of the U.N.'s Goldstone Report on the military conflict, the ECLJ challenged the objectivity of the report that levels accusations of war crimes against Israel and "encourages states and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to exercise universal jurisdiction to prosecute the Israelis."

"The real danger from the Goldstone Report is that countries will believe the many falsehoods contained in it and urge the International Criminal Court to try Israeli officials for war crimes that they did not commit and, in fact, took Herculean measures to avoid," said Robert Ash, a senior litigation counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, the ECLJ's American division, and an attorney who worked extensively on the report.

via wnd.com


The Goldstone Report is much more scurrilous than most of its detractors (and supporters) believe. According to the report, Israel used the more than 8,000 rocket attacks on its civilians merely as a pretext, an excuse, a cover for the real purpose of Operation Cast Lead, which was to target innocent Palestinian civilians—children, women, the elderly—for death. This criminal objective was explicitly decided upon by the highest levels of the Israeli government and military and constitutes a deliberate and willful war crime. The report found these serious charges “to be firmly based in fact” and had “no doubt” of their truth.

In contrast, the Mission decided that Hamas was not guilty of deliberately and willfully using the civilian population as human shields. It found “no evidence” that Hamas fighters “engaged in combat in civilian dress,” “no evidence” that “Palestinian combatants mingled with the civilian population with the intention of shielding themselves from attack,” and no support for the claim that mosques were used to store weapons.

The report is demonstrably wrong about both of these critical conclusions. The hard evidence conclusively proves that the exact opposite is true, namely that:

1. Israel did not have a policy of targeting innocent civilians for death. Indeed the IDF went to unprecedented lengths to minimize civilian casualties; and

2. That Hamas did have a deliberate policy of having its combatants dress in civilian clothing, fire their rockets from densely populated areas, use civilians as human shields, and store weapons in mosques.

What is even more telling than its erroneous conclusions, however, is its deliberately skewed methodology, particularly the manner in which it used and evaluated similar evidence very differently, depending on whether it favored the Hamas or Israeli side.

I have written a detailed analysis of the Goldstone Methodology, which is now available online, (http://www.alandershowitz.com/goldstone.htm). It is being sent to the Secretary General of the United Nations for inclusion in critiques of the Goldstone report received by the United Nations. This analysis documents the distortions, misuses of evidence and bias of the report and those who wrote it. It demonstrates that the evidence relied on by the report, as well as the publicly available evidence it deliberately chose to ignore, disproves its own conclusions.

The central issue that distinguishes the conclusions the Goldstone Report reached regarding Israel, on the one hand, and Hamas, on the other, is intentionality. The report finds that the most serious accusation against Israel, namely the killing of civilians, was intentional (and deliberately planned at the highest levels). The report also finds that the most serious accusations made against Hamas, namely that their combatants wore civilian clothing to shield themselves from attack, mingled among the civilian populations and used civilians as human shields, was unintentional. These issues are, of course, closely related. If it were to turn out that there was no evidence that Hamas ever operated from civilians areas, and that the IDF knew this, then the allegation that the IDF, by firing into civilian areas, deliberately intended to kill Palestinian civilians, would be strengthened. But if it were to turn out that the IDF reasonably believed that Hamas fighters were deliberately using civilians as shields, then this fact would weaken the claim that the IDF had no military purpose in firing into civilian areas. Moreover, if Hamas did use human shields then the deaths of Palestinian civilian shields would be more justly attributable to Hamas then to Israel.

Since intentionality, or lack thereof, was so important to the report’s conclusions, it would seem essential that the report would apply the same evidentiary standards, rules and criteria in determining the intent of Israel and in determining the intent of Hamas. Yet a careful review of the report makes it crystal clear that its writers applied totally different standards, rules and criteria in evaluating the intent of the parties to the conflict. The report resolved doubts against Israel in concluding that its leaders intended to kill civilians, while resolving doubts in favor of Hamas in concluding that it did not intend to use Palestinian civilians as human shields. Moreover, when it had precisely the same sort of evidence in relation to both sides—for example, statements by leaders prior to the commencement of the operation—it attributed significant weight to the Israeli statements, while entirely discounting comparable Hamas statements. This sort of evidentiary bias, though subtle, permeates the entire report.

In addition to the statements of leaders, which are treated so differently, the report takes a completely different view regarding the inferring of intent from action. When it comes to Israel, the report repeatedly looks to results and infers from the results that they must have been intended. But when it comes to Hamas, it refuses to draw inferences regarding intent from results. For example, it acknowledges that some combatants wore civilian clothes, and it offers no reasonable explanation for why this would be so other than to mingle indistinguishably from civilians. Yet it refuses to infer intent from these actions.

Highly relevant to the report’s conclusion that militants did not intend for their actions to shield themselves from counterattack is that the Mission was “unable to make any determination on the general allegation that Palestinian armed groups used mosques for military purpose,” “did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities,” did not find evidence “that ambulances were used to transport combatants or for other military purposes,” and did not find “that Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat actives from United Nations facilities that were used as shelters during the military operations.” There is, however, hard evidence that Hamas did operate in mosques and, at the very least, near hospitals. Circumstantial evidence (precise weaponry) was used to prove Israeli intent. Regarding Hamas, the circumstantial evidence even stronger in inferring intent. It is beyond obvious that militants do not fire rockets in the vicinity of mosques or hospitals because it is easier to launch rockets near community institutions. Rather, they do so only because of the special protections afforded to hospitals and religious centers in war.

The report—commissioned by an organization with a long history of anti-Israel bigotry, and written by biased “experts,” with limited experience and a pre-ordained result—is one-sided and wrong in its fundamental conclusions. This should not be surprising since conclusions can be no better than the methodology employed, and the methodology employed in this report is fundamentally flawed.

So now it is up to Richard Goldstone to explain the evidentiary bias that is so obviously reflected in the report, and that is documented in my lengthier analysis available online. The burden is on him to justify the very different methodologies used in the report to arrive at its conclusions regarding the intentions of Israel and the intentions of Hamas. Failure to assume that burden will constitute an implicit admission that the conclusions reached in the Goldstone report are not worthy of consideration by people of good will.


Palestine Press Agency says that Hamas' response to Goldstone also talks about how it is treating Gilad Shalit.

Their "commission of inquiry" claims that the armed groups holding Shalit are "committed to the Third Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, saying he has the proper amounts of food and was being held in a safe and clean manner that preserves his dignity."

The only problem is that the Third Geneva Conventions also specifically says inArticle 125

Art. 125. Subject to the measures which the Detaining Powers may consider essential to ensure their security or to meet any other reasonable need, the representatives of religious organizations, relief societies, or any other organization assisting prisoners of war, shall receive from the said Powers, for themselves and their duly accredited agents, all necessary facilities for visiting the prisoners, for distributing relief supplies and material, from any source, intended for religious, educational or recreative purposes, and for assisting them in organizing their leisure time within the camps. Such societies or organizations may be constituted in the territory of the Detaining Power or in any other country, or they may have an international character.

The Detaining Power may limit the number of societies and organizations whose delegates are allowed to carry out their activities in its territory and under its supervision, on condition, however, that such limitation shall not hinder the effective operation of adequate relief to all prisoners of war.

The special position of the International Committee of the Red Cross in this field shall be recognized and respected at all times.

As soon as relief supplies or material intended for the above-mentioned purposes are handed over to prisoners of war, or very shortly afterwards, receipts for each consignment, signed by the prisoners' representative, shall be forwarded to the relief society or organization making the shipment. At the same time, receipts for these consignments shall be supplied by the administrative authorities responsible for guarding the prisoners.

Hamas has never allowed any third party to visit Shalit. As far as I can tell, Hamas never specified how Red Cross visitation would compromise Hamas' security.

Also, Article 13 states "prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity." This was violated with Hamas' parade mocking Shalit in front of thousands of Gazans in 2008.

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