Israel stole 2 billion dollars from Palestinian workers: 40-year deception exposed
Over the past four decades Israel has defrauded Palestinians working inside Israel of more than two billion US dollars by deducting from their salaries contributions for welfare benefits to which they were never entitled, Israeli economists have revealed.
A new report, “State Robbery”, to be published later this month, says the “theft” continued even after the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 and part of the money was supposed to be transferred to a special fund on behalf of the workers.
According to information supplied by Israeli officials, most of the deductions from the workers’ pay were invested in infrastructure projects in the Palestinian territories – a presumed reference to the massive state subsidies accorded to the Jewish settlements.
Nearly 50,000 Palestinians from the West Bank are working in Israel – following the easing of restrictions on entering Israel under the “economic peace” promised by Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister – and continue to have such contributions docked from their pay.
Complicit in the deception, the report adds, is the Histadrut, the Israeli labour federation, which levies a monthly fee on Palestinian workers, even though they are not entitled to membership and are not represented in labour disputes.
“This is a clear-cut case of theft from Palestinian workers on a grand scale,” said Shir Hever, a Jerusalem-based economist and one of the authors of the report. “There are no reasons for Israel to delay in returning this money either to the workers or to their beneficiaries.”
The deductions started being made in 1970, three years after the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories began, when Palestinian workers started to enter Israel in significant numbers, most of them employed as manual labourers in the agriculture and construction industries.
Typically, the workers lose a fifth of their salary in deductions that are supposed to cover old age payments, unemployment allowance, disability insurance, child benefits, trade union fees, pension fund, holiday and sick pay, and health insurance. In practice, however, the workers are entitled only to disability payments in case of work accidents and are insured against loss of work if their employer goes bankrupt.
According to the report, compiled by two human rights groups, the Alternative Information Centre and Kav La’Oved, only a fraction of the total contributions – less than eight per cent – was used to award benefits to Palestinian workers. The rest was secretly transferred to the Finance Ministry.
The Israeli organizations assess that the workers were defrauded of at least 2.25bn dollars in today’s prices, in what they describe as a minimum and “very conservative” estimate of the misappropriation of the funds. Such a sum represents about 10 per cent of the PA’s annual budget.
The authors also note that they excluded from their calculations two substantial groups of Palestinian workers – those employed in the Jewish settlements and those working in Israel’s black economy – because figures were too hard to obtain.
Mr Hever said the question of whether the bulk of the deductions – those for national insurance – had been illegally taken from the workers was settled by the Israeli High Court back in 1991. The judges accepted a petition from the flower growers’ union that the government should return about 1.5 million dollars in contributions from Palestinian workers in the industry.
“The legal precedent was set then and could be used to reclaim the rest of these excessive deductions,” he said.
At the height of Palestinian participation in the Israeli labour force, in the early 1990s, as many as one in three Palestinian workers was dependent on an Israeli employer.
Israel continued requiring contributions from Palestinian workers after the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, arguing that it needed to make the deductions to ensure Israeli workers remained competitive.
However, the report notes that such practices were supposed to have been curbed by the Oslo process. Israel agreed to levy an “equalization tax” – equivalent to the excessive contributions paid by Palestinians – a third of which would be invested in a fund that would later be available to the workers.
In fact, however, the Israeli State Comptroller, a government watchdog official, reported in 2003 that only about a tenth of the money levied on the workers had actually been placed in the fund.
The Finance Ministry has admitted that most of the money taken from the workers was passed to Israeli military authorities in the Palestinian territories to pay for “infrastructure programmes”. Hannah Zohar, the director of Kav La’Oved who co-authored the report, said she believed that the ministry was actually referring to the construction of illegal settlements.
The report is also highly critical of the Histadrut, Israel’s trade union federation, which it accuses of grabbing “a piece of the pie” by forcing Palestinian workers to pay a monthly “organizing fee” to the union since 1970, even though Palestinians are not entitled to membership.
Despite the Histadrut’s agreement with its Palestinian counterpart in 2008 to repay the fees, only 20 per cent was returned, leaving 30m dollars unaccounted for.
The Histadrut was also implicated in another “rip-off”, said Mr Hever. It agreed in 1990 to the Israeli construction industry’s demand that Palestinian workers pay an extra two per cent tax to promote the training of recent Jewish immigrants, most of them from the former Soviet Union.
Mr Hever said that in effect the Palestinian labourers were required to “subsidise the training of workers meant to replace them”. The funds were never used for the stated purpose but were mainly issued as grants to the families of Israeli workers.
In one especially cynical use of the funds, the report notes, the money was spent on portable stoves for soldiers involved in Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza last year.
In response, the Finance Ministry called the report “incorrect and misleading”, and the Histadrut claimed it was “full of lies”. However, neither provided rebuttals of the report’s allegations or its calculations.
Mr Hever said the government body responsible for making the deductions, the department of payments, had initially refused to divulge any of its figures, but had partly relented after some statistics were made available through leaks from its staff.
Assef Saeed, a senior official in the Palestinian Authority’s Labour Ministry, said the PA was keen to discuss the issue of the deductions, but that talks were difficult because of the lack of contacts between the two sides.
In what seems to signal an escalation of organized Jewish terror against Palestinians and their property, suspected Jewish terrorists on Friday torched a mosque in the northern West Bank .
Palestinians sources said armed settlers from a nearby settlement threw flammable substance inside the Hasan Khadr Mosque at the village of Yasuf near Salfit, 15 kilometers, south west of Nablus .
The incident occurred around 4:00 am shortly before dawn.
The suspected terrorists also scrawled Nazis slogans in Hebrew, reading “revenge” and “we will burn all of you.” Other scrawls read “price-tag-greeting from Effi” Effi is a Hebrew name.
Yasuf local council head Abdul Rahim Musleh said the fire gutted the mosque’s interior, including the carpeted floor, numerous, numerous Qurans and as well as furniture..
The targeted mosque is the largest of four mosques in the village of 2000 inhabitants.
Munir Abbushi, the governor of the Salfit district, where the terrorist act took place, accused the Israeli government and army of encouraging the settler terrorists to attack Palestinians.
“The Israeli army is doing nothing to protect the Palestinians from the settler aggression. Army inaction encourages the settlers to escalate their terror against our people and holy places,” said Abbushi.
The head of the Israeli army’s so-called Civil Administration in the West Bank , Yoav Mordechai, condemned the torching of the mosque, saying he would see to it that the perpetrators are apprehended and brought to justice.
However, Palestinians doubt Israeli sincerity in combating organized Jewish terror carried out by settlers indoctrinated in extremist religious ideology advocating genocide against non-Jews.
Khalid Maali, a Palestinian journalist from Salfit, attributed the incident to repeated edicts, or religious rulings, by rabbis urging settlers to kill Palestinians and vandalize their property.
“These rabbis are saying in broad daylight that it is a mitzvah (good religious deed) to murder non-Jews and destroy their property. And these terrorist settlers are simply acting on and carrying out these edicts.”
Maali charged that the Israeli government and army were legitimizing settler attacks against Palestinians by failing to apprehend and punish terrorists involved in terrorist attacks.
“This is tantamount to encouraging them to commit more terror. When these terrorist are allowed to get away with impunity, the Israeli government is effectively telling them that you can attack Palestinians and torch mosques and have nothing to worry about.”
Reactions
The torching of the Hasan Khadr mosque has drawn angry reactions from Palestinian leaders on both sides of the Green Line.
Ahmed Teibi, a prominent leader of the 1.5 million-strong Arab community in Israel , who is also a Knesset member, held Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak responsible for this “sinful act.”
“By giving these thugs (Jewish settlers) a carte blanch to maraud and rampage throughout the West Bank , the Israeli army and government are effectively encouraging them to commit crimes against the Palestinians.”
He urged the occupation army to immediately put an end to settler terror and violence before the situation gets out of hand.
The league of Muslim Ulema or religious scholars in occupied Palestine strongly condemned the “sacrilegious act,” calling on the Palestinian Authority to stop stripping Palestinians of fire arms.
“The PA has stripped the people of their arms. Now we stand unable to defend and protect ourselves. And the PA security agencies are not allowed to repulse settler attacks as their only task is to fight the resistance fighters,” said league chief Sheikh Hamed al Beitawi.
Al-Beitawi, who is also an elected member of the Palestinian legislative council who has spent years in Israeli jails for opposing the Israeli military occupation, also denounced rabbis for issuing edicts to their followers, inciting them to murder Palestinians and vandalize their property.
“These rabbis call themselves men of peace, but true men of peace don’t incite to terror and hatred and bloodshed. Imagine how these rabbis would react if a Jewish synagogue was torched in London or in Paris. They would invoke the entire history of anti-Semitism from the Spanish inquisition to the Nazi holocaust.”
Settler leaders have repeatedly said they will attack Palestinians and their property every time the Israeli army moves to vacate settlers from illegal outposts. The threats have been carried out, with settlers attacking Palestinian farmers, especially olive-pickers, businesses and now mosques.
This is not the first time Jewish terrorists attack Muslim holy places. In 1994, a Jewish terrorist who had immigrated from the United States, riddled Muslim worshipers with bullets at the Ibrahimi Mosque in downtown al Khalil, killing 29 and injuring and maiming dozens.
The terrorist, Baruch Goldstein, who was eventually killed by survivors, became a saintly figure for right-wing Jewish fanatics who advocate the extermination, enslavement or expulsion of non-Jews from mandatory Palestine (the land between the River Jordan to the Mediterranean).
The Aqsa Mosque in al Quds has also been a constant target for organized Jewish terror since Israel occupied the city from Jordan in 1967.
Similarly, other mosques, both in the West Bank and pre-1948 Palestine, have been repeatedly vandalized and desecrated by supremacist Jewish groups seeking the extirpation of non-Jews from Palestine.
Moscow Rejected US Request To Recognize A Jewish State
Little hope for the Palestinians.
The Haaretz newspaper said on Friday that Moscow refused an American overture calling on the international quartet to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and give it the right to annex the major settlement outposts in the West Bank to its borders.
The newspaper said that US secretary of state Hillary Clinton proposed during telephone calls a week ago with the quartet members to issue a joint statement in this regard.
According to the newspaper, the statement was already prepared by the American administration and called for resuming the negotiations without preconditions in order to reach a peace agreement achieving the Palestinian’s goal of having an independent state on the 1967 borders, but with Israel keeping its major settlements in exchange for compensating Palestinians by giving them other lands.
The statement also called for fulfilling Israel’s dream of a recognized Jewish state with secure borders, but the Russians rejected this text and considered that the reference to future borders would determine the results of negotiations in advance. They also refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
The newspaper quoted a senior US official as saying that his American administration refrained from publishing the statement because of the absence of consensus in the quartet committee.
For its part, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper said that the visit of Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman to Moscow ended without achieving results after the failure of the Russian-Israeli governmental committee to narrow the gap in contentious issues.
Different Russian media outlets also said that the pleasantries exchanged between the two parties were aimed to cover up the failure of Lieberman’s visit.
A new report has revealed that the European Union is likely to change its stance over the recognition of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem Al-Quds as its capital.
According to an EU draft resolution authored by Sweden, the current holder of the rotating EU presidency, the body would recognize a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood in a monthly meeting of the ministers next week in Brussels, Haaretz reported.
In November, the EU termed as “premature” a Palestinian proposal to seek support for an independent state.
“We are discussing other steps in order to demonstrate our support for the Palestinian aspirations more clearly than we have done so far, and clearly there is a need for that,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.
The reported change in the EU’s change has irked Israeli officials, who warned the decision could further harm the renewal of peace negotiations in the region.
“The process being led by Sweden harms the European Union’s ability to take part as a significant mediator in the political process between Israel and the Palestinians,” said an Israeli Foreign Ministry statement on Tuesday.
“After the important steps taken by the government of Israel to enable the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians, the European Union must now exert pressure on the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table,” it claimed.
The EU has declined to comment on “internal information or drafts”, saying any statement will undoubtedly reflect the position of all 27 countries, the Swedish Embassy in Tel Aviv told Ynet.
Israel had earlier warned that declaring an independent Palestinian state without concluding a peace agreement would lead to Israeli counter-measures that could include annexation of more of the occupied West Bank.
US Army confirms Israeli Nukes - Aid for Israel at Stake
The US Army has let slip one of the worst-kept secrets in the world - that
Israel has the bomb.
Officially, the United States has a policy of “ambiguity” regarding Israel’s nuclear capability. Essentially, it has played a game by which it neither acknowledges nor denies that Israel is a nuclear power.
But a Defense Department study
(Link: http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2008/JOE2008.pdf)
completed last year, offers what may be the first time in a unclassified report that Israel is a nuclear power. On page 37 of the U.S. Joint Forces Command report, the Army includes Israel within “a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east.”
The single reference is far more than the U.S. usually would state publicly about Israel, even though the world knew Israel to be a nuclear power years before former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu went public with facts on its weapons program in 1986.
Several years later investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published “The Samson Option,” detailing Israel’s strategy of massive nuclear retaliation against Arab states in the event it felt its very existence was threatened. Israel’s nuclear arsenal has been estimated to range from 200 to 400 warheads.
Yet Israel has refused to confirm or deny it’s nuclear capabilities, and the U.S. has gone along with the charade.
As recently as Feb. 9 President Barack Obama ducked the question when asked pointedly by White House correspondent Helen Thomas whether he knew of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons. Keeping the blinders on is necessary politically in order to avoid a policy confrontation with Israel.
By law, the U.S. would have to cease providing billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel if it determined the country had a nuclear weapons program. That’s because the so-called Symington Amendment, passed in 1976, bars assistance to countries developing technology for nuclear weapons proliferation.
Given the U.S.’s long history of selective blindness when it comes to Israeli nukes, it’s unlikely that the Joint Operating Environment 2008 report compiled by the Army amount to much more than a minor faux pas.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in a March 8 article on the report, observed: “It is virtually unheard of for a senior military commander, while in office, to refer to Israel’s nuclear status. In December 2006, during his confirmation hearings as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates referred to Israel as one of the powers seen by Iran as surrounding it with nuclear weapons. But once in office, Gates refused to repeat this allusion to Israel, noting that when he used it he was ‘a private citizen.’ ”
source
Rothschild Agents Take 10 Key Posts In Obama Administration
Rothschild Agents Take 10 Key
Posts In Obama Administration
By Michael Collins Piper
American Free Press
2-21-9
“Six former Rhodes Scholars (educated at Oxford University in Britain) and four others associated with the London School of Economics are serving in key posts in the Obama administration. That’s not good.”
Our greatest founding father and first president, George Washington, probably wouldn’t be ready to celebrate his birthday on Feb. 22 if he were alive today. Having led the 13 colonies to independence from the British Empire in 1783, following the course of a difficult eight-year struggle by those freedom-loving American colonists who followed him, Washington (who lived from 1732 to 1799) would most assuredly be appalled to see that the liberties achieved from the American Revolution are now being flagrantly defied by a number of figures who populate the upper ranks of the administration of Barack Obama.
Six former Rhodes Scholars (educated at Oxford University in Britain) and four others associated with the London School of Economics are serving in key posts in the Obama administration. That’s not good.
Top: Rice, McFaul, Kagan, Slaughter, and Wolin
Bottom: Emanuel, Summers, Orszag, Rouse, and Sutphen
Here are 10 of the key “British"-that is, Rothschild -operatives now ensconced in the Obama administration (more can be expected):
Susan Rice - ambassador to the UN; Michael McFaul - head of the Russian desk at the National Security Council; Elena Kagan - solicitor general of the United States; Anne-Marie Slaughter - State Department policy planning staff; Neal S.Wolin - deputy counsel to the president for economic policy; Ezekial Emanuel - senior counselor at the White House Office of Management and Budget on health care policy; Lawrence Summers - head of the National Economic Council; Peter Orszag - director of the Office of Management and Budget; Peter Rouse - senior advisor to the president; Mona Sutphen - deputy chief of the White House staff.
The truth about the Rhodes Scholarships is not known to the average American who is constantly told by the mass media that Rhodes Scholars (such as former President Bill Clinton) are among “the best and the brightest.”
The Rhodes Scholarships-awarded to Americans and students from other former British colonies-are funded by a trust set up by 19th Century British imperial figure Cecil Rhodes, whose intent was to indoctrinate these scholars with the theme that the American colonies should be reunited with the British Empire and that they should work through “public service” to achieve that goal. But Rhodes wasn’t just some rich madcap dreamer. His ventures were underwritten by the international Rothschild dynasty operating from the financial district in London known as “The City"-the banking center of the Rothschild controlled British empire that also includes the London School of Economics.
So now a clique of internationalists trained in the idea of extinguishing American independence are ensconced in the Obama administration.
And another Rhodes Scholar, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, is widely touted as the great Grand Old Party candidate to “take back the White House” in 2012. Jindal doesn’t offer “change.” He-like the other globalists in the Obama administration-is part of the problem.
All of this is not a “conspiracy theory.” Rather, these facts are well known to those familiar with what the Rhodes scholarships are really about.
Obama also has some 20 stooges from Trilateral Commission
by CANUKISTAN_VIEW on 23.02.2009 [11:49]
As previously noted in Pawns of the Global Elite, Barack Obama was groomed for the
presidency by key members of the Trilateral Commission. Most notably, it was
Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller in 1973,
who was Obama’s principal foreign policy advisor.
The pre-election attention is reminiscent of Brzezinski’s tutoring of Jimmy Carter
prior to Carter’s landslide election in 1976.
For anyone who doubts the Commission’s continuing influence
on Obama, consider that he has already appointed no less than eleven members of the
Commission to top-level & key positions
in his Administration.
According to official Trilateral Commission membership lists, there are only 87
members from the US (the other 337 members are from other regions).
Is this a mere coincidence or is it a continuation of dominance over the Executive
Branch since 1976? (For important background, read The Trilateral Commission:
Usurping Sovereignty.)
Secretary of Treasury, Tim Geithner
Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice
National Security Advisor, Gen. James L. Jones
Deputy National Security Advisor, Thomas Donilon
Chairman, Economic Recovery Committee, Paul Volker
Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair
Assistant Sec of State, Asia & Pacific, Kurt M. Campbell
Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg
State Department, Special Envoy, Richard Haass
State Department, Special Envoy, Dennis Ross
State Department, Special Envoy, Richard Holbrooke
There are many other incidental links to the Trilateral Commission, for instance,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is married to Commission member William Jefferson
Clinton.
Geithner’s informal group of advisors include E. Gerald Corrigan, Paul Volker, Alan
Greenspan and Peter G. Peterson, among others. His first job after college was
with Henry Kissinger at Kissinger Associates.
Brent Scowcroft has been an unofficial advisor to Obama and was mentor to Defense
Secretary Robert Gates.
Robert Zoelick is currently president of the World Bank
Laurence Summers, White House Economic Advisor, was mentored by former Treasury
Secretary Robert Rubin
during the Clinton administration.
There are many other such links, but these are enough for you
to get the idea of what’s going on here.
Notice that 5 of the Trilateral appointees involve the State De- partment, where
foreign policy is created and implemented.
Hillary Clinton is certainly in line with these policies be-
cause her husband, Bill Clinton, is also a member.
What is more important than economic recovery? Paul Volker is the answer.
What is more important than national intelligence? Gen. James Jones, Thomas Donilon
and Adm. Dennis Blair hold the top three positions.
What is more important than the Treasury and the saving of our financial system?
Timothy Geithner says he has the answers.
The State Department is virtually dominated by Trilaterals: Kurt Campbell, James
Steinberg, Richard Haass, Dennis Ross
and Richard Holbrooke.
This leaves Susan Rice, Ambassador to the United Nations. The U.N. is the chosen
instrument for ultimate global governance. Rice will help to subvert the U.S. into
the U.N. umbrella of vassal states.
Since 1973, the Commission has met regularly in plenary sessions to discuss policy
position papers developed by its members.
Policies are debated in order to achieve consensuses. Respective members return to
their own countries to implement policies consistent with those consensuses.
The original stated purpose of the Trilateral Commission was to create a “New
International Economic Order.”
Its current statement morphed into fostering a “closer cooperation among these core
democratic industrialized areas of the world with shared leadership responsibilities
in the wider international system.
The Trilateral Commission web site
U.S. Trilateral members implement policies determined by a majority of non-Americans
that most often work against the best interests of the country.
“How,” you say?
Since the administration of Jimmy Carter, Trilaterals held these massively
influential positions:
Six out of eight World Bank presidents, including the current appointee, Robert
Zoelick
Eight out of ten U.S. Trade Representatives
President and/or Vice-President of every elected administration (except for
Obama/Biden)
Seven out of twelve Secretaries of State
Nine out of twelve Secretaries of Defense
Is this sinking in? Are you grasping the enormity of it?
For the Trilateral crowd, the game is about over. The recent re- emergence of
original members Kissinger, Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft and Paul Volker serves to
reinforce the conclusion
that the New International Economic Order is near.
The Trilateral Commission and its members have engineered the global economic, trade
and financial system that is currently in a state of total chaos. Does that mean
that they have lost? Hardly.
As I recently wrote in Chorus call for New World Order, they are using the crisis to
destroy what remains of national Sovereignty,
so that a New World Order can finally and permanently be put
into place.
The Obama presidency is a disingenuous fraud. He was elected
by promising to bring change, yet from the start change was never envisioned. He was
carefully groomed & financed by the Trilateral Commission and their friends.
In short, Obama is merely the continuation of disastrous, non-American policies that
have brought economic ruin upon us
and the rest of the world.
The Obama experience rivals that of Jimmy Carter, whose campaign slogan was “I will
never lie to you.”
When the Democrat base finally realizes that it has been conned again (Bill Clinton
and Al Gore were members), perhaps it will unleash a real political
revolution, ousting Trilateral politicians, operatives and policies from the shores
of our country.
If the reader is a Democrat, be aware that many Republicans and conservatives are
still licking their wounds after finally realizing that George Bush and Dick Cheney
worked the same con on them for a disastrous eight years of the same policies.
Israel hopes to colonize parts of Iraq as ‘Greater Israel’
Israel hopes to colonize parts of Iraq as ‘Greater Israel’
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jan 30, 2009, 00:20
(WMR) — Israeli expansionists, their intentions to take full control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and permanently keep the Golan Heights of Syria and expand into southern Lebanon already well known, also have their eyes on parts of Iraq considered part of a biblical “Greater Israel.”
Israel reportedly has plans to relocate thousands of Kurdish Jews from Israel, including expatriates from Kurdish Iran, to the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Nineveh under the guise of religious pilgrimages to ancient Jewish religious shrines. According to Kurdish sources, the Israelis are secretly working with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to carry out the integration of Kurdish and other Jews into areas of Iraq under control of the KRG.
Kurdish, Iraqi Sunni Muslims, and Turkmen have noted that Kurdish Israelis began to buy land in Iraqi Kurdistan, after the U.S. invasion in 2003, that is considered historical Jewish “property.”
The Israelis are particularly interested in the shrine of the Jewish prophet Nahum in al Qush, the prophet Jonah in Mosul, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel in Kirkuk. Israelis are also trying to claim Jewish “properties” outside of the Kurdish region, including the shrine of Ezekiel in the village of al-Kifl in Babel Province near Najaf and the tomb of Ezra in al-Uzayr in Misan Province, near Basra, both in southern Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated territory. Israeli expansionists consider these shrines and tombs as much a part of “Greater Israel” as Jerusalem and the West Bank, which they call “Judea and Samaria.”
Kurdish and Iraqi sources report that Israel’s Mossad is working hand-in-hand with Israeli companies and “tourists” to stake a claim to the Jewish “properties” of Israel in Iraq. The Mossad has already been heavily involved in training the Kurdish Pesha Merga military forces.
Reportedly assisting the Israelis are foreign mercenaries paid for by U.S. Christian evangelical circles that support the concept of “Christian Zionism.”
Iraqi nationalists charge that the Israeli expansion into Iraq is supported by both major Kurdish factions, including the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headed by Iraq’s nominal President Jalal Talabani. Talabani’s son, Qubad Talabani, serves as the KRG’s representative in Washington, where he lives with his wife Sherri Kraham, who is Jewish.
Also supporting the Israeli land acquisition activities is the Kurdistan Democratic Party, headed by Massoud Barzani, the president of the KRG. One of Barzani’s five sons, Binjirfan Barzani, is reportedly heavily involved with the Israelis.
The Israelis and their Christian Zionist supporters enter Iraq not through Baghdad but through Turkey. In order to depopulate residents of lands the Israelis claim, Mossad operatives and Christian Zionist mercenaries are staging terrorist attacks against Chaldean Christians, particularly in Nineveh, Irbil, al-Hamdaniya, Bartalah, Talasqaf, Batnayah, Bashiqah, Elkosheven, Uqrah, and Mosul.
These attacks by the Israelis and their allies are usually reported as being the responsibility of “Al Qaeda” and other Islamic “jihadists.”
The ultimate aim of the Israelis is to depopulate the Christian population in and around Mosul and claim the land as biblical Jewish land that is part of “Greater Israel.” The Israeli/Christian Zionist operation is a replay of the depopulation of the Palestinians in the British mandate of Palestine after World War II.
In June 2003, a delegation of Israelis visited Mosul and said that it was Israel’s intentions, with the assistance of Barzani, to establish Israeli control of the shrine of Jonah in Mosul and the shrine of Nahum in the Mosul plains. The Israelis said Israeli and Iranian Jewish pilgrims would travel via Turkey to the area of Mosul and take over lands where Iraqi Christians lived.
SIR Gerald Kaufman, yesterday (Thu 15 Jan 2009) compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland. Kaufman, a member of the Jewish Labour movement linked to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ruling party, also called for an arms embargo against Israel.
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Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: “My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
“My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians.”
He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants “was the reply of the Nazi” and added: “I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.”
He accused the Israeli government of seeking “conquest” and added: “
They are not simply war criminals, they are fools.”
Journalists call Livni ‘terrorist’ during press conference on Gaza operation
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had a testy press conference Friday in Washington, D.C., moments after she signed an agreement with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meant to combat arms smuggling to Gaza.
From the starting moments of the press conference, Livni was beset by a less-than friendly barrage of questions, with a number of journalists asserting that Israel’s military operations in Gaza will only make Middle East peace more distant.
Some journalists went so far as to compare the Israeli government to that of dictator Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, due to Israel’s decision to bar journalists from Gaza.
One of the more tense moments came when one journalist began to quote at length a Human Rights report on the situation in Gaza, before asking Livni to comment on “the murder of innocent civilians in the Strip.”
When the man was asked to finish his question, he yelled “you are letting her speak for an hour, and you aren’t allowing us to ask questions. Since when have you hosted terrorists here?”
To her credit, Livni managed to keep her cool, and expressed her desire to answer the question. When he finished, she answered that Israel “did not want to get involved in the internal matters of the Palestinian Authority, that’s why we left the Gaza Strip unilaterally, but we got terror in return. We try all we can to avoid harming civilians, but it happens.”
A number of other journalists asked questions that included quotes from the human rights report, asking if Israel needs to be held responsible for the failure of the cease-fire due to the decision to enact a blockade on the Gaza Strip.
While she was speaking inside, a protest was being held outside the building by an anti-war group calling themselves “Women in Pink”, who repeatedly chanted “there is a war criminal in this building.
Comparison of military strength of Israel and the Palestinians
As the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has once again flared up following Israel’s ongoing air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip, the IMEU presents a comparison of Israeli and Palestinian military capabilities.
And by the way, YOU paid for most of the stuff in that left column!
Venezuela has broken off diplomatic relations with Israel to protest its military offensive in Gaza.
The decision by President Hugo Chavez’s socialist government comes more than a week after it expelled the Israeli ambassador in Caracas and seven embassy staff members.
A Foreign Ministry statement said Wednesday that Venezuela “has decided to break off diplomatic relations with the state of Israel given the inhumane persecution of the Palestinian people.”
Attempted US arms delivery raises fears of Gaza escalation.
The US has to re-route arms shipment to Israel as Athens declined to allow a Greek port be used as a transit point, fearing nationwide protests.
The transit was called off by the Greek government on Tuesday, after the issue provoked a media outcry in Greece, where Israel’s 19-day-old offensive in Gaza is deeply unpopular.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, however, painted a different picture, saying that the route had been changed to avoid Greece, “because the Greek government had some issue with the off-loading of some of that shipment in their country.”
Morrell declined to say what type of arms were included in the shipment.
This is while the US military claimed that the shipment of 325 containers of ammunition from the Greek port of Astakos to a US stockpile in Israel was canceled in light of the proximity of the Israeli port of Ashdod - the shipment’s destination - to the conflict in the Gaza Strip.
Anti-Israeli protester in Athens
Opposition parties in Greece have called for public demonstrations in Astakos on Wednesday and Thursday, raising fears of fresh nationwide protests, only weeks after violent anti-government riots were subdued.
Since the beginning of the Israeli attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip on December 27, more than 975 people have been killed and another 4,500 have been wounded.
Hundreds of civilians have died in Gaza
since the Israeli offensive began Reuters
Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, has broken off ties with Israel in protest against its war in Gaza, which has left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead.
Morales said on Wednesday that he would seek to get top Israeli officials, including Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, charged with “genocide” in the International Criminal Court.
The Bolivian president also dismissed the United Nations and its “Insecurity Council” for its “lukewarm” response to the crisis and said the general assembly should hold an emergency session to condemn the invasion.
“Considering these grave attacks against ... humanity, Bolivia will stop having diplomatic relations with Israel,” Morales told diplomats in the Bolivian capital, La Paz.
He also said that Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, should be stripped of
his Nobel Peace Prize for failing to stop the invasion.
Palestinian ‘holocaust’
Morales’s move follows the decision by his ally Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, to expel Israel’s ambassador in the country because of the offensive, calling it a “holocaust”.
Morales expelled the US ambassador from Bolivia in September after accusing him of encouraging violent protests against his government.
Chavez did the same not long afterwards in “solidarity” with Morales.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have now died in Israel’s offensive in Gaza, around 40 per cent of whom were civilians, aid agencies and Palestinian medics say.
Thirteen Israelis have also died, four from rocket fire from Gaza.
“The process of national revival of the Jewish people is irreversible and has its internal logic. We shall have no peace as long as the whole territory of the Country of Israel will not return under Jewish control. This might sound too hard, but such is the logic of history. The war on the Holy Land has been already fought for four thousand years and the end cannot be seen. A stable peace will come only then, when Israel will return to itself all its historical lands, and will thus control both the Suez and the Ormudz channel. The state will find at last its geostrategic completeness. We must remember that Iraqi oil fields too are located on the Jewish land. This may seem utopia to many now - but an even greater utopia seemed a hundred years ago the revival of the Jewish state...If you want it, this will not not be a fairy tale”
--Rabbi Avrom Shmulevic of the Bead Artzein ("For the Homeland") Movement.
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 Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, January 8, 2009
The 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 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 belonged 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). 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 process of military planning. It would appear that Israel was anxious to reach an agreement with BG prior to the invasion, which was already in the advanced planning stage.
Moreover, these negotiations with British Gas were conducted by the Ehud Olmert government with the knowledge that a military invasion of Gaza was on the drawing board and that a new political-territorial arrangement of the Gaza strip was being contemplated.
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.
What can we expect in the wake of the invasion? What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palstine’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)
