23 October 2008 — The Palestine quagmire began at the United Nations more than 60 years ago.

That’s when under considerable American pressure the U.N. General Assembly voted to “partition” Palestine between a Jewish State and a Palestinian Arab State.

The entire Arab world voted against it. It was an immensely contentious decision. Secretary of State George Marshall himself personally threatened to resign if Truman approved this plan.

In the end, Marshall gave in and stayed in office, but he warned — and how right he proved to be — that this decision was likely to have very troubling impact on U.S. foreign policies for years to come.

Today at the United Nations in New York, Professor Richard Falk, the newly appointed Special Rapporteur on Israeli Actions in the Palestinian Territories, presents his first report to the U.N. General Assembly Third Committee.

Overall Falk’s conclusions mirror my own. Click here to read Falk’s complete report; and pay special attention to his “Recommendations” on the last page.

The biggest difference is I’m free to state things rather more bluntly, and Falk is constrained by both his U.N. mandate and the legalistic style of these things.

Indeed I do take off the gloves and call it straight in my upcoming publication, SAVING ISRAEL FROM ITSELF and SAVING AMERICA FROM ISRAEL.

This publication contains what I feel the imperative to explain and to advocate. It is the result of my own investigation into the situation a few months ago when I visited Israel and Occupied Palestine with stops in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bir Zeit University, Bethlehem, Hebron, Beit Jalla, Nazareth, Tiberias, Jericho, as well as an Israeli settlement and a Palestinian Refugee Camp, before brief visits to Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Furthermore, Falk isn’t in a position as I am to speak up forcefully about the powerful Israel and Jewish Lobby in our own country that has caused so much harm and whose former top officials are now on trial as spies.

Professor Richard Falk

Richard Falk, himself Jewish, is one of our country’s most distinguished scholars and authors. We have featured his excellent writings and statements about Israel and Palestine in the past, and those too I greatly encourage you to read.

His overall conclusion: “Palestinians have been betrayed by the international community.”

And get this: Because Falk has spoken up against their policies and because he has been appointed by the U.N. to this new role, the Israelis have not only barred him from coming to Israel, they refuse to let him go to Jerusalem or to the Palestinian West Bank or Gaza! So much for Israeli Democracy! How outrageous!

I share Falk’s conclusion. But I think it needs an addition.

We Americans have been betrayed as well by many of our own leaders in Washington. It’s time our American democracy policies change to what is right, to what is just, and to what is in keeping with our own American principles and values.

These are indeed my primary concerns and they lie at the heart of SAVING ISRAEL FROM ITSELF and SAVING AMERICA FROM ISRAEL which we are working strenuously to complete.

Americans are demanding answers to this question from Washington policy-makers about the endangered economy.

The same demand should be made from the same policy-makers about what has happened in the critical Middle East region.

Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk is in fact asking this question and answering it.

If anyone has the expertise to do this, it is Robert Fisk. He is one of a small handful of professional independent experts who have devoted their lives to learning about and writing about the realities of the situation in today’s Middle East.

We feature Fisk’s question and answer now because to fully appreciate why Goals for Americans will soon be publishing SAVING ISRAEL FROM ITSELF and SAVING AMERICA FROM ISRAEL what Fisk has to say is of critical importance.

Robert Fisk has been based in the region, with home in Beirut, since 1976. He began his career as the Middle East correspondent for THE TIMES OF LONDON. In recent years, he has been the star region and globe-trotting correspondent for THE INDEPENDENT.

Two years ago, Fisk published THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION - The Conquest of the Middle East. It is a tremendous book — both in content and length.

Here are just a few of the superlative reviews:

“A magisterial report from the shifting front lines of the Middle East. It deserves to be read by all those concerned with what is happening in Iraq today.” —The Boston Globe

“A stimulating and absorbing book, by a man who…has met the leading players, from bin Laden to Ahmad Chalabi… A formidable production.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Vivid, graphic, intense… A book of unquestionable importance… [Fisk’s] experience of war is unmatched, [as is] his capacity to convey that experience in concrete, passionate language.” —The Washington Post Book World

“Fisk’s magnum opus…seals [his] place as a venerable, indispensable contributor to informed debate in and about the Middle East.” —The Nation

“Powerful… Mr. Fisk is a gifted writer and an accomplished storyteller…his love affair with the region and the glamorous profession of being a foreign correspondent finds expression on every page.” —The Economist

No Washington policy-makers were at Fisk’s World Affairs Council talk in the basement at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on 30 September. He has a sequel book out now, The Age of the Warrior that brought him briefly to Washington.

But if the policy-makers are serious about wanting to understand what is wrong with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and the urgency of changing those policies before it is too late, first we advise them to spend the next hour watching this GfA video of Fisk’s talk and then to read and ponder our unique and exclusive upcoming publication SAVING ISRAEL FROM ITSELF and SAVING AMERICA FROM ISRAEL.

Oct. 9, 2008 — If you’re still looking for the smoking gun that helps explain why our current financial crisis was allowed to happen, one of the most critical answers can be found in a little-publicized Securities and Exchange Commission ruling made in April of 2004. With the unanimous vote of all five members of the S.E.C, an exemption was granted to the investment banks of Wall Street that allowed them to speed down the road to ruin!

Runaway greed was unleashed with this little-known ruling. The damage that has been caused is still beyond measure or calculation.

At issue was a long-standing regulation, (the Net Capital Rule), that required investment banks to have a comfortable and responsible cash reserve on hand for the companies to weather downturns in the market and to guard against excessive debt loads.

Early in 2004, the major Wall Street players all put pressure on the S.E.C. to grant them an exemption – an effort led by Henry Paulson, then at Goldman Sachs and now our current Treasury Secretary. These are the same Wall Street players who are now lining up for bailout money, with their friend and former colleague, Paulson, running the 700 billion-dollar show.

No wonder the public is enraged.

Why did these companies bully the S.E.C. for this exemption at that time? The answer is the housing market, which was riding a bubble, held aloft in part because of the sub-prime mortgage market and the new and unregulated mortgage-backed securities that promised to make everyone rich.

Wall Street investment banks desperately wanted in, but this regulation was in their way!

On April 28, 2004, after less than an hour’s discussion, the Commissioners caved in to Wall Street and approved the exemption. These institutions would now be set free to use their billions of dollars in reserve – their safety net – to be invested in the reckless and uncertain mortgage-backed securities market. In the process, they would be putting their shareholders at great risk, as well as the stability of the entire industry.

The Commissioners reassured themselves that rules embedded in the exemption would allow them greater access to risky behavior on the part of the major firms. They reassured themselves that these firms would successfully self-regulate themselves - that the executives running these Wall Street firms would never allow their personal greed to steer their companies so deeply into dangerous debt that it would threaten their very survival of the institutions.

The commissioners forgot the lessons of the Savings & Loan debacle of the 80s, when deregulation led to massive abuses within the industry. Self-regulation didn’t work then, and, tragically, it wasn’t going to work this time around as well.

The S.E.C. established a seven-member commission at the same time to provide oversight, and to blow the whistle if they thought the huge Wall Street firms were taking on excessive debt and risk.

Former California representative Christopher Cox, a persistent enemy of regulatory oversight of the financial industry, was appointed by President Bush as the new S.E.C. chairman in 2005. One of his first orders of business was to gut the effectiveness of this particular commission as much as he could so his friends on Wall Street could do as they pleased without governmental review.

Earlier this year, another watchdog group within the S.E.C. warned about excessive debt and dangerous practices at Bear Stearns and other companies.

Deaf, dumb, blind and arrogant, Cox said in March: “We have a good deal of comfort about the capital cushions at these firms at the moment.”

Days later, Bear Stearns went belly up, and had to be acquired by JP Morgan Chase, with the assistance of American taxpayers to the tune of 29 billion dollars.

Wall Street firms have been tumbling ever since, weighted down by the gluttonous debt the S.E.C. exemption allowed them to accumulate.

The Securities and Exchange Commission was created during The Depression to restore a sense of trust and decency to Wall Street – investor confidence. That confidence has been dashed once again. The S.E.C. was sitting impotent and disinterested on the sidelines while this crisis brewed – history repeating itself once again.

Chairman Cox, running for cover, and away from his involvement in this disaster, issued a lame postmortem recently: “The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work.”

The exemption oversight commission, that was never allowed to do its job in the first place, was quietly shut down earlier this month.

EPILOGUE:

We are in the opening weeks of what most experts now anxiously conclude will be a serious worldwide recession. We are once again paying the consequences for what happens when you excessively free up the Market Place so it can inevitably respond to its worst instincts. This time, the price will be steep, painful and prolonged. The monetary price we will have to pay as American citizens will make the Savings & Loan bailout seem like pocket change. It will be a price our children will be paying for a long time as well.

On the international stage, the price goes beyond huge amounts of bailout money or loan guarantees. The price concerns our very identity – our very soul as a nation.

For hundreds of millions of our fellow world citizens, America has always stood for integrity and honesty and the rule of common decency. That image, that ideal, has been shattered with this crisis.

We are now being seen as a country that tolerated lawlessness and unbridled greed at the very top of some of our most critical institutions.

If the leader of the Free World doesn’t live up to its own standards, who will?

“Jerusalem-born Shaul was so horrified by what
he witnessed and the kind of person he felt he was
turning into that he decided to do something about it.”

7 October: The Israeli Army — along with the Shinbet and Mossad and Border Police — are the institutions that do the actual repression, dispossession, torture, and killing of the Palestinians.

Those in the Israeli Knesset and Government draft the laws, issue the orders, and pretend to make it all “legal.”

Those in our own government — both the Congress and the White House — make all of us Americans seriously complicitous because we provide ever-greater amounts of money, guns, and the constant political excuses to make it all possible.

I met Yehuda Shaul the second day I was in Jerusalem in May. Knowing that I wanted to meet with serious and courageous Israelis, a dinner with three of them was quickly arranged at “Cafe Europe” on Saladin Street, where I also met the owner, an extremely engaging and interesting Palestinian, Jad. I’ve detailed this long, more than 3 hour, dinner and discussion in our upcoming publication SAVING ISRAEL FROM ITSELF, AND SAVING AMERICA FROM ISRAEL.

This week, a press agency in Rome, Italy, wrote the following about Yehuda and the organization he founded, Breaking The Silence (BTS). This short article further underscores how important it is we Americans know about, encourage, and support these courageous and principled Israelis. As Yehuda says and I so agree, we have to do something about this!

Breaking the silence challenges the Israeli army

RAMALLAH, West Bank (6 October IPS) - An Israeli police commander has called them “provocateurs,” “militants,” and “lawbreakers.” Earlier in the year, the Israeli army decided that their presence in the city of Hebron, 30 kilometers south of Jerusalem in the Palestinian West Bank, constituted a security threat and banned them from the city, stating that any member of the organization caught there would be expelled forthwith.

They’ve been spat at, stoned and assaulted, but these former members of the army, many of whom served in Hebron, are determined to expose what is being done in their name and in the name of Israel’s security.

Yehuda Shaul

The organization’s main aim is to break the silence and taboo surrounding the behavior of Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian territories in an endeavor to enlighten ordinary Israelis on what happens behind the scenes as their sons and daughters, husbands and wives serve the Jewish state.

Hebron is an especially tense city as clashes break out frequently between the city’s approximately 600 illegal Israeli settlers, protected by over a thousand Israeli soldiers, living amongst a Palestinian population of about 170,000.

The Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron used to be the home of the United States doctor and immigrant Baruch Goldstein, who mowed down 29 Muslim worshippers as they prayed in the Ibrahimi Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan in 1994. Survivors beat him to death.

BTS has used the anonymous testimony of more than 500 Israeli soldiers who served in the Palestinian territories to hold photo-exhibitions as well as conduct fact-finding tours of Hebron for the Israeli public.

Jerusalem-born Shaul was so horrified by what he witnessed and the kind of person he felt he was turning into that he decided to do something about it. “As the term of my military service was drawing to a close, I started questioning who I was and what I wanted from life as a civilian and what I had become,” recalls Shaul.

“It’s a very terrifying moment because, in one second military terminology and way of thinking doesn’t apply to you any more, and in one second you lose the justification for 95 percent of actions you took part in over the past two years and ten months,” said the former soldier.

Shaul began talking to many of his fellow soldiers about their mutual experiences. “We all felt that something wrong was going on around us. We started talking about what we’ve done, and that’s how BTS got started,” said Shaul.

The group kicked off their campaign with a photo exhibition Bringing Hebron to Tel Aviv in 2004 which was attended by thousands. The exhibition was put up at Harvard University in the US in 2006.

Shaul explains how many Israeli soldiers changed and eventually grew accustomed to abusing Palestinian civilians.

Following the initial excitement after first arriving in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the soldiers soon got bored and would invent games to amuse themselves.

“You aim your rifle at kids and see them through the scope of your rifle and take a picture. The rifle is no longer a killing machine, the rifle becomes a part of your game, a way to pass time,” said Shaul.

Palestinian father and son at checkpoint.

“If you call on a Palestinian to show his ID and you don’t like his reaction, you then detain him for as long as you feel like. It just depends on which side of the bed you woke up on that morning,” he said.

At other times the soldiers would randomly spray a suburban area indiscriminately in response to gunshots from the area. Testimony from other soldiers included actions such as tanks randomly driving over parked Palestinian cars even when they were not in the way and the road was wide enough for the tanks to pass.

Stealing from Palestinians and assaulting them in their homes while soldiers conducted searches happened regularly.

“Over time,” Shaul says, “the Palestinians stop being people and simply become objects.”

Following the success of the Tel Aviv exhibition, BTS started organizing weekly tours for the Israeli public in Hebron. More than 5,000 people have participated in over 300 tours during the last three years.

But these tours have been interrupted and marred by attacks by Israeli settlers. The army responded by banning BTS from the area earlier this year. Following a successful appeal to the Israeli high court BTS had the ban overturned, and the tours resumed.

But the resumption of the first tour in June was stopped yet again as Israeli settlers blocked the path of the bus and poured scalding water over several tour participants while the police stood by.

None of the settlers were charged.

Angry Israeli intellectuals and left-wing activists, including internationally renowned Israeli author Amos Oz, signed a letter of protest which was published in the Israeli daily Haaretz. They demanded that the Israeli police enforce law and order in Hebron and make the settlers accountable.

BTS follows in the footsteps of another group of peace activists, Yesh Gvul (Hebrew for “There’s a Limit.”) Yesh Gvul comprises Israeli soldiers who refuse, on the basis of moral objections, to serve in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Yesh Gvul was established in 1982 following Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon when more than a thousand Palestinian civilians were massacred by Israel’s Christian Phalangist allies in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

This followed the assassination of Phalangist leader and Lebanese president Bashir Gemayel. The Phalangists, incorrectly, suspected Palestinian involvement.

Israeli troops were later found to have surrounded the camps, preventing any escape, and fired flares into the night making it easier for their butcher allies. Israel was also largely held responsible for arming, training and financing the Phalangists.

Paul Flum, President, Goals for Americans Foundation

“I refused to be part of an intelligence unit which provided information on the possible bombing of civilian targets in the territories,” Neiman told IPS. “I also began a campaign of letter writing to the then [army] chief of staff, Dan Halutz.”

Halutz was responsible for ordering the dropping of a one-ton bomb on a crowded residential apartment building in a densely populated Gaza neighborhood in 2002. The bomb killed Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Amongst the civilian casualties were 14 children.

Our current financial-industry crisis started brewing years ago because of political and ideological extremism. The antiregulation zealots have systematically eroded and eliminated the essential safeguards that have kept the industry honest and accountable, and these actions, over time, allowed and encouraged unbridled greed to run amuck on Wall Street and throughout the banking industry. We are now facing an enormous urgent uphill struggle to contain the damage these years of neglect have brought about.

The problem is both incredibly complex and frighteningly simple. The bottom line is this: The credit system, the life blood that fuels the everyday life cycle of our economic wellbeing, is in serious danger of failing — of seizing up. Fear is a primary motivator at this point, with lending institutions terrified to loan money they’re not sure will ever be paid back. Apparently we came close to just such a seizure of the system on September 17th, and that’s when the three main players in the subsequent negotiations began a frantic campaign to alert the country — and Congress — to the impending nightmare.

For months, Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Timothy Geithner, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have been fighting a furious but quiet rear-guard action as these mountains of mortgage-related debt piled up on the teetering balance sheets of most major Wall Street firms. When the dominos started to fall, one by one, over the course of the summer — Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG — the magnitude of the crisis became more and more clear.

Their solution — the White House solution — amounted to nothing less than the greatest governmental intrusion into the private-business sector since the New Deal. And by its very title, “Bailout,” it took on the aura of being a sellout of American taxpayers. Paulson asked Congress for 700 billion dollars to buy the mortgage-related securities — the debt — of most of the struggling companies, to provide them with a massive infusion of capital to stay afloat and to calm the markets.

Republicans and Democrats alike hated the idea, and saw it as a massively expensive reward system for the financial-industry insiders who had created the mess to begin with — a bailout for incompetents, swindlers and crooks! And the American public rose up in anger as well.

With just weeks to go before the national elections, everyone in Congress is terrified to go on record as having voted for a bailout for Wall Street Pirates. On Monday, September 29th, the House of Representatives, led by Republicans, voted down a compromise bailout plan that was a much-revised version of Paulson’s original plan — a stinging defeat for the House majority and minority leaders and especially for President Bush.

As a result, the stock market plunged almost 800 points by the closing bell, the largest single-day fall in history.

What needs to be done now?

Representatives from the Congressional leadership, working with Federal Reserve officials and the White House, need to keep working on this plan until they get it right.

But buying the debt from these irresponsible institutions is not the solution!

The Federal Reserve should convene an emergency meeting and approve a major interest-rate cut. This would not only make borrowing easier in the struggling credit market but would also have a powerful psychological effect on the world markets.

A loan program should replace the buyout program — a program that should be contingent upon the firing of the executives — the pirates — of these same Wall Street firms that are now lining up for bailout money. The Fed just recently saved A.I.G. from collapse with an 11 percent loan, not a buyout.

Why don’t the White House and Paulson think this sensible solution that will actually earn serious money for the government, would also make sense for the current situation?

This crisis is real and immediate, but another round of fearmongering by the White House is not the solution! The public has had enough of President Bush telling us that it’s his way or the highway. His credibility is long gone! And Congress is siding with the public.

The next president and the 2009 Congress will have a serious regulatory overhaul to deal with and plenty of time to assess blame and prosecute lawbreakers.

The job now is to get the credit market functioning again on a daily basis plus convince the international markets that we are serious about cleaning our own house.

JUST SAY NO TO THE WALL STREET BAILOUT!

By Citizen Paul

At GOALS FOR AMERICANS we believe it’s time for Congress to resist the latest example of fearmongering coming out of the White House — this time concerning the credit market crisis!

We agree with the considerable number of experts who think the proposed 700-billion-dollar bailout of the financial-services industry mortgage debt is an absurd overreaching to the crisis –- a so-called solution that neither addresses the underlying problems nor forces the guilty parties to accept responsibility for their immoral actions.

Secretary Paulson’s and President Bush’s plan, if rushed through, would result in the American taxpayers being forced to take on the worthless debt created by a handful of criminal corporate leaders who themselves have already pocketed millions in bloated salaries, bonuses, perks, and obscene retirement packages.

The crisis is real, but this BAILOUT is the wrong solution.

Instead of buying their debt, we support plans that involve FEDERAL LOAN GUARANTEES to these struggling Wall Street firms, which they would be required to pay back with interest, so their debt stays with them, and doesn’t end up on the backs of taxpayers.

We support a vigorous oversight apparatus to insure the transparency of these loans. And we would demand that none of the money go to compensating any of the remaining corporate officers still at their jobs, who helped engineer this disaster with their fiscal irresponsibility and personal greed!

We would support allowing many of the smaller banks to fail, which would be in keeping with the essential philosophy of a free-market system –- ours! –- in which you accept the consequences and the responsibility for your corporate failings and abuses, come what may.

Mordechai Vanunu

Still Trying to Prevent Nuclear War in Middle East

Mordechai Vanunu is a former Israeli and a former Jew. As a man of great courage and integrity, Vanunu decided years ago that he could not tolerate Israel’s many and repeated violations of international law and that because of the work he had done, he had a civic responsibility to tell the world what he knew about Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program.

Consequently, Vanunu decided to become a Christian and he renounced his Israeli citizenship.

On October 5, 1986, the entire front page of the London Sunday Times was all about Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program, complete with pictures.

Mordechai Vanunu had blown the whistle; he had become a “nuclear whistleblower.” Vanunu believes, and rightly so, that Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program was setting the region on a course that would eventually result in nuclear proliferation leading to nuclear war.

Israeli nuclear facility at Dimon in Negev Dessert

Like other major whistleblowers to whom we owe so much (Daniel Ellsberg from the past and Sibel Edmonds more recently come to mind in our own country) Vanunu acted out of conscience and not at all for personal gain.

Indeed, he was made to pay a tremendous price and he is still being forced into submission now 22 years later.

The Israelis enticed Vanunu into a “honey trap” with their American-pretending Mossad agent “Cindy,” now said to be living comfortably thanks to the Israelis and the U.S. in Florida.

“Cindy” enticed Vanunu to go with her on a vacation to Rome.

There Mossad agents kidnapped Vanunu and in contemptuous violation of international law smuggled him secretly to Israel.

In a secret trial he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. For 11 of these years Vanunu was kept in solitary confinement in conditions that Amnesty International characterized as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.”

Finally after protests throughout the world and Amnesty adopting him as a special “Prisoner of Conscience” Vanunu was released in 2004.

But the Israelis then did what they seem to relish. They used various new legal tricks to make it a crime for Vanunu to speak with foreign journalists or even to travel a few miles to pray in Bethlehem at Christmas time.

Supposedly, according to the Israelis, this single man whom they kidnapped and imprisoned for 18 years, was even now so dangerous that he had to be further deprived of his basic human rights, confined in Jerusalem where he is shunned and ostracized by most Israelis. Indeed, new efforts are underway to imprison Vanunu again after all he has already been subjected to.

I was fortunate to meet with Mordechai on my recent visit to Israel and to speak with him not only about his own situation but of the great dangers of a future nuclear war in the Middle East.

Modechai is right and he has certainly earned the right to be listened to for his heroic and continuing acts of conscience. For whatever reasons, the Israelis are the ones who introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East. It is Israel that repeatedly violated international law and even today it is Israel that continues to lie about its nuclear weapons program and refuse any and all forms of international inspection. It is Israel in fact that has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT. Iran has not only signed this treaty and year after year allowed and cooperated with international inspections. Iran in fact has not even been charged with violating the NPT which it has carefully lived up to.

Vanunu displays copy of the original newspaper in which he revealed Israel’s nuclear secrets.

But more than anything else it is preventing nuclear war in the Middle East that all of us should be striving to achieve. That is one of the main reasons I decided at this time to see for myself what is happening in Israel and in Occupied Palestine.

Resolving the core conflict in the region, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and then working overtime to make the entire Middle East region one free of weapons of mass destruction is a central theme in the upcoming Goals for Americans PLAN PALESTINE and A NEW MIDDLE EAST that will be featured on our website.

Professor Richard Falk

The United Nations in March of this year appointed Professor Richard Falk as the key person to report to the international community about what the Israelis have done and are doing to the Palestinian People. Falk is one of our country’s most discussed experts on world affairs and himself a proud American Jew. He retired a few years ago from Princeton University where he was Professor of International Law and Practice at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Officially Falk was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to a six-year term as Special Rapporteur on Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories.
Falk took over this position just a few months ago in June from the well-respected South African Professor, John Dugard, himself a noted expert on apartheid and international affairs.

Earlier this summer I saw this terrible situation for myself when I visited many areas in Israel and Palestine including Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Beit Jallah, Nazareth, Tiberias, Jericho, Haifa, and Hebron, in addition to a number of Israeli settlements and a Palestinian refugee camp.

Now, as I work to finish my Foundation’s newest and maybe most important contribution to helping resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that continues to plague our world, I am greatly encouraged that a man like Falk has reached such similar conclusions.

Yes, Falk is certainly right when he concludes that the “Palestinians have been betrayed by the international community.”

But I think we Americans have to face another reality as well.

We Americans have been betrayed by our own leaders, in both parties, who have allowed themselves year after year to be so controlled and manipulated by both the Israeli Government and the Israeli Lobby.

Both of these betrayals must now be rectified!

That is why I wanted to see for myself the situation and spent a very intense week there in Israel and Palestine earlier this summer before making brief visits to the neighboring Arab States of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

And that is why I will soon be publishing SAVING ISRAEL FROM ITSELF and AND SAVING AMERICA FROM ISRAEL, some excerpts from which you can now read here in advance at our website.

As a prelude, I highly recommend that all concerned Americans read this interview with Professor Falk recently conducted and published by a small European magazine, Current Concerns.

Because of his position, Falk must use far more diplomatic language than I prefer but his views and conclusions not only very much mirror my own but provide the critical context for what we will soon be publishing and making available to all members of Congress and top Washington policy-makers. In fact we have already published a full-page ad about our upcoming publication on the back cover of The Washington Diplomat (click to view PDF).

First though, before the Falk interview, this short summary of the conclusions reached by Professor Falk’s predecessor, John Dugard, in his own final report to the United Nations in March of this year:

CONCLUSIONS FROM U.N. SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON PALESTINE, JOHN DUGARD:

Humanitarian situation in the Palestinian occupied territories is disastrous

The construction of the wall, the expansion of settlements, the restrictions on freedom of movement, house demolitions and military incursions have had a disastrous impact on the economy, health, education, family life and standard of living of Palestinians in the West Bank. [...] Poverty and unemployment are at their highest levels ever; health and education are undermined by military incursions, the wall and checkpoints; and the social fabric of society is threatened. [...]

Deadly harassments

Health-care clinics are in short supply of pediatric antibiotics and 91 key drugs are no longer available. Previously, seriously ill patients were allowed to leave Gaza to receive treatment in Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Jordan and other countries through the Rafah and Erez crossings. Rafah is now completely closed and the Israeli authorities deny passage through Erez to all but the most “severe and urgent cases.”

The situation has worsened since the declaration of Gaza as a hostile territory. The World Health Organization reports that while 89.4 per cent of patients who applied for permits during the period January-May 2007 were granted permits, only 77.1 per cent of those who applied were granted permits during October 2007. This has resulted in a drastic increase in the number of patients who have died as a result of restrictions: according to the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights, since June 2007, 44 people have died as a result of denial or delay of access to medical care by the Israeli authorities and 13 died in November alone. Mahmoud Abu Taha, a 21-year-old patient with stomach cancer, arrived at Erez at 16.00 hours on 18 October with a Palestinian intensive care unit ambulance, escorted by his father. The patient’s entry was delayed for two and a half hours, after which the IDF asked the father to cross to the Israeli side of Erez. His son, the patient, was to enter on a walker and not with the ambulance. The patient was denied access after reaching the end of the 500 metre long tunnel, while the father was arrested by the IDF and held for nine days.

On 28 October, a second arrangement for the patient was approved and he was admitted to an Israeli hospital, where he died the same night. [...]

Violation of international law

The situation in the West Bank may not be as serious as that of Gaza, however it is all a question of degree. Moreover, as in Gaza, the serious humanitarian situation in the West Bank is largely the result of Israel’s violations of international law. The wall violates norms of international humanitarian law and human rights law, according to the International Court of Justice; settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention; checkpoints violate the freedom of movement proclaimed in human rights conventions; house demolitions violate the Fourth Geneva Convention; the humanitarian crisis in the West Bank, brought about by Israel’s withholding of Palestinian tax money and other violations of international law, violates many of the rights contained in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. As in Gaza, Israel’s actions constitute an unlawful collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

INTERVIEW WITH NEW U.N. SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON PALESTINE, RICHARD FALK:

“Palestinians have been betrayed by the international community over the years”

Interview with Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories

On the occasion of the eighth session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the newly appointed Special Rapporteur on Palestine and Other Occupied Territories, addressed the council for the first time and gave his eagerly-awaited inaugural speech. In his explanations, Falk referred to the report of his predecessor John Dugard (see below) who during the last four years had reported very frankly on the catastrophic conditions in the territories occupied by Israel and had now handed over the mandate to Richard Falk. Falk, who himself is a Jewish US citizen, had been attacked by Israel and the US prior to his election as a Special Rapporteur. However, he was given the mandate despite harsh resistance against his appointment.

Professor Richard Falk

In his first speech to the Human Rights Council, he assured that he would take great effort to improve the living conditions in the occupied territories and to end the conflict. At the same time, he announced an extension of his mandate by saying that he would also investigate in the human rights violations of Palestinians towards Israel. In the ensuing discussion, he made it clear that he was going to differentiate between the occupiers and the occupied; By no means must victims be made offenders.

After his speech and the ensuing discussion, Current Concerns was given the opportunity for an interview with Richard Falk about the situation in the Middle East, Palestine, and the reasons for the extension of his mandate.

A peace plan for the Middle East

Question: The conflict between Palestine and Israel is not the only crisis in this region. How is it possible to end the crisis; is there any solution for this area at all?

Richard Falk: That is a far-reaching question because the situation has gradually worsened especially during the Bush presidency in this region and virtually the entire region is now a war zone. I think the best antidote for this reality – if one is trying to find a constructive approach – would be to create a regional security framework in which there are mutual assurances of non-aggression and peaceful resolution of conflicts given by all the governments of the region. To make such an undertaking a success, it would also depend upon the US either endorsing this regional approach or participating directly in some way in the arrangement as a non-regional participant along with others. Perhaps, Russia, the US, the EU could participate, and also China and India. So I think that’s one worthwhile initiative.

Another would be to get rid of all weapons of mass destruction in the region including the Israeli nuclear-weapons arsenal. I think that such a step would go along with dealing with the Iran-Iraq problems that have been used in recent years as a pretext for aggressive war. I see those first two steps, especially if coordinated with a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, meaning a total and genuine withdrawal and not merely a ‘redeployment’; also without permanent military bases of any kind. Any kind of military presence would seem to me unacceptable. On the basis of those three policy shifts, I think a more balanced approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict could need to be forthcoming. I think if those four things were to happen, or even started happening, there would be hope that the region could be restabilized. And there may be certain objective conditions that are favourable to this kind of approach including safeguarding the prize of oil and avoidance of spreading and deepening of the US recession to the entire global economy. If one thinks rationally about the future, the first objective should be to create stability and order in the Middle East. This requires achieving justice for the peoples of the region starting with overcoming the plight of the Palestinians and ending the occupation of Iraq.

“Is Israel at all interested in reducing the violence?”

You are the new special rapporteur on Palestine, so we want to focus on this conflict. How would you describe the conditions, which the Palestinians live in?

I should say I can respond in two different ways. As a special rapporteur I haven’t really conducted an independent investigation, so I’m not really in a position to comment on the present set of circumstances. As a concerned citizen, I had been long troubled by the suffering of the Palestinian people under this historically unprecedented occupation that has now lasted for more than forty years. In recent months, I have felt that there exists a real danger of a humanitarian catastrophe taking place in Gaza particularly as a result of the siege and associated policies pursued by Israel, since Hamas won the elections at the start of 2006. In a sense, these harsh conditions themselves, even if they don’t result in massive deaths and famine, impose such a daily ordeal on the people of Gaza that it is already a catastrophe.

Concern for the fate of the Gazans is not just a worry about the future. It exists as a present reality and the world community has been unforgivably slow to recognize and respond to the seriousness of the situation. Particularly the EU, and even more so the US, have been diverted by the Hamas issue from addressing the suffering of the people of Gaza and the Palestinians generally. I find it shocking that there has been so little attention given to the repeated Hamas offers of a long-term cease-fire, along with their efforts to eliminate the violence and the violent interaction of the two peoples. Hamas, in my understanding, even established and largely maintained a unilateral cease-fire during the first year after the January 2006 elections despite a series of Israeli provocations. During this period Israel continued to engage in targeted assassinations and mounted military incursions on Palestinian territories. It makes one wonder whether Israel is at all interested in curtailing the violence that is associated with its so-called security policy being imposed on the occupied territories.

A state for the Palestinians

How can one help in this situation to make things better? My question refers to your position as the special rapporteur on Palestine. What do you think is your task concerning this issue?

I think it can and must get better for the Palestinian people. It is hard to imagine people enduring the present reality much longer. And usually in a situation of this kind if it doesn’t get better, it gets worse. In this sense a mere continuation of the present structure of occupation would itself produce a deteriorating humanitarian situation for Gaza and generally, for occupied Palestine. At the same time, it is almost impossible to assume a significant adjustment in Israeli security policy without a real change in the political leadership in Israel or as a result of some kind of significant political change in the approach taken by the US Government. Neither development seems at all likely at the present time.

Unfortunately, the current American presidential candidates seem unable to put forward innovative positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The political climate makes American politicians feel that in order to be credible they have to demonstrate a 110 percent level of support for Israel, whatever it does. And this is very discouraging in terms of what we can expect in the near future from Washington. To avoid succumbing to despair and cynicism, we should take note of some surprises in recent history that exceeded all reasonable expectations. Non-violently ending the apartheid system in South Africa was a utopian project until it happened. A white racist elite ruled the country with an iron hand. It looked as if it would never change this approach unless it was to be defeated through an armed struggle. Thereby it came to a point where it no longer could sustain apartheid. What was achieved quite remarkably was to persuade the pro-apartheid leadership of the country to accept a peaceful defeat of apartheid accompanied by moves toward multi-racial constitutional democracy.

There are Israelis who are already thinking and working along this line, inspired by the South African experience. I believe that a part of the role of this mandate is to encourage people both in Israel and in the US and in Europe and elsewhere to try to understand that it really is in the long-term interests of both peoples to find the courage, the wisdom, and empathy to commit themselves to attaining a peaceful future. It needs to be understood that the longer the construction and extension of Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in and around Jerusalem goes on – as well as other related activities such as building an expensive network of interconnections between the settlement communities in the Westbank and pre-1967 Israel – the more difficult it becomes to envision, much less implement a two states solution. There seems little doubt that Israel’s own efforts to establish facts on the ground over the last 40+ years have undermined what is still pronounced as their vision of a peaceful future. A Palestinian state cannot be a token reality if peace is to be achieved. It must represent, at the very least, a truly sovereign state that exists in geographic unity on the entirety of the West Bank and shares in the administration of Jerusalem.

International law remains the foundation

We talked about the situation of Palestine and the possibility for a peace process. My question is now: What do you think about Israel and the respect for international law and humanitarian law as a prerequisite for peace?

I think that the issue is complicated and important at the same time. It is complicated because Israel has presented itself as a democratic society, a political system that is very committed to the rule of law. And the legitimacy of the Israeli state depends on its adherence to constitutional democracy. In the conflict with the Palestinians the Israeli leadership is aware that international law is on the Palestinian side with respect to the main contested issues (withdrawal from the land occupied in 1967, the status of the settlements, the claims to Jerusalem, the rights of Palestinian refugees). To date the US Government has supported Israel in all diplomatic negotiations by insisting upon the exclusion of international law. This amounts to a way of suggesting that a solution to the conflict should not be based on the relative rights of the two sides but rather on their relative power. For this reason bargaining between the two sides should take full account of the realities on the ground and not pay any attention to the terms of a just peace that either the United Nations has endorsed or international law prescribes.

This attitude has had a number of detrimental effects. It has made it impossible to achieve an understanding of peace that is acceptable to the Palestinians. It has also made the Palestinians feel that having international law or the UN on their side is of no use. They still suffer, the bodies keep piling up, and their territorial domain is being continuously squeezed to create even more facts on the ground. Cumulatively, this experience conveys a message to most Palestinians that the only way to get results and challenge an oppressive situation is by recourse to force. Palestinians look particularly at the Hezbollah success in getting Israel to withdraw substantially from southern Lebanon and compare that to their own situation. The international community and the US particularly are sending the message that international law doesn’t help the weak in any practical way. It helps the powerful and the oppressors by discrediting resistance to oppressive circumstances.

Extension of the mandate

In your speech to the council you mentioned the extension of the mandate. Everybody wants to know why you propose this extension. What is the reason, what are the ideas behind this and how does this correspond with international law and the human rights?

I think there is both a principal reason and a pragmatic or practical reason. The principal reason is that an understanding of the argument about security and the issue of the violations of the occupation policy depend on evaluating the Israeli legal arguments claiming security as a justification for their approach. To deal with this central issue depends on a consideration of the extent to which Palestinian behavior makes it legal for Israel to be doing what it is doing.

This kind of balanced inquiry does not suggest any symmetry between the occupier and the occupied or between the victims and their oppressors. In fact a balanced inquiry exposes the real structure of the asymmetries in a more credible way, in a more effective way, and gives a fair response to the claims of the occupying power. The practical reason is that it has been too easy for apologists on behalf of Israel and of the US to point to this one-sidedness of the formal mandate as discrediting to both the Human Rights Council, and the UN more generally, and to this mandate in particular. Harping on the one-sidedness of the mandate has been a very effective way of avoiding the substance of the Palestinian complaints. This criticism of the mandate has succeeded in focusing far too much attention on this procedural issue bearing on the formal scope of the inquiry. I feel that from both principled and practical perspectives it was appropriate to raise this matter at the outset of my appointment. I knew that to do so would be to pose a delicate issue, but I acknowledge that I did not realize beforehand how complicated and difficult it would be to adopt my recommendation.

We congratulate you on your election as a special rapporteur for Palestine. Resistance by the US and Israel was enormous so we all were surprised in a positive way that you were appointed.

Yes, I was really surprised. I was fully aware that Israel and the US were actively opposing my election, and were very upset about the existence of the mandate and with John Dugard as the most recent holder of the mandate. I have been told that both governments lobbied heavily to get a different kind of person appointed and were angry that these efforts failed, awakening to the fact that I was the choice of the HRC despite their campaign. And so, yes I was surprised.

Thank you very much that you took some time for us. And we wish you success in your very difficult mandate.

Thank you very much for the questions, thank you. I want to try to do the best I can for both peoples. The Palestinians particularly have been betrayed by the international community over the years. This betrayal is linked to the unwillingness to accept the special responsibility of the international community that is grounded in the establishment of Palestine as a British mandate after World War I. In a fundamental sense the mandate that I hold is at least a symbolic recognition by the UN System of this responsibility.

Click the arrow to play the video below

Whether it’s Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin in the White House in January, the Israeli Lobby is in high-gear and getting ready.

Both parties and both campaigns have been infiltrated and pretty much already captured by different arms and different personalities of “The Lobby.”

This was clearly demonstrated when the day after he locked up the nomination Obama quickly pushed a joint U.S./Israeli flag pin into his lapel and went before American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to proclaim his loyalty so brazenly that even some of his advisers winced.

And just last week, right after being annointed by John McCain, and even as she was hunkered down preparing her acceptance speech, Sarah Palin said OK to the “request” from just one special interest group to come and see her. No less than the entire Board of Director of AIPAC marched up to her hotel suite even as all in the national media was kept away.

The Washington operatives in the multi-organization Israeli Lobby are super-busy preparing for big policy jobs in the White House and throughout the corridors of power — whomever wins the November election. They are also in hyper-drive formulating and pushing policy positions with which they will dominate the print media and the radio/TV air waves as well as the Washington politicians.

Whichever politicians prevail on November 5th, one group of these Israeli lobby organizations and operatives will be in power in government. The other group of them will be in power in the think-tanks and the media as well as as outside “advisers” and “contractors.”

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, is the most public out-front group in the powerful Washington Israel Lobby. It remains so even with its two former top officials still awaiting trial as Israeli spies — another important subject the corporate media largely avoids even as Bush/Cheney “pardon” rumors are the talk of the town in insider circles.

BUT AIPAC is actually just one of many major organizations that make up the Israeli/Jewish lobby.

Another is of more recent vintange and known as the “Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.”

Just as AIPAC and it’s Near East Institute think-tank are intertwined with the Israeli elite — including the politicians, the army, and the intelligence services — the same is the case with the Saban Center which is named for a close friend of Ariel Sharon and a man thought to still be a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, Haim Saban. His multi-millions (actually he has billions) in effect got Brookings to turn over its Middle East policy to him and his Israeli friends and to appoint none other than Martin Indyk to run it.

Right after the two political conventions concluded this arm of the Israeli Lobby held a media event to try to steer the future of U.S. policy in the Middle East — especially should Obama and Biden be in the White House as Brookings is traditionally aligned with the Democratic Party much as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and others are aligned with the Republicans.

They called their event “A GRAND STRATEGY FOR AMERICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST” and you can watch it in full above.

What you will see are three Jews and one westernized Arab, albeit someone most Arabs and nearly all Palestinians consider a collaborator. The hook for the discussion is the new book underwritten by the Saban Center, but published for them by Random House titled, A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East.

In the video, in order of appearance, are four long-time friends all with close ties to both the Israeli and U.S. governments as well as the many other organizations and personalities that make up the extended Israel Lobby in Washington:

• Martin Indyk, Zionist Jew originally from Australia and Israel, is the Director of the Saban Center
• Kenneth Pollack, Zionist Jew formerly with the CIA and son-in-law of Ted Koppel, is Senior Fellow of the Saban Center
• David Brooks, Zionist Jew and former employee of Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard, now is a popular press and TV commentator.
• Marwan Muasher was Jordan’s first Ambassador to Israel and has long involvments with the Israeli government and Israeli/U.S. intelligence.

Paul with Israeli General Benzy Gruber at his home in the occupied West Bank

I have great admiration for the Israeli people and for the Jewish people as a whole. Their accomplishments are many, their talents abundant, their past suffering truly horrible beyond description.

And yet the policies of the Israeli government toward the Palestinian people are terrible, cruel, and uncivilized, and, as such, unacceptable. They are abhorrent and must be changed.

Facing such injustices, we Citizens of the United States have an obligation not just to lament and wring our hands, but to insist, indeed to demand, that the Israelis change these destructive policies and that our own government assume its responsibilities to make them do so.

The overall situation in the Middle East between Israel, the Palestinians, and much of the Arab and Muslim worlds is reaching what leading experts believe to be a point of no return. Too many organizations and individuals are spending their days complaining about how bad things are, lamenting what could have been, and even declaring the “Two-State Solution” dead.

But that’s not what I think. And that’s not what I’m doing. I happen to be an action guy –– and as an American Citizen I require a certain level of performance from our government.

I think this dangerous and dire situation has gone on for far too long, and I think it is a situation crying out for bold new leadership and new ideas. Therefore, I am focusing on crafting a better future.

The United States should be providing principled and courageous leadership at this crucial time, not facilitating more war, hatred, and destruction. I’ve studied and written about this issue since 1962 and from the vantage point of 60 different counties in which I’ve worked. And now my recent trip made it clear what must be done.

Dome of the Rock: Jerusalem, Israel

Paul with Israeli soldier outside the King David Hotel in Jerusalem

More than anything else, my meetings with Israelis and Palestinians — some rabbis and generals, some ministers and elected legislators, some UN personnel and NGO specialists, men and women, students and teachers — convinced me that we owe it to them, as well as ourselves, to face the challenge head-on. It’s time the United States stops being the enabler for outrageous Israeli policies — that so clearly would be unacceptable anywhere else in our world.

We all know that many leading Israelis themselves have proclaimed their abhorrence about what their Government does.

Yet America continues to facilitate and enable this behavior with $3 billion every year plus armaments of every kind — making us more deeply involved and responsible as each day goes by.

So we need first of all to start being honest and courageous in facing today’s situation in which we are so intimately entangled. What has happened and what will happen in this small area greatly affects our country and our world.

Being politically correct and socially acceptable has overridden the greater responsibility to speak truthfully and to act forcefully. This kind of avoidance approach is what my recent visit to Israel, Occupied Palestine, and three other countries in the region has impelled me to speak up and champion what is right and just. This is not dreamy innocence or naive idealism.

This is facing up to one of the the great and perilous issues of our time. This is getting back to basics!

While the Israelis and our own government keep uttering the platitudinous words about “Palestinian Statehood” the realities on the ground are completely otherwise.

Paul with Mohammed Faraje outside the Lutheran Hotel and Boys School in Jerusalem.

Indeed more than ever in recent years, the Israelis have been rushing forward trying to make any kind of acceptable and dignified “Two- State settlement” impossible — and they have come a long way in that direction though they have not yet fully succeeded.

In this report, I offer a clear and succinct outline of specific Israeli policies that must change, what should be expected of the Palestinians, and the Arab States, and what I expect of my own country. It’s time to act and provide justice where there is none.

“Citizen Paul”

Paul Flum, President
Goals for Americans® Foundation

Citizen Paul and Yahav on balcony over-looking Israeli settlement

On the day we met, we had attended a presentation by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Occupied Palestinian Territory. We were briefed on the humanitarian crisis and consequences that need to be addressed:

• Lack of protection for civilians and continuing violence
• Closure, movement restrictions and lack of access
• Political geographical and institutional fragmentation
• High Food Insecurity
• Continuous Decline in the Economy and Socio-Economic Conditions
• Agricultural Livelihoods Threatened
• Health-Care Quality Deteriorating; Mental-Health-Disorder Symptoms on Rise
• Access to Quality Water and Sanitation Problematic
• Basic education standards Deteriorating
• Palestinian Civilians at Risk and in Need of Protection
• Children Exposed to Violence and Rights Violations on a Daily Basis
• Increased Humanitarian Coordination Needed
• Gender-Based Impact of the Crisis

Following the meeting, Zohar took us to some key areas where Israelis have demolished Palestinian homes and expropriated land to build new Jewish-only settlements. Despite announced agreements otherwise, this practice continues to make the prospect of a two-state solution less possible.

HONOR, & EQUALITY FOR ALL