More than 1,300 Palestinians, at least a third of whom were women and children, were killed in Israel's war on Gaza, which had the stated aim of preventing rocket attacks into Israel.

Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, died during the 22-day conflict.
source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/02/20092355215224610.h...

Rolf Verleger, former chairman of the Jewish Community in Schleswig-Holstein (a German Federal State), criticizes the 'all too simple' comments of German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Israel's recent military action against the Palestinian people. To hold only Hamas responsible does not reflect the very complex historical development of the situation. He asks four questions:

1. None of his Grandparents survived the Nazi Holocaust. Did this fact give Jewish franctireurs and the Jewish Army in 1947/48 the right to expel hundreds of thousands of Arabs from Israel?
2. The German Nazis expropriated the property of his Great-Grandfather in Berlin. Did this fact give the state of Israel the right to confiscate the property of the expelled Arabs?
3. All his uncles and aunts were murdered by the SS. Does this fact give the state of Israel the right to exercise a dictatorial occupation for the last 40 years over the Palestinian people?
4. His Grandma Hannah was shot, because she went to her hair-dresser without wearing the "Judenstern" ( a yellow star to mark Jewish People. It had to be put visibly on the clothes). Does this fact give the State of Israel the right to starve and bombard the people in Gaza?

"In general terms", he asks, "does the fact that the European Jews were the victim of a great wrong, give the state of Israel the right, before God and humanity, to wrong others? This is the real question. And here, Mrs. Merkel is oversimplifying. Israel is not always right."

He also compares the blockade of Gaza with the blockade of Sarajevo in 1990, and adds, "the leaders who did that then were punished as war criminals in The Hague."

"Judaism once was 'the religion of acting charity'. When I say that today, no one is going to believe me."

(Excerpt of an interview given on Deutschlandfunk, 12/29, 2008)

See also:

• The Palestinians are the Jews of the Israelis
• Israeli settler abuse compared to pre-holocaust Europe

The Jerusalem Post broke the news this morning: George Bush intends to attack Iran in his final months in office. 

"The official claimed that a senior member of the president's entourage, which concluded a trip to Israel last week, said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for."

(read more...►)

Congress has the power to stop him. There is a resolution already in the Senate called S. Res. 356. It's a straightforward and simple resolution that says, "A resolution affirming that any offensive military action taken against Iran must be explicitly approved by Congress before such action may be initiated."

Tell your Senator to support and fight for S. Res 356:

http://www.TrueMajority.org/dontbombiran

Today's story is just the latest to discuss the increasingly belligerent rhetoric of the Bush administration towards Iran. Just last week, President Bush compared anyone who seeks to negotiate with Iran to those who appeased the Nazis prior to World War II.

We only have a few months until our long national nightmare of the Bush Administration comes to an end.  But, it is abundantly clear that they intend on going out with a bang. It's time for the Congress to embrace its role as a co-equal branch of government and stop them before it is too late.

 

Dear Supporter of a Just Foreign Policy,

Former President Jimmy Carter, predictably, is being denounced for today's meeting with the exiled leader of Hamas in Syria.

Carter's critics are wrong. Talking to Hamas, which won the January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, is a necessary part of creating peace. As Carter himself said, "There's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process."

Please sign our petition - co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace¹ - to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain asking them to support former President Carter and support talks with Hamas:

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/involved/carter.html

Jimmy Carter knows that 64 percent of Israelis have said they want their government to talk with Hamas about a cease-fire.² He knows that after Hamas won the January 2006 elections, it was willing to declare a ceasefire and allow President Abbas to negotiate with Israel on behalf of all Palestinians.³

Jimmy Carter knows that the blockade of Gaza being carried out by Israel, the U.S., and Egypt has actually strengthened Hamas in Gaza,⁴ as 90 percent of Gaza's factories have closed and many former employees are now working for Hamas.

Jimmy Carter knows that Efraim Halevy, former head of Israel's Mossad, has called for Israel to negotiate with Hamas.⁵ He knows that before the Annapolis conference, a bipartisan group of U.S. foreign-policy experts, including former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, sent a letter to President Bush and Secretary Rice saying that "genuine dialogue" with Hamas is "far preferable to its isolation."⁶

Indeed, he knows that the U.S. has encouraged Egypt to talk to Hamas about negotiating a cease-fire.⁷ How can it be a scandal for Jimmy Carter to talk to Hamas, but not for Egypt to talk to Hamas at U.S. direction?

If the United States truly wants a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians - as opposed to just pretending that it wants one - it must deal with Hamas.

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/involved/carter.html

Thanks for all you do for a just foreign policy,

Robert Naiman, Patrick McElwee and Chelsea Mozen
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org

Please contribute: We need your support to continue our work.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate.html

References:
1. See the webpage for the organization Jewish Voice for Peace:
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org

2. "Poll: Most Israelis back direct talks with Hamas on Shalit," Yossi Verter, Haaretz, February 27, 2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/958473.html

3. "Carter Defends Plan to Meet Hamas Despite Israel Criticism," Agence France Press, April 13, 2008
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/13/8260/

4. "Gaza's Unemployed Have Handouts or Hamas," Griff Witte, Washington Post, April 13, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/12/AR2008041201969.html

5. "Ex-Mossad chief wants Israel to talk to Hamas," Michel Hoebink, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, February 21, 2008
http://www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/080221-israel-mossad

6. "Bipartisan Foreign Policy Leaders on Annapolis Conference," Daniel Levy, Prospects for Peace, October 10, 2007
http://www.prospectsforpeace.com/2007/10/bipartisan_foreign_policy_lead.html

7. "Brushoff for Carter Over Plans for Hamas Meeting," Griff Witte, Washington Post, April 15, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/14/AR2008041402654.html

By Ghali Hassan

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 8:04 AM on January 23, 2007 on AlterNet.Org The head of Israel’s largest Holocaust memorial, Holocaust-survivor Yosef Lapid, said that the behavior of some of Israel’s settler’s toward Palestinians reminded him of the anti-semitism before WWII. Referring to a recently televised incident in which: "a Hebron settler woman hiss[ed] "whore" at her Palestinian neighbour and settler children lobb[ed] rocks at Arab homes," the sometimes fiery Lapid commented on Israeli radio:

"It was not crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us, but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn," he said. "I was afraid to go to school, because of the little anti-Semites who used to lay in ambush on the way and beat us up. How is that different from a Palestinian child in Hebron?" "When we impose upon ourselves, and rightly so, the restriction of not comparing in any way or under any condition, the behavior of Jews to the behavior of Nazis, we forget that anti-Semitism only peaked in Auschwitz," Lapid wrote in Maariv. It is unthinkable for the memory of Auschwitz to serve as cause to ignore the fact that there are Jews among us who behave today towards Palestinians just like German, Hungarian, Polish and other anti-Semites behaved towards Jews," he added.

Read the full article here ». See also Primo Levi - The Palestinians are the Jews of the Israelis »

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It would later turn out that Primo Levi, whose memoirs on Auschwitz have achieved enormous influence among U.S. Intellectuals, would make clear his break with Zionism in 1982, after the assault on Beirut. It was on the eve of Primo Levi’s departure to return to Auschwitz to commemorate the dead that he signed the petition, with other survivors, to demand the recognition of the rights of all peoples of the region, published in La Repubblica. In his views, the Israeli bombers in 1982 were not fighting for freedom, but had become the new oppressors, fighting to deprive another minority of their freedoms. He wrote,

“Everybody is somebody’s Jew. And today the Palestinians are the Jews of the Israelis.”

claiming that the Israeli state had become morally unacceptable to anyone who survived the Nazi genocide; after Sabra and Shatilla, he publically asked Sharon and Begin to resign. And though he was told that he needed to remain silent, that in times of war, his open and public criticism could only hearten the enemies of Israel, he stood firm, and deepened his public criticism in 1984, three years before his death, calling upon Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

Judith Butler (Jews and the Bi-National State)

See also Israeli settler abuse compared to pre-Holocaust Europe » [23.01.2007]

We all pray for a time when the world will be a peace — but until that time arrives, Jewish law directs the Jewish state and the American nation to do what it takes (no more, but no less, either) to survive and prosper ethically in the crazy world in which we live in.