Israel’s 60th Birthday

“We committed Nazi acts.” Aharon Zisling, Israel’s first Agriculture Minister

“There is no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young (Arab) girls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested.” General Richard Catling, British Army Assistant Inspector after interrogating several female survivors (The Palestinian Catastrophe, Michael Palumbo, 1987)

The following article is by Khalid Amayreh from The Voice of Palestine. (thanks Ann)

As the evil state of Israel is celebrating sixty years of ethnic cleansing and atrocities against the native Palestinians, many people around the world, especially young generations, will not be fully aware of the manner in which Israel came into existence. Similarly, the younger Zionist generations who don’t stop calling their Palestinian victims “terrorists” should have a clearer idea about Israel’s manifestly criminal past which Zionist school textbooks shamelessly glamorize and glorify

Prior to “Jewish” statehood, three main Jewish terror organizations operated in Palestine, primarily against Palestinian civilians and British mandate targets. The three were: The Haganah, the Zvei Leumi or Irgun and the Stern Gang. The Haganah (Defence) had a field army of up to 160,000 well-trained and well-armed men and a unit called the Palmach, with more than 6,000 terrorists. The Irgun included as many as 5,000 terrorists, while the Stern Gang included 200-300 dangerous terrorists.

The following are merely some examples of Zionist terrorism prior to the creation of the Zionist state in 1948: The list doesn’t include the bigger massacres such as Dir Yasin, Dawaymeh, Tantura and others.

1937-1939

During this period, Zionist terrorists carried out a series of terror attacks against Palestinian buses resulting in the death of 24 persons and the wounding of 25 others.

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Brown praises the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the following from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.  We might ask: is he aware of how many Palestinian victims have been persecuted?

GORDON Brown… pledged at a service on Wednesday night to mark the Jewish state’s 60th birthday that Britain would continue to be “a true and constant friend of Israel in good times and in bad”. And he announced that he would soon by paying Israel a visit.

“We will never reduce our efforts to secure for Israel a future free from terror, a future where - alongside a viable Palestinian state - children and the children of all your neighbours can believe in a brighter future.”
With his father - a church minister - being a frequent visitor to Israel, he said he learned of the fight for a Jewish homeland, the Balfour declaration and the promises made - some of which have been honoured and some which have been broken. “I learned of the ancient dream of the Jewish nation becoming reality in the modern state of Israel,” Mr Brown went on.

…He announced that against the backdrop of the current political process - which presented all with the real opportunity to move forward - he would be visiting Israel in July at the invitation of Ehud Olmert…he was well aware of just how many victims and persecution were part of Israel’s history. (sic)

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Today is Israel’s New Year / 60th ‘birthday’ and next week on the 14th is its Independence day.  With that in mind Linda Mamoun writes that “the frenzy around Israel Independence Day is an attempt to freeze history in 1948 when public support of Israel was unequivocal.”  She is to be commended for this excellent article looking at celebrations in the US, I especially enjoyed her humour.  For example, she’s introduceda new term for the broad range of superficial activites you can participate in to support Israel: calling them the great Israel Hobby.  However I disagree that a Two State option is viable.  Only a One State solution allows any kind of justice and reconciliation.

Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

Two weeks before Israel’s 60th anniversary the House and Senate voted unanimously to pass resolutions honoring “the founding of the modern State of Israel.” Before the House vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in on the deliberations saying, “I urge our colleagues to speak with one voice, and support this resolution recognizing the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel. In doing so, we not only commend Israel, we also bring luster to this House by associating ourselves with that great state of Israel.” To further commemorate Israeli independence, Pelosi reserved time through the month of June for a weekly series of floor speeches. Israel Independence Day has been celebrated within Jewish communities in the United States since Israel was founded. Traditionally the celebrations were organized by synagogues or Hebrew schools. Children would sing Ha’Tikvah, the Israeli national anthem, and read scriptures on the Promised Land. But these days the anniversaries are geared toward the broader public, making headlines in places where there are large Jewish communities, but also in areas where one would be hard-pressed to find a single person identifying as Jewish. Not only are the anniversaries endorsed by celebrities and political committees (this year’s “National Committee” includes former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the three presidential frontrunners, and all living secretaries of state), but the organizers offer a dizzying array of festivities, requiring careful planning by those hoping to partake in all the revelry. Israel Independence Day falls on May 8 this year, but in the US the festivities run from early April through the beginning of June. With all the events going on around the country, have you planned how you will celebrate Israeli independence?

Mark Your Calendar

If you really had your act together, you could have booked a trip to the Holy Land with Pastor John Hagee and his Christians United For Israel (CUFI) tour. During ten days in early April, the Celebrate Jerusalem Tour featured a Night to Honor Jerusalem, a Middle East Intelligence Briefing, a luncheon at the Jerusalem Convention Center, a Jerusalem Unity Rally Walk, and a “special CUFI salute” to Israel’s 60th anniversary. Best of all, you would have gotten to hear Hagee’s rallying speech, in which he announced his pledge of $6 million for Israeli causes (mostly settlement-related) and declared that ”Turning part or all of Jerusalem over to the Palestinians would be tantamount to turning it over to the Taliban.”

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Berlusconi is cosying up to Israel, from the Italy mag.

Premier-elect Silvio Berlusconi has sent a special message to Israel to mark the 60th anniversary of its declaration of independence, remarking that ”Israel’s birthday is the birthday of all of us”.

In a statement published Tuesday by the Tel Aviv daily Yediot Ahronot, Berlusconi observed that memory was ”a fundamental element of the identity of the Israeli people, who were ale to defend democracy and freedom under difficult conditions”.

Israel begins two days of celebrations celebrating its 60th anniversary on Wednesday.

In his 2001-2006 government, Berlusconi followed Washington’s lead in favoring Israel in its Mideast policy.

During this spring’s election campaign, Berlusconi said the first country he would visit if elected would be Israel, something he did not do in his previous five years in office.

Don’t you miss the glory days of Israel when leaders were leaders - not these corrupt baffoons we have now? Men of principle like Ben Gurion - the kind of guy you could rely on to screw everyone else over but never his fellow Jewish Israelis! Infact he screwed everyone else over to help them - an Israeli Robin Hood: robbing from the poor Palestinians to make Israelis rich. Actually I guess that makes him more like the evil sheriff of Nottingham or King John - still - what a guy! The following from AFP.

Torn by a political crisis that cast doubts over the future of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel on Wednesday commemorated its fallen soldiers on the eve of its 60th anniversary.

Olmert, who is fighting off calls to step down over fresh corruption allegations, marked Remembrance Day with a call to fight for the survival of the Jewish state — a nation shaped by conflict.

“We remember our children who fought and gave their lives so Israel can live,” Olmert said in a radio broadcast.

“We commit ourselves to keep their memory alive, to fight for the survival of the state and to work for a better future,” he said.

“We reach our hand out for peace, but we are also ready to use our weapons,” said Olmert, commemorating the 22,437 soldiers killed in action and the 1,634 civilians who have died in militant attacks since May 1948.

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Why Facing Tomorrow? What they really need to do this time of year is face up to the past - the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. This would go a long way to bridge the gap and addressing the issues that will lead to peace. However thats not a bright positive PR op for the Governement so instead we get a vacuous soundbite Facing Tomorrow. Interesting to see Yahoo has joined Google in the celebrations.  Meanwhile the rest of Israel is looking to the past as “the future is always scary, so if you want to feel good, it’s more fun to look back and ignore the problems.”  Guess when they’re looking back they’re not looking at the Nakba: unless of course they can get nostalgic over ethnic cleansing.

The idea could only have started with Israel President Shimon Peres, the man who has witnessed up close and person more historic events during Israel’s first six decades of statehood than arguably any other person alive today, going back to 1948 when he was one of founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion closest, and youngest advisers.

Peres decided last year that it was not enough to review the Jewish state’s achievements, challenges and milestones reflectively. Rather, the emphasis for Israel must be on looking forward. Thus was conceived the first annual Israel Presidential Conference, a three-day unparalleled assembly of some of the world’s “best and brightest,” including equally large representations of Presidents and Prime Ministers, current and past, and Nobel Laureates, to name but two special categories that will be fully represented at the gathering in Jerusalem, Israel from May 13 to May 15.

Thus was the flagship international event commemorating Israel’s 60th Anniversary celebrations was born, with Israel President Shimon Peres hosting his premiere “Facing Tomorrow” Conference which will welcome many international leaders to Jerusalem including President George Bush. The Conference was initiated personally by Israel President Peres to address the three main “tomorrows:” the Israel tomorrow, the global tomorrow and the Jewish tomorrow.

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Larry Derfner in the US News describes how “A bribery investigation threatens to bring down Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.”

In advance of Israel’s planned celebrations of its 60th birthday on Thursday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seemed about to announce a major achievement: a cease-fire with Hamas and other Gaza militant groups in Gaza, which would have halted the seven-year-long rocketing of the border town of Sderot. But at the end of last week, just as Egyptian mediators had gotten an agreement from the Gazans and were prepared to present it to the Israelis, Olmert was summoned urgently by police for questioning on what has been reported in some Israeli media as suspicions of bribery.Since then, everything has been on hold in anticipation of state prosecutors’ announcement of the nature and gravity of the investigation. If it approximates the very rough outline that has been reported despite a judicial gag order—that there is strong evidence that Olmert, before becoming prime minister, accepted bribes from a wealthy American with interests in Israel—the already widespread calls for his resignation could become overwhelming.

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From the Stop the War coalition:

Stop the War is calling on all its supporters to join the national demonstration for Palestine in London next Saturday, which will mark the 60th anniversary of what Palestinians call the Nakba - the catastrophe - when Israeli forces used terror and brute force to drive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland.

Sixty years of colonial expansion and brutal occupation have followed — in violation of numerous United Nations resolutions — and today the Israelis have imposed a blockade on Gaza which starves one and a half million inhabitants of food and essential resources. Across Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians are living in the most abject conditions, under which Israel has set up walls and checkpoints that separate farmers from their lands, students from their schools and universities, patients from their hospitals and families from each other.

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Yvonne Ridley on, Israel’s 60th birthday theme, children.

I wonder how many of you know that the theme under consideration for Israel’s 60th Independence Day is children?

It is hard to imagine isn’t it? It could not be more meaningless when you consider how snipers belonging to the Israeli Army target young innocents.

Of course they don’t target just any children. No, the ones targeted in the crosshair of these Zionist cowards are Palestinian children.

Just how twisted do you have to be to gun down a child?

And just how twisted do you have to be to mark the 60th anniverary in honour of children.

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