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Pentagon Will Take Out 1,200 Iranian Targets
The Times of London, Britain's most famous newspaper, reports that the Pentagon had drawn up plans to "annihilate
the Iranians' military capability in three days". The September 2 edition bases the report on an interview with Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national
security at the Nixon Center.
There has been no comment about these elaborate plans for aggression from any of the leading Democratic presidential candidates.
A Proposal on Stopping the Guns to Israel
You've probably heard of the Bush plan for a big increase in Israeli military aid. They would get a whopping $30 billion over 10 years. Lenni Brenner author of "Zionism in the Age of the Dictators" and " 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis" has a strategy. Click here to read
Brother McElroy...What About Palestinians Right to Education?
By Stanley Heller
My union, the American Federation of Teachers has joined the throng of U.S. unions denouncing British unions that are threatening to boycott Israeli institutions that cooperate in their country's apartheid system. So I wrote my president (via an aide ) a letter of complaint.
Dear Brother McElroy:
I'm a classroom teacher for 37 years and a former AFT local president. I read recently that the AFT had joined in a statement created by the Jewish Labor Committee blasting several of the largest unions in the United Kingdom for calling for economic, cultural and academic boycotts of Israel. The statement claims the only motive for the boycott was to "demonize" and "bash" Israel. I went back and read an AFT press statement from May of this year criticizing any academic boycott of Israel which included your statement that "boycotting universities and their faculty restricts the flow of ideas and it is anathema to academic freedom".
Is that all there is to it? What about millions of Palestinians who are denied basic human rights including the right to education?
CONTINUED
Principal Resigns in NYC Because She
Didn't Denounce the Word "Intifada"
Debbie Al Monstaser the principal of the brand new Khalil Gibran school in New York City resigned after a barrage of criticism of her for here definition of the word "intifada"
Al Monstaser is on the board of a group that shares the office with an Arab-American women's group that sells a T-shirt with the words, "NYC Intifada" upon it. When asked to comment on the shirt Monstaser said the word "intifada" meant "shaking". "Intifada" comes from the word "shaking", but in common talk now means "uprising". Monstaser's failure to denounce the word "intifada" outraged the right wing New York press which has been trying to destory the Khalil Gibran school ever since it was announced. The school is to teach Arabic language and culture as one of the city's system of dual-language programs. The city currently has more than 60 similar language and culture schools including French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Greek, Korean, among others.
The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a press release has said that, "criticism from conservative columnists, several officials, The NY Post, and The NY Sun has been increasingly strident and bigoted since the school was announced in February...notorious Arab bashers began their campaign with slogans of "Jihad School" and a campaign called "Stop the Madrassa" (madrassa is the Arabic word for school).
Randi Weingarten sharply criticized Al Monstaser. Weingarten is head of New York's United Federation of Teachers. The UFT doesn't represent school principals, but supposedly stands up for academic freedom.
West Bank Misery Tour (published in the New Haven Register)
When I saw the U.S. customs official in Newark International Airport I broke
into a smile. I was away from Israel at last. I was away from the
checkpoints, away from the settlements and away from the soldiers. I no
longer had to have a fanciful story of the tourist sights I visited when I
was actually touring the misery of the West Bank.
CONTINUED
Report from the Land of Apartheid
MECC Chair Stanley Heller is just back from a Palestine/Israel. His second report was published on August 2 on Counterpunch
The two babies lay nearly side by side in the incubator. One had eyes open, the other shut. It's against medical standards to put more than one child in an incubator, but with only six working incubators in the hospital in Jenin they had to double up. Jenin Hospital, in the north of the West Bank, is the only hospital in the Jenin Governate. It serves 350,00 people with 123 beds.
At the moment the hospital has no working ambulance. At one time it had three. Two were destroyed by Israeli missiles during this uprising. In one the doctor inside, Khalil Sulaiman, was martyred. The last working one suffered a car accident last week and it will take another week to repair it.
The wards were crowded. In the pediatric wing each small room had three beds and not much medical equipment. There is no air conditioning though temperatures in summer are at least in the 80's. Hospital officials said the hospital was getting aid from Europe, but it's been cut off.
CONTINUED
Tear Gassed in Bil'in
By Stanley Heller
The smell of Israeli tear gas is a mix between a charcoal fire and burning garbage. I was afraid of it so I stayed far away and observed the attempt at a demonstration in front of the Separation Wall in Bil'in. However, the brave Israeli soldiers shot over a hundred shells of tear gas so even from 200 yards away the sharply diluted gas filled my nostrils, rasped the throat and, of course, burned my eyes. Of course, it was far worse for the people in the march. Some passed out.
The wall is not concrete in Bil'in. It's made up of rows of razor sharp barbed wire in front of a military access road and a number of 21st century electronic security gadgets. Palestinians hate it even more than the 30 foot high concrete walls as it takes more of their land.
The wall goes by many names "Apartheid Wall", "Separation Wall", "Security Barrier". One could also call it the "Theft Wall" as its main purpose is to steal Palestinian land.
CONTINUED (along with video)
Israeli Army Finds Misconduct in Hebron Shooting and Abduction
An Israeli army probe has indicated a gross level of misconduct on the part of those soldiers who last week kidnapped one innocent Palestinian and shot another south of the West Bank city of Hebron.
One officer and five soldiers embarked on an unsanctioned ‘undercover mission’, during which they kidnapped and tied-up one Palestinian taxi-driver and opened fired on another who they claimed “looked suspicious”. The injured man was left for dead and the soldiers failed to report the brutal attack to their superiors.
CONTINUED
Strip Searching
Revolting accounts of humiliation and abuse in the new report by "If Americans Knew" about the decades old Israeli practice of strip searching Palestinians and dissidents. They do it to Israeli Palestinians, to American citizens, to children younger than 7. Read here and watch the video by clicking here.
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