Thursday, January 29, 2009

THE TRUTH IS OUT Haaretz: "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed on Tuesday to take a tough stance in talks with Israel and said he would tell a U.S. envoy that Israel's Gaza offensive proved it was not intent on peacemaking. Hamas survived Israel's onslaught, accusing its rivals in the Arab world of being 'collaborators' who bet on Israel destroying the group. Hamas accuses the U.S.-backed Abbas and his Arab allies of getting nothing in peace talks with Israel. 'We want a state in the 1967 borders, a fair solution to the refugee issue, removal of settlements. There will be no going beyond these points or bargaining,' said Abbas, on the defensive in the Arab world before Hamas' rhetoric of 'resistance'." ExpressNews: "Israel's attack on Gaza had little to do with self-defense and everything to do with instilling fear among Palestinian people, says political scientist Norman Finkelstein. He said the incursion was only the latest in a more than 60-year history of 'terrorizing the Arab world periodically into submission, and reminding them who is in charge in the Middle East'. 'As Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, UN sanctuaries... and slaughtered and incinerated Gaza's defenseless civilian population, Israeli commentators gloated that Gaza was to Lebanon as a second sitting for an exam is to the first: a second chance to get it right. 'There's no pretense here that this war had anything to do with rocket attacks-it's about getting it right,' and restoring Israel's 'deterrence capacity' he said, adding that Hamas fired rockets into Israel only after Israel broke a ceasefire agreement and killed seven militants. Nonetheless, he said, 'this massacre was the last time Israel will get a free ride. People now know too much, the myths have been dispelled and the truth is out there. People are appalled and disgusted at the state which has become in some sense Satanic in its constant, incessant desire to wage war, war and more war'." The old game of accusing anyone who dares to question the aggression of Israel as being anti-semite no longer works. Azvsas: "Use of Nazi epithets is, in fact, very common in Israeli society and among Zionists and it doesn't take much for one Zionist to accuse another of being a 'nazi' or anti-semitic." RadioNZ: "The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed El Baradei, has cancelled two interviews with the BBC in protest at a decision not to broadcast a charity appeal for Gaza." 10:57:38 AM

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