By: Josef Federman
JERUSALEM (AP) — Netanyahu speech ignores rival claims and realities of rivals: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an impassioned defense of his approach to peace during a speech to Congress on Tuesday. But the address reflected the world view of Israel’s nationalistic right wing, one of several conflicting narratives that divide Israelis and Palestinians.

Here is a sampling of Netanyahu’s claims along with what he did not mention.

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NETANYAHU: “You don’t need to send American troops to Israel. We defend ourselves.”

THE FACTS: Israel is a leading recipient of American foreign aid, including more than $1 billion in military assistance each year.

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NETANYAHU: “In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo.”

THE FACTS: While the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, is promised to the Jewish people in the Bible, the international community considers the West Bank occupied territory. Israel captured the area in the 1967 Mideast war but has never annexed it. Its occupied status is underscored by the presence of tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers who protect Israeli settlements and control the movement of Palestinian residents [Apartheid] in the name of security.

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NETANYAHU: “You don’t need to export democracy to Israel. We’ve already got it.”

THE FACTS: Israel does give its Arab minority full civil rights, including participation in elections. But Israeli Arabs suffer from systematic discrimination in housing and the workplace. Also, more than 2 million Palestinians living in the West Bank do not have Israeli citizenship and therefore cannot vote in Israeli elections. [Apartheid]

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NETANYAHU: “The vast majority of the 650,000 Israelis who live beyond the 1967 lines reside in neighborhoods and suburbs of Jerusalem and greater Tel Aviv.”

THE FACTS: Nearly all of these communities were built in the face of overwhelming international opposition and are considered illegal settlements by the world, including the U.S. There are 300,000 Israelis living in the West Bank and 200,000 in east Jerusalem, making a total of 500,000.

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NETANYAHU: “The Palestinian economy is booming. It’s growing by more than 10 percent a year.”

THE FACTS: The West Bank economy is indeed growing rapidly. But the World Bank has noted that the growth comes after years of contraction during fighting with Israel and has been fueled by huge amounts of foreign aid. It warns the growth is unsustainable unless Israel does more to encourage the Palestinian private sector.

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NETANYAHU: “Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by the Palestinian version of al-Qaida.”

THE FACTS: While Hamas and al-Qaida have killed hundreds of people in religious holy wars, they have no connection, and Hamas has in fact come under criticism from the global terror network for being too moderate. Al-Qaida preaches global jihad. Hamas says its struggle is solely against Israel, not the West at large. In its Gaza stronghold, Hamas has violently clashed with smaller armed groups that claim inspiration from al-Qaida.

[ Israel and Palestine on PA ]

‘Loony Bins‘ Glenn Beck: “I Warn You, The Palestinian Flag” Will Destroy “The Western Way Of Life“

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Warning: ‘If anti-Semitism & anti-Moronic opinions offend thee, click off now!’
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“We’ll make a pastrami sandwich out of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty-five years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.” ~ Ariel Sharon, 1973

“While this parasite, Ariel Sharon, was talking about turning Palestinians into a pastrami sandwich, fate turned Sharon into a vegetable.

“After the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St. Germain, the German people were not only bankrupted, they were thoroughly humiliated. The Jews thought they had outsmarted everyone and the world was now theirs. The British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, wrote: ‘The international bankers swept statesmen, politicians, journalists and jurists all to one side and issued their orders with the imperiousness of absolute monarchs.’

“Does that sound familiar? If not, it should. It is exactly what the leeches at Goldman Sachs and their butt boys in Congress and at the Federal Reserve are doing today. When these Palestinian hating, Jew loving morons in the US and UK whine about losing their jobs, homes and pensions, I suggest they go ask the Jew Master, Lloyd C. Blankfein, for help. To his credit, he only took a $67 million bonus a few months before the bailout of Goldman Sachs. Case in point: Bernard Madoff was able to steal billions of dollars simply because 93% of his victims were Jews, and knowing Jews as he did, he simply used their own greed against them.

“Do I hate all Jews? I most certainly do not. I admire Jews for their inherent ability to use the Christians in the US and UK, all their live long days, to wage wars against the Jew’s enemies and to secure, protect and maintain Israel while their own countries go deeper into debt, infrastructures crumble, and their healthcare and social security programs become unsustainable… ‘This year, the U.S. Congress approved $2.76 billion in its annual aid package for Israel. The total amount of direct U.S. aid to Israel has been constant, at around $3 billion–usually 60% military and 40% economic–per year for the last quarter century.’ ~ Matt Bowles is a member of SUSTAIN?Stop US Tax Funded Aid to Israel Now.

“While the Jews and their butt boys in Washington will not cut the billions of tax dollars going to Israel by fifty cents, they’ll fix it so that 50% of Main Street USA will never draw a penny of the Social Security they pay into the account… ‘Young Americans might not get full Social Security retirement benefits until they reach age 70 if some trial balloons that prominent lawmakers of both parties are floating become law.’ ~ McClatchy Newspapers 7/11/10

“Few Jews are as out spoken as Ariel Sharon was, but many agree with Sharon that God provided Christians as tools to be used to make Israel the supreme country in the entire world, thus fulfilling their God’s will as stated in Deuteronomy 7:6-8 (NIV). The way Christians, Hitler being the exception, freely give their children and money to Jews, logic dictates that this Jew, Sharon, was as smart as he was fat. Then there are the orthodox Jews. I consider them to be the pus in a boil and the stink in a fart.” ~ B. W. Miller

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   Columnist – John Sammon
Obama’s long expected decision to escalate the Afghanistan War is based on the dubious conclusion that if decisive military victory over the Taliban isn’t possible, some kind of honorable (for us) chastisement of them is, by holding more ground, as well as retraining a corrupt regime in Kabul to be more honest.

It demonstrates a sad fact.

Some change in the status quo in the way America is, is possible. But not much. Not enough.

Obama ran his candidacy on a call for change. His supporters voted for him in part based on that promise. He was elected on that premise.

Unlike the war-making, torture-mongering wire-tapping crooks Bush and Cheney, Obama is a decent and honorable man. He is attempting to change some things, health care for one. But the public should understand that no matter who holds the office, the United States is not truly of and by and for the people, but a conglomerate geo-political-military-industrial ruling elite whose first priority is to maintain monetary power and influence, material and energy wealth.

Obama, nor anyone else, will be able to change these:

  1.  The US will continue to make war on or meddle in the affairs of much smaller, Third World impoverished countries, because of political differences, or we want their natural resources, those who lack a navy, air force, shoes on their feet and refrigerators. We’ve been in Afghanistan eight years, and killed a number of them, but it’s not enough, enough revenge. We have to triumph over them, or at least appear to. No attempt will be made to reach a political settlement until enough people have died. Just from the standpoint of size and firepower, the US comes off looking like an imperialist bully, but its people many of them nonetheless for some reason have great pride that we are sometimes able to defeat these impoverished pygmy countries.

  2.  The US will just as assiduously avoid military attack on small countries that have a nuclear capability, like Iran and North Korea. Any country, even a small one, that could strike back and cause us great harm, we will treat with caution and seek a political solution.

  3.  The US will continue to back Israel to run wild in the Middle East pushing Palestinians out, treating them like dogs, sometimes murdering them, and building new settlements on formerly Palestinian land, which over decades is what led to the anti-American sentiment and 9-11. There’s a huge difference between defending Israel’s right to exist, and equipping them with sophisticated weapons so they can expand at the expense of others who have also lived in the area for centuries. There is a very powerful pro-Israel lobby on Capitol Hill and championed by the likes of Joe Lieberman that makes any objective discussion of the situation impossible.

Anyone, including Obama, who criticizes Israel, is immediately branded an anti-Semite. Americans never look in a mirror when it comes to understanding how a problem came to be. They believe they are always innocent, noble, incapable of error, and that bad evil countries picked on them for no reason at all.

  4.  The US government and the priorities of the country will continue to be influenced by corporate lobbyists whose loyalty is to their industry and profits and not the American people. Thus, ruthless, dishonest corporations of the kind that nearly destroyed the economy will continue to hold sway. Money talks.

  5.  America will continue to be domestically the most violent country in the history of the world, a nation of child abusers, rapists, serial and spree killers, drive-by back shooters and gangs. Media will express shock and ask “why?” at each new atrocity, and then run the usual nightly shit entertainment programming glorifying violence, beautiful Hollywood models and cool-dude guys with their perfectly arranged hair pointing hand guns in prime time, acting tough and yelling “freeze!” Right before a Viagra commercial.

This is a sick country with twisted values, and will remain so.

  6.  Americans, using religion and the military, will continue to believe they are better than other people. You never hear a Frenchman say God bless France, or a Honduran say God bless Honduras, like you hear “God bless America.” This fantasy supposes that the creator of all life, the God of all people, would select for special reverence a nation above all others with an artificial border created by European immigrants who purchased or out-rightly conquered it from its former owners, while also performing the extermination of its original native inhabitants.

  7.  Racism will continue.

  8.  So will sexism.

  9.  There will be no standard flat and fair tax for Americans, but a system that bleeds the middle class and rewards the few richest.

10.  The destruction caused by global warming will race ahead of any president’s attempt to deal with it, and any president who does, will face the anger of the people who will call him a traitor.

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   Columnist – John Sammon
Here is a short compilation of the outstanding features of world religions and how they have been interpreted.

Catholicism – It only makes sense that the founder of this faith, a humble, obscure first century Galilean carpenter who preached humility, otherworldliness, non-accumulation of possessions, tolerance and forbearance, would have his message taken over by acquisitive, palace-building, gold hunting aggressive clerics. The Roman Empire, corrupt, evil, on its last leg to collapse, took the religion and installed its Caesar as the new head of the church, The Pope. Jesus may have overturned the tables of the money changers, but the word ever since is go for the gold, constructing ornate, opulent city-size palaces, wearing gold robes, golden jewelry trappings, wearing crowns with rubies, emeralds, diamonds, the gold stolen from South American natives. Catholic clerics preach to the poor to not practice birth control often in the most poverty-stricken countries like Brazil that don’t have the resources to handle their mushrooming population, to the point that they have to cut down the Amazon Rain Forest to try and survive. Catholics want to out-populate other religions in the best imperialistic style of the old Roman Empire, and the expanded birth program of the more recent Nazi Germany. They have launched crusades and wars of conquest against supposed heathens, but also against other Christians. Pillage, plunder, murder, in the name of Jesus. Nuns come in the middle of the night, tie you up and whip you because you wet the bed. Priests molest young boys. What’s all this have to do with Jesus?

Judaism – The Jews rightly believe they’re the oldest, but like other religions, wrongly believe that they’re also the best, as if there is such a thing as a best religion. More clannish than some other religions, that means they don’t want you to marry their daughter if you’re not also Jewish. They believe in the more cruel, austere Old Testament minus Jesus, which tends to recommend a lot of smiting (killing). Everyone who doesn’t believe gets smited, whether it’s Canaanites, or Philistines, or the Palestinians of today. If they don’t like you, they really like to smite you. Like other religions, this religion has many curious symbolic pagan-like acts, such as painting animal blood over doorways at Passover, or stomping glass cups at weddings, refusing pork, wearing little beanies that don’t provide shade from the sun, and getting obsessive over candle holders. Because over the centuries they were often mistreated by Catholics, they developed a sense of humor when they’re not smiting, and provided many fine comics and entertainers.

Islam – A dry desert air religion. More obsessive with direction than other religions, everybody has to bow and point their head toward Mecca, as if something important once happened in this sleepy little desert spice-trade caravan town. Just as imperialistic as other religions, Islamists tend to be humorless, unlike the Jews, so that when they smite you, or do a jihad on you as they like to put it, it makes you angrier than if they told a joke and smited you. Beards are big in this religion, beards and turbans. Instead of God and Jesus, or God and no Jesus, they believe in God and a prophet. They have their own Bible, the Koran. Less materialistic and gold-hungry than other religions, and not as interested in ringing bells, they nevertheless like to build tall towers, climb to the top and yell over loudspeakers. They have many sects in this religion, including the not-so-crazies, and the real way out whackos. They believe they are the un-corrupted voice of God, and have a duty to gain supremacy and conquest over non-believers, just as Christians believe they are un-corrupted and want to conquer the Islamists.

Hinduism – Sells itself as a religion that’s not a religion. Doesn’t believe in any one God, any one dogma, any one concept, or set of rites, but includes a crazy gargoyle patchwork of deities sprouting multi-heads and arms and multiple mix-mangled philosophies seemingly based on the premise that hallucinogenic inarticulacy is of and itself profound. Death and rebirth and reincarnation are important to Hindus, who believe that if you commit wrong, you come back as an unpleasant animal, and the concept of duality, the whole, and the self, and the all-knowing and the no-knowing, that nothing is real, and life is an unbroken circle, and transcendent. This is a religion for people who believe the bigger the words describing it, the more important it must be, and therefore the closer to God, words such as Satchidananda. Everything has to end with the letter A, like karma and yoga. Not for the simple-minded. Obsessed with cremation and dumping people’s ashes in already-polluted rivers, and like other religions, stresses over-population to out-represent other religions way beyond the ability of the natural resources of the Asian countries where it is often practiced.

Buddhism – Less imperialistic than many other religions, less of an emphasis on money and conquest, Buddhists believe everything means everything. Everything has symbolic importance, even little insects. Big on insects. You shouldn’t step on one. Big on symbolic trappings, but unlike other religions, not opulent, but bargain basement accoutrements, robes, prayer wheels, incense. Big on shaved heads and sitting trance-like with crossed legs, and making hum-sounds. More into the life sucks and everything after is better philosophy, Buddhists often believe in eight principles of meekness that in art represents a ships’ wheel.

Protestant – An offshoot of Catholicism, founded by a drunken lecher and butcher English king who wanted to divorce his wife.

Mormon – Would you believe in an angel named Moroni? A cult founded by a mushroom-smoking Upstate New York hillbilly with a forged set of commandments and a secret inner sanctum in Utah, and whose proponents include very clean, hardworking conservative people who look like Donny Osmond and who like other religions, recommend large families to out-populate other religions, and who send out boys wearing ties on bikes to convert heathens in exotic countries where like most other religions, they are not wanted.

Methodist, Presbyterian, and all the rest. More offshoots. Include elements of all the above.

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CAIRO – Quoting from the Quran for emphasis, President Barack Obama called for a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims” Thursday and said together, they could confront violent extremism across the globe and advance the timeless search for peace in the Middle East.

“This cycle of suspicion and discord must end,” Obama said in a widely anticipated speech in one of the world’s largest Muslim countries, an address designed to reframe relations after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

The White House said Obama’s speech contained no new policy proposals on the Middle East. He said American ties with Israel are unbreakable, yet issued a firm, evenhanded call to the Jewish state and Palestinians alike to live up to their international obligations. [ READ MORE ]

FULL SPEECH – Delivered At Cairo University (06/04/2009)

“A New Beginning” — The President gives a speech in Cairo, Egypt, outlining his personal commitment to engagement with the Muslim world, based upon mutual interests and mutual respect, and discusses how the United States and Muslim communities around the world can bridge some of the differences that have divided them. June 4, 2009.

ANALYSIS

Obama’s Speech To Muslims Successful?

The Arab World Reacts

Obama Makes His Case

Bridging U.S./Muslim Relations

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