25,000 Jews live in Iran

25,000 Jews live in Iran. It's the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel. Iranian Jews are not persecuted or abused by the state, in fact, they are protected under Iran’s constitution. They are free to practice their religion and to vote in elections. They are not stopped and searched at checkpoints, they are not brutalized by an occupying army, and they are not herded into a densely-populated penal colony (Gaza) where they are deprived of the basic means of survival. Iranian Jews live in dignity and enjoy the benefits of citizenship.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is demonized in the western media. He is called an anti-Semite and the “new Hitler”. But if those claims are true, then why did the majority of Iran's Jews vote for Ahmadinejad in recent presidential elections? Could it be that most of what we know about Ahmadinejad is just baseless rumor and propaganda? This excerpt appeared in an article by the BBC:

"(Ahmadinejad's) office recently donated money for Tehran's Jewish hospital. It is one of only four Jewish charity hospitals worldwide and is funded with money from the Jewish diaspora – something remarkable in Iran where even local aid organizations have difficulty receiving funds from abroad for fear of being accused of being foreign agents.”

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The Message of the Bulldozers

Ramadan Kareem: From the Netanyahu and Obama Administrations

On the day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began, at 2:30 in the morning, workers sent by the Israeli authorities, protected by dozens of police, destroyed the tombstones in the last portion of the Mamilla cemetery, an historic Muslim burial ground with graves going back to the 7th Century, hitherto left untouched. The government of Israel has always been fully cognizant of the sanctity and historic significance of the site. Already in 1948, when control of the cemetery reverted to Israel, the Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry recognized Mamilla “to be one of the most prominent Muslim cemeteries, where seventy thousand Muslim warriors of [Saladin’s] armies are interred along with many Muslim scholars. Israel will always know to protect and respect this site.” For all that, and despite (proper) Israeli outrage when Jewish cemeteries are desecrated anywhere in the world, the dismantlement of the Mamilla cemetery has been systematic. In the 1960s “Independence Park” was built over a portion of it; subsequently an urban road was built through it, major electrical cables were laid over graves and a parking lot constructed over yet another piece. Now some 1,500 Muslim graves have been cleared in several nighttime operations to make way for…..a $100 million Museum of Tolerance and Human Dignity, a project of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. (Ironically, Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center’s Director, appeared on Fox News to express his opposition to the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, because the site of the 9/11 attack “is a cemetery.”)

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Sinking Ship

The attack on the Gaza relief flotilla jeopardizes Israel itself.

Israel’s botched raid against the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla on May 31 is the latest sign that Israel is on a disastrous course that it seems incapable of reversing. The attack also highlights the extent to which Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States. This situation is likely to get worse over time, which will cause major problems for Americans who have a deep attachment to the Jewish state.

The bungled assault on the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the flotilla, shows once again that Israel is addicted to using military force yet unable to do so effectively. One would think that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would improve over time from all the practice. Instead, it has become the gang that cannot shoot straight. 

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Israeli Raid Coverage: American Media Fail Again

An American art student loses an eye when struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli Defense Force (IDF) personnel breaking up, in the occupied West Bank, a demonstration which itself is a protest against the deadly commando raid on the Free Gaza flotilla.

American Emily Henchowicz aided by Palestinian after being hit in the eye by an IDF tear-gas cannister

No, you didn’t miss U.S. news media coverage of this IDF attack on 21-year-old Emily Henchowicz, a student at Cooper Union in New York City who was standing with a group of foreigners during that demonstration near a checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

You didn’t miss it because the mainstream media in the U.S. ignored it.

Apparently news of Henchowicz’s maiming was not news deemed worthy enough for print in the New York Times or Washington Post or meriting broadcast network/cable news attention.

It’s no surprise that the avowedly right-wing FOX ignored this incident, but the liberal-leaning MSNBC ignored this story also.

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Who Knew That Israeli Blockade Is ‘Economic Warfare’

When the corporate media explain the logic behind Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, they turn to what Israel says officially and publicly. For example, today’s New York Times, in an article on an Israeli government-backed investigation into the deadly Israeli raid on a flotilla heading to Gaza, states:

Israel argues that the blockade is necessary to prevent Hamas from smuggling in weapons or materials needed to make them, and to weaken Hamas control.

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Gaza

Defenders of Israel say things would be different if people in Gaza didn’t fire rockets into Israeli towns. I agree. Firing rockets into civilian areas is immoral. It is criminal. It is atrocious. It's also hopelessly impractical, in the sense that in no way will it get the Gazans the lives they want to live. The Palestinians would have been better off if long ago they adopted a policy of strict nonviolent noncooperation and resistance. Forswearing violence would have won the sympathies of many Americans and would have put Israel’s heavy-handed anti-Palestinian conduct in the worst light.

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The method in Israel’s madness

Why would Israel, in a deliberate and methodical operation planned over a week in advance – according to statements by senior Israeli military commanders made in Hebrew-language media days before the attack – target an unarmed ship on a humanitarian mission flying the flag of Comoros? (Unlike Turkey, Comoros is a party of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction over war crimes committed on vessels of member states.)

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America: The Silence of a Nation and The Signing of a Genocide

America’s Complicity in Evil

Barbarism on the High Seas

As I write at 5pm on Monday, May 31, all day has passed since the early morning reports of the Israeli commando attack on the unarmed ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, and there has been no response from President Obama except to say that he needed to learn “all the facts about this morning’s tragic events” and that Israeli prime minister Netanyahu had canceled his plans to meet with him at the White House. Thus has Obama made America complicit once again in Israel’s barbaric war crimes. Just as the US Congress voted to deep-six Judge Goldstone’s report on Israel’s war crimes committed in Israel’s January 2009 invasion of Gaza, Obama has deep-sixed Israel’s latest act of barbarism by pretending that he doesn’t know what has happened.

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AIPAC: Telling a Whopper

The theme of this year’s annual policy conference for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was “Israel: Tell the Story.” And it was quite a story that AIPAC wanted to tell.

The conference aimed at imparting to the over 7000 attendees “an intimate understanding of the many ways that Israel is making the world a better place,” with a focus on peacemaking and innovation. According to the AIPAC web site, conference goers will also “meet Israelis who rush to the scene of natural disasters in far away lands because they believe that to save one life is to save the whole world.” No mention was made of the 1400 people killed during the Israeli assault on Gaza.

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