Palestinian Christian groups are boycotting celebrations of Orthodox Christmas in Bethlehem, accusing their Church of selling land to Israelis.

At least 100 protesters gathered with banners saying: "The Holy Land is not for sale," ahead of festivities to mark Christmas Eve for the Orthodox Church.

They accuse the Greek Orthodox Church of selling and leasing land in the West Bank to Israeli organisations.

The Church said it would not comment, on such a festive occasion.

The Council of Arab Orthodox Institutions and Organisations in Palestine said the current patriarch, Theophilos III, had continued to allow Israeli investors to lease Church land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The area was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Israeli-Arab war, and is where the Palestinians want their future state.

Read more @ BBC News

Could this be preparation of war with Iran?

Israel will begin distributing its entire population with gas masks in two months, though no reason has officially been given by the Israeli government.

No indication or threat has been made against Israel from any country that an attack is planned. No country in the Middle East is believed to be likely to engage in chemical or biological warfare with Israel, either.

The gas mask distribution has, however, raised questions as to Israel’s potential plans to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Such an attack could cause an unconventional response from Iran. Iran’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities are currently not known.

Rumors in the Middle East abound that Israel is preparing to rein in Hezbollah through another war on Lebanon. Hezbollah, however, is also not believed to hold any chemical or biological weapons.

Read more @ EU Times

Israel is the worst country on Earth.

Germany was bad but Israel is badder. Zionists are much more cruel.

What do you say about Israel; tell te truth, share your opinions?

[quote]

30 December 2009

[b]Israel: A monster beyond control?[/b]

By Alan Hart, researcher for ITN and BBC Panorama. (www.alanhart.net)

On the first anniversary of the beginning of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip -- in my view it was a demonstration of Israeli state terrorism at its most naked -- it’s not enough to say that the governments of the Western powers (and others) are complicit in Israel’s on-going collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians, 53% of whom are children.

What is actually happening in the blockaded Gaza Strip, and less obviously on the occupied West Bank, is the continuation by stealth of Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. My friend Professor Ilan Pappe, Israel’s leading “revisionist” (meaning honest) historian and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, would and has put it another way. What we are witnessing is, in his words, “genocide in slow motion.” And that, really, is what the governments of the Western powers (and others) are complicit in.

The question that provokes in my mind is: Why, really, are the major powers (and others) allowing it to happen?

The only answer that makes some sense to me is this. They have concluded, but cannot say, that nuclear-armed Israel, with the assistance of the Zionist lobby in all of its manifestations, is a monster beyond control.

In my analysis it’s possible to identify the moment in history when the major powers abandoned any hope they might have had of containing Zionism’s colonial ambitions.

It came, the moment, in the immediate aftermarth of the 1967 war.

Contrary to Zionism’s version of the story, it was a war of Israeli aggression not self-defense. As I document in some detail in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Israel’s military and political leaders knew the Arabs were not intending to attack.

That being so, what the major powers ought to have said to Israel (in the diplomatic language of a Security Council Resolution and more explicitly behind closed doors) is something like: “Aggression cannot be rewarded. Aggressors cannot keep territory conquered in war. You are now required to get the hell out of it without laying down conditions for your withdrawal.”

To drive home the point, they could and should have reminded Israel of what President Eisenhower said to the people of America when he demanded Israel’s unconditional withdrawal from Egyptian territory after its collusion with Britain and France in 1956. Eisenhower, the first and the last American president to contain Zionism, said this:

“If we agree that armed attack can properly achieve the purposes of the assailant, then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order. We will have countenanced the use of force as a means of settling international differences and gaining national advantage… If the UN once admits that international disputes can be settled using force, then we will have destroyed the very foundation of the organisation and our best hope for establishing a real world order.”

As it happened, the major powers could not say that to Israel in 1967 because the Johnson administration had colluded with Israel to the extent of giving it the greenlight to smash Eygpt’s armed forces, in the hope that a humiliating defeat for them would lead to the overthrow of President Nasser.

But also true is that President Johnson sought and obtained an assurance that Israel would not take advantage of the war situation to grab Jordanian and Syrian territory. It was because some in the Johnson administration (probably Defense Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff) didn’t trust Israel to keep its word that the U.S. spy ship, the Liberty, was stationed off the Israel/Gaza coast to listen to IDF movement orders. And it was because Israeli Defense Minister Dayan didn’t want Johnson to know that he intended to take the West Bank and the Golan Heights that he, Dayan, ordered the attack on the Liberty. (The full story of that attack and Johnson’s cover-up of it is also in my book, in a chapter headed The Liberty Affair – “Pure Murder” on a “Great Day”).

Despite that, the major powers, including and led by America, could still have acted firmly to contain Zionism’s colonial ambitions. They could have said to Israel something like: “We can just about live with the fact that you will retain the newly occupied Arab territories as a bargaining chip, to be exchanged for peace with your Arab neighbours, but we will not allow you to settle those territories. Not one building. If you defy us on this matter, the Security Council will authorize enforcement action as necessary to oblige you to comply with international law.”

In what became Security Council Resolution 242, it was the failure of the major powers to read the riot act to Israel on the matter of not settling the newly occupied territories that marks the moment when they, the major powers, became resigned to the fact that the Zionist state, assisted by its awesomely powerful global lobby, was a monster they could not control. (They could slap it on the wrist from time to time but not control it).

The lesson of the cold-blooded attack on the Liberty was that there is nothing the Zionist entity might not do, to its friends as well as its enemies, in order to get its own way. (In my book I explain, on the basis of a conversation with Dayan, the real reason for Israel’s decision to acquire a nuclear arsenal. It was to have the deterrent threat capability of saying to its friends, “Don’t push us further than we are prepared to go or we’ll use these things.”)

So in the full light of the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, it’s not surprising that the major powers (and others) are today complicit, more by default than design I say, in Zionism’s crimes.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=210885

[/quote]

Eruption of violence comes as Israelis who opposed the war a year ago say they are being silenced and vilified

sraeli troops yesterday shot dead six Palestinians in two separate incidents, as evidence emerged that an increasingly fragile ceasefire between armed groups loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and Israel appeared to be in danger of breaking down.

The shootings, the most serious violence in months, came a day before today's first anniversary of the outbreak of Israel's war against Gaza in which almost 1,400 Palestinians died – and as allegations have emerged from Israeli human rights campaigners who opposed the war that they are facing concerted attempts to silence them.

Read more @ The Guardian

Just to keep this separate from other topics.

and can we please keep this clear of:

1. Hyperbole.

2. insinuations and insults.

By this, what I mean is, a person has a right when asked to give his real opinion on a matter without recourse to "revenge" replies - I am more interested in what people think on these issues than the condemnation of those views if others disagree.

I very much doubt this will go according to plan, but I will start a question, something that I have wanted to ask.

Recently, Israel has been repossessing homes of Palestinians in East Jerusalem under the pretext that either the residents were not legally resident or that the buildings were built without permit - with the homes them being either demolished or handed over the Israeli citizens( while many other Israeli citizens also protested against this move).

Where do you see the right and the wrong on this matter?

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned an attack on a mosque in the occupied West Bank and called for the arrest of those responsible.

Jewish settlers are suspected of launching the attack, burning books and scrawling hate-messages in Hebrew.

The main prayer hall and library of the mosque in the village of Yasuf were badly burnt in the attack on Thursday.

Clashes later broke out between villagers and Israeli troops sent to investigate the incident.

Israeli condemnation

In a statement, Mr Netanyahu "vigorously denounced the aggression against the mosque".

He said he had told security forces "to act with determination to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice".

Other Israeli leaders added their voices to the condemnation.

Read more @ BBC News

Activists break West Bank barrier

Palestinians and foreign peace activists have broken apart a section of the West Bank barrier.

They used ropes and at least one truck to pull down some of the concrete blocks forming the Israeli-built wall.

The activists carried out the protest to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The barrier, which separates Israel from the West Bank, is a mixture of fences, barbed wire, ditches and concrete slabs up to 8m (26ft) high.

Israeli armed police, who are reported to have arrived shortly afterwards, are believed to have used tear gas to force the activists to stop.

Read more and watch video @ BBC News

SUSYA, occupied West Bank (IPS) - Hundreds of impoverished Palestinian herders and farmers living in caves and tents in a remote area of the Palestinian West Bank have been provided free electricity due to the ingenuity of two Israeli physicists.

The goat and sheep farming community of Susya, comprising clans of about 25 large families, had until recently followed a centuries-old tradition of subsistence farming without access to electricity.

...

But following the intervention of Comet-ME, one of 12 finalists of the BBC's World Challenge, a global competition aimed at projects showing enterprise and innovation at a grassroots level, Susya made international headlines.

Israeli physicist Elad Orian together with fellow physicist Noam Dotan, both pro-peace activists and founders of Comet-ME, have spent the last two years installing a high-grid wind and solar system free of charge in Susya.

"The core of our activity is the provision of basic energy services for off-grid communities using solar and wind power, in a way that is both environmentally and socially sustainable," Orian told IPS.

Read more @ Electronic Intifada

The UN's main human rights watchdog has begun a debate on a damning report into Israel's military operation against Gaza eight months ago.

It is seen as a test of US engagement with the Human Rights Council, which was shunned by President George W Bush.

The US, which is Israel's main ally, has criticised elements of the report.

The report, widely lauded by human rights groups, accuses both Israel and its militant Palestinian adversary Hamas of war crimes in the campaign.

Read more @ BBC News

RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that Gaza's access to safe supply of drinking water could cease at any time. The World Health Organization (WHO) says outbreaks of disease could be triggered as a consequence.

The warnings follow a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report Monday that "Gaza's underground water system is in danger of collapse after recent conflict compounded by years of overuse and contamination."

"An outbreak of Hepatitis A and parasitic infections could occur at any time," Mahmoed Daher from WHO in Gaza told IPS. "Already the number of people, especially children, suffering from diarrhea has risen dramatically."

"We have noticed an increase in people suffering from kidney diseases from water contaminated with toxins, as well as babies born with an unnatural blue tinge," Munther Shoblak from Gaza's Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) told IPS.

The UNEP report focuses on a rise in saltwater intrusion from the sea caused by over-extraction of ground water, and pollution from sewage and agricultural run-off, with toxic levels high enough to put infants at risk of nitrate poisoning.

Read more @ Electronic Intifada