Americans need to Answer: When Will Palestinians get their Fourth of July?
(Informed Comment) – The Palestinians do not have any of these rights, whether God wants them to or not. They were successively ethnically cleansed from their homeland of Palestine by militant Jewish settlers. (There were no Jews in Palestine to speak of as recently as 1800; Bonaparte found about 3,000 I think; Palestine was inhabited by Muslim and Christian Palestinians and as late as 1939 the British mandatory authorities envisaged a Palestinian state in 1949). Some 750,000 were expelled with no compensation and their land and property usurped in 1948. More tens of thousands were displaced in 1967. Their numbers have grown. Some 20 percent of Israel is remnants of the original Palestinian inhabitants, some 1.6 million persons. They are second class citizens in many ways.
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Palestinian refugee Shaher Alkhateeb, 73, who witnessed what the Palestinians call the "Nakba," or "catastrophe," poses for a picture in front of a wall painted with a mural depicting a prisoner jailed in Israel, in Kalandia refugee camp, between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)But the some 4 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza, and the several hundred thousand living in Lebanese refugee camps [and Syria, Jordan], are living lives the opposite of the ones Jefferson declared natural. They are stateless. In the West Bank they live under Israeli military rule; there are a few civil institutions, but all of these can be over-ruled by the whim of the Israeli army. Palestinians do not control their land, water or air. In Gaza, the Israelis have put them under siege, including the children and non-combatants in general. They aren’t allowed to export virtually anything they produce. They have no port or airport (both bombed by Israel). They suffer from massive unemployment and even malnutrition. The Israelis have placed the Palestinians of Gaza in a huge open-air concentration camp. With American and European help.
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So the Palestinians do not have a right to life. They have no liberty at all as the US founding generation conceived it. And they certainly have no right to pursue happiness. Their lives are constrained and made difficult by deliberate actions of Israeli officials and officers and armed squatters on their land who torment them. The Declaration of Independence insists that people have a right to elect their government.U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People
Today I received an email notice from Lisa Pease (@BooMan aka Real History Lisa) about her new article.
Continued below the fold …
Reading through her blog, Lisa Pease has also covered the likely assassination of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. This reminds me once again that the intelligence community and covert operations are the leading factor how global affairs are dealt with. Not much has changed over the decades except what were covert assassinations are now openly advocated with impunity, by western powers and in the US protectorate Israel.
With the death of UN hero Dag Hammarskjöld, it’s a small step to D.R. Congo and the heinous crime by western powers, the murder of Patrice Lumumba on January 16, 1961, four days before the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. The sixties would become a decade renowned for high profile assassinations by the dark state. How much individuals try, peace has never been given a chance. The knee-jerk reaction has always been war.
Assassination of Patrice Lumumba, CIA involvement with Allan Dulles, NSC and President Eisenhower
At a meeting of the U.S. National Security Council, President Eisenhower told CIA Director Allen Dulles that Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba needed to be “eliminated” in order to keep the Congo from becoming “another Cuba”. Robert Johnson, who took notes of the meeting, revealed the information at a Senate hearing years later.
When the Church Committee investigated CIA assassination plots in 1975, one of the plots it uncovered had as its target Patrice Lumumba, who in 1960 had emerged as the leader of the newly independent Congo. Lumumba was indeed murdered in early 1961, though the Committee absolved the CIA of the African leader’s death at the hands of his Congolese enemies. A 2001 report from the Belgian government found complicity on the part of that country in Lumumba’s death. As far as US involvement, the line between the CIA’s vigorous support of anti-Lumumba Congolese and involvement in Lumumba’s murder is not clearly drawn.
○ Patrice Lumumba: CIA Cable Traffic Leopoldville to Langley of August 1960
○ Dulles cable to Leopoldville 8/26/1960Last letter written by Patrice Lumumba to his dear wife …
All during the length of my fight for the independence of my country, I have never doubted for a single instant the final triumph of the sacred cause to which my companions and myself have consecrated our lives.
But what we wish for our country, its right to an honorable life, to a spotless dignity, to an independence without restrictions, Belgian colonialism and its Western allies–who have found direct and indirect support, deliberate and not deliberate, among certain high officials of the United Nations, this organization in which we placed all our confidence when we called for their assistance–have not wished it.
They have corrupted certain of our fellow countrymen, they have contributed to distorting the truth and to besmirching our independence. What else might I say? That dead, living, free, or in prison on the order of the colonialists, it is not I who counts. It is the Congo, it is our people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage where we are regarded from the outside sometimes with benevolent compassion, sometimes with joy and pleasure.
But my faith will stay unbreakable. I know and I feel to the depth of my being that sooner or later my people will get rid of all their interior and exterior enemies, that they will rise up like a single person to day no to a degrading and shameful colonialism and to reassume their dignity under a pure sun.
We are not alone. Africa, Asia, and free and liberated people from every corner of the world will always be found at the side of the Congolese. They will not abandon the fight until the day comes when there are no more colonizers and mercenaries in our country.
[Source: Lumumba’s blood on US hands]
Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders
The Church Committee investigated CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders. This Interim Report, published in 1975, discusses alleged plots to kill:
- Patrice Lumumba (Congo)
- Fidel Castro (Cuba)
- Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic)
- Ngo Dinh Diem (Vietnam)
- Rene Schneider (Chile)
The Committee also examined the CIA’s development of a general “executive action” capability. The Committee found that the U.S. initiated plots to assassinate Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba. In the other cases, either U.S. involvement was indirect or evidence was too inconclusive to issue a finding. In Lumumba’s case,the Committee asserted that the U.S. was not involved in his death, despite earlier plotting. The Committee was unable to state with certainty whether any plots were authorized by U.S. Presidents.
Today’s reality in the conflict between Israel and the stateless people of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT):
Israel’s FM Avigdor Liberman declares Hamas leaders should be assassinated
(Jerusalem Post) – The Foreign Minister continued by stressing the need to go after the leaders of terrorism wherever they are saying, “We must lay hands on all those who perpetrated and encouraged the murder of the three teenagers, including [Hamas PM Ismail] Haniyeh and [Hamas leader Khaled] Mashaal.”
He added that the two should consider themselves “legitimate targets.”
The comments followed comments made by Liberman on Sunday where he said that only a full-scale return of Israeli control to Gaza would end the rocket fire.
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In Jerusalem, lynch mobs were roaming the streets shouting ‘Death to Arabs!” In statements by Israel’s leadership, a call for incitement set the tone this week. A typical callous comment by a blogger Ron Temis:13 שייטת are the real Jews today not ghetto Jews like you כל הכבוד לצה׳ל
My Reply:
Assassins are the real Jews as in the old days. Flaunting International Law, war crimes and crimes against humanity. I wish you a long life to witness the havoc Likud’s policy has wrought on Israel.
