To: Helen Thomas CC: MSM, US-Israeli Government Subject: AIPAC, Vanunu, Arrigoni

April 23, 2011 posted by Eileen Fleming

by Eileen Fleming
Dear Helen Thomas,

I am the founder of one of 100 organizations who have endorsed Move Over AIPAC, but I didn’t commit to attend until I learned you were going to be speaking and I began to dream of 15 minutes with you.
However, my dream died when I learned that Ms. Thomas has now declined to take part in the Move Over AIPAC conference fearing she was becoming the focus and said “I am delighted that people are coming together for this gathering and I want to make sure that the focus stays on AIPAC and U.S. policy, not me.”
OK, I understand but I am disappointed because I wanted to tell you that when I was a child in the sixties, my DREAM was to grow up and be Brenda Starr, the red headed, ace investigative journalist and star reporter for the metropolitan daily, The Flash. Brenda boldly traveled the world searching for unusual and usually dangerous stories and she always knew when somebody was not telling the truth. Brenda also never backed down from setting the record straight.

After high school I was a copy girl in a Gannett affiliate but for lots of reasons, I changed my major from journalism to nursing and quickly forgot about my childish dream. That is, until June 2005, during my first of 7 trips to Israel Palestine. I was writing my first novel at the time, but I returned home determined to follow in the footsteps of Dorothy Day, who became a voice for the marginalized and oppressed and agitated church, state and the media in her publication, The Catholic Worker, which persists today.

But on 9 February 2009, I knew I wanted to be Helen Thomas because of this: Helen Thomas on her one question for Obama

And here is HOW and WHY I have tried:
On 21 April 2011, the USA MSM was once again deafeningly silent regarding the ongoing saga of Israel’s Nuclear Whistle Blower and this day in history in 2004.

A “Vanunu” Google News search turned up only two mentions of it; a letter published in the UK, Vanunu still not free The Guardian.

And my article: SECURITY’S Vendetta Against Vanunu Mordechai and This Day in History
Salem-News.Com

I also wanted to THANK Ms. Thomas for speaking up about the fact that any Jew without any historical connection to Israel is encouraged to settle-as in colonize-upon legally owned Palestinian land.
I have tried since I went online in July 2005 to wake up clueless US Christians about the true facts on the ground in the so called Holy Land, which any one with eyes to see can see is in pieces:

I learned about, Aliyah, which means ‘going up,’ during my first of seven trips to Israel and occupied Palestine in June 2005 from an American Jewess who had taken the deal and she informed me:

I get fifteen hundred shekels or about thirty-six hundred dollars a year in increments to help with my expenses. I can apply for unemployment benefits after seven months, as long as I look for a job. I just completed Ulpan, which was five hundred hours of Hebrew language immersion studies that took five months, five hours a day, for five weeks. I get subsidized rent and just moved out of the Absorption Center Projects. All the new immigrants get room, utilities, and three meals a day for the first five months in Israel. We also receive free medical care and all the doctors here are dedicated. We can go to the university with 100 percent of the tuition paid by the government. College is much cheaper here; it’s about three thousand to four thousand dollars a year. Until I am thirty years old, I can receive up to three years of education for my master’s degree.

She was clueless as to the Palestinian side of the story just as most Americans are, and also clueless regarding these facts courtesy of http://ifamericansknew.org/

Statistics Last Updated: February 2, 2011

Israeli and Palestinian Children Killed September 29, 2000 – Present

124 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,452 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

Israelis and Palestinians Killed

September 29, 2000 – Present 1,084 Israelis and at least 6,430 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

Israelis and Palestinians Injured September 29, 2000 – Present

9,226 Israelis and 45,041 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information.)

Daily U.S. Military Aid to Israel and the Palestinians Fiscal Year 2009

During Fiscal Year 2009, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.2 million per day in military aid and $0 in military aid to the Palestinians. (View Sources & More Information)

UN Resolutions Targeting Israel and the Palestinians 1955 – 1992

Israel has been targeted by at least 65 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by none. (View Sources & More Information)

Current Number of Political Prisoners and Detainees

1 Israeli is being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 5,935 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel. (View Sources & More Information)

Demolitions of Israeli and Palestinian Homes 196 7 – Present

0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and 24,813 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. (View Sources & More Information)

Israeli and Palestinian Unemployment Rates

The Israeli unemployment rate is 6.4%, while the Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank is 16.5% and 40% in Gaza. (View Sources & More Information)

Current Illegal Settlements on the Other’s Land

Israel currently has 236 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land. (View Sources & More Information)

During the same week that I dreamed I would get to meet Helen Thomas, I also was grieving the loss of Vittorio Arrigoni, a winner

I am sad that my brief dream of meeting Helen Thomas is now a ghost, but I also follow in the spirit of Vik/Vittorio Arrigoni who always said, “STAY HUMAN” and he wanted to be [and is] remembered as “a Dreamer who Never Gives Up.”

While I will miss Helen in D.C., I will persist to do all I can to help Move Over AIPAC and work to change US foreign policy, because I also dream of a world where human rights are for all people and International Law is understood and honored.

But that would require a Media to report on what we the people need to know and then we the people would have to take our responsibilities as American citizens seriously and seize our RIGHTS:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all [people] are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights…that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among [people], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the RIGHT of the people to alter or to abolish it.” -The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

Learn More: www.moveoveraipac.org

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Barak: ‘Israeli Jews should move to Finland’

Posted on April 21, 2011 by rehmat1

On April 10, 2011 – Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio: “Those who came here in order to set up a national home have to know how to stand firm. For those who want complete quiet, there is Finland and there is Western Europe, and they can go there.” He also said Israel would act to bring down the Hamas regime in Gaza only when absolutely necessary because such action would require entering and retaking the Gaza Strip.

Remember, when Helen Thomas gave a similar advice to the western Jews occupying Arab Palestine, she was forced to leave her 50-year post at the White House.

Correct me if I am wrong – Ehud Barak had admitted three historical facts in his above statement;
1) he implies Israel is not a national home because it must be set up,
2) he recognizes Jews do have an option to leave in peace elsewhere and
3) he recognizes all Zionists’ whining about so-called ‘anti-Semitism’ is nothing but a hoax to support Jewish centuries-old dogma of victimization.

Professor Stephen Walt (Harvard University) noted in April 2010 in Foreign Policy that between 700,000 to one million Israeli Jewish citizen are living in foreign countries, and emmigration has outpaced immigration since 2007. The reason for this exodus, according to professors Ian Lustick (University of Pennsylvania), Stephen Walt and others is that “moderate” Israelis are abandoning the Zionist project, ostensibly fed up with Israeli policies, have never actually troubled to ask the Israeli expatriates why they left.

According to Walt, the conflict with the Palestinians in eminently solvable, but “because Netanyahu has long opposed the creation of a viable Palestinian state and instead wants to extend Israel’s control of the West Bank, he has to lay out a set of demands that will endlessly delay the process and make it hard for Obama to put meaningful pressure on him.”

Some Israeli intellectuals believe that the only non-Palestinian people still living in Israel are the hardcore Zionists, fanatic religious Jews and Ethiopian Jews.

I have no clue why Barak chose Finland because it has only a few thousands of Jewish population and seeks EU and NATO’s protection against its great fear of Russia. Finland has 120 soldiers as part of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

And finally, some words of wisdom from former French Jewish Ambassador to UK, Daniel Bernard:

“All the current troubles in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel. Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?”

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Israel got the ‘Keys’ to White House

Posted on April 16, 2011 by rehmat1

It’s a rite of passage, all presidential candidates pass through Israel. Mostly it’s about money,” says Dr. Norman Finkelstein.

“They bought the executive branch. They bought the legislative branch. The people of the US don’t have true representation when it comes to their values versus the Pro Israel lobby,” says Cynthia McKinney, a former Congresswoman and Presidential candidate.

“The policies they inflict on America are deeply damaging to our national interests. It is just that, right now, AIPAC is part of an infinitely larger problem: a thoroughly corrupted political system,” wrote MJ Rosenberg.

How true are the above statements? According to some political insiders, more than one-third of contributions to the Republican and Democrat parties come from the Jewish groups and individuals on the condition that the lawmakers will look after the interests of Israel over the US interests. This is later accomplished by surrounding the President with Jewish and Zionist individuals blessed by the Israel Lobby (AIPAC). The list of such ‘Israel-Firsters’ around Barack Obama can be found here.

But then, it would be an act of anti-Semitism, if you believe the above and what Jerusalem-born Chancellor Professor Naseer Aruri 77 (University of Massachusetts) and author of several books on Israel-Palestinian conflict said recently in an interview he gave to young Iranian journaist Kourosh Ziabari.

Naseer Aruri believes that Jewish lobby groups carry terrifying influence over America’s foreign policy especially concerning Palestine. They use money and character assassination to blackmail American lawmakers, journalists and anyone who dare to criticize Israel in public.

“The sources of Zionist power in the US stem from superior organization, good finance, a ready-made “defense” of their cause such as “anti-Semitism,” which serves as a sort of black-mail and a barrier against valid criticism of policies. While the public can criticize Obama and his policy and expect no retribution, that same public cannot criticize Israel in the same way. Look at what happened to Helen Thomas, the dean of the White House journalists since the 1950s when she dared to express her opinion on the Israeli theft of Palestinian land, ongoing since the 1940s. Senators and Congress people have been dumped by the Lobby upon the first sign of dissent and deviation from the delivered wisdom and accepted orthodoxy on Israel. In short, the Zionist lobby is fortified by a shield which enables it to suppress dissent in a democratic nation, said Naseer Aruri.

Professor Naseer Aruri also believes that the so-called two-state solution for the Zionists’ occupation of Palestine is long dead – and the just and durable solution would only be a single state where native Muslims, Christian and foreign Jews can live together under equal justice and protection.

“I am afraid no just and lasting solution seems to be on the horizon at the present time. Israel and its supporters have stood firmly during the past four decades against the global consensus which demanded withdrawal from occupied territories and a just resolution of the refugees problem in accordance with UN resolutions and the general principles of international law– a resolution based on the principles of equal justice, equal protection of the law, and an end to apartheid, which now prevails throughout historic Palestine pre and post 1948. As for the two-state solution, there is no such a thing. It is already too late for that, as the entire spectrum of Israeli politics allows no sovereignty on any piece of land lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. That leaves one just solution: a single state in which Muslims, Christians and Jews can live together on the basis of equal justice and equal protection of the law,” said Naeer Aruri.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian