100 Years – The True History of Zionism 2000-2010 Part Two

2000

The Second Intifada

On Sept. 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon appeared at the Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City with more than 1,000 Israeli police. In a blatant attempt to provoke Palestinians, he repeated a phrase that was broadcast during 1967 Six Day war when Israeli Occupation Forces seized East Jerusalem, “’The Temple Mount is in our hands,’» Sharon shouted. Palestinians reacted almost immediately to the threat to Al Aqsa.

…. Throughout the Second Intifada, Israeli forces also enforced an oppressive siege on the entirety of Palestine. Initially, Israel placed severe restrictions on Palestinians’ ability to move. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports that Israel blocked access to Palestinian cities and villages with “concrete blocks, piles of dirt, deep trenches, or checkpoints”. Israeli authorities also enforced an early curfew that prohibited Palestinians from even being outside of their own homes at certain points throughout the day and night. [1]

The Second Intifada lasted from September 2000 to (officially) September 2005. The number of fatalities were said to be approximately 3000 Palestinians and 1000 Israelis. (Wiki). I say “officially” because the deaths of Palestinians continued on a grand scale (over 1800 Palestinians killed by Israelis) between 2005 and 2008. [2]

The Oslo Scam

(Ehud Barak) promised peace and brought war, and not by accident. While speaking about peace, he;

▪️enlarged the settlements.

▪️Cut the Palestinian territories into pieces by ‘by-pass’ roads.

▪️Confiscated lands. Demolished homes. Uprooted trees.

▪️Paralyzed the Palestinian economy..

▪️Conducted negotiations in which he tried to dictate to the Palestinians a peace that amounts to capitulation.

▪️Was not satisfied with the fact that by accepting the Green Line, the Palestinians had already given up 78% of their historic homeland.

▪️Demanded the annexation of ‘settlement blocs” and pretended that they amount only to 3% of the territory, while in fact he meant more than 20% would remain under Israeli control.

▪️Wanted to coerce the Palestinians to accept a ‘state’ cut off from all its neighbors and composed of several enclaves isolated from each other, each surrounded by Israeli settlers and soldiers…(a la Gaza)

▪️Boasts publicly that he has not given back to the Palestinians one inch of territory…

▪️When the intifada broke out, sent snipers to shoot, in cold blood from a distance, hundreds of unarmed demonstrators, adults and children.

▪️Blockaded each village and town separately, bringing them to the verge of starvation, in order to get them to surrender.

▪️Bombarded neighborhoods. Started a policy of mafia-style ‘liquidations’, causing an inevitable escalation of the violence.” [3]

(Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery, February 3, 2001)

«America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get their way», Netanyahu said, referring to his plans for a «broad attack on the Palestinian Authority … [one which would] bring them to the point of being afraid that everything is collapsing».

2001

“They asked me (Netanyahu) before the election if I’d honour [the Oslo accords]», he went on. «I said I would, but … I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the 1967 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones – as far as I’m concerned the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue.» In this way, he concluded, «I de facto put an end to the Oslo accords.»

[The Oslo Accords stated at the time that Israel would gradually hand over territories to the Palestinians in three different pulses, unless the territories in question had settlements or military sites. This is where Netanyahu found a loophole.][4]

When his interlocutor asks about world opinion re continued conquest/settlement, he says, «The world won’t say a thing. The world will say we’re defending.»[5][6]

— Netanyahu talking when he didn’t know he was being recorded

“During the six-year period 2001 and 2007 Israel has, on average, killed more Palestinians per year than it killed during the first 20 years of occupation. Moreover, since the eruption of the second intifada (in 2000) Israelis have killed almost twice as many Palestinians as they killed in the preceding 34 years”[7]

The Apartheid Wall

“On June 16, 2002, Israel added another restriction to its list of human rights violations by beginning construction of the Apartheid Wall. Most of the wall has been built on Palestinian land, allowing Israel to annex the land that lay between the wall and 1948 Palestine (today, called Israel). Two years later, the International Court of Justice ruled illegal and ordered the construction to be stopped. Israel has yet to abide by the ruling.”[8]

Syria and Lebanon

Ziad Abdel Nour, an associate of Bush Administration advisers, policy makers, and media including (zionist) Neo-Conservatives Paula Dobriansky, James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Joseph Farah (World Net Daily), Clifford May, and Daniel Nassif of US State Department-funded Al Hurra and Radio Sawa, admits:

«Both the Syrian and Lebanese regimes will be changed- whether they like it or not- whether it’s going to be a military coup or something else… and we are working on it. We know already exactly who’s going to be the replacements. We’re working on it with the Bush administration.» [9]

(Counterpunch: «Faking the Case Against Syria,» by Trish Schuh)

The “Bantustan” model

In 2004, Haaretz reported the former Italian prime minister, Massimo D’Alema, as telling dinner guests at a Jerusalem hotel that, on a visit to Rome a few years earlier, Sharon had told him that the bantustan model was the most appropriate solution to the conflict with the Palestinians. [10]

Gaza concentration camp

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was nothing more than a crude attempt to cut down the Arab population and maintain a Jewish majority. With the added “bonus” of simultaneously creating a large concentration camp (no, that’s not just a slogan – it’s a fact). The idea too was to create a “hostile territory” in to which they could launch large scale military assaults by creating a narrative whereby they could paint themselves as the victim….even though Palestinians had been largely on ceasefire on and off for almost TWELVE YEARS out of the FIFTEEN YEARS since Hamas won elections in Gaza.[11]

“EVEN BIGGER ANIMALS”

The demographer Arnon Sofer of Haifa University is the architect of the current isolation of Gaza. In 2004, he advised the government of Ariel Sharon to withdraw Israeli forces from within Gaza, seal the territory off from the outside world, and simply shoot anyone who tries to break out.

“When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe….Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.” He added that “the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”

(Jerusalem Post (11 November 2004))

Gaza Myths

The myths about the blockade of Gaza are so legion that it is almost impossible to disentangle them. But let’s try tackling a few.

▪️The first is that the blockade was a necessary response to the election of Hamas.

Tell that to John Wolfensohn, special envoy to the Quartet, comprising the US, UN, Europe and Russia, from May 2005 whose job it was to oversee the disengagement. Wolfensohn was succeeded by the far less principled former British prime minister, Tony Blair.

In an interview with the Haaretz newspaper in 2007, Wolfensohn explained why he had resigned in April 2006 after a brief tenure. Shortly after the disengagement in summer 2005, he said, Israel and the US had violated the understandings made to ensure the border crossings into Gaza remained open after Jewish settlers left. “Every aspect of that agreement was abrogated,” he said.

The economy collapsed as a result, as Gaza’s farmers saw their produce rot at the crossings, and unemployment and disillusionment among Gazans skyrocketed. “Instead of hope, the Palestinians saw that they were put back in prison. And with 50 per cent unemployment, you would have conflict.”

It was the closure of the crossings in fact that Wolfensohn believes explains Hamas’s success in the subsequent elections, in early 2006. So, in other words, Israel’s blockade pre-existed Hamas’s rise to power and began when Fatah was still the ruler of Gaza.

▪️The second myth is that the blockade was an attempt, if a futile one, to get Hamas to recognise Israel’s “right to exist”.

Tell that to Dov Weisglass, former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s fixer in Washington. It was he who suggested the true goal of the blockade that Israel intensified immediately following Hamas’s electoral triumph. The policy would be “like an appointment with a dietitian. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won’t die.”

In short, according to Weisglass, Israeli policy in Gaza was “collective punishment” inflicted on the civilian population for choosing Hamas — a policy, should it need pointing out, that is a violation of international law and a war crime.

The hope, it seems, was that Gazans would, as they sank into abject poverty, manage to summon up the energy to overthrow Hamas. It never happened.

▪️The third myth is that the blockade was designed to put pressure on Hamas to end rocket fire into Israel.

Tell that to Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, and Matan Vilnai, his deputy. This pair was plotting an invasion of Gaza throughout the six-month ceasefire with Hamas, and in fact much earlier.

In truth, they ignored every diplomatic overture from Hamas, including offers of indefinite truces, while they invested their energies in the coming ground invasion. In particular they worked on plans, noted in the Israeli media back in spring 2008, to “level” Gaza’s civilian neighbourhoods and create “combat zones” from which civilians could be expelled.”[12]

— Jonathon Cook

Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.

Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.[13]

Wholesale slaughter

“…while Israel did withdraw its military bases from Gaza and redeployed its forces to bases outside of Gaza in 2005, it continues to carry out daily military operations in and attacks on Gaza. According to Defense for Children International – Palestine, during the first year after the disengagement the Israeli military fired over 15,000 shells into Gaza, conducted over 550 airstrikes on Gaza, and carried out regular military incursions into Gaza. A total of 525 Palestinians were killed and 1,527 injured during these attacks. This period included two major military operations. Operation Summer Rains during June 2006 left at least 256 Palestinians dead and 848 injured. At least 85 more Palestinians were killed in Gaza during a November 2006 military offensive which was codenamed Operation Autumn Clouds.[14][15]

“Human rights group B’tselem, citing the Israeli Shin Bet, notes that nearly 14,000 projectiles (12,000 by Wiki) were (allegedly) fired from Gaza from 2005 to 2013. UN OCHA noted that Israel fired about the same number of artillery shells into Gaza……in 2006 alone.”[16]

June 09 2006

In a calculated move to break the 16 month unilateral ceasefire of Hamas, Israel goes on a rampage.

“An Israeli navy gunboat fired shells onto a northern Gaza beach Friday, killing at least seven people and prompting the military wing of Hamas to call off a 16-month-old cease-fire with Israel.” [a Hamas official was killed the day before]

“Hamas has stuck to the cease-fire it announced in February 2005, but other groups did not sign on and have continued attacks against Israel. Earlier this year, Hamas won the Palestinian elections.”

“Five militants also died earlier Friday in two Israeli strikes in Gaza, Palestinian sources said.”[17]

June 25 2006

“Operation Summer Rains”

“Since the start of the operation, codenamed Summer Rain, at least 240 Palestinians have been killed. One in five were children. According to the PCHR, which has investigated each case, 197 of the dead were civilians and the vast majority were killed in Gaza. Among them were 12 women and 48 children.”[18]

Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006 (edit: when Hamas finally broke its 16 month ceasefire)

Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.

Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.

Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.

That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.”

(Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything you need to know, Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn, JULY 21, 2006)

Lebanon

Between 12 July and 14 August 2006, Israel waged war on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon and the Lebanese capital Beirut, by land, air and sea. Over the 34 days of the conflict, Israel carried out thousands of air strikes, while Hezbollah fired missiles into northern Israel. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), «The conflict resulted in at least 1,109 Lebanese deaths, the vast majority of whom were civilians, 4,399 injured, and an estimated one million displaced.»[19]

Friends of al Qaeda

Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker reveals that US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Hariri in Lebanon as well as the Syrian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood were assembling, arming, training, and heavily funding a sectarian extremists front, many of whom had direct ties to Al Qaeda, to unleash in both Lebanon and Syria. The goal was to create and exploit a sectarian divide between Sunni and Shi’ia Muslims. Hersh interviewed intelligence officers who expressed concerns over the «cataclysmic conflict» that would result, and the need to protect ethnic minorities from sectarian atrocities. The report indicated that extremists would be logistically staged in northern Lebanon where they would be able to cross back and forth into Syria.

(New Yorker: «The Redirection,» by Seymour Hersh, March 5, 2007.)[20]

2008

For more than four months after 19 June 2008, Hamas refrained from any military actions that might endanger the negotiated truce or “calm” with Israel.

The graphs show that the total number of rocket and mortar attacks shrank from 245 in June to 26 total for July through October, a reduction of 97 percent.

Even this was not enough for Israel, which violated the truce by imposing a terror-famine in Gaza for most of these months. But despite these violations, Hamas refrained from launching rockets until Israel definitively cancelled the truce on the night of 4-5 November by sending an Israeli commando squad into Gaza, where it killed six Hamas members. Hamas responded with 30 rockets.[21][22]

Mark Perry, co-director of the Conflicts Forum, a British-American group which mediates between the West and Islamist groups, including Hamas, stated on PBS’s “Newshour” (1/5/09) that contrary to US-Israeli propaganda, “During the six months of the cease-fire [agreed on between Israel and Hamas in June 2008], there were 153 violations of the cease-fire by Israel, and 36 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli forces. Most important of all, the economic siege of Gaza continued.”[23]

The interest of Hamas in a ceasefire agreement that would actually open the border crossings was acknowledged at a Dec. 21 Israeli cabinet meeting – five days before the beginning of the Israeli military offensive – by Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet. “Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce,” Diskin was quoted by Y-net News agency as saying….. The report recalls that Hamas “tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement” on other Palestinian groups, taking “a number of steps against networks which violated the arrangement,” including short-term detention and confiscating their weapons. It even found that Hamas had sought support in Gazan public opinion for its policy of maintaining the ceasefire.[24]

2008-2009

During Cast Lead, the Israeli assault on Gaza, more than 1400 Palestinians are killed over 22 days, most of them civilians. Many die as at Qana, when they flee their homes to UN compounds and schools, hoping to be safe.

“Very early on in Operation Cast Lead, the scale of Israel’s attack became apparent. In just the first six days the Israeli Air Force carried out more than 500 sorties against targets in the Gaza Strip. That amounted to an attack from the air roughly every 18 minutes — not counting hundreds of helicopter attacks, tank and navy shelling, and infantry raids. All of this on a territory similar in size to the US city of Seattle.”[25]

http://electronicintifada.net/content/lies-and-israels-war-crimes/8363

During Cast Lead, 3000 TONS of weaponry was casted on Gaza in only 22 days.[26]

Of those 3000 Tons, 75 Tons were depleted uranium. [27]

2009

I’m going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria.

This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate.

Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me….

This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned… in the region it is important to know that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance.

Consequently, everything that moves in the region- and I have this from the former Israeli prime minister who told me ‘we’ll try to get on with our neighbours but those who don’t agree with us will be destroyed.»[28]

— Former French minister for Foreign Affairs Roland Dumas on French TV station LCP

Sources

[1] https://www.ampalestine.org/palestine-101/history/intifadas/second-intifada-introduction

[2] https://www.btselem.org/statistics/fatalities/before-cast-lead/by-date-of-event

[3] http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/archives_article130/

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/26/binyamin-netanyahu-tape-israeli-palestinian-politics

[5] Transcript: http://mondoweiss.net/2010/07/the-world-wont-say-a-thing-netanyahu-on-ongoing-israeli-expansion/

[6] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkpoint-washington/2010/07/netanyahu_america_is_a_thing_y.html

[7] http://www.israelsoccupation.info/sites/default/files/From%20Colonization%20to%20Separation%20-TWQ.pdf

[8] https://www.ampalestine.org/palestine-101/history/intifadas/second-intifada-introduction

[9] https://colorrevolutionsandgeopolitics.blogspot.com/2011/09/act-one-of-cias-arab-spring-lebanons.html

[10] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/07/southafrica.israel