There is an enormous difference between "recognizing Israel's existence" and "recognizing Israel's “right to exist." From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified. For Palestinians to acknowledge the occurrence of the “Nakba” - the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 - is one thing. For them to publicly concede that it was "right" for the “Nakba” to have happened would be something else entirely. For the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, the Holocaust and the “Nakba”, respectively, represent catastrophes and injustices on an unimaginable scale that can neither be forgotten nor forgiven.

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Israel's Kafkaesque "Matrix of Control"

Stephen Lendman

February 02, 2007

Znet

(Excerpt)

Finding an equitable solution to the intractable, festering decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Gordian Knot that must be cut to achieve peace overall in the Middle East. Today, no solution is in sight nor are any serious efforts planned to find one despite occasional rhetoric to the contrary like what's now being heard from Washington with similar disingenuous echoes inside Israel.

Palestinians know otherwise from long experience. They've heard this siren song before. It's the same old tired refrain going nowhere and not intending to. The so-called "road map" goes nowhere, and the "peace process" guarantees only more conflict because Israel wants it that way to justify its harshness and refuses to discuss the most fundamental Palestinian concerns. Unless they're resolved there can never be peace. They include:

a sovereign integral independent Palestinian state,
the Right of Return,
status of Jerusalem Palestinians want as their capital,
settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) that must be removed, and
established borders.

They also include ending what Palestinian-American scholar and activist Edward Said once called Israel's agenda of "refined viciousness" against the Palestinian people. Since Hamas' Palestinian Authority (PA) January, 2006 legislative electoral victory, there's been nothing "refined" about it.

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News & Comment

“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder

respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

~George Orwell~

It's The 'Foreign Policy' Stupid!

As US power fades, it can't find friends to take on Iran

Washington has exaggerated Tehran's capabilities and intentions in Iraq. It is confused and frustrated

Jonathan Steele
The Guardian - London

Friday February 2, 2007

(Excerpt)

The US claims Iran has increased its subversion in Iraq in recent months. The US has a record of self-serving and false intelligence on Iraq but, even if true, Iran's actions cannot make much difference to the problems the US is facing. The sectarian violence is perpetrated largely by Iraqis on Iraqis. If outsiders provoke it, they are mainly Sunni jihadis loyal to al-Qaida. As for attacks on US forces, these come primarily in Sunni areas or the mixed province of Diyala. Some US officials now hint that Iranians may be involved in these areas too. Links between Iran and Iraq's Sunni insurgents would be new, but marginal.

The real purpose of Washington's heightened talk of Iranian subversion seems to be twofold. The administration is playing the blame game. When the "who lost Iraq?" debate develops in earnest as the presidential election contest hots up,