Monday, January 5, 2009

Obama's Secretary Of State-Designate Husband's Ambassador To Israel In 1990s

A U.S. Ambassador to Israel in the 1990s—former Clinton White House National Security Council Adviser Martin Indyk—apparently represented the special interests of the Militaristic Israeli Establishment before he was named by the husband of Obama Administration Secretary Of State-Designate Hillary Clinton to represent the Democratic Clinton Administration in Israel during the 1990s. As Peace And Its Discontents: Essays On Palestine In The Middle East Peace Process by Professor Edward Said noted:

“Consider…the extraordinary, not to say astonishing presence in the Clinton Administration of one Martin Indyk…An Australian, Indyk was employed by the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a think-tank associated with AIPAC, the pro-Israeli lobby, and the Likud Party [of former MIT student Benjamin Netanyahu]. Literally a few days before he was appointed to the National Security Council in early 1993 Indyk was made an American Citizen.”

The same book also observed in 1995:

“The tragedy is not that peace was achieved but that it was not, even though much of the Western media have celebrated the achievements of what has been called the American `peace process.’

“…Arab views are rarely encountered in the mainstream American media…When reports of torture and killing of Palestinians by Israeli and Palestinian police appear, they are connected with neither the deeply flawed Oslo Accords nor with an Israeli and, behind it, an American policy which has maintained hundreds of Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, continues to deploy a major army of occupation, intransigently confiscates and builds on Arab land in East Jerusalem (as part of the city’s forced Judaization), and resolutely denies Palestinians true freedom and national self-determination…According to Israeli figures, 70,000 more acres of Palestinian land have been expropriated or designated `security’ areas since September 1993
[as of 1995].”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/16/96)

How Militaristic Israel Invaded Gaza In 1956

Former U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Member Barack Obama claimed to be an "anti-war candidate" during his 2008 presidential campaign. But Democratic President-Elect Obama still hasn’t been very eager to condemn the recent invasion of Gaza by the war machine of his militaristic Israeli government political allies in 2009. Yet 2009 is not the only year in which the government of Israel ordered its troops to invade Gaza.

As the Palestine Book Project’s 1977 book, Our Roots Are Still Alive: The Story of the Palestinian People recalled:

“Over 750,000 Palestinians had been driven out of Palestine to create the state of Israel…King Farouk of Egypt took over the administration of the Gaza Strip…

“On May 5, 1951 General Bennike, head of the United Nations Treaty Supervision Organization, reported that Israeli troops had expelled 7,000 Arabs from el-Auja, a demilitarized zone near Egypt, and added the territory to Israel. Nothing was done…Israel’s only offer involving return of Palestinians was to accept 100,000 refugees from the Gaza Strip, if the Strip were added to the state of Israel.

“Palestinians rejected this solution and any other that did not promise the return of their land. In 1950, 25,000 refugees went on a hunger strike against UNRWA, stating they would rather starve than settle outside Palestine…

“…Merchants crossing Beersheeba from the Gaza Strip, their pack animals loaded with rice and sugar, found their centuries-old caravan routes blocked by Israeli troops…Soon many people had fathers and sons, mothers and daughters who had been killed on the Gaza caravan…

“…In 1952 an officers’ coup in Egypt overthrew the corrupt rule of King Farouk. Within two years, Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged as the dynamic nationalist leader of Egypt…

“In early February 1955, the Egyptian government tried and hanged three Israeli intelligence agents in Cairo for acts of terrorism. On February 28, Israeli troops attacked a camp in the Gaza Strip and killed 36 Egyptian soldiers. The United Nations condemned the raid, pointing out that there had been no Egyptian border crossing or other military act providing even a pretext for the raid…

“But Nasser would not be intimidated. On July 26, 1956, he nationalized the Suez Canal, a part of Egypt formerly controlled by Britain. Over 125,000 Egyptians had died building the canal for the British Empire…

“…In October 1956, under a secret agreement with Britain and France, Israel invaded…the Gaza Strip…

“…Israel continued to occupy the territory for five months before it reluctantly withdrew. When it left, UN troops were stationed in Gaza…

“In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation had been especially brutal. As the soldiers moved into Gaza, they found a list of fedayeen in an Egyptian administration center. Systematically, they rounded up and executed 250 young Palestinians. Eighty died in a mass execution in a schoolyard.

“Still, during the five long months of Israeli occupation, small groups of Palestinians risked their lives to harass the Israeli soldiers…The seeds of resistance that sprouted in Gaza took root among Palestinians in many Arab countries…”