Labelling might give conscientious consumers useful information to target settlements goods but, in the unlikely event a significant number of shoppers chose to act, it would barely dent Israel’s economy.

I am convinced that a new Declaration of Independence will be good both for the United States and for Israel.

As a prologue to the injuries suffered by the United States, I cannot put it any better than did America’s Founders:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation:”

In its periodic report on the boycott against Israeli products, the national office for land defense said that the movement is growing worldwide, and that people in different fields including cultural, academic, economic, sport and military fields, are demanding Israel be held accountable for its crimes against Palestine.

Academia is far from the bastion of free thinking and free speech it would like to claim for itself, as a newly confected “row” involving the leading medical journal The Lancet confirms.

Recently Southampton University in the UK caved in on hosting an important conference examining Israel and international law, following an intensive campaign of intimidation from Israeli apologists.

Now some 400 medical professors are blackmailing Reed Elsevier, publishers of The Lancet, by threatening to boycott its publications unless the company sacks editor Richard Horton – or as they duplicitously phrase it, “enforce appropriate ethical standards of editorship”.

By refusing to publish papers or peer review them, the professors, including five Nobel winners, hope Reed Elsevier will capitulate from fear that such a boycott might bring it to its knees.

Richard Horton

Thousands of Palestinians attended the funeral of Mahmoud Abu Jheisha on Sunday, after the 20-year-old was shot dead by Israeli forces outside the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron when he allegedly stabbed an Israeli soldier.

The funeral procession began at the Amari Mosque in Abu Jheisha's hometown of Idhna, west of Hebron, where family and friends paid their final respects, before he was taken to be buried in the town cemetery.

Participants reportedly chanted slogans condemning Israeli crimes and calling for an end to Israeli practices as part of the occupation.

Abu Jheisha was shot dead by Israeli forces after allegedly stabbing an Israeli soldier at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

Witnesses told Ma'an that he stabbed the soldiers a number of times before Israeli forces shot him dead.
The Israeli soldier, who was moved to a Jerusalem hospital, received stab wounds in his head and chest, and his condition was described as moderate.

Evidently, in Harper’s pro-Zionist fantasy world ‘terrorist’ is a smear word applied exclusively to the opponents of Israeli imperialism, whereas a state birthed through ethnic cleansing and maintained by way of bribery, blackmail, and state-sponsored mass murder is praised to the heavens merely for allowing its privileged Jewish citizens and disenfranchised Arab subjects to vote for whichever hawkish Zionist politician will continue the policies of terror in the holy land.

Jonathan Cook contrasts the European Union’s feebleness towards the exponential expansion of Jewish squatter colonies with the Israeli political institutions – from the Supreme Court to the far right – uniting behind the colonies.

Lawrence Davidson explores why Zionists were so afraid of an academic conference that had been set to take place at Southampton University that they pulled all the strings to get it cancelled.

“Law” and “justice” are words that seldom if ever pass the lips of our politicians when discussing the ‘Palestine Question’ — or shouldn’t that be properly called the ‘Israel Question’? In the UK there is still no rush, it seems, to deliver law or justice to the situation after 100 years of betrayal.

Britain’s ferocious warmongering in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and efforts to destabilize Syria, caused havoc in those countries and earned us a reputation for human misery making. This week our misbegotten chickens came home to roost in an unbearably distressing way as desperate refugee-migrants drowned at sea hundreds at a time.

Ruth Tenne argues that, by blocking our website, Redress Information & Analysis, London’s Camden Council – which appears to be covertly advancing the interests of the pro-Israel constituency – is breaking the law.

Thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel marched in protest on Thursday as their Jewish compatriots partied, each group in its own way marking the 67th anniversary of the State of Israel's founding.
The anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948 is celebrated according to the Jewish calendar, this year falling on April 23.

Palestinians usually mark the day on May 15 by commemorating what they call the Nakba -- or "catastrophe" -- of Israel's creation.

But thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel, many waving Palestinian flags, gathered Thursday in the Galilee for a protest march timed to coincide with the Israeli celebrations.
It centered on the ruins of Al-Haditha, near Tiberias, one of nearly 400 Palestinian villages destroyed in the war that erupted after Israel's founding.

"Our grandfathers who suffered displacement asked us not to sell our land and to return to it and not give up," activist Hammad Abu al-Haija told the crowd.

Grand Sheikh of Al-Aqsa Mosque Ekrema Sabri yesterday warned that the situation in Jerusalem is "very dangerous" because of the continuous settler desecration of Al-Aqsa.

Speaking to the Palestinian newspaper Al-Resalah, Sabri said that the situation in the mosque has been intensified by the "provocative" acts being carried out almost on a daily basis in the third most holy site for Muslims.

The Gaza Strip contains many archaeological artifacts and remnants belonging to different historical ages - from the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Hellenistic (323-31 B.C.), Roman (65 B.C.-330 C.E.), Byzantine (395-634), Islamic (636-1099), Mamluk (1250-1516) and Ottoman (1516-1917). However, the ministry says that due to Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza, both archaeological and scientific exploration, as well as tourism, have suffered greatly.

Settlers frequently attack locals and prevent farmers from reaching their lands, in addition to attacks on olive trees themselves.

GAZA MASSACRE 2014 inspired this dark rock tune about a murdered father speaking to his daughter about her future. Dark yes! But also hoping for a better day in a future where we coexist as brothers, We Exist will make you think. It will make you hurt, get angry and move you to be fired up about changing this world for all of us because we belong no matter what they say!

In a letter calling on European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini to promote and implement a 2012 plan to mark produce and products for the European marketplace from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, 16 EU foreign ministers stated that what they are requesting is “an important step in the full implementation of EU longstanding policy in relation to the preservation of the two-state solution”.

Are you surprised that there has been little mobilization to help Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, which is overrun by militants, and besieged by the Syrian army? Palestinians – and Syrians – there are killed in a myriad of ways, including starvation.

Do the math...

Do the math...

Stuart Littlewood looks at where the main British political parties stand on Palestine, and concludes that “there is still no rush… to deliver law or justice… after 100 years of betrayal”.

Farmers in the blockaded Gaza Strip see no end in sight to their suffering, as Israel continues to destroy their crops. Israeli pesticide planes sprayed Gaza’s agricultural lands east of Gaza in recent days with chemicals causing huge damage to the crops.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have turned down a request from former US President Jimmy Carter to meet during his upcoming visit to the occupied Palestinian territories because of Carter’s 'anti-Israel' stance, a report says.

According to an unnamed Israeli official, both leaders refused to meet Carter following consultations between the Israeli foreign ministry and the national security council of the premier’s office, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Monday.

The foreign ministry urged Rivlin and Netanyahu to refrain from meeting the 90-year-old due to his "anti-Israeli stance" over the last few years, according to the official.

The report said that Israel has allowed Carter to visit the besieged Gaza Strip during his visit.

So, where were the reporters of the mainstream media? Where was C-SPAN during a week when Congress was on a holiday and their cameras were not preoccupied by Capitol Hill activities—its foremost priority? Apparently, the American people were only to see and hear the extreme views of AIPAC that do not even command the support of a majority of American Jews who do favor a two-state solution, along with a majority of Arab-Americans.

Organized by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which was launched about thirty years ago by a British Army Officer who served in World War II and two retired U.S. Ambassadors to countries in the Middle East (wrmea.org), the day-long program at the prestigious National Press Club should have been intriguing to reporters. After all, are they not interested in important, taboo-challenging presentations on a critical dimension of U.S. foreign and military policy?

Right-wing Israeli organisations have been quietly escalating “legal warfare” against the Palestinian leadership in an attempt to dissuade it from bringing war crimes charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

Assad alleged that the movement had allied itself with extremist militants fighting in Syria.

Uri Avnery explains how political manipulation of the Israeli Supreme Court facilitated the judgement prohibiting calls for the boycott of goods produced in Jewish squatter colonies built on stolen Palestinian land.

Israeli forces arrested a Palestinian journalist on Wednesday after raiding his home in Nablus, bringing the total number of journalists imprisoned by Israel to 20.

Khaled had been detained on charges of setting fire to tires and hurling stones on Israeli soldiers near the Apartheid wall in Ramallah’s town of Anan.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has called for "an immediate injection" of $30 million to provide aid for residents of the beleaguered Yarmouk refugee camp, where fighting between Palestinian factions and the Islamic State group continues.

On Thursday evening, just a few hours before April 17, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the release of all political prisoners, held by Israel, is a top priority and one of the cases to be filed to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The Holy Fire ceremony at Easter is observed every year in Jerusalem, a place holy to the three major monotheistic faiths. But Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike are prevented from freely practicing their long-held traditions there as Israel relentlessly erases their heritage from the city.

Lawrence Davidson highlights the wilful distortions, prejudice and hypocrisy underlying a Zionist advertisement campaign targeting a historical Palestinian leader and Muslims in general, now underway in the Philadelphia area in the USA.

Almost half of all Americans want to support Israel even if its interests diverge from the interests of their own country. Only a minority of Americans (47 percent) say that their country should pursue their own interests over supporting Israel’s when the two choices collide. It’s the ultimate violation of George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address warning that “nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded. … The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.”

What matters is that the US, while it is a declining world power, is still militarily powerful, dangerous and destructive, even as its empire building is weakening and its forces are in retreat. As Mahatma Gandhi once stated about the declining British Empire, ‘It’s the aging tiger that becomes the man eater’.

Western media campaign to demonize Putin has failed to convince its target audience. The Western public are not buying the hysterical political agenda.
The iconic current affairs TIME magazine follows this week’s news that Russian President Vladimir Putin came top of the TIME 100 readers’ poll.

Western publics have now alternative media sources, ranging from foreign-based professional news services to a plethora of Western-based internet sites. The alternative scope is often critical of Western government policies and capable of ably exposing ulterior, hidden political agenda. In other words, the alternative news sources are often doing the proper job of journalism that is neglected by Western mainstream media who seem to be preoccupied with advancing the political objectives of their governments – no matter how unethical those objectives are.

Bad pay, hard labor, nasty skin rashes, and poor sleep in constructions sites are just the tip of work conditions found in Israeli agricultural settlements, said Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a report released Monday.

Physicians and medical workers with difficult hours will be allowed to drive in, as was the case before the second intifada in 2000.

(*Bottle Rocket Display by the Containment Wall anticipated by weekend ?)

Organic farms in the West Bank: Hemmed in by smokestacks, separation wall
Next to chemical pesticides factory and separation barrier, fields are surrounded by impact of the Israeli occupation

Any lawyers willing to do it? Support the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) movement, on American university campuses across the nation.

It is high time to engage the enemy with weaponry with which they are not only familiar, but weaponry which can penetrate their defenses and do damage. ‘Know thy Enemy’, learn from his successes.

Ahmad Saadaldin on Panel 3 (Overcoming obstacles: SJP – Student for Justice in Palestine successes) stood out as an especially inspiring representative of … a younger generation of activists.

The US administration and the US Congress have succumbed to the demands of the Zionists and the Zionist regime. American politicians and media have fallen captive to the Zionist network. This is a lethal ailment that afflicts the US.

Regrettably little is being done to cure this fatal disease.

The few prophetic voices we have, like Gideon Levy, will continue to remind us of the false prophets who have led us into the darkness.

As part of his mission, Levy came to Washington last week to speak at the National Press Club.

Levy came to Washington with the simple message that change in the situation between Israel and it neighbors will have to come from the U.S. He feels that Israel is a “lost case”. Change will not come from an Israeli society which “has surrounded itself with shields, with walls, not just physical walls but also mental walls.”

He sees three principles which allow “Israelis to live easily with the brutal tyranny that is the occupation”.

Palestinian children as young as 11 are being employed under dangerous conditions in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank in breach of international law, a human rights group said on Monday. Hundreds of child labourers are working in farms and agricultural businesses in the strategically sensitive Jordan Valley for just £13 a day, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch, which documented cases of young people suffering work-related ill health and injuries.

American politicians and media have fallen captive to the Zionist network. This is a lethal ailment that afflicts the US.

C-Span refused to cover the conference? Speak of “Silencing voices of TRUTH” or any exposure of even the most legitimate and reasonable discourse about Israel — Apparently, “The invisible dictatorship (to borrow a phrase) J.I.D., which controls America certainly saw to it!”

Whether it is not already too late to do much about it, we shall see.

Let us get it out on as many Websites as possible, Twitter and Facebook it, as well. We should not underestimate the power of the internet.

Distribution! Distribution! Distribution!

Bill Kristol and John McCain have replaced Robert Novak and Pat Buchanan in Republican foreign policy influence.

When the unexpectedly detailed P5+1 framework agreement with Iran was announced last Thursday, Illinois Republican Mark Kirk made a bizarre comment. “We all know” said the senator, that this is going to end with “a mushroom cloud somewhere near Tehran”—a result of Israel having to go to war to “clean up the mess” made by American and European negotiators. A few days earlier John McCain had expressed the wish that Israel “go rogue” and attack Iran in order to upend the Iran negotiations.

GC: Why is this world so sad? Do you have a religious answer? A faith-based answer?

CO: Life is suffering, and the ancient story of John the Baptist and Herod belongs to modern history…. Our “Herod” (POTUS) stands militarily above all other nations, and only Russia seems to stop the U.S. from cutting off (bombing) any head(s) our Controllers desire.

They intimidate the Vatican, and instead of “putting on the armor of God,” (St. Paul), the Roman Catholic Church often acquiesces, and by the “sin of omission,” helps hasten the making of a Rich Man & Lazarus world, an inevitable War of Civilizations.

At any rate, how will that “Ole Time Religion” square with this basically unimaginable world towards which we are racing?

The Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights, in a new report documenting Israeli harassment at Erez border crossing, has stated that an increasing number of Palestinian businessmen are being detained while attempting to cross into Israel, via the Erez checkpoint, for routine trips.

Settlers from Leshem settlement to the west of Salfit took over an archeological site located on the lands of two Palestinian towns in the governorate.

The United Nations human rights office has voiced concerns over Israel’s so-called administrative detention, calling on Tel Aviv to end the unlawful practice of detaining Palestinians without charge or trial.

“The Zionist paradigm is founded on the distorted story of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt and their persecution by the Assyrians and Captivity by Babylonians. But the truth is that the Israelites never set foot in Egypt or Palestine. Actually they never left Ancient Arabia and North Yemen, their origin land, before the Babylonian Captivity” . . .

. . . The question here; why a purportedly Islamist organization want to destroy ancient Assyrian and Babylonia artifacts. Islamic laws don’t ban sculpture per se (most Islamic countries have museums packed with statues) but only prohibits worshiping idols as used to be during pagan cultures. Everybody knew that neither Assyrian nor Babylonian ancient idols/statues were honored or worshipped by modern day Iraqis or Syrians. Still that did not deter ISIL from destroying the ancient statues, cuneiform tablets and artifacts.

A German court has shut down a long-standing anti-Israel exhibition in the western city of Cologne, accusing its organizer of anti-Semitism and glorification of violence.

(*BEX!)

What’s left of Yarmouk Palestinian neighborhood in Damascus will soon duplicate the mounds of rubble and smell of death in Homs, the old city of Aleppo, Idlib, East Damascus, Deraa. Some Lebanese refugee camp residents and political analysts predict a similar fate for Ein el Helweh.