OK, the headline got your attention - but there is also much behind it. Before you read on, though, I want to make clear the purpose of this post. It is NOT a hatchet job on Sarah Palin. In truth, I like her - she is a breath of fresh air in this long and haggard campaign.

But there are serious questions she does need to answer - and they are not the questions about her children, or Troopergate, or whether it is better experience to have been mayor of a small town or a community organizer.

This post IS a bone to the bloggers and media on the left to actually ask her some very serious questions about the connections between her faith and her views on policy - just as Barack Obama was asked so many times about Jeremiah Wright.

Sarah Palin was baptized a Roman Catholic, and then became an evangelical Protestant at a young age. The church she now attends, Wasilla Bible Church is part of a wide ranging evangelical movement known in theological circles as dispensationalism.

Dispensationalism is a popular but controversial system of interpreting the Bible, characterized by its belief that periods of history are divided in to various dispensations or ages, i.e. creation (Adam), pre-diluvean (Noah), the patriarchs (Abraham), the Mosaic law, the Davidic kingdom of Israel, the church age (Christ), and finally the new creation. Each dispensation in time begins with God's grace being manifest on man and ends with man falling from grace and in need of God's redemption.

So for example, under the Law, God's grace was given to the Israelites as they were freed from slavery in Egypt and ended with Saul's defeat in battle after disobeying God's command to him. Under the Dispensationalist system, the Church Age began with Christ's resurrection and will end with the Great Tribulation.

This belief has spawned a generation of books, movies and prophecies of the imminent Second Coming of Christ in the wake of the creation of the modern nation of Israel in 1948. Going back in even further, however, at least to the time of Woodrow Wilson, politicians have seized upon the fervor surrounding the expectation of Christ's return, to create their own cheering sections for military intervention in the Middle East.

Thus, George W. Bush has found a united base of support, even in his darkest days, among this large segment of evangelical Christians who believe that this war is the sign that assures us that Christ's return is imminent.

As a Christian myself, this thinking disturbs me on many levels. First, this is just bad theology. Jesus Christ rejected the opportunity to be annointed a military leader to conquer the powers of this world, and chose to conquer in other ways.

Christians made their greatest impressions on the Roman Empire as they buried the dead from battle, rather than taking up arms to fight themseleves. They often had their own lives taken by force, and were known to sing on their way to their execution. Within 300 years of Christ's death, the mighty empire of Rome succumbed to the multi-generational commitment of Christians to spreading their faith - without using the sword.

Second, it means that a large segment of the war's supporters, who are but a small minority of all Americans, favor the war for reasons that have nothing to do with stated policy. Without them, The government could not prosecute this war, yet it has never suggested any specific, religious reason for having troops in Iraq.

Third, these views exist under the radar of public opinion. How can the public make an informed decision about supporting or opposing the war effort if it doesn't know why it's most zealous and largest group of supporters want it continue? The Dispensationalists are covert and deceptive. Yet if their views were as prophetic as they imagine, they should be proclaiming them from the top of every mountain and on every media outlet they can find - but such is not the case.

So it is more than fair to ask Sarah Palin what underlies her view that the Iraq War is a task God has given us - it is imperative. If she says it is consistent with the dispensationalist view, that should be carefully examined, because it gives rise to a worldview that is likely to keep us at war in the Middle East perpetually, with no end to come.

If she says otherwise, then other reasons she gives should be carefully examined to be sure they are credible. Frankly, unless she says she wants John McCain to bring her son home safely - and soon - it is highly problematic.

Even without specific views that would perpetuate war in the Middle East, the military intervention in Iraq has been too costly, too long and just plain too much. Our focus should be on what happens within our own boundaries. If religious fervor to conquer other people in other places is added to a foreign policy that overreaches as it is, we are in for trouble.

We have spent too much money, lost too many lives, hindered our international alliances, and gained very little from this fight. Protecting our own homeland is one thing - destroying our enemies' is quite another.

Ask Sarah Palin the hard questions about this war.

In 2004 George Khoury (right), an Israeli Arab student, was shot while running in the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem by a gunman from the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade who mistook him for a Jew. Khoury's family decided to make the donation in an effort to help create greater cultural understanding between Arabs and Jews. The translation is expected to be distributed in the Israeli Arab sector and eventually in other Arab countries.

Khoury came from a prominent Jerusalem family known for their efforts at promoting Jewish-Arab coexistence.  Khoury's father, Elias, is a famous East Jerusalem lawyer who has represented Palestinian political figures and Israeli Arabs in court. George, the middle son in the Khoury family, had participated in interfaith dialogues in Germany and England. He had been studying economics and international relations at the Hebrew University and planned to follow in his father's footsteps and become a lawyer before he was killed.

The translator of "Tale," an Israeli Arab scholar named Jamal Gnaim, said he loved the book and spoke of his "sacred" efforts to stay true to Oz's vision:

(The book represents) Oz from the point of view of his language and associations, and Hebrew literature and Zionist thought, and it's important that others get to know this milieu.

A recent Ha'aretz article has the full story...

Racism against Israel’s Arab citizens has dramatically increased in the past year, including a 26 percent rise in anti-Arab incidents, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel’s annual report.

Author Sami Michael, the association’s president, said upon the release of the report that racism was so rife it was damaging civil liberty in Israel.

“Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy,” Michael said. The publication coincides with Human Rights Week, which begins Sunday.

“We are a society under supervision under a democratic regime whose institutions are being undermined and which confers a different status to residents in the center of the country and in the periphery,” Michael said.

The number of Jews expressing feelings of hatred toward Arabs has doubled, the report stated.

According to the June 2007 Democracy Index of the Israel Democracy Institute, for example, only half the public believes that Jews and Arabs must have full equal rights.

Among Jewish respondents, 55 percent support the idea that the state should encourage Arab emigration from Israel and 78 percent oppose the inclusion of Arab political parties in the government. According to a Haifa University study, 74 percent of Jewish youths in Israel think that Arabs are “unclean.”

The ACRI says that bills introduced in the Knesset contribute to delegitimize the country’s Arab citizens, such as ones that would link the right to vote and receive state allowances to military or national service.

They also include bills that require ministers and MKs to swear allegiance to a Jewish state and those that set aside 13 percent of all state lands owned by the Jewish National Fund for Jews only.

“Arab citizens are frequently subject to ridicule at the airports,” the report states.

It says that Arab citizens “are subject to ‘racial profiling’ that classifies them as a security threat. The government also threatens the freedom of expression of Arab journalists by brandishing the whip of economic boycott and ending the publication of government announcements in newspapers that criticize its policy.”

Hadash Chairman MK Mohammad Barakeh said that the report “did not take us by surprise and neither should anyone be surprised by it. Its results are the natural consequence of a racist campaign led by political and military leaders, as well as the result of the anti-Arab racist policies implemented by consecutive governments.”

Israeli Democracy: Arabs Need Not Apply

Ellen Davidson

December 9, 2007

NAZARETH— Israel is frequently cited as “the only democracy in the Middle East.” The 1.2 million Palestinians living inside Israel’s borders, would beg to differ.

Beginning with the founding of Israel as a Jewish state in 1948, Palestinians have been treated as second-class citizens and enemies from within. Each of the “Basic Laws,” the foundation of the Israeli legal system, begins with a statement that Israel is a Jewish state. For example, the purpose of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom is “to establish the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

From 1948 until 1966, Palestinians inside Israel were subject to military law, while Jews lived under civilian law. During that time, 66 percent of Arab-owned land was confiscated. In 1947, Jews owned 6.7 percent while Palestinians held the rest. Today, Israeli Palestinians, 20 percent of the population, own 2.5 percent of the land.

Discrimination inside Israel falls broadly into four categories, according to Mohammad Zeidan, general director of the Nazareth- based Arab Association for Human Rights (AHR): laws that give different privileges and rights to Jews and non-Jews; indirect discrimination not specifically linked to religion; institutional discrimination, such as allocation of municipal funds; and racism in public life, including cultural discrimination.

The legal discrimination can be seen explicitly in laws that offer automatic Israeli citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world, while non-Jews who are married to Israeli citizens face a difficult process for acquiring citizenship.

In order to be elected to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, political parties must formally recognize Israel as a Jewish state, so even advocating complete equality for Palestinians inside Israel would disqualify a party from running candidates.

Legal discrimination also plays a role in land allocation. Nearly 20 percent of Israeli land is controlled by the Jewish National Fund, which is legally mandated to use the land only to benefit Jews. Much of this land was confiscated from its Palestinian owners by the military or taken away under the “absentee” laws of 1950, which declared that landowners who were not occupying their land in the years 1948 to 1952 forfeited their rights to it. Having been made refugees during the war of 1948, many Palestinians were robbed of their lands by these laws. In addition, many Palestinian villages had been declared “military zones” by the Israeli army. The owners frequently were living a few miles away, waiting for the military to allow them access to their land, only to have the title stripped from them.

Indirect discrimination is equally insidious: Many social services such as student and housing loans are predicated on having a military service number. Since Palestinians are exempt from military service, few Israeli Arabs have this number. Orthodox Jews are also exempt from military service, but they can go to the military service office and get assigned a number, giving them the same access to the privileges associated with military service. Many help-wanted ads specify that the position is open to candidates “after military service,” another way of saying, “Arabs need not apply.”

Institutional discrimination crops up in community development plans, where Palestinian neighborhoods are held to existing land allocations, while Jewish neighborhoods grow unchecked. In the Arab city of Nazareth, for example, the population of 13,000 Palestinians in 1947 lived on 3,000 acres. In 2007, with a population of 70,000, the city occupies only 3,100 acres, with strict limitations on any expansion.

On the hilltops surrounding it, the mainly Jewish city of Nazareth Illit (built on confiscated Palestinian land) with a population of 50,000, sprawls across 11,250 acres. When the original Palestinian owners of the land went to court to protest the confiscation of their property for “public” purposes, arguing that they were also the public, the court ruled that absorption of immigration was the main “public purpose” of the time.

In 1965, the Israeli parliament adopted the Planning and Construction Law governing development in the country. Dozens of villages were declared “unrecognized” and the land classified as non-residential agricultural land. Some 100,000 Israeli Palestinians live in these villages, which Zeidan says are more aptly called “dis-recognized,” They receive no government services such as electricity, water and sewage, although they pay the same taxes as other citizens, and all structures are considered illegal and subject to demolition.

Municipal funding is also plagued by inequity. In Jerusalem, for example, the population of approximately 700,000 includes 270,000 Palestinians. Social services in mainly Palestinian East Jerusalem receive 12 percent of the city budget. Education in East Jerusalem gets 15 percent of the budget. Per capita income in East Jerusalem is 1,311 shekels per month (or $341), versus 5,968 (or $1,520) in West Jerusalem.

Israel maintains two educational systems, one in Hebrew for Jews and one in Arabic for Palestinians. According to Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community-Based Organizations, 75 percent of Jewish schools have career and vocational guidance services, while only one-quarter of Arab schools do. Government-funded preschools do not operate in Arab towns.

Cultural discrimination flows from the other three forms of discrimination, says the AHR’s Zeidan. Israeli culture is steeped in racism, he says. More than half the population believes that political rights such as voting should be withdrawn from Palestinians living inside Israel. The Ysrael B’tenah Party, which with 12 seats is the fourth largest party in the Knesset, openly speaks of “transfer” of the Palestinian population. “The space that we can act inside Israel is getting smaller and smaller,” says Zeidan.

While Israel is legally a bilingual state — Hebrew and Arabic — you are more likely to encounter signage in Russian or English than in Arabic. ATMs, for instance, are mostly in Hebrew, English and sometimes Russian. Many government offices refuse to conduct business in Arabic.

“Israel is a democratic state for Jews and Jews only,” says Fida Ibrahim Abu Ata, public relations director of Ittijah. “And that is how it should be stated, as plain and vivid as this.”

Ellen Davidson is a longtime Jewish- American peace activist from New York who traveled to Palestine on a delegation with the Middle East Children’s Alliance, mecaforpeace.org.

Source: http://attendingtheworld.wordpress.com/2007/12/09/new-heights-of-racism/

As he is facing the multiple corruption investigations, Mr Olmert already announced that he will resign later this month.

He has consistently denied all the accusations against him.

On September 17, a leadership vote is to be held by the ruling Kadima party.

The accusations precede 2006, when Mr Olmert became prime minister, and concern his time as mayor of Jerusalem and minister of trade and industry.

The police recommendation to indict the prime minister is meaningless, said Mr Olmert's lawyers.

"The only person authorised by the law to decide whether to indict a prime minister is the attorney general. He has the authority and he bears the responsibility over the issue", his lawyers said in a statement.

Mr Mazuz is expected to make his decision in the next few weeks.

Let’s step back to April/May 2007, Estonia and Russia found themselves amongst a dispute.  Estonia, a small country bordered by the Baltic Sea, removed a Soviet war monument from the center of the capital, Tallinn, to a military cemetery.This did not go over well, Russia decided to hit Estonian websites with BotNets performing DOS attacks, flood websites, and even deface the websites of a political party. Russia has never claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they were traced there and one person was charged for the crime.

So, Russia has shown that it has without a doubt, the capability to attack a nation over the net.What is the US doing to counter this? As we all know, the government really doesn’t tell us much about their more important projects, we have to wait for a “leak” or a stolen laptop to disseminate that information.What we do know is that the air force is constructing its own large BotNet, the 2008 Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community addressed a cyber threat for the first time, and the US Gov’t has participated in a few Red Cell/Blue Cell activities viewed as “practice” for a real attack.

Now that we know the past, I would like to make some predictions about the future. Have you been following what’s going on between Iran and the world, a dispute that started between Israel and Iran, then brought in the US, and now has spread worldwide over Iran’s nuclear program. If you’re reading this, I know you are following Russia vs. Georgia, but did you know that the US and Russia are beginning to spat over the dispute. Russia and Iran, however have been strangely friendly in some ways. This should raise some eyebrows. Is the US at risk of a cyber-attack from Russia? Yes. Will the two major worldwide disputes escalate and involve the US in possible more fighting or even a war? That is still up in the air. Right now, the world seems to be dealing with Iran with peaceful diplomacy, good move UN, and we have yet to see what will fully happen to Russia after they walked over Georgia. The current “peace” is refreshing, but how long will it last? I believe that a cyber-war would precede a major physical attack somewhere. All I can say is keep an eye out for major site shut-downs via DDOS attacks, or a few minor site defacements because it might be a precursor of more dangerous scenarios to come.

- Anti-Semitic incidents (violence, vandalism, etc.) increased roughly five-fold between 1984 and 2004 (7).

- According to the report, "...criticism of Zionism is not in itself antisemitic. However, in some quarters an antisemitic discourse has developed that is in effect antisemitic because it views Zionism itself as a global force of unlimited power and malevolence throughout history. This definition of Zionism bears no relation to the understanding that most Jews have of the concept; that is, a movement of Jewish national liberation, born in the late nineteenth century, with a geographical focus limited to Israel.... The EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism, quoted in full on page 6, identifies some of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel: Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, for example by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour... Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation... Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (for example claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis... Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis... Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel. The EUMC Definition goes on to state that criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic" (17-18).

- Extremist groups commonly use "Zionist" as a codeword for "Jew," and many others repeat this rhetoric, often unaware of what they're actually saying (18). (Note that when the discussion doesn't center on Israel, other common code words include "New York liberal," "Hollywood liberal," and "New Yorker.")

- Comparisons of Israel to the Nazis are used to suggest that "the world and the Jews are now 'even'" and "cancel out the world's empathy for Jewish suffering" (19). In other words, the comparisons attempt to paint Jews as villains who deserve what we got. (I still maintain that many Nazi comparisons are just lazy - after all, people get called Nazis all the time - but there's a steady stream of Israeli=Nazi propaganda coming from extremist groups.)

- The idea that Jews are secretly controlling the world still has numerous incarnations, from theories that AIPAC caused the Iraq war to the idea that Jews planned 9/11 (20) to the rumors that Tony Blair has been influenced by a "Jewish cabal" (see the Haaretz article).

- Jews are frequently suspected of dual loyalty, and are tolerated only as long as we conform completely to the culture around us (whether that culture is white, progressive, conservative, middle-class, etc.) (20). Jews are often told (usually implicitly, I've found) that we can't have any positive or complicated feelings toward Israel if we want to be allies (35); if we don't hate Israel 100%, then we're obviously racist right-wingers parading as progressives.

- Although far-right extremist groups still engage in anti-Semitic behavior and rhetoric, there's evidence that anti-Semitism is now more common in the left wing. Legitimate criticism of Israel often crosses the line into anti-Semitism (32); however, because Leftists see themselves as immune from prejudice, it's hard to convince people that they've said or done something anti-Semitic (33). (I myself hear nonstop complaints about the vast armies of Jews who use frivolous charges of anti-Semitism to shut down discussion. But, seeing as they never seem to make an appearance, I suspect that they're a much tinier minority than people think. Yes, there are often arguments and even fights over whether something is anti-Semitic or not. But the same is true of any forum for discussing racism and discrimination.)

- Anti-Semitic incidents have been increasing on college campuses: "...a brick was thrown through the window of a Jewish student residence and a poster bearing the words “Slaughter the Jews” was pasted on its front door. A knife was stuck in the door of another Jewish student’s residence. A series of similar motions were proposed across the country, six of which were passed, comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and calling for a boycott of Israeli goods" (40). (Note: I don't consider comparisons to apartheid inherently anti-Semitic. But a boycott of Israeli goods and professors, along with a severing of ties with Israeli institutions, is a prime example of the double standard described above, and holds everyone with ties to Israel collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.)

There's a lot more information in the report, along with a ton of examples of various anti-Semitic incidents and rhetoric. It's long, but worth the read.

(Cross-posted at Alas, A Blog)

In a distinct break with most of Israel's leadership, Israeli President Shimon Peres is publicly speaking out against a possible attack on Iran's nuclear program.

In an interview with The Sunday Times of London, Peres said attacking Iran was unwise and unnecessary.

"The military way will not solve the problem," Peres said. "Such an attack can trigger a bigger war."

Iran's nuclear program remains one of Israel's biggest concerns.

And the possibility that Israel might attack Iran remains one of the world's biggest concerns.

Israel's notoriously divided political elite have been remarkably united on the question of Iran. There are few in the Israeli political leadership who have publicly spoken out against a possible strike.

Israel has used the threat of a military strike to try and pressure the international community into taking tougher steps to force Iran to give up on its nuclear ambitions.

In recent months, Israel has deliberately toned down its tough talk because the political leadership does not want the issue to be seen as Israel v. Iran, but rather as Iran v. The World.

Above: An American made F-16

Peres made that point in his latest interview.

The fact that Peres is speaking out doesn't represent a significant rift in the Israeli leadership: Peres is, after all, one of the most dovish leaders in Israel.

But the fact that Peres feels comfortable speaking out does indicate that there are at least some within the Israeli political establishment who don't see the military strike as the best, or only, option in dealing with Iran.

(AP photo/Oded Balilty)

Ellos prohiben a los judíos a ntrar en sus barrios y les obligan a mantenerse en sus propios barrios y comunidades. Secuestran a jóvenes judíos en París  y reclaman dinero de rescate.

Y ahora han comenzado en Francia, a fabricar camisetas con frases de la época del nazimo y las llevan sin pudor por las calles.

Estza camiseta es na reproducción de un cartel de la época del nazismo, que escrito en aleman y polaco prohívbe a los judíos a entrar en aparcamientos. El catel había sido utilizado en 1940, en la ciudad polaca de   Lodz .

_ En Australia

El muy integrado jefe de la asociación Australian Arabic Council (AAC) -, Jabbour, en una entrevista porTV, llamó a los judíos, "monos" y "Cerdos" luego repitió lo misnmo y con mucho orgullo al ser entrevistado por el periodico "The Age"  en la edición del 21. 08. 2008, en Australia no pueden de su asombro ya que hasta ahora parecía ser un muslman moderado.

fuente aquí

De aquí

http://iamthewitness.com/audio/John.Kaminski/CII.2008.08.12.Tue.1of2.Kaminski.mp3

http://iamthewitness.com/audio/John.Kaminski/CII.2008.08.12.Tue.2of2.Kaminski.mp3

http://www.johnkaminski.info/

More here

Cross-posted @ Filasteen

Though a bribery investigation in India delayed the deal for two years, the Israeli armaments authority finally clinched it at the beginning of the month.

Deliveries of the Spyder will now start in 2011.

The Spyder system employs advanced Python 5 and Derby missiles to take out manned aircraft, cruise missiles, UAVs and precision-guided munitions.

These missiles can skim the earth at an altitude of just 20 meters or climb as high as nine kilometers.  Their maximum intercept range is 15 kilometers.

The Spyder is just one of several Israeli weapons sold to India.  There is also the Barak anti-ship missile, Heron UAV, Phalcon AWACS aircraft and assorted munitions.

Indeed, since establishing diplomatic ties with Israel in 1991, Indian has become the Jewish State's largest arms export market.

More here

Cross-posted @ The Cylinder

Dr. Richard L. Cravatts, a lecturer at Boston University, Simmons College, Babson College, and Emmanuel College, is Director of Boston University's Program for Book and Magazine Publishing at BU's Center for Professional Education. He writes frequently on law, social policy, religion, marketing, politics, and housing development.

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Richard L. Cravatts Ph.D.
August 10, 2008
As part of evaluating the competitive landscape of the popularity of nations, in a process referred to in marketing circles as ´place branding,´ Israel, to no one´s great surprise, comes up short in brand likeability, ranking last out of 35 nations included in an August 2006 survey conducted by nation branding expert Simon Anholt, even less attractive to respondents than Indonesia, Estonia, and Turkey.

How could this have happened to a country that is the Middle East´s only thriving democracy and enjoys a remarkably robust economy that has spawned some 1000 startup high tech companies, for example, second only to the U.S.? How, in short, would you go about making the world hate Israel?

This is how you would accomplish that objective if you were an enemy of Israel:

Even after 60 years of its existence, you question the fundamental right of Israel to even exist and regularly, though falsely, condemn it for being created "illegally"—through the "theft" of Palestinian lands and property—and thus decide, because of its original sin, it has no "right to exist." You accuse the government of a "brutal," illegal "occupation" of Palestinian lands, especially Gaza and the West Bank (but for many, all of Israel), of being a "colonial settler state," a Zionist "regime" or "project," a land-hungry nation, a usurper of property that was lived on and owned by a Palestinian "people" "from time immemorial."

You describe the very existence of the country as being the "greatest threat to world peace," the core cause of all Muslim anger toward the West, the root of all of the Palestinians´ suffering and economic plight, and describe Israel as a nation that has even been referred to publicly as a "shitty little country" by the French ambassador to Britain.

You make ´Palestinianism´ into a virtual cult whose members offer a world-wide reverence for the Palestinian cause and repeat without end that their nationalistic striving is inviolable, a basic human right, Of all the 100 million refugees who were dispersed around the globe and were re-assimilated since World War II, you chose only the Palestinians to languish, as if in amber, in barbaric refugee camps where their lives are used as political fodder to denounce the existence of an Israel that supposedly has deprived them of a home.

You have the United Nations set up an agency whose sole function it is to make sure that this one group of refugees in the whole world are coddled, advocated for, and repeat, mantra-like, that a human "right of return" has been sanctified and assured by international law for the Palestinians, giving only this group of refugees a collective, as opposed to individual, right of return—and not only to those refugees who supposedly lived in and left what is now Israel, but all of their descendents, as well.

You use the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council of the United Nations to further demonize and delegitimate Israel, making it a pariah in the world community and issuing an edict that equates Zionism with racism. In 2006-07, if you are the Human Rights Council, you pass one hundred percent of your condemnatory resolutions against Israel.

If you are the autocratic, despotic states of the Arab world, you initiate a prolonged, unceasing propaganda war against Israel and Zionism, in which it is your intention to encourage your citizens, not to question why they live under tyranny and despair under their own corrupt, defective governments, but that their circumstances are bleak because of the success and very existence of Israel. You depict Jews as apes, pigs, and subhuman monsters, and regularly produce Nazi-like propaganda and cartoons in your state-owned media that accuses Jews and Israelis of blood libels, bloodthirstiness, militarism, a desire for world domination, imperialism, and complicity with the U.S. and the West to destroy Islam—all which make Jew-hatred inevitable.

You inculcate Palestinian children, nearly from birth, with seething, blind, unrelenting, and obsessive hatred of Jews and the 'Zionist regime,' so that kindergartners graduate with blood-soaked hands while toting plastic AK 47s and dedicate their lives to jihad, and older children are recruited to hide explosives on their bodies to transform themselves into shahids -- a new generation of kindling for radical Islam's cult of death.

When Israel launches a military strike against nests of terrorists or in response to ceaseless rocket barrages, you term their response "disproportionate," another escalation in the "cycle of violence," a violation of human rights, aggressive, militaristic, with Apache gunships "pounding" terrorist neighborhoods. Whenever you refer to any attack on Israel by terrorists, or the barrage of thousands of rockets that have rained down on Israel towns for two years from inside Gaza, you characterize them as innocuous, carried out with "crude, homemade, rockets," in order to gloss over their actual lethality.

If you are the Palestinian media, and members of the world media who are either intentionally biased or willing to be duped by anti-Israel propaganda, you repeatedly report on supposed Israeli human rights violations, such as an alleged "massacre of the 21st century," a horrible war crime and example of "genocide" committed by Israel against Palestinians in the village of Jenin.

You talk about the Israeli security barrier as an "apartheid wall," and describe it as a massive, soaring, unbroken division through Palestinian neighborhoods and communities, overlooking the fact that the wall is towering and solid concrete only in those regions that have been repeatedly assaulted by terrorism, and that 90 percent of the hundreds of miles of barrier is comprised merely of wire fence.

You use the "apartheid wall" image to create a broader misconception about the Palestinians living under a South African-style apartheid regime, disingenuously equating race restrictions that blacks lived under in Soweto with the open society of Israel in which Israeli Arabs have more rights than in any Arab state and are asked only not to murder Jews in their midst.

On campuses where a coddled and insulated professoriate often express antipathy for the perceived ills of capitalism, the usurpation of "Palestine" by Israel, "land grabs" through occupation, and the denial of the civil and economic rights of the Palestinians, you contend that Israel´s very existence is not at all about self-determination (something you deem appropriate only for the Palestinians) and all about greed, globalism, colonialism, exploitation, and undeserved political and economic might. No longer able to fight apartheid in South Africa, you now try to transmogrify that racist social system onto Israel, holding rallies and encouraging the signing of petitions which call from divestiture from companies doing business in Israel.

You fund Middle Eastern Studies centers on university campuses and use them as anti-Israel, anti-American "think tanks" where scholarship is tainted with ideology and singularly focused on the Palestinian cause. You fund the active and vocal Muslim Students Association on campuses across the country that hold "Israel Apartheid Week" and "Holocaust in the Holy Land" festivals at which propaganda, Jew-hatred, apologies for terrorism, and further demonizing of Israel takes place.

In the Arab world, you play fast and loose with history in your attempt to create a historical narrative conforming to your own political agenda, erasing any link between Palestine and the Jews. Though Jerusalem is mentioned not once in the Koran and over 669 times in the Jewish Bible, you claim that Jerusalem is now the "third holiest site to Muslims," that, as Yasser Arafat announced at Camp David in 2000, the Temple Mount was never a Jewish site, that Jews now "occupy" Muslim lands, and that the archeological and historical evidence that confirms an uninterrupted 3000-year presence by Jews in the Holy Land is merely a "construct," yet another lie promulgated by Israeli historians and archeologists as way of erasing and obscuring an Islamic past.

If you are in the Muslim world or the netherworld of Jew-haters, you question the actual extent and truthfulness of the Holocaust, first complaining that the Palestinians should not have been made to suffer the loss of their homeland because of the German´s extermination of European Jewry—leading in some part to the creation of Israel—and then at other times questioning whether the Holocaust even occurred and accusing Zionists of using the fictitious event as a way to falsely extract sympathy from the world community and force them into giving Palestine away to the Jews.

If you are in the traditionally Arabist U.S. State Department, or in the "realist" school of diplomacy, or part of the European Union, and you have an insatiable need for oil, you overlook the tyrannies and unfaithfulness of our Middle Eastern "friends," and ask nothing of them, but demand that Israel, the only democracy in a sea of despotism, continually prove its loyalty to us and embrace policies that could potentially threaten their own security. You write academic books questioning the strength of the "Israel Lobby," and wonder out loud if Jewish influence and wealth forces us to lose credibility and threaten our national security on behalf of Israel.

You do all of these things, as part of a concerted effort and also as random, independent efforts on the part of Israel´s enemies, and you do it for the 60 years of Israel´s existence, and then you are shocked, shocked, when Israel is shown to rank unfavorably in surveys which measure the public´s perception of nations and how they compare to one another in the world community. But you are pleased, because you know that if Israel cannot be annihilated with armaments and rockets, perhaps you can make it cease to exist simply by making the entire world loathe it for being what it is.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/70990

Tags: Apartheid, Islamic Apartheid, Israel, Jews, Muslims, racism, Propaganda, Pallywood, UN, Arabism, Anti Israel bigotry

By Angie Riedel

It is time to get past the 'death and violence is the answer' mentality. We can not afford to let it continue.The US government now confronts every minor inconvenience with brutality and force. With lies. With tricks. With deceit. With unrivaled hypocrisy. It speaks a scripted and rehearsed dialog of illogic and insults. It changes the meanings of words and uses those words as weapons to crush, to silence and oppress, to steal what it wants. This government no longer shows respect for anyone but itself and feels no compulsion to listen or cooperate, to show respect for others, or to care at all about right and wrong, truth or lies, justice or injustice.

It seems that this government can't take a single step without stepping on others, without breaking the very laws it exists to uphold, without negating every principle we stand for.

At what point will this criminality cease?

It is no surprise that we are seeing our own citizens being brutalized and arrested for imaginary political crimes before any crimes are committed; and when there is no possibility that they will be committed. For this government there is no longer any concept of innocence until guilt is proven in a court of law. A court of law un-tampered with, a court uncontrolled by compromised loyalists, a court left free to honor its commitment to see justice done. There is no longer any concept of requiring proof of any crime at all.

For this government there is no need for any crime to actually be committed before it engages in illegal, unjustifiable surveillance, the planting of its spies in the affairs of private citizens, the laying of blatantly unsupported charges, all with the obvious aim of depriving innocent people of their freedom and their rights with unlawful, disingenuous arrests.

Every power this government begged us for, insisting with feigned hysterics that such unprecedented powers over others were necessary to protect the public has been fully and thoroughly misused and abused, used against the very people it claimed the desire to protect. There is no respect for the rule of law instead of the rule of men. There is only the obvious problem this government has with the millions of its own citizens that disagree with its vision of death to all who would stop them from their brutal, murderous desire to take control of the world.

This cannot go on. Not just because of the travesty of justice. Not just because of the suffering and destruction of hope, health, happiness, prosperity and safety these unjustifiable policies spawn. Not just because of the denial of rights and peace and freedom. But because of the risk of irreversible damage to our very humanity, to our ability to recognize justice, to our desire for and understanding of what the very idea of freedom means. Most of all because of a risk that is too horrible to gamble with, our ability to value life itself.

Because this government has no respect for compassion or justice we have lost the ability to value compassion and justice or understand their necessity. We have lost our comprehension of the need to treat others as we ourselves would demand to be treated. We are even losing the ability to see ourselves, each other, and others as worthy of common decency and deserving of basic God given rights, including the right to life itself.

We have crossed a line that can never be crossed with any justification, a line that leaves it up to a small group of selfish small-minded men to decide who among us deserves justice and who does not. Is it any surprise that those men have decided that no one deserves justice except themselves?

We must ask this government, what are you so afraid of? Because taking with you, everywhere you go, the largest assortment and biggest, most powerful most deadly weapons and contingents of armed men does not mean that you are powerful, it means that you are afraid. It means that everywhere you go, you go in fear. You are too afraid to go about in this world as we all do, with open hands and goodwill, and show up unarmed and with nothing to hide. It seems you have everything to hide.

Why then should we trust you? Why should anyone trust you when you demand the right to lie and keep secrets and use unjust, overwhelming force to get your way?

What gives you the right to impose your personal will on this world? What gives you the right to impose anything on anyone in this country? Who are you exactly that you imagine yourselves to be above the law not just of this land but the laws of common human decency and common sense? What do you tell yourselves entitles you to behave so badly? Because whatever you are telling yourselves is also a lie. There is no such entitlement. The use of violence to force your will and your ways on our people, on people everywhere, is invalid and it is wrong.

This government understands and perceives full well that its notions of total domination and total control both here at home and abroad are unwelcome. It knows full well that domination is not acceptable or warranted. We do not need to be controlled nor does this world need to be controlled, at least not by this government. It is this government that needs to be controlled as it apparently lacks any interest and has no intention of exercising the slightest control over itself.

There is an evil game being played that we must no longer tolerate. A verbal game of trading places with right and wrong, innocence and guilt, honesty and deceit. Authority wraps itself in the flag, it wraps itself in a cover of holy righteousness, it wraps itself in a wrapper that has words like nobility, bravery, honor and democracy on it, and in its thinly veiled deceit it wreaks havoc, death and destruction all the while proclaiming itself to be our savior, our highest good, our necessary evil. It is none of those things.

The game being played in Georgia is the same game being played in Minneapolis. The self-defined good guys show up and take sides without asking any questions whatsoever. Who is right and who is wrong, who is guilty and who is innocent is already determined. No effort is made to discern the truth. No interest exists in hearing all sides. No respect is shown for the marginalized, for the brutalized, for the wronged. It proclaims, we are the good ones and they are the bad ones, and then it moves in with overwhelming force. Abroad it uses military force, at home it uses militarized police. The people are automatically bad, and they are automatically good, and even questioning this bizarre system is a crime. But it is not a crime, it is a necessity. It is our duty.

Instead of the seething and rage, hatred, insults and threats that now come in endless rivers from this government against its perceived enemies, why can't it act like it should? Why can't it take the time to engage in honest discussion? To get the facts? To consider all sides? Why can't it extend invitations to come and talk, to find common ground, to construct bridges to friendship and cooperation? Why can't it value all of the most obvious ways to establish trust, peace and mutual prosperity? Why can't it host an open and public dialog so that all may listen in and those involved and concerned may be allowed to participate and speak for themselves, explaining things from their own perspectives, giving their own reasons, telling us themselves who they are and what they see? Only such an impartial, honorable and open, fair style of discourse can achieve justice and understanding? How else can justice be served?

Why do we never hear the other sides stories? How can this government be threatened by allowing the other side to speak for itself? If truly those other sides, Iran, Russia, our own peaceful demonstrators, are dangerous and evil, that would all be self-evident. But their prevention of any such truth coming out, their adamant demands and insistence that force must be used, and used immediately and overwhelmingly is beyond questionable. It is deeply disturbing. It does not engender trust. It engenders distrust and for good reason. No genuine attempts are made to do the right thing or to go about things the right way, the decent way, the honorable way, the fair way. And why? Because all of those things stand directly in the way of this government getting its way.

When all that is right and decent and honorable and just is an enemy to government, then what they desire to achieve cannot be right or decent or honorable or just. And if that is the case then why are they doing it? What are they there for? Are they there, taking our money and using it at will, to do what they know is not right, not decent, not honorable and not just? They are.

Can they please tell us then, why? And more to the point, just what are they trying to accomplish? Who's idea is this really? And why do they act completely opposite to who they say they are and what they say they are doing? What is this blanket of deceit and how dare they use these tactics? Why do they relentlessly desire war and violence, oppression, control and killing? Where is any sign of conscience? Of compassion? Of simple respect for human life?

Does this government shed a tear when its own soldiers come home in coffins? Does it show any care for those who come home wounded, broken and deserving of support? Does this government show any concern or grieving for the deaths of innocent people abroad? Does it not disregard such deaths and sweep them aside with insulting terms like collateral damage? This government seems to see the deaths and disempowerment of others as a tool. A tool it uses more than any other to achieve its aims.

Then we must ask them, what are your aims? Why all the killing? Why all the lies? Why the twisting of words and meanings? Why do you cover yourself in a coat of righteousness specifically to cover the truth of your unrighteousness? Who are you and what are you doing? And why?

We are long past a time where brutality and killing are an answer. Brutality and killing are not an answer. They are criminal acts. We know this at the personal level and it is no different at all for those equal beings who call themselves our government. Killing is wrong. War is pointless, destructive and wrong. It solves nothing. It enables unconscionable acts of murder of innocents, of thefts of lands and treasure. War provides the stage for arrogant, greedy power to play act its role of righteous savior, to use its unrighteous overwhelming force, and to destroy what others have worked so hard to build. One must ask, why would they desire this in the first place? Why do they desire this at all?

Who benefits? It is not you and I. It is them. Down to the personal level of unprecedented riches, power and wealth, of getting away with dishonesty and crime, of giving themselves unprecedented unnecessary invalid powers over life and death, over justice and injustice. It turns them into imperial kings and robber barons, thugs dressed in fine clothing who tell lies to TV cameras to cover the truth of what they are doing and why. They are killing us all, slowly but surely, because they have no respect whatsoever for life. Not here and not abroad. How are they different from serial killers? They are liars. And this must stop. This is not the way to anything but our guaranteed demise. Who believes we need this?

These are the methods and beliefs of madmen. Ideas of having the right to control and oppress, to kill and to commit crimes all in the name of bizarre, insane notions that do not apply to anyone but themselves. They turn the whole planet into a world of pawns they can use to play their games of death and destruction and control. These are not honorable men with honorable goals. They are usurpers, tyrants, hypocrites and they have no respect for life, human or otherwise, or for the environment we are all dependent on for our survival. These are men who are trying with all of their might to provoke this whole world into its final world war, carnage and destruction unlike anything seen before. This is their aim. This is their goal. Not because it is good for us, but because it serves their selfish, hypocritical, patently insane beliefs of self superiority and being God's chosen.

If these men are God's chosen it would not be due to worthiness or for His praise. They would be singled out and punished for acting much more in the service of the dark side, the side of death and dishonesty, of the negation and disrespect for free will. These are not Godly men. They're not heroes or leaders or workers for justice and freedom. What they really are cannot be stated because it is inexplicable. What is known is the results of their actions, and those results are death and destruction. Those results come to us on their lying lips, lies they must tell to trick us into going along, into believing they are good and those others are always bad. It is time to see it and face it, and to stop it.

Who is it that is such a threat to peace in this world? Who is the relentless aggressor? Is it Russia? Long despised and feared by those in power, the claims are communism or inhumanity, or any other words that would paint another nation as evil beings who threaten us all. Is it Iran? A religious country of ordinary human beings who do not possess anything remotely similar to the military power, might and aggression of our own government? What lies it takes to turn passive non-aggressors into something for this country to fear and loathe. What gigantic, inexcusable lies.

What country has galloped the globe time and again, bringing its overwhelming military force to kill native populations? Populations who pose no threat to anyone. Where innocents are slaughtered with overpowering violence, military might, and depraved indifference to human life and the environment. What country has never ceased its invasions and attacks since World War 2? Russia? China? Iran? Viet Nam? Argentina? The Falkland Islands? Canada? Saudi Arabia? Iraq?

Only one nation has never ceased inflicting war and carnage around the world. Only one nation's unbridled, insatiable aggression has been responsible for the nonstop murders of millions of innocent people. The United States. Its Siamese-twin Israel is right behind having engaged in decades of calculated, overt genocide of Palestinians.

Why?

Because these policies of aggression and violence are wrong, because they cannot be justified, then the question must be asked and we have every right to the answer. Why? What makes them so special that they may act in ways that threaten all peace, all stability, all prosperity and all freedom in the world? What makes them so special that they may deny justice and life to any and all they choose? Is there really such a thing as anyone so special? Only in their own imaginations. Only in the imaginations of those who support them. Only in the misguided beliefs of those who assist them. But in reality, in this very real world of real people living real lives, in real terror and real suffering, there is no such thing as anyone so special. There is no proof that any such specialness exists. It does not exist.

No man is our master. No man shall be crowned king of this world. No man is anything more than our human equal, no more deserving of life and needs and free will than we are. Many men, petty tyrants, thieves and thugs, elected men, religious men, statesmen of all creeds and colors exist and live in the wrong belief that it is their place to dominate and control others. To determine what shall be and what shall not be for all. They always impose their will with force, with killing, with torture. It is the only way to enslave a population and it is the only way the worst of them can hope to enslave the world.

We have watched as this government devolved into a den of thieves and liars, of instigators and deceivers, of unequaled propagandists and cheaters. We have extended them our unearned trust and they have used it against us, and against the world to achieve their own convoluted aims. We have been harmed. Others have been harmed. Harm that can have no recompense, there is no making up for what has been taken. Loved ones are irreplaceable. Innocent children are not replaceable. Lost blood lines, ancestral homes, prosperity, justice, peace, these can not be recompensed.

Everywhere this government goes it leaves in its wake death, poverty and injustice, destruction and military bases, not for anyone's protection or benefit, but to ensure it can keep its stranglehold on the conquered, disempowered, violently controlled masses.

Today they are still hell bent on attacking Iran, a country that is no threat to us at all. They are instigating violence, daring and begging Russia to react to the injustice and lies and aggression that they themselves arranged, armed and are responsible for. They are painting Russia as the aggressor when it is not the aggressor. But Russia's patience is being tapped and will eventually be drained. Anyone can see that. We need no experts to explain the particulars. We need only to understand what it feels like to be lied about and threatened, to be attacked by criminals and thugs, to understand that at some point anyone would stand up for themselves and fight back.

What we are seeing is the organized, preconceived plan to instigate World War 3. This is the desired goal of our government. Israel is its minion, deeply woven into the fabric of deceit, tampering and instigation. These two self-glorified special interests only want what they want at any price to others, at any cost to us, at all costs to those they want to see dead and destroyed for all time.

They are madmen who should be behind bars, locked in padded cells and given injections of anti-psychotic drugs and sedatives. They should be watched 24 hours a day and kept in locked rooms for their own safety as well as the safety of this world. For if these men and their obvious aims of destruction are not stopped, if they are not confronted, exposed and brought to the light of day, if they are not prevented from continuing their insane goals of death to the whole world, they will without any doubt succeed.

Shall we really stand idly by, claiming concern for our jobs or egotistical need for prestige, afraid of the erroneous criticism of deceived and misguided peers, as the world is raped and killed? What is worth the price? If anything needs to go, is it the world? Or shouldn't it really be them? Is it too late for us to remember what really matters in this world? Is it beyond the time when life was held precious and sacred? Are we all too happy to just get it over with and let them take us all to hell so that this endless carnage and pollution and destruction and violation of all that is good and decent and pure will finally cease? Or can common sense prevail? Can right and wrong be refreshed in our minds and in our souls and can we simply, calmly, step up and lead them away from the controls, away from the one second in time, on that one day that is unavoidably coming, when that final line is crossed? When that final insult, that final lie, that final spread of nuclear warheads is aimed and launched at millions of innocent people, that will immediately result in the mutually assured destruction of the world?

If we cannot stand up to illegitimate mortal leaders and take away this power over our lives that no man should ever have, then perhaps we have not yet evolved enough to recognize that life matters and that justice matters and that respect matters and that we all deserve to live in un-violated peace and freedom. And if that is true, then we won't have long to wait. Because these are the most dangerous men in the world and if there is no one willing to stop them we will all witness the consequences. And then we will die.

Related article on Palin's church

Shadad Ateli said since mid-May [2008], many Palestinians have been going without water for hours, and sometimes days at a time, because of a reduced supply as a regional drought enters its fifth year. He called on Israel, which controls some 90 percent of water sources in the West Bank to rethink its water policies. "Water shouldn't be a part of the conflict. It should be divided according to human needs equally," Ateli said.

Uri Shani, spokesman for Israel's Water Authority, says Palestinians are receiving more water than their agreed share under an interim peace deal. The drought has affected Israel as well, with fresh water supplies below their acceptable minimum, but there have been no cases of community water supplies being cut off.

[...]

Current peace talks between the two sides have not touched on water sharing yet, said Ateli, who is representing the Palestinians in negotiations on water with Israel.

West Bank residents use around 15 gallons of water a day, two-thirds of what the World Health Organization recommends for urban needs. In northern villages that number drops to 7 gallons a day. Daily water consumption in Israeli cities is 60 gallons per capita, [Israeli human rights group] B'Tselem reported.

Shani said the Palestinian Authority was not cracking down on herders who steal water supplies - a problem Palestinians acknowledge - and could recycle waste water for agriculture, as Israel does. He said that could boost supplies from 30 to 40 million cubic liters. The only solution to this problem is creating more water, Shani said.

Source: AFP / Haaretz.com, 27 Jul 2008

"Je me souviens d'une parole outrancière d'un de mes amis aujourd'hui décédé: "qui n'est pas juif est antisémite"; elle ressemble à vos propos.
ISRAEL est un Etat qui n'est pas exemplaire et qui a besoin de l'aide de tout le monde y compris de celle du QUATAR qui peut y apporter la PAIX
Quant à votre attaque contre notre Président, peut-être êtes-vous de ces internationalistes qui n'ont jamais fait rien de bon pendant des années et des siècles si ce n'est que de vaines paroles......
Je suis francais et juif: j'aime la FRANCE et je respecte ISRAEL comme les autres pays".

Bonjour XXXX, français et juif, vous m'avez fait sortir de mes gonds, par votre attaque personnelle et votre manque de subtilité.

J'ai rédigé 180 articles sur mon blog, écrit deux bouquins, oeuvré de ci, de là (mais je n'ai pas à vous raconter ma vie) et l'alter-mondisme ou l'internationalisme, comme vous dites, me sont aussi étrangers...que du pain à Pessa'h. Je les combat comme je peux, parce que, voyez-vous, XXXX, je suis juif français comme vous, mais aussi israélien, et de longue date, et pas vraiment catalogué à la droite israélienne. J'aime la France, comme vous, mais je ne me contente pas de respecter Israël, je l'aime, tout autant, si ce n'est plus que la France.

Quand notre Président, que j'ai soutenu et continue à soutenir, s'embarque dans des initiatives diplomatiques, qui peuvent nuire, gêner, embarrasser Israël ou torpiller sa politique, je l' écris. Quand il faillit à se promesses envers Israël, je les lui rappelle. Quand je considère que l'Union pour la Méditerranée ou le sommet de Damas, sont chimériques et contre productifs, tant pour Israël que pour la France, je le dis. Quand Bashar el Assad devient la pierre angulaire de la politique française au Proche-Orient, je m'insurge et préviens que ce type n'est que la Cinquième colonne de l'Iran, qu'il soutient tous les mouvements terroristes, ennemis irréductibles d'Israël, et qu'il ne faut surtout pas le mettre sur un piédestal, mais le marginaliser au maximum.

Israël a effectivement besoin de l'aide de tout le monde, comme vous le dites, mais pas grand monde ne lui accorde de l'aide, bien au contraire: les bâtons dans les roues pleuvent. Ce qui signifie qu'il faut continuer à capitaliser sur ses amis, comme les Etats-Unis - même si les relations ne sont pas toujours au beau fixe - et ne pas attendre des TOVOT (bontés) de la part des autres.

Un peu de réalisme, XXXX: les amis, ou les courtisans, de nos ennemis, ne sont pas nos amis !! Votre naïveté est confondante.

Quant à votre ami ZAL, décédé, laissez le dormir en paix. Je n'accorde aucun crédit au dicton "qui n'est pas juif est antisémite". Ne serait-ce que grâce au nombre de non juifs qui ont participé à la Guerre d'Indépendance en 48, et aux autres guerres d'Israël, et au vu de tous les amis sincères d'Israël, d'où qu'ils viennent.

Un peu de subtilité, Paul, La lutte contre les antisémites et les ennemis d'Israël ne se borne pas à s'insurger lors d'attaques physiques sur des juifs français, bien que ce soit fondamental.

Une différence entre nous existe néanmoins : Je ne ""respecte" pas israël, je l'aime de manière inconditionnelle, avec ses défauts, ses travers, et tout le reste. Le respect suppose une distance objective, qui est manifestement la votre. J'aimerais beaucoup, pour terminer sur une note conciliante, que vous vous débarrassiez de ce respect en prenant d'avantage position.

Je publie votre commentaire et ma réponse sur mon blog - en omettant bien entendu votre nom - parce que je n'arrive pas à vous faire parvenir ma réponse d'un seul tenant, et parce, que, in fine c'est moi qui ai rédigé ce texte.

Shalom, Arié.

source : geopolitiquebiblique

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSDAH72079920080907?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Iran's armed forces will begin three days of war games on Monday involving anti-aircraft defense systems, Iranian media said on Sunday.

The exercises will be held amid persistent speculation about a possible U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, which the West and Israel say are part of a clandestine bid to build atomic bombs, despite Tehran's denials.

The ISNA news agency said both Iran's Revolutionary Guards and its regular army would take part in the drills.

"Maneuvers with the participation of anti-aircraft defense systems will be held for three days starting Monday," it said, without giving further details.

The English-language Iran Daily said the aim was to maintain and upgrade the combat readiness of relevant units as well as to "test new weapons and defense plans."

Speculation about a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities has risen since Israel staged an air force exercise in June which was reported to be a simulation of a strike against Iran. Iran says it would hit back if attacked.

An Iranian commander last week said the Iranian air force would hold exercises during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began in Iran on September 2, but it was not immediately clear whether he was referring to the same drills as the ISNA report.

Alongside the regular army, Iran has a Revolutionary Guards force viewed as guardians of the Islamic ruling system. The Guards have a separate command and their own air, sea and land units, but often work with the regular military.

Iran has dismissed reports of possible U.S. or Israeli plans to strike Iran, but says it would respond by attacking U.S. interests and Israel if any such assault was made.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman last week denied reports, based on comments from Israeli defense sources, that Iran had bought Russia's advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile system and would get it this year.

There have been conflicting reports about whether Iran was buying the S-300 system. Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said last year Russia had agreed to deliver the missiles to Iran under a signed contract. Russia denied such plans.

Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, says its nuclear program is aimed at making electricity, not bombs. The United States says it wants diplomacy to end the row but has not ruled out military action if that fails.