The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act
Robert Fisk, The Independent, 1 January 2009

To admit that Egypt can’t even open its sovereign border without permission from Washington tells you all you need to know about the powerlessness of the satraps that run the Middle East for us.

Open the Rafah gate – or break off relations with Israel – and Egypt’s economic foundations crumble. Any Arab leader who took that kind of step will find that the West’s economic and military support is withdrawn. Without subventions, Egypt is bankrupt. [Read Robert Fisk’s article]

Egypt’s welfare bill is “$1.3 billion a year in military aid since 1979, and an average of $815 million a year in economic assistance,” courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Arab leaders choose to ferment division along religious lines, enable humanitarian holocausts that promise to end only in their eventual, collective demise, rather than form an economic union independent of U.S. constraints.

The Arab League could assume bills of this nature as it pursues alternatives to current trade deals rather than continue to oppress the citizens of the countries they claim to represent, the refugees cleansed, incarcerated, waiting decades to be freed, and the immigrants imported for slave labour.

Such a move would have wide popular support and in their long term self-interest as the current system implodes. The selfish satraps apparently prefer inaugural parties, private contract lobbying and critical shopping sprees paid for with the blood and treasure of its victims to constructing policies that would alleviate their suffering.

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hat tip: Palestine Video

Ilan Pappe: Israel’s righteous fury and its victims in Gaza

My visit back home to the Galilee coincided with the genocidal Israeli attack on Gaza. The state, through its media and with the help of its academia, broadcasted one unanimous voice — even louder than the one heard during the criminal attack against Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Israel is engulfed once more with righteous fury that translates into destructive policies in the Gaza Strip. This appalling self-justification for the inhumanity and impunity is not just annoying, it is a subject worth dwelling on, if one wants to understand the international immunity for the massacre that rages on in Gaza.

It is based first and foremost on sheer lies transmitted with a newspeak reminiscent of darker days in 1930s Europe. Every half an hour a news bulletin on the radio and television describes the victims of Gaza as terrorists and Israel’s massive killings of them as an act of self-defense. Israel presents itself to its own people as the righteous victim that defends itself against a great evil. The academic world is recruited to explain how demonic and monstrous is the Palestinian struggle, if it is led by Hamas. These are the same scholars who demonized the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in an earlier era and delegitimized his Fatah movement during the second Palestinian intifada.

[Read the article]

Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Saturday, January 3, 2009 — 1:46 PM ET
Armored Column Seen Moving Into Gaza

Israeli television showed a column of tanks moving into the Gaza Strip on Saturday evening, in what appeared to be the beginning of a ground offensive against Hamas. The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse reported that Israeli defense officials were confirming the movement of ground forces into Gaza.

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Palestine War Enters Science-Fiction Realms
Excerpt

Propaganda wars have escalated and are being fought on the new 21st century battlefield – the Internet – while at the same time entering a level of absurdity: Hackers working for the anti-zionist solidarity movement have carried out electronic attacks on major Israeli websites, altering them with anti-war materials. Leaflets have been dropped over Gaza by the Israeli air-force seeking to …employ spies and traitors!

The leaflets say:

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