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Happy Christmas, O Prisoners Of The Little Town of Bethlehem
O little town of Bethlehem How still we see thee lie Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight
by Stuart Littlewood
While carving the turkey for your family and merrily quaffing mulled wine ‘midst happy laughter, remember that the romantic Little Town of Bethlehem at the centre of our childhood Christmases is now “an immense prison” in the words of Michel Sabbah, former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and entirely surrounded by Israel’s ugly 8-metre separation wall bristling with machine-gun towers.
The good citizens of Bethlehem are cut off from their capital Jerusalem, only six miles away, the rest of the West Bank and the whole world.
Consider that the United Nations, for obvious reasons, designated Jerusalem and Bethlehem a protected international zone under UN administration. Israeli rule was not to be permitted.
Consider also that when Palestine was under British mandate Christians accounted for 20 per cent of the population and how 63 years of terror, illegal occupation, dispossession, interference and economic wrecking tactics have whittled their numbers down to less than 2 per cent.
Consider that, at this rate, there will soon be no Christians left in the land where Christianity was born… thanks to the cowardice and inaction of our political leaders.
How will the 26 bishops sitting around in our House of Lords, doing nothing, explain that to their dwindling congregations?
As usual, many Palestinians in Bethlehem and the other cities and villages throughout occupied Palestine will be unable to reunite with their families or celebrate Christmas at their holy places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem due to cruel Israeli-imposed travel restrictions. Imagine for a moment what sort of Christmas the half-starved children in blockaded Gaza are having this year, and every year… and what New Year prospects face all the other Palestinian children struggling to grow up with the Israeli army’s boot on their necks.
Deep down it is not about religion at all. The struggle is between justice and a criminal conspiracy of huge international proportions, the tentacles of which spread far beyond the Holy Land and impact on all of us, even here in the deepest recesses of England’s green and pleasant land.
In the New Year civil society must resolve to DO SOMETHING about it, one way or another, before the evil spins irreversibly out of control.
Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. He is a frequent contributor to My Catbird Seat. For further information please visit : www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk. ‘Free Palestine’ Book Now On Internet
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=173373
Posted by Stuart Littlewood on Dec 22 2011, With 0 Reads, Filed under Israel, Middle East, Palestine, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Many thank yous for remembering their suffering. Its been on my mind all my adult life how they suffer under this imposter occupation.
You’re on a roll, as we say here in the former US of A. Another powerful piece. I hope it manages to penetrate some Christian cranium.
While the Palestinians suffer through another Christmas of Occupation, the Israeli’s get to enjoy their holidays on stolen land.
But folks, not all is lost, for now we have some information here, that may help exonerate our Palestinian Oppressed Brothers, and just in time for Christmas. Thank You Dear Jesus.
……And so, now we have further details on just how we, the United States Of America, were attacked on 9/11/01 and by whom.
……Read it and WEEP my fellow American Patriots. I would like to hear our American, Israeli, and British LEADERS refute these allegations, in VERY SPECIFIC DETAIL, especially since the cost to the world, to America (in terms of lives, our Bill Of Rights , the US Constitution, and our Economy) has been So Great its incalculable. I’m Waiting.
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Mossad ran 9/11 Arab “hijacker” terrorist operation
By Wayne Madsen on December 23, 2011
Wayne Madsen – via Opinion Maker January 27, 2011
British intelligence reported in February 2002 that the Israeli Mossad ran the Arab hijacker cells that were later blamed by the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission for carrying out the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. WMR has received details of the British intelligence report which was suppressed by the government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.
A Mossad unit consisting of six Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jews infiltrated “Al Qaeda” cells in Hamburg (the Atta-Mamoun Darkanzali cell), south Florida, and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in the months before 9/11. The Mossad not only infiltrated cells but began to run them and give them specific orders that would eventually culminate in their being on board four regularly-scheduled flights originating in Boston, Washington Dulles, and Newark, New Jersey on 9/11.
The Mossad infiltration team comprised six Israelis, comprising two cells of three agents, who all received special training at a Mossad base in the Negev Desert in their future control and handling of the “Al Qaeda” cells. One Mossad cell traveled to Amsterdam where they submitted to the operational control of the Mossad’s Europe Station, which operates from the El Al complex at Schiphol International Airport. The three-man Mossad unit then traveled to Hamburg where it made contact with Mohammed Atta, who believed they were sent by Osama Bin Laden. In fact, they were sent by Ephraim Halevy, the chief of Mossad.
The second three-man Mossad team flew to New York and then to southern Florida where they began to direct the “Al Qaeda” cells operating from Hollywood, Miami, Vero Beach, Delray Beach, and West Palm Beach. Israeli “art students,” already under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration for casing the offices and homes of federal law enforcement officers, had been living among and conducting surveillance of the activities, including flight school training, of the future Arab “hijacker” cells, particularly in Hollywood and Vero Beach.
In August 2001, the first Mossad team flew with Atta and other Hamburg “Al Qaeda” members to Boston. Logan International Airport’s security was contracted to Huntleigh USA, a firm owned by an Israeli airport security firm closely connected to Mossad — International Consultants on Targeted Security – ICTS. ICTS’s owners were politically connected to the Likud Party, particularly the Netanyahu faction and then-Jerusalem mayor and future Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was Olmert who personally interceded with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to have released from prison five Urban Moving Systems employees, identified by the CIA and FBI agents as Mossad agents. The Israelis were the only suspects arrested anywhere in the United States on 9/11 who were thought to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks.
The two Mossad teams sent regular coded reports on the progress of the 9/11 operation to Tel Aviv via the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. WMR has learned from a Pentagon source that leading Americans tied to the media effort to pin 9/11 on Arab hijackers, Osama Bin Laden, and the Taliban were present in the Israeli embassy on September 10, 2001, to coordinate their media blitz for the subsequent days and weeks following the attacks. It is more than likely that FBI counter-intelligence agents who conduct surveillance of the Israeli embassy have proof on the presence of the Americans present at the embassy on September 10. Some of the Americans are well-known to U.S. cable news television audiences.
(This story continues at TheTruthSeeker and also at Wayne Madsen’s site.)
……………………AND ON AND ON IT GOES. I truly believe, that this Years “Day Of Atonement” should go further.
Now that’s just me, but common people.
Is is better to die on your Feet, or live on your Knees.
Israel’s prisoners are not only Bethlehem there in the Pentagon and Congress.
According to YNET Ynet reports:
Pentagon officials were the ones who requested that Congress approve a $106 million aid budget for Israel’s defense systems against missiles, on top of the Iron Dome budget. Congress chose to nearly double that amount, approving a budget of $235 million for 2012, amounting to $25 million more than in 2011.
Since 1949, Congress has distributed over $114 billion in U.S. aid to Israel.