Salah Haj Yihye (far right), the mobile clinic coordinator, with the medical delegation from the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meets with Quartet Envoy Tony Blair in Ramallah, September 2007.

Photo of Obama in Muslim dress allegedly circulated by the Clinton campaign

Palestinians forced from their villages in 1948.

American ammunition pulled from the body of a dead Palestinian.

So said Jimmy Carter several months ago. Since that time, the Free Gaza Movement acted to break the siege of Gaza, which is not only killing Gazans, but traumatizing its population. This letter by Eyad el-Sarraj, a psychiatrist and founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program and leader of the International Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza, was recently published by the Jewish Voice for Peace. It talks about the dire situation that continues in Gaza, in spite of the ceasefire that Hamas, after several attempts, was able to neogotiate (yes, Hamas).

The psychiatric implications of the siege are well explained.

An appropriate subtitle for this diary is: May God help us all.

When Sarah Palin was interviewed by Charlie Gibson about Israel the other night, to some she gave a "scary" response. She said that she supported Israel's prerogative to attack Iran, and under Gibson's further questioning, said that the U.S. has no right to "second guess" Israel's decision (to attack Iran). Chris Matthews on Hardball seemed so angry about her responses that he asked whether it was in the national interest. Then additional questions surfaced as to whether Palin's remarks had been scripted by AIPAC representatives. As everyone knows, John McCain has been shadowed by the Neocon, Joe Lieberman throughout his campaign, and has in the past expressed views that Iran's nuclear developments may deserve a military action. That is precisely what AIPAC, right wing Zionist organizations, and various proIsrael Neoconservatives have been urging.

This review of the Palin remarks appeared on the British blog: War Without End. But its source was actually Philip Weiss' blog, MondoWeiss.

According to a very reliable poll conducted by the Pro-Peace Jewish activist group J Street, most U.S. Jews stand firmly behind Jimmy Carter's positions on Israel. Although the survey did not specifically mention Carter, the positions supported by Jewish Americans were largely identical to those Jimmy Carter advocates.

Accusations that Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, along with another critic of Israel's occupation and colonialism, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, both of whom are great humanitarians, is anti-Semitic can be laid to rest. The notion that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic has also run its course. Carter remains the moral soul of the Democratic party of which there is no doubt.

Now how do you like it?

You decide.

Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss reported this second if earlier episode in which a major American television and news network, CBS, intentionally spread Israeli propaganda to American audiences. This one came to light only recently (the first entailed newscaster, Bob Simon, hawking Israeli military propaganda against Iran. See `60 Minutes' serves up Israeli propaganda).

In this episode, we catch Mike Wallace distorting an interview with the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for purposes of falsely representing the view that Iran has hostile intents towards Israel. Weiss picked up this story from another source, Representative Press, and it was actually dated August, 2006 and entitled,

"What we've done shows that people can do what governments should have done. If people stand up against injustice, we can truly be the conscience of the world." --Jeff Halper

A few days ago, Abie Nathan died. Who the hell was Abie Nathan? The shortest biography I could find was this entry in Wikipedia:

Abie Nathan was born in Abadan, Persia on 29 April 1927. He spent his adolescent years in the city of Mumbai (then Bombay) in India. He became a pilot in the Royal Air Force in 1944. In 1948 he volunteered as a pilot in the Machal (volunteers in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War) and stayed in Israel thereafter. He worked with El Al airlines and later opened a restaurant in Tel Aviv.

Flight for Peace

Nathan led a party called Nes (lit. Miracle) in the 1965 Knesset elections but missed the electoral threshold by 2,000 votes. After the results were published he declared he would fly to Egypt, carrying a message of peace. Flying in his plane, which he named Shalom 1 ("Peace 1"), he landed in the Egyptian city of Port Said on 28 February 1966. Arrested upon landing, he asked to meet Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, and to deliver a petition calling for peace between Israel and Egypt. He was denied, and was deported back to Israel, where he was arrested again for leaving the country by an illegal route.

Meetings with PLO

In 1978, Nathan began his first hunger strike to protest the construction of Israeli settlements. In the early 1980s, Nathan began meeting officials from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). These meetings were later outlawed by the Knesset. In 1991, Nathan went again on a hunger strike for 40 days to protest that Israeli law which prevented meetings with terrorist organizations. He stopped his hunger strike following the intervention of President Chaim Herzog.

Nathan, however, continued to meet with PLO head Yasser Arafat, and on 18 September 1991 he was condemned to 18 months in prison. President Herzog cut 12 months from his sentence, and he was released after serving less than 6 months.

Voice of Peace and humanitarian activities

In 1973, Nathan founded the Voice of Peace radio station. He bought a ship with the help of John Lennon, named it "The Peace Ship", and sailed it outside Israeli territorial waters. The station broadcast 24 hours a day, mostly English-language programs that mainly included popular music, while promoting Nathan's political activities. While spreading his ideas to his audience, Nathan was also involved with disaster relief in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Biafra, Colombia, and Ethiopia. In another anti-war protest, he presided over the burial of smashed military toys.

On 1 October 1993, Nathan had to close the Voice of Peace station due to economic and legal difficulties. Part of the reason for closing was that with the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords, he felt his message for peace and dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians has been spread. The ship was scuttled on 28 November 1993.

In 1997, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. He died in Tel Aviv on 27 August 2008, aged 81.