Palestine Think Tank Digest
Iraq – Another Hiroshima? Investigative report

Posted: 14 Oct 2008 11:49 AM CDT

Maurizio Torrealta, of RaiNews24, presents the premiere of an interview with a US war veteran who makes this denouncement: “we used an atomic bomb in Iraq in 1991.

“There were very few Italian news reporters, but there were Iranians, Russians, Japanese and Spanish ones. It makes one stop and think.” Maurizio Torrealta of RaiNews24 has presented today in a preview the latest investigation that reveals a disturbing scenario. The United States, during the Gulf War of 1991, and to be precise, on the final day of the conflict, had released an atomic warhead with five kilotons of power in the area of Basra, in southern Iraq.

An insidious ghost. To understand this power, the bomb dropped upon Nagasaki in 1945 was twenty-two kilotons, therefore, it is a ‘small nuclear warhead’. But this does not make what took place less serious. “An intervention on a Canadian site made by a United States veteran, which could be found on Internet, was the starting place for the investigation,” Torrealta reveals. “He told of an atomic warhead that was dropped over the area of Basra, near the border with Iran, during the operation called Desert Storm (the attack against Iraq lead by the USA in 1991, after the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam’s troops). From that moment we were alerted and we were able to get in contact with the USA veteran. We worked for a year in order to convince him to be interviewed on video and to tell his story, which has been confirmed in every detail. Then we compared his declarations with the surveys of the International Seismological Center (a German non-governmental organisation that monitors the seismographic events in the world). It could only just be a coincidence, but on the same day, the seismographs registered activity equal to that which could be caused by a bomb of this sort in the same area of the complaint of the USA veteran.”

This could resolve every doubt, couldn’t it? “The definitive proof would be taken from the survey of the waves of the seismic event, to understand if they are on the surface or if they are underground,” the journalist of RaiNews24 responded, “because in that case the mystery would be resolved, in that if they were surface waves, it would not be caused by an earthquake.” It would seem to be a very simple thing to check, but this is not the case. “To make this verification, we need the collaboration of various seismic centres, nine of them in the entire world, who would have registered the seismic event. The argument is delicate, and it unleashes particular ghosts. We are making our work available to everyone, inviting whoever has an information regarding this to collaborate with us, so that the truth can be ascertained.”

Another retaliation? Another important element that would support this thesis is that, as the journalist explains, “the annual mortality rate at Basra has gone from 32 in 1989 to more than 600 in 2002.”

It would seem like a complex investigation, but with the necessary perseverance, one is able to come to some results. “Yes, also because today we have only presented a preview of a far longer interview. The USA soldier narrates a great deal of things that still have to be verified,” Torrealta explains, “but that should not be ignored. For example, he claims that between the First and the Third of March 2002, in Afghanistan, a similar warhead was used. This is a declaration that cannot remain without verification and it is a call for everyone to carryout accurate investigations, to work together, with the necessary knowledge and ability. It would be terribly serious if, in the most absolute silence, an atomic bomb has been used. Radioactivity does leave a trace.”

This is a serious doubt that carries enormous repercussions, why, from a tactical or strategic point of view, would the USA have dropped an atomic bomb on the last day of the war, which had at that point been won? Why would they have done it against those Shias who, before being left to their own devices, had rebelled against Saddam by aiding the Coalition troops?

“It is one of our priorities to verify if the information by the soldier was true,” Torrealta replies, “then as to the reasons behind why this would have been done is not my task to state,” Torrealta said. “We have only made some conjectures. Two days prior to the end of the war, a Scud missile hit a US base, killing twenty-eight American soldiers. The Bush Sr. Administration has always declared that it would have used atomic weapons if it were being attacked with chemical or bacteriological arms. But the matter of the use of atomic weaponry, in that conflict, was ambiguous. The then Secretary of State, James Baker III, when addressing the question coined the phrase the `calculated ambiguity doctrine’: he neither denied nor confirmed the possible use of atomic weapons. It would not have been the only ret

Posted: 10 Oct 2008 04:47 AM CDT

Israeli Bestseller Breaks National Taboo

by Jonathan Cook

No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has spent 19 weeks on Israel’s bestseller list – and that success has come to the history professor despite his book challenging Israel’s biggest taboo.

Dr. Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation – whose need for a safe haven was originally used to justify the founding of the state of Israel – is a myth invented little more than a century ago.

An expert on European history at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Sand drew on extensive historical and archaeological research to support not only this claim but several more – all equally controversial.

In addition, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land, that most of today’s Jews have no historical connection to the land called Israel and that the only political solution to the country’s conflict with the Palestinians is to abolish the Jewish state.

The success of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? looks likely to be repeated around the world. A French edition, launched last month, is selling so fast that it has already had three print runs.

Translations are under way into a dozen languages, including Arabic and English. But he predicted a rough ride from the pro-Israel lobby when the book is launched by his English publisher, Verso, in the United States next year.

In contrast, he said Israelis had been, if not exactly supportive, at least curious about his argument. Tom Segev, one of the country’s leading journalists, has called the book “fascinating and challenging.”

Surprisingly, Dr. Sand said, most of his academic colleagues in Israel have shied away from tackling his arguments. One exception is Israel Bartal, a professor of Jewish history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Writing in Haaretz, the Israeli daily newspaper, Dr. Bartal made little effort to rebut Dr. Sand’s claims. He dedicated much of his article instead to defending his profession, suggesting that Israeli historians were not as ignorant about the invented nature of Jewish history as Dr. Sand contends.

The idea for the book came to him many years ago, Dr. Sand said, but he waited until recently to start working on it. “I cannot claim to be particularly courageous in publishing the book now,” he said. “I waited until I was a full professor. There is a price to be paid in Israeli academia for expressing views of this sort.”

Dr. Sand’s main argument is that until little more than a century ago, Jews thought of themselves as Jews only because they shared a common religion. At the turn of the 20th century, he said, Zionist Jews challenged this idea and started creating a national history by inventing the idea that Jews existed as a people separate from their religion.

Equally, the modern Zionist idea of Jews being obligated to return from exile to the Promised Land was entirely alien to Judaism, he added.

“Zionism changed the idea of Jerusalem. Before, the holy places were seen as places to long for, not to be lived in. For 2,000 years Jews stayed away from Jerusalem not because they could not return but because their religion forbade them from returning until the messiah came.”

The biggest surprise during his research came when he started looking at the archaeological evidence from the biblical era.

“I was not raised as a Zionist, but like all other Israelis I took it for granted that the Jews were a people living in Judea and that they were exiled by the Romans in 70AD.

“But once I started looking at the evidence, I discovered that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were legends.

“Similarly with the exile. In fact, you can’t explain Jewishness without exile. But when I started to look for history books describing the events of this exile, I couldn’t find any. Not one.

“That was because the Romans did not exile people. In fact, Jews in Palestine were overwhelming peasants and all the evidence suggests they stayed on their lands.”

Instead, he believes an alternative theory is more plausible: the exile was a myth promoted by early Christians to recruit Jews to the new faith. “Christians wanted later generations of Jews to believe that their ancestors had been exiled as a punishment from God.”

So if there was no exile, how is it that so many Jews ended up scattered around the globe before the modern state of Israel began encouraging them to “return”?

Dr. Sand said that, in the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era, Judaism was a proselytizing religion, desperate for converts. “This is mentioned in the Roman literature of the time.”

Jews traveled to other regions seeking converts, particularly in Yemen and among the Berber tribes of North Africa. Centuries later, the people of the Khazar kingdom in what is today south Russia, would convert en masse to Judaism, becoming the genesis of the Ashkenazi Jews of central and ea

When Will America wake up from her slumber?

When future Historians look into the factors that ultimately brought down the American empire, one of the main factors they will feature prominently is the gIsraeli factor.h

It is well known that Israel, through the numerous Zionist lobbies and pressure groups, more or less controls Americafs politics, media and financial institutions.

I am not going to provide statistical data showing the extent to which nearly every aspect of American life is infiltrated and penetrated by Zionism. Such data are readily available for those seeking the truth about Zionist dominance in America.

Instead, I suggest that skeptics speak to some of those senators or congressmen and women who dare to gtell it like it is,h or privately ask some people in the media and show-business about their respective experiences with regard to the gLobby.h

Undoubtedly they will hear hair-raising stories they have never thought they will ever hear.

In the late 1970s, the American Jewish intellectual Alfred Lilienthal wrote an extremely important book on the Jewish lobby that controls contemporary America. The book is titled gThe Zionist Connection: What Price Peace,h and is in my opinion one of the greatest books written in the twentieth century.

The reason I mentioned Lilienthalfs book is because the Zionist control of American political life and institutions is today deeper, tighter and more encompassing than ever before. And there is no doubt under the sun that Americafs steady downfall is imputed first and foremost to this impenetrable Israel-worshiping lobby which utilizes Americafs power and resources for the sake of serving and promoting Zionist goals both in the Middle East and at the global level.

Didnft Israeli emissaries in the 1990s, following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, tell the rulers of Central Asia and Eastern Europe that gwe control the US government, and the way to Americafs mind and heart goes through Jerusalem?h!!!

Sounds anti-Semitic? Well, donft be too sure, just listen to what Zionist leaders and rabbis in Israel are saying! Maybe you will change your views.

Some of the most strident and audacious acts Israel and her agents in America have taken to destroy America from within has been the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. That unnecessary and manifestly disastrous war was conceived in and planned by Israel through the mostly Jewish neocons in Washington, D.C.

Interestingly, not only has this criminal war killed more than a million Iraqis and several thousand American soldiers, but it has also ruined the United States financially and dealt the American currency, the US dollar, what seems to be an irreversible crushing blow.

Needless to say, the current mega crisis in America, on the one hand, and the ongoing Israeli-conceived wars America is fighting in many parts of the world, on the other, are inextricably entwined. American leaders and politicians wonft say that openly. But America doesnft lack the brain power to know the facts and find out the truth about the umbilical connection between the Israeli factor and the ravaging financial crisis now facing the US.

Again, if you are in doubt, ask those who dare to speak in Washington and they will tell you what you canft count on the Zionist-controlled media to tell. After all, Fox News, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek, to mention a few of the so-called gagenda setters,h are not really answerable to the American people. They are answerable to the lobby, because if and when officials at these outlets donft go with the flow, they get fired immediately. Have you ever thought why it is easier to criticize Israel in Tel Aviv than in New York? Have you every figured out why it is easier for an Israeli politician to lambaste his own government for its misdeeds than it is for an American official to do so? There are Israeli academics and intellectuals who have called Israel ga Nazi state.h Can an American professor or intellectual call Israel a Nazi state and retain his job?

Now Israel has got America deeply sinking in the futile war on terror, which is actually another meaningless war on Israelfs enemies, namely the Muslims, for supporting the just Palestinian cause and demanding Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab land.

Like the Iraq war and the Afghan war, the apparently nihilistic war on terror is being waged on Israelfs behalf because, in the final analysis, there is really no conflict between Muslims and America.

Yes, g9/11, we are told, was carried out by a few terrorists who held Muslim names and who wrongly thought that they were serving the Palestinian cause and the cause of Islam by killing innocent people.

But these misguided individuals, if indeed they were the real villains (because there is a growing mass of evidence prompting honest people to doubt and q