From someone living in weirdoland... is is lard or butter?...

Did you see Tzipi Livni's speech in the Knesset last week? It was the best show in town. She was outstanding. Sharp as a razor, sure of herself, eloquent, refined, witty and downright venomous. The head of the opposition has come across in her latest appearances as an excellent speaker. "The flip is worse than the flop" and "Be a man and give in" - everyone keen to mercilessly attack the prime minister would use her witticisms, calling him by his nickname "Bibi" as he pretended not to listen. It set off the imagination: What would have happened had Livni formed the coalition? Well, the situation would be even worse.

If Livni were prime minister, she of course would have traveled to Washington, just like Benjamin Netanyahu, but she would have returned home in a hail of glory and success. Barack Obama and his guest would have emerged from their meeting smiling and embracing to tell reporters of the palpable "chemistry" between them. Two states for two peoples, the end of the occupation, they would recite. Two fresh, promising, young leaders taking the journey together, because it is their lot.

Back in Israel, Livni would have immediately invited Mahmoud Abbas to renew the negotiations, and he would have happily consented.

...

Thankfully, Livni was not elected. True, with her, things would have been much more pleasant, but this would be a deceptive charm. With Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the world may wake up and end the sleight of hand. Who knows, maybe some Israelis will follow its lead and wake up as well.

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Is is a question of who's worse or what?

from the NYT

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Dubai police released the names of 15 more suspects on Wednesday in the killing of a senior Hamas operative in a Dubai hotel room last month, expanding the range of an investigation that has already fostered diplomatic tensions between several European countries and Israel, whose intelligence service is widely suspected of planning the assassination.

The new suspects carried Irish, British, French, and Australian passports, and bring the size of the assassination team to 26, including six women, Dubai police officials said in a written statement. The suspects’ roles included “preparations and helping to facilitate” the Jan. 19 killing of the Hamas official, Mahmoud al Mabhouh, the statement said.

At least seven of the 11 suspects the Dubai police identified earlier this month carried what appeared to be expertly copied European passports bearing the names of people living in Israel. Several of the new suspects were similarly identified by names belonging to people living in Israel and carrying foreign passports, according to a report Wednesday evening on Israel’s Channel Two News. One — Gabriella Barney — is believed to be the daughter of a man identified in the first group of suspects.

The initial identifications drew sharp questions from British, Irish, and German diplomats about how the fraudulent passports came to be, and statements of concern from the European Union. It has also reinforced suspicions about the involvement of the Israeli secret service, the Mossad. Dubai’s police chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, was quoted in the Emirati press last week saying he was “99 percent, if not 100 percent” sure that the Mossad was behind the killing.

Israel has declined to comment on the accusations, as is its custom with claims related to the Mossad.

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The plot thickens... To coordinate 26 people is a lot of fiddle for one assassination.... Could there be other smelly stuff coming out as well?...

"Never in the field of human conflict has....."

Why does a small section of the .22% of world wide Jewish people in occupied Palestine carry such power over the politicians of so many countries?

Why do nations with once proud human rights, ignore the basics for this travesty of international justice?

Why do decent international people condone by default the abuses of civilization which the Zionists perform and ignore with an American 5th Amendment-like bailout, "I refuse to comment which may .......?"

Australians by nature have never appreciated arrogance or the attitude of "above the law".

And yet - the successive governments of Australia since "the Little Digger" have turned a blind eye to the Palestinian Jewish revolution and the subsequent invasion by foreign Jews.

If the world - in particular Europe (the Jewish holocaust) cannot achieve acknowledgement that the military take-over of the NON-militant people of Palestine is a major crime against humanity - then I hope I don't see the result of that ignorance.

The actions of the Zionist Jews is absolutely no different, by intent and prosecution, than that of the Nazis who are so often argued by the criminals as a reason for their abdication of civilized behavior. 

I must seem somewhat stupid to some of the more informed contributors to this forum but, I just cannot understand why “So many owe so much to so few”.

I don’t care who these powerful lobbies are – I care for my country and there is no place for absolute minorities.

God Bless Australia and bring back Gough Whitlam’s “farm”.  NE OUBLIE.

Israel's Mossad has regularly faked Australian passports for its spies, an ex-agent said today, as anger grew over the use of foreign travel documents for an alleged assassination.

Former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky told ABC Radio that the spy agency had used Australian passports for previous operations before last month's hit on a top Hamas commander in Dubai that has been blamed on Israel.

He said agents had little trouble passing themselves off as Australians as few people in the Middle East have much knowledge about the country.

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A former top level US intelligence official says the assassination in Dubai of a Hamas operative has all the hallmarks of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

He believes the Israeli operatives badly bungled the job because they underestimated the competency of the Dubai police.

Three Australians with dual citizenship have been named as suspects in the investigation because copies of their passports have been linked to the killing. All say they were victims of identity theft.

The Israeli Government says there is absolutely no evidence that it sanctioned the use of Australian passports by the alleged assassins.

And Israel insists that no other government has accused it of involvement in last month's assassination of the Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

But there has been no shortage of independent commentators ready to make that link.

Retired army colonel Patrick Lang spent eight years as the head of intelligence for the Middle East and South Asia for the US Defence Department, and for that time was the chief liaison with Israeli military intelligence.

And Mr Lang says the use of fake documents is standard practice for intelligence operatives.

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In 1973, a Moroccan waiter working in the Norwegian town of Lillehammer was shot dead by agents of the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad, who mistook him for Ali Hassan Salameh, a Palestinian behind an attack during the previous year's Munich Olympics in which 11 Israeli athletes died.

Two members of the hit squad were arrested the next day as they reused a getaway car to travel to the airport.

One of them, an inexperienced Danish-born volunteer, provided police with a paper trail that led to the capture and imprisonment of several of his comrades, and sparked a diplomatic incident.

Wanting to recoup the expenses he had incurred during the operation from his Mossad handlers, he had kept his receipts.

Thirty-seven years later, a paper trail - though this time electronic - has once again exposed the work of a group of assassins, pointed the finger of suspicion at Israel, and raised questions about the future of covert operations in foreign countries.

By and large a one-dimensional approach has characterised our approach to understanding the phenomenon of terrorism. However, the recent killing of a Hamas figure, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai should make us cast our net wider to focus also on state terrorism.

The Dubai police have claimed with almost undisputed evidence that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, was behind the killing. Israel has, as usual, maintained a policy of ambiguity by neither confirming nor denying Mossad's actions, although some of its political leaders, specifically the Opposition Leader, Tzipi Livni, have applauded the killing on the grounds that Mabhouh was a terrorist and deserved to be eliminated.

If it is proved beyond doubt that Mossad agents, using forged passports in the names of British, French, Irish, German and Australian citizens, perpetrated the act, the killing clearly underlines a  disturbing aspect of Israeli behaviour.

It constitutes a blatant act of state terrorism, which places Israel in a position parallel to the very forces that it has unfailingly condemned as terrorist groups or networks.

This is not the first time, and may not be the last time, that a state has engaged in such operations. In the case of Israel specifically, it has historically never shied away from targeting those it has regarded as either acting violently against it or violently threatening it. In this, it has never made a distinction between those perpetrating violence for the sake of violence and those who have sought to defend themselves against Israel or to free themselves from Israel's territorial-strategic expansion and physical subjugation.

This form of terrorism has a long history in the Middle East. It began with the founders of Israel, led by David Ben-Gurion, who showed no moral qualms about forming the first subnational terrorist groups, such as the Stern Gang and Irgun, in the early 1940s to terrorise the British out of Palestine and create the state of Israel in 1948 on what had traditionally been recognised as Palestinian land.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/it-is-time-for-israels-friends-to-condemn-its-acts-of-terrorism-20100228-pb2n.html?autostart=1

meanwhile .....

Australia has softened its traditionally staunch support for Israel in the United Nations but denied it was linked to tensions over the country's apparent use of forged Australian passports in an assassination in Dubai.

At a vote in the UN General Assembly - where Australia has been one of Israel's strongest supporters - the government abstained from a resolution demanding that Israel and the Palestinians investigate possible war crimes during the assault on Gaza that Israel began in December 2008.

Three months ago, Australia voted against a similar resolution which sought to endorse the Goldstone report - a UN-sponsored paper which accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes.

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, said yesterday that the change was not related to the passport scandal and that Australia abstained because the latest resolution did not specifically endorse the Goldstone report.

''Our vote on the resolution was neither determined nor influenced by recent events,'' he said. ''The Australian government always considers UN resolutions on a case-by-case basis and on their merits. Australia abstained on this resolution because, unlike previous resolutions, it did not endorse the Goldstone report.''

Six other countries also changed their votes, including Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Some countries, such as Britain, France and New Zealand, shifted from abstention to support. Others, such as the United States and Canada, voted against both resolutions.

Britain, France and Germany have all recently expressed anger at Israel after their passports were caught up in the Dubai plot.

One Department of Foreign Affairs source told the Herald there was no doubt the decision to abstain was intended as a sign to Israel not to take Australian support for granted.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/australia-abandons-israel-in-un-vote-20100228-pb70.html?autostart=1