George Salzman

Open Letter to Prime Minister Blair: Doing a Northern Ireland in the Middle East

The original of this letter is on Alan Hart's website at http://www.alanhart.net/
open-letter-to-pm-blair-doing-a-northern-ireland-in-the-middle-east/, by Alan Hart, 11 May 2007. 
Contact information for Alan Hart [1].

The opening page of Hart's site is at http://www.alanhart.net/. A remarkably rich assembly of work on the global impact of Zionism by an unusually outspoken British Gentile committed to telling it like it is. Well worth visiting and watching the world-class interviews, each about a half hour -- really one-on-one conversations -- that Hart has posted along with a great deal of his written material. The importance of his work is also attested by the vigorous efforts of the Zionist network to prevent publication of his book and to defame him.[2]

-- George Salzman

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Dear Prime Minister Blair,

"Giving the impossible a go" in Israel-Palestine

I write to you with the warning words of Yehoshafat Harkabi reverberating in my mind. (He was, before your time, Israel's longest serving and most enlightened Director of Military Intelligence. I'll get to his warning words in due course).

Straight talk with Israel Shamir

Some things can't be fixed. Here in Oaxaca there are endless demands for 'justice' for people who we all know have been disappeared by government thugs, undoubtedly killed, most likely after having been brutally, excruciatingly tortured. Such victims are beyond justice. All we can do is try to prevent the continuation of such inhumane actions. This frightful photo is from an article by Nidal Sakr. It should be unthinkable that other human beings -- and they are always 'other', not infrequently with darker skins -- are starved, if not to death to a state of severely stunted development, prevented, at the least, from ever experiencing a healthy existence.

by George Salzman

A few weeks ago I'd never heard of Israel Shamir. Somehow or other his name came up, prompting a Google search. It quickly became clear that he was reviled by some of the most despicable of Israel's apologists. Which whetted my interest in learning more about him. So I wrote a letter, the first one, which follows the figure caption, on 24 May 2009. Much to my surprise, and pleasure, Shamir wrote back the same day (the 25th in Israel-Palestine), and so our exchange was under way.

Weavers of the fabric of truth

Dahr Jamail, John Pilger, Mohammed Omer

by George Salzman 

Telling the truth has always involved some risk. At the least, friends might be offended. At worst, as is ongoing now for some years here in Mexico, reporters have clearly been assassinated because they have told truths that expose terrible acts by powerful people.

Dahr Jamail (left) and Mohammed Omer (right), co-recipients of the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for journalism, being congratulated by John Pilger (center), a member of the Martha Gellhorn Prize judges panel, at the award ceremonies in London, 16 June 2008. The photo, by Paul de Rooij, is from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which gives a brief account of Omer's harrowing treatment by the Israeli Shin Bet agents as he was returning to his home in Rafah, in Gaza. A more detailed, extensive account of this ghoulish incident, by John Pilger is in The Guardian of 2 July 2008.

Israeli Zionist Nazi Culture

A report from Rabbis for Human Rights

by George Salzman

Noga Eitan is a spokeswoman for the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights. She wrote about the conversation she heard between soldiers on a train in Israel the evening before the start of the Jewish high holidays, the days of Passover (seven in Israel, eight in the Diaspora). The executive director of the group, Rabbi Arik W. Ascherman, says in his introductory statement on the conversation Noga reports, “It is not quite as awful as the ‘disproved’ incidents alleged by the soldiers from the Rabin Academy, but awful enough”.[1] His introductory comments, which I omit, are of course within the framwork of his overall religious outlook. He is well-intentioned, a good person, a humane Zionist who so far as I can tell has not resolved in his mind the fundamental contradictions at the base of the Zionist conquest of the Palestinians. All religions, regardless of their particular dogma, always muddle what ought to be clear, critical thinking. A real intellectual curse.

Doing away with the Zionist state of Israel, an earned fate

by George Salzman

In writing the short piece that follows I hold no illusions that we, the millions, perhaps even billions, of ordinary people who are aghast at the demonstration of Israeli brutality towards Palestinians can do anything that will be immediately effective in halting the Israeli nation-state's ongoing conquest of the Palestinians under its control, a conquest fully supported by the U.S. and its craven ‘allies’. But in the long term I believe there is solid reason to be hopeful we can make a good world for all peoples. 

This iconic photograph is part of a powerful open letter ‘to the Jews’ that Khalid Amyreh wrote on 10 March 2008. Mr. Amyreh is a journalist I have come to trust, who writes about the harsh reality he is experiencing in Israel’s colonized territory.

An open letter to Mazin Qumsiyeh

by George Salzman

Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian American medical researcher born on the outskirts of Bethlehem. He was Assoc. Prof of Genetics at Duke Univ. and Yale Univ., is now Biology Prof at Bethlehem Univ. An active, passionate advocate of non-violence in the struggle for human rights, his effectiveness in efforts for the Palestinians is testified to by the scurrilous attempts to defame him mounted by misguided Jewish organizations. Info about him is in "The Cucumber and the Cactus", at

http://qumsiyeh.org/thecucumberandthecactus/.

 

Dear Mazin,

Today is 11 January, 15 days since the aerial bombing of Gaza began and the 8th day since Israeli ground troops attacked in a massive invasion. I am adding to my open letter an ‘iconic photograph ' used by Khalid Amayreh in an article.

Murdering children is unforgivable

by G.S. <george.salzman@umb.edu> 29 April 2008 to 13 June 2008 this page is at http://www.georgesalzman.org/1-2008-06-murdering-children-is- unforgivble.html on this 'new' website it is also at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/S2/2008-06-13.htm on the 'old' website in an 'old-fashioned' format Wading in the blood of Armageddon       Murdering children – in fact murdering anyone, but especially children – is equally unacceptable to me whether done by German Nazis of the Third Reich, by Palestinian ‘Freedom Fighters’, or by Jewish Nazis of the Israeli military or murderous Israeli fanatical settlers. One simply does not kill children if one is to be a humane being. The Jewish murderers are the product of Zionist ideology which appears to be overwhelmingly dominant in Israel. It is a deadly ideology that may well lead to the obliteration of Jewish people and of millions of others in the course of history.[1]