| Author | Message | | Jefferson Davis | | Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 6:10 am Post subject: What happened on October 13, '07 in Calf. and LIBERTY |
| What happened on October 13, 2007 in Calif. and LIBERTY
October 15, 2007 08:49 PM
Eileen Fleming http://www.arabisto.com/p_blogEntry.cfm?blogEntryID=860
[Irvine, California, October 13, 2007 ] I arrived at the Irvine Marriott last Friday evening because I was scheduled to speak the next day at "The No More Wars for Israel Conference" which had been dedicated to Mordecahi Vanunu.
I learned then that the event had been canceled.
Mark Glenn, one of the Coordinators, informed me that three days prior, the Marriott requested payment of $20,000.00, although there was no such requirement in the contract.
Mark told me he was able to secure $8,000 within twenty-four
hours and even after a visit from a representative from CAIR, Council of American-Islamic Relations [http://www.cair.com/]informed the Marriott's Events Coordinator that twenty speakers from around the Nation were on their way; the event would not happen at the Marriott as planned.
Dr. Hesham Tillawi, Palestinian American, Political Analyst and TV show host of "Current Issues" reported that he spoke with Marriott Representative, Diana Harrison. "I asked her if we came up with all the money, would that be OK and she responded, 'The event has been canceled.'"
I had traveled from Florida to speak about how freedom of speech had been denied in Israel to Mordechai Vanunu, and was aghast to learn it also had been squelched in Irvine.
While I did not agree with many things some of the speakers said during the rescheduled event at a local church that began nine hours after originally planned, I uphold that all people have the right to think their own thoughts and speak their own minds.
The conference continued on Sunday, but I had already split and found out on Monday that some of the speakers, who spoke on Sunday, were white supremacists. I thank God I was not in attendance, for I abhor and detest any ideology which presupposes any person is superior to any other.
I am however grateful to have made the long trip to meet the diversity that is America; Christians, Muslims, agnostics and two Orthodox Rabbis against the ideology of Zionism, but most especially to have had the opportunity to hear the President of the USS LIBERTY Veterans Association, Phillip F. Tourney.
On June 8, 2007, in the Marriott Courtyard in Tysons Corner, Virginia, Tourney held a press conference regarding the fact that 40 years ago, "Thirty four Americans were brutally slaughtered, 172 wounded [including himself and that] Israel deliberately attacked America's virtually unarmed USS LIBERTY in international waters, knowing full well our identity, in an assault that lasted as long as the attack on Pearl Harbor…the government of Israel put a knife in the back of America…the Israelis began the attack with unmarked jet fighters using rockets, canons, and napalm on our unprotected ship…three motor torpedo boats…fired six torpedoes at us, one hitting its mark, midship's on the starboard side, instantly blowing to bits 25 of America's finest young men."
On October 13, 2007 Phillip remarked to the crowd who had gathered at the conference that began nine hours late in a California church, "It was God that kept us afloat."
I contend that it was also God who kept the Saturday event afloat and as the saying goes; it's not over 'till the fat lady sings.
Forty years ago the American government colluded with Israel in the treasonous cover-up of the attack on the USS LIBERTY and the survivors "were ordered to remain silent under threat of court martial, imprisonment or worse...The U.S. government has never challenged the obviously phony Israeli excuse of "mistaken identity" nor have they attempted to expose the dishonorable cover up that continues to date. Truth and America's honor were ignominiously sacrificed to provide cover for Israel's transparent lies and despicable act of perfidy." -Phillip F. Tourney, President USS LIBERTY Veterans Association, June 8, 2007, Marriott Courtyard, VA.
All the Veterans are asking for is an open and independent panel to investigate the horrific and unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty. They have written to President George W. Bush requesting this just action only to receive pro-forma letters from a White House staffer stating that the attack had already been investigated.
"This is a bald-faced lie!" Tourney wrote in a postscript to our Commander In Chief in his most recent appeal.
"The declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel…strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots -- communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel. The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation."-
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/tuesday/
chi-liberty_tuesoct02,0,1050179.story?coll=chi_business_ugc
On October 13th Tourney stated, "Israel got away with cold blooded murder! Forty years ago the CIA and the NSA all threatened the survivors not to talk! They scared me so much, I didn't for twenty years…Our keel was broken, we should have sunk but God kept us alive…Israel wanted the world to believe that Egypt [committed the crime]…Thirty-four were killed and 172 were wounded out of a crew of 294…The Israeli planes marked out the Star of David so we wouldn't know who was attacking us…Eighteen hours after the attack we were rescued…McNamara said, 'We're not going to attack our ally.' How did McNamara know who attacked us?"
"J.Q. "Tony" Hart, then a chief petty officer assigned to a U.S. Navy relay station in Morocco that handled communications between Washington and the 6th Fleet, remembered listening as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in Washington, ordered Rear Adm. Lawrence Geis, commander of the America's carrier battle group, to bring the jets home. When Geis protested that the Liberty was under attack and needed help, Hart said, McNamara retorted that "President [Lyndon] Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors."
"The Johnson administration did not publicly dispute Israel's claim that the attack had been nothing more than a disastrous mistake. But internal White House documents obtained from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library show that the Israelis' explanation of how the mistake had occurred was not believed. Except for McNamara, most senior administration officials from Secretary of State Dean Rusk on down privately agreed with Johnson's intelligence adviser, Clark Clifford, who was quoted in minutes of a National Security Council staff meeting as saying it was "inconceivable" that the attack had been a case of mistaken identity. The attack "couldn't be anything else but deliberate," the NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter, later told Congress. [IBID]
States and nations have obligations. People have rights.
American democracy is based on the self evident truth that all people are created equal; all are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…[and] that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted…and derive their powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes unjust and destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to rise up and alter or abolish it. –slight paraphrase from "The Declaration of Independence"
I in no way am against the state of Israel, in no way do I want it abolish it, I only desire that it uphold its promise:
On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations." - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the establishment of Israel.
EVERY day, the U.S.A. gives more than $7,023,288.00 of we the peoples tax dollars to Israel and over $108 billion since 1948. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
1,024 Israelis and at least 4,274 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. [IBID]
7,633 Israelis and 31,531 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000? [IBID]
Israel has been targeted by at least 65 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by none.[IBID]
One Israeli is being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 10,756 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel, including children under the age of 16 and women.
For the 2005-2006 election cycle Pro-Israel Funds to Congress totaled $3,277,693 and the total Arab American PAC Funds to Congress was a mere $80,500. - Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2007.
During President George Washington's Farewell Address on September 17, 1796 he warned, "The nation which indulges toward another…is in some degree a slave…a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."
During President George W. Bush's, Second Inaugural Address he promised, "In the long run, there is no JUSTICE without FREEDOM. There can be no human rights without LIBERTY. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for liberty, we stand with you."
The man some call prophet and some call God promised that it is the Peacemakers who are the children of God [Matthew 5:9] and "You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free."-John 8:32
In 2006, American Israeli, Jeff Halper, Founder and Coordinator of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and a Noble Peace Prize Nominee for 2006, told me: "Israel is a not a democracy but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control."
"The fierce urgency of now" [Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.] should compel we the people for justice, liberty, freedom and truth to inundate our elected officials to do the right thing, for American democracy is based on the self evident truth that all people are created equal; all are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…[and] that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted…and derive their powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes unjust and destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to rise up and alter or abolish it.
May we the people rise up and demand our independence from the ethnocracy of Israel and honor our veterans by demanding JUSTICE for the USS LIBERTY | |  | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
