The Hariri Assassination. By Rannie Amiri

Via: CounterPunch.

Israel’s Fingerprints Surface

In the Middle East, the link between political machinations, espionage and assassination is either clear as day, or clear as mud.

As for the yet unsolved case of the February 2005 murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, mud might be giving way to daylight.

A crackdown on Israeli spy rings operating in Lebanon has resulted in more than 70 arrests over the past 18 months. Included among them are four high-ranking Lebanese Army and General Security officers—one having spied for the Mossad since 1984.

A significant breakthrough in the ongoing investigation occurred in late June and culminated in the arrest of Charbel Qazzi, head of transmission and broadcasting at Alfa, one of Lebanon’s two state-owned mobile service providers.

According to the Lebanese daily As-Safir, Qazzi confessed to installing computer programs and planting electronic chips in Alfa transmitters. These could then be used by Israeli intelligence to monitor communications, locate and target individuals for assassination, and potentially deploy viruses capable of erasing recorded information in the contact lines. Qazzi’s collaboration with Israel reportedly dates back 14 years.

On July 12, a second arrest at Alfa was made. Tarek al-Raba’a, an engineer and partner of Qazzi, was apprehended on charges of spying for Israel and compromising national security. A few days later, a third Alfa employee was similarly detained.

Israel has refused to comment on the arrests. Nevertheless, their apparent ability to have penetrated Lebanon’s military and telecommunication sectors has rattled the country and urgently raised security concerns.

What does any of this have to do with the Hariri assassination?

Outside the obvious deleterious ramifications of high-ranking Lebanese military officers working for Israel, the very legitimacy of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is now in question. The STL is the U.N.-sanctioned body tasked with prosecuting those responsible for the assassination of the late prime minister. On Feb. 14, 2005, 1,000 kg of explosives detonated near Hariri’s passing motorcade, killing him and 21 others.

It is believed the STL will issue indictments in the matter as early as September—relying heavily on phone recordings and mobile transmissions to do so.

Blair’s Medal of Dishonour

Via: Morning Star.

Pouring scorn on the warmongering ex-PM’s latest ‘peace’ accolade

We live in strange times. In October 2009, the fledgling President Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples.”

He declared himself “surprised and deeply humbled,” accepting it as “a call to action.”

You might have thought this meant more “diplomacy and co-operation” were the order of the day. Not quite.

Two months later Obama announced that killing more Afghans and throwing millions of dollars into doing it was his first priority.

He didn’t quite put it like that, though. He told an audience at West Point, New York, that the deployment of 30,000 additional troops was vital to “the common security of the world.”

It would “break the Taliban’s momentum and increase Afghanistan’s capacity.” Goals would not be set “beyond our responsibility, our means or our interests.”

Six-and-a-half months into 2010, US deaths from improvised explosive devices alone are 188 – already exceeding the 152 for the whole year of 2008, in “Operation Enduring Freedom.” Total deaths for 2009 in Afghanistan were 317. This year they are already 231.

Dismemberments, disfigurements and deaths are seemingly part of Obama’s perceived “interests.” Enduring freedom indeed.

Under this shining example of all the Nobel peace prize now stands for, US drones are killing citizens of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

And now amid this Orwellian world, “Teflon” Tony Blair is set to collect the latest in a glittering array of awards for services to humanity – the 2010 Liberty Medal, awarded by the US Constitution Centre.

His contribution to the betterment of mankind has included joining the United States in the Afghanistan invasion and the silent cull of an average of 6,000 Iraqi children a month between 1997 and 2003 by instructing Britain’s UN officials to veto everything from vaccines to Ventolin, insulin to incubators, paper to pencils, female hygiene appliances to aids for children at the schools for the blind and deaf.

Cancer rate in Fallujah worse than Hiroshima. By Tom Eley

Via: WSWS.

The consequences of a US war crime

The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.

According to the authors of a new study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,” the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.

The epidemiological study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH), also finds the prevalence of these conditions in Fallujah to be many times greater than in nearby nations.

The assault on Fallujah, a city located 43 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the most horrific war crimes of our time. After the population resisted the US-led occupation of Iraq—a war of neo-colonial plunder launched on the basis of lies—Washington determined to make an example of the largely Sunni city. This is called “exemplary” or “collective” punishment and is, according to the laws of war, illegal.

The new public health study of the city now all but proves what has long been suspected: that a high proportion of the weaponry used in the assault contained depleted uranium, a radioactive substance used in shells to increase their effectiveness.

In a study of 711 houses and 4,843 individuals carried out in January and February 2010, authors Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, Entesar Ariabi and a team of researchers found that the cancer rate had increased fourfold since before the US attack five years ago, and that the forms of cancer in Fallujah are similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation.

In Fallujah the rate of leukemia is 38 times higher, the childhood cancer rate is 12 times higher, and breast cancer is 10 times more common than in populations in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait. Heightened levels of adult lymphoma and brain tumors were also reported. At 80 deaths out of every 1,000 births, the infant mortality rate in Fallujah is more than five times higher than in Egypt and Jordan, and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Strikingly, after 2005 the proportion of girls born in Fallujah has increased sharply. In normal populations, 1050 boys are born for every 1000 girls. But among those born in Fallujah in the four years after the US assault, the ratio was reduced to 860 boys for every 1000 female births. This alteration is similar to gender ratios found in Hiroshima after the US atomic attack of 1945.

The Regulation and Reform Dilemma. By Richard D. Wolff

Via: Professor Richard D. Wolff’s Website.

With financial reform now newly passed, politicians who supported it go into overdrive to exaggerate its likely effects. Their cultivated enthusiasms culminate in the same promises made by every president and congressperson after similar reforms were enacted in the wake of earlier capitalist crises. “This reform,” they all insist, “will prevent crises in the future.” That promise has been broken every time as our current global capitalist crisis proves yet again.

Reforms and regulations fail for one basic reason. The corporations whose behaviors contributed to the crisis emerge from the processes of reforms and regulations or reregulations with their basic internal structures in tact. They remain organized such that the mass of workers come to work, Monday through Friday, produce whatever their employer then sells, and then go home. The corporation’s Board of Directors continues to make all the key decisions: what, where, and how production will occur, where and how the products will be sold, and how to dispose of the enterprise’s profits. In making those decisions, the Board (15-20 individuals) is responsible and accountable chiefly to the major shareholders who elect them (usually another 15-20 individuals). Each Board’s job is to make money for its corporation.

For the Boards, reforms and regulations are like taxes: obstacles to be minimized, evaded, weakened, and, where possible, eliminated. The goal is to grow the corporation’s profits, market share, etc. As the first receiver of the corporation’s net revenues (including profits), the Board of Directors possesses the funds needed to succeed. Over the last century, Board of Directors have dispersed these funds in ever larger contributions to political candidates, lobbying campaigns, and conservative think tanks publicly promoting low business taxes, deregulation, etc. In these ways, US corporations basically responded to the New Deal’s reforms and regulations in the decades after the 1930s by working around and then against them. In this process, Democrats and Republicans alike did those corporations’ bidding (e.g., Reagan cut business taxes, Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall, etc.).

If we now just enact and impose another set of reforms, regulations, and business taxes – and that is all Obama or either party do, think or talk about – we will shortly have a replay of history. These new reforms and regulations will be undone just like those of the New Deal. The only difference this time will be that corporations will get that job done faster since they have all the accumulated experience in how to do that.

Real reform and regulation from the top, via laws and government administration, can only work if it has a cooperating partner at the productive base of society operating the enterprises which produce the wealth. The existing corporate structure provides no such partner. On the contrary, it represents an enemy of reform and regulation. Corporate boards and major shareholders receive and control the fruits of production (profits). Those are the resources with which they have repeatedly undone reforms and regulations.

The solution therefore lies in a change in the organization of enterprises. Instead of the tiny minority of boards of directors and major shareholders, the decision-making of enterprises ought to be democratized. All those who work in each enterprise ought collectively to function as their own board of directors. Everyone comes to work Mondays through Thursday producing what the enterprise sells. On Friday everyone comes to work to hold meetings and there democratically to decide what, where, and how to produce and what to do with the profits. Such a democratically organized economy would then negotiate with its democratic political counterparts based on residential communities to produce and enforce reforms and regulations as needed and in cooperation as social partners.

Palestinian Children Under Occupation. By Stephen Lendman

Via: SteveLendmanBlog.

The Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations is a Beirut, Lebanon-based organization engaged in “strategic and futuristic studies on the Arab and Muslim worlds, (emphasizing) the Palestinian issue.” In July 2010, it published the latest in its “Am I Not a Human?” series titled, “The Suffering of the Palestinian Child under the Israeli Occupation,” saying:

Palestinian children grow up “under the Israeli occupation, surrounded by cruelty, oppression, killing, starvation and destruction.” Yet, like all children, they dream of playing and living normally and safely. Instead, their father may be dead or in prison, their brother killed, their home destroyed, and their mother forced to give birth at an Israeli checkpoint, risking her and the newborn.

Palestinian children grow up differently from most others, their development “distorted by an occupation,” destroying their innocence, dreams and well-being. They live in constant fear, forced to grow up while still a child. “Actually (they are) grown up, for (they challenge) the toughest circumstances,” helping their families, replacing a parent when lost, and confronting Israeli incursions. “Amazingly….Palestinian child(ren set) the example to mature people,” even when very young.

They live when “we think that the world has become (more) civilized” without cruel colonizations, when global leaders defend human rights, dignity, democratic freedoms, and peace rhetorically, yet are indifferent to oppressed Palestinians, children always the most vulnerable, yet they persist and endure despite enormous hardships and obstacles, what Western children can’t imagine.

From September 2000 (the start of the second Intifada) through 2007 alone, 1,400 children were killed, 230 under age 12. What about others under occupation, with no father, injured or handicapped, hungry, impoverished or in prison? Still more who’ve lost friends and relatives, who live in fear and can’t sleep, who feel helpless when Israelis attack, and unprotected under a ruthless occupation, ongoing for over 43 years, affecting them physically, emotionally, and economically, making them feel isolated, helpless, and unaided, world leaders indifferent to their plight and their families.

Who’s aiding Judaisation? By Nicola Nasser

Via: Al-Ahram Weekly.

While the massive US role in constructing the Jewish state goes unacknowledged, even more shocking is the part played by Palestinians who kowtow to Washington, writes Nicola Nasser

Since 1860, when the American Jewish tycoon Judah Touro donated $60,000 — a fortune for that time — towards the construction of the first Jewish settlement outside the old walls of Jerusalem, public and private American funds have aided the creation and territorial expansion of Israel. Israel today is the foremost recipient of US aid. According to a USAID green paper, between 1946 and 2008 Israel has received more aid than Russia, India, Egypt and Iraq. In fact, the US has poured more money into Israel than it did into the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. However, a recent New York Times article adds a new dimension to the story. On 5 July, the Times reported that, over the last decade more than 40 American groups have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, indicating that the US Treasury is effectively aiding and abetting illegal settlement expansion and the Judaisation of Jerusalem.

While the New York Times honed in on the irony of how a US government organ was facilitating the funnelling of private funds into activities and goals that ran counter to official US policy, and as significant as this is, the article failed to mention that the amount of private tax-exempt “donations” pales in comparison to the public funds that Washington has steadily poured into the Zionist project. For example, the US federal budget for 2011 has earmarked $3 billion in aid for Israel, or 42 per cent of the total amount of aid to be allocated to the so-called Near East for that year. It is also interesting to observe that the policies of USAID, an instrument that the State Department uses to pursue the US’s objectives overseas, also conflict with Washington’s official stances. USAID programmes for the Palestinians effectively exclude East Jerusalem. Its green papers and other official reports and statements make frequent mention of “the West Bank and Gaza” as headings for its activities, but rare are references to East Jerusalem. It is as though, for USAID, East Jerusalem is not an indivisible part of the occupied territories, in spite of Washington’s official acknowledgement that it is and in spite of the inclusion of East Jerusalem among the final status issues in the US- brokered negotiating process between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel, the occupying power. One cannot help but suspect USAID — and by extension the State Department — of perpetrating a certain calculated deception through its deliberate and systematic omission of East Jerusalem in its programmes and documents.

The New Warlord Of Oz. By John Pilger

Via: ZCommunications.

The Order of Mates celebrated beside Sydney Harbour the other day.  This is a venerable masonry in Australian political life that unites the Labor Party with the rich elite known as the big end of town. They shake hands, not hug, though the Silver Bodgie now hugs. In his prime, the Silver Bodgie, aka Bob Hawke or Hawkie, wore suits that shone, wide-bottomed trousers and shirts with the buttons undone. A bodgie was a Australian version of the 1950s English Teddy Boy and Hawke’s thick grey-black coiffure added inches to his abbreviated stature.

Hawke also talked out of the corner of his mouth in an accent that was said to be “ocker”, or working class, although he himself was of the middle class and Oxford educated. As president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, his popularity rested on his reputation as a hard-drinking larrikin, an Australian sobriquet once prized almost as much as an imperial honour. For Hawke, it was the disguise of one whose heart belonged to the big end of town, who cooled the struggles of working Australians, during the rise to power of the new property sharks, minerals barons and tax avoiders.

Indeed, as Labor prime minister in the 1980s, Hawke and his treasurer Paul Keating eliminated the most equitable spread of personal income on earth: a model for the Blairites. And the great Mate across the Pacific loved Hawkie. Victor Marchetti, the CIA strategist who helped draft the treaty that gave America control over its most important spy base in the southern hemisphere, told me, “When Hawke came along … he immediately sent signals that he knew how the game was played and who was buttering his bread. He became very co-operative, and even obsequious.”

The party overlooking Sydney Harbour on 12 July was to launch a book by Hawke’s wife, Blanche d’Alpuget, whose effusions about the Silver Bodgie include his single-handed rescue of Nelson Mandela from apartheid’s clutches. A highlight of the occasion was the arrival of the brand new prime minister, Julia Gillard, who proclaimed Hawke her “role model” and the “gold standard” for running Australia.

This may help explain the extraordinary and brutal rise of Gillard.

To Shoot An Elephant

Via: PULSE.

We’d previously posted the trailer of this important documentary; the full video below is well worth watching.  During Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza in December 2008, Alberto Arce and Mohammad Rujailah were among only a few remaining internationals who embedded with ambulances and among Palestinian civilians as witnesses.  “To Shoot an Elephant” (the title is inspired by a George Orwell essay) is an award-winning documentary available in several language subtitle choices.

A note on translation from the Arabic: its worth reading this piece by Marie Dhumières: ‘Bad Translation Makes Fundamentalists Of Us All‘. Alhamdulilah (Alleluia, thank God!) someone understands the commonality of everyday phrases in Arabic like Enshallah (God willing) and other non-literal religious-sounding phrases as simply part of speech. I would also add the curious tendency by some western translators to leave the word Allah untranslated into God. This is worth keeping in mind when reading off the subtitles.

There Is No Two-State Solution. By Jeremy R. Hammond

Via: Foreign Policy Journal.

The two-state solution is dead. There is no longer any hope for peace or justice in this solution, if there ever was to begin with. There was a time when Israel could have accepted a Palestinian state along the pre-June 1967 armistice line, with minor and mutually agreed upon revisions of the final border, and thereby “secure” its “gains” from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

But the “Jewish state” passed up this long-standing opportunity by rejecting the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and deliberately sabotaging all efforts by the international community to seek a final resolution by implementing the consensus on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Rejecting peace, Israel, with U.S. support, sought to change the facts on the ground by continuing it’s illegal occupation, constructing an illegal wall that would effectively annex major swaths of the West Bank, and continuing the illegal construction of Jewish colonies in Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem.

By such means, and by repression and violence, Israel sought to steal additional land from the Arab population, beyond that which it took by ethnically cleansing Palestine in 1948, at a time when Jews legally owned only 7 percent of the land of Palestine, compared with the 85 percent of the land owned by Arabs.

But Israel’s policies have failed to achieve their intended aims. Rather, by preventing implementation of the two-state solution and destroying its viability, Israel has made a one-state solution inevitable.

The realization that, U.S. support notwithstanding, the Israeli government cannot for much longer sustain itself as a racist, criminal regime, is setting in, and versions of the one-state solution are “now being advocated by leading figures in Likud and among the settlers“.

“Peace Envoy” Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent

Via: Media Lens.

Last month, the Independent carried an interview with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and now “the international community’s Middle East envoy.” (Donald Macintyre, ‘Tony Blair: Former PM urges Israel to ease Gaza blockade’, Independent, June 4, 2010; http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/tony-blair-former-pm-urges-israel-to-ease-gaza-blockade-1991105.html)

Taken literally, the “international community” refers to the UN General Assembly, or perhaps to a majority of its members. But in media Newspeak, the term stands for the United States joined by its allies and clients. As Noam Chomsky has noted: “Accordingly, it is a logical impossibility for the United States to defy the international community.” (Chomsky, ‘The Crimes of “Intcom”‘, Foreign Policy, September 2002; http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200209–.htm)

As for the “peace process” being facilitated by the “peace envoy”, Gideon Levy, a columnist in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, comments:

“The masked ball is at its peak: Preening each other, Obama and Netanyahu have proved that even their heavy layer of makeup can no longer hide the wrinkles. The worn-out, wizened old face of the longest ‘peace process’ in history has been awarded another surprising and incomprehensible extension. It’s on its way nowhere.” (Levy, ‘An excellent meeting’, Haaretz, July 8, 2010; http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/an-excellent-meeting-1.300686)

This, Independent readers were told portentously, was Blair’s first newspaper interview since the Israeli navy “halted” the Gaza peace flotilla. Questions were posed by Donald Macintyre, the paper’s Jerusalem correspondent since 2004 and, previously, its chief political commentator for eight years. (Macintyre, op.cit.)

Macintyre began by channelling Blair’s call for “an easing of the ‘counterproductive’ blockade of Gaza” and a new “strategy” which “isolates the extremists and helps the people and not one that operates the other way round.”

Blair, the reporter told us, “stressed more than once that the world needed to understand Israel’s deep-seated security concerns and the fact that [Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit, who has been held for almost four years by Gaza militants, was a ‘huge issue’ for the Israeli public. Mr Blair again called for Sgt Shalit’s release.”

Blair’s sympathy for Israel’s security concerns was clear, and dutifully reflected in Macintyre’s piece:

“Mr Blair said the captivity of Sgt Shalit and the fact that ‘Hamas as an entity is hostile’ would be a ‘very difficult situation for any country’.”

Macintyre relayed Blair’s assertion “that not enough international attention was paid to the fact that ‘the events that we see across TV screens are perceived completely differently in Israel, and people have got to understand that the pressure on [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu in respect of Gaza from many quarters is to be tougher’.”

The “once-flourishing Gaza businessmen” Blair had met at an international Bethlehem conference on the Palestinian economy were, said Blair, “victims of the Hamas takeover, not supporters of it”.

The whole tone of the Independent interview was uncritical and respectful; a bland and meek summation of the sincere and well-intentioned thoughts of a man with the blood of untold numbers of victims on his hands: men, women and children in Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia and, indeed, in Palestine itself.

BP’s Scheme to Swindle the “Small People”. By Dahr Jamail

Via: T R U T H O U T.

Clint Guidry, the Louisiana shrimp harvester representative on the Louisiana Shrimp Task Force created by executive order of Gov. Bobby Jindal, has called BP "liars" and "killers." (Photo: Erika Blumenfeld)

Gulf Coast fishermen and others with lost income claims against BP are outraged by a recent announcement that the $20 billion government-administered claim fund will subtract money they earn by working on the cleanup effort from any future damage claims against BP. This move, according to lawyers in Louisiana working on behalf of Louisiana fishermen and others affected by the BP oil disaster, contradicts an earlier BP statement in which the company promised it would do no such thing.

Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed by President Obama as the independent administrator of the Gulf Claims Facility for the $20 billion BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster compensation fund, said yesterday that the wages earned by people working on BP’s cleanup will be deducted from their claims against the company.

He said the fund is designed to compensate fishermen and others for their lost income, and if BP is already paying someone to help skim oil and perform other cleanup work, those wages will be subtracted from the amount they’re eligible to claim from the fund.

Attorney Stephen Herman, one of two interim liaison counsel for cases pending in the eastern district of Louisiana before Judge Carl J. Barbier, told Truthout he has spoken with Feinberg and that this recent announcement contradicts an earlier statement made by BP, in which the company clearly said it would not do this.

A letter dated May 2, 2010, from Herman’s firm, Herman, Herman, Katz & Cotlar LLP, in New Orleans, sent to Murray Greene in BP’s Legal Department, asked Greene to confirm in writing that BP agreed to destroy voluntary waiver and release forms issued to response workers at a meeting in Venice, Louisiana, and stated:

“Lastly, we inquired as to BP’s position with respect to any future claim of credit or set-off due to payments made to individuals who are assisting BP in mitigating its exposure to individuals and others for the unprecedented environmental and human losses as a result of this incident. It is our position that since my clients are effectively helping BP minimize its own future exposure as well as attempting to preserve the wetlands and the environment that BP ought not to seek any offset or reduction of claims as a result of any payments made to these individuals who courageously take on the dirty work of cleaning up BP’s mess.”

The next day, May 3, A.T. Chenault, a lawyer representing BP, responded in writing via letter stating, “We have no personal knowledge of the presentation of a Voluntary Waiver and Release to numerous people from Plaquemines Parish in Venice, Louisiana. However, it is the position of BP that any such documents will be rescinded and not binding on anyone signing same.”

Chenault’s letter concluded with a statement that directly contradicts Feinberg’s recent announcement.

“Lastly, we confirm that BP will not offset payments to vessel owners or other volunteers against claims they might have,” wrote Cheault, who is with the firm Fowler, Rodriguez, Valdes-Fauli.

Netanyahu Brags About How Easy It Is To Manipulate The United States

Via: Political Theatrics.

The following is the English transcript of the video alongside the Hebrew as translated by Dena Shunra starting at 3:15 - You can find her website here at hebrew.shunra.net:

Background: Netanyahu is visiting the home of a woman who just lost her husband, and she is being cheered by five other widows. There’s a young boy present, and Netanyahu asks (at about 3:00) that they turn off the camera so he can speak to them “freely”. The camera gets turned on again in mid-conversation.

אתם מתחילים עכשיו להבין את פרוש הסיסמה “יש”ע זה כאן”?מה ערפאת רוצה? הוא רוצה התנחלות אחת גדולה. קוראים לה “תל אביב”.	Netanyahu: Are you starting to understand what the slogan “Judea and Samaria are right here”?What does Arafat want? He wants one big settlement. It’s called “Tel Aviv”.
אשה: כן. זה מה שכלתי, שהיא באה מאנגליה, אומרת. “גם תל-אביב היא התנחלות.”	Woman: Yes, that’s what my daughter in law, who comes from England, that what she says: “Tel Aviv is a settlement too.”
ביב: מבחינתם, לדעתי, גם המים הטריטוריאליים שלהו הם שלהם.	Netanyahu: As far as they’re concerned, I think, our territorial waters are also their?
-?	[inaudible]
זה שהם רוצים אותנו בים, כן. אבל בים (מצביע הצידה) הערבים ממקדים כרגע מלחמת טרור והם חושבים שזה ישבור אותנו. הדבר העיקרי, קודם כל, הוא לתת להם מכות. לא רק מכה, מכות כל כך מכאיבות שהמחיר יהיה כבד מנשוא. כרגע המחיר לא כבד מנשוא. התקפה רבת היקף על הרשות הפלסטינית. להביא אותם לפחד שהכול מתמוטט.	Netanyahu: The fact is that they want us in the sea, yes, but over there in the sea [points aside]. The Arabs are currently focusing a war of terror and they think it will break us. The main thing, first of all, is to hit them. Not just one hit, so many painful its that the price will be to heavy to be borne. The price is not too heavy to be borne, now. A broad attack on the Palestinian Authority. To bring them to the point of being afraid that everything is collapsing.
אישה: הם לא פוחדים, הם צוחקים עלינו. הם יורים עלינו לתוך היישוב בצחוק…	Woman: They’re not afraid, they’re making fun of us. They shoot into our settlement and make fun of us.
ביבי: פחד שהכול מתמוטט. זה מה שמביא אותם ל… (מסובב אצבעות)	Netanyahu: Fear that everything is collapsing. That’s what leads them to… [makes a hand motion]
אישה: רגע, אבל אז עוד פעם העולם יגיד מה אתם כובשים?	Woman: wait a moment, but then the world will say “how come you’re conquering again?”
ביבי: העולם, העולם לא יגיד כלום. העולם יגיד שאנחנו מגנים.	Netanyahu: the world won’t say a thing. The world will say we’re defending.
אישה: אתה לא מפחד מהעולם, ביבי?	Woman: Aren’t you afraid of the world, Bibi?
ביבי: במיוחד היום, עם אמריקה. אני יודע מה זה אמריקה. אמריקה זה דבר שאפשר להזיז אותו בקלות. להזיז לכיוון הנכון.	Netanyahu: Especially today, with America. I know what America is. America is something that can easily be moved. Moved to the right correction.
ילד: הם אומרים שהם בעדנו, אבל, כאילו…	Child: They say they’re for us, but, it’s like…
ביבי: הם לא יפריעו לנו. לא יפריעו לנו.	Netanyahu: They won’t get in our way. They won’t get in our way.
ילד: מצד שני, אם אנחנו עושים איזה משהו, אז הם…	Child: On the other hand, if we do some something, then they…
ביבי: אז נניח שהם אומרים משהו. אז אומרים… אמרו! 80 אחוז מהאמריקאים תומכים בנו. זה אבסורד. יש לנו שם תמיכה כזו ואנחנו אומרים “מה נעשה עם הזה…” תראי, הממשל ההוא היה פרו-פלסטיני בצורה קיצונית. לא פחדתי לתמרן שם. לא פחדתי להתעמת עם קלינטון. לא פחדתי להתעמת עם האו”ם. בלאו הכי אני משלם את המחיר, אז עדיף לי כבר לקבל את תמורה. תמורה לאגרה.	Netanyahu: So let’s say they say something. So they said it! They said it! 80% of the Americans support us. It’s absurd. We have that kind of support and we say “what will we do with the…” look. That administration was extremely pro-Palestinian. I wasn’t afraid to maneuver there. I was not afraid to clash with Clinton. I was not afraid to clash with the United Nations. I was paying the price anyway, I preferred to receive the value. Value for the price.
ילד: אוסלו… מילא הבאנו להם דברים, ואנחנו לא יכולים לקחת להם אותם בחזרה, כי הם לא ייתנו להם אותם בחזרה.	Child: But never mind that we gave them things, and we can’t take them back. Because they won’t give them back to us.
ביבי: (עוצר אותו):  קודם כל, קודם כל אוסלו זו מערכת – אתה צודק. א’, אני לא יודע מה אפשר לקחת או אי אפשר.	Netanyahu (holds his and to stop him from speaking): first of all, first of all Oslo is a system –  you’re right. A, I don’t know what can be taken and can’t be taken.
אשה: יש לו דעות פולייטיות, תאמין לי.	Woman: he has political opinions, believe me.
ביבי: הוא צודק.	Netanyahu: He’s right.
אשה: הוא אמר לאריק שרון דברים שאני אמרתי לו: זה לא – זה לא דעה של ילד. הסכמי אוסלו זה אסון.	Woman: He said such things to Arik Sharonthat I told him: that’s not – that’ not a child’s opinion. The Oslo Accords are a disaster.
ביבי: כן, את זה את יודעת ואני ידעתי.	Netanyahu: Yes. You know that and I knew that.
אשה: יפה, אז חשבתי ש…	Woman: Fine, so I thought that…
ביבי: צריך שהעם יידע.	Netanyahu: The people [nation] has to know.
אשה: נכון. אבל חשבתי שראש הממשלה כן ידע, והוא יעשה הכל כדי, איכשהו, לא לעשות דברים קריטיים, כמו מסירת חברון ש…	Woman: Right. But I thought that the prime minister did know, and that he’d do everything so that, somehow, not to do critical things, like handing over Hebron, that…
ביבי: מה היו הסכמי אוסלו? הסכמי אוסלו שהכנסת חתמה עליהם – שאלות אותי, לךפני הבחירות: אתה תקיים?” אמרתי: “כן, כפוף להדדיות וצמצום הנסיגות.” “אבל איך אתה מצמצם את הנסיגות?” אני אתן פירוש להסכם שיאפשר לי להפסיק את הדהירה הזאת לקווי 67′. איך עשינו את זה?	Netanyahu: What were the Oslo Accords? The Oslo Accords, which the Knesset signed, I was asked, before the elections: “Will you act according to them?” and I answered: “yes, subject to mutuality and limiting the retreats.” “But how do you intend to limit the retreats?” “I’ll give such interpretation to the Accords that will make it possible for me to stop this galloping to the ’67 [armistice] lines. How did we do it?
קריין: הסכם אוסלו קבע בשעתו כי ישראל תמסור בהדרגה שטחים לפלסטינים בשלוש פעימות שונות, אלא אם בשטחים האמורים יימצאו התנחלויות, או אתרים צבאיים. כאן מזה ביבי פרצה.	Narrator: The Oslo Accords stated at the time that Israel would gradually hand over territories to the Palestinians in three different pulses, unless the territories in question had settlements or military sites. This is where Netanyahu found a loophole.
אף אחד לא אמר מה זה אתרים צבאיים מוגדרים. אתרים צבאיים מוגדרים, אני אמרתי, אלה אזורי ביטחון. בקעת הירדן, מבחינתי, זה אזור צבאי מוגדר.	Netanyahu: No one said what defined military sites. Defined military sites, I said, were security zones. As far as I’m concerned, the Jordan Valley is a defined military site.
אישה: נכון. (צוחקת) יישובי בית שאן. עמק בית שאן.	Woman: Right [laughs]. The Beit She’an settlements. The Beit She’an Valley.
ביבי: לך תגיד. לך תגיד. אבל אז היתה שאלה, מי יגדיר מה זה “אתרים צבאיים מוגדרים”. קיבלתי מכתב מכריסטופר. אלי ואל ערפאת באותה שעה, שאומר שישראל, וישראל בלבד, היא זו שתגדיר מה הם, את מיקום האתרים הצבאיים האלה, ואת גודלם. עכשיו, הם לא רצו לתת את המכתב הזה, אז לא נתתי את הסכם חברון. הפסקתי את ישיבת הממשלה, אמרתי: “אני לא חותם”. רק כשהגיע המכתב, תוך כדי הישיבה אלי ואל ערפאת, חתמתי על הסכם חברון, או אשררתי אותו. הוא כבר היה חתום קודם. למה זה חשוב? כי מאותו הרגע עצרתי בעצם את הסכם אוסלו.	Netanyahu: How can you tell. How can you tell? But then the question came up of just who would define what Defined Military Sites were. I received a letter – to my and to Arafat, at the same time – which said that Israel, and only Israel, would be the one to define what those are, the location of those military sites and their size. Now, they did not want to give me that letter, so I did not give the Hebron Agreement. I stopped the government meeting, I said: “I’m not signing.” Only when the letter came, in the course of the meeting, to my and to Arafat, only then did I sign the Hebron Agreement. Or rather, ratify it, it had already been signed. Why does this matter? Because at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo Accord.
אשה: ולמרות זאת, אדם משלנו, סליחה, שידע שזו תרמית, ושאנחנו הולכים להתאבד עם הסכם אוסלו, נותן להם לדוגמה את חברון. את זה אף פעם לא הבנתי.	Woman: And despite that, one of our own peope, excuse me, who knew it was a swindle, and that we were going to commit suicide with the Oslo Accord, gives them – for example – Hebron. I never understood that.
ביבי: באמת חברון זה כואב. זה כואב. זה הדבר שכואב. אחד מהרבנים המפורסמים, שאני מאוד מכבד אותו, רב של ארץ ישראל, אמר לי: מה היה אבא שלך אומר?” הלכתי לאבא שלי. אתם יודעים קצת על העמדות של אבא שלי?	Netanyahu: Indeed, Hebron hurts. It hurts. It’s the thing that hurts. One of the famous rabbis, whom I very much respect, a rabbi of Eretz Yisrael, he said to me: “What would your father say?”  I went to my father. Do you know a little about my father’s positiond?
אישה: כן	Woman: Yes.
אבי הוא…	Netanyahu: My father is…
ילד: לא (צוחק)	Child: No. [laughs]
אישה: הוא יקרא עוד מעט.	Woman: He’ll read in a little while.
ביבי: הוא לא בדיוק יונה צחורה, כמו שאומרים. אז אבי שמע את השאלה ואמר: “תגיד לרב שהסבא שלך, הרב נתן מיליקובסקי, היה יהודי חכם. תגיד לו שעדיף לתת שני אחוז מאשר לתת מאה אחוז.” וזו הברירה שעומדת כאן על הפרק. אתה נתת שני אחוז ובזה עצרת את הנסיגה הזאת. במקום מאה אחוזים.”  החוכמה היא לא להיות שם ולהישבר. החוכמה היא להיות שם ולשלם מחיר מזערי.	Netanyahu: He’s not exactly a lily-white dove, as they say. So my father heard the question and said: “Tell the rabbi that your grandfather, Rabbi Natan Milikowski, was a smart Jew. Tell him it would be better to give two percent than to give a hundred percent. And that’s the choice here. You gave two percent and in that way you stopped the withdrawal. Instead of a hundred percent.” The trick is not to be there and break down. The trick is to be there and pay a minimal price.
אישה: אמן כראש ממשלה.	Woman: May you say that as prime minister.
ביבי: אני מעריך שכן. אני מעריך שזה יקרה.	Netanyahu: In my estimate that will happen.

Gordon Levy from Haaretz on the Netanyahu video:

This video should have been banned for broadcast to minors. This video should have been shown in every home in Israel, then sent to Washington and Ramallah. Banned for viewing by children so as not to corrupt them, and distributed around the country and the world so that everyone will know who leads the government of Israel. Channel 10 presented: The real (and deceitful ) face of Binyamin Netanyahu. Broadcast on Friday night on “This Week with Miki Rosenthal,” it was filmed secretly in 2001, during a visit by Citizen Netanyahu to the home of a bereaved family in the settlement of Ofra, and astoundingly, it has not created a stir.