If Americans Knew is dedicated to providing Americans with essential information they need to know about Israel and Palestine. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/new.html To better understand the Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations, it is important to understand the original 1947 UN action on Israel-Palestine. The common representation of Israel's birth is that the UN created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the US governmental establishment supported it. All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/realstory.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/realstory.html Editors at McClatchy's Sacramento Bee recently made a series of questionable decisions in their coverage of a local event. They ran news stories about opposition to an upcoming event beforehand and accusations against it afterward, but didn't cover the event itself. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/ep-sacbee.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/ep-sacbee.html While many Americans may believe that US policies are designed to address American needs, America's new Ambassador to Israel explains that this is far from the case. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/spinprotest.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/spinprotest.html Today's New York Times front-page story on Egyptian protests against the Israeli embassy largely neglects a primary cause of the anger: Israeli forces' killing of five Egyptian policemen. Egyptian anger over these deaths grew even greater when Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak refused to apologize. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/spinprotest.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/spinprotest.html Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper recently published an article calling Israel "The New Golden Country" for young people from around the world. It reports that Israel boasts "an ever-increasing GDP, a strong currency, and a lower unemployment rate than the US." http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/pay.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/pay.html He looks at the camera with bright eyes and the beginning of a smile, wearing a miniature dark blue zipper sweatshirt, the cuffs folded up a bit to make it fit. I can imagine his mother dressing him that morning, making sure he would be warm enough. I wonder if she's the one who took the picture. Someone has written on the photo "kisses." http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/mincolldamage.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/mincolldamage.html You might think that 20 percent of the American Congress going on all-expenses-paid, week-long junkets to a foreign country -- paid for by a lobby for that country -- would be newsworthy, especially when the top congressional leaders of both parties are leading the trips. You would be wrong. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/lobbydominates.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/lobbydominates.html Janet McMahon of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs explains the history and impact of "stealth PACs." Why has the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spawned a network of PACs across America? Why don't any claim affiliation to their creator or use descriptive names? Shouldn't they be consolidated to have reduced total contribution limits like other PACs? How has the American Israel Public Affairs Committee secretly coordinated stealth PACs, and what has been done about it? http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-stealthpacs.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-stealthpacs.html US media widely and repeatedly reported on the horrific March 11th murder of three small Israeli children and their parents. While no one yet knows who committed this grotesque act, reports presume that the murderers were Palestinian, and for this reason the incident is receiving major attention. Various heads of state, including President Obama, have condemned it. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/itamar.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/itamar.html In an inversion of journalistic ethics, the Sacramento Bee reported on opposition to an event before and after it took place, but didn't cover the event itself. It featured an entire report on accusations against a flier, but didn't include a response from the flier's authors. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/sacbee.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/sacbee.html Minimally explored in all the coverage of the momentous Egyptian uprising taking place over the last 10 days [Jan-Feb 2011] are the Israeli connections. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/egyptrev.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/egyptrev.html Alison Weir, CounterPunch - There is something particularly horrifying when someone is shot in the head. Perhaps it's the gruesome image, the destruction of the brain, the clear intent to kill. The recent shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is made even more nightmarish by the location of her devastating injury. Those of us who focus on Israel-Palestine are acutely aware of this horror. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/giffords.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/giffords.html "How are we going to beat back the anti-Israel divestment resolution at Berkeley? We're going to make certain that pro-Israel students take over the student government and reverse the vote. That is how AIPAC operates in our nation's capitol. This is how AIPAC must operate on our nation's campuses." http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-aipacstudents.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-aipacstudents.html I am disturbed by an article that the Center published in the fall 2007 issue of "Intelligence Report"--the Center's magazine. The item "Navy Extremist Disciplined--But Not for Extremism" is on page 11. The article focuses on Navy officer John Sharpe Jr. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/splc.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/splc.html NPR's reporter Linda Gradstein has done it again. She has managed to take a "must report" story on Israeli-Palestinian relations -- the new report by B'Tselem on the non-combatants, including children, killed by the Israeli military during the Israeli attack on Gaza -- and report it in a manner which minimizes the story's potential to create opposition to Israeli treatment of Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/gradsteindistortion.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/gradsteindistortion.html The First Intifada was a grassroots uprising against Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Intifada is an Arabic word for "civil uprising" that literally means "shaking off." http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/firstintifada.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/firstintifada.html It's interesting to find myself a small factor in the California race for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. But before I get to that, it's necessary to take a look at the campaigns themselves, and the system in which they're running. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-weir.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-weir.html With President Obama's Middle East peace plans so completely -- and humiliatingly -- shipwrecked on the rocks of Israeli intransigence, it's time for him to consider a new approach, at least if he's serious about his announced objectives. In the spirit of bipartisanship that he's so dedicated to, I suggest he look to the way Dwight D. Eisenhower handled a similar predicament a half-century ago. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ob-norr.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ob-norr.html Recent exposes revealing that Ethan Bronner, the New York Times Israel-Palestine bureau chief, has a son in the Israeli military have caused a storm of controversy that continues to swirl and generate further revelations. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/bronner2.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/bronner2.html On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie was killed by Israeli soldiers driving a bulldozer. Please help us keep Rachel's memory and message alive! Order materials to distribute to your friends, family, neighbors, and community. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/rc-materials.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/rc-materials.html Contact information for the U.S. government and media. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/congress.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/congress.html International security and counterterrorism expert Philip Giraldi argues that Israel's flourishing high tech industry is built on widespread theft of American research. This has undermined American companies and endangered American security. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/download/StealingSuccess.pdf http://www.ifamericansknew.org/download/StealingSuccess.pdf And there is another aspect of Israel's growing high tech sector that he understandably chose to ignore because it is extremely sleazy. That is the significant advantage that Israel has gained by systematically stealing American technology with both military and civilian applications. The US developed technology is then reverse engineered and used by the Israelis to support their own exports with considerably reduced research and development costs, giving them a huge advantage against American companies. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/sp-giraldi.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/sp-giraldi.html Stuart Littlewood highlights the BBC's chronic pro-Israel bias, from allowing untruths about Israel's onslaught on Gaza in 2008-09 to go unchallenged, to its failure to provide accurate context about the Israeli township of Sderot, to its routine willingness to give disproportionate airtime to Israeli spokesmen and lobbyists. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/bewareofbbc.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/bewareofbbc.html Ethan Bronner is the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief. As such, he is the editor responsible for all the news coming out of Israel-Palestine. It is his job to decide what gets reported and what doesn't; what goes in a story and what gets cut. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/bronner.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/bronner.html Noam Chomsky has been called the US leading intellectual by pundits and even some sectors of the mass media. He has a large audience throughout the world especially in academic circles, in large part because of his vocal criticism of US foreign policy and many of the injustices resulting from those policies. Chomsky has nonetheless been reviled by all of the major Jewish and pro-Israel organizations and media for his criticism of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians even as he has defended the existence of the Zionist state of Israel. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-fourteen.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-fourteen.html Eric Rozenman's Dec. 11 Op-Ed article, "Israeli settlements are more than legitimate," is legal nonsense that disregards history. He is correct in his observation that Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine permitted "close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes," but the conclusions he then draws are flatly wrong. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/illegal.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/illegal.html In your recent column in the New York Times, "Ten for the Next Ten," you wrote: "I'll place my hopes on the possibility -- however remote at the moment -- that...people in places filled with rage and despair, places like the Palestinian territories, will in the days ahead find among them their Gandhi, their King, their Aung San Suu Kyi." Your hope has already been fulfilled in the Palestinian territories. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/bono.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/bono.html Much planning had gone into our family vacation in Israel-Palestine. We could spare only the last two weeks of 2009, and so had developed an uncompromising itinerary for each day, allowing a mere half-day to recover from jet lag from our trip from California. After devoting most of the first week to visiting holy places in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho, we were, in the words of our 17-year-old, quite "churched out." We are a typical American family in at least one regard: we have two other children (ages five and two), and we are all blessed with limited attention span. Absorbing detailed references to the Old and New Testaments in the places we visited was beyond our capabilities. Our hired tour guide and driver, Issa Habash, had long ago taken notice of our monumental ignorance and had given up on reciting chapter and verse from the Bible. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/executions.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/cur_sit/executions.html This documentary on the deliberate killing and intimidation of journalists in conflict zones, examines how international reporters became targets. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/shootmessenger.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/shootmessenger.html We, a group of Christian Palestinians, after prayer, reflection and an exchange of opinion, cry out from within the suffering in our country, under the Israeli occupation, with a cry of hope in the absence of all hope, a cry full of prayer and faith in a God ever vigilant, in God's divine providence for all the inhabitants of this land. Inspired by the mystery of God's love for all, the mystery of God's divine presence in the history of all peoples and, in a particular way, in the history of our country, we proclaim our word based on our Christian faith and our sense of Palestinian belonging -- a word of faith, hope and love. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/moment-truth.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/moment-truth.html John Pilger: In a speech in Chicago, John Pilger describes how propaganda has become such a potent force in our lives and, in the words of one of its founders, represents 'an invisible government'. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/invisgov.html http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/invisgov.html