1) There were "...... 750,000 Palestinians that were forced from their homes in 1948, ....." http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/refugees.html
2) Menachem Begin, head of one of the Jewish terrorist groups, called this a “splendid act of conquest,” and stated: “As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest.” Zionist/Israeli forces committed 33 massacres altogether. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ A Synopsis of the Israel/Palestine Conflict.
3) Today, after 60 years of killings, ethnic cleansing and babaric genocide by scores of Menachem Begins, Israel, the US and Britain end up with 1.5 million refugees in Gaza alone, never mind those in The West Bank and neighbouring countries.
4) Never mind what Menachem Begin thanked his god for, it seems that God has His own plan.
==================
Pictures (Of Death That) Speak A Thousand Words.
1)
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/phopto-gallery-of-gazas-martyred-children/
2)
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/actual-photographs-of-hamas-most-wanted-terrorists/
3)
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/dead-palestinian-children-have-names-too/
4) Update Jan 16 2009 6:15 pm -- watch slide at http://www.ikhwanweb.com/
5) Watch another slide at: http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/01/16/gaza-the-tip-of-an-iceberg/
6) Update Jan 24th 2009
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/photo-essay-never-to-forgive-never-to-forget-the-child-martyrs-of-gaza/
SSUS - PERJUANGAN YANG BERTERUSAN
Satu Bahasa Satu Bangsa Satu Negara
Showing posts with label Israel Palestine America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel Palestine America. Show all posts
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Victory Even In Death
Victory Even In Death - aview by an Israeli peace activist.
Israel Is Losing This War
By Uri Avnery, January 11, 2009
NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.
Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.
This is the description that would now appear in the history books – if the Germans had won the war.
Absurd? No more than the daily descriptions in our media, which are being repeated ad nauseam: the Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of Gaza as “hostages” and exploit the women and children as “human shields”, they leave us no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured.
IN THIS WAR, as in any modern war, propaganda plays a major role. The disparity between the forces, between the Israeli army - with its airplanes, gunships, drones, warships, artillery and tanks - and the few thousand lightly armed Hamas fighters, is one to a thousand, perhaps one to a million. In the political arena the gap between them is even wider. But in the propaganda war, the gap is almost infinite.
Almost all the Western media initially repeated the official Israeli propaganda line. They almost entirely ignored the Palestinian side of the story, not to mention the daily demonstrations of the Israeli peace camp. The rationale of the Israeli government (“The state must defend its citizens against the Qassam rockets”) has been accepted as the whole truth. The view from the other side, that the Qassams are a retaliation for the siege that starves the one and a half million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, was not mentioned at all.
Only when the horrible scenes from Gaza started to appear on Western TV screens, did world public opinion gradually begin to change.
True, Western and Israeli TV channels showed only a tiny fraction of the dreadful events that appear 24 hours every day on Aljazeera’s Arabic channel, but one picture of a dead baby in the arms of its terrified father is more powerful than a thousand elegantly constructed sentences from the Israeli army spokesman. And that is what is decisive, in the end.
War – every war – is the realm of lies. Whether called propaganda or psychological warfare, everybody accepts that it is right to lie for one’s country. Anyone who speaks the truth runs the risk of being branded a traitor.
The trouble is that propaganda is most convincing for the propagandist himself. And after you convince yourself that a lie is the truth and falsification reality, you can no longer make rational decisions.
An example of this process surrounds the most shocking atrocity of this war so far: the shelling of the UN Fakhura school in Jabaliya refugee camp.
Immediately after the incident became known throughout the world, the army “revealed” that Hamas fighters had been firing mortars from near the school entrance. As proof they released an aerial photo which indeed showed the school and the mortar. But within a short time the official army liar had to admit that the photo was more than a year old. In brief: a falsification.
Later the official liar claimed that “our soldiers were shot at from inside the school”. Barely a day passed before the army had to admit to UN personnel that that was a lie, too. Nobody had shot from inside the school, no Hamas fighters were inside the school, which was full of terrified refugees.
But the admission made hardly any difference anymore. By that time, the Israeli public was completely convinced that “they shot from inside the school”, and TV announcers stated this as a simple fact.
So it went with the other atrocities. Every baby metamorphosed, in the act of dying, into a Hamas terrorist. Every bombed mosque instantly became a Hamas base, every apartment building an arms cache, every school a terror command post, every civilian government building a “symbol of Hamas rule”. Thus the Israeli army retained its purity as the “most moral army in the world”.
THE TRUTH is that the atrocities are a direct result of the war plan. This reflects the personality of Ehud Barak – a man whose way of thinking and actions are clear evidence of what is called “moral insanity”, a sociopathic disorder.
The real aim (apart from gaining seats in the coming elections) is to terminate the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In the imagination of the planners, Hamas is an invader which has gained control of a foreign country. The reality is, of course, entirely different.
The Hamas movement won the majority of the votes in the eminently democratic elections that took place in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. It won because the Palestinians had come to the conclusion that Fatah’s peaceful approach had gained precisely nothing from Israel - neither a freeze of the settlements, nor release of the prisoners, nor any significant steps toward ending the occupation and creating the Palestinian state. Hamas is deeply rooted in the population – not only as a resistance movement fighting the foreign occupier, like the Irgun and the Stern Group in the past – but also as a political and religious body that provides social, educational and medical services.
From the point of view of the population, the Hamas fighters are not a foreign body, but the sons of every family in the Strip and the other Palestinian regions. They do not “hide behind the population”, the population views them as their only defenders.
Therefore, the whole operation is based on erroneous assumptions. Turning life into living hell does not cause the population to rise up against Hamas, but on the contrary, it unites behind Hamas and reinforces its determination not to surrender. The population of Leningrad did not rise up against Stalin, any more than the Londoners rose up against Churchill.
He who gives the order for such a war with such methods in a densely populated area knows that it will cause dreadful slaughter of civilians. Apparently that did not touch him. Or he believed that “they will change their ways” and “it will sear their consciousness”, so that in future they will not dare to resist Israel.
A top priority for the planners was the need to minimize casualties among the soldiers, knowing that the mood of a large part of the pro-war public would change if reports of such casualties came in. That is what happened in Lebanon Wars I and II.
This consideration played an especially important role because the entire war is a part of the election campaign. Ehud Barak, who gained in the polls in the first days of the war, knew that his ratings would collapse if pictures of dead soldiers filled the TV screens.
Therefore, a new doctrine was applied: to avoid losses among our soldiers by the total destruction of everything in their path. The planners were not only ready to kill 80 Palestinians to save one Israeli soldier, as has happened, but also 800. The avoidance of casualties on our side is the overriding commandment, which is causing record numbers of civilian casualties on the other side.
That means the conscious choice of an especially cruel kind of warfare – and that has been its Achilles heel.
A person without imagination, like Barak (his election slogan: “Not a Nice Guy, but a Leader”) cannot imagine how decent people around the world react to actions like the killing of whole extended families, the destruction of houses over the heads of their inhabitants, the rows of boys and girls in white shrouds ready for burial, the reports about people bleeding to death over days because ambulances are not allowed to reach them, the killing of doctors and medics on their way to save lives, the killing of UN drivers bringing in food. The pictures of the hospitals, with the dead, the dying and the injured lying together on the floor for lack of space, have shocked the world. No argument has any force next to an image of a wounded little girl lying on the floor, twisting with pain and crying out: “Mama! Mama!”
The planners thought that they could stop the world from seeing these images by forcibly preventing press coverage. The Israeli journalists, to their shame, agreed to be satisfied with the reports and photos provided by the Army Spokesman, as if they were authentic news, while they themselves remained miles away from the events. Foreign journalists were not allowed in either, until they protested and were taken for quick tours in selected and supervised groups. But in a modern war, such a sterile manufactured view cannot completely exclude all others – the cameras are inside the strip, in the middle of the hell, and cannot be controlled. Aljazeera broadcasts the pictures around the clock and reaches every home.
THE BATTLE for the TV screen is one of the decisive battles of the war.
Hundreds of millions of Arabs from Mauritania to Iraq, more than a billion Muslims from Nigeria to Indonesia see the pictures and are horrified. This has a strong impact on the war. Many of the viewers see the rulers of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority as collaborators with Israel in carrying out these atrocities against their Palestinian brothers.
The security services of the Arab regimes are registering a dangerous ferment among the peoples. Hosny Mubarak, the most exposed Arab leader because of his closing of the Rafah crossing in the face of terrified refugees, started to pressure the decision-makers in Washington, who until that time had blocked all calls for a cease-fire. These began to understand the menace to vital American interests in the Arab world and suddenly changed their attitude – causing consternation among the complacent Israeli diplomats.
People with moral insanity cannot really understand the motives of normal people and must guess their reactions. “How many divisions has the Pope?” Stalin sneered. “How many divisions have people of conscience?” Ehud Barak may well be asking.
As it turns out, they do have some. Not numerous. Not very quick to react. Not very strong and organized. But at a certain moment, when the atrocities overflow and masses of protesters come together, that can decide a war.
THE FAILURE to grasp the nature of Hamas has caused a failure to grasp the predictable results. Not only is Israel unable to win the war, Hamas cannot lose it.
Even if the Israeli army were to succeed in killing every Hamas fighter to the last man, even then Hamas would win. The Hamas fighters would be seen as the paragons of the Arab nation, the heroes of the Palestinian people, models for emulation by every youngster in the Arab world. The West Bank would fall into the hands of Hamas like a ripe fruit, Fatah would drown in a sea of contempt, the Arab regimes would be threatened with collapse.
If the war ends with Hamas still standing, bloodied but unvanquished, in face of the mighty Israeli military machine, it will look like a fantastic victory, a victory of mind over matter.
What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet.
In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the State of Israel.
===========================
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
Source: http://www.progressive.org/mag/avnery011109.html
Israel Is Losing This War
By Uri Avnery, January 11, 2009
NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.
Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.
This is the description that would now appear in the history books – if the Germans had won the war.
Absurd? No more than the daily descriptions in our media, which are being repeated ad nauseam: the Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of Gaza as “hostages” and exploit the women and children as “human shields”, they leave us no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured.
IN THIS WAR, as in any modern war, propaganda plays a major role. The disparity between the forces, between the Israeli army - with its airplanes, gunships, drones, warships, artillery and tanks - and the few thousand lightly armed Hamas fighters, is one to a thousand, perhaps one to a million. In the political arena the gap between them is even wider. But in the propaganda war, the gap is almost infinite.
Almost all the Western media initially repeated the official Israeli propaganda line. They almost entirely ignored the Palestinian side of the story, not to mention the daily demonstrations of the Israeli peace camp. The rationale of the Israeli government (“The state must defend its citizens against the Qassam rockets”) has been accepted as the whole truth. The view from the other side, that the Qassams are a retaliation for the siege that starves the one and a half million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, was not mentioned at all.
Only when the horrible scenes from Gaza started to appear on Western TV screens, did world public opinion gradually begin to change.
True, Western and Israeli TV channels showed only a tiny fraction of the dreadful events that appear 24 hours every day on Aljazeera’s Arabic channel, but one picture of a dead baby in the arms of its terrified father is more powerful than a thousand elegantly constructed sentences from the Israeli army spokesman. And that is what is decisive, in the end.
War – every war – is the realm of lies. Whether called propaganda or psychological warfare, everybody accepts that it is right to lie for one’s country. Anyone who speaks the truth runs the risk of being branded a traitor.
The trouble is that propaganda is most convincing for the propagandist himself. And after you convince yourself that a lie is the truth and falsification reality, you can no longer make rational decisions.
An example of this process surrounds the most shocking atrocity of this war so far: the shelling of the UN Fakhura school in Jabaliya refugee camp.
Immediately after the incident became known throughout the world, the army “revealed” that Hamas fighters had been firing mortars from near the school entrance. As proof they released an aerial photo which indeed showed the school and the mortar. But within a short time the official army liar had to admit that the photo was more than a year old. In brief: a falsification.
Later the official liar claimed that “our soldiers were shot at from inside the school”. Barely a day passed before the army had to admit to UN personnel that that was a lie, too. Nobody had shot from inside the school, no Hamas fighters were inside the school, which was full of terrified refugees.
But the admission made hardly any difference anymore. By that time, the Israeli public was completely convinced that “they shot from inside the school”, and TV announcers stated this as a simple fact.
So it went with the other atrocities. Every baby metamorphosed, in the act of dying, into a Hamas terrorist. Every bombed mosque instantly became a Hamas base, every apartment building an arms cache, every school a terror command post, every civilian government building a “symbol of Hamas rule”. Thus the Israeli army retained its purity as the “most moral army in the world”.
THE TRUTH is that the atrocities are a direct result of the war plan. This reflects the personality of Ehud Barak – a man whose way of thinking and actions are clear evidence of what is called “moral insanity”, a sociopathic disorder.
The real aim (apart from gaining seats in the coming elections) is to terminate the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In the imagination of the planners, Hamas is an invader which has gained control of a foreign country. The reality is, of course, entirely different.
The Hamas movement won the majority of the votes in the eminently democratic elections that took place in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. It won because the Palestinians had come to the conclusion that Fatah’s peaceful approach had gained precisely nothing from Israel - neither a freeze of the settlements, nor release of the prisoners, nor any significant steps toward ending the occupation and creating the Palestinian state. Hamas is deeply rooted in the population – not only as a resistance movement fighting the foreign occupier, like the Irgun and the Stern Group in the past – but also as a political and religious body that provides social, educational and medical services.
From the point of view of the population, the Hamas fighters are not a foreign body, but the sons of every family in the Strip and the other Palestinian regions. They do not “hide behind the population”, the population views them as their only defenders.
Therefore, the whole operation is based on erroneous assumptions. Turning life into living hell does not cause the population to rise up against Hamas, but on the contrary, it unites behind Hamas and reinforces its determination not to surrender. The population of Leningrad did not rise up against Stalin, any more than the Londoners rose up against Churchill.
He who gives the order for such a war with such methods in a densely populated area knows that it will cause dreadful slaughter of civilians. Apparently that did not touch him. Or he believed that “they will change their ways” and “it will sear their consciousness”, so that in future they will not dare to resist Israel.
A top priority for the planners was the need to minimize casualties among the soldiers, knowing that the mood of a large part of the pro-war public would change if reports of such casualties came in. That is what happened in Lebanon Wars I and II.
This consideration played an especially important role because the entire war is a part of the election campaign. Ehud Barak, who gained in the polls in the first days of the war, knew that his ratings would collapse if pictures of dead soldiers filled the TV screens.
Therefore, a new doctrine was applied: to avoid losses among our soldiers by the total destruction of everything in their path. The planners were not only ready to kill 80 Palestinians to save one Israeli soldier, as has happened, but also 800. The avoidance of casualties on our side is the overriding commandment, which is causing record numbers of civilian casualties on the other side.
That means the conscious choice of an especially cruel kind of warfare – and that has been its Achilles heel.
A person without imagination, like Barak (his election slogan: “Not a Nice Guy, but a Leader”) cannot imagine how decent people around the world react to actions like the killing of whole extended families, the destruction of houses over the heads of their inhabitants, the rows of boys and girls in white shrouds ready for burial, the reports about people bleeding to death over days because ambulances are not allowed to reach them, the killing of doctors and medics on their way to save lives, the killing of UN drivers bringing in food. The pictures of the hospitals, with the dead, the dying and the injured lying together on the floor for lack of space, have shocked the world. No argument has any force next to an image of a wounded little girl lying on the floor, twisting with pain and crying out: “Mama! Mama!”
The planners thought that they could stop the world from seeing these images by forcibly preventing press coverage. The Israeli journalists, to their shame, agreed to be satisfied with the reports and photos provided by the Army Spokesman, as if they were authentic news, while they themselves remained miles away from the events. Foreign journalists were not allowed in either, until they protested and were taken for quick tours in selected and supervised groups. But in a modern war, such a sterile manufactured view cannot completely exclude all others – the cameras are inside the strip, in the middle of the hell, and cannot be controlled. Aljazeera broadcasts the pictures around the clock and reaches every home.
THE BATTLE for the TV screen is one of the decisive battles of the war.
Hundreds of millions of Arabs from Mauritania to Iraq, more than a billion Muslims from Nigeria to Indonesia see the pictures and are horrified. This has a strong impact on the war. Many of the viewers see the rulers of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority as collaborators with Israel in carrying out these atrocities against their Palestinian brothers.
The security services of the Arab regimes are registering a dangerous ferment among the peoples. Hosny Mubarak, the most exposed Arab leader because of his closing of the Rafah crossing in the face of terrified refugees, started to pressure the decision-makers in Washington, who until that time had blocked all calls for a cease-fire. These began to understand the menace to vital American interests in the Arab world and suddenly changed their attitude – causing consternation among the complacent Israeli diplomats.
People with moral insanity cannot really understand the motives of normal people and must guess their reactions. “How many divisions has the Pope?” Stalin sneered. “How many divisions have people of conscience?” Ehud Barak may well be asking.
As it turns out, they do have some. Not numerous. Not very quick to react. Not very strong and organized. But at a certain moment, when the atrocities overflow and masses of protesters come together, that can decide a war.
THE FAILURE to grasp the nature of Hamas has caused a failure to grasp the predictable results. Not only is Israel unable to win the war, Hamas cannot lose it.
Even if the Israeli army were to succeed in killing every Hamas fighter to the last man, even then Hamas would win. The Hamas fighters would be seen as the paragons of the Arab nation, the heroes of the Palestinian people, models for emulation by every youngster in the Arab world. The West Bank would fall into the hands of Hamas like a ripe fruit, Fatah would drown in a sea of contempt, the Arab regimes would be threatened with collapse.
If the war ends with Hamas still standing, bloodied but unvanquished, in face of the mighty Israeli military machine, it will look like a fantastic victory, a victory of mind over matter.
What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet.
In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the State of Israel.
===========================
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
Source: http://www.progressive.org/mag/avnery011109.html
Monday, January 12, 2009
An Open Prison
We feel people should know this. Events with an Israeli-slant are detailed greatly and thoroughly covered – more infect - by the controlled main stream media. Therefore, we attempt to fill in the many intentionally left out items – most of them about incidents in the Palestinian territories – that are rarely available.
For more thorough daily coverage of the region, we provide these links. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/daily_news.html.
==========================
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live in an odd and oppressive limbo. They have no nation, no citizenship, and no ultimate power over their own lives.
Since 1967, when Israel conquered these areas (the final 22 percent of mandatory Palestine), Palestinians have been living under Israeli military occupation. While in some parts Israel has allowed a Palestinian “autonomous” entity to take on such municipal functions as education, health care, infrastructure and policing, Israel retains overall power.
According to international law, an occupying force is responsible for the protection of the civilian population living under its control. Israel, however, ignores this requirement, routinely committing violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of principles instituted after World War II to ensure that civilians would “never again” suffer as they had under Nazi occupation. Israel is one of the leading violators of these conventions today.
Israeli forces regularly confiscate private land; imprison individuals without process – including children – and physically abuse them under incarceration; demolish family homes; bulldoze orchards and crops; place entire towns under curfew; destroy shops and businesses; shoot, maim, and kill civilians – and Palestinians are without power to stop any of it.
When a child is arrested, for example – often by a group of armed soldiers in the middle of the night – parents can do nothing. Knowing that their son is most likely being beaten by soldiers on the way to the station, stripped and humiliated in prison, quite likely physically abused in multiple additional ways, and destined to be held – perhaps in isolation – for days, week, or months (all before a trial has even taken place), parents are without the ability to protect their child. Quite often, in fact, they cannot even visit him.
Finally, when the military trial under which their son is to be sentenced – often to years (sometimes decades) in prison – all they can do is hire a lawyer whose efforts, at best, will reduce the ultimate sentence by a few months. Rarely, if ever, can even the most skilled lawyer do more than afford the child a friendly face in court and be an outside witness to the injustice of the proceedings. Meanwhile, the presence of such a lawyer provides Israel cover for its “judicial system.”
Perhaps most significant – and rarely understood by people in the outside world – is the fact that Palestinians live, basically, in a prison in which Israel holds the keys.
They cannot leave Gaza or the West Bank unless Israeli guards allow them to. If they have been allowed out, they cannot return to their homes and families unless Israeli guards permit it.
Frequently, in both cases, Israel refuses such permission.
Academics invited to attend conferences abroad, high school students given US State Department scholarships to study in the United States, mothers wishing to visit daughters abroad, American citizens returning to their families, humanitarians bringing wheelchairs – the list goes on almost without limit – have all been denied permission by Israel to leave or enter their own land.
The “Intifada”
Living under such hardship and humiliation, in the year 2000 the Palestinian population began an uprising against Israeli rule called the “Intifada.” This term – rarely translated in the American media – is simply the Arabic word for uprising or rebellion – literally, it means “shaking off.” The American Revolutionary War, for example, would be called the American intifada against Britain.
This is the second such uprising. The first began in 1986 and ended in 1993 when the peace negotiations offered hopes of justice. (Sadly, in the following years these hopes were crushed after Israel, rather than withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza, as promised, actually doubled its expansion in these areas.)
During this first uprising, which consisted largely of Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli troops (very few Palestinians had weapons), Palestinians were killed at a rate approximately 7-10 times that of Israelis.
One of the ways Israeli forces attempted to put down this rebellion was through the “break the bones” policy, implemented by Yitzhak Rabin, in which people who had been throwing stones – often youths – were held down and their arms broken. On the first day of this policy alone, one hospital in Gaza treated 200 People for fractures.1
Today’s uprising – termed the “Second Intifada” – was sparked when an Israeli general, Ariel Sharon, known for his slaughter of Palestinian civilians throughout his career, visited a Jerusalem holy site, accompanied by over a thousand armed Israeli soldiers. When some Palestinian youths threw stones, Israeli soldiers responded with live gunfire, killing 5 the first day, and 10 the second.
This uprising has now continued for over five years, as Israel periodically mounts massive invasions into Palestinian communities, using tanks, helicopter gunships, and F-16 fighter jets. Palestinian fighters resisting these forces possess rifles and homemade mortars and rockets. A minute fraction strap explosives onto their own bodies and attempt to deliver their bombs in person; often they kill only themselves.
While the large majority of Palestinians oppose suicide bombings, many feel that armed resistance has become necessary – much as Americans supported war after the attack at Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, only a small portion take an active part in the resistance, despite the fact that virtually all support its aim: to create a nation free from foreign oppression.
Most Palestinians attempt – with greater or lesser success – to go on with their lives, raise their children, attend school, go to work, celebrate festivals, organize weddings, raise their crops, provide for their families – all the things that preoccupy people around the world.
As Israel constructs a wall around them, however, prevents them at checkpoints from traveling from town to town, destroys their crops, prevents children from traveling to schools and the sick and injured from getting to the hospitals, it is becoming increasingly difficult to live even an approximation of a normal life.
Most Palestinians feel that the Israeli government’s intention is to drive them off the land, and there is a great deal of evidence that this is the goal of many Israeli leaders.
At the same time, however, there is a small but determined minority of Israelis, joined by citizens from throughout the world, who are coming to the Palestinian Territories to oppose Israeli occupation. These “internationals,” as they are often called, take part in peaceful marches, attempt to help Palestinian farmers harvest their crops despite Israeli military closures, live in refugee camps in the hope that their presence will prevent Israeli invasions and shelling, and walk children to school.
They are sometimes beaten, shot, and killed.
Some Israeli soldiers are refusing to serve in the West Bank or Gaza, stating: “We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.”
Meanwhile, the semblance of Palestinian autonomy continues. Elections held in January, 2005, resulted in new Palestinian leadership that will govern under occupation and will attempt to negotiate eventual Palestinian liberation. Yet even this election demonstrated Israel’s power, as various Palestinian candidates were arrested, detained, and sometimes beaten by Israeli forces. This aspect, however, like so much else, was rarely reported by the American media.
End Notes
1.“Under orders from Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin, ‘Soldiers armed with cudgels beat up those they could lay their hands on regardless of whether they were demonstrators, or not, breaking into homes by day and night, dragging men and women, young and old, from their beds to beat them. At Gaza’s Shifa Hospital 200 people were treated during the first five days of the new policy, most of them suffering from broken elbows and knees. Three had fractured skulls.’” (PALESTINE AND ISRAEL: THE UPRISING AND BEYOND, David McDowall, University of California Press, 1989, p. 7.)
Source: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/
For more thorough daily coverage of the region, we provide these links. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/daily_news.html.
==========================
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live in an odd and oppressive limbo. They have no nation, no citizenship, and no ultimate power over their own lives.
Since 1967, when Israel conquered these areas (the final 22 percent of mandatory Palestine), Palestinians have been living under Israeli military occupation. While in some parts Israel has allowed a Palestinian “autonomous” entity to take on such municipal functions as education, health care, infrastructure and policing, Israel retains overall power.
According to international law, an occupying force is responsible for the protection of the civilian population living under its control. Israel, however, ignores this requirement, routinely committing violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of principles instituted after World War II to ensure that civilians would “never again” suffer as they had under Nazi occupation. Israel is one of the leading violators of these conventions today.
Israeli forces regularly confiscate private land; imprison individuals without process – including children – and physically abuse them under incarceration; demolish family homes; bulldoze orchards and crops; place entire towns under curfew; destroy shops and businesses; shoot, maim, and kill civilians – and Palestinians are without power to stop any of it.
When a child is arrested, for example – often by a group of armed soldiers in the middle of the night – parents can do nothing. Knowing that their son is most likely being beaten by soldiers on the way to the station, stripped and humiliated in prison, quite likely physically abused in multiple additional ways, and destined to be held – perhaps in isolation – for days, week, or months (all before a trial has even taken place), parents are without the ability to protect their child. Quite often, in fact, they cannot even visit him.
Finally, when the military trial under which their son is to be sentenced – often to years (sometimes decades) in prison – all they can do is hire a lawyer whose efforts, at best, will reduce the ultimate sentence by a few months. Rarely, if ever, can even the most skilled lawyer do more than afford the child a friendly face in court and be an outside witness to the injustice of the proceedings. Meanwhile, the presence of such a lawyer provides Israel cover for its “judicial system.”
Perhaps most significant – and rarely understood by people in the outside world – is the fact that Palestinians live, basically, in a prison in which Israel holds the keys.
They cannot leave Gaza or the West Bank unless Israeli guards allow them to. If they have been allowed out, they cannot return to their homes and families unless Israeli guards permit it.
Frequently, in both cases, Israel refuses such permission.
Academics invited to attend conferences abroad, high school students given US State Department scholarships to study in the United States, mothers wishing to visit daughters abroad, American citizens returning to their families, humanitarians bringing wheelchairs – the list goes on almost without limit – have all been denied permission by Israel to leave or enter their own land.
The “Intifada”
Living under such hardship and humiliation, in the year 2000 the Palestinian population began an uprising against Israeli rule called the “Intifada.” This term – rarely translated in the American media – is simply the Arabic word for uprising or rebellion – literally, it means “shaking off.” The American Revolutionary War, for example, would be called the American intifada against Britain.
This is the second such uprising. The first began in 1986 and ended in 1993 when the peace negotiations offered hopes of justice. (Sadly, in the following years these hopes were crushed after Israel, rather than withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza, as promised, actually doubled its expansion in these areas.)
During this first uprising, which consisted largely of Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli troops (very few Palestinians had weapons), Palestinians were killed at a rate approximately 7-10 times that of Israelis.
One of the ways Israeli forces attempted to put down this rebellion was through the “break the bones” policy, implemented by Yitzhak Rabin, in which people who had been throwing stones – often youths – were held down and their arms broken. On the first day of this policy alone, one hospital in Gaza treated 200 People for fractures.1
Today’s uprising – termed the “Second Intifada” – was sparked when an Israeli general, Ariel Sharon, known for his slaughter of Palestinian civilians throughout his career, visited a Jerusalem holy site, accompanied by over a thousand armed Israeli soldiers. When some Palestinian youths threw stones, Israeli soldiers responded with live gunfire, killing 5 the first day, and 10 the second.
This uprising has now continued for over five years, as Israel periodically mounts massive invasions into Palestinian communities, using tanks, helicopter gunships, and F-16 fighter jets. Palestinian fighters resisting these forces possess rifles and homemade mortars and rockets. A minute fraction strap explosives onto their own bodies and attempt to deliver their bombs in person; often they kill only themselves.
While the large majority of Palestinians oppose suicide bombings, many feel that armed resistance has become necessary – much as Americans supported war after the attack at Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, only a small portion take an active part in the resistance, despite the fact that virtually all support its aim: to create a nation free from foreign oppression.
Most Palestinians attempt – with greater or lesser success – to go on with their lives, raise their children, attend school, go to work, celebrate festivals, organize weddings, raise their crops, provide for their families – all the things that preoccupy people around the world.
As Israel constructs a wall around them, however, prevents them at checkpoints from traveling from town to town, destroys their crops, prevents children from traveling to schools and the sick and injured from getting to the hospitals, it is becoming increasingly difficult to live even an approximation of a normal life.
Most Palestinians feel that the Israeli government’s intention is to drive them off the land, and there is a great deal of evidence that this is the goal of many Israeli leaders.
At the same time, however, there is a small but determined minority of Israelis, joined by citizens from throughout the world, who are coming to the Palestinian Territories to oppose Israeli occupation. These “internationals,” as they are often called, take part in peaceful marches, attempt to help Palestinian farmers harvest their crops despite Israeli military closures, live in refugee camps in the hope that their presence will prevent Israeli invasions and shelling, and walk children to school.
They are sometimes beaten, shot, and killed.
Some Israeli soldiers are refusing to serve in the West Bank or Gaza, stating: “We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.”
Meanwhile, the semblance of Palestinian autonomy continues. Elections held in January, 2005, resulted in new Palestinian leadership that will govern under occupation and will attempt to negotiate eventual Palestinian liberation. Yet even this election demonstrated Israel’s power, as various Palestinian candidates were arrested, detained, and sometimes beaten by Israeli forces. This aspect, however, like so much else, was rarely reported by the American media.
End Notes
1.“Under orders from Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin, ‘Soldiers armed with cudgels beat up those they could lay their hands on regardless of whether they were demonstrators, or not, breaking into homes by day and night, dragging men and women, young and old, from their beds to beat them. At Gaza’s Shifa Hospital 200 people were treated during the first five days of the new policy, most of them suffering from broken elbows and knees. Three had fractured skulls.’” (PALESTINE AND ISRAEL: THE UPRISING AND BEYOND, David McDowall, University of California Press, 1989, p. 7.)
Source: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Three Points of Time.
Today’s the 31st Dec 2008. Tomorrow’s the 1st Jan 2009.
What’s the difference?
Today is sufferings. Tomorrow shall be more sufferings.
Today death rains on us. Tomorrow deadlier death rains on us.
Today the cowboys lend their tanks and cannons. Tomorrow the neoconservatives lend their drones and stealths.
Today they destroyed our farms. Tomorrow they blocked all in-coming foods.
Today they rob our medicine. Tomorrow they pulverized our hospitals.
Today the Jews lob rockets upon us. Tomorrow the Zionist launch nuclear devices around.
Today they settle on our land. Tomorrow they force us to vacate our world.
Today the world makes token noises. Tomorrow this world don’t care.
Today there are puppet Bushes and puppet Olmerts. Tomorrow more vicious puppet Bushes and puppet Olmerts.
Today there are puppet players. Tomorrow more puppet masters.
Today what’s the difference? Tomorrow any cause for celebrations?
All things other than Him, suffer three distinct points of times.
Points of before-time, points of in-time, points of after-time.
Birth. Life. Death.
Birth of the dinosaurs. Age of the dinosaurs. Extinction of the dinosaurs.
Birth of the Pharoses. Age of the Pharoses. Extinction of the Pharoses.
Birth of Rothschilds and Churchills. Age of Rothschilds and Churchills. Extinction of Rothschilds and Churchills.
Birth of the platypus. Life of the platypus. Extinction the platypus.
What’s the difference?
There seems to be no permanency.
Perhaps the differences lies in the causes.
Perhaps the causes make life different.
He is Life and He is Cause.
What’s the difference?
What’s the difference?
Today is sufferings. Tomorrow shall be more sufferings.
Today death rains on us. Tomorrow deadlier death rains on us.
Today the cowboys lend their tanks and cannons. Tomorrow the neoconservatives lend their drones and stealths.
Today they destroyed our farms. Tomorrow they blocked all in-coming foods.
Today they rob our medicine. Tomorrow they pulverized our hospitals.
Today the Jews lob rockets upon us. Tomorrow the Zionist launch nuclear devices around.
Today they settle on our land. Tomorrow they force us to vacate our world.
Today the world makes token noises. Tomorrow this world don’t care.
Today there are puppet Bushes and puppet Olmerts. Tomorrow more vicious puppet Bushes and puppet Olmerts.
Today there are puppet players. Tomorrow more puppet masters.
Today what’s the difference? Tomorrow any cause for celebrations?
All things other than Him, suffer three distinct points of times.
Points of before-time, points of in-time, points of after-time.
Birth. Life. Death.
Birth of the dinosaurs. Age of the dinosaurs. Extinction of the dinosaurs.
Birth of the Pharoses. Age of the Pharoses. Extinction of the Pharoses.
Birth of Rothschilds and Churchills. Age of Rothschilds and Churchills. Extinction of Rothschilds and Churchills.
Birth of the platypus. Life of the platypus. Extinction the platypus.
What’s the difference?
There seems to be no permanency.
Perhaps the differences lies in the causes.
Perhaps the causes make life different.
He is Life and He is Cause.
What’s the difference?
Friday, December 26, 2008
They Nurture Terrorism
Further readings on terrorism and its causes.
Ref: http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman241208.htm
Obama v. Richard Falk On Israel And Occupied Palestine
By Stephen Lendman
Obama leaves no ambiguity where he stands. From public statements, campaign pledges, policy advisors, and war cabinet selections, his positions affirm:
-- one-sided pro-Israeli zealotry;
-- continued Palestinian oppression;
-- no end to the Iraq war and occupation;
-- possibly attacking Iran and/or allying with Israel to do it;
-- pursuing an imperial agenda; targeting Pakistan, Russia and other countries;
-- expanding the size of the military; increasing expenditures for it; and
-- providing Israel annually with billions of dollars; the latest weapons and technology; the same zero interest rate loans Wall Street gets; liberal debt forgiveness; virtually anything Israel requests on the pretext of security, to wage aggressive war, or expand its illegal settlements; and
-- acquiescing and remaining silent after Israel insulted a high UN official by harassing and detaining him, then expelling him from the country.
Last March, Richard Falk replaced John Dugard as the UN Human Rights Council's (UNHRC) Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine. UNHRC is mandated:
-- to promote and protect human rights globally;
-- detect and speak out objectively against violations and violators;
-- "provide a forum for identifying, highlighting and developing responses to today's human rights challenges,
-- act as the principal focal point of human rights research, education, public information, and advocacy activities in the United Nations system," and
-- respect the rights of everyone irrespective of nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, language, age, or religion "as stipulated in the United Nations Charter."
Navanethem Pillay became Human Rights High Commissioner last July. Richard Falk has regional responsibility for Occupied Palestine. On December 14, he arrived at Ben Gurion airport, Tel Aviv to perform his assigned duties. He led a three-person mission that intended to visit the West Bank and Gaza, assess conditions on the ground, then report on Israel's compliance with human rights standards and international humanitarian law.
Israel was informed of his trip, his itinerary, individuals he planned to meet with, and issued visas for himself, a staff security person, and an assistant. Falk had no reason to expect interference, and as he put it: "I would not have made the long journey from California, where I live, had I not been reasonably optimistic about my chances of getting in." Nonetheless, he was denied entry and harassed as follows:
-- despite his UN status, he was put in a holding room with about 20 others experiencing entry problems;
-- then "treated not as a UN representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search and the most meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed;"
-- separated from his two UN companions; they were allowed entry and taken to the airport facility about a mile away;
-- required to put his luggage and cell phone in a room, then taken to a "locked tiny room that smelled of urine and filth;"
-- five other detainees were with him in very cramped, uncomfortable quarters;
-- he was confined there for the next 15 hours, "which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food and lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office;"
-- Israel's "obvious intention (was) to teach me, and more significantly, the UN a lesson: there will be no cooperation with those who make strong criticisms of Israel's occupation policy."
Israel accuses Falk of bias for making inflammatory comments about its occupation of Palestine. He rejects the charge and asserts that, like his predecessor John Dugard (whom Israel earlier assailed) he assesses facts and relevant law truthfully. "It is the character of the occupation that gives rise to sharp criticism of Israel's approach," especially its collective punishment of 1.5 million Gazans under siege. Although denied entry and expelled, Falk insists that he'll continue "to use all available means to document the realities of the Israeli occupation" and report as fully and truthfully on them as possible.
He's mandated to assess conditions on the ground, prepare detailed reports on what he finds, keep the UN fully informed, the public worldwide as well, and recommend ways of remediating violations. As an international law expert, he's eminently qualified for the task.
Since assuming his post in May, he's been denied entry into Israel and Occupied Palestine. On August 25, he submitted his first report covering the first half of 2008. He criticized the deteriorating human rights conditions for Palestinians, called Israel's violations grave, singled out the Gaza siege and a crackdown on free expression and peaceful assembly.
Earlier this year, Israel denied a Bishop Desmond Tutu-headed UNHRC mission entry as well. He was delegated to investigate the Israeli occupation force November 2006 Beit Hanoun massacre, an appalling act of mass murder killing 18 civilians (including seven children and six women) and wounding 53 others. The mission had to enter Gaza from the Egyptian side through the Rafah International Crossing Point, but even that way is rarely easy.
Other international delegations have been obstructed as well, including diplomats, humanitarian workers, and journalists. Last November, the IDF stopped an EU one and one other comprised of 20 representatives of international organizations seeking entry into Gaza. Israel is extremely brazen, so far with no world community condemnation of its practices.
As a UN member and signatory to various human rights conventions, it must honor their mandates. Nonetheless, it doesn't as well as much other international law and UN resolutions going back to the 1947 General Assembly Partition Plan (Resolution 181). It divided Palestine 56 - 44% for Israel.
When Arabs were nearly 70% of the population, Jews got most of the fertile land, nearly all urban and rural territory, 400 of over 1000 Palestinian villages, but it wasn't enough. After Israel's 1948 "War of Independence," it secured 78% of Mandatory Palestine, expelled or killed about 800,000 Palestinians, destroyed 531 of their villages, 11 urban neighborhoods, and committed grievous crimes of war and against humanity. They've been documented and included:
-- cold-blooded massacres of civilian men, women, children, the elderly and infirm;
-- destruction of homes, villages and crops;
-- mass instances of rape; and
-- other atrocities on a vast scale;
The State of Israel was born. The US was the first country to recognize it. Palestinians lost 78% of their land, and in 1967 the remainder. They now live under military occupation. It's harsh and cruel. Their rights are ruthlessly denied. They experience daily abuse and neglect. Their refugees aren't able to return. Conditions on the ground are intolerable, and UNHRC is mandated to assess and report on them. Richard Falk, like John Dugard before him, is dedicated to do it.
"Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust"
In July 2007, Falk's used this title for an article, and Israel noticed. He wrote: "it is especially painful for me, as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as 'holocaust'....Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians (in such terms)? I think not."
He condemned Israel's actions in Gaza and referred to subjecting "an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty." He called it "a holocaust-in-the-making" and appealed to world governments and international public opinion "to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy."
He urged concerted action to spare Gazans "from further pain and suffering." He took umbrage with how America supports Israel and with European governments for having "lent their weight to recent illicit (and overt) efforts to crush Hamas as (the legitimate) Palestinian (government)." He referred to "Israel's impunity under America's geopolitical umbrella," and the immorality of the international community watching Gaza's "ugly spectacle unfold while some of its most influential members actively encourage and assist Israel" in its efforts.
He called Gaza "a cauldron of pain and suffering....with more than half (the population) living in miserable refugee camps," dependent on humanitarian aid, and living under military occupation in spite of the sham 2005 "disengagement." He condemned world leaders for not recognizing the legitimately elected Hamas government, calling it a "terrorist organization" when, in fact, it's not, and failing to recognize how its leaders reached out to Israel in peace, declared a unilateral 18 month ceasefire, did it again for another six months, then ended it in self defense after repeated Israeli violations.
He condemned Israel for being "more determined than ever to foment civil war in Palestine," arm and pit Fatah against Hamas, "make Gazans pay with their well being and lives," crush their will, and maintain separate Gaza and West Bank "destinies."
Israel intends to isolate Gaza, cantonize the West Bank, seize Palestinian land, expand its illegal settlements, and appropriate "the whole of Jerusalem" as its capital by grabbing all areas Palestinians have and expelling them. While talking peace, Israel wages war, won't compromise, doesn't respect international law, commits grievous crimes against humanity, denies "Palestinians their right of self-determination," and treats the entire population as an "enemy" of the State.
"To persist with such an approach under present circumstances is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community...." This prospect sends a "warning of a Palestinian holocaust in the making, and should remind the world of the famous post-Nazi pledge of 'never again.' "
On December 9, 2008 (five days before Falk arrived in Israel), he issued the following statement titled: "Gaza: Silence is not an option." He highlighted the plight of the people, the unacceptable conditions and desperate urgency to act, the cruelty and lawlessness of the blockade, and yet Israel "maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease."
He called this action "flagrant and (a) massive violation of international humanitarian law" under Geneva and other human rights conventions. He said it's long past time for talk. "The UN is obligated to respond under these conditions." World governments are complicit for going along or remaining silent. The "UN (and) international society (are obligated to discharge) their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people." Israel ruthlessly prevents them.
Little wonder Falk, or others with these views, are persona non grata at the least or targeted for something far worse, including assassination. Israel is unyielding in its position, yet officials like Falk and human rights activists speak out and act, even at the risk of their safety and well-being.
What to Expect From Obama
A new administration is taking shape. Nearly all of its top officials have been announced. In less than a month, it will assume office, so how will it address Occupied Palestine? Negligently and with disdain from the man James Petras calls "America's First Jewish President," Barack Obama, in quoting a prominent Chicago Jew, a former congressman, federal judge, Clinton White House Counsel, and early Obama supporter - Abner Mikvner.
Obama has been carefully groomed and vetted for his job, surrounded by pro-Israeli zealots, transformed into a committed "Israel-Firster," well-indocrinated, funded and considered safe. As Petras states:
"By the end of the 1990s, Obama was firmly embedded in the liberal Zionist Democratic Party network and through it he teamed up with two key Zionist figures who were crucial to his presidential campaign: David Axelrod," a long-time Chicago political strategist, and "Obama's chief (one) since 2002 and the chief architect and tactician of his presidential campaign in 2008; Bettylu Salzman, daughter of Phillip Klutznick (now deceased), a billionaire real estate developer, slumlord, zealous Israel-Firster," and Jimmy Carter's Commerce Secretary from 1980 - 1981.
Chicagoan Penny Pritzker (of the wealthy Pritzker Hyatt Hotels family) was Obama's main fund fundraiser. Called by some the most powerful woman in America, she's certainly notable, one of the richest, an influential American Jew, and staunchly pro-Israel as is her family.
She had a sordid involvement in subprime mortgage lending, made millions by defrauding the poor, was one of Obama's Transitional Economic Advisory Board members, and Warren Buffett calls her the person to call when you want something done. She'll have a seat at the table in the new administration behind the scenes, her preferred role in business and politics.
Other figures will be active and prominent, Dennis Ross for one. He was Director of the State Department's Policy Planning office under GHW Bush, after which he became Clinton's Special Middle East Coordinator. He's also a co-founder of the AIPAC-backed Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an extremist pro-Israeli front group with prominent American Jews in it like Ross (on his mother's side) who remains a consultant. WINIP's Board of Advisors is a who's who rogues gallery with names like Richard Pearle, Alexander Haig, George Shultz, James Woolsey, Lawrence Eagleburger, and others.
Petras calls Ross "a virulent Zionist advocate of Israel's ultra-militaristic policies, including an armed preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear and military installations. Ross is an unconditional supporter of the Israeli starvation siege of the 1.5 million (Gazans) and fully backed Israel's savage air attacks against civilian targets in Lebanon." His closeness to Obama signals a continued pro-Israeli hardline agenda, no letup in the persecution of Palestinians, and the possibility of an even greater regional war. So far no official announcement of his role has been made, but he'll be prominent either publicly or behind the scenes.
Various positions mentioned include Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (number three behind Clinton), Deputy Secretary of State, Deputy National Security Advisor, or Special Middle East Envoy. In recent months, Ross has been affiliated with the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center that was founded in 2007 by former senators George Mitchell, Howard Baker, Tom Daschle and Bob Dole. It presents itself as centrist, but, in fact, on key issues is militant and hard line, especially on the Middle East. It advocates coercing Iran to surrender its sovereignty, knuckle under to Washington, or be unilaterally attacked if it won't, and gets its advice from "two leading Iran experts:"
-- Michael Rubin of the right wing American Enterprise Institute, a former Giuliani advisor, closely allied to Bush neocons; and
-- Ken Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, a Middle East specialist who's ideologically allied with the right and no friend of Iran.
They, Ross and others produced the 2008 report: "Meeting the Challenge: US Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development." It argues that Iran's commercial program, contrary to available evidence, aims to develop nuclear weapons and threatens "US and global security, regional stability, and the international nonproliferation regime." In stark contrast, the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate refuted this claim and stated that Iran has no current nuclear weapons program. Washington ideologues like Ross dismiss it, press their case for war, recommend a major military presence in the Gulf, and pressuring Russia to cease efforts to aid the Islamic Republic.
He's also current chairman of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI), another pro-Israeli front group that includes past and present prominent Israeli government officials in its membership as well as influential American Jews. During his Clinton years, he was hostile to Iraq and Iran, advocated war, and subverted all efforts for an equitable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A noted Arab said about him: "In the 1990s, the "perception always was that Dennis (Ross) started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted, and then tried to sell it to the Arabs....He was never looked at....as a trusted world figure or honest broker." All along he flacked for Israel, and ideologically he's closely aligned with Republican neocons and their permanent war agenda.
According to the Jewish publication, Ynetnews.com, he may not become Middle East Envoy with Colin Powell now considered a "serious option" for the job. That is, if he wants it and if Hillary Clinton will accept a notable figure like him circumventing her and reporting directly to Obama. Another possible candidate, besides Ross, is Daniel Kurtzer, former US ambassador to Israel and Egypt, and in other Middle East posts, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. He now has a Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs chair in Middle East Studies.
On December 14, Barak Ravid wrote in Haaretz that "Obama (will) base his Middle East policy on (an) army of envoys," and he named four possibilities - Dennis Ross most prominently, Colin Powell, Dan Kurtzer, and Martin Indyk.
He suggested that besides a Middle East Envoy, others would be appointed to:
-- Iraq to work with the government; the puppet one, that is, to assure America's permanent occupation, total control over state policy, and unchallenged regional influence;
-- Iran to open dialogue and "participate in international discussions on an incentive package;" in fact, for the government to cease its legal commercial nuclear development, surrender to America's will, and become a vassal state or risk possible attack and mass destruction;
-- Afghanistan and Pakistan "to stabilize the security situation;" in fact, a major effort may be undertaken to destabilize it as part of a broader agenda to stoke violence, increase Washington's presence in the region, double US forces in Afghanistan to 60,000 or more according to recent reports, and "Balkanize" each country, Iraq and possibly Syria into separate autonomous states; and
-- North Korea "to watch over denuclearization and the lifting of international sanctions;" in fact, plans for North Korea include ending its nuclear program, lessening the country's ability to defend itself, bringing it into the US orbit, and making it subservient to America's will.
Martin Indyk
He's a lobbyist and very much a pro-Israeli zealot. He's also a former US ambassador to Israel, the only foreign-born one (to a London Jewish family), an Assistant Secretary of State for Near East affairs in the Clinton administration, and currently a senior foreign policy fellow and head of the Washington-based Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
In the early 1980s, he began his Washington career as deputy director of research for AIPAC. In 1985, he co-founded WINEP (described above). In the November-December 2000 issue of New Left Review, Edward Said said this about him:
"On the eve of Clinton's inauguration in January 1993, it was announced that Indyk - an Australian national of Jewish origin, born in London - had been sworn in as an American citizen at the express command of the President-elect, overriding all normal procedures in an act of peremptory executive privilege, to allow him to be parachuted immediately into the National Security Council, with responsibility for the Middle East. What had Indyk been or done to merit such extraordinary favour? He had been head of (WINEP) that lobbies for Israel in tandem with AIPAC."
Said added that the consensus in Washington that Israel is a model democracy "is virtually impregnable." If there's ever a sign of slippage, in pours a phalanx of Zionist lobbyists like Indyk. They constitute an ideological pro-Israeli trump card along with Congress, especially the Senate. Virtually "the entire (body) can be marshalled in a matter of hours into signing a letter to the President on Israel's behalf."
Regarding Hillary Clinton at the time, Said said that no one better "exemplifies the sway of AIPAC better." She "outdoes even the most right-wing Zionists in fervour for Israel in her avid clawing for power in New York" and will stoop at nothing to get it. She's Machiavellian and very dangerous.
So is Indyk (Dennis Ross and others) in service to Israel. At WINEP in 1993, he outlined his notion of dual Iran and Iraq containment, and it became policy under Clinton. It postulated that outlier Middle East states be "contained," isolated, and threatened to weaken them politically, economically, and perhaps militarily.
For Iraq, it recommended continued sanctions, an economic embargo, and if "Saddam's regime crosses clearly drawn lines of appropriate behavior, particularly with regard to its weapons of mass destruction programs and its threats to other countries, the United States should punish it severely."
A more flexible approach was taken on Iran, saying that its "geopolitical importance is greater than Iraq's and the challenge it represents is more complex. Given (America's) military presence (in the region), Iran does not currently pose a threat of military aggression, but its long-term policies could destabilize the region."
The report accused Iran of opposing the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process," promoting Islamic militancy, supporting terrorism and subversion, and seeking nuclear weapons. Rather than war, it recommended "a more nuanced approach," but if Iran initiated a "special provocation....clear retaliatory measures" would be called for.
Targeting Iraq and Iran benefits Israel by weakening or eliminating its two main regional rivals. Iraq is now neutralized, not Iran, but harsh sanctions against it are in place. Pro-Israeli zealots, like Indyk and Ross, want them tightened. They also support war to destroy the country's nuclear infrastructure and much of its military capacity.
This is Obama's team with others on it, like Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, as belligerent. It suggests that peace in the Middle East is a nonstarter; the occupation of Iraq and Palestine will continue; Iran may be targeted; Pakistan as well; the war in Afghanistan will be expanded; imperial adventurism will be stressed; so will permanent war and homeland repression; and human rights advocates like Richard Falk will be sorely tested in their jobs.
======================
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Ref: http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman241208.htm
Obama v. Richard Falk On Israel And Occupied Palestine
By Stephen Lendman
Obama leaves no ambiguity where he stands. From public statements, campaign pledges, policy advisors, and war cabinet selections, his positions affirm:
-- one-sided pro-Israeli zealotry;
-- continued Palestinian oppression;
-- no end to the Iraq war and occupation;
-- possibly attacking Iran and/or allying with Israel to do it;
-- pursuing an imperial agenda; targeting Pakistan, Russia and other countries;
-- expanding the size of the military; increasing expenditures for it; and
-- providing Israel annually with billions of dollars; the latest weapons and technology; the same zero interest rate loans Wall Street gets; liberal debt forgiveness; virtually anything Israel requests on the pretext of security, to wage aggressive war, or expand its illegal settlements; and
-- acquiescing and remaining silent after Israel insulted a high UN official by harassing and detaining him, then expelling him from the country.
Last March, Richard Falk replaced John Dugard as the UN Human Rights Council's (UNHRC) Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine. UNHRC is mandated:
-- to promote and protect human rights globally;
-- detect and speak out objectively against violations and violators;
-- "provide a forum for identifying, highlighting and developing responses to today's human rights challenges,
-- act as the principal focal point of human rights research, education, public information, and advocacy activities in the United Nations system," and
-- respect the rights of everyone irrespective of nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, language, age, or religion "as stipulated in the United Nations Charter."
Navanethem Pillay became Human Rights High Commissioner last July. Richard Falk has regional responsibility for Occupied Palestine. On December 14, he arrived at Ben Gurion airport, Tel Aviv to perform his assigned duties. He led a three-person mission that intended to visit the West Bank and Gaza, assess conditions on the ground, then report on Israel's compliance with human rights standards and international humanitarian law.
Israel was informed of his trip, his itinerary, individuals he planned to meet with, and issued visas for himself, a staff security person, and an assistant. Falk had no reason to expect interference, and as he put it: "I would not have made the long journey from California, where I live, had I not been reasonably optimistic about my chances of getting in." Nonetheless, he was denied entry and harassed as follows:
-- despite his UN status, he was put in a holding room with about 20 others experiencing entry problems;
-- then "treated not as a UN representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search and the most meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed;"
-- separated from his two UN companions; they were allowed entry and taken to the airport facility about a mile away;
-- required to put his luggage and cell phone in a room, then taken to a "locked tiny room that smelled of urine and filth;"
-- five other detainees were with him in very cramped, uncomfortable quarters;
-- he was confined there for the next 15 hours, "which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food and lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office;"
-- Israel's "obvious intention (was) to teach me, and more significantly, the UN a lesson: there will be no cooperation with those who make strong criticisms of Israel's occupation policy."
Israel accuses Falk of bias for making inflammatory comments about its occupation of Palestine. He rejects the charge and asserts that, like his predecessor John Dugard (whom Israel earlier assailed) he assesses facts and relevant law truthfully. "It is the character of the occupation that gives rise to sharp criticism of Israel's approach," especially its collective punishment of 1.5 million Gazans under siege. Although denied entry and expelled, Falk insists that he'll continue "to use all available means to document the realities of the Israeli occupation" and report as fully and truthfully on them as possible.
He's mandated to assess conditions on the ground, prepare detailed reports on what he finds, keep the UN fully informed, the public worldwide as well, and recommend ways of remediating violations. As an international law expert, he's eminently qualified for the task.
Since assuming his post in May, he's been denied entry into Israel and Occupied Palestine. On August 25, he submitted his first report covering the first half of 2008. He criticized the deteriorating human rights conditions for Palestinians, called Israel's violations grave, singled out the Gaza siege and a crackdown on free expression and peaceful assembly.
Earlier this year, Israel denied a Bishop Desmond Tutu-headed UNHRC mission entry as well. He was delegated to investigate the Israeli occupation force November 2006 Beit Hanoun massacre, an appalling act of mass murder killing 18 civilians (including seven children and six women) and wounding 53 others. The mission had to enter Gaza from the Egyptian side through the Rafah International Crossing Point, but even that way is rarely easy.
Other international delegations have been obstructed as well, including diplomats, humanitarian workers, and journalists. Last November, the IDF stopped an EU one and one other comprised of 20 representatives of international organizations seeking entry into Gaza. Israel is extremely brazen, so far with no world community condemnation of its practices.
As a UN member and signatory to various human rights conventions, it must honor their mandates. Nonetheless, it doesn't as well as much other international law and UN resolutions going back to the 1947 General Assembly Partition Plan (Resolution 181). It divided Palestine 56 - 44% for Israel.
When Arabs were nearly 70% of the population, Jews got most of the fertile land, nearly all urban and rural territory, 400 of over 1000 Palestinian villages, but it wasn't enough. After Israel's 1948 "War of Independence," it secured 78% of Mandatory Palestine, expelled or killed about 800,000 Palestinians, destroyed 531 of their villages, 11 urban neighborhoods, and committed grievous crimes of war and against humanity. They've been documented and included:
-- cold-blooded massacres of civilian men, women, children, the elderly and infirm;
-- destruction of homes, villages and crops;
-- mass instances of rape; and
-- other atrocities on a vast scale;
The State of Israel was born. The US was the first country to recognize it. Palestinians lost 78% of their land, and in 1967 the remainder. They now live under military occupation. It's harsh and cruel. Their rights are ruthlessly denied. They experience daily abuse and neglect. Their refugees aren't able to return. Conditions on the ground are intolerable, and UNHRC is mandated to assess and report on them. Richard Falk, like John Dugard before him, is dedicated to do it.
"Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust"
In July 2007, Falk's used this title for an article, and Israel noticed. He wrote: "it is especially painful for me, as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as 'holocaust'....Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians (in such terms)? I think not."
He condemned Israel's actions in Gaza and referred to subjecting "an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty." He called it "a holocaust-in-the-making" and appealed to world governments and international public opinion "to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy."
He urged concerted action to spare Gazans "from further pain and suffering." He took umbrage with how America supports Israel and with European governments for having "lent their weight to recent illicit (and overt) efforts to crush Hamas as (the legitimate) Palestinian (government)." He referred to "Israel's impunity under America's geopolitical umbrella," and the immorality of the international community watching Gaza's "ugly spectacle unfold while some of its most influential members actively encourage and assist Israel" in its efforts.
He called Gaza "a cauldron of pain and suffering....with more than half (the population) living in miserable refugee camps," dependent on humanitarian aid, and living under military occupation in spite of the sham 2005 "disengagement." He condemned world leaders for not recognizing the legitimately elected Hamas government, calling it a "terrorist organization" when, in fact, it's not, and failing to recognize how its leaders reached out to Israel in peace, declared a unilateral 18 month ceasefire, did it again for another six months, then ended it in self defense after repeated Israeli violations.
He condemned Israel for being "more determined than ever to foment civil war in Palestine," arm and pit Fatah against Hamas, "make Gazans pay with their well being and lives," crush their will, and maintain separate Gaza and West Bank "destinies."
Israel intends to isolate Gaza, cantonize the West Bank, seize Palestinian land, expand its illegal settlements, and appropriate "the whole of Jerusalem" as its capital by grabbing all areas Palestinians have and expelling them. While talking peace, Israel wages war, won't compromise, doesn't respect international law, commits grievous crimes against humanity, denies "Palestinians their right of self-determination," and treats the entire population as an "enemy" of the State.
"To persist with such an approach under present circumstances is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community...." This prospect sends a "warning of a Palestinian holocaust in the making, and should remind the world of the famous post-Nazi pledge of 'never again.' "
On December 9, 2008 (five days before Falk arrived in Israel), he issued the following statement titled: "Gaza: Silence is not an option." He highlighted the plight of the people, the unacceptable conditions and desperate urgency to act, the cruelty and lawlessness of the blockade, and yet Israel "maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease."
He called this action "flagrant and (a) massive violation of international humanitarian law" under Geneva and other human rights conventions. He said it's long past time for talk. "The UN is obligated to respond under these conditions." World governments are complicit for going along or remaining silent. The "UN (and) international society (are obligated to discharge) their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people." Israel ruthlessly prevents them.
Little wonder Falk, or others with these views, are persona non grata at the least or targeted for something far worse, including assassination. Israel is unyielding in its position, yet officials like Falk and human rights activists speak out and act, even at the risk of their safety and well-being.
What to Expect From Obama
A new administration is taking shape. Nearly all of its top officials have been announced. In less than a month, it will assume office, so how will it address Occupied Palestine? Negligently and with disdain from the man James Petras calls "America's First Jewish President," Barack Obama, in quoting a prominent Chicago Jew, a former congressman, federal judge, Clinton White House Counsel, and early Obama supporter - Abner Mikvner.
Obama has been carefully groomed and vetted for his job, surrounded by pro-Israeli zealots, transformed into a committed "Israel-Firster," well-indocrinated, funded and considered safe. As Petras states:
"By the end of the 1990s, Obama was firmly embedded in the liberal Zionist Democratic Party network and through it he teamed up with two key Zionist figures who were crucial to his presidential campaign: David Axelrod," a long-time Chicago political strategist, and "Obama's chief (one) since 2002 and the chief architect and tactician of his presidential campaign in 2008; Bettylu Salzman, daughter of Phillip Klutznick (now deceased), a billionaire real estate developer, slumlord, zealous Israel-Firster," and Jimmy Carter's Commerce Secretary from 1980 - 1981.
Chicagoan Penny Pritzker (of the wealthy Pritzker Hyatt Hotels family) was Obama's main fund fundraiser. Called by some the most powerful woman in America, she's certainly notable, one of the richest, an influential American Jew, and staunchly pro-Israel as is her family.
She had a sordid involvement in subprime mortgage lending, made millions by defrauding the poor, was one of Obama's Transitional Economic Advisory Board members, and Warren Buffett calls her the person to call when you want something done. She'll have a seat at the table in the new administration behind the scenes, her preferred role in business and politics.
Other figures will be active and prominent, Dennis Ross for one. He was Director of the State Department's Policy Planning office under GHW Bush, after which he became Clinton's Special Middle East Coordinator. He's also a co-founder of the AIPAC-backed Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an extremist pro-Israeli front group with prominent American Jews in it like Ross (on his mother's side) who remains a consultant. WINIP's Board of Advisors is a who's who rogues gallery with names like Richard Pearle, Alexander Haig, George Shultz, James Woolsey, Lawrence Eagleburger, and others.
Petras calls Ross "a virulent Zionist advocate of Israel's ultra-militaristic policies, including an armed preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear and military installations. Ross is an unconditional supporter of the Israeli starvation siege of the 1.5 million (Gazans) and fully backed Israel's savage air attacks against civilian targets in Lebanon." His closeness to Obama signals a continued pro-Israeli hardline agenda, no letup in the persecution of Palestinians, and the possibility of an even greater regional war. So far no official announcement of his role has been made, but he'll be prominent either publicly or behind the scenes.
Various positions mentioned include Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (number three behind Clinton), Deputy Secretary of State, Deputy National Security Advisor, or Special Middle East Envoy. In recent months, Ross has been affiliated with the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center that was founded in 2007 by former senators George Mitchell, Howard Baker, Tom Daschle and Bob Dole. It presents itself as centrist, but, in fact, on key issues is militant and hard line, especially on the Middle East. It advocates coercing Iran to surrender its sovereignty, knuckle under to Washington, or be unilaterally attacked if it won't, and gets its advice from "two leading Iran experts:"
-- Michael Rubin of the right wing American Enterprise Institute, a former Giuliani advisor, closely allied to Bush neocons; and
-- Ken Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, a Middle East specialist who's ideologically allied with the right and no friend of Iran.
They, Ross and others produced the 2008 report: "Meeting the Challenge: US Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development." It argues that Iran's commercial program, contrary to available evidence, aims to develop nuclear weapons and threatens "US and global security, regional stability, and the international nonproliferation regime." In stark contrast, the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate refuted this claim and stated that Iran has no current nuclear weapons program. Washington ideologues like Ross dismiss it, press their case for war, recommend a major military presence in the Gulf, and pressuring Russia to cease efforts to aid the Islamic Republic.
He's also current chairman of The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI), another pro-Israeli front group that includes past and present prominent Israeli government officials in its membership as well as influential American Jews. During his Clinton years, he was hostile to Iraq and Iran, advocated war, and subverted all efforts for an equitable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A noted Arab said about him: "In the 1990s, the "perception always was that Dennis (Ross) started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted, and then tried to sell it to the Arabs....He was never looked at....as a trusted world figure or honest broker." All along he flacked for Israel, and ideologically he's closely aligned with Republican neocons and their permanent war agenda.
According to the Jewish publication, Ynetnews.com, he may not become Middle East Envoy with Colin Powell now considered a "serious option" for the job. That is, if he wants it and if Hillary Clinton will accept a notable figure like him circumventing her and reporting directly to Obama. Another possible candidate, besides Ross, is Daniel Kurtzer, former US ambassador to Israel and Egypt, and in other Middle East posts, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. He now has a Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs chair in Middle East Studies.
On December 14, Barak Ravid wrote in Haaretz that "Obama (will) base his Middle East policy on (an) army of envoys," and he named four possibilities - Dennis Ross most prominently, Colin Powell, Dan Kurtzer, and Martin Indyk.
He suggested that besides a Middle East Envoy, others would be appointed to:
-- Iraq to work with the government; the puppet one, that is, to assure America's permanent occupation, total control over state policy, and unchallenged regional influence;
-- Iran to open dialogue and "participate in international discussions on an incentive package;" in fact, for the government to cease its legal commercial nuclear development, surrender to America's will, and become a vassal state or risk possible attack and mass destruction;
-- Afghanistan and Pakistan "to stabilize the security situation;" in fact, a major effort may be undertaken to destabilize it as part of a broader agenda to stoke violence, increase Washington's presence in the region, double US forces in Afghanistan to 60,000 or more according to recent reports, and "Balkanize" each country, Iraq and possibly Syria into separate autonomous states; and
-- North Korea "to watch over denuclearization and the lifting of international sanctions;" in fact, plans for North Korea include ending its nuclear program, lessening the country's ability to defend itself, bringing it into the US orbit, and making it subservient to America's will.
Martin Indyk
He's a lobbyist and very much a pro-Israeli zealot. He's also a former US ambassador to Israel, the only foreign-born one (to a London Jewish family), an Assistant Secretary of State for Near East affairs in the Clinton administration, and currently a senior foreign policy fellow and head of the Washington-based Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
In the early 1980s, he began his Washington career as deputy director of research for AIPAC. In 1985, he co-founded WINEP (described above). In the November-December 2000 issue of New Left Review, Edward Said said this about him:
"On the eve of Clinton's inauguration in January 1993, it was announced that Indyk - an Australian national of Jewish origin, born in London - had been sworn in as an American citizen at the express command of the President-elect, overriding all normal procedures in an act of peremptory executive privilege, to allow him to be parachuted immediately into the National Security Council, with responsibility for the Middle East. What had Indyk been or done to merit such extraordinary favour? He had been head of (WINEP) that lobbies for Israel in tandem with AIPAC."
Said added that the consensus in Washington that Israel is a model democracy "is virtually impregnable." If there's ever a sign of slippage, in pours a phalanx of Zionist lobbyists like Indyk. They constitute an ideological pro-Israeli trump card along with Congress, especially the Senate. Virtually "the entire (body) can be marshalled in a matter of hours into signing a letter to the President on Israel's behalf."
Regarding Hillary Clinton at the time, Said said that no one better "exemplifies the sway of AIPAC better." She "outdoes even the most right-wing Zionists in fervour for Israel in her avid clawing for power in New York" and will stoop at nothing to get it. She's Machiavellian and very dangerous.
So is Indyk (Dennis Ross and others) in service to Israel. At WINEP in 1993, he outlined his notion of dual Iran and Iraq containment, and it became policy under Clinton. It postulated that outlier Middle East states be "contained," isolated, and threatened to weaken them politically, economically, and perhaps militarily.
For Iraq, it recommended continued sanctions, an economic embargo, and if "Saddam's regime crosses clearly drawn lines of appropriate behavior, particularly with regard to its weapons of mass destruction programs and its threats to other countries, the United States should punish it severely."
A more flexible approach was taken on Iran, saying that its "geopolitical importance is greater than Iraq's and the challenge it represents is more complex. Given (America's) military presence (in the region), Iran does not currently pose a threat of military aggression, but its long-term policies could destabilize the region."
The report accused Iran of opposing the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process," promoting Islamic militancy, supporting terrorism and subversion, and seeking nuclear weapons. Rather than war, it recommended "a more nuanced approach," but if Iran initiated a "special provocation....clear retaliatory measures" would be called for.
Targeting Iraq and Iran benefits Israel by weakening or eliminating its two main regional rivals. Iraq is now neutralized, not Iran, but harsh sanctions against it are in place. Pro-Israeli zealots, like Indyk and Ross, want them tightened. They also support war to destroy the country's nuclear infrastructure and much of its military capacity.
This is Obama's team with others on it, like Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, as belligerent. It suggests that peace in the Middle East is a nonstarter; the occupation of Iraq and Palestine will continue; Iran may be targeted; Pakistan as well; the war in Afghanistan will be expanded; imperial adventurism will be stressed; so will permanent war and homeland repression; and human rights advocates like Richard Falk will be sorely tested in their jobs.
======================
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Israel’s Siege of Gaza
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/roy_01_.html
London Review of Books
Tell a friend about this article
If Gaza falls . . .
Sara Roy
From the issue dated 1 January 2009
Israel’s siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then. Israel’s siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt around which an informal but increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form. The overwhelming majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1 per cent are unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is rapidly disappearing for the majority of the population.
On 5 November the Israeli government sealed all the ways into and out of Gaza. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems, fertiliser, plastic sheeting, phones, paper, glue, shoes and even teacups are no longer getting through in sufficient quantities or at all. According to Oxfam only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza in November. This means that an average of 4.6 trucks per day entered the strip compared to an average of 123 in October this year and 564 in December 2005. The two main food providers in Gaza are the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Food Programme (WFP). UNRWA alone feeds approximately 750,000 people in Gaza, and requires 15 trucks of food daily to do so. Between 5 November and 30 November, only 23 trucks arrived, around 6 per cent of the total needed; during the week of 30 November it received 12 trucks, or 11 per cent of what was required. There were three days in November when UNRWA ran out of food, with the result that on each of these days 20,000 people were unable to receive their scheduled supply. According to John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza, most of the people who get food aid are entirely dependent on it. On 18 December UNRWA suspended all food distribution for both emergency and regular programmes because of the blockade.
The WFP has had similar problems, sending only 35 trucks out of the 190 it had scheduled to cover Gazans’ needs until the start of February (six more were allowed in between 30 November and 6 December). Not only that: the WFP has to pay to store food that isn’t being sent to Gaza. This cost $215,000 in November alone. If the siege continues, the WFP will have to pay an extra $150,000 for storage in December, money that will be used not to support Palestinians but to benefit Israeli business.
The majority of commercial bakeries in Gaza – 30 out of 47 – have had to close because they have run out of cooking gas. People are using any fuel they can find to cook with. As the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has made clear, cooking-gas canisters are necessary for generating the warmth to incubate broiler chicks. Shortages of gas and animal feed have forced commercial producers to smother hundreds of thousands of chicks. By April, according to the FAO, there will be no poultry there at all: 70 per cent of Gazans rely on chicken as a major source of protein.
Banks, suffering from Israeli restrictions on the transfer of banknotes into the territory were forced to close on 4 December. A sign on the door of one read: ‘Due to the decision of the Palestinian Finance Authority, the bank will be closed today Thursday, 4.12.2008, because of the unavailability of cash money, and the bank will be reopened once the cash money is available.’
The World Bank has warned that Gaza’s banking system could collapse if these restrictions continue. All cash for work programmes has been stopped and on 19 November UNRWA suspended its cash assistance programme to the most needy. It also ceased production of textbooks because there is no paper, ink or glue in Gaza. This will affect 200,000 students returning to school in the new year. On 11 December, the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, sent $25 million following an appeal from the Palestinian prime minister, Salaam Fayad, the first infusion of its kind since October. It won’t even cover a month’s salary for Gaza’s 77,000 civil servants.
On 13 November production at Gaza’s only power station was suspended and the turbines shut down because it had run out of industrial diesel. This in turn caused the two turbine batteries to run down, and they failed to start up again when fuel was received some ten days later. About a hundred spare parts ordered for the turbines have been sitting in the port of Ashdod in Israel for the last eight months, waiting for the Israeli authorities to let them through customs. Now Israel has started to auction these parts because they have been in customs for more than 45 days. The proceeds are being held in Israeli accounts.
During the week of 30 November, 394,000 litres of industrial diesel were allowed in for the power plant: approximately 18 per cent of the weekly minimum that Israel is legally obliged to allow in. It was enough for one turbine to run for two days before the plant was shut down again. The Gaza Electricity Distribution Company said that most of the Gaza Strip will be without electricity for between four and 12 hours a day. At any given time during these outages, over 65,000 people have no electricity.
No other diesel fuel (for standby generators and transport) was delivered during that week, no petrol (which has been kept out since early November) or cooking gas. Gaza’s hospitals are apparently relying on diesel and gas smuggled from Egypt via the tunnels; these supplies are said to be administered and taxed by Hamas. Even so, two of Gaza’s hospitals have been out of cooking gas since the week of 23 November.
Adding to the problems caused by the siege are those created by the political divisions between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas Authority in Gaza. For example, Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), which is not controlled by Hamas, is supposed to receive funds from the World Bank via the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) in Ramallah to pay for fuel to run the pumps for Gaza’s sewage system. Since June, the PWA has refused to hand over those funds, perhaps because it feels that a functioning sewage system would benefit Hamas. I don’t know whether the World Bank has attempted to intervene, but meanwhile UNRWA is providing the fuel, although they have no budget for it. The CMWU has also asked Israel’s permission to import 200 tons of chlorine, but by the end of November it had received only 18 tons – enough for one week of chlorinated water. By mid-December Gaza City and the north of Gaza had access to water only six hours every three days.
According to the World Health Organisation, the political divisions between Gaza and the West Bank are also having a serious impact on drug stocks in Gaza. The West Bank Ministry of Health (MOH) is responsible for procuring and delivering most of the pharmaceuticals and medical disposables used in Gaza. But stocks are at dangerously low levels. Throughout November the MOH West Bank was turning shipments away because it had no warehouse space, yet it wasn’t sending supplies on to Gaza in adequate quantities. During the week of 30 November, one truck carrying drugs and medical supplies from the MOH in Ramallah entered Gaza, the first delivery since early September.
The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is little international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit support of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – which has been co-operating with Israel on a number of measures. On 19 December Hamas officially ended its truce with Israel, which Israel said it wanted to renew, because of Israel’s failure to ease the blockade.
How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza’s children – more than 50 per cent of the population – benefit anyone? International law as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls, the West Bank will be next.
-------------------
Sara Roy teaches at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and is the author of Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
London Review of Books
Tell a friend about this article
If Gaza falls . . .
Sara Roy
From the issue dated 1 January 2009
Israel’s siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then. Israel’s siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt around which an informal but increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form. The overwhelming majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1 per cent are unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is rapidly disappearing for the majority of the population.
On 5 November the Israeli government sealed all the ways into and out of Gaza. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems, fertiliser, plastic sheeting, phones, paper, glue, shoes and even teacups are no longer getting through in sufficient quantities or at all. According to Oxfam only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza in November. This means that an average of 4.6 trucks per day entered the strip compared to an average of 123 in October this year and 564 in December 2005. The two main food providers in Gaza are the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Food Programme (WFP). UNRWA alone feeds approximately 750,000 people in Gaza, and requires 15 trucks of food daily to do so. Between 5 November and 30 November, only 23 trucks arrived, around 6 per cent of the total needed; during the week of 30 November it received 12 trucks, or 11 per cent of what was required. There were three days in November when UNRWA ran out of food, with the result that on each of these days 20,000 people were unable to receive their scheduled supply. According to John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza, most of the people who get food aid are entirely dependent on it. On 18 December UNRWA suspended all food distribution for both emergency and regular programmes because of the blockade.
The WFP has had similar problems, sending only 35 trucks out of the 190 it had scheduled to cover Gazans’ needs until the start of February (six more were allowed in between 30 November and 6 December). Not only that: the WFP has to pay to store food that isn’t being sent to Gaza. This cost $215,000 in November alone. If the siege continues, the WFP will have to pay an extra $150,000 for storage in December, money that will be used not to support Palestinians but to benefit Israeli business.
The majority of commercial bakeries in Gaza – 30 out of 47 – have had to close because they have run out of cooking gas. People are using any fuel they can find to cook with. As the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has made clear, cooking-gas canisters are necessary for generating the warmth to incubate broiler chicks. Shortages of gas and animal feed have forced commercial producers to smother hundreds of thousands of chicks. By April, according to the FAO, there will be no poultry there at all: 70 per cent of Gazans rely on chicken as a major source of protein.
Banks, suffering from Israeli restrictions on the transfer of banknotes into the territory were forced to close on 4 December. A sign on the door of one read: ‘Due to the decision of the Palestinian Finance Authority, the bank will be closed today Thursday, 4.12.2008, because of the unavailability of cash money, and the bank will be reopened once the cash money is available.’
The World Bank has warned that Gaza’s banking system could collapse if these restrictions continue. All cash for work programmes has been stopped and on 19 November UNRWA suspended its cash assistance programme to the most needy. It also ceased production of textbooks because there is no paper, ink or glue in Gaza. This will affect 200,000 students returning to school in the new year. On 11 December, the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, sent $25 million following an appeal from the Palestinian prime minister, Salaam Fayad, the first infusion of its kind since October. It won’t even cover a month’s salary for Gaza’s 77,000 civil servants.
On 13 November production at Gaza’s only power station was suspended and the turbines shut down because it had run out of industrial diesel. This in turn caused the two turbine batteries to run down, and they failed to start up again when fuel was received some ten days later. About a hundred spare parts ordered for the turbines have been sitting in the port of Ashdod in Israel for the last eight months, waiting for the Israeli authorities to let them through customs. Now Israel has started to auction these parts because they have been in customs for more than 45 days. The proceeds are being held in Israeli accounts.
During the week of 30 November, 394,000 litres of industrial diesel were allowed in for the power plant: approximately 18 per cent of the weekly minimum that Israel is legally obliged to allow in. It was enough for one turbine to run for two days before the plant was shut down again. The Gaza Electricity Distribution Company said that most of the Gaza Strip will be without electricity for between four and 12 hours a day. At any given time during these outages, over 65,000 people have no electricity.
No other diesel fuel (for standby generators and transport) was delivered during that week, no petrol (which has been kept out since early November) or cooking gas. Gaza’s hospitals are apparently relying on diesel and gas smuggled from Egypt via the tunnels; these supplies are said to be administered and taxed by Hamas. Even so, two of Gaza’s hospitals have been out of cooking gas since the week of 23 November.
Adding to the problems caused by the siege are those created by the political divisions between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas Authority in Gaza. For example, Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), which is not controlled by Hamas, is supposed to receive funds from the World Bank via the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) in Ramallah to pay for fuel to run the pumps for Gaza’s sewage system. Since June, the PWA has refused to hand over those funds, perhaps because it feels that a functioning sewage system would benefit Hamas. I don’t know whether the World Bank has attempted to intervene, but meanwhile UNRWA is providing the fuel, although they have no budget for it. The CMWU has also asked Israel’s permission to import 200 tons of chlorine, but by the end of November it had received only 18 tons – enough for one week of chlorinated water. By mid-December Gaza City and the north of Gaza had access to water only six hours every three days.
According to the World Health Organisation, the political divisions between Gaza and the West Bank are also having a serious impact on drug stocks in Gaza. The West Bank Ministry of Health (MOH) is responsible for procuring and delivering most of the pharmaceuticals and medical disposables used in Gaza. But stocks are at dangerously low levels. Throughout November the MOH West Bank was turning shipments away because it had no warehouse space, yet it wasn’t sending supplies on to Gaza in adequate quantities. During the week of 30 November, one truck carrying drugs and medical supplies from the MOH in Ramallah entered Gaza, the first delivery since early September.
The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is little international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit support of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – which has been co-operating with Israel on a number of measures. On 19 December Hamas officially ended its truce with Israel, which Israel said it wanted to renew, because of Israel’s failure to ease the blockade.
How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza’s children – more than 50 per cent of the population – benefit anyone? International law as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls, the West Bank will be next.
-------------------
Sara Roy teaches at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and is the author of Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)