Six Alternatives to a Troop Surge in Afghanistan

MADRE News

Posted on: Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Keywords: Afghanistan, Peace Building, US Foreign Policy

Tonight, President Obama will tell us that he must expand the war on Afghanistan in order to end it. He will say that another troop surge is necessary to prevent al-Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base. What he won’t say is that al-Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan. He probably won’t point out that international forces already outnumber the Taliban twelve to one. And he’s not likely to remind us that throughout history, from the American Revolution to the Vietnam War, home-grown insurgencies like the Taliban’s ultimately ended when foreign troops withdrew.

More than 80 percent of Afghans don’t want more US troops in their country. One reason is that the US presence is strengthening the Taliban, which most Afghans oppose. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has found, “The mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in Afghanistan is probably the single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban.”

Afghanistan’s crisis is in part the result of 30 years of US intervention in the region, including the covert CIA campaign that created the Taliban (and al-Qaeda). Having unleashed this violence, the US has a legal and ethical obligation to the people of Afghanistan. That obligation will not be met by putting more boots on the ground. Instead, we need policies that address the grinding poverty, mass violence against women, predatory government and ongoing warfare that plague Afghanistan.

Here are six things the Obama Administration must do to further the prospects for peace in Afghanistan:

1. Protect civilians from attacks

• This will be the third US troop surge in Afghanistan; the first two killed record numbers of civilians.
• In 2007, US/NATO troops were expanded by 45 percent and more civilians were killed than in the previous four years combined. In the first 10 months of Obama’s 2009 surge, more than 2000 civilians were killed—at a faster rate than any time since the war began.
• The Taliban is known to attack villages where US soldiers have been. More US troops will make more civilians vulnerable to reprisal attacks.
• President Obama’s expansion of the war into Pakistan has further endangered civilian lives.  He has authorized as many drone strikes in less than ten months as George Bush did in his last three years in office.

The US should stop constructing military bases and waging air strikes in or near civilian areas. President Obama must put a stop to drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

2. Uphold Afghan women’s rights

• George Bush’s lie—that the US is in Afghanistan to defend women’s rights—is now driving the idea that more US forces are needed to protect Afghan women from the Taliban.
• The problem with this argument is that the US has never prioritized women’s rights—or anyone’s rights—in Afghanistan.
• From 2001 to the present, the US has allied itself with warlords and fanatical fundamentalists whose track record on women’s rights is virtually the same as the Taliban’s. In the creation of Afghanistan’s Parliament, constitution and judiciary, the US has consistently traded women’s rights for allegiance from warlords and reactionary clerics.
• The choice in Afghanistan is not between “winning the war” or “abandoning Afghan women.” Upholding women’s rights in Afghanistan is not some idealistic mission: the US is legally obligated to protect internationally recognized human rights, including women’s rights, in every policy, foreign and domestic. Military force is about the least suited instrument for securing human rights in any context.
• Rampant abuses of Afghan women’s rights cannot be eliminated by force. Ultimately, an end to the armed conflict is a precondition for Afghan women to create an environment in which they themselves can successfully assert their rights.

The US should declare women’s rights—and all human rights—non-negotiable and end the US pattern of trading Afghan women’s rights for cooperation from warlords and armed groups.

US economic and political support to Afghanistan should be tied to human rights improvements, including women’s rights to healthcare, education, employment, political participation and freedom from violence.

3. Prioritize development and meet humanitarian needs

• Proponents of a troop surge argue that development cannot be pursued without security; but the inverse is equally true. In a country with the world’s highest infant mortality rate, there can be no security without development.
• The US is undermining development by militarizing humanitarian aid. The army’s “Provincial Reconstruction Teams” blur the line between combat operations and aid delivery. They use humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip to extort information from civilians. The practice turns urgently-needed aid into a weapon of war and endangers recipients by associating them with the US military.

The US should demilitarize aid operations and fund community-based, Afghan-led reconstruction efforts to enable access to food, clean water, health care and primary education. Aid should be channeled through Afghan organizations to ensure that funds reach those most in need instead of reverting back to private US-based contractors.

4. Address the underlying reasons for the resurgence of the Taliban

• Grinding poverty and a 40 percent unemployment rate are root causes of the insurgency. Most Taliban recruits join because they are paid a daily wage.
• The Taliban is also strengthened by popular outrage and fear of US attacks, the illegitimacy of the Karzai government and the support of Pakistan.
• These problems will not be solved with more troops. They are social and political problems that must be addressed with development and diplomacy.

The US should allocate funding for job training and creation programs for Afghans.  Currently, only 10 percent of US funding in Afghanistan is earmarked for development; the rest is for military purposes. Allocating more funds to combating poverty in Afghanistan will weaken the Taliban without endangering civilians and help build long-term security.

5. Support Afghan civil society

• Civil society, including the Afghan women’s movement, is the country’s most moderating force and a vital resource for rebuilding Afghanistan, advancing human rights and fostering peace in the region.
• The political spaces where civil society can flourish—including a free press, progressive civic institutions, non-governmental organizations, and schools and universities—are debilitated by an atmosphere of war and militarism.

The US should hold consultations with Afghan civil society, particularly women’s organizations, to determine policies that can support civil society as a critical counter-force to warlords, armed groups and corrupt officials.

6. Advance diplomacy and peace building

• Ultimately, this war, like other armed conflicts, will end through negotiations. Yet, compared to the resources poured into the fighting, the US has barely begun to lay the groundwork for peace talks.
• Negotiations need to include local processes of reconciliation and peace building and address key grievances of the Taliban without legitimizing their cause.
• A regional process should include Afghanistan’s neighbors and address disputes between India and Pakistan, which are fueling violence in Afghanistan.

The US should support and facilitate diplomacy and peace building while recognizing that ultimately, decisions about what happens in Afghanistan must be made in Afghanistan and not in Washington.

Rich Siegal , In Palestine

Each and every awakening from zionism is a step towards justice.  My heart sings when i come across people who’ve changed their minds about Isreal and its myths.  Please watch these videos for a gentle story about how these men came to understand the horror visited upon the Palestinians for the last 61 years.

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Sudanese woman found guilty of indecency for wearing trousers vows to fight ruling

Former UN worker escapes flogging but says she would rather go to jail than pay fine imposed for breaching decency laws

• James Sturcke, Matthew Weaver and agencies
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 September 2009 15.15 BST
• Article history

A Sudanese woman said today that she would continue her campaign of defiance after being convicted by a court of indecency for wearing trousers in public.

Lubna Hussein said she would refuse to pay the 500 Sudanese pound (£127) fine imposed on her by a judge who ruled that she should not face a punishment of 40 lashes.

Hussein was among 13 women arrested in July during a raid at a party by the police in Khartoum. Ten of the women were fined and flogged two days later. But Hussein and two others decided to go to trial.

“I will not pay a penny,” said Hussein, who stated last week that she would rather go to jail than pay any fine. “I won’t pay, as a matter of principle. I would spend a month in jail. It is a chance to explore the conditions of jail.”

Amnesty International has called on the Sudanese government to withdraw the charges against Hussein and repeal the indecency law, which it said justifies “abhorrent” penalties.

Earlier, Hussein’s supporters were beaten by riot police armed with batons and shields outside the court. Dozens of people were detained.

Hussein, a former reporter, was working for the UN at the time of her arrest.

The case is being seen as a test of Sudan’s Islamic decency regulations, which many female activists claim are too vague and give undue latitude to individual police officers to determine what is acceptable clothing.

“Lubna has given us a chance. She is very brave. Thousands of girls have been beaten since the 1990s, but Lubna is the first one not to keep silent,” one protester, Sawsan Hassan el-Showaya, told Reuters.

About 150 protesters – most of them women, including some in trousers – had gathered on a traffic island to wave banners outside the court, hemmed in by security guards and riot police.

The women were later confronted by dozens of men in traditional Islamic dress who shouted religious slogans and denounced Hussein and her supporters, describing them as prostitutes and demanding harsh punishment for Hussein.

Scuffles erupted, in which one bearded protester grabbed a paper banner and ripped it to pieces. Riot police beat back the protesters and later loaded dozens of women into a van and drove off.

“They are beating us. They are trying to provoke us into violent action so they can react and clear us off the streets,” said Nahed Goubia, a surgeon in a white trouser suit, before police cleared the area.

Hussein’s lawyer, Nabil Adib Abdullah, has said the law on indecent dress is so wide that it contravenes a person’s right to a fair trial. Hussein challenged the charges, arguing that her clothes were respectable, so she did not break the law.

The judge adjourned Hussein’s last court session to investigate whether she was immune from prosecution because she was working as a UN press officer.

Hussein has said that she resigned from her UN job to give up any legal immunity so she can continue with the case, prove her innocence and challenge the decency law.

India’s generation of children crippled by uranium waste

Observer investigation uncovers link between dramatic rise in birth defects in Punjab and pollution from coal-fired power stations

• Gethin Chamberlain, Bathinda
• The Observer, Sunday 30 August 2009
• Article history

Gurpreet Sigh, 7, who has cerebral palsy and microcephaly, and is from Sirsar, 50km from the Punjabi town of Bathinda. He is being treated at the Baba Farid centre for Special Children in Bathinda Photograph: Gethin Chamberlain

Their heads are too large or too small, their limbs too short or too bent. For some, their brains never grew, speech never came and their lives are likely to be cut short: these are the children it appears that India would rather the world did not see, the victims of a scandal with potential implications far beyond the country’s borders.

Some sit mutely, staring into space, lost in a world of their own; others cry out, rocking backwards and forwards. Few have any real control over their own bodies. Their anxious parents fret over them, murmuring soft words of encouragement, hoping for some sort of miracle that will free them from a nightmare.

Health workers in the Punjabi cities of Bathinda and Faridkot knew something was terribly wrong when they saw a sharp increase in the number of birth defects, physical and mental abnormalities, and cancers. They suspected that children were being slowly poisoned.

But it was only when a visiting scientist arranged for tests to be carried out at a German laboratory that the true nature of their plight became clear. The results were unequivocal. The children had massive levels of uranium in their bodies, in one case more than 60 times the maximum safe limit.

The results were both momentous and mysterious. Uranium occurs naturally throughout the world, but is normally only present in low background levels which pose no threat to human health. There was no obvious source in the Punjab that could account for such high levels of contamination.

And if a few hundred children – spread over a large area – were contaminated, how many thousands more might also be affected? Those are questions the Indian authorities appear determined not to answer. Staff at the clinics say they were visited and threatened with closure if they spoke out. The South African scientist whose curiosity exposed the scandal says she has been warned by the authorities that she may not be allowed back into the country.

But an Observer investigation has now uncovered disturbing evidence to suggest a link between the contamination and the region’s coal-fired power stations. It is already known that the fine fly ash produced when coal is burned contains concentrated levels of uranium and a new report published by Russia’s leading nuclear research institution warns of an increased radiation hazard to people living near coal-fired thermal power stations.

The test results for children born and living in areas around the state’s power stations show high levels of uranium in their bodies. Tests on ground water show that levels of uranium around the plants are up to 15 times the World Health Organisation’s maximum safe limits. Tests also show that it extends across large parts of the state, which is home to 24 million people.

The findings have implications not only for the rest of India – Punjab produces two-thirds of the wheat in the country’s central reserves and 40% of its rice – but for many other countries planning to build new power plants, including China, Russia, India, Germany and the US. In Britain, there are plans for a coal-fired station at the Kingsnorth facility in Kent.

The victims are being treated at the Baba Farid centres for special children in Bathinda – where there are two coal-fired thermal plants – and in nearby Faridkot. It was staff at those clinics who first voiced concerns about the increasing numbers of admissions involving severely handicapped children. They were being born with hydrocephaly, microcephaly, cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome and other complications. Several have already died.

Dr Pritpal Singh, who runs the Faridkot clinic, said the numbers of children affected by the pollution had risen dramatically in the past six or seven years. But he added that the Indian authorities appeared determined to bury the scandal. “They can’t just detoxify these kids, they have to detoxify the whole Punjab. That is the reason for their reluctance,” he said. “They threatened us and said if we didn’t stop commenting on what’s happening, they would close our clinic.

“But I decided that if I kept silent it would go on for years and no one would do anything about it. If I keep silent then the next day it will be my child. The children are dying in front of me.”

Dr Carin Smit, the South African clinical metal toxicologist who arranged for the tests to be carried out in Germany, said that the situation could no longer be ignored. “There is evidence of harm for these children in my care and… it is an imperative that their bodies be cleaned up and their metabolisms be supported to deal with such a devastating presence of radioactive material,” she said.

“If the contamination is as widespread as it would appear to be – as far west as Muktsar on the Pakistani border, and as far east as the foothills of Himachal Pradesh – then millions are at high risk and every new baby born to a contaminated mother is at risk.”

In the Faridkot centre last week, Harmanbir Kaur, 15, was rocking gently backwards and forwards. When her test results came back, they showed she had 10 times the safe limit of uranium in her body. Her brother, Naunihal Singh, six, has double the safe level.

Harmanbir was born in Muktsar, 25 miles from Faridkot. Her mother, Kulbir Kaur, 37, watched her slowly degenerate from a healthy baby into the girl she is today, dribbling constantly, unable to feed herself, lost in a world of her own. “God knows what sin I have committed. When we go to our village people say there is a curse of God on you, but I don’t believe so,” she said. “Every part of this area is affected. We never imagined that there would be uranium in our kids.”

A few miles down the road in Bathinda, Sukhminder Singh, 48, a farmer, watched his son Kulwinder, 13, staring into space while curling his hands up under his chin. Tests showed Kulwinder has 19 times the maximum safe level of uranium in his body. He has cerebral palsy and has already had seven operations to unbend his arms and legs.

“The government should investigate it because if our child is affected it will also affect future generations,” he said. “What are they waiting for? How many children do they want to be affected? Another generation? I can leave the house for work, but my wife is always with him. Sometimes she cries and asks why God is playing with our luck. Every morning he sends a new trouble.”

Doni Choudhary, aged 15 months, is waiting to be tested, though staff say he shows similar symptoms to those who have tested positive and are treating him for suspected uranium poisoning. His mother, Neelum, 22, from the state capital, Chandigarh, says he was born with hydrocephaly. His legs are useless.

“He is dependent on others. After me, who can care for him?” Neelum asks. “He tries to speak but he can’t express himself and my heart cries. When will he understand that his legs don’t work? What will he feel?”

India’s reluctance to acknowledge the problem is hardly unexpected: the country is heavily committed to an expansion of thermal plants in Punjab and other states. Neither was it any surprise when a team of scientists from the Department of Atomic Energy visited the area and concluded that while the concentration of uranium in drinking water was “slightly high”, there was “nothing to worry” about. Yet some tests recorded levels of uranium in the ground water as high as 224mcg/l (micrograms per litre) – 15 times higher than the safe level of 15mcg/l recommended by the WHO. (The US Environmental Protection Agency sets a maximum safe level of 20mcg/l.)

Some scientists have proposed that the ground water may have been contaminated by contact with granite rocks that rise above the ground about 150 miles away to the south in the Tosham hills, in Haryana state. A continuation of these rocks is believed to run deep below the thick alluvial deposits that form the plains of Punjab.

Increasing demands for water, in particular to irrigate the rice crop, have led to greater dependence on tube wells. That in turn is depleting the water table in the state at an alarming rate – by at least 30cm a year, according to one study – with the result that water is being drawn from ever deeper levels. However, this theory seems to be in conflict with evidence from parents of many of the children, who say they use the mains supply, which comes from other sources.

There have also been claims that the contamination may have been exacerbated by depleted uranium carried on the wind from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At a seminar in Amritsar in April, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, a former chief of the naval staff, suggested that areas within a 1,000-mile radius of Kabul – including Punjab – may be affected by depleted uranium. Although the prevailing monsoon winds blow either from the north-east or the south-west, there are times when a depression originating in the Mediterranean can result in rainfall in Punjab.

Meanwhile, smoke continues to pour from the power station chimneys and lorries shuttle backwards and forwards, taking away the fly ash to be mixed into cement at the neighbouring Ambuja factory. Inside the plant last week, there was ash everywhere, forming drifts, clinging to the skin, getting into the throat.

Ravindra Singh, the plant’s security officer, said that most of the ash went to the cement works, while the rest was dumped in ash ponds. It would be more efficient to burn better quality coal that left less ash, he said. Every day the plant burned 6,000 tons of coal. He had no idea how much ash that generated, but the stream of lorries to take it away was continuous.

The first coal-fired power station in Punjab was commissioned in Bathinda in 1974, followed by another in nearby Lehra Mohabat in 1998. There is a third to the east, at Rupnagar.

Tests on ground water in villages in Bathinda district found the highest average concentration of uranium – 56.95mcg/l – in the town of Bucho Mandi, a short distance from the Lehra Mohabat ash pond. Such a concentration of uranium means the lifetime cancer risk in the village was more than 153 times higher than in the normal population. Tests on ground water in the village of Jai Singh Wala, close to the Bathinda ash pond, showed an average level of 52.79mcg/l. People living there said they used the ash to spread on the roads and even on the floors of their homes.

Scientists in Punjab who have studied the presence of uranium in the state have dismissed the government denials as a whitewash. “If the government says there is a high level of uranium in an area that would create havoc – they don’t want to openly say something like that,” said Dr Chander Parkash, a wetland ecologist working at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.

Both he and Dr Surinder Singh, who works at the same university and has also carried out tests on the state’s ground water, said it was clear that uranium was present in large quantities and should be investigated further.

Another scientist, Dr GS Dhillon, a former chief engineer with the irrigation department, is convinced that the uranium has come from the power stations and accuses the authorities of failing to control the ash ponds, which he believes have contaminated the ground water.

Their concerns are bolstered by a report from the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Russia’s leading state organisation for nuclear research, published last month in the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Thermal Engineering journal. The report’s author, DA Krylov, raised serious doubts about the safety of coal-fired thermal power stations (TPSs), concluding that radiation from ash residues and from chimney emissions built up around coal-fired power plants and posed an additional risk to those living and working in the area.

“Natural radionuclides contained in coals concentrate in ash-and-slag wastes and gas-aerosol emissions as these coals are fired at TPSs, with the result that an elevated man-made radiation background builds up around TPSs,” the report stated. The situation became worse, the report said, if ash was used as a construction material or as a filling material for roads.

A previous report in the magazine Scientific American, citing various sources, claimed that fly ash emitted by power plants “carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy”, adding: “When coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.”

Lockerbie bomber returns to Libya

The Lockerbie bomber has left Scotland on board a plane bound for Libya after being freed from prison on compassionate grounds.

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, was jailed in 2001 for the atrocity which claimed 270 lives in 1988.

The decision to release Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, was made by the Scottish Government.

US president Barack Obama said the decision was “a mistake” and some US victims’ families reacted angrily.

Some 189 Americans were among those who died in the explosion.

Megrahi left Greenock prison in a police convoy.  Megrahi was released from Greenock Prison

‘A convenient scapegoat?’

A police convoy left Greenock Prison, where Megrahi was serving his sentence, more than an hour after the announcement of his release was made.

He was taken to Glasgow Airport to board the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus plane bound for Tripoli, which took off shortly before 1530 BST.

The government said it had consulted widely before Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill made his decision on applications for Megrahi’s compassionate release or his transfer to a Libyan jail. He told a media conference on Thursday that he had rejected the application for a prisoner transfer.

However, after taking medical advice it was expected that three months was a “reasonable estimate” of the time Megrahi had left to live.

He ruled out the option of the Libyan being allowed to live in Scotland on security grounds.

The remaining days of my life are being lived under the shadow of the wrongness of my conviction
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi

And Mr MacAskill stressed that he accepted the conviction and sentence which had been handed to Megrahi.

“Mr al-Megrahi did not show his victims any comfort or compassion. They were not allowed to return to the bosom of their families to see out their lives, let alone their dying days. No compassion was shown by him to them,” he said.

“But that alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him and his family in his final days.”

Mr MacAskill continued: “Our justice system demands that judgement be imposed, but compassion be available.

Fiona Trott
BBC News correspondent, in Lockerbie

Band of Brothers

Israel no victim

Peter Slezak and Antony Loewenstein

Sydney Gaza protest. Photo: Ann El Khoury

Sydney Gaza Protest, Photo: Ann Elkhoury

Vic Alhadeff is a senior Zionist organisation official. His Unleashed article provides an opportunity for analysis that is instructive about our media and intellectual culture. The very persuasiveness of Alhadeff’s case for Israel is the reason it deserves attention. It misrepresents the uncontroversial facts and the moral issues at stake.

Alhadeff rehearses official lies of the Israeli government that are, moreover, uncritically repeated by our politicians and “free press”.

Alhadeff portrays Israel as a victim of implacable, irrational foes who are bent on gratuitously “killing, maiming and terrorising as many civilians as possible”. At a time when Israel is committing unprecedented violence, such reversal of the facts requires contempt for an audience who is expected not to know better. Israel’s actions are comparable to their killing of stone-throwing children with rifles and tanks.

Israeli victim-hood is the premise on which the public relations machine relies to warrant their military actions. On this picture, a well-meaning, peace-loving Israel offers generous treaties and truces that are rejected by fanatical, fundamentalist terrorists in favour of murdering Jews. The story line is that, finally, Israel had no choice but to invade the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas.

This story can only convince an audience that does not know the facts and these are either falsified or left out altogether by Alhadeff.

First, the central factual claim on which the entire campaign rests concerns the relentless rocket fire against Israeli citizens that finally became intolerable and the justification for large-scale air-force strikes. As Israel’s own newspaper Haaretz reminds us: “Six months ago Israel asked and received a cease-fire from Hamas. It unilaterally violated it when it blew up a tunnel, while still asking Egypt to get the Islamic group to hold its fire.”

Haaretz reports Israeli ministry of defence sources who reveal that plans for the operation were made over six months ago, at the same time as Israel was beginning to negotiate the truce agreement with Hamas. Nevertheless, the media and politicians have consistently reported the official Israeli lies, re-writing history effectively as it happens.

However, even if the Palestinian violation of the cease-fire were true, it would not justify the current intense military assault on Gaza which is the most destructive since 1967. Israel has declared Gaza to be a “special military zone”, a classification that is one degree below a declaration of total war against an enemy state.

While the rocket fire is illegal under international law, it does not give Israel the right to respond against the population of Gaza since collective punishment is unequivocally prohibited by the Geneva conventions. This comes after the collective punishment of Israel’s devastating blockade for which it was condemned by the UN and human rights groups around the world. The blockade had already created a severe humanitarian crisis with shortages of bread, fuel, ink, paper, electricity, medications and hospital equipment among other elementary necessities of life.

A separate violation by Israel concerns the targeting of civilians. Since Hamas is a legitimate, democratically elected political party that controls the government, security-related institutions are civilian targets including police departments and uniformed officers. Other targets are incontestably civilian such as factories, mosques, a television broadcasting centre, university and other sites that have been demolished with loss of innocent life.

The excuse that Hamas is to blame for placing military sites among the population would not justify killing civilians even if it were true.

Another clear violation of international law is the grossly disproportionate scale of the military attack. Alhadeff’s rehearsing of official Israeli excuses for a massive military over-reaction to the supposed provocation is an attempt to excuse the inexcusable.

The rocket fire has claimed altogether a handful of Israeli lives despite Israel’s unprecedented military assault – clear evidence of how little threat Hamas rockets pose for Israel. To put Israel’s aggression into perspective, we must juxtapose the claims of urgency and “no choice” with the entire history of harm caused by home-made rockets: altogether around 20 fatalities in the past two years.

Alhadeff is certainly correct in noting that Hamas is listed as a “terrorist” organisation – but this just reflects the Orwellian terminology used by Western commentators to exclude Western crimes by definition, regardless of their scale. By any meaningful definition, Israel is responsible for large-scale terrorism, if the facts make any difference.

In 1982 during the first Lebanon war, Israel killed around 17,000 civilians – by far the largest act of terrorism in the Middle East, but conveniently forgotten by Alhadeff and media commentators. The 2006 Lebanon war cost around 1,000 lives and involved cluster bombs against civilians and other forms of terrorism including gross violations of international law.

Another revealing omission from Alhadeff’s version of history is the 40-year military occupation and its toll on Palestinian lives. However, perhaps most glaring is Alhadeff’s failure to even hint at the crushing blockade of Gaza. Contrary to the picture retailed by Alhadeff, Hamas showed remarkable restraint under the most desperate conditions and extreme provocation.

The exaggeration of the danger posed by home-made missiles leaves no doubt that the Israeli attack on Gaza was driven by political and not security motives. The posturing before forthcoming Israeli elections is widely cited as motivation for this military adventure.

The mainstream understanding of what goes on in the world is often the reverse of the truth. In light of the facts, it is regrettable that the Australian government has uncritically echoed Israeli-American talking points.

Contrary to standard perceptions, since its election in 2006 Hamas has consistently offered negotiation with Israel and expressed a willingness to accept a two-state solution based on 1967 borders. As Harvard Middle East expert, Sara Roy, has pointed out, Israel pretends that they have no partner for peace precisely because they know that the reality is quite the opposite.

Even the Australian Jewish News (AJN) recently expressed the need for friends of Israel to be critical of the Jewish state. This view was widely shared by around 500 signatories of a statement published by Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV) () in 2007 who urged a wider and more honest debate over Israel and Palestine.

Alhadeff’s article has interest as an example of apologetics in the service of power and state crimes. He does not contribute to the well-being and security of Israelis or Palestinians.

Israeli peace group Gush Shalom published a statement in Haaretz on December 30 calling for an immediate cease-fire, arguing that the war is “inhuman, superfluous” and that “nothing good for Israel will come out of it”. They further point out that the attack will deepen hatred for Israel, “arouse the whole civilized world against us” and “undermine even more the status of peace-seeking Palestinians”.

from the ABC’s Unleashed:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2457110.htm

Press Freedom Round-up 2008

Press Freedom Round-up 2008
Better figures despite a hostile climate and more Internet repression

In 2008 :
- 60 journalists were killed
- 1 media assistant was killed
- 673 journalists were arrested
- 929 were physically attacked or threatened
- 353 media outlets were censored
- 29 journalists were kidnapped

Internet :
- 1 blogger was killed
- 59 bloggers were arrested
- 45 were physically attacked
- 1,740 websites were blocked, shut down or suspended

For comparison, in 2007 :
- 86 journalists were killed
- 20 media assistants were killed
- 887 journalists were arrested
- 1,511 were physically attacked or threatened
- 528 media outlets were censored
- 67 journalists were kidnapped
2008 Killed Arrested Physically attacked or threatened Media outlets censored Kidnapped
Africa 3 263 117 41 9
Asia/Pacific 26 60 106 70 0
Americas 7 127 414 72 16
Europe/Ex-USSR 8 86 168 79 0
Maghreb/Mid-East 16 137 124 91 4
Total 60 673 929 353 29

Reporters Without Borders only counted cases in which a link between the violation and the victim’s work as a journalist was clearly established or very likely. The figures cover the violations the organisation learned about. They do not cover violations which the victims chose not to report (usually for security reasons). In other words, the same method was used to compile the figures as in previous years, making comparisons possible.

Overview

The Asia-Pacific and Maghreb-Middle East regions are still the deadliest for the press. After Iraq (with 15 journalists killed), the two countries with the highest death tolls are Pakistan (7 killed) and the Philippines (6 killed). The bloodshed continues in Mexico, where four journalists were murdered in connection with their work. The fall in the death toll in Africa (from 12 in 2007 to 3 in 2008) is due above all to the fact that many journalists stopped working, often going into exile, and to the gradual disappearance of news media in war zones such as Somalia.

The number of arrests (for periods of more than 48 hours) is particularly high in Africa, where it is almost routine for journalists to end up in police cells when they upset senior officials or cover subjects that are off-limits. In Iraq (31 arrests), the US military’s handling of the security situation often results in Iraqi journalists, including those working for foreign news media, being imprisoned. In China (38 arrests), many cases of detention were attributable to the Olympics. In Burma (17 arrests), outspoken journalists and bloggers were jailed in a crackdown by the military government.

Reporters Without Borders comment :

“The figures may be lower than last year’s but this should not mask the fact that intimidation and censorship have become more widespread, including in the west, and the most authoritarian governments have been taking an even tougher line. The quantitative improvement in certain indicators is often due to journalists becoming disheartened and turning to a less dangerous trade or going into exile. We cannot say that 60 deaths, hundreds of arrests and systematic censorship offer grounds for optimism.”

Repression shifts to the Internet

The fall in the number of journalists from the traditional media killed or arrested in 2008 does not mean the press freedom situation has improved. As the print and broadcast media evolve and the blogosphere becomes a worldwide phenomenon, predatory activity is increasingly focusing on the Internet.

In this respect, the figures speak for themselves. In 2008, someone was for the first time killed while acting as a “citizen journalist.” It was Chinese businessman Wei Wenhua, who was beaten to death by “chengguan” (municipal police officers) while filming a clash with demonstrators in Tianmen (in Hubei province) on 7 January. Cases of online censorship were recorded in 37 countries, above all China (93 websites censored), Syria (162 websites censored) and Iran (38 websites censored).

There are democracies that do not lag far behind in terms of online surveillance and repression. Taboos established by the monarchy in Thailand and by the military in Turkey are so tenacious that incautious Internet users are increasingly being monitored and punished by the police. Video-sharing websites such as YouTube and Dailymotion are favourite targets of government censors. It is becoming more and more common for sites to be blocked or filtered because of content that officials have deemed “offensive.” A visceral reaction from some governments towards participatory websites, especially social networking sites, is beginning to give rise to cases of “mass censorship.” The censorship of sites such as Twitter (in Syria) or Facebook (blocked in Syria and Tunisia, and filtered in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates) leads to massive amounts of content being blocked – an effect that is considerably compounded when combined with other standard methods of control.

Governments are increasingly responding with imprisonment to criticism by bloggers. In China, 10 cyber-dissidents were arrested, 31 were physically attacked or threatened, and at least three were tried and convicted. In Iran, Reporters Without Borders registered 18 arrests, 31 physical attacks and 10 convictions. Online free expression is also curtailed in Syria (8 arrests and 3 convictions), Egypt (6 arrests) and Morocco (2 arrests and 2 convictions).

Internet freedom has been crushed with particular severity in Burma, where the military government has arrested and tried blogger and comedian Zarganar and the young cyber-dissident Nay Phone Latt in a disgraceful manner and sentenced them to incredibly severe jail terms (59 years for the former, 20 years for the latter). These two men join Burma’s many other political prisoners, who include 16 journalists.

Reporters Without Borders comment :

“The growth in the Internet’s influence and potential is being accompanied by greater vigilance on the part of some governments with already marked security concerns. Every year, repressive governments acquire new tools that allow them to monitor the Internet and track online data. The Internet is gradually becoming a battleground for citizens with criticisms to express and journalists who are censored in the traditional media. As such, it poses a threat to those in power who are used to governing as they wish with impunity.”

Hostile climate, better figures

The upsurge in online repression comes at a time when traditional media, even in the leading western democracies, are coming under renewed pressure. Anti-terrorism and “post-9/11” laws put investigative journalists in very delicate positions. Foreign correspondents face growing hostility if they are from countries that are part of, or associated with, the US-led “anti-terrorist” coalition.

Still, even if the overall situation is bad, the figures are not as alarming as in previous years. Repression has shifted and diversified. Some authoritarian governments have been replaced. But even with 24 per cent fewer arrests, there are still too many police raids on news media and reporters’ homes, including in France. And there are leading journalists and free expression activists such as Hu Jia, the “Olympic” prisoner of a Chinese government as intolerant as ever, who are beginning 2009 in jail.

There are no grounds for optimism. The murders of journalists continue although the number has fallen slightly (by 22 per cent, from 86 in 2007 to 60 in 2008) and the deaths are now concentrated in “hot zones” – Iraq, Pakistan’s Tribal Areas, Philippines and Mexico – where civilians of all kinds fall victim to wars, political and criminal violence or terrorism. Abduction, an effective source of income and political affirmation, is still very frequent in Afghanistan (7 journalists and media assistants kidnapped), Somalia (5 kidnappings), Mexico (5 kidnappings) and Iraq (4 kidnappings).

Finally, there is a slight decline in the use of censorship (with a third fewer cases in 2008 than in 2007) but it continues to be a routine tool in many countries that are equally distributed in all the continents – Sudan (4 media outlets censored), Guinea (5), Somalia (5), Iran (27), Egypt (10), Syria (11), Russia (15), Belarus (18), Turkey (13), Burma (85), China (132), Pakistan (19), Malaysia (25), Bolivia (20), Brazil (14), Mexico (10) and Venezuela (7).

Reporters Without Borders comment :

“One should not conclude from a decline in the figures that the situation has necessarily improved. The sad spectacle of a journalist in handcuffs is an almost daily occurrence in all the continents. When governments are challenged, their most frequent response is imprisonment. And the dozens of murders, in which the involvement of the security forces is often almost certain, rarely lead to trials, whether in Sri Lanka or Burkina Faso.”

Videos from the Gaza Strip

-See videos from the Gaza strip at the Palestine Vlog, including the one below of the December 27 attacks:

Israel’s ‘victories’ in Gaza come at a steep price

The Jewish ethical tradition means embracing Palestinians, too.

By Sara Roy from the January 2, 2009 edition, Christian Science Monitor

Cambridge, Mass. – I hear the voices of my friends in Gaza as clearly as if we were still on the phone; their agony echoes inside me. They weep and moan over the death of their children, some, little girls like mine, taken, their bodies burned and destroyed so senselessly.

One Palestinian friend asked me, “Why did Israel attack when the children were leaving school and the women were in the markets?” There are reports that some parents cannot find their dead children and are desperately roaming overflowing hospitals.

As Jews celebrated the last night of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights commemorating our resurgence as a people, I asked myself: How am I to celebrate my Jewishness while Palestinians are being killed?

The religious scholar Marc Ellis challenges us further by asking whether the Jewish covenant with God is present or absent in the face of Jewish oppression of Palestinians? Is the Jewish ethical tradition still available to us? Is the promise of holiness – so central to our existence – now beyond our ability to reclaim?

The lucky ones in Gaza are locked in their homes living lives that have long been suspended – hungry, thirsty, and without light but their children are alive.

Since Nov. 4, when Israel effectively broke the truce with Hamas by attacking Gaza on a scale then unprecedented – a fact now buried with Gaza’s dead – the violence has escalated as Hamas responded by sending hundreds of rockets into Israel to kill Israeli civilians. It is reported that Israel’s strategy is to hit Hamas military targets, but explain that difference to my Palestinian friends who must bury their children.

On Nov. 5, Israel sealed all crossing points into Gaza, vastly reducing and at times denying food supplies, medicines, fuel, cooking gas, and parts for water and sanitation systems. A colleague of mine in Jerusalem said, “this siege is in a league of its own. The Israelis have not done something like this before.”

During November, an average of 4.6 trucks of food per day entered Gaza from Israel compared with an average of 123 trucks per day in October. Spare parts for the repair and maintenance of water-related equipment have been denied entry for over a year. The World Health Organization just reported that half of Gaza’s ambulances are now out of order.

According to the Associated Press, the three-day death toll rose to at least 370 by Tuesday morning, with some 1,400 wounded. The UN said at least 62 of the dead were civilians. A Palestinian health official said that at least 22 children under age 16 were killed and more than 235 children have been wounded.

In nearly 25 years of involvement with Gaza and Palestinians, I have not had to confront the horrific image of burned children – until today.

Yet for Palestinians it is more than an image, it is a reality, and because of that I fear something profound has changed that will not easily be undone. For how, in the context of Gaza today, does one speak of reconciliation as a path to liberation, of sympathy as a source of understanding? Where does one find or even begin to create a common field of human undertaking (to borrow from the late, acclaimed Palestinian scholar, Edward Said) so essential to coexistence?

It is one thing to take an individual’s land, his home, his livelihood, to denigrate his claims, or ignore his emotions. It is another to destroy his child. What happens to a society where renewal is denied and all possibility has ended?

And what will happen to Jews as a people whether we live in Israel or not? Why have we been unable to accept the fundamental humanity of Palestinians and include them within our moral boundaries? Rather, we reject any human connection with the people we are oppressing. Ultimately, our goal is to tribalize pain, narrowing the scope of human suffering to ourselves alone.

Our rejection of “the other” will undo us. We must incorporate Palestinians and other Arab peoples into the Jewish understanding of history, because they are a part of that history. We must question our own narrative and the one we have given others, rather than continue to cherish beliefs and sentiments that betray the Jewish ethical tradition.

Jewish intellectuals oppose racism, repression, and injustice almost everywhere in the world and yet it is still unacceptable – indeed, for some, it’s an act of heresy – to oppose it when Israel is the oppressor. This double standard must end.

Israel’s victories are pyrrhic and reveal the limits of Israeli power and our own limitations as a people: our inability to live a life without barriers. Are these the boundaries of our rebirth after the Holocaust?

As Jews in a post-Holocaust world empowered by a Jewish state, how do we as a people emerge from atrocity and abjection, empowered and also humane? How do we move beyond fear to envision something different, even if uncertain?

The answers will determine who we are and what, in the end, we become.

Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, and the author, most recently, of “Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.”

Awakening From History

This is a powerful and moving radio documantary about an Irish Australian radio producer trying to come to grips with his location in history and what it’s meant for him personally. He recounts experiences of violence in his life both as a victim and as someone who became violent. His candour is sometimes difficult to listen to, but it’s what grounds this piece in reality.

I find it important to think about these issues given today’s events in Gaza and the awful violence which has engulfed that densly populated piece of the planet. What happens to the victims of this inordinate amount of violence? How long can people live without hope? What do we do to stay human ?

In this piece, story telling is one of the ways explored as an antidote: stories to create connections; stories to transform. I think their power to change things is undeniable.

Radio Eye, ABC Radio National

Finalist – United Nations of Australia Media Peace Prize

Colm McNaughton is a thirty-something Irish Australian, who spent some of his childhood in a Catholic family in Northern Ireland. He returns at the height of the highly charged ‘marching season’ to find out how realistic the peace and reconciliation movement is. He meets and records some heavy characters from both sides of the sectarian divide and confronts the way violence brought trauma into his own life. A tough story which has room for just enough optimism in the midst of the fatalism that still infects the ‘Irish Question’.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/radioeye/stories/2008/2141659.htm

Protest In Vienna for Gaza

From Women in Black in Vienna.

They Report:

There have been two mass demonstrations for Gaza in Vienna thus far.  There will certainly be more.

We had a vigil at the Israeli Embassy on Tuesday, which received much publicity..many photographers and journalists came from the Austrian Press Agency.  The Ambassador came out to talk but dialogue with such a person is impossible.

[The photograph] is of  yesterday’s vigil of our group, sympathizers, and the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace.  We have had a lot of interest, there have been interviews, etc.  We were at the Israeli Embassy on Tuesday and many photographers and journalists came from the Austrian Press Ageny.   Today, in the Sunday paper (Kurier) I had a two page interview and the woman brought everything exactly as I said it.   It is the first time we have had publicity in one of the main newspapers.  They also gave two sentences about Women in Black’s focus and work.

The media is no longer silent in Vienna….it took a long time.

best wishes in these horrible times,

Paula Abrams-Hourani
Women in Black (Vienna)

When the Dog was Just the Dog

In Jeffery Masson’s book ‘ Dogs Never Lie About Love‘,  he explores the emotional lives of ‘our best and truest friend’.    Well, I just love dogs. I can’t imagine a world without them.  The comfort and love they bring into your home and life is without equal. Their emotional brain locks into yours and the unconditionality of their love is humbling.

So, if you like dogs, you’ll enjoy this great piece of radio by Lea Redfern.  it takes you through lots of emotions–both dark and light, and it even includes a very smooth version of Puppy Love accompanied by suitable howls from a variety of cannines.

Enjoy!

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Radio Eye, ABC Radio National

This playful and sometimes dark program reveals that even when the dog is “just the dog” their place in human lives can be essential.

In this era of professional dog walkers and puppy day care, it’s easy to regard dogs as developmentally arrested substitute children. So when radio producer, and then childless owner of two active puppies, Lea Redfern decided to make a program about dogs, she had cause to examine her own motives. What were her dogs to her, what role did they play in her life? These questions led her to think about Georgie, the first dog she ever owned, and the changes in the way we think about, and treat dogs over the last couple of decades.

Music

Greig’s “Morning” from Peer Gynt performed by Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Bird song, magpies and various

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/radioeye/stories/2008/2415089.htm

Norwegian Doctor tells Sky News that Israel is deliberately targeting civillians

It is hard to sit here in safe Sydney and hear this –what many had long suspected.  Not only is Israel lying as usual, but it’s also testing what seem to be new weapons.  Dr. Mads Fredrik Gilbert talks about horrific details of people who were killed by being split into two!

I have always thought Israel was mercernary and I don’t understand why world governments aren’t tackling this rogue state the way they should, by at least severing economic and diplomatic ties.

It’s never a perfect solution, but it’s a start.

I think Israel  should be disarmed .  There’s already a precedent for doing that.   Remember the sanctions against Iraq and how they were policed by the UN following the first Gulf war?

And then there’s Australia, the US lackey in the region.  Spineless as usual and pro Zionist as ever.  As an Australian citizen, I am ashamed of their cowardice and cowtowing to the Israel lobby here.  But this shouldn’t come as a surprise because Australia has rarely excercised its independence on foreign policy matters. Loyal to England at first and now to the new empire, the US.  Speaking of which, what a predicatable disappointment Obama was on the Bombing of Gaza when it all began?  His lack of comapssion sickens me.

Boston protest for Palestine January 3rd 2009

 

I found this  inspiring to watch.  Among some of the messages coming from Gaza is the gentle call ‘ to stay human’.

In the midst of the barbarity of the Israeli bombing, this is surely one of the hardest things to do.  But stay human we must.  There’s no other choice if we want a better world to live in.

Shocking cynicism of a poisoned homeland

Sydney Gaza Protest 4th jan 09. Photo: Ann El khoury

I heard on Radio National’s PM this evening, that there’s unconfirmed reports of the Israeli Army admitting to diplomats in private, that they know the rocket fire they claim came from within the UN school in Gaza yesterday, actually came from outside.  So this article below from Australian Sara Dowse, couldn’t be more timely.

Sara Dowse January 8, 2009

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/01/07/1231004100045.html

It has taken me days to begin writing this, so horrified have I been by Israel’s latest actions. My sense of justice, however – as a mother, a Jew, and above all as a human being – impels me to try.

The massacre in Gaza has its roots in virulent European anti-Semitism and the 1917 Balfour declaration, when the British government promised Zionists that Jewish people would have a homeland in Palestine if Britain was victorious in World War I.

The key word here is homeland, and it should be remembered that the promise was qualified by the condition that such a homeland would “not be to the detriment” of the Palestinians. The steady increase in Jewish immigration under the British mandate provoked riots and protests, but Palestinians were still in majority until, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Zionists unilaterally declared an Israeli state.

Despite the suffering of the Palestinians, whose land was taken from them, for many years the sympathy of the developed world was with Israel, refuge for the survivors of the Nazi slaughter of European Jews, and beleaguered by surrounding hostile Arab states.

With the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel could no longer be accepted as a victim. Yet it has continued to play on the sympathies of Western governments, most particularly the US, and Jews of the diaspora. In reality, Israel has been a colonising state, masquerading as the most democratic, most humane, most modern nation in the region. It has served the Western powers to have such a proxy in the Middle East, and most recently, under the Bush Administration and in concert with the Israelis, they have played a cynical game of divide and rule, encouraging the Israelis in their blind refusal to negotiate with Hamas, just as for years Israel refused to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the forerunners of Fatah, whom they now support.

Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, but the legitimate, democratically elected government of the Palestinian Authority. We may not like what it stands for, but that is no reason for sidelining it. Undermining that government by Israel and the West is but one of a string of cynical actions on their part.

The rationale that Hamas has refused to accept Israel’s existence or to eschew violence is yet another example of how the truth has been twisted. What Hamas rejected was the continued, barbaric Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and the laying down of arms against an aggressive military occupation. I have heard with my own ears the Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, say exactly that. Is he to be trusted? It would have been worth a try.

And who now would trust Israel?

So here we have it: a tough, technocratically savvy, nuclear power with the backing of the largest military power the world has known, bombing, then invading, a territory the size of a small city, with a population of 1.5 million, most of whom are civilians, to “defend our citizens”.

The ceasefire was meant to lift the Israeli blockade on Gaza, but it didn’t. It was meant to facilitate the release of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were members of the elected Hamas Government, but it didn’t.

Israeli planes raided southern Gaza in November. The Hamas rockets continued. Which side broke the ceasefire? Hamas may not be blameless, but the situation is far more complex than Israel claims. The fact that more than 600 people have died because in a couple of weeks the US will have a new government and next month Israel will have an election, is the most shocking form of cynicism the Palestinian people have yet faced.

Since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon I have undergone what for me, as a Jew, has been an agonising realignment of my feelings about Israel. I have come to believe that a specifically Jewish state has been a terrible mistake.

A homeland is different from a state. There have been examples throughout history and there are in our own time polities with mixed ethnic populations and official sanction for their living in harmony together. Australia is one.

I don’t know how it will come about – I hope with as little bloodshed as possible – but I look forward to the distant day when the land becomes a multicultural country again, perhaps as a federation, perhaps in another form, but similar to what it was before it was destroyed with the poison of ethnic territorial nationalism.

Sara Dowse is a Jewish Australian woman, and a prize-winning writer of reviews and Canberra-themed fiction. A feminist and women’s rights activist, she was a member of the Women’s Liberation Movement and the Women’s Electoral Lobby-ACT. She became the inaugural head of the Women’s Affairs Section of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (now Office of the Status of Women) for the Whitlam government.

Want to End the Violence in Gaza? Boycott Israel.

sydney gaza march 4th jan 09. Photo: Ann El Khoury

By Naomi Klein, The Nation
Posted on January 9, 2009, Printed on January 9, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/118332/

It’s time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on “people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.” The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions — BDS for short — was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for “the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions” and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. “The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.… This international backing must stop.”

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can’t go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren’t good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.

1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis. The world has tried what used to be called “constructive engagement.” It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures — quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non–Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 percent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel’s exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers “upgraded” the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange’s flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don’t work, sticks are needed.

2. Israel is not South Africa. Of course it isn’t. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes of South African apartheid in the occupied territories: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was “infinitely worse than apartheid.” That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less. This one I’ll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus’s work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Coming up with our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn’t it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don’t I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel’s Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom specializing in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. “As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company.”

Ramsey says that his decision wasn’t political; he just didn’t want to lose customers. “We can’t afford to lose any of our clients,” he explains, “so it was purely commercially defensive.”

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it’s precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.

Naomi Klein’s latest book is The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

© 2009 The Nation All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/118332/

Jews Against the Iraqi war

Getting away with murder

Julia Irwin January 11, 2009

Sydney Morning Herald

YOU’VE got to hand it to the Israeli public relations flacks: only they could convince you that killing children was an act of self-defence.

As the recent bombing of Gaza began, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni gave instructions for the Foreign Ministry to take “emergency measures to adapt Israel’s public relations to the ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip”. Livni went on to call for foreign language speakers to put Israel’s case to the world.

In Australia, the ABC relies for “independent” comment on the smooth Mark Regev, an official spokesman for the Israeli Government, and Martin Indyk, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

It’s the oldest trick in the book: if they look and sound like us, we are more likely to be sympathetic towards them. Anyone putting an alternative view is immediately cast as anti-Semitic. Our media glibly accept the excuses of the Israeli public relations machine and ignore the horrific realities of Israel’s barbaric behaviour in Gaza.

It’s the same in most Western countries – the groundwork has been laid and the responses of world leaders are predictable. When the Israeli attacks began, right on cue Western leaders regretted the killing of children but in the same breath condemned Palestinians for firing rockets from their walled ghetto into Israel.

While French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for an immediate ceasefire by both sides, US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called only for Hamas to halt rockets fired from Gaza. They did not call for Israel to halt its bombing.

There was a lot of handwringing by world leaders but no tough talk when it came to the bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza or the killing of 40 civilians in a United Nations school. We saw the same during the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon.

It all reminds me of an old story from the days of the Roman Empire. The Emperor Nero was upset that his prized lions were being distressed by Christians who ran away from them in the Colosseum. Nero ordered that at the next circus a Christian was to be buried up to his neck in the sand to make things easier for the lions. When the lions entered the ring, the biggest and meanest saw the hapless condemned, swaggered over and stood astride the Christian’s head, roaring for approval from the crowd. At that moment, the Christian craned his neck and bit off the lion’s testicles. The crowd was shocked. “Fight fair! Fight fair!” they yelled.

It seems that no matter what injustice Palestinians have suffered in the past 60 years, they should be grateful for the privilege of being able to live under the jackboot of Israeli occupation.

For three years since daring to democratically elect a government not favoured by Israel or the US, the people of Gaza have been subjected to a starvation blockade. Yet the civilised world has barely raised a note of concern. Is this the standard by which we judge the behaviour of nations? We talk about Darfur and Zimbabwe but say little of the gross abuse of human rights that occurs daily in the illegally occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Our double standards have made a mockery of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention.

Our failure to condemn the totally disproportionate, not to say illegal, attacks by the Israeli Defence Force has changed the way conflict is regarded around the world. Last August, Russia employed the same tactics in its attack on Georgia as Israel did against Lebanon.

Neither Russia nor China sought UN Security Council emergency meetings in response to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. What happens in the Middle East today sets the standard for the world. And that applies to weapons as well as tactics.

Using cluster bombs or phosphorus bombs against civilian targets is perfectly legal if you can believe the Israeli Defence Force.

Assassinating Hamas leaders during a ceasefire does not constitute a breach. Collective punishments against communities, obstructing medical and humanitarian relief – all part of Israel’s tactics – could now be considered acceptable behaviour in national and international conflict.

How can we criticise brutal regimes elsewhere in the world when we condone worse atrocities when they are committed by Israel? The Security Council has become a laughing stock. The Secretary-General is a pathetic figure reduced to faint pleas for a ceasefire while UN personnel are murdered on the ground in Gaza. And who will pick up the pieces when the bloodshed has finally stopped? The rest of the world will, of course. Through the world’s contributions to the UN, its largest budget item is the UN Relief and Works Agency. With an annual $700 million budget going to support Palestinian refugees, the biggest component is being spent on Gaza.

Even before the Israeli bombing and invasion of Gaza, the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur responsible for reporting on conditions in the occupied territories, Richard Falk, was denied entry to Gaza.

Last month, Falk called for an International Criminal Court investigation to determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.

To that long list of war crimes and crimes against humanity we can now add the atrocities committed in this recent invasion. But, with its superior public relations forces, Israel can easily deflect concern about its barbaric assault.

And will the world call Israel’s leaders to account for their crimes? Not likely. Western leaders – including Australia’s – will merely call on Palestinians to fight fair.

Julia Irwin is Federal MP for the NSW seat of Fowler and a member of the Parliament’s Palestinian Friendship Group.

By Invitation Only is a space for people of influence to have their say. Edited by Kerry-Anne Walsh. kwalsh@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Source: The Sun-Herald

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/01/10/1231004352831.html

Israeli human rights groups speak out as death toll passes 1,000

I was asked a question at a dinner about six months ago–by someone who I thought was an enlightened person–whether or not if she went to Egypt, she would be discriminated against because she was a Jew. This was not someone lacking in self esteem or social capital.  So her question was offensive. I could have countered with a similar question about Israel.  But i was too gob smacked to say more than that many others in Egypt would face discrimination, not just her.   Other people at the dinner who heard her question jumped in with comments about how there’s a whole heap of  people who face discrimination in many countries, not least of all, the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

I read a statement by British Jews who quoted the Deputy Israeli Defence Minister  on how he wants to  make the Palestinians suffer an even greater Shoah ( holocaust) . Uri Avnery  from the Israeli peace group  Gush Shalom, describes the country’s actions as those of a  ‘blood stained monster.’   It couldn’t be more apt. This  wanton killing must surely be the cruellest war crime of this insatiably violent century.

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Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem and Sarah Boseley

The Guardian, Thursday 15 January 2009

The number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s offensive in Gaza climbed above 1,000 yesterday, despite repeated calls from the UN for a halt to the conflict.

With mounting concern about the hundreds of civilians killed, nine Israeli human rights groups wrote to their government warning of their “heavy suspicion … of grave violations of international humanitarian law by military forces”.

Among the sites hit yesterday was Sheikh Radwan cemetery. Thirty graves were destroyed, spreading rotting flesh over a wide area. The army said it was targeting a nearby weapons cache.

So far 1,010 Palestinians have died, including 315 children and 95 women, Dr Moawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza’s medical emergency services, told the Guardian. The number of injured after 19 days of fighting stood at 4,700, he said. On the Israeli side, 13 people have died, among them three civilians, and four soldiers accidentally killed by their own troops.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which is based in Gaza and has field staff across the territory, believed at least 673 civilians had been killed – about two-thirds of the total. A more accurate count of civilian deaths is difficult, with journalists and international human rights observers banned from entering Gaza.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was in Cairo for talks to halt the fighting. “My call is for an immediate end to violence in Gaza, and then to the Israeli military offensive and a halt to rocket attacks by Hamas,” he said. “It is intolerable that civilians bear the brunt of this conflict.”

Yesterday John Holmes, the UN’s humanitarian chief, told the security council: “The situation for the civilian population of Gaza is terrifying, and its psychological impact felt particularly by children and their parents, who feel helpless and unable to protect them.”

He added that Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israel violated international laws and must cease. “Yet any Israeli response must itself comply with international humanitarian law. Here, too, there is considerable and grave cause for concern.”

The Israeli military pressed on with its offensive yesterday, striking 20 sites across Gaza, including what it said were rocket launching sites, three smuggling tunnels, several armed gunmen and five buildings storing weapons.

Yet despite the intense bombing and artillery, militant rocket fire from Gaza has continued every day since the war began. Yesterday at least 16 rockets were fired into southern Israel, some reaching as far as Be’er Sheva and Ashdod.

Separately, guerrillas in southern Lebanon fired rockets into northern Israel yesterday. There were no casualties. The Israeli military fired mortars back.

The nine Israeli human rights groups, which include B’Tselem, Gisha, Amnesty International’s Israel section and Physicians for Human Rights, said accounts from Gaza showed the Israeli military was “making wanton use of lethal force” and called for a halt to attacks on civilians, access for civilians to escape the fighting, medical care for the injured, access for medical and rescue teams and the proper operation of electricity, water and sewage systems. Their unusually strong criticisms stand out in a country whose Jewish population at least has been united in extraordinarily strong support for the war in Gaza.

The desperate state of health facilities in Gaza was highlighted yesterday in the Lancet medical journal. Several mobile clinics and ambulances have been damaged by Israeli attacks, it notes, and at least six medical personnel killed. Hospitals and clinics have been forced to close. International law requires that all medical staff and facilities be protected at all times, even during armed conflict, said the Lancet. “Attacks on staff and facilities are serious violations of these laws,” it said.

Many doctors are working 24-hour shifts, ambulances cannot be maintained and are breaking down, while hospital equipment, medicines and anaesthetics, beds and medical staff are all in short supply. Hospitals and clinics have had their electricity supplies cut and are relying on “fragile back-up generators”.

Norwegian doctors Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse wrote that during their spell working in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in the current conflict they had “witnessed the most horrific war injuries in men, women and children of all ages in numbers almost too large to comprehend. The wounded, dying and dead have streamed into the overcrowded hospital in endless convoys of ambulances and private cars and wrapped in blankets in the caring arms of others. The endless and intense bombardments from Israeli air, ground and naval forces have missed no targets, not even the hospital.”

Two Palestinian journalists working for an Iranian television station were charged in Israel yesterday with passing classified information to the enemy. They were accused of reporting the start of the ground invasion two weeks ago while the information was still under military censorship, and could face lengthy jail terms.

---

Israel disqualifies Arab parties

From an email i recieved from a Jewish friend

Israel’s Arab parties, Balad and United Arab List-Ta’al, are disqualified from running in the upcoming Israeli elections in February, the country’s Central Elections Committee ruled Monday. This is a shocking turn of events in a country whose Arab citizens (to say nothing of those under its occupation) comprise at least 20% of its total population.

In the bellicose atmosphere that prevails at present, however, the fundamentals of democracy have been set aside. This is not the first time that the Israeli government has made efforts to disqualify the Arab parties from running in national elections, and in the past the Israeli High Court of Justice has blocked such efforts. But it is not clear that the Court will rule against the present attempt. Even if the Court overturns a ban on Arab parties, the widespread anger Palestinian citizens of Israel have expressed in response to the recent attacks on Gaza suggests that many Arab voters may refuse to participate in electing a new government next month.

As UAL-Ta’al’s Member of Knesset Ahmad Tibi said yesterday during a Knesset hearing to discuss the banning of the Arab parties, “we object to targeting civilians and you are committing genocide in Gaza. You’re murdering children.” In light of such outraged expressions by popular leaders such as Tibi, there is unlikely to be any eagerness among Palestinian citizens of Israel to participate in electing a new government that will certainly support the current military action against Gaza.

The ultra-nationalist Jewish parties which sponsored the ban, Israel Beitenu and National Union-National Religious Party, consider the Arab parties to represent a fifth column in Israel. There are signs that such extreme sentiments are becoming part of the mainstream discourse among Jews in Israel. Last month, Tsipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and prime ministerial candidate, seemed to echo such views when she suggested that the future creation of a Palestinian state would offer a “national solution” for Arab citizens of Israel. Her remarks, which stoked fear and outrage among Palestinian citizens of Israel, were widely interpreted as suggesting that Arab citizens should prepare themselves for the possibility of involuntary de-patriation.

Indeed, as the Israeli media reported soon afterwards, new polls show that Jewish Israelis increasingly favor the idea of ethnic cleansing, or “transfer,” of Palestinians out of the territories, and of Arab citizens out of Israel . The effort to ban Arab parties from participating in the upcoming elections is another sign that Israeli politics are increasingly driven by ethnoreligious xenophobia and political absolutism.

The military assault on Gaza — and Israel’s continuing refusal to negotiate a fair settlement with the Palestinians — have certainly intensified such ethnocentrist nationalism, but public support in Israel for such attacks may also be seen as a politically contrived symptom of the increasingly extremist national discourse.

for further info: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7825032.stm

Action for Gaza

Rally MAJOR GLOBAL JANUARY RALLIES occurred from Jan 1-11, including a 100,000 strong rally in London on the 10th January.

Please check the links below for further actions.

*** For updates on US cities, please visit ANSWER: Act-Now-to-Stop-War-and-Racism and US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation page

*** For updates on UK cities, please visit this Palestine Solidarity Campaign page and the Scottish Palestine Solidarity campaign

*** For updates on your city, visit your national or local anti-war group; a good source is http://www.indymedia.org http://YOURCITY.indymedia.org (insert your city)

Lobby USA

1. Contact the White House to protest the attack and demand an immediate cease-fire.

Call 202-456-1111 or send an email to comments@whitehouse.gov.

2. Contact the State Department at 202-647-6575 3.

Contact your Representative and Senators in Congress at 202-224-3121 4. Contact your local media by phoning into a talk show or writing a letter to the editor

ISRAEL

Mr. Ehud Barak,

Minister of Defence,

Ministry of Defence,

Hakirya,

Tel-Aviv 64743, Israel.

E-mail: sar@mod.gov.il or pniot@mod.gov.il

Tel.: ++972-3-6975540 or ++972-3-6975423 Fax: ++972-3-6976711

Ma’ariv:

2 Karlibach st. Tel-Aviv 67132 Israel Fax:

+972-3-561-06-14 e-mail: editor@maariv.co.il

Yedioth Aharonoth:

2 Moses st. Tel-Aviv

Israel

Fax: +972-3-608-25-46

Ha’aretz (Hebrew):

21 Schocken st.

Tel-Aviv, 61001

Israel Fax: +972-3-681-00-12

Ha’aretz (English edition):

21 Schocken st. Tel-Aviv, 61001

Israel Fax: +972-3-512-11-56

e-mail: letters@haaretz.co.il

Hayom:

2 Hashlosha st.

The B1 Building

Tel-Aviv Israel

e-mail: hayom@israelhayom.co.il

Jerusalem Post:

P.O. Box 81 Jerusalem 91000

Israel Fax: +972-2-538-95-27

e-mail: news@jpost.co.il

or letters@jpost.co.il

1. Join or organize emergency protests and direct actions in partnership with Palestine solidarity and social justice organisations in your area. Send reports of actions you participate in so this information can be shared with people around the world.

2. Donate money through:

Medical Aid for Palestine http://www.map-uk.org/ Middle East Children’s Alliance

http://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=1171

to pay for desperately needed medical supplies and their delivery.

The current conditions in Gaza medical facilities are dire.

3. Flood Israeli embassies and consulates with letters and calls decrying the attacks. Find contact info for Israeli embassies around the world. http://www.learn4good.com/travel/israel_embassies.htm

4. Shift the framing of Israel’s actions in the media by phoning into a talk show or writing a letter to the editor.

5. Sign the petition in support of UN General Assembly President Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/IJAN_Brockmann_BDS/

He has spoken out to condemn Israeli Apartheid and called for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

6. Write to your member of parliament. If you are in the UK, you can find your MP’s details on this site: http://www.writetothem.com/

7. If you are in Europe write to your MEP http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members.do

8. Write to members of the Israeli government and members of the Knesset Download a list of e-mail addresses 9-12. If you are in the UK you can do the following (or the equivalents if you live elsewhere)

9. Write to: (a) the Labour Party using this online form: http://www.labour.org.uk/contact

(b) the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron camerond@parliament.uk (You could mention you are appalled that he has been on the BBC calling for restraint on all sides when nearly 300 Palestinians have been killed.)

10. British Consulate Jerusalem +972 (02) 541 4100

11. British Embassy Tel Aviv +972 (02) 3510 1167 / +972 (03) 527 1572 Call them.

12. Fax the office of the UK Prime Minister – Gordon Brown – on +44 20 7925 0918

AUSTRALIA

Israeli Ambassador to Australia HE Yuval Rotem ambassadorsec@canberra.mfa.gov.il

Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs

The Hon Stephen Smith

Stephen.Smith.MP@aph.gov.au

Australian Ambassador to Israel

HE John Larsen Fax: +972 3 6935002

Boycott

* Global Boycott Movement

* Electronic Intifada — Boycott Divestment Sanctions by topic

* PACBI: Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural boycott of Israel

* Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) Resources – UK

* Boycott Israel – InMinds

Boycott Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza

War of Choice: How Israel Manufactured the Gaza Escalation

Steve Niva January 7  2009

Israel has repeatedly claimed that it had “no choice” but to wage war on Gaza on December 27 because Hamas had broken a ceasefire, was firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and had “tried everything in order to avoid this military operation,” as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni put it.

This claim, however, is widely at odds with the fact that Israel’s military and political leadership took many aggressive steps during the ceasefire that escalated a crisis with Hamas, and possibly even provoked Hamas to create a pretext for the assault. This wasn’t a war of “no choice,” but rather a very avoidable war in which Israeli actions played the major role in instigating.

Israel has a long history of deliberately using violence and other provocative measures to trigger reactions in order to create a pretext for military action, and to portray its opponents as the aggressors and Israel as the victim. According to the respected Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz in his recent book, Defending the Holy Land, Israel most notably used this policy of “strategic escalation” in 1955-1956, when it launched deadly raids on Egyptian army positions to provoke Egypt’s President Nasser into violent reprisals preceding its ill-fated invasion of Egypt; in 1981-1982, when it launched violent raids on Lebanon in order to provoke Palestinian escalation preceding the Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and between 2001-2004, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon repeatedly ordered assassinations of high-level Palestinian militants during declared ceasefires, provoking violent attacks that enabled Israel’s virtual reoccupation of the West Bank.

Israel’s current assault on Gaza bears many trademark elements of Israel’s long history of employing “strategic escalation” to manufacture a major crisis, if not a war.

Making War ‘Inevitable’

The countdown to a war began, according to a detailed report by Barak Raviv in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak started planning the current attack on Gaza with his chiefs of staff at least six months ago — even as Israel was negotiating the Egyptian brokered ceasefire with Hamas that went into effect on June 19. During the subsequent ceasefire, the report contends, the Israeli security establishment carefully gathered intelligence to map out Hamas’ security infrastructure, engaged in operational deception, and spread disinformation to mislead the public about its intentions.

This revelation doesn’t confirm that Israel intended to start a war with Hamas in December, but it does shed some light on why Israel continuously took steps that undermined the terms of the fragile ceasefire with Hamas, even though Hamas respected their side of the agreement.

Indeed, there was a genuine lull in rocket and mortar fire between June 19 and November 4, due to Hamas compliance and only sporadically violated by a small number of launchings carried out by rival Fatah and Islamic Jihad militants, largely in defiance of Hamas. According to the conservative Israeli-based Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center’s analysis of rocket and missile attacks in 2008, there were only three rockets fired at Israel in July, September, and October combined. Israeli civilians living near Gaza experienced an almost unprecedented degree of security during this period, with no Israeli casualties.

Yet despite the major lull, Israel continually raided the West Bank, arresting and frequently killing “wanted” Palestinians from June to October, which had the inevitable effect of ratcheting up pressure on Hamas to respond. Moreover, while the central expectation of Hamas going into the ceasefire was that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza, Israel only took the barest steps to ease the siege, which kept the people at a bare survival level. This policy was a clear affront to Hamas, and had the inescapable effect of undermining both Hamas and popular Palestinian support for the ceasefire.

But Israel’s most provocative action, acknowledged by many now as the critical turning point that undermined the ceasefire, took place on November 4, when Israeli forces auspiciously violated the truce by crossing into the Gaza Strip to destroy what the army said was a tunnel dug by Hamas, killing six Hamas militants. Sara Roy, writing in the London Review of Books, contends this attack was “no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June.”

The Israeli breach into Gaza was immediately followed by a further provocation by Israel on November 5, when the Israeli government hermetically sealed off all ways into and out of Gaza. As a result, the UN reports that the amount of imports entering Gaza has been “severely reduced to an average of 16 truckloads per day — down from 123 truckloads per day in October and 475 trucks per day in May 2007 — before the Hamas takeover.” These limited shipments provide only a fraction of the supplies needed to sustain 1.5 million starving Palestinians.

In response, Hamas predictably claimed that Israel had violated the truce and allowed Islamic Jihad to launch a round of rocket attacks on Israel. Only after lethal Israeli reprisals killed over 10 Hamas gunmen in the following days did Hamas militants finally respond with volleys of mortars and rockets of their own. In two short weeks, Israel killed over 15 Palestinian militants, while about 120 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel, and although there were no Israeli casualties the calm had been shattered.

It was at this time that Israeli officials launched what appears to have been a coordinated media blitz to cultivate public reception for an impending conflict, stressing the theme of the “inevitability” of a coming war with Hamas in Gaza. On November 12, senior IDF officials announced that war with Hamas was likely in the two months after the six-month ceasefire, baldly stating it would occur even if Hamas wasn’t interested in confrontation. A few days later, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly ordered his military commanders to draw up plans for a war in Gaza, which were already well developed at the time. On November 19, according to Raviv’s report in Haaretz, the Gaza war plan was brought before Barak for final approval.

While the rhetoric of an “inevitable” war with Hamas may have only been Israeli bluster to compel Hamas into line, its actions on the ground in the critical month leading up to the official expiration of the ceasefire on December 19 only heightened the cycle of violence, leaving a distinct impression Israel had cast the die for war.

Finally, Hamas then walked right into the “inevitable war” that Israel had been preparing since the ceasefire had gone into effect in June. With many Palestinians believing the ceasefire to be meaningless, Hamas announced it wouldn’t renew the ceasefire after it expired on December 19. Hamas then stood back for two days while Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militants fired volleys of mortars and rockets into Israel, in the context of mutually escalating attacks. Yet even then, with Israeli threats of war mounting, Hamas imposed a 24-hour ceasefire on all missile attacks on December 21, announcing it would consider renewing the lapsed truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip if Israel would halt its raids in both Gaza and the West Bank, and keep Gaza border crossings open for supplies of aid and fuel. Israel immediately rejected its offer.

But when the Israel Defence Forces killed three Hamas militants laying explosives near the security fence between Israel and Gaza on the evening of December 23, the Hamas military wing lashed out by launching a barrage of over 80 missiles into Israel the following day, claiming it was Israel, and not Hamas, that was responsible for the escalation.

Little did they know that, according to Raviv, Prime Minister Olmert, and Defense Minister Barak had already met on December 18 to approve the impending war plan, but put the mission off waiting for a better pretext. By launching more than 170 rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians in the days following December 23, killing one Israeli civilian, Hamas had provided reason enough for Israel to unleash its long-planned attack on Gaza on December 27.

The Rationale for War

If Israel’s goal were simply to end rocket attacks on its civilians, it would have solidified and extended the ceasefire, which was working well, until November. Even after November, it could have addressed Hamas’ longstanding ceasefire proposals for a complete end to rocket-fire on Israel, in exchange for Israel lifting its crippling 18-month siege on Gaza.

Instead, the actual targets of its assault on Gaza after December 27, which included police stations, mosques, universities, and Hamas government institutions, clearly reveal that Israel’s primary goals go far beyond providing immediate security for its citizens. Israeli spokespersons repeatedly claim that Israel’s assault isn’t about seeking to effect regime change with Hamas, but rather about creating a “new security reality” in Gaza. But that “new reality” requires Israel to use massive violence to degrade the political and military capacity of Hamas, to a point where it agrees to a ceasefire with conditions more congenial to Israel. Short of a complete reoccupation of Gaza, no amount of violence will erase Hamas from the scene.

Confirming the steps needed to create the “new reality,” the broader reasons why Israel chose a major confrontation with Hamas at this time appear to be the cause of several other factors unrelated to providing immediate security for its citizens.

First, many senior Israeli political and military leaders strongly opposed the June 19 ceasefire with Hamas, and looked for opportunities to reestablish Israel’s fabled “deterrent capability” of instilling fear into its enemies. These leaders felt Israel’s deterrent capability was badly damaged as a result of their withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and especially after the widely criticized failures in the 2006 Israeli war with Hezbollah. For this powerful group a ceasefire was at best a tactical pause before the inevitable renewal of conflict, when conditions were more favorable. Immediately following Israel’s aerial assault, a New York Times article noted that Israel had been eager “to remind its foes that it has teeth” and to erase the ghost of Lebanon that has haunted it over the past two years.

A second factor was pressure surrounding the impending elections set to take place in early February. The ruling coalition, led by Barak and Livni, have been repeatedly criticized by the Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, who is leading in the polls, for not being tough enough on Hamas and rocket-fire from Gaza. This gave the ruling coalition a strong incentive to demonstrate to the Israeli people their security credentials in order to bolster their chances against the more hawkish Likud.

Third, Hamas repeatedly said it wouldn’t recognize Mahmud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority after his term runs out on January 9. The looming political standoff on the Palestinian side threatens to boost Hamas and undermine Abbas, who had underseen closer security coordination with Israel and was congenial to Israeli demands for concessions on future peace proposals. One possible outcome of this assault is that Abbas will remain in power for a while longer, since Hamas will be unable to mobilise its supporters in order to force him to resign.

And finally, Israel was pressed to take action now due to its sense of the American political timeline. The Bush administration rarely exerted constraint on Israel and would certainly stand by in its waning days, while Barack Obama would not likely want to begin his presidency with a major confrontation with Israel. The Washington Post quoted a Bush administration official saying that Israel struck in Gaza “because they want it to be over before the next administration comes in. They can’t predict how the next administration will handle it. And this is not the way they want to start with the new administration.”

An Uncertain Ending

As the conflict rages to an uncertain end, it’s important to consider Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz’s contention that Israel’s history of manufacturing wars through “strategic escalation” and using overwhelming force to achieve “deterrence” has never been successful. In fact, it’s the primary cause of Israel’s insecurity because it deepens hatred and a desire for revenge rather than fear.

At the same time, there’s no question Hamas continues to callously sacrifice its fellow Palestinian citizens, as well as Israeli civilians, on the altar of maintaining its pyrrhic resistance credentials and its myopic preoccupation with revenge, and fell into many self-made traps of its own. There had been growing international pressure on Israel to ease its siege and a major increase in creative and nonviolent strategies drawing attention to the plight of Palestinians such as the arrival of humanitarian relief convoys off of Gaza’s coast in the past months, but now Gaza lies in ruins.

But as the vastly more powerful actor holding nearly all the cards in this conflict, the war in Gaza was ultimately Israel’s choice. And for all this bloodshed and violence, Israel must be held accountable.

With the American political establishment firmly behind Israel’s attack, and Obama’s foreign policy team heavily weighted with pro-Israel insiders like Dennis Ross and Hillary Clinton, any efforts to hold Israel accountable in the United States will depend upon American citizens mobilizing a major grassroots effort behind a new foreign policy that will not tolerate any violations of international law, including those by Israel, and will immediately work towards ending Israel’s siege of Gaza and ending Israel’s occupation.

Beyond that, the most promising prospect for holding Israel accountable is through the increasing use of universal jurisdiction for prosecuting war crimes, along with the growing transnational movement calling for sanctions on Israel until it ends its violations of international law. In what would be truly be a new style of foreign policy, a transnational network that focuses on Israeli violations of international law, rather than the state itself, could become a counterweight that forces policymakers in the United States, Europe, and Israel to reconsider their political and moral complicity in the current war, in favor of taking real steps towards peace and security in the region for all peoples.

Steve Niva, a professor of International Politics and Middle East Studies at The Evergreen State College, is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. He is currently writing a book on the relationship between Israel’s military violence and Palestinian suicide bombings.

We Will Not go Down

A moving song by Michael Heart for the people of Gaza

Michael says ‘2 nights ago I picked up my acoustic guitar and started strumming lightly, while looking at these horrible photos of the casualties in Gaza, on the internet. It was around midnight my time. And before I knew it, by 2 AM, I had written a song about it. The next day … I decided to record it, not really knowing what I was going to do with it. It was just an emotional outlet for me. But then it occurred to me that maybe if the song was distributed on a massive scale, it could raise awareness about the cause. But more on that later…

I also created a little “home made” slide show, with the song in the background (some pictures are very graphic so please warn your friends). Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s the song.

P.S. The song is called We will not go down‘

Beautiful Children

Gaza invasion: Powered by the U.S.

Taxpayers are spending over $1 billion to send refined fuel to the Israeli military — at a time when Israel doesn’t need it and America does.

By Robert Bryce

Editor’s note: Generous support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

http:////www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/01/16/gaza_invasion/index.html

Israel’s current air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip has left about 1,000 Palestinians dead, including 400 women and children. Several thousand people have been wounded and dozens of buildings have been destroyed. An estimated 90,000 Gazans have abandoned their homes.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which began more than two weeks ago, has been denounced by the Red Cross, multiple Arab and European countries, and agencies from the United Nations. Demonstrations in Pakistan and elsewhere have been held to denounce America’s support for Israel.

It’s well known that the U.S. supplies the Israelis with much of their military hardware. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has provided about $53 billion in military aid to Israel. What’s not well known is that since 2004, U.S. taxpayers have paid to supply over 500 million gallons of refined oil products — worth about $1.1 billion –- to the Israeli military. While a handful of countries get motor fuel from the U.S., they receive only a fraction of the fuel that Israel does — fuel now being used by Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and tanks to battle Hamas.

According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, between 2004 and 2007 the U.S. Defense Department gave $818 million worth of fuel to the Israeli military. The total amount was 479 million gallons, the equivalent of about 66 gallons per Israeli citizen. In 2008, an additional $280 million in fuel was given to the Israeli military, again at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. The U.S. has even paid the cost of shipping the fuel from U.S. refineries to ports in Israel.

In 2008, the fuel shipped to Israel from U.S. refineries accounted for 2 percent of Israel’s $13.3 billion defense budget. Publicly available data shows that about 2 percent of the U.S. Defense Department’s budget is also spent on oil. A senior analyst at the Pentagon, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, says the Israel Defense Force’s fuel use is most likely similar to that of the U.S. Defense Department. In other words, the Israeli military is spending about the same percentage of its defense budget on oil as the U.S. is. Therefore it’s possible that the U.S. is providing most, or perhaps even all, of the Israeli military’s fuel needs.

What’s more, Israel does not need the U.S. handout. Its own recently privatized refineries, located at Haifa and Ashdod, could supply all of the fuel needed by the Israeli military. Those same refineries are now producing and selling jet fuel and other refined products on the open market. But rather than purchase lower-cost jet fuel from its own refineries, the Israeli military is using U.S. taxpayer money to buy and ship large quantities of fuel from U.S. refineries. The Israeli government obtains the fuel through the Defense Department’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, and pays for the fuel and the shipping with funds granted to it through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), another Defense Department program. (In 2008, Congress earmarked $2.4 billion in FMF money for Israel, and $2.5 billion for 2009.)

The dimensions of the FMS fuel program are virtually unknown among America’s top experts on Middle East policy. For his part, the Pentagon analyst was surprised to learn that FMS money was even being used to supply fuel to Israel. “That’s not the purpose of the program,” he says. “FMS was designed to allow U.S. weapons makers to sell their goods to foreign countries. The idea that fuel is being bought under FMS is very, very odd.” Quantcast The fuel program, in fact, raises a number of pressing questions. The shipments have occurred during times of record-high oil prices, when American consumers have been angered by motor fuel prices that in 2008 exceeded $4 per gallon. Given those high prices, it appears to make little sense for the U.S. government to be promoting policies that reduce the volume of — and potentially raise the price of — motor fuel available for sale to U.S. motorists. The U.S. fuel shipments are part of a sustained policy that has widened the energy gap between Israel and its neighbors.

Over the past few years, the Israel Defense Force has cut off fuel supplies and destroyed electricity infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Those embargoes and attacks on power plants have exacerbated a huge gap in per-capita energy consumption between Israelis and Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. And that sharp disparity helps explain why the Palestinians have never been able to build a viable economy.

Edward S. Walker, former president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, says the fuel supply program is emblematic of U.S. military support for Israel. Walker, who has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, explains that the FMF money allows the Israelis to “do with it what they want. They can buy equipment or fuel. It’s their choice, not the government’s choice. It’s the only program where we give someone a blank check and they can use it any way that they choose.” Given the recent spike in oil prices, which helped send the U.S. and the world economy into a tailspin, and Americans still smarting from paying $4 at the pump, says Walker, “Why are we supplying fuel to Israel when we are paying such high prices?”

GRIEVING OVER GAZA

Sydney Gaza march December 08. Photo: Ann El Khoury

By Anat Biletzki

January 14, 2009

I write as an Israeli.

In the past two-and-a-half weeks Israeli forces have killed over 900 people in Gaza; Palestinian rockets have killed four Israelis and Palestinian fighters have killed six soldiers. As the assault began, Bibi Netanyahu, the leader of Israel’s definitive right-wing party, Likud, said that talk of comparative numbers is not pertinent to the validity of Operation Cast Lead. That might be true, but the grotesque proportions of one to one hundred in counting the dead should give us pause, should make us reflect on the mantras of the conventional wisdom.

We are told by the mainstream media that Hamas broke the half-year truce agreed upon in June and refused to extend it past the December expiration date. Whether or not the truce was adhered to in its first four months is a question of interpretation rather than fact. Israelis will tell you that the Palestinians did, in fact, launch some Qassam missiles into Israel. True. Palestinians will tell you that Israel did not, in fact, live up to its side of the bargain and continued, even intensified, the siege of Gaza, stopping the electricity, water, fuel, food and medicines crucial for decent survival. True again. But no one denies that on November 4 Israel carried out an incursion into Gaza, killing seven Palestinians and setting off the renewal of violence–Qassam launchings into Israel by Hamas and Israeli killings of Palestinians in Gaza–that was in full swing by the time the truce expired.

We are also led to believe that Hamas refused to extend the half-year cease-fire. But even the mainstream news in the ten days before the attack started clearly reported that Hamas’s positions just before the expiration date were vague and divided; and that starting on December 21 it made several overtures to Israel, via Egypt and Turkey, to discuss and consider continuing the truce. Israel refused.

Then we are urged by most conventional media, buttressed by “experts” on Israel, that no nation on earth would tolerate the rocketing of its civilians. That might be true. But such legal posturing, deriving from supposed expertise in the laws of war, seems to forget that the option of going to war, not to mention bombing indiscriminately from on high, is prescribed as a last resort after all other alternatives have been tried and exhausted. Refusing to engage with Hamas, Israel has, instead, put Gaza under blockade. To quote Michael Walzer, who taught us long ago about just and unjust wars–siege is the oldest form of total war.

As to indiscriminate bombing and shelling, we are fed the constant diet of “collateral damage,” as if killing of civilians (now estimated as most of the dead, with over half being women and children) can be so effortlessly explained or excused.

So, on the one hand, Israel is touted as having amazingly sophisticated methods of targeting while, on the other, it is facilely pardoned for missing the targets. The adage of collateral damage goes a long way–as long as sixteen people, most of them women and children, dying when one Hamas leader is targeted and killed; or forty people seeking shelter in a UN school. And note: in order to count as a bona fide civilian, in order not to be a legitimate target, a person living in Gaza mustn’t be in the police force, in a university, in a mosque, or in a hospital run by the Gazan authorities.

So indiscriminate is Operation Cast Lead that several Israeli human rights groups and organizations have mounted a wide campaign, crying “Civilians Are Not Cannon Fodder.” Neither in Gaza nor in Israel. But that impartiality between Gaza and Israel brings us back to comparing the numbers. Over 900 people, out of a population of 1.5 million, have been killed in Gaza. That is equivalent to 180,000 Americans being killed–in two weeks.

Walzer himself has recently, in The New Republic, accused those using the proportionality argument of incautious lack of judgment. Yet some of those using that argument are Israelis demonstrating, arm in arm with Palestinians, against the carnage. Contrary to what one hears in the mainstream media, which adopts the conventional wisdom pitting all critiques of Israel as venomously pro-Palestinian–in Israel even as a fifth column–these are Israelis (and Jews) who know the unconventional facts. They are marginalized in the current Israeli ecstasy of battle; and ignored by the mainstream media.

I write as an Israeli. Some of us, as Israelis, are grieving over what we have become. Blaming the other side with a roster of rehearsed clichés cannot mitigate the grief.

Women in Black protest outside American Embassy on the occasion of the inauguration of Barack Obama

JOINT CONVOCATION OF WOMEN IN BLACK OF MADRID AND OF BELGRADE

Women in Black Against War

Invite you to a vigil in black and in silence

Tuesday, 20 JANUARY  2009 from 18:00 to 19:00

IN FRONT OF THE EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES (Madrid)

c/Serrano, Nº 75
Metro:  Nunez de Balboa

On the occasion of the inauguration

of Mr. Barack Obama

as the President of the United States

Women in Black of Madrid and of Belgrade Say, Mr. Obama:

For years, Israel has engaged in a policy of generalized colonial war against Palestine: the war in Gaza, the Wall, the settlements in Trans-Jordan, the usurpation of water and other resources, in great measure because the governments of the USA have supported and permitted it. The United States is responsible for the continual violation of the resolutions of the United Nations and international treaties on the part of the governments of Israel. This war policy has caused the civil society of Palestine to live under the boot of oppressive militarization of the Israeli governments, as well as that of its own governors; and the civil society of Israel under the boot of oppressive militarization of their own. This policy of violence and humiliations increases the pain, the hatred and the zeal for revenge, causing a radicalization of a part of the Palestinian and Arab society, in general, and provoking a wave of global repudiation towards Israel and the USA.

Women in Black join the multiplicity of petitions that have been signed by numerous women of the International Network of Women in Black to the end that the permanent violence in the Gaza Strip and Trans-Jordan cease, asking that the USA, the countries of Europe and other countries cease their sale of arms to Israel, because that weaponry is being used against the civil population, which means that they are accomplices in the aggression.

The people of Gaza and Trans-Jordan, as well as all Palestinians, many of them refugees from war, pay the price of the inability of the international community to oblige the government of Israel to respect international law and to draw an end to their policy of colonialism.

Certainly, with the launching of rockets, Hamas generates fear and constitutes a threat for the civil population of Israel. These actions are to be condemned and must stop — but enough already of impunity towards the government of Israel and the blackmail of its leaders.

How is it possible to support, defend or stay silent about the policy of aggression of the government of Israel?

We, Women in Black of Belgrade-Serbia and Madrid, members of the International Network of Women in Black Against War, an organization born in Israel in 1988, call on you in the name of peace and justice in the Middle East. The cease-fire unilaterally decreed by the government of Israel does not contribute to peace.

Mr. Obama

Yes, you can: Stop the crime against humanity in Gaza.

Yes, you can: Put an end to the siege being experienced by the Gaza Strip and Trans-Jordan.

Yes, you can: Put an end to the United States sale of arms to Israel. Otherwise, the US will continue to be responsible for the deaths they produce.

Yes, you can: Revise all the agreements with Israel, as well as immediately nullify the agreements subscribed to on the 16^th of January by the representatives of Israel and the United States, Tzipi Livni and Condoleeza Rice, because they do not contribute to peace. They serve only to reinforce the interests of Israel.

Yes, you can: Urge the government of Israel to appear before the responsible international tribunals, and that these tribunals pass judgment on their multiple vitiations of the principles contained in the treaties and resolutions of international law.

Yes, you can: Support the initiatives that judge these violations of international conventions. Israel must respect and comply with them. We must put an end to impunity.

Yes, you can: Set in motion the change that will end so much violence, so that the civil society of Palestine and Israel can develop relationships of understanding and confidence propitious for the building of peace.

Yes, you can: Listen to the voices of the Arab, Israeli and USA pacifist civil organizations and those of the international community who call out for peace and justice and who, on occasion, are slandered, accused as criminals, assaulted and jailed for our non-violent activism in favor of peace.

Yes, you can: Break your silence. World silence has already been broken, and the general l message is to stop the crimes against humanity and open a dialogue that will include all parties to the conflict.

We, Women in Black of Belgrade/Serbia have the right and moral legitimacy to demand that all the governments of the world, including that of the USA, respect all human rights, because we have always and from the very first condemned, demanded and continue demanding findings of responsibility for all the crimes committed by the criminal Serbian regime and its armed forces in all the territory of the former Yugoslavia. We continue demanding that the crimes be punished, first the ones committed in our name, as well as those committed by others.

We, Women in Black of Madrid, have the right and moral legitimacy to demand respect for all human rights by all governments, first of all, our own, and also that of the USA. We will continue to demand that all the crimes against humanity be brought to justice, first the ones committed in our name, and also those committed by others.

One of our friends, a Woman in Black from Israel, affirms: “my community recognizes that our own security and well-being are connected with the well-being of the Palestinians and their security and prosperity. We refuse to be enemies; we will continue creating a culture of Non-violence, Justice and Peace.”

Belgrade/Serbia and Madrid, 20 January 2009

“Exterminate all the Brutes”:Gaza 2009

January 20, 2009 By Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky’s ZSpace Page

Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched.  The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press.  The planning had two components: military and propaganda.  It was based on the lessons of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised.  We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended.

That surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the streets of densely populated Gaza City.   It took only a few minutes to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee.

In his retrospective “Parsing  Gains of Gaza War,” New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner cited this achievement as one of the most significant of the gains.  Israel calculated that it would be advantageous to appear to “go crazy,” causing vastly disproportionate terror, a doctrine that traces back to the 1950s. “The Palestinians in Gaza got the message on the first day,” Bronner wrote, “when Israeli warplanes struck numerous targets simultaneously in the middle of a Saturday morning. Some 200 were killed instantly, shocking Hamas and indeed all of Gaza.” The tactic of “going crazy” appears to have been successful, Bronner concluded: there are “limited indications that the people of Gaza felt such pain from this war that they will seek to rein in Hamas,” the elected government.  That is another long-standing doctrine of state terror.  I don’t, incidentally, recall the Times retrospective “Parsing Gains of Chechnya War,” though the gains were great.

The meticulous planning also presumably included the termination of the assault, carefully timed to be just before the inauguration, so as to minimize the (remote) threat that Obama might have to say some words critical of these vicious US-supported crimes.

Two weeks after the Sabbath opening of the assault, with much of Gaza already pounded to rubble and the death toll approaching 1000, the UN Agency UNRWA, on which most Gazans depend for survival, announced that the Israeli military refused to allow aid shipments to Gaza, saying that the crossings were closed for the Sabbath.  To honor the holy day, Palestinians at the edge of survival must be denied food and medicine, while hundreds can be slaughtered by US jet bombers and helicopters.

The rigorous observance of the Sabbath in this dual fashion attracted little if any notice.  That makes sense.  In the annals of US-Israeli criminality, such cruelty and cynicism scarcely merit more than a footnote.  They are too familiar. To cite one relevant parallel, in June 1982 the US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon opened with the bombing of the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, later to become famous as the site of terrible massacres supervised by the IDF (Israeli “Defense” Forces).  The bombing hit the local hospital – the Gaza hospital — and killed over 200 people, according to the eyewitness account of an American Middle East academic specialist.  The massacre was the opening act in an invasion that slaughtered some 15-20,000 people and destroyed much of southern Lebanon and Beirut, proceeding with crucial US military and diplomatic support.  That included vetoes of Security Council resolutions seeking to halt the criminal aggression that was undertaken, as scarcely concealed, to defend Israel from the threat of peaceful political settlement, contrary to many convenient fabrications about Israelis suffering under intense rocketing, a fantasy of apologists.

All of this is normal, and quite openly discussed by high Israeli officials.  Thirty years ago Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur observed that since 1948, “we have been fighting against a population that lives in villages and cities.” As Israel’s most prominent military analyst, Zeev Schiff, summarized his remarks, “the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously…the Army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets…[but] purposely attacked civilian targets.”  The reasons were explained by the distinguished statesman Abba Eban: “there was a rational prospect, ultimately fulfilled, that affected populations would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities.” The effect, as Eban well understood, would be to allow Israel to implement, undisturbed, its programs of illegal expansion and harsh repression.

Eban was commenting on a review of Labor government attacks against civilians by Prime Minister Begin, presenting a picture, Eban said, “of an Israel wantonly inflicting every possible measure of death and anguish on civilian populations in a mood  reminiscent of regimes which neither Mr.Begin nor I would dare to mention by name.” Eban did not contest the facts that Begin reviewed, but criticized him for stating them publicly.  Nor did it concern Eban, or his admirers, that his advocacy of massive state terror is also reminiscent of regimes he would not dare to mention by name.

Eban’s justification for state terror is regarded as persuasive by respected authorities.  As the current US-Israel assault raged, Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained that Israel’s tactics both in the current attack and in its invasion of Lebanon in 2006 are based on the sound principle of “trying to `educate’ Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population.” That makes sense on pragmatic grounds, as it did in Lebanon, where “the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future.” And by similar logic, bin Laden’s effort to “educate” Americans on 9/11 was highly praiseworthy, as were the Nazi attacks on Lidice and Oradour, Putin’s destruction of Grozny, and other notable attempts at “education.”

Israel has taken pains to make clear its dedication to these guiding principles. NYT correspondent Stephen Erlanger reports that Israeli human rights groups are “troubled by Israel’s strikes on buildings they believe should be classified as civilian, like the parliament, police stations and the presidential palace” – and, we may add, villages, homes, densely populated refugee camps, water and sewage systems, hospitals, schools and universities, mosques, UN relief facilities, ambulances, and indeed anything that might relieve the pain of the unworthy victims.  A senior Israeli intelligence officer explained that the IDF attacked “both aspects of Hamas — its resistance or military wing and its dawa, or social wing,” the latter a euphemism for the civilian society.  “He argued that Hamas was all of a piece,” Erlanger continues, “and in a war, its instruments of political and social control were as legitimate a target as its rocket caches.” Erlanger and his editors add no comment about the open advocacy, and practice, of massive terrorism targeting civilians, though correspondents and columnists signal their tolerance or even explicit advocacy of war crimes, as noted.  But keeping to the norm, Erlanger does not fail to stress that Hamas rocketing is “an obvious violation of the principle of discrimination and fits the classic definition of terrorism.”

Like others familiar with the region, Middle East specialist Fawwaz Gerges observes that “What Israeli officials and their American allies do not appreciate is that Hamas is not merely an armed militia but a social movement with a large popular base that is deeply entrenched in society.” Hence when they carry out their plans to destroy Hamas’s “social wing,” they are aiming to destroy Palestinian society.

Gerges may be too kind.  It is highly unlikely that Israeli and American officials – or the media and other commentators – do not appreciate these facts.  Rather, they implicitly adopt the traditional perspective of those who monopolize means of violence: our mailed fist can crush any opposition, and if our furious assault has a heavy civilian toll, that’s all to the good: perhaps the remnants will be properly educated.

IDF officers clearly understand that they are crushing the civilian society.  Ethan Bronner quotes an Israeli Colonel who says that he and his men are not much “impressed with the Hamas fighters.” “They are villagers with guns,” said a gunner on an armored personnel carrier. They resemble the victims of the murderous IDF “iron fist” operations in occupied southern Lebanon in 1985, directed by Shimon Peres, one of the great terrorist commanders of the era of Reagan’s “War on Terror.” During these operations, Israeli commanders and strategic analysts explained that the victims were “terrorist villagers,” difficult to eradicate because “these terrorists operate with the support of most of the local population.”

An Israeli commander complained that “the terrorist…has many eyes here, because he lives here,” while the military correspondent of the Jerusalem Post described the problems Israeli forces faced in combating the “terrorist mercenary,” “fanatics, all of whom are sufficiently dedicated to their causes to go on running the risk of being killed while operating against the IDF,” which must “maintain order and security” in occupied southern Lebanon despite “the price the inhabitants will have to pay.” The problem has been familiar to Americans in South Vietnam, Russians in Afghanistan, Germans in occupied Europe, and other aggressors that find themselves implementing the Gur-Eban-Friedman doctrine.

Gerges believes that US-Israeli state terror will fail: Hamas, he writes, “cannot be wiped out without massacring half a million Palestinians.  If Israel succeeds in killing Hamas’s senior leaders, a new generation, more radical than the present, will swiftly replace them. Hamas is a fact of life. It is not going away, and it will not raise the white flag regardless of how many casualties it suffers.”

Perhaps, but there is often a tendency to underestimate the efficacy of violence.  It is particularly odd that such a belief should be held in the United States.  Why are we here?

Hamas is regularly described as “Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.” One will be hard put to find something like “democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus” — blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel, which flatly and explicitly reject the right of Palestinians to self-determination.  All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.

Such details as those mentioned earlier, though minor, nevertheless teach us something about ourselves and our clients.  So do others.  To mention another one, as the latest US-Israeli assault on Gaza began, a small boat, the Dignity, was on its way from Cyprus to Gaza.  The doctors and human rights activists aboard intended to violate Israel’s criminal blockade and to bring medical supplies to the trapped population.  The ship was intercepted in international waters by Israeli naval vessels, which rammed it severely, almost sinking it, though it managed to limp to Lebanon.  Israel issued the routine lies, refuted by the journalists and passengers aboard, including CNN correspondent Karl Penhaul and former US representative and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney.  That is a serious crime — much worse, for example, than hijacking boats off the coast of Somalia.  It passed with little notice.

The tacit acceptance of such crimes reflects the understanding that Gaza is occupied territory, and that Israel is entitled to maintain its siege, even authorized by the guardians of international order to carry out crimes on the high seas to implement its programs of punishing the civilian population for disobedience to its commands – under pretexts to which we return, almost universally accepted but clearly untenable.

The lack of attention again makes sense.  For decades, Israel had been hijacking boats in international waters between Cyprus and Lebanon, killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes bringing them to prisons in Israel, including secret prison/torture chambers, to hold as hostages for many years.  Since the practices are routine, why treat the new crime with more than a yawn?  Cyprus and Lebanon reacted quite differently, but who are they in the scheme of things?

Who cares, for example, if the editors of Lebanon’s Daily Star, generally pro-Western, write that “Some 1.5 million people in Gaza are being subjected to the murderous ministrations of one of the world’s most technologically advanced but morally regressive military machines.  It is often suggested that the Palestinians have become to the Arab world what the Jews were to pre-World War II Europe, and there is some truth to this interpretation.  How sickeningly appropriate, then, that just as Europeans and North Americans looked the other way when the Nazis were perpetrating the Holocaust, the Arabs are finding a way to do nothing as the Israelis slaughter Palestinian children.” Perhaps the most shameful of the Arab regimes is the brutal Egyptian dictatorship, the beneficiary of most US military aid, apart from Israel.

According to the Lebanese press, Israel still “routinely abducts Lebanese civilians from the Lebanese side of the Blue Line [the international border], most recently in December 2008.” And of course “Israeli planes violate Lebanese airspace on a daily basis in violation of UN Resolution 1701″ (Lebanese scholar Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Daily Star, Jan. 13).  That too has been happening for a long time.  In condemning Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006, the prominent Israeli strategic analyst Zeev Maoz wrote in the Israeli press that “Israel has violated Lebanese airspace by carrying out aerial reconnaissance missions virtually every day since its withdrawal from Southern Lebanon six years ago. True, these aerial overflights did not cause any Lebanese casualties, but a border violation is a border violation. Here too, Israel does not hold a higher moral ground.” And in general, there is no basis for the “wall-to-wall consensus in Israel that the war against the Hezbollah in Lebanon is a just and moral war,” a consensus “based on selective and short-term memory, on an introvert world view, and on double standards.  This is not a just war, the use of force is excessive and indiscriminate, and its ultimate aim is extortion.”

As Maoz also reminds his Israeli readers, overflights with sonic booms to terrorize Lebanese are the least of Israeli crimes in Lebanon, even apart from its five invasions since 1978: “On July 28, 1988 Israeli Special Forces abducted Sheikh Obeid, and on May 21, 1994 Israel abducted Mustafa Dirani, who was responsible for capturing the Israeli pilot Ron Arad [when he was bombing Lebanon in 1986].  Israel held these and other 20 Lebanese who were captured under undisclosed circumstances in prison for prolonged periods without trial. They were held as human `bargaining chips.’ Apparently, abduction of Israelis for the purpose of prisoners’ exchange is morally reprehensible, and militarily punishable when it is the Hezbollah who does the abducting, but not if Israel is doing the very same thing,” and on a far grander scale and over many years.

Israel’s regular practices are significant even apart from what they reveal about Israeli criminality and Western support for it.  As Maoz indicates, these practices underscore the utter hypocrisy of the standard claim that Israel had the right to invade Lebanon once again in 2006 when soldiers were captured at the border, the first cross-border action by Hezbollah in the six years since Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, which it occupied in violation of Security Council orders going back 22 years, while during these six years Israel violated the border almost daily with impunity, and silence here.

The hypocrisy is, again, routine.  Thus Thomas Friedman, while explaining how the lesser breeds are to be “educated” by terrorist violence, writes that Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006, once again destroying much of southern Lebanon and Beirut while killing another 1000 civilians, was a just act of self-defense, responding to Hezbollah’s crime of “launching an unprovoked war across the U.N.-recognized Israel-Lebanon border, after Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from Lebanon.”

Putting aside the deceit, by the same logic, terrorist attacks against Israelis that are far more destructive and murderous than any that have taken place would be fully justified in response to Israel’s criminal practices in Lebanon and on the high seas, which vastly exceed Hezbollah’s crime of capturing two soldiers at the border.  The veteran Middle East specialist of the New York Times surely knows about these crimes, at least if he reads his own newspaper: for example, the 18^th paragraph of a story on prisoner exchange in November 1983 which observes, casually, that 37 of the Arab prisoners “had been seized recently by the Israeli Navy as they tried to make their way from Cyprus to Tripoli,” north of Beirut.

Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them.  This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.

As I write, another boat is on its way from Cyprus to Gaza, “carrying urgently needed medical supplies in sealed boxes, cleared by customs at the Larnaca International Airport and the Port of Larnaca,” the organizers report.  Passengers include members of European Parliaments and physicians.  Israel has been notified of their humanitarian intent.  With sufficient popular pressure, they might achieve their mission in peace.

The new crimes that the US and Israel have been committing in Gaza in the past weeks do not fit easily into any standard category – except for the category of familiarity; I’ve just given several examples, and will return to others.  Literally, the crimes fall under the official US government definition of “terrorism,” but that designation does not capture their enormity.  They cannot be called “aggression,” because they are being conducted in occupied territory, as the US tacitly concedes.  In their comprehensive scholarly history of Israeli settlement in the occupied territories, Lords of the Land, Idit Zertal and Akiva Eldar point out that after Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in August 2005, the ruined territory was not released “for even a single day from Israel’s military grip or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day…

Israel left behind scorched earth, devastated services, and people with neither a present nor a future.  The settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and kill and harass its inhabitants by means of its formidable military might” – exercised with extreme savagery, thanks to firm US support and participation.

The US-Israeli assault on Gaza escalated in January 2006, a few months after the formal withdrawal, when Palestinians committed a truly heinous crime: they voted “the wrong way” in a free election.  Like others, Palestinians learned that one does not disobey with impunity the commands of the Master, who continues to prate of his “yearning for democracy,” without eliciting ridicule from the educated classes, another impressive achievement.

Since the terms “aggression” and “terrorism” are inadequate, some new term is needed for the sadistic and cowardly torture of people caged with no possibility of escape, while they are being pounded to dust by the most sophisticated products of US military technology – used in violation of international and even US law, but for self-declared outlaw states that is just another minor technicality.

Also a minor technicality is the fact that on December 31, while terrorized Gazans were desperately seeking shelter from the ruthless assault, Washington hired a German merchant ship to transport from Greece to Israel a huge shipment, 3000 tons, of unidentified “ammunition.”  The new shipment “follows the hiring of a commercial ship to carry a much larger consignment of ordnance in December from the United States to Israel ahead of air strikes in the Gaza Strip,” Reuters reported.  All of this is separate from the more than $21 billion in U.S. military aid provided by the Bush administration to Israel, almost all grants. “Israel’s intervention in the Gaza Strip has been fueled largely by U.S. supplied weapons paid for with U.S. tax dollars,” said a briefing by the New America Foundation, which monitors the arms trade.  The new shipment was hampered by the decision of the Greek government to bar the use of any port in Greece “for the supplying of the Israeli army.”

Greece’s response to US-backed Israeli crimes is rather different from the craven performance of the leaders of most of Europe.  The distinction reveals that Washington may have been quite realistic in regarding Greece as part of the Near East, not Europe, until the overthrow of its US-backed fascist dictatorship in 1974.  Perhaps Greece is just too civilized to be part of Europe.

Were anyone to find the timing of the arms deliveries to Israel curious, and inquire further, the Pentagon has an answer: the shipment would arrive too late to escalate the Gaza attack, and the military equipment, whatever it may be, is to be pre-positioned in Israel for eventual use by the US military.  That may be accurate.  One of the many services that Israel performs for its patron is to provide it with a valuable military base at the periphery of the world’s major energy resources.  It can therefore serve as a forward base for US aggression – or to use the technical terms, to “defend the Gulf” and “ensure stability.”

The huge flow of arms to Israel serves many subsidiary purposes.  Middle East policy analyst Mouin Rabbani observes that Israel can test newly developed weapons systems against defenseless targets.  This is of value to Israel and the US “twice over, in fact, because less effective versions of these same weapons systems are subsequently sold at hugely inflated prices to Arab states, which effectively subsidizes the U.S. weapons industry and U.S. military grants to Israel.” These are additional functions of Israel in the US-dominated Middle East system, and among the reasons why Israel is so favored by the state authorities, along with a wide range of US high-tech corporations, and of course military industry and intelligence.

Israel apart, the US is by far the world’s major arms supplier.  The recent New America Foundation report concludes that “U.S. arms and military training played a role in 20 of the world’s 27 major wars in 2007,” earning the US $23 billion in receipts, increasing to $32 billion in 2008.  Small wonder that among the numerous UN resolutions that the US opposed in the December 2008 UN session was one calling for regulation of the arms trade.   In 2006, the US was alone in voting against the treaty, but in November 2008 it was joined by a partner: Zimbabwe.

There were other notable votes at the December UN session.  A resolution on “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination” was adopted by 173 to 5 (US, Israel, Pacific island dependencies).  The vote strongly reaffirms US-Israeli rejectionism, in international isolation.  Similarly a resolution on “universal freedom of travel and the vital importance of family reunification” was adopted with US, Israel, and Pacific dependencies opposed, presumably with Palestinians in mind.

In voting against the right to development the US lost Israel but gained Ukraine.  In voting against the “right to food,” the US was alone, a particular striking fact in the face of the enormous global food crisis, dwarfing the financial crisis that threatens western economies.

There are good reasons why the voting record is consistently unreported and dispatched deep into the memory hole by the media and conformist intellectuals.  It would not be wise to reveal to the public what the record implies about their elected representatives.  In the present case it would plainly be unhelpful to let the public know that US-Israeli rejectionism, barring the peaceful settlement long advocated by the world, reaches such an extreme as to deny Palestinians even the abstract right to self-determination.

One of the heroic volunteers in Gaza, Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, described the scene of horror as an “All out war against the civilian population of Gaza.”  He estimated that half the casualties are women and children.  The men are almost all civilians as well, by civilized standards.  Gilbert reports that he had scarcely seen a military casualty among the 100s of bodies.  The IDF concurs.  Hamas  “made a point of fighting at a distance — or not at all,” Ethan Bronner reports while “parsing the gains” of the US-Israeli assault.  So Hamas’s manpower remains intact, and it was mostly civilians who suffered pain: a positive outcome, according to widely-held doctrine.

These estimates were confirmed by UN humanitarian chief John Holmes, who informed reporters that it is “a fair presumption” that most of the civilians killed were women and children in a humanitarian crisis that is “worsening day by day as the violence continues.” But we could be comforted by the words of Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the leading dove in the current electoral campaign, who assured the world that there is no “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, thanks to Israeli benevolence.

Like others who care about human beings and their fate, Gilbert and Holmes pleaded for a ceasefire.  But not yet. “At the United Nations, the United States prevented the Security Council from issuing a formal statement on Saturday night calling for an immediate ceasefire,” the New York Times mentioned in passing.  The official reason was that “there was no indication Hamas would abide by any agreement.” In the annals of justifications for delighting in slaughter, this must rank among the most cynical.  That of course was Bush and Rice, soon to be displaced by Obama who compassionately repeats that “if missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that.” He is referring to Israeli children, not the many hundreds being torn to shreds in Gaza by US arms.  Beyond that Obama maintained his silence.

A few days later, under intense international pressure, the US backed a Security Council resolution calling for a “durable ceasefire.” It passed 14-0, US abstaining.  Israel and US hawks were angered that the US did not veto it, as usual.  The abstention, however, sufficed to give Israel if not a green at least a yellow light to escalate the violence, as it did right up to virtually the moment of the inauguration, as had been predicted.

As the ceasefire (theoretically) went into effect on January18, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights released its figures for the final day of the assault: 54 Palestinians killed including 43 unarmed civilians, 17 of them children, while the IDF continued to bombard civilian homes and UN schools.  The death toll, they estimated, mounted to 1,184, including 844 civilians, 281 of them children. The IDF continued to use incendiary bombs across the Gaza Strip, and to destroy houses and agricultural land, forcing civilians to flee their homes.  A few hours later, Reuters reported more than 1,300 killed. The staff of the Al Mezan Center, which also carefully monitors casualties and destruction, visited areas that had previously been inaccessible because of incessant heavy bombardment.  They discovered dozens of civilian corpses decomposing under the rubble of destroyed houses or removed by Israeli bulldozers.  Entire urban blocks had disappeared.

The figures for killed and wounded are surely an underestimate.  And it is unlikely that there will be any inquiry into these atrocities.  Crimes of official enemies are subjected to rigorous investigation, but our own are systematically ignored.  General practice, again, and understandable on the part of the masters.

The Security Council Resolution called for stopping the flow of arms into Gaza.  The US and Israel (Rice-Livni) soon reached an agreement on measures to ensure this result, concentrating on Iranian arms.  There is no need to stop smuggling of US arms into Israel, because there is no smuggling: the huge flow of arms is quite public, even when not reported, as in the case of the arms shipment announced as the slaughter in Gaza was proceeding.

The Resolution also called for “ensur[ing] the sustained re-opening of the crossing points on the basis of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access between the Palestinian Authority and Israel”; that Agreement determined that crossings to Gaza would be operated on a continuous basis and that Israel would also allow the crossing of goods and people between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Rice-Livni agreement had nothing to say about this aspect of the Security Council Resolution.  The US and Israel had in fact already abandoned the 2005 Agreement as part of their punishment of Palestinians for voting the wrong way in a free election in January 2006.  Rice’s press conference after the Rice-Livni agreement emphasized Washington’s continuing efforts to undermine the results of the one free election in the Arab world: “There is much that can be done,” she said, “to bring Gaza out of the dark of Hamas’s reign and into the light of the very good governance the Palestinian Authority can bring” – at least, can bring as long as it remains a loyal client, rife with corruption and willing to carry out harsh repression, but obedient.

Returning from a visit to the Arab world, Fawwaz Gerges strongly affirmed what others on the scene have reported.  The effect of the US-Israeli offensive in Gaza has been to infuriate the populations and to arouse bitter hatred of the aggressors and their collaborators. “Suffice it to say that the so-called moderate Arab states [that is, those that take their orders from Washington] are on the defensive, and that the resistance front led by Iran and Syria is the main beneficiary.  Once again, Israel and the Bush administration have handed the Iranian leadership a sweet victory.” Furthermore, “Hamas will likely emerge as a more powerful political force than before and will likely top Fatah, the ruling apparatus of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority,” Rice’s favorites.

It is worth bearing in mind that the Arab world is not scrupulously protected from the only regular live TV coverage of what is happening in Gaza, namely the “calm and balanced analysis of the chaos and destruction” provided by the outstanding correspondents of al-Jazeera, offering “a stark alternative to terrestrial channels,” as reported by the London Financial Times.  In the 105 countries lacking our efficient modalities of self-censorship, people can see what is happening hourly, and the impact is said to be very great.

In the US, the New York Times reports, “the near-total blackout…is no doubt related to the sharp criticism Al Jazeera received from the United States government during the initial stages of the war in Iraq for its coverage of the American invasion.” Cheney and Rumsfeld objected, so, obviously, the independent media could only obey.

There is much sober debate about what the attackers hoped to achieve.  Some of objectives are commonly discussed, among them, restoring what is called “the deterrent capacity” that Israel lost as a result of its failures in Lebanon in 2006 – that is, the capacity to terrorize any potential opponent into submission.  There are, however, more fundamental objectives that tend be ignored, though they too seem fairly obvious when we take a look at recent history.

Israel abandoned Gaza in September 2005.  Rational Israeli hardliners, like Ariel Sharon, the patron saint of the settlers movement, understood that it was senseless to subsidize a few thousand illegal Israeli settlers in the ruins of Gaza, protected by the IDF while they used much of the land and scarce resources.  It made more sense to turn Gaza into the world’s largest prison and to transfer settlers to the West Bank, much more valuable territory, where Israel is quite explicit about its intentions, in word and more importantly in deed.

One goal is to annex the arable land, water supplies, and pleasant suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that lie within the separation wall, irrelevantly declared illegal by the World Court.  That includes a vastly expanded Jerusalem, in violation of Security Council orders that go back 40 years, also irrelevant.  Israel has also been taking over the Jordan Valley, about one-third of the West Bank.  What remains is therefore imprisoned, and, furthermore, broken into fragments by salients of Jewish settlement that trisect the territory: one to the east of Greater Jerusalem through the town of Ma’aleh Adumim, developed through the Clinton years to split the West Bank; and two to the north, through the towns of Ariel and Kedumim.  What remains to Palestinians is segregated by hundreds of mostly arbitrary checkpoints.

The checkpoints have no relation to security of Israel, and if some are intended to safeguard settlers, they are flatly illegal, as the World Court ruled.  In reality, their major goal is harass the Palestinian population and to fortify what Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper calls the “matrix of control,” designed to make life unbearable for the “two-legged beasts” who will be like “drugged roaches scurrying around in a bottle” if they seek to remain in their homes and land.  All of that is fair enough, because they are “like grasshoppers compared to us” so that their heads can be “smashed against the boulders and walls.” The terminology is from the highest Israeli political and military leaders, in this case the revered “princes.” And the attitudes shape policies.

The ravings of the political and military leaders are mild as compared to the preaching of rabbinical authorities.  They are not marginal figures.  On the contrary, they are highly influential in the army and in the settler movement, who Zertal and Eldar reveal to be “lords of the land,” with enormous impact on policy.  Soldiers fighting in northern Gaza were afforded an “inspirational” visit from two leading rabbis, who explained to them that there are no “innocents” in Gaza, so everyone there is a legitimate target, quoting a famous passage from Psalms calling on the Lord to seize the infants of Israel’s oppressors and dash them against the rocks.  The rabbis were breaking no new ground.

A year earlier, the former chief Sephardic rabbi wrote to Prime Minister Olmert, informing him that all civilians in Gaza are collectively guilty for rocket attacks, so that there is “absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings,” as the Jerusalem Post reported his ruling.  His son, chief rabbi of Safed, elaborated: “If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand, and if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”

Similar views are expressed by prominent American secular figures.  When Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz explained in the liberal online journal Huffington Post that all Lebanese are legitimate targets of Israeli violence.  Lebanon’s citizens are “paying the price” for supporting “terrorism” – that is, for supporting resistance to Israel’s invasion.  Accordingly, Lebanese civilians are no more immune to attack than Austrians who supported the Nazis.

The fatwa of the Sephardic rabbi applies to them.  In a video on the Jerusalem Post website, Dershowitz went on to ridicule talk of excessive kill ratios of Palestinians to Israelis: it should be increased to 1000-to-one, he said, or even 1000-to-zero, meaning the brutes should be completely exterminated.  Of course, he is referring to “terrorists,” a broad category that includes the victims of Israeli power, since “Israel never targets civilians,” he emphatically declared.  It follows that Palestinians, Lebanese, Tunisians, in fact anyone who gets in the way of the ruthless armies of the Holy State is a terrorist, or an accidental victim of their just crimes.

It is not easy to find historical counterparts to these performances.  It is perhaps of some interest that they are considered entirely appropriate in the reigning intellectual and moral culture – when they are produced on “our side,” that is; from the mouths of official enemies such words would elicit righteous outrage and calls for massive preemptive violence in revenge.

The claim that “our side” never targets civilians is familiar doctrine among those who monopolize the means of violence.  And there is some truth to it.  We do not generally try to kill particular civilians.  Rather, we carry out murderous actions that we know will slaughter many civilians, but without specific intent to kill particular ones.  In law, the routine practices might fall under the category of depraved indifference, but that is not an adequate designation for standard imperial practice and doctrine.

It is more similar to walking down a street knowing that we might kill ants, but without intent to do so, because they rank so low that it just doesn’t matter.   The same is true when Israel carries out actions that it knows will kill the “grasshoppers” and “two-legged beasts” who happen to infest the lands it “liberates.” There is no good term for this form of moral depravity, arguably worse than deliberate murder, and all too familiar.

In the former Palestine, the rightful owners (by divine decree, according to the “lords of the land”) may decide to grant the drugged roaches a few scattered  parcels.  Not by right, however: “I believed, and to this day still believe, in our people’s eternal and historic right to this entire land,” Prime Minister Olmert informed a joint session of Congress in May 2006 to rousing applause.  At the same time he announced his “convergence” program for taking over what is valuable in the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians to rot in isolated cantons.

He was not specific about the borders of the “entire land,” but then, the Zionist enterprise never has been, for good reasons: permanent expansion is a very important internal dynamic.  If Olmert is still faithful to his origins in Likud, he may have meant both sides of the Jordan, including the current state of Jordan, at least valuable parts of it.

Our people’s “eternal and historic right to this entire land” contrasts dramatically with the lack of any right of self-determination for the temporary inhabitants, the Palestinians.  As noted earlier, the latter stand was reiterated by Israel and its patron in Washington in December 2008, in their usual isolation and accompanied by resounding silence.

The plans that Olmert sketched in 2006 have since been abandoned as not sufficiently extreme.  But what replaces the convergence program, and the actions that proceed daily to implement it, are approximately the same in general conception.  They trace back to the earliest days of the occupation, when Defense Minister Moshe Dayan explained poetically that “the situation today resembles the complex relationship between a Bedouin man and the girl he kidnaps against his will…You Palestinians, as a nation, don’t want us today, but we’ll change your attitude by forcing our presence on you.” You will “live like dogs, and whoever will leave, will leave,” while we take what we want.

That these programs are criminal has never been in doubt.  Immediately after the 1967 war, the Israeli government was informed by its highest legal authority, Teodor Meron, that “civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” the foundation of international humanitarian law.  Israel’s Justice Minister concurred.  The World Court unanimously endorsed the essential conclusion in 2004, and the Israeli High Court technically agreed while disagreeing in practice, in its usual style.

In the West Bank, Israel can pursue its criminal programs with US support and no disturbance, thanks to its effective military control and by now the cooperation of the collaborationist Palestinian security forces armed and trained by the US and allied dictatorships.  It can also carry out regular assassinations and other crimes, while settlers rampage under IDF protection.  But while the West Bank has been effectively subdued by terror, there is still resistance in the other half of Palestine, the Gaza Strip.  That too must be quelled for the US-Israeli programs of annexation and destruction of Palestine to proceed undisturbed.

Hence the invasion of Gaza.

The timing of the invasion was presumably influenced by the coming Israeli election.  Ehud Barak, who was lagging badly in the polls, gained one parliamentary seat for every 40 Arabs killed in the early days of the slaughter, Israeli commentator Ran HaCohen calculated.

That may change, however.  As the crimes passed beyond what the carefully honed Israeli propaganda campaign was able to suppress, even confirmed Israeli hawks became concerned that the carnage is “Destroying [Israel's] soul and its image.  Destroying it on world television screens, in the living rooms of the international community and most importantly, in Obama’s America” (Ari Shavit).  Shavit was particularly concerned about Israel’s “shelling  a United Nations facility…on the day when the UN secretary general is visiting Jerusalem,” an act that is “beyond lunacy,” he felt.

Adding a few details, the “facility” was the UN compound in Gaza City, which contained the UNRWA warehouse.  The shelling destroyed “hundreds of tons of emergency food and medicines set for distribution today to shelters, hospitals and feeding centres,” according to UNRWA director John Ging.  Military strikes at the same time destroyed two floors of the al-Quds hospital, setting it ablaze, and also a second warehouse run by the Palestinian Red Crescent society. The hospital in the densely-populated Tal-Hawa neighbourhood was destroyed by Israeli tanks “after hundreds of frightened Gazans had taken shelter inside as Israeli ground forces pushed into the neighbourhood,” AP reported.

There was nothing left to salvage inside the smoldering ruins of the hospital. “They shelled the building, the hospital building.  It caught fire. We tried to evacuate the sick people and the injured and the people who were there. Firefighters arrived and put out the fire, which burst into flames again and they put it out again and it came back for the third time,” paramedic Ahmad Al-Haz told AP.  It was suspected that the blaze might have been set by white phosphorous, also suspected in numerous other fires and serious burn injuries.

The suspicions were confirmed by Amnesty International after the cessation of the intense bombardment made inquiry possible.  Before, Israel had sensibly barred all journalists, even Israeli, while its crimes were proceeding in full fury.  Israel’s use of white phosphorus against Gaza civilians is “clear and undeniable,” AI reported.  Its repeated use in densely populated civilian areas “is a war crime,” AI concluded.

They found white phosphorus edges scattered around residential buildings, still burning, “further endangering the residents and their property,” particularly children “drawn to the detritus of war and often unaware of the danger.” Primary targets, they report, were the UNRWA compound, where the Israeli “white phosphorus landed next to some fuel trucks and caused a large fire which destroyed tons of humanitarian aid” after Israeli authorities “had given assurance that no further strikes would be launched on the compound.” On the same day, “a white phosphorus shell landed in the al-Quds hospital in Gaza City also causing a fire which forced hospital staff to evacuate the patients… White phosphorus landing on skin can burn deep through muscle and into the bone, continuing to burn unless deprived of oxygen.” Purposely intended or beyond depraved indifference, such crimes are inevitable when this weapon is used in attacks on civilians.

It is, however, a mistake to concentrate too much on Israel’s gross violations of jus in bello, the laws designed to bar practices that are too savage.  The invasion itself is a far more serious crime.  And if Israel had inflicted the horrendous damage by bows and arrows, it would still be a criminal act of extreme depravity.

Aggression always has a pretext: in this case, that Israel’s patience had “run out” in the face of Hamas rocket attacks, as Barak put it.  The mantra that is endlessly repeated is that Israel has the right to use force to defend itself.  The thesis is partially defensible.  The rocketing is criminal, and it is true that a state has the right to defend itself against criminal attacks.  But it does not follow that it has a right to defend itself by force.  That goes far beyond any principle that we would or should accept.

Nazi Germany had no right to use force to defend itself against the terrorism of the partisans.  Kristallnacht is not justified by Herschel Grynszpan’s assassination of a German Embassy official in Paris.  The British were not justified in using force to defend themselves against the (very real) terror of the American colonists seeking independence, or to terrorize Irish Catholics in response to IRA terror – and when they finally turned to the sensible policy of addressing legitimate grievances, the terror ended.  It is not a matter of “proportionality,” but of choice of action in the first place: Is there an alternative to violence?

Any resort to force carries a heavy burden of proof, and we have to ask whether it can be met in the case of Israel’s effort to quell any resistance to its daily criminal actions in Gaza and in the West Bank, where they still continue relentlessly after more than 40 years.  Perhaps I may quote myself in an interview in the Israeli press on Olmert’s announced convergence plans for the West Bank: “The US and Israel do not tolerate any resistance to these plans, preferring to pretend – falsely of course – that `there is no partner,’ as they proceed with programs that go back a long way.

We may recall that Gaza and the West Bank are recognized to be a unit, so if resistance to the US-Israeli annexation-cantonization programs is legitimate in the West Bank, it is in Gaza too.”

Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah observed that “There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel’s extrajudicial killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never stopped for a day during the truce. The western-backed Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has acceded to all Israel’s demands. Under the proud eye of United States military advisors, Abbas has assembled `security forces’ to fight the resistance on Israel’s behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian in the West Bank from Israel’s relentless colonization” – thanks to firm US backing.

The respected Palestinian parliamentarian Dr. Mustapha Barghouti adds that after Bush’s Annapolis extravaganza in November 2007, with much uplifting rhetoric about dedication to peace and justice, Israeli attacks on Palestinians escalated sharply, with an almost 50% increase in the West Bank, along with a sharp increase in settlements and Israeli check points.  Obviously these criminal actions are not a response to rockets from Gaza, though the converse may well be the case, Barghouti plausibly suggests.

The reactions to crimes of an occupying power can be condemned as criminal and politically foolish, but those who offer no alternative have no moral grounds to issue such judgments.  The conclusion holds with particular force for those in the US who choose to be directly implicated in Israel’s ongoing crimes — by their words, their actions, or their silence.   All the more so because there are very clear non-violent alternatives – which, however, have the disadvantage that they bar the programs of illegal expansion.

Israel has a straightforward means to defend itself: put an end to its criminal actions in occupied territories, and accept the long-standing international consensus on a two-state settlement that has been blocked by the US and Israel for over 30 years, since the US first vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a political settlement in these terms in 1976.  I will not once again run through the inglorious record, but it is important to be aware that US-Israeli rejectionism today is even more blatant than in the past.   The Arab League has gone even beyond the consensus, calling for full normalization of relations with Israel.  Hamas has repeatedly called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus.  Iran and Hezbollah have made it clear that they will abide by any agreement that Palestinians accept.  That leaves the US-Israel in splendid isolation, not only in words.

The more detailed record is informative.  The Palestinian National Council formally accepted the international consensus in 1988.  The response of the Shamir-Peres coalition government, affirmed by James Baker’s State Department, was that there cannot be an “additional Palestinian state” between Israel and Jordan – the latter already a Palestinian state by US-Israeli dictate.  The Oslo accords that followed put to the side potential Palestinian national rights, and the threat that they might be realized in some meaningful form was systematically undermined through the Oslo years by Israel’s steady expansion of illegal settlements.  Settlement accelerated in 2000, President Clinton’s and Prime Minister Barak’s last year, when negotiations took place at Camp David against that background.

After blaming Yassir Arafat for the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton backtracked, and recognized that the US-Israeli proposals were too extremist to be acceptable to any Palestinian.  In December 2000, he presented his “parameters,” vague but more forthcoming.  He then announced that both sides had accepted the parameters, while both expressed reservations.  The two sides met in Taba Egypt in January 2001 and came very close to an agreement, and would have been able to do so in a few more days, they said in their final press conference.  But the negotiations were cancelled prematurely by Ehud Barak.  That week in Taba is the one break in over 30 years of US-Israeli rejectionism.  There is no reason why that one break in the record cannot be resumed.

The preferred version, recently reiterated by Ethan Bronner, is that “Many abroad recall Mr. Barak as the prime minister who in 2000 went further than any Israeli leader in peace offers to the Palestinians, only to see the deal fail and explode in a violent Palestinian uprising that drove him from power.” It’s true that “many abroad” believe this deceitful fairy tale, thanks to what Bronner and too many of his colleagues call “journalism”.

It is commonly claimed that a two-state solution is now unattainable because if the IDF tried to remove settlers, it would lead to a civil war.  That may be true, but much more argument is needed.  Without resorting to force to expel illegal settlers, the IDF could simply withdraw to whatever boundaries are established by negotiations.

The settlers beyond those boundaries would have the choice of leaving their subsidized homes to return to Israel, or to remain under Palestinian authority.  The same was true of the carefully staged “national trauma” in Gaza in 2005, so transparently fraudulent that it was ridiculed by Israeli commentators.  It would have sufficed for Israel to announce that the IDF would withdraw, and the settlers who were subsidized to enjoy their life in Gaza would have quietly climbed into the lorries provided to them and travelled to their new subsidized residences in the West Bank.  But that would not have produced tragic photos of agonized children and passionate calls of “never again.”

To summarize, contrary to the claim that is constantly reiterated, Israel has no right to use force to defend itself against rockets from Gaza, even if they are regarded as terrorist crimes. Furthermore, the reasons are transparent.  The pretext for launching the attack is without merit.

There is also a narrower question.  Does Israel have peaceful short-term alternatives to the use of force in response to rockets from Gaza.  One short-term alternative would be to accept a ceasefire.  Sometimes Israel has done so, while instantly violating it.  The most recent and currently relevant case is June 2008.  The ceasefire called for opening the border crossings to “allow the transfer of all goods that were banned and restricted to go into Gaza.” Israel formally agreed, but immediately announced that it would not abide by the agreement and open the borders until Hamas released Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in June 2006.

The steady drumbeat of accusations about the capture of Shalit is, again, blatant hypocrisy, even putting aside Israel’s long history of kidnapping.  In this case, the hypocrisy could not be more glaring.  One day before Hamas captured Shalit, Israeli soldiers entered Gaza City and kidnapped two civilians, the Muammar brothers, bringing them to Israel to join the thousands of other prisoners held there, almost 1000 reportedly without charge.   Kidnapping civilians is a far more serious crime than capturing a soldier of an attacking army, but it was barely reported in contrast to the furor over Shalit.  And all that remains in memory, blocking peace, is the capture of Shalit, another reflection of the difference between humans and two-legged beasts.  Shalit should be returned – in a fair prisoner exchange.

It was after the capture of Shalit that Israel’s unrelenting military attack against Gaza passed from merely vicious to truly sadistic.  But it is well to recall that even before his capture, Israel had fired more than 7,700 shells at northern Gaza after its September withdrawal, eliciting virtually no comment.

After rejecting the June 2008 ceasefire it had formally accepted, Israel maintained its siege.  We may recall that a siege is an act of war.  In fact, Israel has always insisted on an even stronger principle: hampering access to the outside world, even well short of a siege, is an act of war, justifying massive violence in response.  Interference with Israel’s passage through the Straits of Tiran was part of the pretext for Israel’s invasion of Egypt (with France and England) in 1956, and for its launching of the June 1967 war.  The siege of Gaza is total, not partial, apart from occasional willingness of the occupiers to relax it slightly.  And it is vastly more harmful to Gazans than closing the Straits of Tiran was to Israel.  Supporters of Israeli doctrines and actions should therefore have no problem justifying rocket attacks on Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip.

Of course, again we run into the nullifying principle: This is us, that is them.

Israel not only maintained the siege after June 2008, but did so with extreme rigor.  It even prevented UNRWA from replenishing its stores, “so when the ceasefire broke down, we ran out of food for the 750,000 who depend on us,” UNRWA director John Ging informed the BBC.

Despite the Israeli siege, rocketing sharply reduced.  The ceasefire broke down on November 4 with an Israeli raid into Gaza, leading to the death of 6 Palestinians, and a retaliatory barrage of rockets (with no injuries).  The pretext for the raid was that Israel had detected a tunnel in Gaza that might have been intended for use to capture another Israeli soldier.  The pretext is transparently absurd, as a number of commentators have noted.  If such a tunnel existed, and reached the border, Israel could easily have barred it right there.  But as usual, the ludicrous Israeli pretext was deemed credible.

What was the reason for the Israeli raid?  We have no internal evidence about Israeli planning, but we do know that the raid came shortly before scheduled Hamas-Fatah talks in Cairo aimed at “reconciling their differences and creating a single, unified government,” British correspondent Rory McCarthy reported.  That was to be the first Fatah-Hamas meeting since the June 2007 civil war that left Hamas in control of Gaza, and would have been a significant step towards advancing diplomatic efforts.  There is a long history of Israel provocations to deter the threat of diplomacy, some already mentioned.  This may have been another one.

The civil war that left Hamas in control of Gaza is commonly described as a Hamas military coup, demonstrating again their evil nature.  The real world is a little different.  The civil war was incited by the US and Israel, in a crude attempt at a military coup to overturn the free elections that brought Hamas to power.

That has been public knowledge at least since April 2008, when David Rose published in Vanity Fair a detailed and documented account of how Bush, Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams “backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.” The account was recently corroborated once again in the Christian Science Monitor (Jan. 12, 2009) by Norman Olsen, who served for 26 years in the Foreign Service, including four years working in the Gaza Strip and four years at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, and then moved on to become associate coordinator for counterterrorism at the Department of State.

Olson and his son detail the State Department shenanigans intended to ensure that their candidate, Abbas, would win in the January 2006 elections – in which case it would have been hailed as a triumph of democracy.  After the election-fixing failed, they turned to punishment of the Palestinians and arming of a militia run by Fatah strong-man Muhammad Dahlan, but “Dahlan’s thugs moved too soon” and a Hamas pre-emptive strike undermined the coup attempt, leading to far harsher US-Israeli measures to punish the disobedient people of Gaza.  The Party Line is more acceptable.

After Israel broke the June 2008 ceasefire (such as it was) in November, the siege was tightened further, with even more disastrous consequences for the population.  According to Sara Roy, the leading academic specialist on Gaza, “On Nov. 5, Israel sealed all crossing points into Gaza, vastly reducing and at times denying food supplies, medicines, fuel, cooking gas, and parts for water and sanitation systems…” During November, an average of 4.6 trucks of food per day entered Gaza from Israel compared with an average of 123 trucks per day in October. Spare parts for the repair and maintenance of water-related equipment have been denied entry for over a year. The World Health Organization just reported that half of Gaza’s ambulances are now out of order” – and the rest soon became targets for Israeli attack.

Gaza’s only power station was forced to suspend operation for lack of fuel, and could not be started up again because they needed spare parts, which had been sitting in the Israeli port of Ashdod for 8 months.  Shortage of electricity led to a 300% increase in burn cases at Shifaa’ hospital in the Gaza Strip, resulting from efforts to light wood fires.  Israel barred shipment of Chlorine, so that by mid-December in Gaza City and the north access to water was limited to six hours every three days.  The human consequences are not counted among Palestinian victims of Israeli terror.

After the November 4 Israeli attack, both sides escalated violence (all deaths were Palestinian) until the ceasefire formally ended on Dec. 19, and Prime Minister Olmert authorized the full-scale invasion.

A few days earlier Hamas had proposed to return to the original July ceasefire agreement, which Israel had not observed.  Historian and former Carter administration high official Robert Pastor passed the proposal to a “senior official” in the IDF, but Israel did not respond.  The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, was quoted in Israeli sources on December 21 as saying that Hamas is interested in continuing the “calm” with Israel, while its military wing is continuing preparations for conflict.

“There clearly was an alternative to the military approach to stopping the rockets,” Pastor said, keeping to the narrow issue of Gaza.  There was also a more far-reaching alternative, which is rarely discussed: namely, accepting a political settlement including all of the occupied territories.

Israel’s senior diplomatic correspondent Akiva Eldar reports that shortly before Israel launched its full-scale invasion on Saturday Dec. 27, “Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal announced on the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Web site that he was prepared not only for a `cessation of aggression’ – he proposed going back to the arrangement at the Rafah crossing as of 2005, before Hamas won the elections and later took over the region. That arrangement was for the crossing to be managed jointly by Egypt, the European Union, the Palestinian Authority presidency and Hamas,” and as noted earlier, called for opening of the crossings to desperately needed supplies.

A standard claim of the more vulgar apologists for Israeli violence is that in the case of the current assault, “as in so many instances in the past half century – the Lebanon War of 1982, the `Iron Fist’ response to the 1988 intifada, the Lebanon War of 2006 – the Israelis have reacted to intolerable acts of terror with a determination to inflict terrible pain, to teach the enemy a lesson” (New Yorker editor David Remnick).     The 2006 invasion can be justified only on the grounds of appalling cynicism, as already discussed.  The reference to the vicious response to the 1988 intifada is too depraved even to discuss; a sympathetic interpretation might be that it reflects astonishing ignorance.  But Remnick’s claim about the 1982 invasion is quite common, a remarkable feat of incessant propaganda, which merits a few reminders.

Uncontroversially, the Israel-Lebanon border was quiet for a year before the Israeli invasion, at least from Lebanon to Israel, north to south.  Through the year, the PLO scrupulously observed a US-initiated ceasefire, despite constant Israeli provocations, including bombing with many civilian casualties, presumably intended to elicit some reaction that could be used to justify Israel’s carefully planned invasion.  The best Israel could achieve was two light symbolic responses.  It then invaded with a pretext too absurd to be taken seriously.

The invasion had precisely nothing to do with “intolerable acts of terror,” though it did have to do with intolerable acts: of diplomacy.  That has never been obscure.  Shortly after the US-backed invasion began, Israel’s leading academic specialist on the Palestinians, Yehoshua Porath – no dove — wrote that Arafat’s success in maintaining the ceasefire constituted “a veritable catastrophe in the eyes of the Israeli government,” since it opened the way to a political settlement.  The government hoped that the PLO would resort to terrorism, undermining the threat that it would be “a legitimate negotiating partner for future political accommodations.”

The facts were well-understood in Israel, and not concealed. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir stated that Israel went to war because there was “a terrible danger… Not so much a military one as a political one,” prompting the fine Israeli satirist B. Michael to write that “the lame excuse of a military danger or a danger to the Galilee is dead.” We “have removed the political danger” by striking first, in time; now, “Thank God, there is no one to talk to.”  Historian Benny Morris recognized that the PLO had observed the ceasefire, and explained that “the war’s inevitability rested on the PLO as a political threat to Israel and to Israel’s hold on the occupied territories.” Others have frankly acknowledged the unchallenged facts.

In a front-page think-piece on the latest Gaza invasion, NYT correspondent Steven Lee Meyers writes that “In some ways, the Gaza attacks were reminiscent of the gamble Israel took, and largely lost, in Lebanon in 1982 [when] it invaded to eliminate the threat of Yasir Arafat’s forces.” Correct, but not in the sense he has in mind.  In 1982, as in 2008, it was necessary to eliminate the threat of political settlement.

The hope of Israeli propagandists has been that Western intellectuals and media would buy the tale that Israel reacted to rockets raining on the Galilee, “intolerable acts of terror.” And they have not been disappointed.

It is not that Israel does not want peace: everyone wants peace, even Hitler.  The question is: on what terms?  From its origins, the Zionist movement has understood that to achieve its goals, the best strategy would be to delay political settlement, meanwhile slowly building facts on the ground.  Even the occasional agreements, as in 1947, were recognized by the leadership to be temporary steps towards further expansion.

The 1982 Lebanon war was a dramatic example of the desperate fear of diplomacy.  It was followed by Israeli support for Hamas so as to undermine the secular PLO and its irritating peace initiatives.  Another case that should be familiar is Israeli provocations before the 1967 war designed to elicit a Syrian response that could be used as a pretext for violence and takeover of more land – at least 80% of the incidents, according to Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.

The story goes far back.  The official history of the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish military force, describes the assassination of the religious Jewish poet Jacob de Haan in 1924, accused of conspiring with the traditional Jewish community (the Old Yishuv) and the Arab Higher Committee against the new immigrants and their settlement enterprise.  And there have been numerous examples since.

The effort to delay political accommodation has always made perfect sense, as do the accompanying lies about how “there is no partner for peace.” It is hard to think of another way to take over land where you are not wanted.

Similar reasons underlie Israel’s preference for expansion over security.   Its violation of the ceasefire on November 4 2009 is one of many recent examples.

An Amnesty International chronology reports that the June 2008 ceasefire had “brought enormous improvements in the quality of life in Sderot and other Israeli villages near Gaza, where before the ceasefire residents lived in fear of the next Palestinian rocket strike.  However, nearby in the Gaza Strip the Israeli blockade remains in place and the population has so far seen few dividends from the ceasefire.” But the gains in security for Israel towns near Gaza were evidently outweighed by the felt need to deter diplomatic moves that might impede West Bank expansion, and to crush any remaining resistance within Palestine.

The preference for expansion over security has been particularly evident since Israel’s fateful decision in 1971, backed by Henry Kissinger, to reject the offer of a full peace treaty by President Sadat of Egypt, offering nothing to the Palestinians – an agreement that the US and Israel were compelled to accept at Camp David eight years later, after a major war that was a near disaster for Israel.  A peace treaty with Egypt would have ended any significant security threat, but there was an unacceptable quid pro quo: Israel would have had to abandon its extensive settlement programs in the northeastern Sinai.  Security was a lower priority than expansion, as it still is.  Substantial evidence for this basic conclusion is provided in a magisterial study of Israel’s security and foreign policy by Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land.

Today, Israel could have security, normalization of relations, and integration into the region.  But it very clearly prefers illegal expansion, conflict, and repeated exercise of violence, actions that are not only criminal, murderous and destructive but are also eroding its own long-term security.

US military and Middle East specialist Andrew Cordesman writes that while Israel military force can surely crush defenseless Gaza, “neither Israel nor the US can gain from a war that produces [a bitter] reaction from one of the wisest and most moderate voices in the Arab world, Prince Turki al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia, who said on January 6 that `The Bush administration has left [Obama] a disgusting legacy and a reckless position towards the massacres and bloodshed of innocents in Gaza…Enough is enough, today we are all Palestinians and we seek martyrdom for God and for Palestine, following those who died in Gaza’.”

One of the wisest voices in Israel, Uri Avnery, writes that after an Israeli military victory, “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.”

There is good reason to believe that he is right.  Israel is deliberately turning itself into perhaps the most hated country in the world, and is also losing the allegiance of the population of the West, including younger American Jews, who are unlikely to tolerate its persistent shocking crimes for long.  Decades ago, I wrote that those who call themselves “supporters of Israel” are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction.  Regrettably, that judgment looks more and more plausible.

Meanwhile we are quietly observing a rare event in history, what the late Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling called “politicide,” the murder of a nation — at our hands.

How to get removed from The Guardian’s “Comment is Free’

Tell the truth about Israel.

A friend had her comment removed from the Guardian’s “Comment is Free”.  I can’t imagine what was so offensive about what she said, apart from the fact that it was all true.

Below is a note she wrote about it on facebook.

==============================================================

Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation (1995) wrote a piece for The Guardian on January 16 titled ‘Standing against a tide of hatred’. Then comes the by-line: It’s not Israel’s action, but the vitriolic reaction to it that has been disproportionate. There’s only one explanation: antisemitism’.

As you would imagine, the article elicited much response. In fact, 1130 comments were posted on the ‘Comment is Free’ online edition of The Guardian. I don’t tend to post comments, but in the last 3 weeks I have posted 2 comments. One in The New York Times (about the wonderment of why women in ‘post-liberation’ Iraq are invisible!!) and this one below responding to Wurtzel’s self-absorbed soliloquy. What to do when your post gets removed from the left-leaning Guardian?

I think it was probably the last line that did it, but I just couldn’t help myself. If you feel brave enough to stomach the full article, you can find it @

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/16/elizabeth-wurtzel-antisemitism-israel-gaza

If not, then here is a copy of my comment as it appeared for about a minute.

There is so much wrong with Wurtzel’s thinking, it’s hard to know where to start. Foremost is the ever-constant conflation of anti-semitism with anti-zionism. The differences between the two could not be more distinct (not false as Wurtzel claims), and in my experience of working for nearly 2 decades in human rights work, most people who feel for Gazans and Palestinians are emphatically anti-zionist. They feel for Palestinians because they have engaged with their humanity and their story.

It is both an intellectual and moral laziness, and a casual arrogance that afflicts Wurtzel as she reduces criticism of Israeli atrocities to a racism. No one doubts there are anti-Semites in the world, but Arabs are Semites too and it seems to me there is more anti-semitism in Israel against Arabic-speaking Semites than just about anywhere in the world today. So it is time to face up to the cold facts rather than hide behind a rhetorical shield intended to shut down critique.

Israel is a state that was borne out of another people’s suffering. It is a colonial settler state still in a process of expropriating land and bringing the Indigenous people to heel; it is a state that demands recognition from Arab states but refuses itself to recognise the inalienable rights of the people they the Israelis have conquered. Those rights include the right to resist, the right to return to their land, the right to live without a jackboot on their neck, the right to move freely.

I know it might be hard for Wurtzel to move attention away from herself for a minute, but this is not about her. This is about human rights. This is about speaking against atrocities whether they are in Gaza, Dafur or Rangoon. This is about how we as individuals speak up for what we believe is wrong in the world. Wurtzel has failed to convince that she has a capacity to think beyond her own immediate sensibilities.

She has failed to register the inhumanity of what is happening. She can wail from the comfort zone of not being forced to live in a ghetto with 1.5 million other refugees. What a privilege. Spare a thought for the Palestinian woman who can’t feed her children; who can’t get clean water or essential medicines let alone a script for prozac so she can forget about her troubles.

The time of the righteous By Gideon Levy

09/01/2009

This war, perhaps more than its predecessors, is exposing the true deep veins of Israeli society. Racism and hatred are rearing their heads, as is the impulse for revenge and the thirst for blood. The “inclination of the commander” in the Israel Defense Forces is now “to kill as many as possible,” as the military correspondents on television describe it. And even if the reference is to Hamas fighters, this inclination is still chilling. The unbridled aggression and brutality are justified as “exercising caution”: the frightening balance of blood – about 100 Palestinian dead for every Israeli killed, isn’t raising any questions, as if we’ve decided that their blood is worth one hundred times less than ours, in acknowledgement of our inherent racism.

Rightists, nationalists, chauvinists and militarists are the only legitimate bon ton in town. Don’t bother us about humaneness and compassion. Only at the edges of the camp can a voice of protest be heard – illegitimate, ostracized and ignored by media coverage – from a small but brave group of Jews and Arabs. Advertisement Alongside all this, rings another voice, perhaps the worst of all. This is the voice of the righteous and the hypocritical. My colleague, Ari Shavit, seems to be their eloquent spokesman.

This week, Shavit wrote here (“Israel must double, triple, quadruple its medical aid to Gaza,” Haaretz, January 7): “The Israeli offensive in Gaza is justified … Only an immediate and generous humanitarian initiative will prove that even during the brutal warfare that has been forced on us, we remember that there are human beings on the other side.” To Shavit, who defended the justness of this war and insisted that it mustn’t be lost, the price is immaterial, as is the fact that there are no victories in such unjust wars. And he dares, in the same breath, to preach “humaneness.” Does Shavit wish for us to kill and kill, and afterward to set up field hospitals and send medicine to care for the wounded? He knows that a war against a helpless population, perhaps the most helpless one in the world, that has nowhere to escape to, can only be cruel and despicable. But these people always want to come out of it looking good.

We’ll drop bombs on residential buildings, and then we’ll treat the wounded at Ichilov; we’ll shell meager places of refuge in United Nations schools, and then we’ll rehabilitate the disabled at Beit Lewinstein. We’ll shoot and then we’ll cry, we’ll kill and then we’ll lament, we’ll cut down women and children like automatic killing machines, and we’ll also preserve our dignity. The problem is – it just doesn’t work that way. This is outrageous hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

Those who make inflammatory calls for more and more violence without regard for the consequences are at least being more honest about it. You can’t have it both ways. The only “purity” in this war is the “purification from terrorists,” which really means the sowing of horrendous tragedies. What’s happening in Gaza is not a natural disaster, an earthquake or flood, for which it would be our duty and right to extend a helping hand to those affected, to send rescue squads, as we so love to do. Of all the rotten luck, all the disasters now occurring in Gaza are manmade – by us. Aid cannot be offered with bloodstained hands.

Compassion cannot sprout from brutality. Yet there are some who still want it both ways. To kill and destroy indiscriminately and also to come out looking good, with a clean conscience. To go ahead with war crimes without any sense of the heavy guilt that should accompany them. It takes some nerve. Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who preaches for this war and believes in the justness of the mass killing it is inflicting has no right whatsoever to speak about morality and humaneness.

There is no such thing as simultaneously killing and nurturing. This attitude is a faithful representation of the basic, twofold Israeli sentiment that has been with us forever: To commit any wrong, but to feel pure in our own eyes. To kill, demolish, starve, imprison and humiliate – and be right, not to mention righteous. The righteous warmongers will not be able to allow themselves these luxuries.

Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who sees it as a defensive war must bear the moral responsibility for its consequences. Anyone who now encourages the politicians and the army to continue will also have to bear the mark of Cain that will be branded on his forehead after the war. All those who support the war also support the horror.

Israel admits there were no rockets from Hamas during the ceasefire

I’m trying to find out where this report came from and who this informed  Journalist is . I am surprised that it hasn’t been picked up by a major news network and that it was lost in the news about Gaza.  This is a crucial bit of information because it was the basis upon which Israel justified its bombing of Gaza.  I’ve not see anyone tackle Mark Regev’s lie so well.  So good on you , whoever you are for exposing the deceitful  lies of the state of israel.

Why I’m boycotting Israeli Produce

Fruit and vegetable exports are crucial to the Israeli economy. A consumer boycott of agricultural produce exerts direct economic pressure where it matters

Joanna Blythman

Comments (68)

Men of the Salmi family salvage some belongings from the rubble of their home in the Gaza City district of Zeitoun. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

If you’re not in the habit of checking the country of origin on fruit and vegetables to minimise food miles, you may not have noticed just how much Israeli produce is in our shops and supermarkets. At the moment, there are piles of new potatoes (though it’s hard to see why anyone with a scrap of environmental awareness would buy these when our indigenous main crop spuds are still firm and abundant), and that’s just for starters.

If you go out today and buy avocadoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, Medjoul dates, sharon fruit (persimmons), chillies, oranges, pomegranates, grapefruit or fresh herbs, it’s extremely likely that they will be Israeli. Most of this produce carries country of origin labelling or is branded as Carmel, Bio-Top or Jaffa. In the herb category, there’s room – intentional or otherwise – for confusion. Increasingly your dill, tarragon or basil may be labelled as ‘West Bank’. This is not a Palestinian alternative to the Israeli option; it comes from Israeli settlements in Palestine’s occupied territories.

Israel’s agricultural exporting company, Carmel Agrexco, is one of the biggest suppliers of fresh produce to the UK. As the company puts it:

Israel’s sunny climate enables Agrexco to tap the resources of its Carmel growers most of the annum. By lining up other complementary supply sources – such as fruit, vegetable and root crop growers located in countries in the Mediterranean basin, South America, and Africa – the Carmel label is available year-round

An expert in air-freighting with a base near Heathrow, Agrexco supplies the UK with everything from sweetcorn, rocket and radishes through to melons, strawberries and kumquats, so delivering the ‘permanent global summertime’ of horticultural produce that food retailers have educated British consumers to expect.

As a business, it’s impressive, but I don’t intend to buy any of it. For people aware of the recent horror that unfolded in Gaza and the emerging evidence of the scale of destruction, this cornucopia of fruit and vegetables represents a ready-made target for taking personal action in our daily lives to express disapproval at Israel’s ongoing aggression against the Palestinian people.

We can use the same tactic against Israel that was so effective in showing up South Africa as the apartheid state it once was. The parallels with South Africa are striking. Writing in the Guardian, Naomi Klein recently reminded us of the words of Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, who said in 2007 that the segregation he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was “infinitely worse than apartheid”.

So what, exactly, is he talking about? While we have been munching our way through its avocadoes, Israel has demolished Palestinian homes, evicted their occupants and expropriated their land and water resources. It has illegally colonised productive Palestinian land with waves of settlers. A boycott of Israeli fruit and vegetables, as opposed to other sorts of boycott (academic, sporting), is particularly apt because horticulture has been a major plank of Israeli expansion. Medjoul dates in the Jordan Valley, for example, base their operations on confiscated Palestinian land, in contravention of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

As if that wasn’t enough, Israel has effectively imprisoned Palestinians with checkpoints, an illegal wall and an oppressive system of travel permits and colour-coded identity cards, so scuppering Palestinian economic development. As OXFAM told the House of Commons International Development Committee (pdf), costs for Palestinians who want to export products are up to 70% higher than for Israelis. Settlers in the West Bank get direct access to markets in and through Israel without the disruptive road blocks and transfers faced by the Palestinians who are obliged to rely on Israeli intermediaries. The revenue from taxes and customs goes to Israel, which costs the Palestinian economy 3% of its GDP a year.

Left to develop its agricultural economy, Palestine could be a fertile and productive land. Olive oil used to be a profitable export crop but according to the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem, over 500,000 ancient olive trees have been bulldozed and cut down since 2000 (see zaytoun.org) to make way for the construction of Israeli settlements, settler-only roads and the Separation Wall. Yet in recent years, and despite all the odds stacked against them, marginalised Palestinian growers have produced good extra virgin olive oil, recently gaining organic status for some of their production.

Palestinian growers tenaciously produce the Nabali green olive (pickled in the Palestinian tradition with olive oil, water and salt) tree-ripened black olive, the Middle Eastern favourite Za’atar (a herb and seed mix of wild thyme, toasted sesame and sour-tasting sumac berries), Medjoul dates from Jericho, and the celebrated large, sweet ‘Om Al-Fahem’ almond grown in Jenin. All this is available through the ethical business, Zaytoun. It also used to sell couscous from a women’s co-operative in Gaza, but even before the latest bombardment, Israel’s tightening seige of Gaza made any type of export from that area impossible.

With intractable political conflicts, sometimes it’s hard to see how individual action can make even the slightest difference. But fruit and vegetable exports to Europe are crucial to the Israeli economy, representing 80% of that country’s total exports. The UK is its largest market, eating up a 60% share. Carmel Agrexco itself is 50% owned by the Israeli state, so a consumer boycott of agricultural produce exerts direct economic pressure where it matters.

By refusing to buy Israeli produce, ethically-minded consumers can be part of the wider Boycott Israeli Goods campaign (BIG) and add to the international condemnation of Israel’s tactics in Palestine. The reasons for a boycott precede the most recent open conflict and are ever-more important. Even if the current shaky ceasefire holds, Gaza will still be an open prison and Palestine will still be a country whose food economy is actively sabotaged by its powerful neighbour. Just at the moment, many people don’t have any appetite for Israeli produce. A boycott gives us something to do about it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/jan/23/israel-food-boycott-palestinians-gaza

LETTER FROM VIENNA

Why I Haven’t Returned to Belgrade

By Slavenka Drakulic

01/21/2009

The Balkan wars of the 1990s may be of the past, but their legacy still haunts the region. People do not want to admit they took part in wars. But while they may not be war criminals or murderers, they still bear responsibility.

I was walking down Mariahilfer Street in Vienna not long ago when I happened to overhear a conversation between three young men. They spoke Serbian, and were talking about a gathering at which Bosniaks and Croats had also been present. What drew my attention to them was not the language they spoke, but rather an expression one of them used. “I didn’t expect there would be so many people there tonight who speak our language,” one young man said.

He used the term “our language” (nas jezik) deliberately, instead of referring explicitly to Serbian, Bosnian, or Croatian. Nas jezik refers to all of the closely related southern Slavic languages. After the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the term became a kind of code indicating good intentions. We are not enemies, nas jezik implies. We can still understand one another in spite of everything.

To my surprise, hearing these words warmed my heart. How important it is, I thought, that these Serbian youngsters are communicating with their peers from neighboring countries. It struck me that their generation did not experience the wars of the 1990s. Maybe they were even born after my last visit to Serbia, almost two decades ago.

That visit was in June 1991, just before my native country Croatia proclaimed its independence. One of those three young people could have been born then, perhaps that very month. Once the young men had passed me, the warmth gave way to a familiar mix of guilt and anxiety. How many times in the past 17 years had I been invited to visit Belgrade — by friends, my publisher, the organizers of various conferences? Every time I found a way to refuse their invitations. Why had I not visited for all of these years?

Was it about “them”? About what “they” did to “us”? Or about what Serbs did to themselves? If I traveled there I would carry two decades of images and emotions with me, like that of the Muslim woman from Srebrenica whose son was murdered by the Serbs. Her words, “I was forced to drink the blood of my own son,” are burned in my memory. So too is the photo of a young man bent forward over a railing with a gaping hole in his chest. How strange, I thought when I saw it, that you could see the railing through the hole.

Much has changed in 17 years. Friends in Belgrade have come and gone. Some were even connected to the Milosevic regime. Had I ever really known them? Can one really know people, trust them? These questions depressed me. Perhaps I was staying away from Belgrade to spare myself from these feelings.

Why would Belgrade be different than Zagreb, a city also scarred by war? I had to face the same kind of people in Zagreb — old friends and colleagues who became nationalists and opportunists. But it is not the same. I live and work in Zagreb. It is my city, and there is no way for me to not confront the postwar reality there. That is, unless I want to leave and never come back.

“Belgrade is a part of your past as well,” my friend Boris told me when we recently met here in Vienna. He returned home to Serbia from the United States several years ago. “You must come and see the city and the people there for yourself,” Boris said. “After all, cities are people.” We spoke about returning to the places that used to be ours. He described to me his first trip to Dubrovnik after the war. It was painful, he said, but not only because of his nostalgic memories or because of what shells had done to the beautiful medieval town. Above all, it was painful because the Yugoslav soldiers had destroyed it in his name.

Boris showed me a photo of his son, a handsome young man dressed in a suit. It was hard to believe that the little boy I once knew is now a student of law. I was reminded again of the whole new generation of Serbs that will soon be voting in elections and shaping their country’s future. I hardly know this new generation.

What do I know about them? For one thing, they cannot travel abroad without a visa. They cannot see London or Paris, or even Bucharest or Sofia anymore. How sad and humiliating their situation is. I remember how with the old red Yugoslav passport my generation traveled throughout Europe. As a student, I worked in Sweden during the summer and came back with enough money for a whole year. This was a source of pride for us, in contrast to the countries in the Soviet bloc. They envied us because we could buy blue jeans, Italian shoes, and foreign records. The other side of that freedom to travel, however, was that it meant accepting the political system. We were bribed into believing that “socialism with a human face” made sense and could work. We did not question it.

Today young Serbs are isolated and prohibited from seeing the world, and they are angry about it. At a recent conference, I heard a young Serbian man speak passionately about the fact that his generation was not even born when the wars broke out. They are not responsible for the crimes of their fathers. Because they are young, he implied, they are blameless. I must admit that this presumed innocence does not feel right to me.

I know something about this. My generation assumed our innocence in the bloodshed of World War II. What could we possibly have to do with crimes committed before we were born? Our fathers never spoke about these crimes, and yet I do not blame them for their silence — the same kind of silence that I witness today after the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. I do blame our generation, however, for not asking questions. It is our responsibility to question our fathers’ justifications and their ideology. We didn’t do that. Our generation was responsible for finding out the truth. Instead, we believed in the histories laid out by school textbooks and nationalistic leaders because it was easier to live that way. Our attitude toward the past was one of the reasons that the wars of the 1990s were so easy to start.

I wonder how much the new generation in Serbia knows about its own past. Like ours, their generation is responsible for its silence, for not asking about what happened before they were born, for not caring about what their fathers did during those wars, for believing that they have the right to visas just because they are young and their hands are clean. Most of all, they are responsible for failing to ask their parents why they are deprived of visas. The youngest generation of Serbs cannot be held responsible for the past. But all of them are responsible for their present attitude toward the past. That was the lesson that we, their parents’ generation, had to learn the hard way.

I am no longer afraid to see my friends in Belgrade again. After all, we know exactly what each of us did, or said, or wrote during and after the wars. We know our mistakes and misunderstandings. We can account for each acquaintance, just as surely as the Serbs can account for what their friends and neighbors did in Bosnia or Kosovo.

People do not want to admit that they took part in wars. But while they may not be war criminals or murderers, they still bear responsibility. They believed that there was no alternative to nationalism and voted for a murderous regime. Serbs live in denial of their recent past, and there seems to be no motivation to face the truth. But we cannot be silent. We cannot repeat our mistakes and the mistakes of our parents. We all have to confront the past. The new postwar generation has its own responsibility: it must seek the truth. The youth of Serbia suffer because they are not asking questions.

This, I believe, is why I don’t visit Belgrade. I couldn’t bear the silence.

Slavenka Drakulic is a Croatian novelist and journalist. Her latest book “Frida’s Bed,” about Frida Kahlo, was published in 2008.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2009
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,602678,00.html

A Former Israeli citizen Speaks at an Australian Rally in Support of Gaza

Mothers of the Disappeared March Again and… Again

On the same day Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first African-American president in U.S. history, an old story was repeating itself in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the river from El Paso, Texas. Staging a caravan through the violence-ridden city, a new group of mothers of disappeared young women brought public attention to the cases of daughters who went missing after January 2008. Holding a rally at the downtown Cathedral, the mothers demanded their daughters be returned home alive.

“If there were leads as to the whereabouts of my daughter, I would not be here,” said Ernestina Enriquez, mother of Adriana Sarmiento, “but I do not have any favorable results from the little or the lot the authorities are doing. They don’t tell me anything…”

Demonstrators also demanded action in the cases of Hilda Gabriela Rivas, Brenda Ponce, Lidia Ramos, and Brenda Berenice Castillo. Representatives of Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa, the Mexico Solidarity Network, Centro de Mujeres Tonantzin, and other non-governmental organizations joined in
the protest.

The personal stories aired in public January 20 bore striking similarities. All the disappeared young women are teenagers who went to school or worked for a living, and most were headed to downtown Ciudad Juarez, the scene of numerous disappearances since the 1990s. Two of the women’s disappearances could be connected to travel on the same bus line, while a third instance might have some relationship to the Ignacio Allende preparatory school, an educational institution attended by several earlier victims of sexual assault and murder.

At least one member of the latest group of vanished teenagers was reportedly last headed downtown to purchase shoes, an activity connected to additional disappearances as far back as 1995. The most recent disappearances also bear a similarity to many earlier ones in that the missing persons were not seen being forcibly abducted, suggesting that the young women may have been lured into dangerous situations.

Brenda Berenice Castillo, 17, disappeared on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, a day celebrated as Three King’s Day in Mexico, after she reportedly headed downtown on the Zaragoza bus line to apply for a job at a jewelry business. The mother of a month-old baby, Castillo was quickly forced back into the job market because her husband’s work hours were cut back at his job with an export assembly plant.

“Although (Brenda’s baby) is little, he misses his mother,” lamented Bertha Alicia Garcia, the mother of Castillo.

At least 29 new cases of women who have disappeared in Ciudad Juarez since January 2008 are pending. As in previous times when disappearances of women rose, many tragically ending with the discovery of the tortured and
sexually abused corpse of the missing victim, the latest rash of women’s disappearances coincides with violent upheavals in the criminal underworld, increased seizures of drug loads, changes in political administrations, and deployments by the Mexican army or federal police.

Since 1995, several groups of relatives have thrust the issue of their missing daughters and sisters into the international spotlight. Mass protests, which reached their zenith in 2003-04, prompted the administration of former Mexican President Vicente Fox to create new government bureaucracies, including a special commission on violence against women in Ciudad Juarez and a special prosecutor’s office.

Both agencies were widely criticized for failing to clear up numerous disappearances and femicides. Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon assumed power in December 2006, the two agencies have become virtually invisible.

Meanwhile, murders of women officially reached all-time heights in Ciudad Juarez last year, when at least 86 women were slain; many homicides were connected to the narco war that claimed more than 1,600 lives overall.

Women´s murders have continued into 2009. In early January, the body of a tortured young female was discovered near the village of El Millon in the rural Juarez Valley, the same zone were men’s heads and headless bodies were discovered in recent days.

In response to earlier publicity about the Ciudad Juarez femicides, some Chihuahua state and federal officials frequently pointed to the central state of Mexico as the most violent place for women in the country.

According to official sources cited in the Mexican press, 173 women were murdered and another 1,000 were raped in Mexico state in 2008. Less than half the murder cases were reported solved.

Surrounding Mexico City and containing the capital city’s suburbs, the state of Mexico has a population about 10 times larger than Ciudad Juarez’s estimated population of 1.3 million people.

In its recent world report, Human Rights Watch charged that violence against women in Mexico was endemic and draped in a mantle of impunity. Indeed, the saga of the Ciudad Juarez disappearances and femicides now covers the terms of four Mexican presidents and an equal number of U.S. leaders.

In Ciudad Juarez, many women denounce living hemmed in by gun battles, forced disappearances, sexual assaults, and street crimes of all sorts. The state of terror was further heightened late last year when the body of a young woman was found on a public street with an attached message that warned “sexy” women not to go out alone because “the devil was loose” in the city.

“Women do not enjoy the freedom of secure transit in the city,” said local women’s activist Irma Marrufo, “and this is a right and a responsibility of political authorities and the legal system.”

***

Additional sources:
– Lapolaka.com, January 21, 2009.
– La Jornada, January 20 and 21, 2009. Articles by Israel Davila and Ruben Villalpando.
– Norte, January 15, 20, 21, 22, 2009. Articles by Nohemi Barraza and Herika Martinez Prado.
– El Diario de Juarez, January 21, 2009.
– Proceso, January 18, 2009. Article by M. Turati. — Cimacnoticias.com, January 5 and 22, 2009. Articles by Gladis Torres Ruiz and editorial staff.

***

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email fnsnews@nmsu.edu

Racism Rears Its Ugly Head on Australian Television and Radio

This little gem is from the ABC TV’s Media Watch

With Gaza, Journalists Fail Again

By Truth Dig. Posted on 27 Jan 2009

AP photo / Sebastian Scheiner

A rainbow, as if projected by the American media, is seen over the northern Gaza Strip, from the Israel-Gaza Border.

By Chris Hedges

The assault on Gaza exposed not only Israel’s callous disregard for international law but the gutlessness of the American press. There were no major newspapers, television networks or radio stations that challenged Israel’s fabricated version of events that led to the Gaza attack or the daily lies Israel used to justify the unjustifiable. Nearly all reporters were, as during the buildup to the Iraq war, pliant stenographers and echo chambers. If we as journalists have a product to sell, it is credibility. Take that credibility away and we become little more than propagandists and advertisers. By refusing to expose lies we destroy, in the end, ourselves.

All governments lie in wartime. Israel is no exception. Israel waged an effective war of black propaganda. It lied craftily with its glib, well-rehearsed government spokespeople, its ban on all foreign press in Gaza and its confiscation of cell phones and cameras from its own soldiers lest the reality of the attack inadvertently seep out. It was the Arabic network al-Jazeera, along with a handful of local reporters in Gaza, which upheld the honor of our trade, that of giving a voice to those who without our presence would have no voice, that of countering the amplified lies of the powerful with the faint cries and pain of the oppressed. But these examples of journalistic integrity were too few and barely heard by us.

We retreated, as usual, into the moral void of American journalism, the void of balance and objectivity. The ridiculous notion of being unbiased, outside of the flow of human existence, impervious to grief or pain or anger or injustice, allows reporters to coolly give truth and lies equal space and airtime. Balance and objectivity are the antidote to facing unpleasant truths, a way of avoidance, a way to placate the powerful. We record the fury of a Palestinian who has lost his child in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza but make sure to mention Israel’s “security needs,” include statements by Israeli officials who insist there was firing from the home or the mosque or the school and of course note Israel’s right to defend itself. We do this throughout the Middle East. We record the human toll in Iraq, caused by our occupation, but remind everyone that “Saddam killed his own people.” We write about the deaths of families in Afghanistan during an airstrike but never forget to mention that the Taliban “oppresses women.” Their crimes cancel out our crimes. It becomes a moral void. And above all we never forget to mention the “war on terror.” We ask how and who but never, never do we ask why. As long as we speak in the cold, dead language of those in power, the language that says a lie is as valid as a fact, the language where one version of history is as good as another, we are part of the problem, not the solution.

“Bombs and rockets are flying between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza, and once again, The Times is caught in a familiar crossfire, accused from all sides of unfair and inaccurate coverage,” New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt breezily began in writing his assessment of the paper’s coverage, going on to conclude “though the most vociferous supporters of Israel and the Palestinians do not agree, I think The Times, largely barred from the battlefield and reporting amid the chaos of war, has tried its best to do a fair, balanced and complete job—and has largely succeeded.”

The cliché that Israel had a right to defend itself from Hamas rocket attacks—that bombs and rockets were “flying between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza”—was accepted in the press as an undisputed truth. It became the starting point for every hollow discussion of the Israeli attack. It left pundits and columnists chattering about “proportionality,” not legality. Israel was in open violation of international law, specifically Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which calls on an occupying power to respect the safety of occupied civilians. But you would not know this from the press reports. The use of attack aircraft and naval ships, part of the world’s fourth-largest military power, to level densely packed slums of people who were hungry, without power and often water, people surrounded on all sides by the Israeli army, was fatuously described as a war. The news coverage held up the absurd notion that a few Hamas fighters with light weapons and no organization were a counterforce to F-16 fighter jets, tank battalions, thousands of Israeli soldiers, armored personnel carriers, naval ships and Apache attack helicopters. It fit the Israeli narrative. It may have been balanced and objective. But it was not true.

The Hamas rockets are crude, often made from old pipes, and largely ineffectual. The first homemade Qassam rocket was fired across the Israeli border in October 2001. It was not until June 2004 that Israel suffered its first fatality. There are 24 Israelis who have been killed by Hamas rocket fire, compared with 5,000 Palestinian dead, more than half of them in Gaza, at least a third of them children. This does not absolve Hamas from firing rockets at civilian areas, which is a war crime, but it does raise questions about the story line swallowed without reflection by the press. I covered the Kosovo Albanians’ desperate attempts to resist the Serbs, which resulted in a handful of Serb casualties, but no one ever described the lopsided Serbian butchery in Kosovo as a war. It was called genocide, and it led to NATO intervention to halt it.

It was Israel, not Hamas, which violated the truce established last June. This was never made clear in any of the press reports. Hamas agreed to halt rocket fire into Gaza in exchange for an Israeli promise to ease the draconian siege that made the shipment of vital material and food into Gaza nearly impossible. And once the agreement was reached, the Hamas rocket fire ended. Israel, however, never upheld its end of the agreement. It increased the severity of the siege. U.N. agencies complained. International relief organizations condemned the Israeli blockade. And there were even rumblings inside Israel. Shmuel Zakai, an Israeli brigadier general who resigned as commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division and was forcibly discharged from the military amid allegations that he leaked information to the media, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Dec. 22 that the Israeli government had made a “central error” during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing “to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip. … [W]hen you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,” Zakai said, “it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire. … You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.”

Israel, we know from papers such as Haaretz, started planning this assault last March. The Israeli army deliberately broke the truce when it carried out an attack on Nov. 4 that killed six Hamas fighters. It timed the attack, the heavy air and naval bombardment and the invasion of Gaza to coincide with the waning weeks of the Bush administration. Israel knew it would be given carte blanche by the White House. Hamas responded to the Nov. 4 provocation in the way Israel anticipated. It fired Qassam rockets and Grad missiles into Israel to retaliate. But even then Hamas offered to extend the truce if Israel would lift the blockade. Israel refused. Operation Cast Lead was unleashed.

Henry Siegman, the director of the U.S./Middle East Project at the Council of Foreign Relations, noted correctly that Israel “could have met its obligation to protect its citizens by agreeing to ease the blockade, but it didn’t even try. It cannot be said that Israel launched its assault to protect its citizens from rockets. It did so to protect its right to continue the strangulation of Gaza’s population.”

There were a few flashes of integrity in the American press. The Wall Street Journal ran a thoughtful piece, “How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas,” on Jan. 24 that was unusual in view of the acceptance in U.S. press coverage that Hamas is nothing more than an Islamo-fascist organization that understands only violence. And some journalists from news organizations such as the BBC did a good job once they were finally permitted to enter Gaza. Jimmy Carter wrote an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post detailing his and the Carter Center’s efforts to prevent the conflict. This article was an important refutation of the Israeli argument, although it was ignored by the rest of the media. But these were isolated cases. The publishers, news executives and editors largely accepted without any real protest Israel’s ban on coverage and allowed Israeli officials to fill their news pages and airtime with fabrications and distortions. And this made the war crimes carried out by the Israeli army easier to commit and prolong.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is acutely aware of Israel’s violations of international law, has already begun to reassure his commanders that they will be protected from war crimes prosecution.

“The commanders and soldiers that were sent on the task in Gaza should know that they are safe from any tribunal and that the State of Israel will assist them in this issue and protect them as they protected us with their bodies during the military operation in Gaza,” he said.

Israel’s brutal military tactics, despite the lack of coverage in the American press, have come under intense international scrutiny. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, blame the high civilian death toll on indiscriminate firing and shelling, as well as the use of white phosphorus shells in civilian areas. Israel has admitted using white phosphorus in Gaza but insists the chemical, used for smoke screens and to mark spots to be shelled or bombed, was not used directly against civilians.

Hamas is an unsavory organization. It has made life miserable for many in Gaza and carried out a series of death-squad-style executions of alleged opponents. But Hamas, elected to power in 2006, also brought effective civil control to Gaza. Gaza, ruled by warring factions, warlords, clans, kidnapping rings and criminal gangs, had descended into chaos under Mahmoud Abbas’ corrupt Fatah-led government. Hamas, once it assumed power, halted suicide bombing attacks on Israel. It ended rocket fire into Israel for almost a year. It upheld its agreement with Israel. Hamas’ willingness to negotiate with Israel, albeit through Egyptian intermediaries, led al-Qaida, which has been working to make inroads among the Palestinians, to condemn the Hamas leadership as collaborators.

Israel and the United States carried out an abortive and desperate attempt to overthrow Hamas by arming and backing a Fatah putsch in June 2007. They wanted to install the pliant Abbas in power. Hamas resisted, often with violent brutality, and expelled Abbas and the Fatah leadership from Gaza to the West Bank. Israel has now decided to do the dirty job itself. It will not work. Israel broke and discredited Yasser Arafat and Fatah in much the same manner. Abbas and Fatah have no authority or credibility left. Abbas is seen by most Palestinians as a pliant Israeli stooge. Israel is now destroying Hamas. Radical Islamic groups, such as al-Qaida, far more violent and irrational, stand poised to replace Hamas. And Israel will one day look wistfully at Hamas just as it does now at Fatah. But by then, with Israel surrounded by radical Islamic regimes in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and even Jordan, as well as fighting a homegrown al-Qaida movement among the Palestinians, it may be too late.

The Israeli government bears the responsibility for its crimes. But by giving credibility to the lies and false narratives Israel uses to justify wholesale slaughter we empower not only Israel’s willful self-destruction but our own. The press, as happened during the buildup to the Iraq war, was again feckless and gutless. It bent to the will of the powerful. It abandoned its sacred contract with its readers, listeners and viewers to always tell the truth. It chattered about nothing. It obscured the facts. It did this while hundreds of women and children were torn to shreds by iron fragmentation bombs in a flagrant violation of international law. And as it failed it lauded itself for doing “a fair, balanced and complete job.”

– By Chris Hedges Chris Hedges’ Truthdig column appears Mondays. He is a veteran journalist and the former New York Times Mideast bureau chief.

World gets its first gay head of state

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/world-gets-its-first-gay-head-of-state-1519068.html

Former air hostess to be sworn in as Icelandic premier after economic collapse

Johanna Sigurdardottir is Iceland’s new Prime Minister

The first government collapse of the global economic crisis is about to yield the world’s first openly-gay leader. Johanna Sigurdardottir, a former air hostess, is expected to be sworn in as Iceland’s Prime Minister by the end of the week.

Her moment in the international spotlight comes at the most horrendous moment in her nation’s recent history. As the global meltdown began, the collapse of Iceland’s grossly over-leveraged economy was followed smartly by the implosion of its banks and currency. Now its government has gone the same way, the first to succumb to the backwash from the crisis.

Ms Sigurdardottir’s party, the Social Democrat Alliance, was asked to form a new government but its leader is taking a leave of absence to recover from treatment for a benign tumour. And so, “Saint Johanna”, as she has come to be known, has been propelled from the social affairs ministry – which she has presided over for a decade – to take centre stage in a choice hailed as “unexpected but brilliant”.

The 66-year-old politician lives with her partner, Jonina Leosdottir, a journalist and playwright. The couple were joined in a civil ceremony in 2002. Don’t expect them to show up togetherfor photocalls, however – that’s not the Icelandic way. Though she is famous across the island, having been a top politician for years, her lesbian union was no big deal in this calmly progressive nation of only 300,000 people.

“Johanna is a very private person,” said an Icelandic government source. “A lot of people didn’t even know she was gay. When they learn about it people tend to shrug and say, ‘Oh’. That’s not to say they are not interested; they are interested in who she’s living with – but no more so than if she was a man living with a woman.”

Ms Sigurdardottir has two grown-up sons. She entered politics via the labour movement, was first elected to parliament in 1978 and was given her first ministerial office in 1987. She will be Prime Minister of a minority caretaker government composed of her Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Greens, with outside support. It is only expected to hold office for two or three months, until fresh elections are called.

“In opinion polls Johanna has repeatedly been chosen as the most popular politician in Iceland,” said the government source. “She is a good choice, because one of the problems the government is facing is lack of trust. Getting Johanna to become Prime Minister was a way of saying trust is an issue. Politicians want a fresh mandate from the electorate and, before they get it, they need to rebuild trust. Choosing Johanna is a way of saying, ‘Let’s bridge this gap, let’s have peace to be able to implement the emergency measures’.”

Geir Haarde, the former prime minister, endured months of angry protests over his poor handling of the economy; demonstrators pelted his car with eggs and police were forced to use tear gas on the streets for the first time in 50 years. Compare that to a poll in November that gave Ms Sigurdardottir a 73 per cent approval rating, she was the only minister to improve on the previous year’s score.

“She is often described as the only politician who really cares about the little guy,” wrote Icelandic journalist Iris Erlingsdottir in a blog this week.

She did stand for the leadership of her party back in 1994 and lost badly, but in her concession speech she predicted “my time will come”. And some 15 years later, it truly has.

Pink power: Four pioneering gay politicians

Harvey Milk

First gay man elected to US office when he was voted on to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Was assassinated in 1978 and is the subject of a new film.

Bertrand Delanoë

The Mayor of Paris is perhaps one of the most influential gay politicians in the world. He is said to harbour ambitions of running for the French presidency in 2012.

Penny Wong

Holds the crucial Australian cabinet post of Minister for Climate Change and Water. No other openly gay politician in the country has risen so far up the ladder.

Angela Eagle

Britain’s first openly lesbian MP has been a Treasury minister since 2007. She followed a trail blazed by former minister Chris Smith, who came out in 1984.

THE DEVIL’S FOOTSTEPS IN GAZA

A gut wrenching report on the callousness and brutality of the Israeli army and their shocking indifference towards Palestinians.  There’s also some appallingly cruel commentary at the bottom of the article which can be found here:

http://mideast.blogs.time.com/2009/01/26/the-devils-footsteps-in-gaza/

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There’s something about phosphorus, the way it smoulders and burns for days, that makes it looks as though the Devil had walked by, leaving fiery footprints in the earth. I saw phosphorus today in a bombed out ice cream factory (did the Israeli gunners think Hamas had paused for a Magnum bar?). A fire was still flickering in the smoky gloom two weeks after the shell had smashed through the ice cream factory roof.

And I saw phosphorus again yesterday in the charred rooms of a house in north Gaza that belongs to the Abu Halima family. You could possibly blame the Abu Halimas for their own misfortune. You could say that they read the leaflets, which the Israelis dropped ordering everyone in the neighborhood to flee, and they chose to ignore the warnings. “The Israeli soldiers had been through here many times,” say Mahmoud. “They didn’t bother us, and we didn’t bother them.”

Then the shelling started, harder than anything they had witnessed before. Tank shells crashed into the houses around them, thudded into the strawberry patches, sending up sprays of dust and fruit. The father, Saadallah, gathered his wife and kids into the corridor, away from the blizzard of debris coming in through the windows. Then three phosphorus bombs crashed through the roof, right above them. Mahmoud Saadallah Abu Halima, a relative, arrived soon after at the horrifying scene.

“I saw my mother coming towards me. She was on fire. I threw a blanket around her to try to put out the flames but she kept on burning. I went to Saadallah who was lying on the ground with his three young kids wrapped inside his coat. He was trying to protect them. But the coat had caught fire, too. When I tried to pull the kids away, their flesh came off in my hands.”

With help from the neighbors, they got the burn victims into the back of a pick-up truck, but as Mahmoud said of his family: “They were hardly human. They were like coal.”

Their appalling luck got worse. As they were driving to the hospital, an Israeli sniper, possibly fearing suicide bombers, shot and killed the driver, Mahmoud says. His wife and daughter were also among the phosphorus victims, and still alive. “I pleaded with the soldiers not to shoot again. I explained that we were taking our family to the hospital. They made me take off my clothes and when they saw I didn’t have a bomb or a weapon, they let me carry my wife and daughter to the hospital –-on foot.”

Fourteen days passed before it was safe enough for Mahoud and other survivors of the Abu Halima family to venture out to the pick-up with the four corpses. The pick-up had been turned over and smashed, by an Israeli bulldozer, according to witnesses, probably to get rid of the stench of the bodies and protect them from being devoured by stray dogs. It was a decent thought, but the Israelis underestimated the tenacity of Gaza’s canines.

Next, Mahmoud went back to the charred house, which had since been occupied by an Israeli sniper. He knocked out the toilet so he could get a better shot out of the bathroom window. And, the snipers could write Arabic. Maybe he was a Druze. In lipstick snatched from a bedside table, the soldier had drawn a Star of David on the wall and scrawled: “You have pretty underwear.” Then, at some point during the sniper’s long vigil at the window he experienced a flash of remorse. On the wall, in black, smudgy mascara, he wrote: “From the Israeli army, we are sorry.”

It will be a long time –generations, maybe– before the Abu Halima family, and plenty of other Gazans, can even begin to think about accepting an apology.

By Tim McGirk/Gaza

Gaza Strip academics & journalists call for BBC to get out of Gaza

Gaza – Ma’an –

Date: 29 / 01 / 2009  Time:  21:31

Palestinian academics and media personnel, as well as international activists, demanded the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) leave the Gaza Strip over its refusal to air an appeal for aid on the network.

Academics organized a sit-in near the entrance to the BBC’s office in Gaza, accusing it of bias toward Israel and “its crimes,” as well as denouncing its stance on rejecting to publish an appeal for humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip on its satellite channel.

The BBC said it would not play the appeal due to its policies on neutrality.

Protesters demanded that BBC reporters Paul Wallet, Andrew Herill and Paul Martin leave Gaza immediately, threatening to “use the shoes of those killed on them” if they remain in the Strip.

Other demonstrators chanted slogans against the BBC’s administration, including General Manager Mark Thompson, accusing him of lying and carrying banners reading, “BBC out of Gaza,” “Boycott BBC” and “BBC: Biased toward Israel and complicit in Israeli war crimes.”

British activist Ewa Jasiewicz called for her country to stop supporting Israel, end investment within its borders and boycott Israeli products. She added that many other members of Palestinian solidarity organizations “were eyewitnesses to Israeli crimes in Gaza.”

As’ad Abu Sharkh, a university professor in Gaza, said, “The BBC has become a partner to Israel in its war on Gaza.”

He insisted the BBC should equally refuse to air threats to “turn Gaza into a larger holocaust more grotesque than that of the Jews,” a reference to Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai’s statements during the three-week assault, “while refusing to air an appeal on behalf of the very victims of that holocaust.”

Era[c]ing Pasts :: Reinscribing Presence

The biggest silence in Australia is about  Indigenous history and people.  We have forgotten our bloody heritage and the injustices that have become part of every day life for indigenous people here.

We have just had our national day of celebrating colonialism –Australia Day.   But  despite our Prime Minister’s apology to Indigenous people last year, we still behave like colonialists with a shameful past we’re not prepared to tackle.

The essay below is the latest in a series of essays about race by Dr. Paula Abood.  It is a searing indictment of Australia’s national  identity and the prejudices which inform it.  It is a timely and forensic must read on the construction of race  and nation.

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http://raceandthecity.com/

If you come as softly

as wind within the trees

you may hear what I hear

see what sorrow sees.

-Audre Lorde

On the occasion of the 221^st anniversary of the colonising project in Australia, Aboriginal human rights advocate and community leader, Professor Mick Dodson, was named Australian of the Year.* In responding to a media-initiated question after the announcement, Dodson made the salient point that the day ‘celebrated’ as Australia Day is hardly inclusive considering what the day represents. This day edifies the raising of the Union Jack at Sydney Cove – or Warrang, its first name - in 1788 and augurs the beginning of the disenfranchisement of Indigenous Australia. In bringing Aboriginal sensibilities to the fore, vis-à-vis how this day is both viscerally and psychically felt, Dodson reminds non-Aboriginal Australians what this day means to the First Peoples.

Rather than waving the flag like a two-dollar shop patriot, is it possible that we might waive the right to be benignly forgetful, wilfully indifferent and artfully antagonistic for a moment and afford those whose ‘world came crashing down’** on that day some respect? To do otherwise is to dance on the graves of all who have been massacred, raped, forcibly removed from their families, corralled into slavery and imprisoned into the abjection that is dispossession. The idea of changing the date is a first step towards unfinished business. For those who reject the idea outright (as both national leaders of the major political paries in Australia have), what would their response be to the suggestion that we have a national knees-up – that is, balloons, bikinis and booze – on Anzac Day or Remembrance Day, on All Soul’s Day or Good Friday if you are Christian in faith? Oh so you think it inappropriate to celebrate wildly on a day when people seek solemnity to remember the dead?

If you come as lightly

as the threading dew

I shall take you gladly

nor ask more of you

Australia Day in its current formation does precisely that. It is a day of nationalistic flag-waving and triumphalist posturing privileging an exclusivist white version of history. This day was born of violence and to violence it inevitably returns. And post–Cronulla 2005, we have to endure the annual spectacle of white supremacy running riot under the auspices of Australia Day celebrations. This year, racist thugs terrorised people of non-white appearance in the centre of Manly - Kunná – a popular beach and tourist locale in the northern suburbs of Sydney. A crowd of mostly young white men chanted racist epithets as they ran through the town centre wrapped in their comfort blanket, the Australian flag. The usual institutional disavowal of white racism followed. First came the mayor preferring the term ‘moron’ to that rather harsh word ‘racist’. Then came local police Commander Dave Darcy proclaiming that they ‘were no worse than a rowdy “old cricket crowd”’ (Robinson 2009), except of course if you were one of their brown targets. Darcy goes on: ‘I personally gave them a good looking over, just assessing them. There was an intensity there that no doubt would be confronting to some but at that stage they hadn’t crossed the threshold of criminality’ (Robinson 2009). What is racial terror if not criminality? Aren’t these individuals classifiably white terrorists? Where’s the anti-terrorism legislation when you need it?

Now let’s imagine what the Commander’s response would have been had this rampaging horde of young men numbering well over 100 not been white, but instead a group of Aboriginal or Middle Eastern or Pacific Islander men. Imagine. The racial double standards are not hard to figure if you pay enough attention or happen to be a man of Aboriginal or Middle Eastern appearance for that matter.

The disavowal and the minimisation of racism when perpetrated by whites is the normalised response in the white nation. Remember former Prime Minister John Howard after the Cronulla riots insisting: ‘I do not accept that there is any underlying racism in this country’. A little further back, I remember being one of the interviewees on Radio National after the fire-bombing of a mosque in Brisbane (an Australian response to September 11) and the then Police Commander put this act of race-hatred down to the actions of a larrikin. The minimisation of racism is what race scholar Eduardo Bonilla-Silva sees as a central frame of colour-blind racism. This new formation is deployed precisely because ‘in the postmodern world few claim to be “racist” except for Nazis and Neonazis and members of white supremacist groups’ (2001: 140). Bonilla-Silva argues that the thinking behind this -‘There are racists out there but they are few and hard to find’ (2001: 141) – is a denial of the structural character of racism (2001: 142). Measuring Bonilla-Silva’s theory against the responses to Manly would verily suggest that a culture of colour-blind racism pervades the institutional centre.

1. Commander Darcy from Manly Local Area Command: ‘To suggest that there were racial overtones is … I think, way over the top’ (Robinson 2009).
2. The Manly Daily’s headline: ‘Ratbags: YES Racists: NO’ (Phillips 2009).
3. The Federal politician Tony Abbott: ‘Some people seem to be suggesting there was a racist element to it. My instinct, as someone who has just read the reports, is that I think alcohol was to blame, not racism’ (Phillips 2009).

The Daily Telegraph, not especially known for its race-sensitivities, called it for what it was: ‘Groups of men jump[ing] up on cars chanting race hate to the terrified passengers within … What started as chants of “Aussie Aussie Aussie” at 1pm had in an hour developed an ugly overtone’ (Vallejo 2009). The state Premier, Nathan Rees, for his part went straight to the heart of it: ‘To use an Australian symbol or the Australian flag to promote racism is to fail to understand what those symbols mean. This kind of bigoted behaviour has no place in NSW’ (Robinson 2009). While refreshing to hear a Premier of NSW actually utter the ‘r’ word, an insistence on defending the props so steeped in colonial baggage ignores their agency as instruments of white power. Those who use the flag to promote racism clearly understand this history and that is precisely what makes the flag theirs. The Union Jack in the upper left corner is the same Union Jack raised at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1778. In short, the very livery of Australian-ness as played out in this spectacle are the institutional props that have systematically and psychically been deployed to exclude, to control, to marginalise, first and foremost Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives and communities, and then to a much lesser extent, consecutive waves of non-white migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the following years.

You may sit beside me

Silent as a breath

And only those who stay dead

Shall remember death

Manly, and indeed Cronulla, can be thus read as theatrical representations that belong in this continuum of violence. The white bodies on the beach and the street chasing down ‘ethnics’ are simply recreating real time race drama; by reasserting their dominance, dressed shirtless like Tarzans atop some terrified victim’s Toyota, they embody the very ethos of Australia Day as it is, White Australia Day. Though we endeavour hard to be a forgetful nation, the patriots with their sunburnt chests are an annual reminder as to why we need to critically appraise the day, and indeed, to change the date.

Professor Dodson’s response to this question of change should therefore not be reduced to some abstraction of the culture wars. He speaks for many, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, who emphatically refuse to celebrate Australia Day for the reasons of history, because of contemporary realities. He speaks for those who conscientiously object to e[rac]ing the past, for those who reject the idea of celebrating dispossession.

If you come I will be silent

Nor speak harsh words to you-

I will not ask why, now,

Nor how, nor what you knew.

I am reminded of erasure as I searched for the presence of Native Americans in the memorialising of nation at the moment of Obama. Known for his erudition and attention to history, Obama failed to correct an oversight that continues to escape the notice of the forgetful nation. During a speech remembering an event in another place some two hundred and twenty one years ago, the then hopeful Senator was forced to speak back to the criticism of his long-standing association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the pastor branded anti-American and anti-white for his speaking-truth-to-power sermons. Obama invoked a biblical line that deserves critique. Here is the text of what he said:

‘Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787 … The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery…’ (March 18, 2008)

The spectre of slavery in the United States is a traumatic and harrowing narrative, but if we are to be critical about the past, then the term ‘original sin’ surely belongs to the dispossession and destruction of the Native American peoples. It is well documented that Native Americans have endured a systematic process of extermination that enabled the making of the American nation. In modern times, we use the term genocide to describe what transpired in the Americas. Like Australia, the Americas (both North and South) are soaked in the blood of Indigenous people. To erase this originary violence renders the genocide complete; that is, the victims are at once invisible and forgotten. At the inauguration celebrations, a token appearance and a token mention were all Native Americans were afforded. In the euphoria of history making, forgetfulness continues to shape the rebooting of nation.

‘Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun.

Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequesthed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will cry with me, “Never! Never!”‘

- Tecumseh of the Shawnees (1990:1)

Acclaimed people’s historian Howard Zinn writes: ‘There is not a country in world history in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United States’ (2003: 23). In tracking the history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and those who have been omitted, Zinn provides us with a window to understanding modern America. In the case of Australia, we might ask where today are the people of Warrang and Kunná, the people of Mararwong, Arrowanelly, and Wallumatta?

But we shall sit here softly

Beneath two different years

And the rich earth between us

Shall drink our tears.

Ali Behdad argues in his book Forgetful Nation that the United States ‘is an amnesiac nation that disremembers its violent beginnings’ (2005: 23). At present, Australia Day is a national day of disremembering. For others, it is Invasion Day, Survival Day, a public holiday. Migrants and refugees of all backgrounds for their part are emphatically encouraged to join the party in disremembering. In this way, demonstrating your ‘Australian-ness’ is as easy as painting a flag on your brown face. The SBSTV news report on the night of 26 January proudly trumpeted diversity, focussing on a Vietnamese woman on multicultural parade in Melbourne. She had made her ao dai from an Australian flag, and as subversive as this is in another context, given the racialised reception Vietnamese communities have had to cop over the last 30 years, it also is a picture-perfect representation of the superficiality of official multiculturalism. Then, as always, we watch the staged shots of the benevolent state bestowing citizenship upon its most recent arrivals in ceremonies around the country. Whilst this is indeed an important and euphoric occasion for many, most especially for refugees who have escaped the traumas and violence of conflict and displacement, ironically, this day is painfully heightened by those very realities in Aboriginal communities around the country.

This is an opportune moment for migrant and refugee communities (notably those from non-English speaking backgrounds) to intervene as active participants in the national conversation that Professor Dodson has begun, lest it be dominated by white (migrant) voices. At once sporadic, solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders could be expressed via support for a change of date. It is in the interests of those who are committed to a critical multicultural democracy to ensure that a plurality of voices are heard in the new century. The first step is easy: we recognise that the raising of the Union Jack at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788 represents the beginning of the disenfranchisement of the First Peoples that continues to this day. So instead of mouthing the platitudes of the anthem and inscribing an abaya into the flag, perhaps we could offer a heartfelt cantata to the dispossessed as a gesture to narrative remembrance. Each and every community could find the words to express sorrow and respect via the lexicons of the multilingual nation. It’s time now for a brand new day. It’s time to change the date.

Notes:

*This symbolic gesture provides Professor Dodson with a public platform that has been denied to him over the past decade. Dodson was unashamedly marginalised by the former neo-conservative government in its oppositional zeal to the politics and discourses of self-determination. De-facto assimilation, or new century paternalism was their preferred poison. Dodson was co-author of the landmark Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children form Their Families (1997), undertaken by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (now the Australian Human Rights Commission).

**Mick Dodson referred to 26 January 1788, the day when Governor Arthur Phillip formally annexed the land as ‘the day on which our world came crashing down’. Quoted in a Sydney Morning Herald editorial titled, ‘Stirring the possum on Australia Day’, 27 January 2009, p 10.

References:

Behdad, A (2005) Forgetful Nation: On Immigration and Cultural Identity in the United States, Duke University Press Durham & London

Bonilla-Silva, E (2001) White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era, Lynne Rienner Publishers Boulder London

Lorde, A (1987) ‘Memorial I’ in Ain’t I a Woman: Poems by Black and White Women, (ed.) Illona Linthwaite Virago London.

Obama, B (2008) ‘A More Perfect Union’ <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html> Accessed 30 December 2008.

Phillips, J (29 January 2009) ‘Ratbags:YES Racists:No’ The Manly Daily <http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/ratbags-yes-no/. Accessed 29 January.

Robinson, G (27 January 2009) ‘Manly ‘morons’ rampage were racist: academic’ The Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/manly-morons-racist/2009/01/27/1232818417563.html Acessed 27 January 2009.

Vallejo, J ‘Manly erupts in Violence on Australia Day’ The Daily Telegraph (26 January 2009) <http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24965973-5006009,00.html> Accessed 27 January 2009.

Tecumseh of the Shawnees in Dee Brown Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, (1990) Vintage London.

Zinn, H (2003) A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present, HarperCollins New York

Obama, take away the pain in my stomach

This video message is made by an Israeli woman from Machsom Watch–a checkpoint Watch.  A voluntary movement of Israeli women, founded in 2001, dedicated to monitoring and reporting human rights violations at checkpoints in the West Bank and Jerusalem.  It brings together Israeli women who are united in theis opposition to the occupation and their commitment to human rights.

Thousands protest in Israel against the bombing of Gaza

I wonder what happens if protests such as these were given coverage in the Australian media? Might it be possible that public opinion and therefore government policy would change on Israel?  There’s no doubt in my mind that Australian  media coverage of the war on Gaza and the war on Palestinians in general has been appalling.  But what I find offensive is the lack of space given to those who dissent in Israel and here at home and the constant loud and unenlightened voice of the pro Israel lobby.

Shoe hurled as Chinese PM speaks

A protester has thrown a shoe at Wen Jiabao during a speech at Cambridge University and called the Chinese prime minister a “dictator”.

The shoe landed about a metre away from Mr Wen and the protester, a young man, was then removed by security guards.

Mr Wen, who earlier signed a series of trade agreements with Gordon Brown on the final day of a three-day UK visit, described the incident as “despicable”.

Protests have taken place about human rights and Tibet during his visit.

Protests

Five people were arrested in London on Sunday after trying to approach Mr Wen.

According to eye-witnesses, Mr Wen was interrupted near the end of a speech he was giving in Cambridge on the global economy.

According to the Press Association, the shoe was thrown from the back of the hall and landed “well away” from Mr Wen.

Reports said the protester urged the audience to challenge the Chinese prime minister, shouting “how can the university prostitute itself with this dictator?”

AFP reported that fellow members of the audience shouted “shame on you” as he was escorted out of the auditorium.

Police later confirmed that the man had been arrested on suspicion of a public order offence.

As Mr Wen arrived to deliver the speech, he was met by both pro-Chinese supporters and people demonstrating against China’s human rights record in its own country and in Tibet.

The incident was similar to an event in December when US President George W Bush was forced to duck to avoid shoes thrown at him during a visit to Iraq.

‘Determination’

Earlier, Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for greater collaboration on trade between the UK and China during talks with Mr Wen at Downing Street.

Mr Brown said they shared a determination to reverse the economic downturn and Mr Wen said “concerted efforts” were needed to “address the common challenges that we face”.

Mr Wen said the economic crisis showed the “dangers of a totally unregulated market”.

He added: “Only by working together, only by making a concerted effort, can we address the common challenges we face.”

Mr Brown said the 4 trillion yuan (£400bn) fiscal stimulus announced by the Beijing authorities in November would help British exports to China, particularly in low-carbon technologies.

“The strength of the relationship between China and Britain will be a pivotal force in helping us through the downturn and a powerful driving force behind our future growth and prosperity.”

Mr Wen met Conservative leader David Cameron for 45 minutes on Sunday to talk about topics including the economic crisis and fighting climate change.

Mr Cameron raised human rights issues with the Chinese leader and emphasised the importance of “greater participation” in Beijing’s political process.

Mr Wen’s European tour includes visits to Germany, Spain, and Brussels.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7865868.stm

Published: 2009/02/02 17:46:03 GMT

Open letter to the President of Israel, by Jean-Moïse Braitberg

Date: Sat, Jan 31, 2009

Dear Sir,

I am writing to you, to ask you to contact those who are authorized to do so, to remove the name of my grandfather from the memorial at Yad Vashem, which is dedicated to the Jewish victims of National Socialism. It says “Moshe Brajtberg, gassed in 1943 in Treblinka.”

The rest of my family also perished in the various of the camps to which they were deported. I beg you. Mr. President, to do this, because that which has happened in Gaza, and in other places, and has defined the fate of the Arab peoples of Palestine for 60 years now, disqualifies – to my mind – Israel to be the center which is dedicated to remember the suffering of the Jews, and by extension, that of all of mankind.

Understand me: ever since I was a child I have lived among survivors of the death camps. I saw the numbers tattooed on their arms and heard the stories of their tortures. I experienced the unbearable mourning and shared the nightmares.

I learned that these crimes shall never again take place, that no person, ever again, shall despise another for his ethnicity or religion, and rob him of his elementary Human Rights, just as he has a right to a life lived in decent circumstances, with the hope of better things for his family.

Still, Mr. President, I have noticed that despite innumerable Resolutions of the international community, despite the obvious injustices to which the Palestinians have been heirs since 1948, despite the hopes of Oslo, and despite the repeated recognition on the part of the Palestinian authorities that Israeli Jews have the right to live in peace and security, the only answer of successive Israeli governments has been brute force, blood shed, incarceration, constant controls, colonization and expropriations.

You will tell me, Mr. President, that it is legitimate for a country to defend itself against rockets aimed at its people, or kamikazis who take many innocents with them in death. To which I will answer that my human sympathies do not ask after the nationality of the victim.

You, on the other hand, lead a nation that means to represent the Jews in their entirety, but also claim to preserve the memory of the victims of National Socialism. That is what touches me and is unbearable to me. While you write the names of my loved ones at Yad Vashem, in the heart of Israel,the state holds the memory of my family prisoner behind the barbed wire of Zionism, in order to make them hostages of a so-called authority which – day after day – practices injustice.

So I beg you to take away the name of my grandfather from the memorial that testifies to the horrors suffered by the Jews, so that it can no longer be used to justify the horror which is visited upon the Palestinians.

Veuillez agréer, monsieur le president, l’assurance de ma respectueuse considération.

www.siawi.org

My seeds and your grandchildren = exotic!

Shoes Hurled At Israeli Ambassador in Sweden

A woman has thrown a shoe at the Israeli ambassador to Sweden as he was giving a lecture on Israel’s forthcoming elections.

The shoe hit Benny Dagan in the chest during a seminar held at the University of Stockholm on Wednesday, a local police official said.

Ylva Kornheffer, a board member of the Stockholm Association of Foreign Affairs, the student association which organised the seminar, said she was “sitting in the front row and suddenly a shoe was flying over my head”.

She added that another person threw two books at the envoy but missed.

“The girl who threw the shoe asked the policemen to give it back to her. It was a red Nike shoe,” Kornheffer said.

The two protesters, who were shouting insults, were escorted out of the room by police.

They were taken to a local police station but were released after being questioned.

It was not known whether they were students at the university.

Dagan continued his lecture after a short break and a heated discussion followed the seminar before being interrupted by the moderator.

A protester who threw a shoe at Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, during a speech at Britain’s Cambridge University earlier this week, was charged with a public order offence.

An Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush, the former US president, during a press conference in Baghdad in December, was arrested and is awaiting his trial.

Written by Dave

February 5, 2009 at 2:34 pm

The BBC’s Nadir

‘The BBC cannot be neutral in the struggle between truth and untruth, justice and injustice, freedom and slavery, compassion and cruelty, tolerance and intolerance.’

Thus read a 1972 internal document called Principles and Practice in News and Current Affairs laying out the guidelines for the BBC’s coverage of conflicts. It appears to affirm that in cases of oppression and injustice to be neutral is to be complicit, because neutrality reinforces the status quo. This partiality to truth, justice, freedom, compassion and tolerance it deems ‘within the consensus about basic moral values’. It is this consensus that the BBC spurned when it refused to broadcast the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC)’s video appeal to help the people of Gaza.

The presumption that underlies the decision is that the BBC has always been impartial when it comes to Israel-Palestine. An exhaustive 2004 study by the Glasgow University Media Group – Bad News from Israel – shows that the BBC’s coverage is systematically biased in favour of Israel. It excludes context and history to focus on day-to-day events; it invariably inverts reality to frame these as Palestinian ‘provocation’ against Israeli ‘retaliation’. The context is always Israeli ’security’, and in interviews the Israeli perspective predominates. There is also a marked difference in the language used to describe casualties on either side; and despite the far more numerous Palestinian victims, Israeli casualties receive more air time.

Many of these findings were subsequently confirmed in a 2006 independent review commissioned by the BBC’s board of governors which found its coverage of the conflict ‘incomplete’ and ‘misleading’. The review highlighted in particular the BBC’s selective use of the word ‘terrorism’ and its failure ‘to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, reflecting the fact that one side is in control and the other lives under occupation’.

These biases were once more evident in the corporation’s coverage of the recent assault on Gaza. A false sense of balance was sustained by erasing from the narrative the root cause of the conflict: instead of occupier and occupied, we had a ‘war’ or a ‘battle’ – as if between equals. In most stories the word occupation was not mentioned once. On the other hand the false Israeli claim that the occupation of Gaza ended in 2005 was frequently repeated, even though access to the strip’s land, sea and airspace remain under Israeli control, and the United Nations still recognizes Israel as the occupying authority. In accepting the spurious claims of one side over the judgment of the world’s pre-eminent multilateral institution, the BBC has already forfeited its impartiality.

The BBC presented the assault as an Israeli war of self defence, a narrative that could only be sustained by effacing the 1,250 Palestinians (including 222 children) killed by the Israeli military between 2005 and 2008. It downplayed the siege which denies Gazans access to fuel, food, water, and medicine. It presented Hamas’s ineffectual rockets as the cause of the conflict when it was Israel’s breech of the six-month truce on November 4 which triggered hostilities. It described the massacre of refugees in an UNRWA compound in the context of Israel’s ‘objectives’ and ’security’. The security needs of the Palestinians received scant attention. Selective indices were used to create an illusion of balance: instead of comparing Palestinian casualties to those suffered by Israel (more than 1300 to 13) the BBC chose to match them with the number of rockets fired by Hamas. No similar figures were produced for the tonnage of ordnance dropped on the Palestinians.

A parade of Israeli officials – uniformed and otherwise – were always at hand to explain away Israeli war-crimes. The only Palestinians quoted were from the Palestinian Authority – a faction even the BBC’s own Jeremy Paxman identified as collaborators – even though the assault was described invariably as an ‘Israel-Hamas’ conflict, much as the 2006 Israeli invasion was framed as an ‘Israel-Hizbullah’ war. This despite the fact that Israel made no attempts to discriminate between the groups it was claiming to target and the wider population. As one Israeli military official bragged, Israel was ‘trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel’. Indeed, given the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths, it would have been far more accurate to describe the assaults as ‘IDF-Lebanon’, and ‘IDF-Palestine’ conflicts.

To be sure, Palestinian civilian deaths were mentioned, but only in terms of their ‘cost’ to Israel’s image. Where Israeli crimes were particularly atrocious, the BBC retreated to condemning ‘both sides’. Israeli civilian deaths were elevated to headlines; Palestinians relegated to the bottom. The aforementioned massacre of Palestinian refugees received the same amount of coverage as the funeral of a single Israeli soldier. A hole in an Israeli roof from a Palestinian rocket often received the same attention as the destruction of a whole Gazan neighbourhood. There was also no investigation of Israel’s widely reported use of White Phosphorus, and of the equally illegal Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) munitions. The coverage of the unprecedented worldwide protests was also minimal. Critical voices were by and large excluded.

If there were no occupier and occupied in the conflict; no oppressor and oppressed, no state and stateless; then clearly assisting victims on one side would compromise ‘impartiality’. This view posits the Palestinian population as a whole as an adversary to the Israeli war machine. The BBC’s decision not to acknowledge the victims of the conflict is a function of its biased coverage. When it spent three weeks providing a completely distorted image of the slaughter carried out by one of the world’s mightiest militaries against a defenceless civilian population, it is unsurprising that it should fear viewers questioning how such a ‘balanced’ conflict could produce so many victims. And if the Israelis are able to look after their own, why should the Palestinians need British assistance?

When there is no mention of the violent dispossession of the Palestinians, or of the occupation; no mention of the crippling siege, or of the daily torments of the oppressed, viewers would naturally find it hard to comprehend the reality. For if these truths were to be revealed, the policy of the British government would appear even less reasonable. As a state chartered body, however, the BBC is no more likely to antagonize the government as a politician in the government is to antagonize the Israel lobby. Indeed, the BBC’s director general Mark Thompson can hardly be described as a disinterested party: in 2005 he made a trip to Jerusalem where he met with Ariel Sharon in what was seen in Israel as an attempt to ‘build bridges’ and ‘a “softening” to the corporation’s unofficial editorial line on the Middle East’. Thompson, ‘a deeply religious man’, is ‘a Catholic, but his wife is Jewish, and he has a far greater regard for the Israeli cause than some of his predecessors’ sources at the corporation told The Independent. Shortly afterwards Orla Guerin, an exceptionally courageous and honest journalist responsible for most of the corporation’s rare probing and hard hitting reports, was sacked as the BBC’s Middle East correspondent and transferred to Africa in response to complaints from the Israeli government.

But this decision to refuse a charity appeal has consequences that go far beyond any of the BBC’s earlier failings: as the respected British MP Tony Benn put it, ‘people will die because of the BBC decision’. It is so blatantly unjust that the only question the BBC management might want to mull over is just how irreparable the damage from this controversy might be to its reputation. The organization that only days earlier was reporting with glee a letter by Chinese intellectuals boycotting their state media is today itself the subject of boycotts across Britain, not just by intellectuals, but by artists, scholars, citizens and even the IAEA. Much like Pravda and Izvestia during the Cold War, today it is the BBC that has emerged as the most apposite metaphor for state propaganda.

Written by m.idrees

February 3, 2009 at 3:03 pm

Pulse Media

Irish Citizens call for a boycott of Israel

The following letter was published in a full-page advertisement in The Irish Times on 31 January 2009:

The original ad, including signatures may be downloaded here. [PDF]

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza killed over 1,300 Palestinians, a third of them children. Thousands have been wounded. Many victims had been taking refuge in clearly marked UN facilities.

This assault came in the wake of years of economic blockade by Israel. This blockade, which is illegal under international humanitarian law, has destroyed the Gaza economy and condemned its population to poverty. According to a World Bank report last September, “98 percent of Gaza’s industrial operations are now inactive.”

The most recent attack on Gaza is only the latest phase in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and appropriation of their land.

Israel has never declared its borders. Instead, it has continuously expanded at the expense of the Palestinians. In 1948, it took over 78 percent of Palestine, an area much larger than that suggested for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947. Contrary to international law, Israel expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. These refugees and their descendants, who now number millions, are still dispersed throughout the region. They have the right, under international law, to return to their homes. This right has been underlined by the UN General Assembly many times, starting with Resolution 194 in 1948.

In 1967, Israel occupied the remaining 22 percent of Palestine: the West Bank and Gaza. Contrary to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel has built, and continues to build, settlements in these occupied territories. Today, nearly 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the illegal settlements in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and the number grows daily as Israel expands its settler program.

Israel has resisted pressure from the international community to abide by the human rights provisions of international law. It has refused to comply with UN Security Council demands to cease building settlements and remove those it has built (Resolutions 446, 452 and 465) and to reverse its illegal annexation of East Jerusalem (252, 267, 271, 298, 476 and 478). Since September 2000, over 5,000 Palestinians, almost 1,000 of them minors, have been killed by the Israeli military.

Eleven-thousand Palestinians, including hundreds of minors, languish in Israel jails. Hundreds are detained without trial. In addition, Israel is breaking international law by imprisoning them outside the occupied territories, thereby making it almost impossible for their families to visit them. Every year, hundreds of Palestinian homes are demolished. The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza livesw imprisoned by walls, barriers and checkpoints that prevent or impede access to shops, schools, workplaces, hospitals and places of worship. They are subjected to restrictions of every kind and to daily ritual humiliation at the hands of occupation soldiers and checkpoint guards.

Invasion, occupation and plantation of their land is the reality that Palestinians have faced for decades and still face on a daily basis, as their country is reduced remorselessly. Unless, and until, this Israeli aggression is halted, and the democratic rights of the Palestinian people are vindicated, there will be no justice or peace in the Middle East. Israel’s 40-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza must be ended.

The occupation can end if political and economic pressure is placed on Israel by the international community. Recognizing this, the Palestinian people continually call on the international community to intervene.

We, the signatories, call for the following:

The Irish Government to cease its purchase of Israeli military products and services and call publicly for an arms embargo against Israel.

The Irish Government to demand publicly that Israel reverse its settlement construction, illegal occupation and annexation of land in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and to use its influence in international fora to bring this about.

The Irish Government to demand publicly that the Euro-Med Agreement under which Israel has privileged access to the EU market be suspended until Israel complies with international law.

The Irish Government to veto any proposed upgrade in EU relations with Israel.

The Irish people to boycott all Israeli goods and services until Israel abides by international law.

Requiem for Uma Singh

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2009/02/08/stories/2009020850080300.htm

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

In Nepal, despite the now-flourishing democracy and freedom of press, the price of not toeing the political line set up by armed militias is often death.

Paying a heavy price: Uma Singh

Whenever we in India use the phrase “neighbouring country”, we refer to Pakistan. We forget that there are other neighbours. Nepal, for instance, our northern neighbour, a country that has gone through immense political convulsions in the last three years, has faced decades of internal war and conflict, and is emerging now as a tentative democracy.

The press in Nepal has reported fearlessly through this difficult period. It has known the curbs on freedom. It is now relishing a release from past curbs that only a democracy can guarantee.

Other threats

Yet, despite democracy, the press in Nepal faces a more serious threat, that of violent attacks by dozens of armed groups that continue to flourish with impunity. As a result, those who do not toe the political line set by such groups end up paying a heavy price. One such was 26-year-old radio journalist Uma Singh, who was hacked to death by over 15 men in her home in Janakpur on January 11, 2009.

A recent visit to Kathmandu revealed how strongly a cross-section of journalists there feels about Uma’s brutal murder. Yet little is known in this country about it. In fact, little is reported about the developments in Nepal unless there is an India angle.

Uma was one of a growing breed of independent-minded journalists in Nepal. Unlike India, FM radio in Nepal is an important part of the media scene as it covers politics and current events and not just popular music. Uma reported for Janakpur Today FM radio and also wrote columns in print media. According to her fellow journalists she was fearless in reporting social and political crimes.

Uma Singh lived and worked in the southeastern Tarai region of Nepal bordering India, and reported on problems specific to that region such as the dowry system and caste discrimination. At one point, she was forced to move house because of the threats she received for some of her writing.

Uma Singh belonged to a wealthy landowning family in the Tarai. Three years ago, Maoists kidnapped her father and brother. They have not been seen since and are presumed dead. Uma was determined to track down the perpetrators of that crime. Since her murder, an attempt is being made to dilute the seriousness of the crime by passing it off as a property dispute between members of her family. Yet, the threat she posed was not because she was involved in a family dispute over property but because she did not hesitate to speak plainly about political crimes, including the one involving her family. Nor was she cautious about taking on those close to the people now ruling Nepal. A neighbour, who heard her cries for help when she was attacked, overheard one of the killers saying, “This is for writing so much.”

Uma wrote about violence and discrimination against women. In an interview that she gave last year, she speaks of the challenges facing a journalist and a woman journalist in particular. She talks of how the different armed groups target journalists, demand that they air certain news and not report other news. . “If we don’t air the news, they threaten to kill us”, she says. As a result, she says, “We have been compelled to dance to their tune”. Compounding the problems of journalists, she says, is the fact that women in Nepali society are not accepted as equals. “They say the work we have been doing is not good”, she says in the interview.

Uma Singh was hoping to move to Kathmandu where the presence of national and international media would possibly have given her some protection. Before she could make that important move, she was murdered. She is the first woman journalist to be killed in Nepal; over a dozen male journalists have been killed in the last years.

Blurred boundaries

Uma’s life and death are an illustration of what happens, even within a democracy, when the line between politics and criminality gets blurred. We know this well in India and see it even in States where there is no armed conflict. Those who live in areas of protracted conflict, like Kashmir or the Northeast, understand the reality of reporting under the gaze of multiple armed groups, State and non-State.

Her death also reminds us that the media’s job is to report, not to censor. For instance, some people chose to dismiss the despicable incident in Mangalore in January as “media hype”. Yet, the images of the young women being assaulted were not manufactured even if they were telecast repeatedly. They were real. What Uma Singh reported was not a figment of her imagination. It was also real, perhaps too real.

Kanak Mani Dixit, editor of Himal magazine and one of the leading and most outspoken journalists in Nepal, writes in his tribute to Uma Singh in Republica ( www.myrepublica.com):

Amidst obscure yet widespread threats, the journalist is asked to remain brave and principled. All over the country, we have journalists like the late Uma Singh. In her dedication, courage and professionalism, she represents the strides journalism has taken since 1990, using the fundamental freedoms to bring pluralism to the people. Never ending, this path to journalistic independence and professionalism is a continuous journey, and Uma Singh understood the dangers amidst the all-pervading impunity. She knew that she worked in the most dangerous part of the country, but she would not remain silent. She knew that independent journalism was important for the radio-listeners and newspaper readers she served. Uma Singh died alone and amidst horrific cruelty, a fighter for democracy.

Email the writer: sharma.kalpana@yahoo.com

“The Only Thing That Connected Us to the World Was a Small Radio”

Radio Broadcasts Provide Vital Humanitarian Information to Gazans

http://www.internews.org/prs/2009/20090209_gaza.shtm

Mohammad Abu Shahmeh/Internews Gazans listen to the radio while taking shelter at the house of Abu Ali.

(February 9, 2009) “It was darkness, no electricity, and the only thing that connected us to the world was a small radio. We were more than forty people, men, women, and children sleeping in the living room, listening to the radio and moving the tuner from one station to another; no one could sleep.” So said Um Ibrahim, a mother of eight living in Khan Younis, south of Gaza City.

Along with forty other relatives, Ibrahim and her family had taken shelter in her brother Abu Ali’s house after the first night of the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza in December.

After the escalation in hostilities, independent radio stations in Gaza stopped broadcasting because their staff could not reach the stations, they had no electricity, and their generators had ran out of fuel. With mobile phone service mostly down, Gaza residents had no access to information about the course of the conflict, ceasefire negotiations, or humanitarian relief.

Alerted to this information vacuum by Internews Network staff in Gaza, the Internews team in Ramallah worked with three West Bank radio stations in Hebron whose signals reach all of Gaza to begin producing and airing special humanitarian programming for the people of Gaza.

The stations are part of UPNN, a new network of electronic media, radio and TV stations that formed in August 2008 with media partners Internews has been working with since January 2007.  Reporters from the member stations in the West Bank and Gaza work together to create shared programming for radio, TV, and electronic media. Using the radio network of UPNN, the member stations in Hebron were activated to direct humanitarian information to Gaza.

According to a survey conducted for Internews by Near East Consulting, based on a random sample of 878 Gazans, the three Hebron stations were widely listened to, and 92% of respondents found the information they broadcast to be helpful or very helpful.

In the first few days of the airstrikes, Gaza resident Abu Ali said that people listened to both the Gaza and West Bank radio stations, but, as he explained, “We knew that the Gaza stations were transmitting military programs so we began tuning to West Bank stations from Hebron like Minbar al Huriya, Nawras, and Dream.”

Abu Ali said that people listened to these stations because they provided not only information about the war but also guided Gazans to the distribution centers for food, blankets and other assistance provided by relief agencies.

“We were listening to Minbar al Huriya’s program when they announced the first humanitarian ceasefire – the first good news,” he said. That day and the following day, the Hebron stations announced ceasefire hours and the location of distribution centers.

Abu Ali said that people used that time to go out and get provisions and assistance, sometimes standing in line for hours. Batteries for the radios were a highly sought after commodity. “One night, we boiled the batteries as a way to renew them for more energy,” he said.

“If we had no radio we would have been in complete darkness about what was going on around us,” Abu Ali said.

During the airstrikes, the stations in Hebron, later joined by Alwan Radio, an Internews partner station in Gaza, provided eight hours per day of special humanitarian programming. The stations continue to provide news and information on assistance and produce programming on dealing with trauma and health and safety issues in the aftermath of the war.

The humanitarian broadcasts from the Internews-supported stations are funded in part by a grant for humanitarian media from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and individual donors.

Donate to Internews’ Gaza humanitarian information service.

More Press Releases

Director of a Community Radio Station in Paraguay Killed

(IFJ/IFEX) – The following is a translation of a 13 February 2009 IFJ
media release:

The IFJ condemns the 12 January 2009 assassination of Martín Ocampos Páez, director of the Hugua Ñandu FM community radio station. At the time of his assassination, Ocampos Páez was in his home in the Concepción area of
eastern Paraguay.

“We support the family and our colleagues at the Sindicato de Periodistas
de Paraguay (SPP) in calling on the authorities to investigate this crime,
which may be linked to comments Martín Ocampos made about suspected
relationships between illegal trafficking activities and politicians in
the region,” IFJ Assistant Secretary General Paco Audije said.

Ocampos Páez’s family and others in the area have suggested the complicity
of the police and some local officials with drug traffickers in the area.

IFJ and its regional affiliate, the Latin American and Caribbean
Journalists’ Federation (Federación de Periodistas de América Latina y el
Caribe, FEPALC), support their colleagues at the SPP, who have also spoken
out recently against the death threats reported by journalist Aldo
Lezcano, a correspondent for the daily ABC Color, as well the actions
against reporter Richard Villasboa and camera operator Blas Salcedo, of
Canal 13 television station.

The IFJ represents over 600,000 journalists in 120 countries worldwide.

For further information on the Lezcano, Villasboa and Salcedo cases, see:
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/100757

Anna Politkovskaya murder suspects found not guilty

19 February 2009

By Dominic Ponsford

Press Gazette

A Moscow jury has acquitted three men charged with the killing of journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya.

The campaigning journalist for Novaya Gazeta was shot dead outside her Moscow flat in 2006 in a contract-style killing.

She had a history of exposing atrocities perpetrated in Chechnya and of being highly critical of the Russian authorities.

Defendants Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov and a former police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, were accused of helping organise and arrange Politkovskaya’s killing.

They were charged with murder and could have been imprisoned for life if convicted.

The verdict by the 12-member jury marks the end of what the Moscow Times described as an “often chaotic” three-month trial – which was marked by the fact that neither the gunman, nor the person who ordered the killing, were in the dock.

Prosecutors have said they will appeal the ruling.

Khadzhikurbanov was accused of organising the crime, while Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov were charged as accomplices.

A third Makhmudov brother, Rustam, is claimed by prosectors to be the assassin and has escaped abroad.

The court heard that the two other Makhmudov brothers staked Politkovskaya’s flat before Rustam carried out the killing.

Anna Politkovskaya murder suspects found not guilty – Press Gazette

Once You See What Truly Happened in Gaza, It Will Change You Forever

By Medea Benjamin, AlterNet. Posted February 19, 2009.

What I saw was like a form of collective punishment, leaving behind a trail of grieving mothers, angry fathers and traumatized children.

When I traveled to Gaza last week, everywhere I went, a photo haunted me. I saw it in a brochure called “Gaza will not die” that Hamas gives out to visitors at the border crossing. A poster-sized version was posted outside a makeshift memorial at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. And now that I am back home, the image comes to me when I look at children playing in the park, when I glance at the school across the street, when I go to sleep at night.

It is a photo of a young Palestinian girl who is literally buried alive in the rubble from a bomb blast, with just her head protruding from the ruins. Her eyes are closed, her mouth partially open, as if she were in a deep sleep. Dried blood covers her lips, her cheeks, her hair. Someone with a glove is reaching down to touch her forehead, showing one final gesture of kindness in the midst of such inhumanity.

What was this little girl’s name, I wonder. How old was she? Was she sleeping when the bomb hit her home? Did she die a quick death or a slow, agonizing one? Where are her parents, her siblings? How are they faring?

Of the 1,330 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military during the 22-day invasion of Gaza, 437 were children. Let me repeat that: 437 children — each as beautiful and precious as our own.

As a Jew, an American and a mother, I felt compelled to witness, firsthand, what my people and my taxdollars had done during this invasion. Visiting Gaza filled me with unbearable sadness. Unlike the primitive weapons of Hamas, the Israelis had so many sophisticated ways to murder, maim and destroy-unmanned drones, F-16s dropping “smart bombs” that miss, Apache helicopters launching missiles, tanks firing from the ground, ships shelling Gaza from the sea. So many horrific weapons stamped with Made in the USA. While Hamas’ attacks on Israeli villages are deplorable, Israel’s disproportionate response is unconscionable, with 1,330 Palestinians dead vs. 13 Israelis.

If the invasion was designed to destroy Hamas, it failed miserably. Not only is Hamas still in control, but it retains much popular support. If the invasion was designed as a form of collective punishment, it succeeded, leaving behind a trail of grieving mothers, angry fathers and traumatized children.

To get a sense of the devastation, check out a slide show circulating on the internet called Gaza: Massacre of Children (www.aztlan.net/gaza/gaza_massacre_of_children.php). It should be required viewing for all who supported this invasion of Gaza. Babies charred like shish-kebabs. Limbs chopped off. Features melted from white phosphorus. Faces crying out in pain, gripped by fear, overcome by grief.

Anyone who can view the slides and still repeat the mantra that “Israel has the right to self-defense” or “Hamas brought this upon its own people,” or worse yet, “the Israeli military didn’t go far enough,” does a horrible disservice not only to the Palestinian people, but to humanity.

Compassion, the greatest virtue in all major religions, is the basic human emotion prompted by the suffering of others, and it triggers a desire to alleviate that suffering. True compassion is not circumscribed by one’s faith or the nationality of those suffering. It crosses borders; it speaks a universal language; it shares a common spirituality. Those who have suffered themselves, such as Holocaust victims, are supposed to have the deepest well of compassion.

The Israeli election was in full swing while was I visiting Gaza. As I looked out on the ruins of schools, playgrounds, homes, mosques and clinics, I recalled the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, “No matter how strong the blows that Hamas received from Israel, it’s not enough.” As I talked to distraught mothers whose children were on life support in a bombed hospital, I thought of the “moderate” woman in the race, Tzipi Livni, who vowed that she would not negotiate with Hamas, insisted that “terror must be fought with force and lots of force” and warned that “if by ending the operation we have yet to achieve deterrence, we will continue until they get the message.”

“The message,” I can report, has been received. It is a message that Israel is run by war criminals, that the lives of Palestinians mean nothing to them. Even more chilling is the pro-war message sent by the Israeli people with their votes for Netanyahu, Livni and anti-Arab racist Avigdor Lieberman.

How tragic that nation born out of the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust has become a nation that supports the slaughter of Palestinians.

Here in the U.S., Congress ignored the suffering of the Palestinians and pledged its unwavering support for the Israeli state. All but five members out of 535 voted for a resolution justifying the invasion, falsely holding Hamas solely responsible for breaking the ceasefire and praising Israel for facilitating humanitarian aid to Gaza at a time when food supplies were rotting at the closed borders.

One glimmer of hope we found among people in Gaza was the Obama administration. Many were upset that Obama did not speak out during the invasion and that peace envoy George Mitchell, on his first trip to the Middle East, did not visit Gaza or even Syria. But they felt that Mitchell was a good choice and Obama, if given the space by the American people, could play a positive role.

Who can provide that space for Obama? Who can respond to the call for justice from the Palestinian people? Who can counter AIPAC, the powerful lobby that supports Israeli aggression?  

An organized, mobilized, coordinated grassroots movement is the critical counterforce, and within that movement, those who have a particularly powerful voice are American Jews. We have the beginnings of a such a counterforce within the American Jewish community. Across the United States, Jews joined marches, sit-ins, die-ins, even chained themselves to Israeli consulates in protest. Jewish groups like J Street and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom lobby for a diplomatic solution. Tikkun organizes for a Jewish spiritual renewal grounded in social justice. The Middle East Children’s Alliance and Madre send humanitarian aid to Palestine. Women in Black hold compelling weekly vigils. American Jews for a Just Peace plants olive trees on the West Bank. Jewish Voice for Peace promotes divestment from corporations that profit from occupation. Jews Against the Occupation calls for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.

We need greater coordination among these groups and within the broader movement. And we need more people and more sustained involvement, especially Jewish Americans. In loving memory of our ancestors and for the future of our-and Palestinian-children, more American Jews should speak out and reach out. As Sholom Schwartzbard, a member of Jews Against the Occupation, explained at a New York City protest, “We know from our own history what being sealed behind barbed wire and checkpoints is like, and we know that ‘Never Again’ means not anyone, not anywhere — or it means nothing at all.”

On March 7, I will return to Gaza with a large international delegation, bringing aid but more importantly, pressuring the Israeli, U.S. and Egyptian governments to open the borders and lift the siege. Many members of the delegation are Jews. We will travel in the spirit of tikkun olam, repairing the world, but with a heavy sense of responsibility, shame and yes, compassion. We will never be able to bring back to life the little girl buried in the rubble. But we can-and will–hold her in our hearts as we bring a message from America and a growing number of American Jews: To Gaza, With Love.

For information about joining the trip to Gaza, contact gaza.codepink@gmail.com.

Suspend military aid to Israel, Amnesty urges Obama after detailing US weapons used in Gaza

• White phosphorus shells traced back to America
• Activists call for arms embargoes on both sides

• Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
• The Guardian, Monday 23 February 2009
• Article history

Relatives mourn a Palestinian man killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, last month. Photograph: Eyad Baba/AP

Detailed evidence has emerged of Israel’s extensive use of US-made weaponry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles.

In a report released today, Amnesty International detailed the weapons used and called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. It called on the Obama administration to suspend military aid to Israel.

The human rights group said that those arming both sides in the conflict “will have been well aware of a pattern of repeated misuse of weapons by both parties and must therefore take responsibility for the violations perpetrated”.

The US has long been the largest arms supplier to Israel; under a current 10-year agreement negotiated by the Bush administration the US will provide $30bn (£21bn) in military aid to Israel.

“As the major supplier of weapons to Israel, the USA has a particular obligation to stop any supply that contributes to gross violations of the laws of war and of human rights,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa programme director. “To a large extent, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza was carried out with weapons, munitions and military equipment supplied by the USA and paid for with US taxpayers’ money.”

For their part, Palestinian militants in Gaza were arming themselves with “unsophisticated weapons” including rockets made in Russia, Iran and China and bought from “clandestine sources”, it said. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed and more than 4,000 injured during the three-week conflict. On the Israeli side 13 were killed, including three civilians. Amnesty said Israel’s armed forces carried out “direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects in Gaza, and attacks which were disproportionate or indiscriminate”. The Israeli military declined to comment yesterday.

Palestinian militants also fired “indiscriminate rockets” at civilians, Amnesty said. It called for an independent investigation into violations of international humanitarian law by both sides.

Amnesty researchers in Gaza found several weapon fragments after the fighting. One came from a 500lb (227kg) Mark-82 fin guided bomb, which had markings indicating parts were made by the US company Raytheon. They also found fragments of US-made white phosphorus artillery shells, marked M825 A1.

On 15 January, several white phosphorus shells fired by the Israeli military hit the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza City, destroying medicine, food and aid. One fragment found at the scene had markings indicating it was made by the Pine Bluff Arsenal, based in Arkansas, in October 1991.

The human rights group said the Israeli military had used white phosphorus in densely populated civilian areas, which it said was an indiscriminate form of attack and a war crime. Its researchers found white phosphorus still burning in residential areas days after the ceasefire.

At the scene of an Israeli attack that killed three Palestinian paramedics and a boy in Gaza City on 4 January, Amnesty found fragments of an AGM114 Hellfire missile, made by Hellfire Systems of Orlando, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The missile is often fired from Apache helicopters.

Amnesty said it also found evidence of a new type of missile, apparently fired from unmanned drones, which exploded into many pieces of shrapnel that were “tiny sharp-edged metal cubes, each between 2 and 4mm square in size”.

“They appear designed to cause maximum injury,” Amnesty said. Many civilians were killed by this weapon, including several children, it said.

Rockets fired by Palestinian militants were either 122mm Grad missiles or short-range Qassam rockets, a locally made, improvised artillery weapon. Warheads were either smuggled in or made from fertiliser.

The arsenal of weapons was on a “very small scale compared to Israel”, it said, adding that the scale of rocket arsenal deployed by Hizbullah in the 2006 Lebanese war was “beyond the reach of Palestinian militant groups”.

Armed for war

Israelis Missiles launched from helicopters and unmanned drones, including 20mm cannon and Hellfire missiles. Larger laser-guided and other bombs dropped by F-16 warplanes. Extensive use of US-made 155mm white phosphorus artillery shells and Israeli-made 155mm illuminating shells that eject phosphorus canisters by parachute. Several deaths caused by flechettes, 4cm-long metal darts packed into 120mm tank shells, and fragments of US-made 120mm tank shells.

Palestinians Militants fired rockets into southern Israel including 122mm Grad rockets of either Russian, Chinese or Iranian manufacture, and smaller, improvised Qassam rockets often made inside Gaza and usually holding 5kg of explosives and shrapnel.

Thousands Attend Opening Celebration of Southern Sudan Community Radio Station

“It’s Your Radio, Your Voice”

Deborah Ensor/Internews School children dance at the opening of Naath FM, the only community radio station in Leer County, Southern Sudan.

(February 23, 2009) When Naath FM, the only community radio station in Leer County, Southern Sudan, was officially launched this week, thousands of people came to honor and claim the station that has been a part of their lives for the past year.

“I have never seen anything like this,” said Deborah Ensor, Internews Sudan Program Director. “There were literally thousands of people here, and they were all trying to get into the studio.  If you want to know what community radio is all about, you simply must come to Leer.”

Naath FM is one of four radio stations that Internews has built in the most remote regions of Southern Sudan. Though the station has been on the air for more than a year, officials and the community were eager to have it formally opened and dedicated as a community radio station.

Appropriately enough, the station is called Naath FM – it means “Citizen” in the local language of Nuer and was chosen after listeners called in and suggested it.

“Internews has given the community a tool,” said Lonya Bany Banak, the radio station coordinator who has been with the station since the first day it went on air. “To help people fully participate without discrimination, to take part in decision making. This is the power of community media. It shows we are doing something, that the community really owns this radio. Having accepted to come here like this, in such numbers, it really means something very big.”

Drumming, Dancing, and Celebrating

“Seeing thousands of people in one place in Leer is a stunning sight – the area is flat, dry and dusty and the horizon far reaching, Ensor related. “The barren dust fields were awash in the color and chaos of thousands of stomping feet and the cacophony of clapping hands, as people poured onto the airstrip around the station – hour after hour after hour – drumming, dancing, singing, celebrating.” In traditional fashion, a bull was slaughtered and roasted as part of the event.

The station’s signal was just boosted with a 250-watt transmitter, up from 100 watts. That means news, information and entertainment can be heard across four counties, in four different languages.

“It has never happened before like this,” said Bany, who has been through both war, and now peace, in his home village. “Naath FM is a place for people to share ideas, to bring peace and reconciliation to our communities. The leadership of all four counties came together for this launch. That is very big. They participated together, cut the ribbon together. Different communities became one community.”

There are no official population figures in Southern Sudan, but it is estimated about 200,000 people live in Leer County, a sprawling, flat, marshland littered with oil fields. With the signal now reaching four counties, the potential coverage could be double that.

“So Old I’ve Lost All My Teeth”

One very old woman, who could not remember when she was born, only that “I am old enough to have lost all my teeth,” traveled 45 kilometers to come to the opening.  She sat in front of Naath FM for hours, waiting for other people to arrive.  “I have been seeing that red light at night, and they say that the light is where the people talk from,” the woman said in Nuer, pointing to the 60-meter transmission tower. “But I am not sure this is where the people talk. I wanted to see it myself.”

Naath FM invited the woman to talk live on the air during the opening, and she sang her people’s traditional songs – music so old that the younger generation didn’t even know it.

Such stories are common for Naath FM programming. “Whatever comes on our radio comes from the common people,” Bany said. “Elders come and sing, the youth come and do drama – regardless of political ideas or sides, anyone is welcome. It’s your radio, your voice – that’s our motto, and it gives people more power to participate.”

Lost Cows and Wedding Celebrations

One of the most popular services Naath FM provides is the community announcement forum. Dozens of people come to the station every day to place announcements for lost cows, missing chairs or wedding celebrations.

A group of young boys made up a song and dance about Naath FM and these community announcements, and performed it to a standing ovation at the launch. “This is your community voice,” the song says in Nuer.” If your son is lost, go to Naath FM, they will help you find your cows and your property, too!”

Hundreds of traditional dancers and singers blessed the event, as did a downpour of rain. “Never before has it rained in January!” said Leer County Commissioner Stephan Taker Riak Dong, who officially dedicated the station. “This means that this radio station is blessed, that it stands for peace. Its significance in the historical record of this community is cemented.”

Internews-Built Radio Stations in Southern Sudan

Internews recruits and trains nascent journalists to run the community radio stations in Southern Sudan. In addition to Naath FM, Internews supports The Voice of Community Radio in Kauda, Radio Mujtama Fi Kurmuk, and Nhomlaau FM in Malualkon. The stations broadcast in more than ten local languages.

Internews’ project, “Radio for Peace, Democracy and Development in South Sudan,” began in 2006 and is made possible by a grant from the US Agency for International Development.

More Press Releases

Amnesty’s scandalous obliquity

By Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem

Feb 24, 2009

In an apparent effort to sound “balanced” and “unbiased,” the
London-based human rights group, Amnesty International (AI) , has
urged the international community to halt arms sales to the Israeli
apartheid regime and the Palestinian Islamic liberation movement,
Hamas.

A report issued by the group on Sunday, 22 February, pointed out that
arms supplied to “the two sides” were used in attacks on civilians and
civilian objects” which constituted war crimes.

Non the less, a careful examination of the report shows a clear
propensity on the part of AI to create a false symmetry between Hamas, a small liberation movement resisting a decades-old Nazi-like foreign military occupation, and Israel, a manifestly criminal state armed to the teeth, which has been committing every conceivable crime under the sun for the purpose of maintaining its colonialist occupation and brutal domination over the Palestinian people.

To be sure, no one claims that Hamas is completely blameless.
Targeting innocent civilians is unacceptable.

However, equating the resistance of a long-persecuted people
languishing under an evil military occupation, even if wrongs are
done, with an immensely superior state terror unjustifiably
perpetrated by an occupying power is morally unconscionable, to say
the very least.

Indeed, doing so would be analogous to equating European resistance to the attacking Nazi armies during the Second World War, with the Nazi
aggression itself.

Well, with all due respect to AI and its efforts to safeguard and
defend human rights, there is no legal or moral equation between a
rape victim’s right to defend herself against her attacker and the
criminal act initiated by the rapist.

I am using this analogy because the enduring Israeli oppression meted
out to the Palestinian people is an enduring act of rape.

Yes, firing home-made and other comparatively primitive projectiles on Israeli civilians is a regrettable act. However, the firing of these
projectiles, which killed a few Israelis in 10 years of hostilities
(virtually one Israeli per year), can’t be compared with the nearly
complete annihilation of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and wholesale
murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

The excessive, disproportionate and often pornographic use of deadly
violence against an essentially imprisoned and unprotected civilian
population is more than just a mere miscalculation or faulty reasoning
It is rather a deliberate war crime the perpetrators of which are vile
war criminals who ought to be prosecuted and punished for their
crimes.

More to the point, it is imperative that one gives context if one is
truly interested in producing an honest and objective analysis of the
recent outrage in Gaza.

Hence, one must be honest enough to remember that Israel had been
forcing the 1.5 million Gazans to choose between dying quietly by
succumbing to a genocidal hermetic siege that pushed most of the
region’s inhabitants to the brink of a silent holocaust, or fighting
back, using whatever primitive and extremely limited means at their
disposal.

I strongly believe it is absurd and ludicrous, if not outright
malicious, to compare Hamas with Israel as far as the use of violence
is concerned.

Hamas is a small movement of persecuted Palestinians who have been on the receiving end of Israeli persecution and repression. Hamas poses no real or strategic threat to Israel, a military superpower which
also, to a large extent, controls American politics and policies.

In its recent genocidal onslaught on Gaza, Israel used the deadliest
weapons of death, including F-16 warplanes, apache helicopters,
Merkava tanks, heavy artillery, depleted uranium, chemical agents that
eat through the human flesh and eventually cause death, white
Phosphorus, dart shells and a variety of other lethal weapons.

On the other hand, Hamas used notoriously primitive weapons, mainly to deter Israel from carrying out a genocide on a wider scale.

During that blitz, Israel knowingly and deliberately targeted civilian
neighborhoods, apartment buildings, private homes, mosques, college
dorms, university buildings, UN-run schools, grocery stores and
businesses. It was a no-holds-barred rampage of murder and terror
against an imprisoned and thoroughly starved civilian population.

As a result, as many as 7000 Palestinians were murdered, or maimed and injured, many with life-long deformities. Moreover, hundreds of
thousands of other Gazans suffered long-lasting psychological traumas.

On the Israeli side, we are talking about a dozen Israeli fatalities ,
some of whom killed or injured by “friendly fire.”

So, we are dealing with an extremely lopsided situation where the
death ratio is nearly 1 -100. Needless to say, one doesn’t have to be
a great military expert to realize that this is not really a war, it
is rather a huge massacre.

This is why, AI is called upon to call the spade a spade and refrain
from hiding behind technical jargons that not only fail to communicate
the facts about what really happened in Gaza but also give a false
impression of symmetry in guilt between Israel and Hamas.

More to the point, it is important to remember that Israel didn’t
impose the draconian blockade of Gaza as a retaliation for the largely
innocuous firing of projectiles onto Israel. The criminal blockade was
imposed, first and foremost, as a cruel punishment of Palestinians for
electing a political party that Israel didn’t like.

Hence, the imposition of the siege, which is continuing unabated, is
per se a war crime or a crime against humanity.

The world betrayed them, the Arab world stood silent, with some Arab
regimes even colluding with Israel to perfect the siege in the hope
that Gazans would turn against Hamas and bring it down.

And the hypocritical West had the audacity to blame the victims while
babbling, as usual, about Israel’s right to defend itself.

This happened while an entire people was being imprisoned, starved,
tormented and quietly exterminated, mainly for political reasons
pertaining to Israeli territorial aggrandizement.

In short, it was the Nazi-like Israeli savaging of the Palestinians
that made Palestinian resistance inevitable. The Palestinians, long
tormented by this cruel occupation, have every legal and moral right
to resist, using whatever means available to them.

Indeed, instead of blaming the victims for resisting their oppressors,
the world, including AI , ought to tell Israel that it can’t just
incarcerate 1.5 million civilians within the confines of an open-air
prison, surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, tanks, landmines, and other state-of-the-art machines of death, and then expect the victims to display love and understanding toward their tormentors and
oppressors.

Israel did transform the Gaza Strip into a real concentration camp, by
denying the prisoner population access to fuel, electricity, food,
medicine, medical care, and basic consumer products.

Meanwhile, the Israeli death machine never stopped murdering innocent Palestinians, nearly on a daily basis.

It is essential that AI and other human rights groups take these facts
into account when dealing with the situation in Gaza.

Failing to do so, by cowering before Israeli pressure, would further
corrode AI image as the world’s premier human rights organization.

Argument Clinic

Billboard sex: on the money or a limp excuse for a buck?

• Catherine Deveny
• February 25, 2009

‘LADIES! Faking it? Feel it for real! Call one of the doctors at Advanced Medical Institute now,” and there’s a picture of a gorgeous looking scantily clad girl seducing an equally gorgeous-looking guy.

It’s a massive billboard over the road from Flinders Street Station with a road works sign beneath it that reads, “SEEK ALTERNATE ROUTE.” Not sure if that was part of the official campaign, but if it was, whoever came up with that little installation is a genius.

How many Regular Normal People (RNPs) feel quite happy about themselves and their sex life or lack of until the dissatisfaction fairy in their guts gets abruptly woken by billboards screaming: “Do you want longer lasting CENSORED?” Men “DO IT” longer or “Faking it? Feel it for real.”

How many RNPs, with nothing wrong with them, digest these billboards and suddenly start thinking: “Is everyone else having more sex than me? Is everybody else lasting longer? Doing it more times in a night? Am I missing out? Is there something wrong with me? Am I normal? How much is normal? How long is normal? How many times is normal? Is there something wrong with me? Do I need to be fixed? Am I broken?”

How many RNPs see these billboards, read magazine ads and hear radio commercials and are suddenly racked with inadequacies?

The answer appears to be “stacks”. The sexual dysfunction market is huge and growing, Last year Advanced Medical Institute, posted a 50 per cent increase in gross profit, from $8 million to $12 million. There’s money in limp penises, dry vaginas and human beings’ innate competitive and insecure nature that keeps us constantly trying to keep up with the Joneses, even in the sack.

Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s not wrong. I’m not taking about censorship. Some people find sex confronting or offensive. I’m not one of them, because I’m an adult. My issue is that just because they’re “doctors” from an “institute”, “clinic” or “foundation” doesn’t mean some clever cookie isn’t exploiting human frailty and the fundamental tenet of capitalism being create dissatisfaction and there’s your licence to print money. Use of the words dosage, suffering, health issue, treatment, dysfunction, gel and nasal delivery technology sucks people into thinking they have something wrong that needs to be fixed. When, maybe, they don’t. And maybe they’re not.

Consumer Affairs Victoria, the Therapeutic Goods Administration and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have serious concerns and are received an alarming number of complaints about false and misleading advertising, lack of scientific backing and unsubstantiated claims in this area.

One website is quick to normalise: “You might take comfort in knowing that as many as four in 10 women have the same problem at some point in their lives” and reassures the blokes that “an estimated 30 per cent of men suffer from premature ejaculation”. Reading the website gives you the feeling that even if you don’t think you’re sexually inadequate, you probably are. Or you will be. But relax. We know what to do, but you’ll have to sign up for 12 months and it’ll cost you $3000.

It’s called disease mongering and it’s defined as “trying to convince essentially well people that they are sick”.

Lenore Tiefer, clinical associate professor of psychiatry, New York University, believes creation and promotion of sexual dysfunction is a textbook case of disease-mongering.

“Sexual life has become vulnerable to disease-mongering for two main reasons. First, a long history of social and political control of sexual expression created reservoirs of shame and ignorance that make it difficult for many people to understand sexual satisfaction or cope with sexual problems in rational ways. Second, popular culture has greatly inflated public expectations about sexual function and the importance of sex to personal and relationship satisfaction.”

Genuine cases of sexual dysfunction should be handled by GPs and specialists, not spruiked for by billboards, magazine ads and radio commercials. Are vulnerable people being sucked in by some quick-fix solution when the problem is actually physical (obesity, substance abuse, unrelated but contributing health problems) or psychological (stress, emotion trauma, relationship disintegration)? Or worse still, are they paying to have something fixed that’s not broken?

The real problem is the unrealistic expectations of sex and relationships we have in this pop-a-pill, flick-a-switch, perfection-default-setting society we live in. Lack in the sack may be frustrating and disappointing but sexual dysfunction is not a huge problem. Unrealistic expectation certainly is. We’re all convinced we’re missing out. But slipping mickeys into people’s drinks is still slipping mickeys into people’s drinks. Even if it’s by a bloke in a white coat from some so-called institute.

All our bullies

These days Serbia is globally famous for young tennis stars and old war criminals. Also for a young bully, a roughneck basketball player who recently lost his temper in an American bar, and beat an American drinking buddy into a coma.Instead of being arrested and jailed in the US, where he lived, this character fled to the Serbian embassy in Washington, grabbed a fake ID and escaped to Serbia.

Safe in his homeland, he claims to be a victim of anti-Serb sentiment. He gets large support from Serbian right winged nationalists, who always rebel against big powers, unless that big power is a 300-pound athlete beating up a 135-pound American opponent. The US government asks for extradition. Serbian officials boldly refuse this, faking a show-trial in Belgrade which conveniently vaporizes into nothing.

Our young bully is on the front pages of tabloids, together with our tennis stars: his mom hugging her huge, preemptively bad tempered baby, says with tears in her eyes: my Milorad is very emotional, but he’s not guilty.

The American punching-bag has since emerged from his coma. His family demands justice — not from the assailant, but a bailout from their own government. The Serbian government admits that the suspect skipped bail, but is ready to settle that issue.

From Bush to Obama, from Condoleezza Rice to Hillary Clinton: the Americans always want the man or the money, while the Serbians are willing to be bombed again but not to give in. Once again, a dangerous impasse.

So, a couple of days ago, the new Serbian daily Borba leaks information that Hillary Clinton and the Serbian government had made a quiet settlement of one million dollars to hush up the affair. The money goes to appease the victim’s family. The Serbian get back their bully babe to play free basketball in Serbia. It’s as if nothing happened.

When the news was published, the Serbian government sent the criminal investigative police to the paper. Because a diplomatic secret has been outed! Homeland security is in danger.

The paper’s editor in chief refuses to give the name of her source. The government does not deny the news, but it wants the source to be criminalized, even as the one million dollar sports star walks free in his basketball shoes

We Serbian tax payers endlessly finance our bullies, of every kind. Some years ago the lawmaker in Serbia created a law allowing all Serbian war criminals in Hague war crime tribunal to be financed by the Serbian taxpayers. Nobody offered to subsidize the victims of those war criminals and their politics, though plenty of those victims were Serbian. A civilian initiative managed to stop that public financing, only to se the practice re-emerge today; the same low-minded pay-off system, this time as a top secret.

Yesterday in the war crime tribunal in The Hague, several Serbian leaders from Milosevic’s regime were convicted for war crimes in Kosovo. One was set free. No other modern country has had so many leading politicians in a war crime tribunal. All of them committed war crimes in our name and with our money: many of them are free in the streets of Belgrade, just like the most-wanted Ratko Mladic whose squalid deeds have become epic poems. Mladic’s genocide attack on unarmed prisoners is a heroic defense against Muslims. Our million dollar bully represents that epic of the 90s reduced to a farce.

At least our rich young sports stars can scare up the money to appease American justice these days. Now imagine the coma that the Americans must be in, to be so willing to swallow that cash.Our one-million dollar bully has become a citizen of the world.

Jasmina Tesanovic

27 February 2009

Waltz with Bashir is nothing but charade*

By Gideon Levy <levy@haaretz.co.il>, Haaretz Correspondent

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1065552.html

Everyone now has his fingers crossed for Ari Folman and all the creative
artists behind “Waltz with Bashir” to win the Oscar on Sunday. A first
Israeli Oscar? Why not?

However, it must also be noted that the film is infuriating, disturbing,
outrageous and deceptive. It deserves an Oscar for the illustrations and
animation – but a badge of shame for its message. It was not by accident
that when he won the Golden Globe, Folman didn’t even mention the war in
Gaza, which was raging as he accepted the prestigious award. The images
coming out of Gaza that day looked remarkably like those in Folman’s film.
But he was silent. So before we sing Folman’s praises, which will of course
be praise for us all, we would do well to remember that this is not an
antiwar film, nor even a critical work about Israel as militarist and
occupier. It is an act of fraud and deceit, intended to allow us to pat
ourselves on the back, to tell us and the world how lovely we are.

Hollywood will be enraptured, Europe will cheer and the Israeli Foreign
Ministry will send the movie and its makers around the world to show off the
country’s good side. But the truth is that it is propaganda. Stylish,
sophisticated, gifted and tasteful – but propaganda. A new ambassador of
culture will now join Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, and he too will be
considered fabulously enlightened – so different from the bloodthirsty
soldiers at the checkpoints, the pilots who bomb residential neighborhoods,
the artillerymen who shell women and children, and the combat engineers who
rip up streets. Here, instead, is the opposite picture. Animated, too. Of
enlightened, beautiful Israel, anguished and self-righteous, dancing a
waltz, with and without Bashir. Why do we need propagandists, officers,
commentators and spokespersons who will convey “information”? We have this
waltz.

The waltz rests on two ideological foundations. One is the “we shot and we
cried” syndrome: Oh, how we wept, yet our hands did not spill this blood.
Add to this a pinch of Holocaust memories, without which there is no proper
Israeli self-preoccupation. And a dash of victimization – another absolutely
essential ingredient in public discourse here – and voila! You have the
deceptive portrait of Israel 2008, in words and pictures.

Folman took part in the Lebanon war of 1982, and two dozen years later
remembered to make a movie about it. He is tormented. He goes back to his
comrades-in-arms, gulps down shots of whiskey at a bar with one, smokes
joints in Holland with another, wakes his therapist pal at first light and
goes for another session to his shrink – all to free himself at long last
from the nightmare that haunts him. And the nightmare is always ours, ours
alone.

It is very convenient to make a film about the first, and now remote,
Lebanon war: We already sent one of those, “Beaufort,” to the Oscar
competition. And it’s even more convenient to focus specifically on Sabra
and Chatila, the Beirut refugee camps.

Even way back, after the huge protest against the massacre perpetrated in
those camps, there was always the declaration that, despite everything -
including the green light given to our lackey, the Phalange, to execute the
slaughter, and the fact that it all took place in Israeli-occupied territory
- the cruel and brutal hands that shed blood are not our hands. Let us lift
our voices in protest against all the savage Bashir-types we have known. And
yes, a little against ourselves, too, for shutting our eyes, perhaps even
showing encouragement. But no: That blood, that’s not us. It’s them, not
us.

We have not yet made a movie about the other blood, which we have spilled
and continue to allow to flow, from Jenin to Rafah – certainly not a movie
that will get to the Oscars. And not by chance.

In “Waltz with Bashir” the soldiers of the world’s most moral army sing out
something like: “Lebanon, good morning. May you know no more grief. Let your
dreams come true, your nightmares evaporate, your whole life be a
blessing.”

Nice, right? What other army has a song like this, and in the middle of a
war, yet? Afterward they go on to sing that Lebanon is the “love of my life,
the short life.” And then the tank, from inside of which this lofty and
enlightened singing emanates, crushes a car for starters, turning it into a
smashed tin can, then pounds a residential building, threatening to topple
it. That’s how we are. Singing and wrecking. Where else will you find
sensitive soldiers like these? It would really be preferable for them to
shout with hoarse voices: Death to the Arabs!

I saw the “Waltz” twice. The first time was in a movie theater, and I was
bowled over by the artistry. What style, what talent. The illustrations are
perfect, the voices are authentic, the music adds so much. Even Ron Ben
Yishai’s half-missing finger is accurate. No detail is missed, no nuance
blurred. All the heroes are heroes, superbly stylish, like Folman himself:
articulate, trendy, up-to-date, left-wingers – so sensitive and
intelligent.

Then I watched it again, at home, a few weeks later. This time I listened to
the dialogue and grasped the message that emerges from behind the talent. I
became more outraged from one minute to the next. This is an extraordinarily
infuriating film precisely because it is done with so much talent. Art has
been recruited here for an operation of deceit. The war has been painted
with soft, caressing colors – as in comic books, you know. Even the blood is
amazingly aesthetic, and suffering is not really suffering when it is drawn
in lines. The soundtrack plays in the background, behind the drinks and the
joints and the bars. The war’s fomenters were mobilized for active service
of self-astonishment and self-torment.

Boaz is devastated at having shot 26 stray dogs, and he remembers each of
them. Now he is looking for “a therapist, a shrink, shiatsu, something.”
Poor Boaz. And poor Folman, too: He is devilishly unable to remember what
happened during the massacre. “Movies are also psychotherapy” – that’s the
bit of free advice he gets. Sabra and Chatila? “To tell you the truth? It’s
not in my system.” All in such up-to-the-minute Hebrew you could cry. After
the actual encounter with Boaz in 2006, 24 years later, the “flash” arrives,
the great flash that engendered the great movie.

One fellow comes to the war on the Love Boat, another flees it by swimming
away. One sprinkles patchouli on himself, another eats a Spam omelet. The
filmmaker-hero of “Waltz” remembers that summer with great sadness: It was
exactly then that Yaeli dumped him. Between one thing and the other, they
killed and destroyed indiscriminately. The commander watches porn videos in
a Beirut villa, and even Ben Yishai has a place in Ba’abda, where one
evening he downs half a glass of whiskey and phones Arik Sharon at the ranch
and tells him about the massacre. And no one asks who these looted and
plundered apartments belong to, damn it, or where their owners are and what
our forces are doing in them in the first place. That is not part of the
nightmare.

What’s left is hallucination, a sea of fears, the hero confesses on the way
to his therapist, who is quick to calm him and explains that the hero’s
interest in the massacre at the camps derives from a different massacre:
from the camps from which his parents came. Bingo! How could we have missed
it? It’s not us at all, it’s the Nazis, may their name and memory be
obliterated. It’s because of them that we are the way we are. “You have been
cast in the role of the Nazi against your will,” a different therapist says
reassuringly, as though evoking Golda Meir’s remark that we will never
forgive the Arabs for making us what we are. What we are? The therapist says
that we shone the lights, but “did not perpetrate the massacre.” What a
relief. Our clean hands are not part of the dirty work, no way.

And besides that, it wasn’t us at all: How pleasant to see the cruelty of
the other. The amputated limbs that the Phalange, may their name be
obliterated, stuff into the formaldehyde bottles; the executions they
perpetrate; the symbols they slash into the bodies of their victims. Look at
them and look at us: We never do things like that.

When Ben Yishai enters the Beirut camps, he recalls scenes of the Warsaw
ghetto. Suddenly he sees through the rubble a small hand and a curly-haired
head, just like that of his daughter. “Stop the shooting, everybody go
home,” the commander, Amos, calls out through a megaphone in English. The
massacre comes to an abrupt end. Cut.

Then, suddenly, the illustrations give way to the real shots of the horror
of the women keening amid the ruins and the bodies. For the first time in
the movie, we not only see real footage, but also the real victims. Not the
ones who need a shrink and a drink to get over their experience, but those
who remain bereaved for all time, homeless, limbless and crippled. No drink
and no shrink can help them. And that is the first (and last) moment of
truth and pain in “Waltz with Bashir.”

Wall Street’s Best Investment I: Paying for Policy in Washington

By Robert Weissman

March 4, 2009

Financial deregulatory mania over the last three decades led directly to the current financial meltdown.

Were the deregulators acting out of principle? Perhaps.

But it couldn’t have hurt that the financial sector invested a staggering $5.1 billion in political influence purchasing in the United States over the last decade.

The money flows are laid out in gruesome detail in “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America,” a report that my colleague Jim Donahue and I wrote, along with a team of contributors from the Consumer Education Foundation and my organization, Essential Information. The report is available at: www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm

The entire financial sector (finance, insurance, real estate) drowned political candidates in campaign contributions, spending more than $1.7 billion in federal elections from 1998-2008. Primarily reflecting the balance of power over the decade, about 55 percent went to Republicans and 45 percent to Democrats. Democrats took just more than half of the financial sector’s 2008 election cycle contributions.

The industry spent even more — topping $3.4 billion — on officially registered lobbyists during the same period. This total certainly underestimates by a considerable amount what the industry spent to influence policymaking. U.S. reporting rules require that lobby firms and individual lobbyists disclose how much they have been paid for lobbying activity, but lobbying activity is defined to include direct contacts with key government officials, or work in preparation for meeting with key government officials. Public relations efforts and various kinds of indirect lobbying are not covered by the reporting rules.

During the decade-long period:

* Commercial banks spent more than $154 million on campaign contributions, while investing $383 million in officially registered lobbying;

* Accounting firms spent $81 million on campaign contributions and $122 million on lobbying;

* Insurance companies donated more than $220 million and spent more than

$1.1 billion on lobbying; and

* Securities firms invested more than $512 million in campaign contributions, and an additional nearly $600 million in lobbying. Hedge funds, a subcategory of the securities industry, spent $34 million on campaign contributions (about half in the 2008 election cycle); and $20 million on lobbying. Private equity firms, also a subcategory of the securities industry, contributed $58 million to federal candidates and spent $43 million on lobbying.

Individual firms spent tens of millions of dollars each. During the decade-long period:

* Goldman Sachs spent more than $46 million on political influence buying;

* Merrill Lynch threw more than $68 million at politicians;

* Citigroup spent more than $108 million;

* Bank of America devoted more than $39 million;

* JPMorgan Chase invested more than $65 million; and

* Accounting giants Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG and Pricewaterhouse spent, respectively, $32 million, $37 million, $27 million and $55 million.

The number of people working to advance the financial sector’s political objectives is startling. In 2007, the financial sector employed a staggering 2,996 separate lobbyists to influence federal policy making, more than five for each Member of Congress. This figure only counts officially registered lobbyists. That means it does not count those who offered “strategic advice” or helped mount policy-related PR campaigns for financial sector companies. The figure counts those lobbying at the federal level; it does not take into account lobbyists at state houses across the country. To be clear, the 2,996 figure represents the number of separate individuals employed by the financial sector as lobbyists in 2007. We did not double count individuals who lobby for more than one company the total number of financial sector lobby hires in 2007 was a whopping 6,738.

A great many of those lobbyists entered and exited through the revolving door connecting the lobbying world with government. Surveying only 20 leading firms in the financial sector (none from the insurance industry or real estate), we found that 142 industry lobbyists during the period1998-2008 had formerly worked as ” covered officials” in the government.

“Covered officials” are top officials in the executive branch (most political appointees, from members of the cabinet to directors of bureaus embedded in agencies), Members of Congress, and congressional staff.

Nothing evidences the revolving door — or Wall Street’s direct influence over policymaking — more than the stream of Goldman Sachs expatriates who left the Wall Street goliath, spun through the revolving door, and emerged to hold top regulatory positions. Topping the list, of course, are former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson, both of whom had served as chair of Goldman Sachs before entering government. Goldman continues to be well represented in government, with among others, Gary Gensler, President Obama’s pick to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Mark Patterson, a former Goldman lobbyist now serving as chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

All of this awesome influence buying has enabled Wall Street to establish the framework for debates in Washington, and to obtain very specific deregulatory actions, with devastating consequences. More on this in tomorrow’s column.

Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org and director of Essential Action http://www.essentialaction.org.

Tsvangirai Urges Foreign Based Journo’s To Come Back Home

Added by Media in Zimbabwe • Mar 4th, 2009 • Category: Media News

Information Minister Webster Shamu

by Tsitsi Chimberengwa

All those wishing to practice journalism, should do so without having to pay exorbitant registration fees or face unnecessary restrictions, said Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai during his inaugural speech to the Seventh parliament opening of the seventh parliament today.

“No society can be free, or hope to prosper, without freedom of expression and communication. This too is recognised within the GPA by ensuring that the government immediately processes all applications for re-registration and registration of media houses in terms of both the Broadcasting Services Act as well as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Those wishing to practice journalism must be able to do so without being prohibited by unnecessary restrictions or exorbitant fees,” said Tsvangirai.

Tsvangirai also promised that steps will be taken to ensure that the public media provides balanced and fair coverage to all political parties. He urged both the private and public media to avoid using abusive language that may “incite hostility, political intolerance and ethnic hatred or that unfairly undermines political parties and other organizations.”

Tsvangirai also reiterated calls made in the September 2008, GPA agreement that once there is a free media there would be no need for Zimbabwean radio stations to be based abroad.

“I would encourage those running and working for such stations to return home and help us build a truly free and open communication network in Zimbabwe,” he said adding that such concepts are not foreign to local culture or imposed by outsiders.

”Evidence of this is clear to see in our neighbouring countries where the rights of the people are defended vigorously, where political parties are free to campaign and where there is a healthy choice of radio and television stations and newspapers to choose from,” said Tsvangirai.

For the full speech click here

Iraq’s queer underground railroad

• A secret network of safe houses and escape routes is saving gay Iraqis from execution by Islamist death squads

Comments (113)

• 
• • Peter Tatchell
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 February 2009 21.30 GMT
  • Article history

In the bad old days of slavery in the United States, there was the “Underground Railroad” – a clandestine network of secret routes and safe houses – which spirited thousands of southern slaves to freedom in the north.

Today, 200 years later in Iraq, a modern version of the underground railroad is saving the lives of gay people who are fleeing Islamist death squads. It is providing safe houses in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, and is smuggling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people to neighbouring countries, where it helps them apply for United Nations humanitarian protection. This secret network, coordinated by Iraqi LGBT exiles in London, is saving dozens of lives.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, homophobia and the terrorisation of LGBT people has got much worse. The western invasion of Iraq in 2003 ended the tyrannical Baathist dictatorship. But it also destroyed a secular state, created chaos and lawlessness and allowed the flourishing of religious fundamentalism. The result has been an Islamist-inspired homophobic terror campaign against LGBT Iraqis.

You can watch two short videos, which show the terror of queer life in “democratic” Iraq here and here.

This campaign of terror is sanctioned by Iraq’s leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2005, he issued a fatwa urging the killing of LGBT people in the “worst, most severe way” possible.

This is the same Sistani who was praised by President Bush as a “leading moderate”. The British government concurred. We hosted him in Britain for medical treatment. He was anti-Saddam, so the west backed him, even after he issued his murderous religious edicts.

Although the general security situation has improved in Iraq, for LGBT people it has deteriorated sharply. Systematic assassinations of queers are being orchestrated by police and security agents in the interior ministry, many of whom are former members of the Iranian-backed Badr Corps militia.

Queers are being shot dead in their homes, streets and workplaces. Even suspected gay children are being murdered. They killers claim to be doing these assassinations at the behest of the “democratic” Iraqi government, in order to eradicate what they see as immoral, un-Islamic behaviour.

This programme of targeted murders has one aim, according to the death squads: the total eradication of all queers from Iraq. It is, in effect, a form of sexual cleansing. The killers boast that most “sodomites” have already been eliminated.

The interior ministry is, of course, a key ministry in the UK-backed and US-backed government of Iraq. Some democracy! In fact, there is no democracy or human rights at all for Iraqi queers. If the government in Baghdad is not actively encouraging the mass killing of LGBT people, it is definitely allowing rogue police and Islamists to do so.

To protect against this terror and save lives, the Iraqi LGBT organisation has created its underground queer railroad, complete with safe houses and escape routes.

“Since establishing the safe houses project in 2006 we have provided refuge for dozens of gay people who were being hunted by death squads,” reports Ali Hili, coordinator of Iraqi LGBT.

“We have also assisted people to escape from Iraq to neighbouring countries, where we have established resettlement projects. Our efforts have got gay refugees registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and we’ve already moved some of them a third safer country, in Europe or North America. These lucky ones are now beginning to rebuild their lives,” Mr Hili said

K is a 33-year-old architect who escaped to Amman in Jordan. He now helps run the Iraqi LGBT support group there, aiding other LGBT refugees from Iraq. So far, seven out of 23 Iraqi LGBT refugees who have been smuggled to Jordan have had their applications for asylum approved by the UNHCR and been able to secure asylum in countries such as the United States, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany.

This heroic work is not without its risks and sacrifices. Many of the underground activists have been assassinated, in a series of grisly homophobic and transphobic murders.

Two lesbians who ran the safe house in the city of Najaf were butchered, together with a young boy they had rescued from the sex industry. Last summer, the coordinator of a Baghdad safe house, Bashar, was gunned to death in his local barber’s shop by an Islamist hit squad. Previously, five gay activists who organised another Baghdad safe house were massacred.

The lack of funds is a perpetual problem. Three of the five safe houses in Baghdad had to close last year because of a lack of donations to keep them running. Two have since been reopened but it is a constant struggle to fund them. Money is needed to pay rent, electricity and food bills for the 10-12 LGBT refugees who are crammed into each house. Many more LGBT Iraqis still need a place to hide.

Iraqi LGBT can be contacted through its website

Wall Street’s Best Investment II: 12 Deregulatory Steps to Financial Meltdown

By Robert Weissman

March 6, 2009

What can $5 billion buy in Washington?

Quite a lot.

Over the 1998-2008 period, the financial sector spent more than $5 billion on U.S. federal campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures.

This extraordinary investment paid off fabulously. Congress and executive agencies rolled back long-standing regulatory restraints, refused to impose new regulations on rapidly evolving and mushrooming areas of finance, and shunned calls to enforce rules still in place.

“Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America,” a report released by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation (and which I co-authored), details a dozen crucial deregulatory moves over the last decade — each a direct response to heavy lobbying from Wall Street and the broader financial sector, as the report details.

(The report is available at: www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm) Combined, these deregulatory moves helped pave the way for the current financial meltdown.

Here are 12 deregulatory steps to financial meltdown:

1. The repeal of Glass-Steagall

The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 formally repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and related rules, which prohibited banks from offering investment, commercial banking, and insurance services. In 1998, Citibank and Travelers Group merged on the expectation that Glass-Steagall would be repealed. Then they set out, successfully, to make it so. The subsequent result was the infusion of the investment bank speculative culture into the world of commercial banking. The 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall helped create the conditions in which banks invested monies from checking and savings accounts into creative financial instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps, investment gambles that led many of the banks to ruin and rocked the financial markets in 2008.

2. Off-the-books accounting for banks

Holding assets off the balance sheet generally allows companies to avoid disclosing “toxic” or money-losing assets to investors in order to make the company appear more valuable than it is. Accounting rules — lobbied for by big banks — permitted the accounting fictions that continue to obscure banks’ actual condition.

3. CFTC blocked from regulating derivatives

Financial derivatives are unregulated. By all accounts this has been a disaster, as Warren Buffett’s warning that they represent “weapons of mass financial destruction” has proven prescient — they have amplified the financial crisis far beyond the unavoidable troubles connected to the popping of the housing bubble. During the Clinton administration, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sought to exert regulatory control over financial derivatives, but the agency was quashed by opposition from Robert Rubin and Fed Chair Alan Greenspan.

4. Formal financial derivative deregulation: the Commodities Futures Modernization Act

The deregulation — or non-regulation — of financial derivatives was sealed in 2000, with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. Its passage orchestrated by the industry-friendly Senator Phil Gramm, the Act prohibits the CFTC from regulating financial derivatives.

5. SEC removes capital limits on investment banks and the voluntary regulation regime

In 1975, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) promulgated a rule requiring investment banks to maintain a debt to-net capital ratio of less than 15 to 1. In simpler terms, this limited the amount of borrowed money the investment banks could use. In 2004, however, the SEC succumbed to a push from the big investment banks — led by Goldman Sachs, and its then-chair, Henry Paulson — and authorized investment banks to develop net capital requirements based on their own risk assessment models. With this new freedom, investment banks pushed ratios to as high as 40 to 1. This super-leverage not only made the investment banks more vulnerable when the housing bubble popped, it enabled the banks to create a more tangled mess of derivative investments — so that their individual failures, or the potential of failure, became systemic crises.

6. Basel II weakening of capital reserve requirements for banks

Rules adopted by global bank regulators — known as Basel II, and heavily influenced by the banks themselves — would let commercial banks rely on their own internal risk-assessment models (exactly the same approach as the SEC took for investment banks). Luckily, technical challenges and intra-industry disputes about Basel II have delayed implementation — hopefully permanently — of the regulatory scheme.

7. No predatory lending enforcement

Even in a deregulated environment, the banking regulators retained authority to crack down on predatory lending abuses. Such enforcement activity would have protected homeowners, and lessened though not prevented the current financial crisis. But the regulators sat on their hands. The Federal Reserve took three formal actions against subprime lenders from 2002 to 2007. The Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which has authority over almost 1,800 banks, took three consumer-protection enforcement actions from 2004 to 2006.

8. Federal preemption of state enforcement against predatory lending

When the states sought to fill the vacuum created by federal non-enforcement of consumer protection laws against predatory lenders, the Feds — responding to commercial bank petitions — jumped to attention to stop them. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision each prohibited states from enforcing consumer protection rules against nationally chartered banks.

9. Blocking the courthouse doors: Assignee Liability Escape

Under the doctrine of “assignee liability,” anyone profiting from predatory lending practices should be held financially accountable, including Wall Street investors who bought bundles of mortgages (even if the investors had no role in abuses committed by mortgage originators).

With some limited exceptions, however, assignee liability does not apply to mortgage loans, however. Representative Bob Ney — a great friend of financial interests, and who subsequently went to prison in connection with the Abramoff scandal — worked hard, and successfully, to ensure this effective immunity was maintained.

10. Fannie and Freddie enter subprime

At the peak of the housing boom, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were dominant purchasers in the subprime secondary market. The Government-Sponsored Enterprises were followers, not leaders, but they did end up taking on substantial subprime assets — at least $57 billion. The purchase of subprime assets was a break from prior practice, justified by theories of expanded access to homeownership for low-income families and rationalized by mathematical models allegedly able to identify and assess risk to newer levels of precision. In fact, the motivation was the for-profit nature of the institutions and their particular executive incentive schemes. Massive lobbying — including especially but not only of Democratic friends of the institutions — enabled them to divert from their traditional exclusive focus on prime loans.

Fannie and Freddie are not responsible for the financial crisis. They are responsible for their own demise, and the resultant massive taxpayer liability.

11. Merger mania

The effective abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles over the last two decades has enabled a remarkable concentration in the banking sector, even in advance of recent moves to combine firms as a means to preserve the functioning of the financial system. The megabanks achieved too-big-to-fail status. While this should have meant they be treated as public utilities requiring heightened regulation and risk control, other deregulatory maneuvers (including repeal of

Glass-Steagall) enabled them to combine size, explicit and implicit federal guarantees, and reckless high-risk investments.

12. Credit rating agency failure

With Wall Street packaging mortgage loans into pools of securitized assets and then slicing them into tranches, the resultant financial instruments were attractive to many buyers because they promised high returns. But pension funds and other investors could only enter the game if the securities were highly rated.

The credit rating agencies enabled these investors to enter the game, by attaching high ratings to securities that actually were high risk — as subsequent events have revealed. The credit rating agencies have a bias to offering favorable ratings to new instruments because of their complex relationships with issuers, and their desire to maintain and obtain other business dealings with issuers.

This institutional failure and conflict of interest might and should have been forestalled by the SEC, but the Credit Rating Agencies Reform Act of 2006 gave the SEC insufficient oversight authority. In fact, the SEC must give an approval rating to credit ratings agencies if they are adhering to their own standards — even if the SEC knows those standards to be flawed.

From a financial regulatory standpoint, what should be done going forward? The first step is certainly to undo what Wall Street has wrought. More in future columns on an affirmative agenda to restrain the financial sector.

None of this will be easy, however. Wall Street may be disgraced, but it is not prostrate. Financial sector lobbyists continue to roam the halls of Congress, former Wall Street executives have high positions in the Obama administration, and financial sector propagandists continue to warn of the dangers of interfering with “financial innovation.”

Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.organd director of Essential Action http://www.essentialaction.org

(c) Robert Weissman

This article is posted at:

http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2009/000312.html

Erased: Wiped off the Map

This is a trailer for a documentary about the bombing of Gaza shot by a Spanish film Crew who were there at the time.

If, like me, you were angry with western media coverage of the  war on Gaza; you will find this a searing indictment of not only the media and it’s lack of interrogation of Israel’s war crimes; but also of the acquiescent and equally culpable Politicians in the West.  Not least of all, the Australian Prime Minister and his Deputy who blamed the Palestinians!

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African journalist Frank Nyakairu discusses challenges, rewards of human rights reporting

By Jessica Weiss, IJNet Editor

09/03/2009

Ugandan human rights reporter Frank Nyakairu received the 2008 Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) in November. As a correspondent in East Africa, Nyakairu is a voice for victims of genocide, rape and other violent offenses stemming from wars in the region. He also serves as the chairman of the Forum for African Investigative Reporters, and as a coach to budding reporters.

Since January, Nyakairu has worked for Reuters’ humanitarian news network AlertNet, which aims to keep relief professionals and the wider public up-to-date on humanitarian crises around the globe.

To learn more about the experience of human rights reporting in conflict zones, IJNet Editor Jessica Weiss recently interviewed the accomplished 30-year-old Nyakairu.

JW: You are so young, only 30 years old … when did you know you wanted to be a journalist and how did you get started?

FN: Earlier, when I was 17, I saw a photojournalist photographing a bird feeding on a human body. Later, before I went to University, I started teaching students in lower classes. I loved history and mastered it by retelling it. But I could not get a job as a teacher. I instead got an offer to spend time as a journalism trainee at a local radio station. This was in 1999, when my desire to be like that photojournalist resurrected. My journalism candle has been burning since.

JW: Do reporters that do the sort of work that you do have to have a set of core characteristics, for example, bravery, tenacity or resilience?

FN: They must have the drive to identify the defenseless and speechless in our society and stand up for them to uphold justice and fairness. That drive for the most important causes of humanity is most rewarding when you change lives, of course positively.

JW: When did you begin working for AlertNet?  What do you think is special or beneficial about writing for this population of humanitarians, rather than for communities?

FN: I had been working as a freelancer for Reuters since 2004. My post at AlertNet since January 2009 was my first job with an international news agency. My greatest challenge is how to continue to write for communities. AlertNet is not only for humanitarians, it also focuses on the plight of people in crisis zones. I am among the first correspondents specifically focusing on humanitarian affairs. I have recently written about the Congo, Kenya and Somalia.

JW: In your acceptance speech at the 2008 ICFJ Award’s Dinner, you mentioned how important it is for journalists in your field to support one another. Can you explain this further? What is the benefit that you receive from learning with and from fellow journalists?

FN: As they say, “United we stand and divided we fall.” Journalists in oppressive environments need each other to defend one another and expose their tormentors. The power of the pen is so much that we foster change and expose evil. But most importantly, as we grow older and get off the scene, we need to mentor young ones to carry on with the struggle.

JW: Have you ever considered backing down from your work? In the darkest hours, the most challenging circumstances, what keeps you going?

FN: Not at any one point. I have never thought that I could be anything else. On Earth, everyone is carved out to be someone. Some never be what they are meant to be. As for me, I am strongly convinced I was meant to be a journalist and I am glad I got an opportunity to be one.

JW: You once stated that each story “has taught us more about humanity’s inclination toward destruction.” Do you ever report on positive change or development? Do you see any benefit of positive reporting in places that are overrun by violence and negative news?

FN: Yes, I do positive reporting, but I have to admit that I have overly focused on negative aspects of life. In human rights reporting, a story is mostly negative before it becomes positive. For instance, in 2004, I exposed the forced labor of former child soldiers in northern Uganda. The story caused great concern which lead to the sacking of the farm managers and freeing of the already tormented children. I followed up with a few of them as they were finally reunited with their parents.

JW: Have you ever been harassed or intimidated by the government for your work?

FN: I have been jailed for a week once and threatened by armed forces for exposing abuses in northern Uganda. I have been physically harassed on several occasions as a result of my work. Human rights reporting is not the kind of journalism where you expect to make a lot of friends. It is as dangerous as the abuses themselves sometimes. So to set out to do that kind of work, you need to be prepared for all sorts of tormenting, continued persistent attacks and criticism.

JW: Bearing witness to great human suffering and atrocities, how do you stay sane?

FN: Sometimes, abuses are mind boggling. You find yourself asking “Why? Why? Why?” without finding answers to your own questions. Thank god I have never reached a point of losing my mind. But yes, to some extent, seeing so much cruelty, bloodshed and destruction, leaves one wondering why? It’s worse when you feel the frustration of having little or no contribution to changing the situation for the better. Reporters are only human. Sometimes part of their work is struggling to remain sane, in all situations, which is obviously beyond human capacity.

JW: Do you have suggestions for journalists working – or interested in working – in similar circumstances?

FN: Just be openminded, do not get mangled in biases of conflict or deterred by threats. Those who hate you for such work at the same time respect you for standing up for justice and human rights.

JW: What are the challenges of training a new crop of young journalists? What are the most important things you try to impart upon burgeoning investigative reports?

FN: In places like Africa, journalism is a frustrating profession if one wants to earn a big salary at the onset.  It is resilience, skills, focus, investigative rigor and passionate writing that are rewarded over time. Yet, you cannot get those in our schools. The trick is simple — follow one general principle: anything worth doing, is worth doing well.

JW: What do you try to help them avoid, that you had to experience firsthand?

FN: Remove yourself from situations, avoid bias traps and never try to please anyone in journalism.

JW: Do you see a future for new technologies in the types of reporting that you do?

FN: The world is getting more connected by the World Wide Web and satellite. To be on the same page, reporters should keep tabs with new communication technologies to their work as swiftly and fast as the world demands. To be the best you must have the best of tools. The internet is a very amazing tool in this trade.

To read more about Frank, go to http://www.knight.icfj.org/Awards/KnightAwardsOverview/FrankNyakairu/tabid/814/Default.aspx.

To learn more about the Knight International Journalism Awards, go to http://www.icfj.org/AwardsDinner/AwardInformation/tabid/749/Default.aspx.

To learn more about AlertNet, go to http://www.alertnet.org/.

The Capital of Anger

Jasmina Tesanovic

8th March, 2009

The global economic crisis has stirred all kind of troubles. Women thrive in troubles and make an income out of it. In all dark historical times, in all wars and economic crisis women have been the caryatids of survival. The invisible grey economy of mothers, sisters and daughters becomes the only structure after the fall of patriarchy. Oh yes, women are rich even when they are poor.

In the third millennium of the third wave of feminism we don’t have a feminist movement, but a global network. It is standing on the shoulders of the last century feminisms, but it has no continuity. The global crisis has made women aware of the mainstream ghettoization of feminism. Thrust in the strong arms of laws, biological quotas, cultural, class and race identities, ngo’s: the issues of power have been marginalized. Through the pulverized power issues, the misbalance of power has remained the same. Women human’s rights have been put behind the emergency of war, security issues and economic crisis. The emergence of new fundamentalisms, dividing and demonizing the Other have pulverized the global feminist issues. There are no more women’s issues, all issues are also women’s and women can now, through a feminist reading give their own answers: from reproductive rights to war crimes and women’s tribunals.

Women bodies have become territories of criminal deeds. From rapes used in wars as weapon of ethnic cleansing to quotas in democratic parliaments where personalities of women leaders have been thus annihilated.

One topic has always been the litmus test: the freedom of reproductive choice. Today in the era of raging fundamentalisms; christian, muslim and other, womens bodies have been treated as war machines. On the territory of former Yugoslavia, rapes were used by all sides in order to change the ethnic structure of a territory. In San Salvador where abortion is 100 percent prohibited even in case of the certain death of the mother, the vagina is treated as a crime scene. In US until Obama s victory, all health programs and other social ones were conditioned by pro life politics.

The heroine of the third millennium is not an empress, a mermaid, a witch, a bitch, a singer, a dancer, a philosopher, a writer, a martyr… she can be all of that but those are only words and roles from an old and dying language: so contagiously sick that it is choking civilization, capitalism, socialism, dictatorships, rich and poor into one melting pot called the crisis.

The crisis of capitals, values, institutions, opinions, the crisis of knowledge and survival.

Anna Politkovskaya, the war reporter, the assassinated Russian journalist, used to say:

The whole world is afraid of nuclear proliferation while instead I am afraid of hate: nobody can predict the paths revenge will take. The children from the camps will never forgive the children who grew up in cosy homes. The refugees need understanding and solidarity, not gifts of cash or the hypocrisy of those who fast to “share the suffering” and yet secretly nibble cheese in the closet.

“I live my life and I write what I see:” anywhere on the planet, we can retrace Anna’s steps. We owe her that.

We Told You So

By Robert Weissman

March 12, 2009

Is it fair to complain about the actions of the financial deregulators?

Could anyone reasonably have foreseen the consequences of a decades-long regulatory holiday for the financial sector?

In a word, yes.

In preparing “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America,” <http://www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm> a report that documents a dozen deregulatory steps to financial meltdown, it was remarkable to see that, at almost every step, public interest advocates and independent-minded regulators and Members of Congress cautioned about the hazards that lay ahead. Those ringing the alarm bells were proven wrong only in underestimating how severe would be the consequences of deregulation.

Policymakers ignored the warnings. Good arguments could not compete with the combination of political influence and a reckless and fanatical zeal for deregulation. $5 billion — the amount the financial sector invested in the financial sector over the last decade — buys a lot of friends.

Example: Consumer groups warned of a growing predatory lending scourge at the beginning of this decade (and even in the 1990s), before the housing bubble inflated.

“While many regulators recognize the gravity of the predatory lending problem, the appropriate — and politically feasible — method of addressing the problem still appears elusive,” wrote the National Consumer Law Center and the Consumer Federation of America in January

2001 comments submitted to the FDIC.

What was needed, the consumer groups argued, was binding regulation.

“All agencies should adopt a bold, comprehensive and specific series of regulations to change the mortgage marketplace,” the groups wrote, so that “predatory mortgage practices are either specifically prohibited, or are so costly to the mortgage lender that they are not economically feasible.”

Example: In 1999, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which eliminated the Glass-Steagall and Bank Holding Company Acts’

longstanding ban on combining commercial banks and investment banks, or commercial banks and other financial service providers. This law paved the way for the creation of Citigroup, a merger of Citibank and Travelers Insurance, and helped infuse the speculative go-go culture of investment banks into commercial banks.

When Citibank and Travelers announced their merger in 1998 — a marriage that could only be consummated if Glass-Steagall and related rules were repealed — my colleague Russell Mokhiber and I wrote, “Expect to see lots of bad loans, bad investment decisions, teetering banks and tottering insurance companies — and a series of massive financial bailouts of new conglomerates judged ‘too big to fail.’” We didn’t envision exactly how the Citigroup and Wall Street debacle would play out, but we got the outline right. Our predictions echoed the warnings from consumer advocates.

Example: In 1998, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) suggested the need for regulation of financial derivatives. In a concept paper, the CFTC wrote that, “While OTC [over-the-counter] derivatives serve important economic functions, these products, like any complex financial instrument, can present significant risks if misused or misunderstood by market participants.” The agency suggested a series of modest potential regulations that might have restrained the proliferation of financial derivatives and required parties to set aside capital against the risk of loss (a policy that likely would have saved taxpayers tens of billions or more in the AIG bailout).

But the CFTC initiative was crushed by the then-Committee to Save the World (so designated by Time Magazine) — Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Secretary Larry Summers and Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan. In 2000, Congress passed a statute prohibiting the CFTC from regulating financial derivatives.

Example: In 1995, Congress passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which made it harder for defrauded investors to sue for relief. Representative Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, introduced an amendment that would have exempted financial derivatives from the terms of the Act. Representative Chris Cox, R-California, who would go on to head the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Bush, led the successful opposition to the amendment.

Markey anticipated many of the problems that would explode a decade

later: “All of these products have now been sent out into the American marketplace, in many instances with the promise that they are quite safe for a municipality to purchase. … The objective of the Markey amendment out here is to ensure that investors are protected when they are misled into products of this nature, which by their very personality cannot possibly be understood by ordinary, unsophisticated investors. By that, I mean the town treasurers, the country treasurers, the ordinary individual that thinks that they are sophisticated, but they are not so sophisticated that they can understand an algorithm that stretches out for half a mile and was constructed only inside of the mind of this 26- or 28-year-old summa cum laude in mathematics from Cal Tech or from MIT who constructed it. No one else in the firm understands it. The lesson that we are learning is that the heads of these firms turn a blind eye, because the profits are so great from these products that, in fact, the CEOs of the companies do not even want to know how it happens until the crash.”

There was nothing inevitable, unavoidable or unforeseeable about the current crisis.

At every step, critics warned of the dangers of further deregulation.

But with the financial sector showering campaign contributions on politicians from both parties, investing heavily in a legion of lobbyists, paying academics and think tanks to justify their preferred policy positions, and cultivating a pliant media — especially a cheerleading business media complex — the sounds of clinging cash registers drowned out the evidence-based warnings from public interest advocates and independent-minded government officials.

Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org and director of Essential Action http://www.essentialaction.org

(c) Robert Weissman

NOXIOUS CULTURE OF SILENCE IN THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

MEDIA RELEASE

The Emanuel Synagogue Woollahra has rescinded its invitation to Israeli peace activist, Professor Jeff Halper, to speak at the synagogue on 23^rd March.

This follows the axing by the Australian Jewish News of an advertisement for Professor Halper’s other meetings in Sydney.Professor Halper is Coordinator of the Israeli Committee against Housing Demolitions (ICAHD).

Vivienne Porzsolt, a spokesperson for Jews against the Occupation said ‘It is regrettable that yet once again the power brokers of the Jewish community are seeking to block open discussion about Israel.

This is self-defeating as the realities of Israel’s brutal occupation and ongoing dispossession of the Palestinians are to be seen every day in our media.

These acts of censorship bring no credit on our community and can only provoke the antisemitism they are supposed to avoid.

Jews against the Occupation challenges the noxious culture of silence, fear and suppression that dominates the organized Jewish community in relation to Israel. We want to encourage free debate to dispel those fears and explore a way to peace with justice.

In that spirit, we will organize an alternate venue so that members of the Jewish community can hear for themselves from Jeff Halper about his work.

The Israeli Committee against House Demolitions is committed to non-violent direct action to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes by Israeli forces and helping re-build demolished homes. They work closely with Palestinians defending their property. ICAHD sees home demolitions as a focal point of the Israeli occupation and resistance to them a concrete form of resistance. Their web site is www.icahd.org

In September last year, Professor Halper sailed on one of the boats which succeeded in breeching the Israeli blockade of Gaza. A succession of boats is trying to bring medical and other humanitarian aid to Gaza. Professor Halper was subsequently arrested on his return to Israel.

Contact:

Vivienne Porzsolt

Jews against the Occupation Sydney

www.jao.org.au

ph 0411 366 295

For more on the issue

Crikey

http://antonyloewenstein.com/blog/2009/03/12/the-peace-activist-the-jewish-news-rejects/print/

ABC Radio National

(http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2009/2512774.htm) and abc radio pm (http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2513577.htm).

Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.smh.com.au/national/academics-visit-divides-jewish-groups-20090311-8v9y.html?page=-1

Jewish News

http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=7185

Lessons from AIG

By Robert Weissman

March 19, 2009

Watch out if you live in or visit Washington, D.C.

If you see a camera or microphone, be careful not to be trampled by a politician rushing to shout their “outrage” at AIG, and its brazen scheme to pay $165 million in bonuses to employees at the company unit responsible for driving the company to the edge of insolvency.

Maybe the politicians really are outraged. (They definitely know their constituents are.) But it would have helped if they had expressed some outrage — and opposition — during the decades-long period of deregulation that brought us the AIG collapse and the financial meltdown.

It is indeed unfathomable that AIG went ahead with the bonus payments, and that the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve failed to act to stop the bonus payments before they were made.

What is vital now is that the public’s righteous anger is not expressed only as “no.” There are a lot of things to which We The People do need to say “no.” But we need a lot of “yes’s,” too. We need to demand that policymakers impose public controls over the financial sector. The financial sector restraint, shrinkage and displacement agenda is long and diverse, but there are a number of lessons that flow directly from the AIG debacle.

First, the government must exercise much more direct control over the firms it is bailing out (many of which, like AIG, are very likely to be subjected to government takeovers of one kind or another in the coming months). If the government exercised control commensurate with its ownership stake, it could simply refuse to permit outrages like the AIG bonus payments to occur. Beyond preventing outrages, there should be affirmative demands imposed on the beneficiaries of bailout funds. These should include, for commercial banks, the mandatory write down of principal on home mortgages where the outstanding loan amount now exceed the value of the home, and the end to usurious interest rates on credit cards.

Second, there must be far-reaching reform of compensation arrangements in the financial sector. Never again should anyone get away with saying this is a symbolic issue. The AIG bonus payments, and the manic response from the financial sector to modest executive pay restrictions added by Senator Chris Dodd to the financial bailout reauthorization legislation, demonstrate that the guys on Wall Street certainly don’t think it’s symbolic. Real reform must go beyond giving shareholders a say on pay to imposing public controls. There should be high tax rates on excessive compensation. Most importantly, there should be a prohibition on incentive pay that is linked to short-term performance. Bonuses based on annual performance give traders and others an incentive to take unreasonable risks — threatening the viability of their firms, and the overall financial system.

Third, the regulatory black holes in the financial system must be eradicated. One black hole concerns regulation of financial derivatives

– the exotic instruments that threw AIG into virtual insolvency. During the Clinton administration, Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Deputy Treasury Secretary (now director of the National Economic Council) Larry Summers crushed an effort by independent-minded regulators to adopt modest regulation of financial derivatives. In 2000, Congress prohibited such regulation by law. When regulations are finally adopted this year, as they almost certainly will be, they should prohibit certain kinds of financial derivatives altogether, and require that new ones prove their safety and social value before being placed on the market.

Fourth, we need a revitalized antitrust and competition policy to break up and shrink the size of the mega financial institutions (and, not so incidentally, we also need to shrink the size of the overall financial structure). These too-big-to-fail institutions are, as has been said, just too big. Or amended: they are too big and too interconnected. Their very existence poses unacceptable social costs, made worse by the fact they take greater risks knowing that they benefit from an implicit public insurance.

AIG itself has acknowledged the problem. In a company presentation apparently prepared to persuade the federal government to keep the bailout funds coming, AIG explained, “what happens to AIG has the potential to trigger a cascading set of further failures which cannot be stopped except by extraordinary means.”

AIG CEO Edward Liddy has drawn the proper conclusion: “Where safeguards are lacking” — and it should be added, it has proven far beyond the capacity of regulators to impose sufficient safeguards — “such companies need to be restructured or scaled back so they no longer come close to posing a systemic risk.”

Finally, renewed attention must be paid to corporate structure and prohibitions on whole categories of activity. Insurance companies should be prohibited from operating affiliates that function as de facto hedge funds. Commercial banks husbanding depositors’ assets should be prohibited from operating securities firms (as was law until 1999) or making securities firm-style speculative bets.

Will the outraged politicians demand these and other reforms? Will their outrage last once the media move on to the next story? That will depend almost entirely on whether an organized and focused public demands it.

Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, <http://www.multinationalmonitor.org> and director of Essential Action <http://www.essentialaction.org>.

(c) Robert Weissman

Wall Street Meltdown by Redux

Parents of American Activist Tristan Anderson, Who was Critically Injured by Israeli Military: “We Want Justice for Our Son”

Written by Isabel Nicholson, Alternative Information Center (AIC) Monday, 23 March 2009 On 23 March, a press conference was held at the offices of the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Jerusalem, to demand justice be done in the wake of the shooting by the Israeli military of American activist Tristan Anderson. Tristan Anderson, an American activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was shot in the forehead by the Israeli border police during a non-violent demonstration on March 13th in the West Bank Palestinian village of Ni’ilin. Tristan’s parents, Nancy and Michael Anderson, held a press conference today (March 23) at the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Jerusalem to demand justice for their son. “We are scared and really just in shock,” said Mrs. Anderson with tears in her eyes. “To shoot peaceful demonstrators is horrific to us. We ask that the Israeli government publically take full responsibility for shooting our son.” To date, the Anderson family has not been contacted by any representative of the Israeli government or military, a fact that attorney Michael Sfard, who also spoke at today’s press conference, described at “shameful.” Opening the press conference was Jonathan Pollack, a well-known Israeli activist and long-time friend of Tristan. Pollack updated journalists that Tristan’s condition worsened this past weekend, and following emergency surgery, he is in a medically induced coma. Immediately following the shooting, Tristan underwent two brain surgeries in which part of his right frontal lobe and shattered bone fragments were removed. “We have been hanging between hope and despair, noted Pollack. “Tristan is fighting for his life, just as he has been fighting for justice his whole life.” The Israeli border police shot Tristan using a new, high-velocity tear gas canister that can shoot over 400 meters. “Tristan was shot at 60 meters, so you can imagine what that did to him,” explained Pollack, quickly adding that “actually, we don’t have to imagine, we know.” Tristan’s father, Michael said in disbelief that “We are just appalled that he was shot in the head. It [the tear gas canister] is supposed to be shot in an arc, but they shot it at him.” On behalf of the Anderson family, Attorney Sfard filed a formal complaint yesterday with the West Bank Israeli border police, demanding the immediate launch of a rigorous and independent investigation into the shooting of Tristan. “Israel is a culture of impunity,” stated Sfard, “We have to make sure this investigation is not a whitewash, so that the investigation takes place as an investigation should.” According to Sfard, 90-92 percent of all investigations launched within the Israeli military system since 2000 have yielded no results. Since 2000, there have been only 110-120 court cases launched against Israeli soldiers for injuries and deaths, and only four of these have resulted in indictments. This is despite the fact that thousands of Palestinians have been killed and injured by the Israeli military during this time, and these victims and their families are still without closure or justice. Only one of these indictments was for manslaughter, and that was the case of Tom Hurndall, the British activist who was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in 2003. According to the Andersons, the American Embassy in Tel Aviv has been helpful in day-to-day issues, but the issue of pressing Israel for justice has yet to take place “We want to raise the issue with them [the US authorities], but are focused on our son right now,” said the Andersons. For additional information and to watch the video filmed following the attack on Tristan click here. Tristan’s parents, Nancy and Michael Anderson, at the press conference.

IDF soldiers ordered to shoot at Gaza rescuers, note says

Last update - 08:45 22/03/2009

By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: Amira Hass,

GAZA STRIP – “Rules of Engagement: Open fire also upon rescue,” was handwritten in Hebrew on a sheet of paper found in one of the Palestinian homes the Israel Defense Forces took over during Operation Cast Lead. A reservist officer who did not take part in the Gaza offensive believes that the note is part of orders a low-level commander wrote before giving his soldiers their daily briefing. One of the main themes in news reports during the Gaza operation, and which appears in many testimonies, is that IDF soldiers shot at Palestinian and Red Cross rescuers, making it impossible to evacuate the wounded and dead. As a result, an unknown number of Palestinians bled to death as others cowered in their homes for days without medical treatment, waiting to be rescued. The bodies of the dead lay outside the homes or on roadsides for days, sometimes as long as two weeks. Haaretz has reported a number of such cases, some of them as they happened. The document found in the house provides written proof that IDF commanders ordered their troops to shoot at rescuers. The sheet of paper entitled “Situational Assessment” was found by a field researcher of The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in the home of Sami Dardone’s family in Jabal al-Rayes, east of Jabalya. The extended Dardone family lives in about 40 homes in this neighborhood, built on a hilltop. Some of the homes were taken over by the army to house troops during the offensive and to serve as sniping positions, or for shooting in general. Most of the homes were seriously damaged when the IDF directly bombed them or other targets nearby at the start of the ground operation. This was also the reason the homes’ residents fled on January 4. When the residents returned to the neighborhood at the end of the offensive on January 18, they found that the IDF had completely destroyed some of the homes, in addition to those that had been damaged by shelling and others that were wrecked when soldiers broke in through the walls. Sometimes the soldiers needed explosives to break in. A military source told Haaretz that “the document that was found is not an official document signed by a particular commander, and as such the IDF cannot comment on fragments of sentences that were jotted down on a piece of paper, and asks that this not be interpreted as directives and instructions that were issued by commanders.” ‘Situational assessment’ According to the reservist officer who did not participate in Operation Cast Lead and who received a copy of the document via fax, the “Situational Assessment” was written by a platoon commander, or at the highest level a company commander. The reservist says the author of the “Situational Assessment” was making notes to brief his soldiers based on a briefing that low-ranking commanders receive from senior officers. The date on the sheet is “16.1.08,” clearly an error because it should read one year later. It comments on political and military events that occurred in mid-January 2009. It’s possible to conclude that the author is discussing the possibility of a cease-fire, which was being discussed publicly by Israeli officials at that time. “The next 24 hours are important; there is a likelihood they [Hamas] will not accept the agreement,” the author writes. He also mentions the “Interior Minister.” The reference is probably to Hamas Interior Minister Said al-Sayam, who was killed on January 15 when the IDF bombed his home. Four members of his family and five members of a neighbor’s family were killed. Among the dead were four children. The commander’s notes toward the top of the sheet are largely a short political briefing – for example, “the local leadership wants [a cease-fire], the external [Hamas leadership] is out of touch” – and an assessment of the enemy’s intentions – “the enemy would like to achieve a kidnapping [of soldiers], the destruction of homes.” “Rules of Engagement” is written in the lower half of the sheet, along with one other category: – “Operational Routine.” The following is written: “Rules of Engagement: Fire also upon rescue. Not on women and children. Beyond the tantcher – incrimination.” “Tantcher” is what the IDF calls Salah al-Din – the route that runs the length of the Gaza Strip. The home of the Dardone family is east of the route, so it is possible to assume these are instructions on shooting at anyone crossing the route to the east into areas held by the IDF. A reservist soldier who did not participate in Cast Lead says that to the best of his knowledge “incrimination” refers to the process of identifying whether a person approaching is a terrorist. The reservist officer who did not take part in the Gaza operation spoke with reservists who said “incriminating” was a shoot-to-kill order, contrary to “suspect procedure,” in which shots are fired in the air and then at the legs. The IDF spokesman said in response that “IDF forces were given unequivocal instructions not to fire at those identified as not being involved in the fighting, and to assist as much as possible injured Palestinians under battle conditions.” The reservist officer told Haaretz that “according to the details mentioned in the paper it appears the author was a low-ranking officer who dealt with the affairs of about 30 soldiers – like organizing their platoon equipment and oiling their weapons.” He says the author might have taken part in an earlier briefing by more senior officers and took notes for his political and military briefing. That is where he received his instructions on the rules of engagement. “The rules of engagement are not something the platoon or company commander makes up,” the reservist officer said. According to the graffiti left in the Dardone homes, and based on what is known about the IDF’s deployment in the Strip, the unit involved was part of the Golani Brigade. The last portion of the document is entitled “Operational Routine – Fighting Timeline,” and includes things such as guard duty, responsibility for platoon equipment and briefings. Under “Operational Routine” a note is included whose title can be translated as “Shitting of Houses.” The reservist officer and soldier with whom Haaretz spoke said they were not aware of that term. Many of the homes the IDF troops took over were left in particularly unsanitary conditions; the residents of Sami Dardone’s home found their clothes in piles with obvious signs of human feces. Sealed bags Haaretz asked the IDF spokesman whether “Shitting of Houses” refers to “an intentional action of turning the homes into latrines, or whether the commander wanted to talk to his soldiers about the fact that they had turned their living space into latrines.” A reservist soldier who took part in Cast Lead told the reservist officer that “going to the toilet was part of the briefing, and perhaps ‘Shitting of Houses’ is a reference in the briefing to where to pile up the sealed bags the IDF provides the soldiers for relieving themselves.” The IDF spokesman said that “soldiers who were in the homes were instructed to relieve themselves in areas where it did not endanger their lives, mostly inside the house, and which allowed them to carry out their operational activities in the best possible way, and for as long as it would be necessary.” The other side of the “Situational Assessment” sheet shows that it was written on a letter sent to the troops by a child. “To the Golani soldiers, good luck in the war,” the letter reads in the hand of a young child. In the middle of the page there is a drawing of an armed soldier. “Love, the S. family.” Related articles: IDF ceased long ago being ‘most moral army in the world’ Testimonies on IDF misconduct in Gaza keep rolling in Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques – IDF fashion 2009

Earthquake in Italy

Jasmina Tesanovic

9 April 2009

Here in northern Italy, we overslept the big earthquake in L’Aquila, which is a beautiful, ancient small town now completely in ruins. My agent, his wife and his cat were in Rome one hundred kilometers from the epicenter. He jumped out of his bed at the early hours of 6th April. He phoned me a few hours later: this is like a bombing, he said.

As I write this, I am watching RAI 2 channel: they talk of natural disasters, and two, new, strong quakes shake their TV crew. Two buildings in L’Aquila — among many historic town buildings from the Renaissance and Baroque — groan and half-collapse. The TV crew shifts to a safer spot.

A big debate is going on: all about the dead, the wounded, the reconstruction, the solidarity, the future. But a very Italian debate parallels it: a so-called scientist claims he predicted this quake. Other seismologists claim it is impossible to predict any such thing, even though there were tremors a week ago, and a major one was expected.

A psychologist is speaking of God under the ruins. He is almost screaming while preaching peace for the dead and aid for the survivors. A politician is asking for renewed unity for a very split and quarrelsome Italian society. Berlsusconi, the right wing president, declared an emergency state in that region, as soon as he returned from G20 in London where he had to mingle with the first-class of world politicians.

While Berlusconi was away there was a huge rally of the opposition in Rome against his bland denial of the Italian financial crisis. But then this sudden natural disaster changed the subject: Italy is always a landscape prone to earthquakes and volcanoes. I know a war journalist who build a beautiful mansion under the volcano Etna. He survived many wars and eruptions, yet he died of  too much food and wine under his favorite volcano.

In the seventies in Friuli, northern Italy a massive earthquake killed thousands. I remember being in Milan in those days. We trembled with those refugees. Italian solidarity aided the survivors. All Italians are survivors. In L’Aquila, famous historical monuments are down or half-collapsed, art objects are scattered and waiting to be trampled or looted. Rescue troops search methodically, still hoping for survivors. People sleep under tents praying for good weather. Italy has not seen a true spring yet.

More rain is forecast, even floods. As I watch the TV, I know this is not a science fiction disaster movie, this is the new realism. Only last night the same television showed me an old movie with Ana Magnani: the post war late 1940s in Italy. It seemed so different: the good guys had defeated the bad guys. There was hope. Watching these high tech rescue squads, ambulances heavy with gear and with high pitched Italian sirens, politicians in Armani suits with Missoni ties, blonde sexy news announcers with cosmetic lip surgery, all scampering among the ruins, I feel uneasy. Where are the real people? Whatever became of normal life? Trained dogs sniff for normal life beneath the rubble.

Marta, a 24 year old, has been saved after 23 hours of advanced post-disaster research. The disaster technicians sawed through metal, they pried the rubble off her: her broken voice out of the broken body: grazie ragazzi, grazie! Mother and father without voice waiting for their child to reappear from their smashed home: they still hope she is alive, but the Italian earth still trembles. Scenes of primordial trauma, like Pompeii. That earth opens above or beneath us, and we can do nothing about nature. Can that still be the truth? It doesn’t sound very modern. A survivor in a reality talk show , a journalist, weeps, remembers how his colleague found that two of his children were killed.

Old, poor people sitting next to their destroyed building say: we are here, we are waiting. They don’t say what they await: maybe nobody knows. People owning cars sleep inside those cars. There are also tents, some tents fancier than others, though none as fancy as the hotels where the luckier refugees are still unhappy. The victims talk under shock, trying to remember the details of life, trying to remember what they lost: they speak in details, like Katrina refugees, like Kosovo or Bosnian ones. Any memento from a destroyed home — like a stone of your house — counts more than a jewel. A salvaged photo is more precious than food. People hunt through their rubble for their future values. Volunteers are coming from all points. The hospital has collapsed. Pundits call for high tech sensors while the journalists ask the predictable questions.

The whole world is watching you, Italy: anxious for the fate of the foreign tourists, foreign students… even my own email is full of foreigners asking me: how are you in Italy?

I am in Italy in solidarity with Italy. Berlusconi is telling the refugees: go to the seaside hotels for Easter, enjoy! We are paying! His jokes are beyond bad taste!

Diaspora Jewry needs to let go of idealised Israel

Jeff Halper

April 10, 2009

A funny thing happened to me on my way to synagogue in Sydney; my scheduled talk was cancelled.

Granted, I am very critical of Israel’s policies of occupation and doubt whether a two-state solution is still possible given the extent of Israel’s settlements. But this hardly warrants the demonisation to which I was subjected for weeks in the pages of the otherwise respectable Australian Jewish News.

The uproar caused by the prospect of my speaking to the Jewish community in Australia is truly startling to an Israeli. After all, opinions similar to mine are readily available in the mainstream Israeli media. Indeed, I write frequently for the Israeli press and appear regularly on Israeli TV and radio.

Why, then, the hysteria? Why was I banned from Temple Emanuel in Sydney, a self-proclaimed progressive synagogue. Why did I, an Israeli, have to address the Jewish community from a church? Why was I invited to speak in every university in eastern Australia, yet at Monash University I was forced to hold a secret meeting with Jewish faculty in a darkened room far from the halls of intellectual discourse?

And why, when the “leaders” of the Jewish community were excoriating me and my positions, did the Israelis who attended my talks – together with many Australian Jews – express such appreciation that “real” Israeli views were finally getting aired in this country, even if they did not all agree with me?

All this raises disturbing questions over the right of Diaspora Jews to hear divergent views on Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians held by Israelis, especially, again, since it is a phenomenon that critical Israelis encounter from self-appointed Jewish “gatekeepers” throughout the world.

But the controversy in Australia raises an even deeper issue: what should be the relationship of Diaspora Jewry to Israel? Whatever threat I represent has less to do with Israel, I suspect, than with the fear that I might call into question the idealised image of Israel – which I call the “Leon Uris” image of an Israel that, if it ever existed does not today – to which they cling so dearly, even desperately, despite what appears in the news.

This might seem like a strange thing to say, but I do not believe Diaspora Jews have internalised the fact that Israel is a foreign country, as far from their idealised version as Australia is from its image as kangaroo-land.

Countries change, they evolve. What would Australia’s European founders think – even those who, until 1973, pursued a White Australia policy – if they were to see the multicultural country it has become?

Well, almost 30 per cent of Israeli citizens are not Jews, we may have permanently incorporated another 4 million Palestinians – the residents of the Occupied Territories – into our country and, to top it off, it’s clear by now that the vast majority of the world’s Jews are not going to emigrate to Israel.

Those facts, plus the urgent need of Israel to make peace with its neighbours, mean something. They mean that Israel must change in ways David Ben-Gurion and Leon Uris never envisioned, even if that is hard for Diaspora Jews to accept.

The problem seems to be that Diaspora Jewry uses Israel as the lynchpin of its ethnic identity, mobilising around a beleaguered Israel as a way of keeping the community intact. But this does not foster a healthy relationship. Israel cannot be held up as a voyeuristic ideal by people who, though professing a commitment to Israel’s survival, actually need an Israel at conflict for their own community’s internal survival.

That is why I, as a critical Israeli, am so threatening. I can both conceive of an Israel very different from the “Jewish state” so dearly valued at a distance by Diaspora Jewry – and I can envision an Israel at peace. Ironically, it is precisely such a normal state living at peace with its neighbours that is so threatening to Jews abroad, because it leaves them with no external cause around which to galvanise.

But Israel cannot fulfil that role. Diaspora Jews need to revalidate Diaspora Jewish culture (that Zionism dismissed as superficial and ephemeral) and find genuine, compelling reasons why their children should remain Jewish. Blindly supporting Israel’s extreme right-wing and militaristic policies is not the way to do that. Such uncritical support contradicts the very liberal values that define Diaspora Jewry, driving away the younger generation of thinking Jews.

This is the threat I represent. What befell me in Australia is just a tiny episode in a sad saga of mutual exploitation to the detriment of both Diaspora Jewry and Israel. The lessons are three: Diaspora Jewry must let Israel go, get a (Jewish) life of its own, and return to its historical commitment to social justice and human rights. It may wish Israel well, but it must support an end to Israel’s occupation and a just peace with the Palestinians. As for me, I’m going home to Jerusalem to continue the good fight.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/diaspora-jewry-needs-to-let-go-of-idealised-israel-20090409-a1y6.html?page=-1

A Little Red Light

Uri Avnery
18.04.09

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1240086714

PERHAPS Avigdor Lieberman is only a passing episode in the annals of the State of Israel. Perhaps the fire he is trying to ignite will flicker briefly and go out by itself. Or perhaps the police investigations into the grave corruption affair of which he is suspected will lead to his removal from the public sphere.

But the opposite is also possible. Last week he promised his acolytes that the next elections would bring him to power.

Perhaps Lieberman will prove to be an “Israbluff”’ (a term he himself likes to use), and be revealed, behind the frightful façade, as nothing more than a run of the mill impostor.

Perhaps this Lieberman will indeed disappear, to be replaced by another, even worse Lieberman.

Either way, we should candidly confront the phenomenon he represents. If one believes that his utterances sound fascist, one has to ask oneself: is there a possibility that a fascist regime might come to power in Israel?

THE INITITIAL gut-feeling is a resounding NO. In Israel? In the Jewish State? After the Holocaust which Nazi fascism brought upon us? Can one even imagine that Israelis would become something like the Nazis?

When Yeshayahu Leibowitz coined, many years ago, the term “Judeo-Nazis”, the entire country blew up. Even many of his admirers thought that this time the turbulent professor had gone too far.

But Lieberman’s slogans do justify him in retrospect.

Some would dismiss Lieberman’s achievement in the recent elections. After all, his “Israel is Our Home” party is not the first one to appear from nowhere and win an impressive 15 seats. Exactly the same number that was won by the Dash party of General Yigael Yadin in 1977 and the Shinui party of Tommy Lapid in 2003 – and both disappeared soon after without leaving a trace.

But Lieberman’s voters are not like those of Yadin and Lapid, who were ordinary citizens fed up with some particular aspects of Israeli life. Many of his voters are immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who look upon their “Ivett”, an immigrant from the ex-Soviet land of Moldova, as a representative of their “sector”. Although many of them brought with them from their former homeland a right-wing, anti-democratic and even racist world view, they do not pose by themselves a danger to Israeli democracy.

But the additional power that turned Lieberman’s party into the third-largest faction in the new Knesset came from another sort of voter: Israeli-born youngsters, many of whom had recently taken part in the Gaza War. They voted for him because they believed that he would kick the Arab citizens out of Israel, and the Palestinians out of the entire historical country.

These are not marginal people, fanatical or underprivileged, but normal youngsters who finished high-school and served in the army, who dance in the discotheques and intend to found families. If such people are voting en masse for a declared racist with a pungent fascist odor, the phenomenon cannot be ignored.

FIFTY YEARS ago I wrote a book called “The Swastika”, in which I described how the Nazis took over Germany. I was helped by my childhood memories. I was 9 years old when the Nazis came to power. I witnessed the agonies of German democracy and the first steps of the new regime before my parents, in their infinite wisdom, decided to escape and settle in Palestine.

I wrote the book on the eve of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, after realizing that the young generation in Israel knew a lot about the Holocaust but next to nothing about the people who brought it about. What occupied me more than anything else was the question: how could such a monstrous party succeed in coming to power democratically in one of the most civilized countries in the world?

The last chapter of my book was called “It Can Happen Here”. That was a paraphrase of the title of a book by the American writer Sinclair Lewis, “It Can’t Happen Here”, in which he described precisely how it could happen in the United States.

I argued in the book that Nazism was not a specifically German disease, that in certain circumstances any country in the world could be infected by this virus – including our own state. In order to avoid this danger, one had to understand the underlying causes for the development of the disease.

To the assertion that I am “obsessed” by this matter, that I see this danger lurking in every corner, I answer: not true. For years I have avoided dealing with this subject. But it is true that I carry in my head a little red light that comes on when I sense the danger.

This light is now blinking.

WHAT CAUSED the Nazi disease to break out in the past? Why did it break out at a certain time and not at another? Why in Germany and not in another country suffering from similar problems?

The answer is that fascism is a special phenomenon, unlike any other. It is not an “extreme Right”, an extension of “nationalist” or “conservative” attitudes. Fascism is the opposite of conservatism in many ways, even though it may appear in a conservative disguise. Also, it is not a radicalization of ordinary, normal nationalism, which exists in every nation.

Fascism is a unique phenomenon and has unique traits: the notion of being a “superior nation”, the denial of the humanity of other nations and national minorities, a cult of the leader, a cult of violence, disdain for democracy, an adoration of war, contempt for accepted morality. All these attributes together create the phenomenon, which has no agreed scientific definition.

How did this happen?

Hundreds of books have been written about it, dozens of theories have been put forward, and none of them is satisfying. In all humility I propose a theory of my own, without claiming more validity than any of the others.

According to my perception, a fascist revolution breaks out when a very special personality meets with a very special national situation.

ON THE personality of Adolf Hitler, too, innumerable books have been written. Every phase in his life has been examined under the microscope, each of his actions has been debated relentlessly. There are no secrets about Hitler, yet Hitler has remained an enigma.

One of his most obvious traits was his pathological anti-Semitism, which went far beyond any logic. It remained with him to the very last hour of his life, when he dictated his testament and committed suicide. At the most desperate moments of his war, when his soldiers at the front were crying out for reinforcements and supplies, precious trains were diverted to transport Jews to the death camps. When the Wehrmacht was suffering from a grievous lack of practically everything, Jewish workers were taken from essential factories to be sent to their death.

Many explanations for this pathological anti-Semitism have been suggested, and all of them have been debunked. Did Hitler want to take revenge on a Jew who was suspected of being his real grandfather? Did he hate the Jewish doctor who treated his beloved mother before she died? Was it a punishment for the Jewish director of the Art school who failed to recognize his genius? Did he hate the poor Jews he came across when he was homeless in Vienna? All of this has been examined and found lacking. The enigma remains.

The same is true for his other personal views and attributes. How did he attain the power to hypnotize the masses? What did he have that made so many people, from all walks of life, identify with him? Whence sprang his unbridled lust for power?

We don’t know. There is no full and satisfying explanation. We only know that from among the millions of Germans and Austrians who were living at that time, and the thousands who grew up in similar circumstances, there was (as far as we know) only one Hitler, a unique person. To borrow a term from biology: he was a one-time mutation.

But the unique Hitler would not have become a historic personality if he had not met with Germany in unique circumstances.

GERMANY AT the end of the Weimar republic has also been the subject of many books. What made the German people adopt Nazism? Historical causes, rooted in the terrible catastrophe of the Thirty-year War or even earlier events? The sense of humiliation after the defeat in World War I? The anger at the victors, who ground Germany into the dust and imposed huge indemnities? The terrible inflation of 1923, which wiped out the savings of entire classes? The Great Depression of 1929, which threw millions of decent and diligent Germans into the street?

This question, too, has found no satisfying answer. Other people have also been humiliated. Other people have lost wars. The Great Depression hit dozens of countries. In the US and the UK, too, millions were laid off. Why did fascism not seize power in those countries (except in Italy, of course)?

In my opinion, the fatal spark was ignited at a fateful moment when a people ready for fascism met the man with the attributes of a fascist leader.

What would have happened if Adolf Hitler had been killed in a road accident in the autumn of 1932? Perhaps another Nazi leader would have come to power – but the Holocaust would not have happened, and neither, probably, World War II. His likely replacements – Gregor Strasser, who was No. 2, or Hermann Goering, the flying ace with a morphine addiction – were indeed Nazis, but neither of them was a second Hitler. They lacked his demonic personality.

And what would have happened if Germany had not fallen into the depth of despair? The Western powers could have sensed the danger in time and helped in the reconstruction of the German economy and the reduction of unemployment. They could have abrogated the infamous Versailles Treaty, imposed by the victors after World War I, and allowed Germans to regain their self-respect. The German republic could have been saved, the moral leaders, of which Germany had aplenty, could have regained their leadership role.

What would have happened then? Adolf Hitler, whom the widely adored President of the Reich, a Field Marshall, had contemptuously called “the Bohemian lance-corporal”, would have remained a little demagogue on the lunatic fringe. The 20th century would have looked quite different. Tens of millions of casualties of war and six million Jews would have remained alive, without ever knowing what could have happened.

But Hitler did not die early and the German people were not saved from their fate. At the crucial moment they met, and a spark was struck, lighting the fuse that led to the historic explosion.

SUCH A fateful meeting is not, of course, limited to fascism. It has occurred in history in other circumstances and to other persons.

Winston Churchill, for example. His statues dot the British landscape, and he is considered one of the greatest British leaders of all times.

Yet until the late 1930s, Churchill was a political failure. Few admired him, and even fewer liked him. Many of his colleagues detested him with all their hearts. He was considered an egomaniac, an arrogant demagogue, an erratic drunk. But in a moment of existential danger, Britons found in him their mouthpiece and the leader who took their destiny in his hands. It seemed as if during all the first 65 years of his life, Churchill had been preparing for this one moment, and as if Britain had been waiting for precisely this one man.

Would history have looked different if Churchill had died the previous year of coronary thrombosis, lung cancer or cirrhosis of the liver, and Neville Chamberlain had remained in power? We now know that he and his colleagues, including the influential foreign minister, Lord Halifax, seriously considered accepting Hitler’s 1940 peace offer, based on the partition of the world between the German and the British empires.

Or Lenin. If the imperial German general staff had not provided the famous sealed train to take him from Zurich to Sweden, from where he proceeded to St. Petersburg, would the Bolshevik revolution, which changed the face of the 20th century, have taken place at all? True, Trotsky was in town before him, and so was Stalin. But neither of the two was a Lenin, and without Lenin it would quite possibly not have happened, and certainly not the way it did.

Perhaps one could add to this list Barack Obama. A very special person, of unique origin and character, who had a fateful meeting with the American people at an important moment of their destiny, when they were suffering from two crises at once – the economic and the political one – which cast their shadow on the entire world.

BACK TO US. Is the State of Israel approaching an existential crisis – moral, political, economic – that could leave it an endangered nation? Can Lieberman, or someone who could take his place, turn out to be a demonic personality like Hitler, or at least Mussolini?

In our present situation there are some dangerous indications. The last war showed a further decline in our moral standards. The hatred towards Israel’s Arab minority is on the rise, and so is the hatred towards the occupied Palestinian people who are suffering a slow strangulation. In some circles, the cult of brute force is gaining strength. The democratic regime is in a never-ending crisis. The economic situation may descend into chaos, so that the masses will long for a “strongman”. And the belief that we are a “chosen people” is already deeply rooted.

These indications may not necessarily lead to disaster. Absolutely not. History is full of nations in crisis that recovered and returned to normalcy. Besides the real Hitler, who rose to historic heights, there were probably hundreds of other Hitlers, no less crazy and no less talented, who ended their life as bank tellers or frustrated writers, because they did not meet a historic opportunity.

I have a strong faith in the resilience of Israeli society and Israeli democracy. I believe that we have hidden strengths that will come to the fore in an hour of need.

Nothing “must” happen. But anything “can” happen. And the little red light won’t stop blinking.

The death of Bassem Abu Rahme

or:

How Israel kills at will and in total impunity while the world asks the Palestinians for non-violent resistance.

On April the 17^th, like any Fridays afternoon for the last 4 years, the small village of Bil’in, north of Ramallah, was preparing for the usual demonstration against Israel’s annexation wall (some people call it apartheid wall or separation wall. The Israeli government refers to it as the security fence).

The village of Bil’in has, since the mid eighties, lost more than 60% of its land for the purpose of Israeli growing settlements the construction of the wall. The inhabitants of the village use to live mainly from agriculture and olive trees plantations but more and more, the people of Bil’in have to rely on the women to survive. Embroidering has become one of the main resource of the place, located a few kilometres away from Tel Aviv. (on a nice day, you can see the “inaccessible”-for the Palestinians- beach from the roof tops of Bil’in).

In January 2005, a village committee (led by Mohamed Khatib, Iyad Burnat and Abdullah Abu Rahme) was created and a month later non-violent demonstrations started, first taking part every day, then once a week, on Yum Al Juma’a (Friday, day of prayer).

The village won a huge battle in August 2008 (1) when the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that hat the new route of the barrier in Bil’in was in violation of the Court ruling released on September 2007(2) (which ruled that the Wall path was prejudicial to Bil’in and must be altered)and ordered the State to present within 45 days a new route, which will uphold the principles of the ruling.

On Friday the 17^th of April 2009, the wall still had not moved one inch and while the inhabitants of the village were praying at the village mosk, many internationals (coming from all around the world) and the strong Israeli contingent (including people from the Alternative Information Centre (3) and Anarchists Against the Wall (4)) were looking for some shade (to hide from the baking sun) and chatting about the day’s event. As soon as prayer was over with, the demonstration started to move forward in direction of the wall, a few kilometres away.

You can be sure that Bassem (aka Phil) was right at the front of the march. He always was. I had met Bassem a few times while visiting Bil’in. He was a strong looking man, singing the loudest, joking all the time, jumping around and leading the way, accompanied by the rest of the village committee and the Israeli contingent.

As it usually happens, as soon as the march reached the corner where the Israeli soldiers can be seen, the tear gas started. A few brave ones, always continue anyway and reach the beginning of the wall, after a few minutes. Bassem, as usual, was one of those. The Israelis present at the front of the demonstration started talking with the nearby soldiers in Hebrew and Bassem too, screamed “We are in a non violent protest, there are kids and internationals…”. He was shot in the chest and never managed to finished his sentence. He fell on the floor, move a little bit, fell again, and died. (http://www.bilin-village.org/english/articles/testimonies/Basem-Abu-Rahme-killed-in-Bilin-weekly-protest Scroll down for stills and videos)

Bassem was shot by a new kind of Tear Gas, called “the rocket”. The soldier who shot was a mere 40 meters away. This is the same type of tear gas that critically injured US citizen Tristan Anderson a few weeks ago. Those tear gas canisters are as fast and lethal as live ammunition. Very hard to get away from. Normally, tear gas canisters fly in the air for a long time, then fall and bounce a few times. Those ones fly like a bullet and go straight, not up and down.

Once more, Israel using the West Bank as its testing ground, the Palestinians as guinea pigs.

The soldier who fired, knew what he was doing and who he was targeting. The shame is that he probably knew Bassem. Bassem was always at the front, and had been for a few years now. The soldiers often come back more than once in Bil’in and start to get to know the ones facing them. Bassem did not get a chance to say hi, or bye.

On April the 17^th , Bil’in and Palestine lost one of their heroes.

What is going to happen next?

Israel has already said that it will investigate the incident (out of every single investigation into such crimes, only 6% of the soldiers were ever prosecuted, often let off with a few weeks suspension), but before it did, started the usual propaganda, saying that the protest had been really violent and that the soldiers had to react. (the video of the demonstration clearly shows otherwise).

We might even hear in a few days that it was actually the Palestinians who fired the tear gas and killed their beloved friend.

The P.A, instead of issuing the strongest statement against this act, stopping once and for all the negotiations with the Israeli government and joining the demonstrators every Friday to be hand in hand with its people, said next to nothing, and is looking forward the coming up White House meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and Obama (this is being planned while I write).

The media hardly reported this. The Palestinians do not count. Even more shocking when a video of the event is available to all and could have been use to great effects.

The international community (for what it means) will not mention this “incident” (it is for them) and continue issuing calls for the Palestinians to renounce violence and resist peacefully while saying nothing about Israel’s killings (since the start of the second intifada, 87% of the dead have been Palestinians), violations of international law and oppression of the Palestinians.

It is therefore down to us, the citizens of this world, to act, join solidarity groups, write articles, make films and talk, constantly, about the plight of the Palestinian people. Palestine has to become the number one issue.

This is a must.

For Bassem, his family, Bil’in and Palestine.

Frank Barat is in the organizing committee of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine and a member of Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK.

The village of Bil’in is organizing its fourth conference from the 22^nd till the 24^th of April. For more info click here: http://www.bilin-village.org/english/conferences/conference2009/Fourth-Bilin-conference-on-grassroots-popular-resistance-in-April

(1) http://www.bilin-village.org/english/articles/testimonies/The-Supreme-Court-The-new-barrier-in-Bilin-violates-the-Court-ruling

Beginning of the end for US Cuban embargo

By Antonio Castillo, published in Eureka Street

23 April 2009

While the Fifth Summit of the Americas ended without an agreed final declaration, the gathering of hemispheric presidents will be better remembered for US President Obama’s pledged to ’seek a new beginning with Cuba’.

While Cuba was not present at the gathering of 34 leaders — under Washington’s instigation it has been barred since 1962 from the Organization of American States (OAS) — it was never out of sight. The nearly five decades of US embargo on the island took over the agenda from the very first day.

In the inaugural speech of the Summit, Argentinean President Cristina Kirchner urged Obama to lift the embargo on Cuba and to build new relations between the Americas. The US embargo has never been just a ‘Cuban problem’. It has been — along with the Cuban exclusion from the OAS — a historic point of friction between Latin America and the US.

Obama responded swiftly. ‘The United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba,’ he told the gathering. His remark, and his pledge to talk to Raúl Castro — who replaced his aging brother Fidel as Cuban president — are the clearest signals in decades of the US policy shift toward La Havana.

President Obama’s new approach to Cuba began unfolding a few days before the Summit of the Americas. On 13 April he announced that travel restrictions to Cuban-Americans visiting the island were to be scrapped, and that the limit on remittances sentto Cuba from the US would be raised.

He also gave the green light to US telecommunications companies to start flirting with business on the island. In addition, the sending of goods to Cuba such as clothing, seeds, medicines and veterinary products, are no longer considered ‘banned donations’.

While it is true that Obama left in place the core measures that form the embargo, his announcement is a major step in thawing relations between Washington and La Havana.

The measures were widely applauded, even by the staunch anticommunist Cuban-American community of Florida. Ramón Saúl Sánchez, one of the most respected Cuban exiles living in the US and leader of the Democracy Movement, not only congratulated Obama’s decision, but also favoured a change of US policy toward Cuba.

The relaxation of the embargo announced by Obama came in the context of growing US public opinion favouring a change of policy towards La Havana. A recent US Opinion Dynamics poll showed that 59 per cent of respondents said the US should lift the embargo.

And a December 2008 poll by the Florida International University (FIU) indicated that the majority of Cuban-American voters would support bilateral dialogue and normal diplomatic ties with Cuba.

A few months ago Republican Senator Richard Lugar, considered one of the statesman of US foreign policy, said in a report that the unilateral embargo on Cuba had failed. He went even further and called on Obama to lift all travel restrictions and to forge full bilateral diplomatic ties around issues such as drug traffic, energy and immigration.

The US business sector — largely unable to invest in the island unlike its counterparts from China, Europe and Canada — has also joined the cause to end the embargo. Myron Brilliant, the vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, described Obama’s measures as ‘encouraging’ and said that the ‘last 50 years of our embargo on Cuba has demonstrated that unilateral sanctions don’t work’.

In ‘US Policy toward a Cuba in Transition’, published by the Brookings Institution, 19 academics, opinion leaders, and international diplomats said, ‘The nearly 50-year-old policy toward Cuba has failed.’ The document indicates that ‘Cuba should be a pressing issue for the Obama administration’ and called Obama to commit ‘to a long-term process of critical and constructive engagement at all levels including with the Cuban government’.
US announcements to end the embargo have been made previously without any concrete results. However this time a few favourable factors may allow President Obama to push this policy shift further.

First, his Democrat Party controls Congress. It is in the Congress where the decision to lift the embargo lies. Second — and perhaps more importantly — is that the Cuban-American lobby, unwavering defenders of the embargo, is no longer the only referent for the US administration. There is an increasing number of Cuban-Americans who think the embargo is no longer viable, and their voices are reaching Capital Hill.

And in contrast to many previous American presidents, Obama is not indebted to Florida Cuban-American voters.

The failed embargo on Cuba, in place since 1962, has outlasted nine American presidents, from John F. Kennedy, who first imposed the embargo, to George W. Bush. It has isolated the US from Latin America. And it has brought wide international condemnation, including from the United Nations, which has passed dozens of condemnatory resolutions.

President Obama has two options. He could either end up as the tenth president outlasted by the embargo. Or he could be remembered as the statesman who ended this anachronistic US foreign policy blunder that has caused so much pain to Cuba and its people.

This article was first published in Eureka Street.

Dr Antonio Castillo teaches in the Media and Communications Department at the University of Sydney. His books include Testigos Molestos (Undesirable Witnesses, CEDIC 1983), an account of the struggle of young independent journalists working under Chile’s military regime 1973-1989. His current research project is Venezuela’s Tele Sur: The Latin American Al Jazeera.

Report: Olmert, Livni may face war crimes charges in Norway

By Haaretz Service

Tags: Norway, Gaza, War Crimes

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert and opposition leader Tzipi Livni may face war crimes charges in Norway over their role in Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza, AFP reported Tuesday. The news agency said six Norwegian lawyers announced plans Tuesday to accuse the pair, as well as Defense Minister Ehud Barak and seven senior Israel Defense Forces officers, of the crimes. The lawyers, who planned to file their complaint with Norway’s chief prosecutor on Wednesday, were quoted as saying they would also call for the arrest and extradition of the Israeli leaders. Under the Norwegian penal code, courts may hear cases involving war crimes and other major violations of human rights. The lawyers released a statement quoted by AFP accusing Israel of “massive terrorist attacks” in the Gaza Strip from December 27 last year to January 25, killing civilians, illegally using weapons against civilian targets and deliberately attacking hospitals and medical staff. “There can be no doubt that these subjects knew about, ordered or approved the actions in Gaza and that they had considered the consequences of these actions,” the lawyers’ statement said. It also said the lawyers were representing a number of people living in Norway. “It involves three people of Palestinian origin living in Norway and 20 families who lost loved ones or property during the attack,” one of the lawyers, Kjell Brygfjeld, told AFP. Israel’s stated goal in the three-week offensive was the halting of the cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza. Gaza officials have said over 1,300 Palestinians died during the campaign, a majority of whom were civilians. But the Israel Defense Forces has disputed these claims, stating that the vast majority of the dead were Hamas militants. Related articles: Time to believe Gaza war crimes allegations UN envoy: Gaza op seems to be war crime of greatest magnitude IDF: War crime charges over Gaza offensive are ‘legal terror’

Corporate Crimes

I shake my head with incredulity at these corporations and what they think is acceptable.  And I  have theory that this disregard for life has its roots in the alienation that technology thrives on and what that alienation spawns.  I’ve come across young people who’ve used the most offensive examples to argue their points without thinking about what they’ve said.  Maybe it’s class or gender, but it’s worrying. And what Apple has done is part of that.

Apple, stop insulting our intelligence!

=================================================================

SEATTLE — Apple Inc. pulled a 99-cent iPhone game called “Baby Shaker” from its iTunes store Wednesday after its premise _ quiet a crying baby with a vigorous shake _ prompted outrage.

According to screen shots posted on several Web sites, “Baby Shaker” displayed black-and-white line drawings of a baby. The iTunes description included the line, “See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!” Once the iPhone owner finishes shaking the device, the on-screen baby is depicted with large red X’s over its eyes.

Public outcry ensued, with organizations including the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation condemning Apple for approving the game’s sale.

The application was designed by Sikalosoft, which also makes a 99-cent “Dice Mosaic” iPhone program that converts digital photos into black and white mosaics made from dice.

Sikalosoft did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment, but “Baby Shaker” was deleted from its Web site Wednesday afternoon.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said “Baby Shaker” went on sale Monday, and confirmed that Apple removed it Wednesday. She would not comment on why the program was initially approved for sale nor about how many people downloaded the game. Apple itself screens each iPhone application, a process some prospective iPhone application developers have complained can take weeks or months. Others have said Apple gives little feedback when it accepts or rejects a program.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has rejected apps that let iPhone users throw virtual shoes at President George W. Bush or watch clips from the “South Park” cartoon. It has accepted numerous programs that simulate flatulence.

http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/2009/04/23/for-crying-outloud-apple-pulls-baby-shaker-game/

8-year-old Saudi girl divorces 50-year-old husband AP

By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, Associated Press Writer Hadeel Al-shalchi, Associated Press Writer –

Thu Apr 30, 9:18 pm ET CAIRO – An 8-year-old Saudi girl has divorced her middle-aged husband after her father forced her to marry him last year in exchange for about $13,000, her lawyer said Thursday.

Saudi Arabia has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad for permitting child marriages.

The United States, a close ally of the conservative Muslim kingdom, has called child marriage a “clear and unacceptable” violation of human rights. The girl was allowed to divorce the 50-year-old man who she married in August after an out-of-court settlement had been reached in the case, said her lawyer, Abdulla al-Jeteli. The exact date of the divorce was not immediately known.

A court in the central Oneiza region previously rejected a request by the girl’s mother for a divorce and ruled that the girl would have to wait until she reached puberty to file a petition then. There are no laws in Saudi Arabia defining the minimum age for marriage.

Though a woman’s consent is legally required, some marriage officials don’t seek it. But there has been a push by Saudi human rights groups to define the age of marriage and put an end to the phenomenon. One Saudi human rights activist Sohaila Zain al-Abdeen was optimistic that the girl’s divorce would help efforts to get a law passed enforcing a minimum marriage age of 18. “Unfortunately, some fathers trade their daughters,” she told The Associated Press. “They are weak people who are sometimes in need of money and forget their roles as parents.”

It was not clear if the man received money for the divorce settlement. The man had given the girl’s father 50,000 riyals, or about $13,350, as a marriage gift in return for his daughter, the lawyer said. The 8-year-old girl’s marriage was not the only one in the kingdom to receive attention in recent months. Saudi newspapers have highlighted several cases in which young girls were married off to much older men or young boys including a 15-year-old girl whose father, a death-row inmate, married her off to a cell mate.

Saudi Arabia’s conservative Muslim clergy have opposed the drive to end child marriages. In January, the kingdom’s most senior cleric said it was permissible for 10-year-old girls to marry and those who believe they are too young are doing the girls an injustice. But some in the government appear to support the movement to set a minimum age for marriage. The kingdom’s new justice minister was quoted in mid-April as saying the government was doing a study on underage marriage that would include regulations.

There are no statistics to show how many marriages involving children are performed in Saudi Arabia every year. Activists say the girls are given away in return for hefty marriage gifts or as a result of long-standing custom in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships.

The joy of dance

This video of strangers dancing together at Antwerp station is a delight to watch. it keeps you smiling all along.  i love the little girl in pink wth the back pack who is the first to join the young man in dancing.  And notice the brief cases on the floor… I read trust into that and how little it takes us to join with others  in stuff  that’s life affirming.

I suspect that this is project by a group of dancers and a collaborative arts venture  with Antwerp’s central railway station.  I hope it catches on in  lots of places around the world.

Enjoy!

Arundhathi Roy’s statement about war in Sri Lanka

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4331986.cms

The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream

Indian media — or indeed in the international press — about what is happening there. Why this should be so is a matter of serious concern.

From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people. Working on the principle that every Tamil is a terrorist unless he or she can prove otherwise, civilian areas, hospitals and shelters are being bombed and turned into a war zone. Reliable estimates put the number of civilians trapped at over 200,000. The Sri Lankan Army is advancing, armed with tanks and aircraft.

Meanwhile, there are official reports that several ‘‘welfare villages’’ have been established to house displaced Tamils in Vavuniya and Mannar districts. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph (Feb 14, 2009), these villages ‘‘will be compulsory holding centres for all civilians fleeing the fighting’’. Is this a euphemism for concentration camps? The former foreign minister of Sri Lanka, Mangala Samaraveera, told The Daily Telegraph:  ‘‘A few months ago the government started registering all Tamils in Colombo on the grounds that they could be a security threat, but this could be exploited for other purposes like the Nazis in the 1930s. They’re basically going to label the whole civilian Tamil population as potential terrorists.’’

Given its stated objective of ‘‘wiping out’’ the LTTE, this malevolent collapse of civilians and ‘‘terrorists’’ does seem to signal that the government of Sri Lanka is on the verge of committing what could end up being genocide. According to a UN estimate several thousand people have already been killed. Thousands more are critically wounded. The few eyewitness reports that have come out are descriptions of a nightmare from hell. What we are witnessing, or should we say, what is happening in Sri Lanka and is being so effectively hidden from public scrutiny, is a brazen, openly racist war. The impunity with which the Sri Lankan government is being able to commit these crimes actually unveils the deeply ingrained racist prejudice, which is precisely what led to the marginalization and alienation of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in the first place. That racism has a long history, of social ostracisation, economic blockades, pogroms and torture. The brutal nature of the decades-long civil war, which started as a peaceful, non-violent protest, has its roots in this.

Why the silence? In another interview Mangala Samaraveera says, ‘‘A free media is virtually non-existent in Sri Lanka today.’’

Samaraveera goes on to talk about death squads and ‘white van abductions’, which have made society ‘‘freeze with fear’’. Voices of dissent, including those of several journalists, have been abducted and assassinated. The International Federation of Journalists accuses the government of Sri Lanka of using a combination of anti-terrorism laws, disappearances and assassinations to silence journalists.

There are disturbing but unconfirmed reports that the Indian government is lending material and logistical support to the Sri Lankan government in these crimes against humanity. If this is true, it is outrageous. What of the governments of other countries? Pakistan? China? What are they doing to help, or harm the situation?

In Tamil Nadu the war in Sri Lanka has fuelled passions that have led to more than 10 people immolating themselves. The public anger and anguish, much of it genuine, some of it obviously cynical political manipulation, has become an election issue.

It is extraordinary that this concern has not travelled to the rest of India. Why is there silence here? There are no ‘white van abductions’ — at least not on this issue. Given the scale of what is happening in Sri Lanka, the silence is inexcusable. More so because of the Indian government’s long history of irresponsible dabbling in the conflict, first taking one side and then the other. Several of us including myself, who should have spoken out much earlier, have not done so, simply because of a lack of information about the war. So while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and a genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country.
It’s a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it’s too late

Jelveh and Aung San, Defending Humanity, Defending Conscience

By Elahe Amani

Friday 29 May 2009

Jelveh Javaheri of Iran and Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma have many differences at personal and political level. But, other than sharing the same biology, they have one thing in common, they both are prisoners of conscience by authoritarian states in countries where respect for human rights and human dignity is undermined and violated.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the acclaimed Burma leader and Nobel Peace Laureate in her famous speech “ All we want is our freedom” in 2003 said “As I travel through my country, people often ask me how it feels to have been imprisoned in my home —first for six years, then for 19 months. How could I stand the separation from family and friends? It is ironic, I say, that in an authoritarian state it is only the prisoner of conscience who is genuinely free. Yes, we have given up our right to a normal life. But we have stayed true to that most precious part of our humanity—our conscience.”

Aung San Suu Kyi was confined to a dilapidated house for 13 of the last 19 years, the woman known to the Burmese as ’the lady’ remains their prime minister-elect. She has been detained under house arrest by the country’s military regime under article ten of the 1975 state protection act, which permits the government to imprison anyone for up to five years. With her latest term of house arrest due to expire tomorrow, the Nobel peace prize laureate faces five years in prison over politically-motivated charges that she breached the terms of her detention. She is a prisoner of conscience.

Jelveh Javaheri, the young, vibrant and inspiring women activist in Iran like Aung San Suu Kyi has given up a “normal life” to stay true to her conscience and strive to change the discriminatory laws against women and girls in Iran. She, like thousands of Iranian women and men, demand what belongs to her and other women as human beings which is rights and dignity. She is also in detention and a prisoner of conscience.

Change for Equality, on May 2nd reported that six members of One Million Signatures Campaign, the campaign to change the discriminatory laws, were arrested during and after a peaceful demonstration which was held to celebrate May 1st. The police forces attacked the demonstrators even before they congregated and left many of the people with bloody faces.

There were more than 150 arrested and among them was Campaign activist Kaveh Mozafari, Jelveh’s husband. Jelveh was home when the intelligence forces raided their residence taking everything that potentially might have been useful to fabricate a case for pressing a charge against them including unthinkable and random items such as , Jelveh and Kaveh’s University degrees!!

They asked Jelveh Javaheri to go with them for questioning at the local office. Jelveh, being arrested before knew her rights and asked for a court order but there was no legal document ordering her arrest. With the use of force, three security guards arrested Jelveh while her mother who was witnessing the scene, yelled at the guards, “ You are putting handcuffs on the hands of freedom”. The Security Branch of the Revolutionary Courts charged her with actions against national security and collusion with the intent to participate in a protest, and disruption of public order. According to reports by Jelveh herself, she objected to these charges and explained that she was arrested in her home and had not participated in any protest. After conducting investigations officials realized their mistake. No new charges have been brought against her since she was not even at the protest.

Many of the workers, students and all Campaign activist who were arrested on May 1st peaceful gathering, are released but Jelveh and her husband remain in detention. A wide range of human rights, labor activists and women’s rights groups and websites including but not limited to Change for Equality, Kanoon Zanan, and Feminist School condemned the brutal and violent suppression of May Day peaceful gathering and demanded an end to the illegal detention of Jelveh Javaheri, a founding member of the One Million Signatures Campaign and women’s rights defender and Kaveh Mozafari, also a women’s rights defender and a Campaign member.

Of all the women who were arrested on May 1st, Jelveh is the only woman who is still in detention. In a recent interview of Radio Zamaneh with Jelveh’s mother who witnessed her arrest, she said “My daughter was dragged out barefoot and taken away as part of her husband’s property! There is no other reason for her arrest and on-going detention”.

The Irony of the May Day encounter with protesters lies in the fact that the Iranian government which has a tall records of human rights violations, claims to be the government of “ Mostazafin ”, the government of poor, oppressed and economically marginalized people, the government of the toiling masses. The statesmen of Iran shake hands with leaders like Chaves, allow posters of Che Guevara to be distributed and Che’s mural be painted on the public walls while crashing May Day celebrations and signing economic treaties with global economic powers that compromises the best interest of Iranian people. They claim to be at the front line of struggle against “Big Satan and Global Estekbar” (loosely means global arrogance) and question human rights violations in Iraq and Guantanamo, yet violating the rights of people to freedom of speech and assembly, inflicting violence on a peaceful gathering on the International Worker’s Day and detain rights activists illegally and on unfounded charges or even without any charges. This is Turbo Hypocrisy!

The realities of our world and complexities that the intersection of global patterns such as globalization, militarization and the rise of religious fundamentalism present, charge all progressive people, women rights defenders, social justice activists and human rights organizations and communities to set their minds free of the old paradigms and look at the world with a lens sensitive to gender, race, economic and social stratifications. As Audre Lorde said “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” The global struggle of conscientious people for rights, dignity, democracy and justice are all part of the fabric of humanity that women like Jelveh Javaheri and Aung San Suu Kyi are standing firm to defend. They inspire all of us to be true to the most precious part of our humanity—our conscience.

Open letter to Shahrudi: http://www.campaignforequality.info…

An eye witness account: http://www.irwomen.info/spip.php?ar…

The GayClic Collab Against Homophobia (from France) – Fuck You by Lily Allen

Thou Shalt not gig in Tel Aviv Leonard Cohen!

London based Israeli born jazz musician Gilad Atzmon speaks out

First community radio station run by women

June 26 2009

AHMEDABAD: One of Gujarat’s biggest Women-based NGO, SEWA, will be first to run a community radio

station (CRS) exclusively by women, as Information & Broadcasting Ministry has granted permission to Mahila SEWA Trust for establishing a radio station.

SEWA, which is into radio programme production for last four years, will have its own radio station with a 10-km radius. However, the NGO has decided to keep its base at its training centre at Manipur village in Sanand taluka. “We always wanted to have a rural base for our communication activities. Through this community radio, besides catering to the needs of farmers, we will be broadcasting information for SEWA members and information will be used for their own education and empowerment,” said SEWA director, Reema Nanavati.

The programmes broadcast from this station will cover nearly 30 villages in Sanand and Daskroi talukas. “It’s good to see that we have first radio station to be managed by women to help our members for livelihood and capacity building,” Nanavati said.

According to the grant of permission agreement signed by SEWA with the ministry, CRS is expected to be operational within three months. With setting up of CRS near city, the number of CRS will increase to 49 in the country. The Anna University in Chennai was the first campus to have a CRS in 2003 and Centre gave relaxation in granting licenses for CRS to non-educational organisation particularly after tsunami struck southern coast of India.

SEWA has been broadcasting a 15-minute weekly programme from All India Radio stations with a title Rudi no Radio’. Namrata Bali, who looks after SEWA’s radio programming believes that managing a CRS is going to be a challenge for the organisation. But, the NGO’s practice in production during these years will come handy, as its volunteers have already made need assessment survey, which was submitted to the ministry.

“Because the transmitter and work station will be situated at our training centre, we have an opportunity to rope in women and local youth that work with us. Besides this, our radio team has already prepared a base for CRS and we will try to involve as many people as possible to cater to the listening needs of audience from various occupation and different age groups,” Bali said.

SEWA estimates the cost of setting up broadcasting facility at Rs 6 lakh and production facilities will also cost NGO the same amount. A Canada-based organisation AMARC is helping SEWA in establishing the facilities as well as in generating software.

Losing my religion for equality

• Jimmy Carter
• July 15, 2009

Illustration: Dyson

Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God.

I HAVE been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices - as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy - and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by former South African president Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. We have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights and have recently published a statement that declares: “The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.”

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world’s major faiths share.

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

OBSERVER

Jimmy Carter was president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.

Iranian women’s rights activist Shadi Sadr beaten, arrested and disappeared

Escalation in arbitrary arrests and disappearances of individuals and human rights defenders

July 17, 2009

Shadi Sadr, a lawyer and prominent women’s rights activist working with the One Million Signatures Campaign, was arrested today by plain clothes security officers and taken to an undisclosed location. The men pulled her into a car as she walked along a busy road and beat her as she struggled to escape.

Ms. Sadr, a journalist, member of Meydaan (Women’s Field), director of Raahi (legal advice center for women), and founder of Zanan-e Iran (Women of Iran–the first website dedicated to the work of Iranian women’s rights activists), has written extensively about Iranian women and their legal rights.

Ms. Sadr’s violent arrest marks an escalation in attacks against human rights activists by the Iranian government since demonstrations protesting Iran’s disputed presidential election results. It follows the arrests and disappearances of numerous other human rights defenders, social justice activists, and journalists. Reports from inside Iran indicate that hundreds more protestors have been killed than government reports suggest. Many families are unable to locate their loved ones and are searching through hospitals, photographs of corpses, police stations, prisons, and inquiring at the Revolutionary Court.

WLP is gravely concerned for the safety of Shadi Sadr and women’s rights activists and citizens who have been peacefully speaking out for their basic rights. We are especially concerned about the mounting violence against women by state agents. The murder of 26 year old Neda Agha-Soltani during the initial wave of protests brought the world’s attention to the danger that innocent women are facing as they stand up for their civil rights. Now we have learned of the apparent murder of 28 year old Taraneh Mousavi after she was brutally attacked.

The recent political protests have brought on increased persecution of women’s rights activists, who have been regularly arrested and harassed since 2006 for peacefully advocating for their equal rights before the law. They have faced charges such as “acting against the national security of the state,” “propaganda against the state,” “disrupting public opinion” and, most recently, for membership in the One Million Signatures campaign itself. Many are serving suspended sentences, and face regular harassment and persecution by the government.

We call upon the women’s rights community and all human rights activists and organizations to speak out in defense of Shadi Sadr and all those who are being unjustly persecuted.

Please write to local and international media, mobilize your social networks, and urge your policy makers and embassies as well as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay to take action to protect the basic human rights of all those who are being abused and arrested in Iran.

The Honorable Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary General
760 United Nations Plaza
United Nations
New York, NY 10017
Web contact: www.un.org/en/contactus/contactform.asp

Ms. Navanethem Pillay
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Email: infodesk@ohchr.org
Tel: +41-22-917-90-00
Fax: +41-22-917-9008 or +1-212-963-4097

http://www.learningpartnership.org/en/advocacy/alerts/iranwomenarrests0307

Natalya

By:

Jasmina Tesanovic

On 15 July Natalya Estemirova, 50, was kidnapped and murdered by
unknown assailants in the Chechen capital Grozny. The mother-of-one
worked for the human rights organisation Memorial and was a close
friend of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, also murdered in 2006.

A human rights activist is killed like a dog, executed, dumped and
humiliated in front of the eyes of a million people, who know that
what she was saying was true, right, honest and proper.

Because, you see, WE ALL DO KNOW THAT. Good and bad guys know
Natalya was telling the truth, in Russia, in Chechnya, in US in Europe.
And yet we all stay silent about her death. Most of us turn the head the
other way, as if it is none of our business, as if it is inevitable,
as if it were somebody else’ s world.

Presidents sometimes say: a serious inquiry should be done in this
case. Violence on journalists is not permitted. How could they say
otherwise? Today when words count almost nothing compared to the
escalating violence, to the human annihilation.

Where are the movie stars, those celebrities who adopt poor children,
sing songs in the deserts, catwalk all the politically correct arenas?
Why don’t the superstars for once raise their voice and protect ONE
peaceful human rights activist — who in her or his life has done
more than the whole constellation of stars shining from their heaven
on the global poor?

Where is the solidarity, the everyday culture of us normal human
beings, who know that the freedom to behave humanely, with all those
habeus corpus human rights, is challenged every day in the streets, in
the workplaces — not only in wars, battlefields, mass graves? Why
don’t people of any city flock out to the squares as they did for the
death of Michael Jackson, or some other mass media idol?
Have we grown so stupid and blind to allow assassinations to be part
of our daily life? Is this our present-day normality, and if so, what
of our future?

When I hear Natalya speaking, I have no cultural, racial or language
misunderstandings to bridge. I know exactly what she is saying, and to
whom she is appealing. She is telling us just like Anna Politkovskaya
and many other humanist activists, to live in truth, band together
and defend the common denominator of basic human rights. You don’t
need to be Russian or speak Russian to understand that we are all in
the same boat.

The abuse of civilians by an armed shadow state within the state is
happening everywhere. Democratic regimes have abandoned state control
over their military machines; the modern gunmen are privatized,
offshored, clandestine and deniable. The best voices, the best
actions come not from politicians but from relentless activists,
journalists, lawyers. These are the Hypatias of 21 first century: the
voices of reason and science. They are not gurus, they are not
visionaries, they are not leaders, they are not stars. They bear
witness with their lives and write what they know first hand. We must
be clear and forthright about what it means to all of us, when
assassins burn their books and bodies, as witches, as testimonies of
uncomfortable truths.

Holocaust survivor assaulted because of her work for Palestinians

At 85 Hedy Epstein, a survivor of the 2nd WW has never stopped in her fight for Peace and Human Rights for all people – as she says in this interview – “not only for jewish people”.

“The Free Gaza video is an interview with a great woman, Hedy Epstein, just turned 85. She has dedicated her life to working for peace and human rights. In June she was going to sail to Gaza with the other 21 volunteers on board the Spirit of Humanity. But she was attacked just days before she was to leave for Cyprus. She was walking home, when she was thrown on the ground, cutting both knees and gashing her chin. She talks to us from her home in St. Louis, Missouri. Here is her interview and why she believes she must continue to advocate for justice for Palestine. ”     www.freegaza.org

The Heart of Jenin

‘Do you think the Israelis liked what I did? Some would have preferred it if I’d blown myself up’

The remarkable story of Ismail Khatib, a Palestinian father from the West Bank city of Jenin, continues. After his son Ahmed was shot by israeli soldiers in November 2005, the Khatib’s courageously donated their beloved 12 year-old’s organs to a number of recipients in israel, to both Arabs and Jews.

The story is the subject of the documentary film released last year, The Heart of Jenin, in which two directors, German Marcus Vetter and Israeli-American Leon Geller, accompanied Ismail for two years as he paid visits to the children who received his son’s organs.

Ahmed’s kidneys, liver, lungs and heart were transplanted to recipients ranging from a seven-month-old baby to a 58-year-old woman. Those who received organs included Arabs, Jews, and a Druze girl.

Despite having themselves suffered considerably under israeli occupation and despite the heart-wrenching circumstances in which 12 year old Ahmed died, his father also consents to one of his organs going to help a child from an illegal settler family, whose awful responses in the documentary are in stark contrast with Khatib’s dignity and humanity.

The Deutsche Welle ARTS.21 program speaks with the filmmakers and Ismail Khatib (opening clip above), followed here by a Radio Netherlands audio interview and the film’s trailer.

Heart of Jenin Excerpt (<3 minutes)

Women At Risk

By Bob Herbet,   New York Times

Published: August 7, 2009

“I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me,” wrote George Sodini in a blog that he kept while preparing for this week’s shooting in a Pennsylvania gym in which he killed three women, wounded nine others and then killed himself.

Bob Herbert

We’ve seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter.

Back in the fall of 2006, a fiend invaded an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, separated the girls from the boys, and then shot 10 of the girls, killing five.

I wrote, at the time, that there would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women — not so much of an uproar.

According to police accounts, Sodini walked into a dance-aerobics class of about 30 women who were being led by a pregnant instructor. He turned out the lights and opened fire. The instructor was among the wounded.

We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment.

The mainstream culture is filled with the most gruesome forms of misogyny, and pornography is now a multibillion-dollar industry — much of it controlled by mainstream U.S. corporations.

One of the striking things about mass killings in the U.S. is how consistently we find that the killers were riddled with shame and sexual humiliation, which they inevitably blamed on women and girls. The answer to their feelings of inadequacy was to get their hands on a gun (or guns) and begin blowing people away.

What was unusual about Sodini was how explicit he was in his blog about his personal shame and his hatred of women. “Why do this?” he asked. “To young girls? Just read below.” In his gruesome, monthslong rant, he managed to say, among other things: “It seems many teenage girls have sex frequently. One 16 year old does it usually three times a day with her boyfriend. So, err, after a month of that, this little [expletive] has had more sex than ME in my LIFE, and I am 48. One more reason.”

I was reminded of the Virginia Tech gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people in a rampage at the university in 2007. While Cho shot males as well as females, he was reported to have previously stalked female classmates and to have leaned under tables to take inappropriate photos of women. A former roommate said Cho once claimed to have seen “promiscuity” when he looked into the eyes of a woman on campus.

Soon after the Virginia Tech slayings, I interviewed Dr. James Gilligan, who spent many years studying violence as a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts and as a professor at Harvard and N.Y.U. “What I’ve concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal,” he said, “is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one’s manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act.”

Life in the United States is mind-bogglingly violent. But we should take particular notice of the staggering amounts of violence brought down on the nation’s women and girls each and every day for no other reason than who they are. They are attacked because they are female.

A girl or woman somewhere in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count.

There were so many sexual attacks against women in the armed forces that the Defense Department had to revise its entire approach to the problem.

We would become much more sane, much healthier, as a society if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem, and that the twisted way so many men feel about women, combined with the absurdly easy availability of guns, is a toxic mix of the most tragic proportions.