Alternet - Max Blumenthal
A rabbinical guidebook for killing non-Jews has sparked an uproar in Israel and exposed the power a bunch of genocidal theocrats wield over the government.
When I went into the Jewish religious book emporium, Pomeranz, in central Jerusalem to inquire about the availability of a book called Torat Ha'Melech, or the King's Torah, a commotion immediately ensued. "Are you sure you want it?" the owner, M. Pomeranz, asked me half-jokingly. "The Shabak [Israel's internal security service] is going to want a word with you if you do." As customers stopped browsing and began to stare in my direction, Pomeranz pointed to a security camera affixed to a wall. "See that?" he told me. "It goes straight to the Shabak!"
As soon as it was published late last year,Torat Ha'Melech sparked a national uproar. The controversy began when an Israeli tabloid panned the book's contents as "230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew." According to the book's author, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, "Non-Jews are "uncompassionate by nature" and should be killed in order to "curb their evil inclinations." "If we kill a gentile who has has violated one of the seven commandments… there is nothing wrong with the murder," Shapira insisted. Citing Jewish law as his source (or at least a very selective interpretation of it) he declared: "There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults."
In January, Shapira was briefly detained by the Israeli police, while two leading rabbis who endorsed the book, Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef, were summoned to interrogations by the Shabak. However, the rabbis refused to appear at the interrogations, essentially thumbing their noses at the state and its laws. And the government did nothing. The episode raised grave questions about the willingness of the Israeli government to confront the ferociously racist swathe of the country's rabbinate. "Something like this has never happened before, even though it seems as if everything possible has already happened," Israeli commentator Yossi Sarid remarked with astonishment. "Two rabbis [were] summoned to a police investigation, and announc[ed] that they will not go. Even settlers are kind enough to turn up."
In response to the rabbis' public rebuke of the state's legal system, the Israeli Attorney General and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept silent. Indeed, since the publication of Torat Ha'Melech, Netanyahu has strenuously avoided criticizing its contents or the author's leading supporters. Like so many prime ministers before him, he has been cowed into submission by Israel's religious nationalist community. But Netanyahu appears to be particularly impotent. His weakness stems from the fact that the religious nationalist right figures prominently in his governing coalition and comprises a substantial portion of his political base. For Netanyahu, a confrontation with the rabid rabbis could amount to political suicide, or could force him into an alliance with centrist forces who do not share his commitment to the settlement enterprise in the West Bank.
On August 18, a pantheon of Israel's top fundamentalist rabbis flaunted their political power during an ad hoc congress they convened at Jerusalem's Ramada Renaissance hotel. Before an audience of 250 supporters including the far-right Israeli Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari, the rabbis declared in the name of the Holy Torah that would not submit to any attempt by the government to regulate their political activities -- even and especially if those activities included inciting terrorist attacks against non-Jews. As one wizened rabbi after another rose up to inveigh against the government's investigation of Torat Ha'Melech until his voice grew hoarse, the gathering degenerated into calls for murdering not just non-Jews, but secular Jews as well.
Watch the video (article continues below):
"The obligation to sacrifice your life is above all others when fighting those who wish to destroy the authority of the Torah," bellowed Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, head of the yeshiva in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan. "It is not only true against non-Jews who are trying to destroy it but against Jewish people from any side."
The government-funded terror academy
The disturbing philosophy expressed in Torat Ha'Melech emerged from the fevered atmosphere of a settlement called Yitzhar located in the northern West Bank near the Palestinian city of Nablus. Shapira leads the settlement's Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, holding sway over a small army of fanatics who are eager to lash out at the Palestinians tending to their crops and livestock in the valleys below them. One of Shapira's followers, an American immigrant named Jack Teitel, has confessed to murdering two innocent Palestinians and attempting to the kill the liberal Israeli historian Ze'ev Sternhell with a mail bomb. Teitel is suspected of many more murders, including an attack on a Tel Aviv gay community center.
Despite its apparent role as a terror training institute, Od Yosef Chai has raked in nearly fifty thousand dollars from the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs since 2007, while the Ministry of Education has pumped over 250 thousand dollars into the yeshiva's coffers between 2006 and 2007. The yeshiva has also benefited handsomely from donations from a tax-exempt American non-profit called the Central Fund of Israel. Located inside the Marcus Brothers Textiles store in midtown Manhattan, the Central Fund transferred at least thirty thousand to Od Yosef Chai between 2007 and 2008.
Though he does not name "the enemy" in the pages of his book, Shapira's longstanding connection to terrorist attacks against Palestinian civilians exposes the true identity of his targets. In 2006, Shapira was briefly held by Israeli police for urging his supporters to murder all Palestinians over the age of 13. Two years later, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, he signed a rabbinical letter in support of Israeli Jews who had brutally assaulted two Arab youths on the country's Holocaust Remembrance Day. That same year, Shapira was arrested under suspicion that he helped orchestrate a rocket attack against a Palestinian village near Nablus. Though he was released, Shapira's name arose in connection with another act of terror, when in January, the Israeli police raided his settlement seeking the vandals who set fire to a nearby mosque. After arresting ten settlers, the Shabak held five of Shapira's confederates under suspicion of arson.
Friends in high places
Despite his longstanding involvement in terrorism, or perhaps because of it, Shapira counts Israel's leading fundamentalist rabbis among his supporters. His most well-known backer is Dov Lior the leader of the Shavei-Hevron yeshiva at Kiryat Arba, a radical Jewish settlement near the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron and a hotbed of Jewish terrorism. Lior has vigorously endorsed Torat Ha'Melech, calling it "very relevant, especially in this time."
Lior's enthusiasm for Shapira's tract stems from his own eliminationist attitude toward non-Jews. For example, while Lior served as the IDF's top rabbi, he instructed soldiers: "There is no such thing as civilians in wartime… A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail!" Indeed, there are only a few non-Jews whose lives Lior would demand to be spared. They are captured Palestinian militants who, as he once suggested, could be used as subjects for live human medical experiments.
Otherwise, Lior appears content to watch Palestinians perish as they did at the muzzle of Dr. Baruch Goldstein's machine gun in 1994. Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians and wounded 150 in a shooting spree while they prayed in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs mosque, was a compatriot and neighbor of Lior in the settlement of Kiryat Arba. At Goldstein's funeral, Lior celebrated the massacre as an act carried out "to sanctify the holy name of God." He then extolled Goldstein as "a righteous man." Thanks to Lior's efforts, a shrine to Goldstein was constructed in center of Kiryat Arba so that locals could celebrate the killer's deeds and pass his legacy down to future generations.
Though Lior's inflammatory statements resulted in his being barred from running for election to the Supreme Rabbinical Council, according to journalist Daniel Estrin, the rabbi remains "a respected figure among many mainstream ZIonists." By extension, he maintains considerable influence among religious elements in the IDF. In 2008, when the IDF's chief rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Ronski, brought a group of military intelligence officers to Hebron for a special tour, he concluded the day with a private meeting with Lior, who was allowed to revel the officers with his views on modern warfare -- "no such thing as civilians in wartime."
Besides Lior, Torat Ha'Melech has earned support from another nationally prominent fundamentalist rabbi: Yaakov Yosef. Yosef is the leader of the Hazon Yaakov Yeshiva in Jerusalem and a former member of Knesset. Perhaps more significantly, he is the son of Ovadiah Yosef, the former chief rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of the Shas Party that forms a key segment of Netanyahu's governing coalition.
Yaakov Yosef has brought his influence to bear in defense of Torat Ha'Melech, insisting at the August 18 convention in Jerusalem that the book was no different than the Hagadah that all Jews read from on the holiday of Passover. The Hagadah contains passages about killing non-Jews and so does the Bible, Yosef reminded his audience. "Does anyone want to change the Bible?" he asked.
Bibi buckles
Only days before direct negotiations in Washington between Israel and the Palestinian Authority planned for early September, Yaakov Yosef's 89-year-old father, Ovadiah delivered his weekly sermon. With characteristic vitriol, he declared: "All these evil people should perish from this world… God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians."
The remarks have sparked an international furor and earned a stern rebuke from Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "While the PLO is ready to resume negotiations in seriousness and good faith," Erekat remarked, "a member of the Israeli government is calling for our destruction."
Palestinian Israeli member of Knesset Jamal Zehalka subsequently demanded that the Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein put Yosef on trial for incitement. "If, heaven forbid, a Muslim spiritual leader were to make anti-Jewish comments of this sort," Zehalka said, "he would be arrested immediately."
Here was a perfect opportunity for Netanyahu to demonstrate sincerity about negotiations by shedding an extremist ally in the name of securing peace. All he had to do was forcefully reject Yosef's genocidal comments -- a feat made all the easier by the White House's condemnation of the rabbi. But the Israeli Prime Minister ducked for political cover instead, issuing a canned statement instead of a condemnation. "Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef's remarks do not reflect Netanyahu's views," the statement read, "nor do they reflect the position of the Israeli government."
By refusing to cut Yosef loose, his party remains a central actor in the Israeli government. Thus the statement by Netanyahu was not only weak. It was false.
Related article: What Our Taxes to Israel are Funding, by Alison Weir
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Is Another Israeli Incursion Into Lebanon Looming? A Uniquely Dangerous Border
CounterPunch - Conn Hallinan
While the Middle East—indeed, the world—is riveted by the on-going crisis around Iran’s nuclear program, the most immediate danger of a war may be on Israel’s border with Lebanon: “Exceptionally quiet and uniquely dangerous” was how the Independent’s Robert Fisk described it last month.
That quiet was broken Aug. 3 when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) got into a firefight over tree trimming that ended up killing one Israeli and three Lebanese. Both sides backed off, but events over the past several months suggest Tel Aviv may be looking for a fight.
“Israel has to be ready for any sudden provocation or outbreak of hostilities, the same way the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war was triggered over Hezbollah capturing Israeli soldiers,” Dan Dicker from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs told the Inter Press Service.
The IDF has been smarting since Hezbollah fought it to a standstill in the 2006 war. While the Israeli air force inflicted massive damage on Lebanon’s infrastructure during the 34-day conflict, even Israel’s vaunted Golani Brigade could make little headway against Hezbollah’s tough and competent militia fighting on its home turf.
For the past two years the IDF has been training for a rematch: “Should another war break out—like the one with Hezbollah almost exactly four years ago—the Golani Brigade will not be unprepared,” reads a headline in the Israeli daily, Haaretz. At the Elyakim army base in northern Israel, soldiers are training how to take bunkers and fight in villages.
The IDF has also made it clear the next war will be vastly more destructive than the 2006 conflict that killed 1200 Lebanese and inflicted $10 to $12 billion in damage. The IDF has instituted the “Dahiya Doctrine,” named after the Shiite quarter of Beirut that the Israeli air force flattened in 2006. According to Amos Harel of Haaretz, the doctrine means the IDF will “respond to rocket fire originating from Shiite villages by unleashing a vast destructive operation.”
Over the past several months the Israelis—sometimes with Washington’s help— have unleashed a steady stream of accusations that Hezbollah is preparing for war, that Syria is smuggling arms, and that Iran is up to no good.
Israeli intelligence claims that Hezbollah has up to 40,000 rockets aimed at Israel, and in April Israeli President Shimon Peres charged Syria with supplying the Shiite organization with powerful Scud missiles. Syria vigorously denies the charge, and the United Nations says there is no evidence for the accusation.
Then the Wall Street Journal reported that a “U.S. defense official” told the newspaper that Iran had deployed” sophisticated” radar in Syria as an early warning device for a possible Israeli attack on Teheran’s nuclear sites. The U.S. State Department’s Philip Crowley chimed in that the radar was a “matter of concern” because of Syria’s relationship with Hezbollah.
Added to the growing tension on Lebanon’s southern border was the exposure of an extensive Israeli intelligence operation aimed at Hezbollah that had successfully penetrated Lebanon’s telecommunication system. More than 70 suspects have been arrested and some 20 charged with treason.
According to UPI, intelligence observers say the ring was uncovered because Israel could be gearing up for war and took some chances. “It may have been the Israelis drive to amass intelligence on Hezbollah’s military capabilities ahead of renewed conflict…that prompted the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, to pull out all the stops in Lebanon when it did.”
The tree-trimming incident is an indication of how volatile the Lebanese-Israeli border is. While the Israelis claim they were on their side of the border, the UN only drew that border in 2000, and Beirut has never fully accepted it. While the UN found the tree was on Israel’s side of the border, Lebanon’s Information Minister Tarek Mitri said the section is “Lebanese territory.”
One reason for Lebanon’s sensitivity over the border is that its placement may have relevance to the enormous natural gas deposits off the coast of Gaza, Israel, Lebanon and Syria. Extended out to sea, a matter of a mile or so in the land border could affect whether Lebanon has a claim on some of the gas.
The U.S. Geological Service estimates the fields could yield up to 122 trillion cubic feet of gas, and the Israelis have already laid claim to it. When the Lebanese protested, Israel’s Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau said that Israel “will not hesitate to use force” to defend its claim on the gas field. Nabih Berri, speaker of the Lebanese parliament, responded, “Lebanon’s army, people and the resistance will be ready to thwart any attempts to steal its resources.”
Added to the tense border, natural gas deposits, and Israel’s cold war with Syria and Iran, is a UN investigation that, according to most reports, will charge Hezbollah with involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Hezbollah claims the investigation is an Israeli plot and that Tel Aviv pulled off the hit, but it has yet to produce any evidence to support that charge.
The UN charge could have a destabilizing effect on Lebanon—Hezbollah is the country’s most important political and military force—and a destabilized Lebanon is in no one’s interest, with the exception of Israel and possibly the U.S. That is why long-time antagonists Saudi Arabia and Syria huddled in Damascus and then flew to Beirut July 30 to confer with the government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri on how to avoid a Lebanese meltdown.
In the middle of all this, Israel’s supporters in the U.S. Congress decided to stick their finger in the pie and hold up $100 million in military aid to the Lebanese army. “I am concerned that the training and equipment we have provided the LAF for the purposes of counter-terrorism may in fact be used by the LAF against the Israelis,” said House Armed Service Committee chair, Ike Skelton (D-Mo). Skelton went on to say that, since the LAF collaborated with Hezbollah, the latterorganization was an “indirect recipient of our aid.”
The U.S. started aiding the LAF after the 2005 “Cedar Revolution” put a pro-Washington coalition into power and forced Syria to withdraw following the assassination of Hariri. But the reality of Lebanon’s complex and fractious politics soon reasserted itself and what finally emerged from the last round of elections was a coalition government in which Hezbollah plays a prominent role. Regardless of what the Americans think of the Shiite group, marginalizing the largest ethnic group in the country is not an option.
That the military aid the U.S. is sending could pose a threat to Israel is simply silly. Most the aid consists of body armor, uniforms and unarmored Humvees. It includes neither warplanes nor anti-aircraft, and the tanks are M41 Walker “Bulldogs” designed for the Korean War. The Walker is an under-armored, gas guzzling light tank that wouldn’t last five minutes against the Israel’s modern armor or anti-tank weapons. Indeed, one military expert remarked that he was surprised there were any M41s—a weapon more “quaint” than threatening—that still ran.
If a war does break out between Hezbollah and Israel it might spread to Syria, and even Iran. In his recent report to the Council On Foreign Relations entitled “A Third Lebanon War,” former U.S. ambassador Daniel Kurtzer argues that Israel is likely to initiate the war, and that it might “also use the conflict with Hezbollah as a catalyst and cover for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.” The former ambassador said Syria might also be a target. Kurtzer predicts a crisis sometime in the next 12 to 18 months, “but the situation could change or deteriorate rapidly.”
One explanation for Israel’s unwillingness to escalate the tree-trimming incident was because its antagonists were the LAF, not Hezbollah. Kurtzer—who was a Middle East advisor to President Obama during the last election—says Israel would rather “lure [Hezbollah] into a war.” In the tree trimming crisis the Shiite group stayed on the sidelines.
“Hezbollah is keen to avoid an escalation,” says Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group, “knowing how tough an all-out confrontation could be to the movement in Lebanon, and more broadly to the region.”
As analyst Jim Lobe points out, the Obama administration has little ability to prevent a war because it is hamstrung by its refusal to engage with either Iran or Hezbollah, and because it has allowed the Republicans to derail its efforts to improve relations with Syria.
A uniquely dangerous time, indeed.
Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net
While the Middle East—indeed, the world—is riveted by the on-going crisis around Iran’s nuclear program, the most immediate danger of a war may be on Israel’s border with Lebanon: “Exceptionally quiet and uniquely dangerous” was how the Independent’s Robert Fisk described it last month.
That quiet was broken Aug. 3 when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) got into a firefight over tree trimming that ended up killing one Israeli and three Lebanese. Both sides backed off, but events over the past several months suggest Tel Aviv may be looking for a fight.
“Israel has to be ready for any sudden provocation or outbreak of hostilities, the same way the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war was triggered over Hezbollah capturing Israeli soldiers,” Dan Dicker from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs told the Inter Press Service.
The IDF has been smarting since Hezbollah fought it to a standstill in the 2006 war. While the Israeli air force inflicted massive damage on Lebanon’s infrastructure during the 34-day conflict, even Israel’s vaunted Golani Brigade could make little headway against Hezbollah’s tough and competent militia fighting on its home turf.
For the past two years the IDF has been training for a rematch: “Should another war break out—like the one with Hezbollah almost exactly four years ago—the Golani Brigade will not be unprepared,” reads a headline in the Israeli daily, Haaretz. At the Elyakim army base in northern Israel, soldiers are training how to take bunkers and fight in villages.
The IDF has also made it clear the next war will be vastly more destructive than the 2006 conflict that killed 1200 Lebanese and inflicted $10 to $12 billion in damage. The IDF has instituted the “Dahiya Doctrine,” named after the Shiite quarter of Beirut that the Israeli air force flattened in 2006. According to Amos Harel of Haaretz, the doctrine means the IDF will “respond to rocket fire originating from Shiite villages by unleashing a vast destructive operation.”
Over the past several months the Israelis—sometimes with Washington’s help— have unleashed a steady stream of accusations that Hezbollah is preparing for war, that Syria is smuggling arms, and that Iran is up to no good.
Israeli intelligence claims that Hezbollah has up to 40,000 rockets aimed at Israel, and in April Israeli President Shimon Peres charged Syria with supplying the Shiite organization with powerful Scud missiles. Syria vigorously denies the charge, and the United Nations says there is no evidence for the accusation.
Then the Wall Street Journal reported that a “U.S. defense official” told the newspaper that Iran had deployed” sophisticated” radar in Syria as an early warning device for a possible Israeli attack on Teheran’s nuclear sites. The U.S. State Department’s Philip Crowley chimed in that the radar was a “matter of concern” because of Syria’s relationship with Hezbollah.
Added to the growing tension on Lebanon’s southern border was the exposure of an extensive Israeli intelligence operation aimed at Hezbollah that had successfully penetrated Lebanon’s telecommunication system. More than 70 suspects have been arrested and some 20 charged with treason.
According to UPI, intelligence observers say the ring was uncovered because Israel could be gearing up for war and took some chances. “It may have been the Israelis drive to amass intelligence on Hezbollah’s military capabilities ahead of renewed conflict…that prompted the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, to pull out all the stops in Lebanon when it did.”
The tree-trimming incident is an indication of how volatile the Lebanese-Israeli border is. While the Israelis claim they were on their side of the border, the UN only drew that border in 2000, and Beirut has never fully accepted it. While the UN found the tree was on Israel’s side of the border, Lebanon’s Information Minister Tarek Mitri said the section is “Lebanese territory.”
One reason for Lebanon’s sensitivity over the border is that its placement may have relevance to the enormous natural gas deposits off the coast of Gaza, Israel, Lebanon and Syria. Extended out to sea, a matter of a mile or so in the land border could affect whether Lebanon has a claim on some of the gas.
The U.S. Geological Service estimates the fields could yield up to 122 trillion cubic feet of gas, and the Israelis have already laid claim to it. When the Lebanese protested, Israel’s Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau said that Israel “will not hesitate to use force” to defend its claim on the gas field. Nabih Berri, speaker of the Lebanese parliament, responded, “Lebanon’s army, people and the resistance will be ready to thwart any attempts to steal its resources.”
Added to the tense border, natural gas deposits, and Israel’s cold war with Syria and Iran, is a UN investigation that, according to most reports, will charge Hezbollah with involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Hezbollah claims the investigation is an Israeli plot and that Tel Aviv pulled off the hit, but it has yet to produce any evidence to support that charge.
The UN charge could have a destabilizing effect on Lebanon—Hezbollah is the country’s most important political and military force—and a destabilized Lebanon is in no one’s interest, with the exception of Israel and possibly the U.S. That is why long-time antagonists Saudi Arabia and Syria huddled in Damascus and then flew to Beirut July 30 to confer with the government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri on how to avoid a Lebanese meltdown.
In the middle of all this, Israel’s supporters in the U.S. Congress decided to stick their finger in the pie and hold up $100 million in military aid to the Lebanese army. “I am concerned that the training and equipment we have provided the LAF for the purposes of counter-terrorism may in fact be used by the LAF against the Israelis,” said House Armed Service Committee chair, Ike Skelton (D-Mo). Skelton went on to say that, since the LAF collaborated with Hezbollah, the latterorganization was an “indirect recipient of our aid.”
The U.S. started aiding the LAF after the 2005 “Cedar Revolution” put a pro-Washington coalition into power and forced Syria to withdraw following the assassination of Hariri. But the reality of Lebanon’s complex and fractious politics soon reasserted itself and what finally emerged from the last round of elections was a coalition government in which Hezbollah plays a prominent role. Regardless of what the Americans think of the Shiite group, marginalizing the largest ethnic group in the country is not an option.
That the military aid the U.S. is sending could pose a threat to Israel is simply silly. Most the aid consists of body armor, uniforms and unarmored Humvees. It includes neither warplanes nor anti-aircraft, and the tanks are M41 Walker “Bulldogs” designed for the Korean War. The Walker is an under-armored, gas guzzling light tank that wouldn’t last five minutes against the Israel’s modern armor or anti-tank weapons. Indeed, one military expert remarked that he was surprised there were any M41s—a weapon more “quaint” than threatening—that still ran.
If a war does break out between Hezbollah and Israel it might spread to Syria, and even Iran. In his recent report to the Council On Foreign Relations entitled “A Third Lebanon War,” former U.S. ambassador Daniel Kurtzer argues that Israel is likely to initiate the war, and that it might “also use the conflict with Hezbollah as a catalyst and cover for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.” The former ambassador said Syria might also be a target. Kurtzer predicts a crisis sometime in the next 12 to 18 months, “but the situation could change or deteriorate rapidly.”
One explanation for Israel’s unwillingness to escalate the tree-trimming incident was because its antagonists were the LAF, not Hezbollah. Kurtzer—who was a Middle East advisor to President Obama during the last election—says Israel would rather “lure [Hezbollah] into a war.” In the tree trimming crisis the Shiite group stayed on the sidelines.
“Hezbollah is keen to avoid an escalation,” says Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group, “knowing how tough an all-out confrontation could be to the movement in Lebanon, and more broadly to the region.”
As analyst Jim Lobe points out, the Obama administration has little ability to prevent a war because it is hamstrung by its refusal to engage with either Iran or Hezbollah, and because it has allowed the Republicans to derail its efforts to improve relations with Syria.
A uniquely dangerous time, indeed.
Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net
An Interview With Naseer Aruri: Talking Peace on Israel's Terms
CounterPunch - By ASHLEY SMITH
In late August, U.S. officials announced the resumption of "peace" talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). These talks are the latest stage in a so-called "peace" process, launched with the Oslo Accords, that began nearly two decades ago.
I talked with Naseer Aruri, author of Dishonest Broker: America's Role in Israel and Palestine and Palestine and Palestinians: A Social and Political History, about whether these talks will achieve the long-deferred national aspirations of the Palestinian people.
WHY DID the U.S. and Israel push for this new round of talks?
LET'S BEGIN with some background. The U.S. envoy to the Middle East, former Sen. George Mitchell, who is in charge of trying to bring about a settlement of the Palestine/Israel conflict, has totally failed to reach any kind of agreement. He had been engaged in so-called proximity talks.
Mitchell would go to Jerusalem and sit with the Israelis, then he would go to Ramallah and sit with the Palestinians, and he would try to see if he could bring the two together. There were no results and nothing to really brag about. So the U.S. decided that it was necessary to change the approach, and it came up with the idea of direct negotiations.
These negotiations won't make any difference. In fact, if they do make any difference, they will only make things worse.
The Obama administration has agreed to Israeli terms for the talks. The president recently took a very different position than he did in previous meetings with the Israelis in March and May. At that time, Netanyahu was in a weak position, but at the July meetings, Netanyahu was in a good position to get the U.S. to agree to Israel's conditions for talks.
The July meeting between Obama and Netanyahu revealed the weakness on the part of Obama. The whole ambience was different: the press was allowed in; Mr. Obama praised Mr. Netanyahu--for reasons I don't know--for aiding the "peace process"; and they agreed that there would be no preconditions for peace talks.
Yet in the July meeting, they in fact created preconditions. They want the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which means that the million and a half Palestinians who live in Israel will move from second-class citizens to third-class citizens. It's like saying that the United States should be recognized as a Christian state, and so the non-Christians are not part of it and not included in the distribution of rights.
Netanyahu also managed to get Obama to drop the request to end the moratorium on building new settlements. So Netanyahu managed to get preconditions while stymieing Palestinian efforts to set preconditions, such as compliance with UN resolutions--in particular Resolution 242, on the need to end the occupation.
In agreeing to Israeli terms, the Obama administration departed from the global consensus. You can see this in the contrast between statements from the U.S. about the talks and those of the so-called Quartet--the U.S., the UN, Russia and the European Union.
The Quartet's position is much less destructive than that of the U.S. You find nothing in the U.S. position that calls for an end to the occupation. You find nothing that affirms the Palestinian right to self-determination.
On the other hand, the Quartet position speaks of the end of the occupation, which is remarkable compared to the U.S. position. However, the Israelis are in the habit of getting a concession that in talks and negotiations, the Americans will have more say than other parties--in this case, the Quartet. They have done this in many such talks held over the past 20 years.
It's hard to believe that a Palestinian leader would be drawn to talks loaded with new conditions that are not consistent with the global consensus on Palestinian rights and on how to solve the issue and bring about peace in the region. It does not bode well for the Palestinians.
WHAT EXPLAINS the shift in the Obama administration's position from making demands on Israelis to now basically rubberstamping the Israeli position coming into the talks?
OBAMA BEGAN his presidency with a relatively benign approach to the problem, an approach that was not inconsistent with the global consensus, which says end the occupation and create two states based on equality. He gave speeches addressed to the Islamic world and chose two important Islamic spots--one in Cairo, Egypt, and the other in Istanbul, Turkey. His message to the Muslim world was that the U.S. wants to have good relations with you and is not at war with you about terrorism.
He went so far as to criticize Israel's settlement policy. Obama even gained some support from the U.S. military. Gen. David Petraeus went so far as to imply that Israel is not exactly a strategic asset. Those were not his exact words, but the meaning was clear--that Israel was costly to the U.S. in the Middle East. Israel makes more and more enemies in the region.
The military's position has a lot to do with the weakened condition the U.S. is in throughout the Middle East after its disastrous occupation of Iraq. They are concerned about alienating Arab states and the potential of causing more problems in the region at a time when the U.S. is not in a position to act.
But gradually, the Obama position started to wane under pressure coming from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which supported Netanyahu at least 100 percent. Basically, Obama knuckled under. He moved from talking about ending the settlements to now praising Netanyahu, the defender of the settlements, for making a contribution to the peace process.
Most likely, Obama feared that his pressure on Israel would become a domestic issue and cost Democrats support in the upcoming congressional elections. AIPAC demonstrated to him that he couldn't really keep pushing Netanyahu to comply with international law and the global consensus. Obama then capitulated and accepted Netanyahu's preconditions for the current talks.
WHAT DO the Israelis hope to accomplish through the talks?
THEY WANT to end this problem with a major victory for the Zionist movement and for Israel. Netanyahu thinks he can sell Mitchell and possibly the Palestinians an agreement that is based on the creation of a Palestinian Bantustan similar to the Bantustans that apartheid South Africa imposed on that country's Black majority.
Netanyahu does not intend to relinquish even a particle of sovereignty in the area that lies between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. He knows there is an Israeli consensus that includes the left, right and center, which is that throughout this area, there is room for only one sovereign state--Israel.
Of course, they might allow the Palestinians to have a "state." Everyone will call it a state, but it ain't a state--it will be a Bantustan with no real sovereignty. It will have the trappings of a state, such as uniforms, postage stamps and a flag--things that symbolize a state--but it will not look that different from the PA today.
The PA has no less than 60 undersecretaries in the administration, and you wonder for what? What is all this bureaucracy doing? In fact, there is no real sovereign state that they are overseeing. The Palestinians at best would be getting the trappings of a state and continue to suffer the denial of their right to self-determination.
WHY HAS Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to talks that are really on Israeli terms?
ABBAS' STRATEGY from the first day he succeeded Arafat as the president of the PA has been to depend on the Americans. You can see this strategy in every policy he has adopted. For example, when the Israelis build more settlements, he registers a complaint with Washington.
Of course, he knows very well that nothing will come of it. Abbas knows his position is very weak, so he thinks that he cannot dare to stand up against the Americans. So when Mitchell and Obama want him in direct negotiations with Israel, he feels that he cannot say no.
Yet he is in a dilemma. He is caught between the Americans and most of the Palestinian people and their political representatives, including his closest allies in his party, Fatah. A good number of the latter are now saying that these negotiations are a disaster in the making. Outside of Fatah, there is even more opposition. All sorts of forces have come together to plan demonstrations in Ramallah against the talks. These demonstrations will coincide with the opening of the so-called negotiations on September 2.
Abbas has responded by trying to obstruct the opposition. For example, his intelligence services tried to disrupt a meeting in Ramallah called by figures from the opposition, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the People's Party (which used to be the Communist Party), and the undifferentiated public.
The forces in the meeting all voiced opposition to the negotiations and are the ones who have called the demonstration against the negotiations. Abbas packed the meeting with thugs from the PA's Intelligence Services. They whistled, heckled and prevented people from speaking. They effectively stopped the meeting from happening. In response, people left the hall and went to the streets in a demonstration. Abbas then backtracked and promised to open a question of inquiry into the events on the insistence of the opposition.
WHAT HAS been the response of Hamas in Gaza to the talks?
HAMAS DECLARED publicly that it is opposed to these talks. It urged the people not to support the talks and not to participate in anything that might benefit this endeavor. This position is unequivocal, and Hamas took it as soon as Abbas decided to accept the negotiations and their Israeli preconditions.
To my knowledge, none of the Quartet members has even agreed to invite Hamas to the talks. Abbas himself has no interest in having Hamas join the talks. So there is a consensus between the big powers and Abbas to exclude Hamas. Thus, the U.S. is orchestrating talks with only half the Palestinians represented. Beyond that, most of the Palestinians are expressing their misgivings about the whole process. So Mahmoud Abbas is going to the talks with hardly any Palestinian backing.
THE TALKS themselves seem like an effort to legitimize a sham two-state solution. How do you see the increasing demand for a one-state solution fitting into this situation?
IN MANY Palestinian circles, the idea of a single state has gained ground in the past year and a half. At the same time, we find that the idea is gaining ground among the Israeli right wing. This is pretty amazing. Most people have been astonished that the right wing is calling for a single state. But we have to keep in mind that the right wing in Israel has embraced a single state not based on equality.
Their single state would in fact continue the occupation. It would extend the status quo under the name of a single state. On the other side, more and more Palestinians now advocate a single bi-national state with civil equality and the right of Palestinian refugees to return as the only solution. So we have a situation of dueling concepts of a single state.
More ideas and strategies for Palestinians will hopefully come out of the demonstration on September 2 in Ramallah. We should recall the First and Second Intifadas. We have seen countless similar talks that produced very few results (and sometimes bad results) for Palestinians. And at the same time, they produced a new resistance. The First Intifada (1987-1993) produced a brand new approach to the political struggle for national Palestinian rights. We need to be on the watch for statements, ideas and forces emanating from the demonstrations in Ramallah.
WHAT DO you think will be the likely result of the talks?
I WOULDN'T be surprised if the U.S. delegation pushes for a settlement that would be signed, but defer implementation over a period stretching for seven or eight years. That is what they tried in the Annapolis meeting. In other words, they will collect the signatures, but are not in a position to implement anything because the Israelis are not going to agree to make Jerusalem the capital of two states.
They are not going to agree to let the refugees go back to their homes. And they are not going to agree with full sovereignty and full contiguity for the Palestinian state. So I would not be surprised if they postpone these parts of the discussion. There may be signatures and celebrations, but nothing substantive will take place and nothing that could be described as a diplomatic breakthrough. And the entire process is not set up in the interests of Palestinians.
HOW SHOULD the newly emerging movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) respond to the talks taking place?
I THINK this movement would be inclined to oppose the negotiations. They know that these negotiations are at variance with their goals and objectives. The negotiations are designed to establish a Palestinian Bantustan while the BDS movement's goals are the liberation of the Palestinian people based on increasingly isolating Israel and forcing it to concede to Palestinian rights to self-determination.
So the BDS movement should grow and prosper because it is going to have more and more support from what seems an opposition that is reforming and trying to reestablish itself inside Palestine. The international BDS movement hopefully will be able to link up with the new opposition expressed in the demonstrations in Ramallah against the talks. We need to cultivate solidarity between the international BDS movement with any emergent Palestinian opposition to Abbas and these talks.
In late August, U.S. officials announced the resumption of "peace" talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). These talks are the latest stage in a so-called "peace" process, launched with the Oslo Accords, that began nearly two decades ago.
I talked with Naseer Aruri, author of Dishonest Broker: America's Role in Israel and Palestine and Palestine and Palestinians: A Social and Political History, about whether these talks will achieve the long-deferred national aspirations of the Palestinian people.
WHY DID the U.S. and Israel push for this new round of talks?
LET'S BEGIN with some background. The U.S. envoy to the Middle East, former Sen. George Mitchell, who is in charge of trying to bring about a settlement of the Palestine/Israel conflict, has totally failed to reach any kind of agreement. He had been engaged in so-called proximity talks.
Mitchell would go to Jerusalem and sit with the Israelis, then he would go to Ramallah and sit with the Palestinians, and he would try to see if he could bring the two together. There were no results and nothing to really brag about. So the U.S. decided that it was necessary to change the approach, and it came up with the idea of direct negotiations.
These negotiations won't make any difference. In fact, if they do make any difference, they will only make things worse.
The Obama administration has agreed to Israeli terms for the talks. The president recently took a very different position than he did in previous meetings with the Israelis in March and May. At that time, Netanyahu was in a weak position, but at the July meetings, Netanyahu was in a good position to get the U.S. to agree to Israel's conditions for talks.
The July meeting between Obama and Netanyahu revealed the weakness on the part of Obama. The whole ambience was different: the press was allowed in; Mr. Obama praised Mr. Netanyahu--for reasons I don't know--for aiding the "peace process"; and they agreed that there would be no preconditions for peace talks.
Yet in the July meeting, they in fact created preconditions. They want the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which means that the million and a half Palestinians who live in Israel will move from second-class citizens to third-class citizens. It's like saying that the United States should be recognized as a Christian state, and so the non-Christians are not part of it and not included in the distribution of rights.
Netanyahu also managed to get Obama to drop the request to end the moratorium on building new settlements. So Netanyahu managed to get preconditions while stymieing Palestinian efforts to set preconditions, such as compliance with UN resolutions--in particular Resolution 242, on the need to end the occupation.
In agreeing to Israeli terms, the Obama administration departed from the global consensus. You can see this in the contrast between statements from the U.S. about the talks and those of the so-called Quartet--the U.S., the UN, Russia and the European Union.
The Quartet's position is much less destructive than that of the U.S. You find nothing in the U.S. position that calls for an end to the occupation. You find nothing that affirms the Palestinian right to self-determination.
On the other hand, the Quartet position speaks of the end of the occupation, which is remarkable compared to the U.S. position. However, the Israelis are in the habit of getting a concession that in talks and negotiations, the Americans will have more say than other parties--in this case, the Quartet. They have done this in many such talks held over the past 20 years.
It's hard to believe that a Palestinian leader would be drawn to talks loaded with new conditions that are not consistent with the global consensus on Palestinian rights and on how to solve the issue and bring about peace in the region. It does not bode well for the Palestinians.
WHAT EXPLAINS the shift in the Obama administration's position from making demands on Israelis to now basically rubberstamping the Israeli position coming into the talks?
OBAMA BEGAN his presidency with a relatively benign approach to the problem, an approach that was not inconsistent with the global consensus, which says end the occupation and create two states based on equality. He gave speeches addressed to the Islamic world and chose two important Islamic spots--one in Cairo, Egypt, and the other in Istanbul, Turkey. His message to the Muslim world was that the U.S. wants to have good relations with you and is not at war with you about terrorism.
He went so far as to criticize Israel's settlement policy. Obama even gained some support from the U.S. military. Gen. David Petraeus went so far as to imply that Israel is not exactly a strategic asset. Those were not his exact words, but the meaning was clear--that Israel was costly to the U.S. in the Middle East. Israel makes more and more enemies in the region.
The military's position has a lot to do with the weakened condition the U.S. is in throughout the Middle East after its disastrous occupation of Iraq. They are concerned about alienating Arab states and the potential of causing more problems in the region at a time when the U.S. is not in a position to act.
But gradually, the Obama position started to wane under pressure coming from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which supported Netanyahu at least 100 percent. Basically, Obama knuckled under. He moved from talking about ending the settlements to now praising Netanyahu, the defender of the settlements, for making a contribution to the peace process.
Most likely, Obama feared that his pressure on Israel would become a domestic issue and cost Democrats support in the upcoming congressional elections. AIPAC demonstrated to him that he couldn't really keep pushing Netanyahu to comply with international law and the global consensus. Obama then capitulated and accepted Netanyahu's preconditions for the current talks.
WHAT DO the Israelis hope to accomplish through the talks?
THEY WANT to end this problem with a major victory for the Zionist movement and for Israel. Netanyahu thinks he can sell Mitchell and possibly the Palestinians an agreement that is based on the creation of a Palestinian Bantustan similar to the Bantustans that apartheid South Africa imposed on that country's Black majority.
Netanyahu does not intend to relinquish even a particle of sovereignty in the area that lies between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. He knows there is an Israeli consensus that includes the left, right and center, which is that throughout this area, there is room for only one sovereign state--Israel.
Of course, they might allow the Palestinians to have a "state." Everyone will call it a state, but it ain't a state--it will be a Bantustan with no real sovereignty. It will have the trappings of a state, such as uniforms, postage stamps and a flag--things that symbolize a state--but it will not look that different from the PA today.
The PA has no less than 60 undersecretaries in the administration, and you wonder for what? What is all this bureaucracy doing? In fact, there is no real sovereign state that they are overseeing. The Palestinians at best would be getting the trappings of a state and continue to suffer the denial of their right to self-determination.
WHY HAS Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to talks that are really on Israeli terms?
ABBAS' STRATEGY from the first day he succeeded Arafat as the president of the PA has been to depend on the Americans. You can see this strategy in every policy he has adopted. For example, when the Israelis build more settlements, he registers a complaint with Washington.
Of course, he knows very well that nothing will come of it. Abbas knows his position is very weak, so he thinks that he cannot dare to stand up against the Americans. So when Mitchell and Obama want him in direct negotiations with Israel, he feels that he cannot say no.
Yet he is in a dilemma. He is caught between the Americans and most of the Palestinian people and their political representatives, including his closest allies in his party, Fatah. A good number of the latter are now saying that these negotiations are a disaster in the making. Outside of Fatah, there is even more opposition. All sorts of forces have come together to plan demonstrations in Ramallah against the talks. These demonstrations will coincide with the opening of the so-called negotiations on September 2.
Abbas has responded by trying to obstruct the opposition. For example, his intelligence services tried to disrupt a meeting in Ramallah called by figures from the opposition, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the People's Party (which used to be the Communist Party), and the undifferentiated public.
The forces in the meeting all voiced opposition to the negotiations and are the ones who have called the demonstration against the negotiations. Abbas packed the meeting with thugs from the PA's Intelligence Services. They whistled, heckled and prevented people from speaking. They effectively stopped the meeting from happening. In response, people left the hall and went to the streets in a demonstration. Abbas then backtracked and promised to open a question of inquiry into the events on the insistence of the opposition.
WHAT HAS been the response of Hamas in Gaza to the talks?
HAMAS DECLARED publicly that it is opposed to these talks. It urged the people not to support the talks and not to participate in anything that might benefit this endeavor. This position is unequivocal, and Hamas took it as soon as Abbas decided to accept the negotiations and their Israeli preconditions.
To my knowledge, none of the Quartet members has even agreed to invite Hamas to the talks. Abbas himself has no interest in having Hamas join the talks. So there is a consensus between the big powers and Abbas to exclude Hamas. Thus, the U.S. is orchestrating talks with only half the Palestinians represented. Beyond that, most of the Palestinians are expressing their misgivings about the whole process. So Mahmoud Abbas is going to the talks with hardly any Palestinian backing.
THE TALKS themselves seem like an effort to legitimize a sham two-state solution. How do you see the increasing demand for a one-state solution fitting into this situation?
IN MANY Palestinian circles, the idea of a single state has gained ground in the past year and a half. At the same time, we find that the idea is gaining ground among the Israeli right wing. This is pretty amazing. Most people have been astonished that the right wing is calling for a single state. But we have to keep in mind that the right wing in Israel has embraced a single state not based on equality.
Their single state would in fact continue the occupation. It would extend the status quo under the name of a single state. On the other side, more and more Palestinians now advocate a single bi-national state with civil equality and the right of Palestinian refugees to return as the only solution. So we have a situation of dueling concepts of a single state.
More ideas and strategies for Palestinians will hopefully come out of the demonstration on September 2 in Ramallah. We should recall the First and Second Intifadas. We have seen countless similar talks that produced very few results (and sometimes bad results) for Palestinians. And at the same time, they produced a new resistance. The First Intifada (1987-1993) produced a brand new approach to the political struggle for national Palestinian rights. We need to be on the watch for statements, ideas and forces emanating from the demonstrations in Ramallah.
WHAT DO you think will be the likely result of the talks?
I WOULDN'T be surprised if the U.S. delegation pushes for a settlement that would be signed, but defer implementation over a period stretching for seven or eight years. That is what they tried in the Annapolis meeting. In other words, they will collect the signatures, but are not in a position to implement anything because the Israelis are not going to agree to make Jerusalem the capital of two states.
They are not going to agree to let the refugees go back to their homes. And they are not going to agree with full sovereignty and full contiguity for the Palestinian state. So I would not be surprised if they postpone these parts of the discussion. There may be signatures and celebrations, but nothing substantive will take place and nothing that could be described as a diplomatic breakthrough. And the entire process is not set up in the interests of Palestinians.
HOW SHOULD the newly emerging movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) respond to the talks taking place?
I THINK this movement would be inclined to oppose the negotiations. They know that these negotiations are at variance with their goals and objectives. The negotiations are designed to establish a Palestinian Bantustan while the BDS movement's goals are the liberation of the Palestinian people based on increasingly isolating Israel and forcing it to concede to Palestinian rights to self-determination.
So the BDS movement should grow and prosper because it is going to have more and more support from what seems an opposition that is reforming and trying to reestablish itself inside Palestine. The international BDS movement hopefully will be able to link up with the new opposition expressed in the demonstrations in Ramallah against the talks. We need to cultivate solidarity between the international BDS movement with any emergent Palestinian opposition to Abbas and these talks.
Privatizing war: US has more contractors than uniformed personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan
CounterPunch - By BILL QUIGLEY and LAURA RAYMOND
Another false ending to the Iraq war is being declared. Nearly seven years after George Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, President Obama has just given a major address to mark the withdrawal of all but 50,000 combat troops from Iraq. But, while thousands of US troops are marching out, thousands of additional private military contractors (PMCs) are marching in. The number of armed security contractors in Iraq will more than double in the coming months.
While the mainstream media is debating whether Iraq can be declared a victory or not there is virtually no discussion regarding this surge in contractors. Meanwhile, serious questions about the accountability of private military contractors remain.
In the past decade the United States has dramatically shifted the way in which it wages war – fewer soldiers and more contractors.
Last month, the Congressional Research Service reported that the Department of Defense (DoD) workforce has 19% more contractors (207,600) than uniformed personnel (175,000) in Iraq and Afghanistan, making the wars in these two countries the most outsourced and privatized in U.S. history.
According to a recent State Department briefing to Congress’s Commission on Wartime Contracting, from now on, instead of soldiers, private military contractors will be disposing of improvised explosive devices, recovering killed and wounded personnel, downed aircraft and damaged vehicles, policing Baghdad’s International Zone, providing convoy security, and clearing travel routes, among other security-related duties.
Worse, the oversight of contractors will rest with other contractors. As has been the case in Afghanistan, contractors will be sought to provide “operations-center monitoring of private security contractors (PSCs)” as well as “PSC inspection and accountability services.”
The Commission on Wartime Contracting, a body established by Congress to study the trends in war contracting, raised fundamental questions in a July 12, 2010 “special report” about the troop drawdown and the increased use of contractors:
This massive buildup of contractors in Iraq takes place at a time when the question of contractor immunity – or impunity - is at a critical point.
In one example, since 2004 our organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights, has been demanding- in US courts and through advocacy- that private military contractors who commit grave human rights abuses be held accountable. Contractors have responded by claiming something known as the “government contractor defense,” arguing that because they were contracted by the US government to perform a duty they shouldn’t be able to be held liable for any alleged violations that occured while purportedly performing those duties – even when the alleged violations are war crimes. Contractors also argue that the cases CCR has brought raise “political questions” that are inappropriate for the courts to consider. These technical legal arguments have been the focus of human rights lawsuits for years – and so far the question of the contractors’ actual actions have not been reviewed by the federal courts.
One case that should be watched closely this fall is Saleh v. Titan, a case brought by CCR and private attorneys against CACI and L-3 Services (formerly Titan), two private military contractors who military investigations implicated as having played a part in the torture at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers throughout Iraq.
Saleh v. Titan was filed six years ago on behalf of Iraqis who were tortured and otherwise seriously abused while detained and currently includes hundreds of plaintiffs, including many individuals who were detained at the notorious “hard site” at Abu Ghraib. The plaintiffs in Saleh v. Titan, many of whom still suffer from physical and psychological harm, are simply seeking their day in court, to tell an American jury what happened to them.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed the case last
September and the Supreme Court will be deciding whether or not to take the case this fall. This and a handful of other cases will signal how civil lawsuits on behalf of those injured or killed by contractors will be handled in US courts –and decide whether victims of egregious human rights violations will obtain some form of redress and whether contractors who violate the law will be held accountable or be granted impunity.
And how will human rights abuse by contractors be handled by criminal prosecutors in the coming years? Given its track record, it is safe to say that Iraqi civilians cannot count on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to prosecute many contractor abuse cases. The DOJ was given an “F” by Human Rights First in their 2008 report Ending Private Contractor Impunity: Report Cards on the U.S. Government Response since Nisoor Square. The DOJ has never pursued criminal prosecutions for contractor involvement in the crimes of Abu Ghraib; something CCR still demands today.
Iraq’s Parliament signed the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in 2008 which gave it the power to prosecute some US contractors who commit crimes against Iraqi civilians. We can all hope Iraq’s justice system will be able to overcome the political challenges involved in prosecuting US companies or US contractors and other foreigners in Iraq’s courts. But even that will not stop the common practice of contractor companies simply pulling their employees out of the country when a crime happens.
With these fundamental questions left unanswered and legal loopholes left open, thousands more armed contractors will soon be filing into Iraq, onto the streets where Iraqis work, study and go about their everyday lives.
As Senator, Obama called for less dependence on private military contractors and for accountability when they committed human rights abuses. He told Defense News in 2008 that he was “troubled by the use of private contractors when it comes to potential armed engagements.” Senator Clinton co-sponsored legislation to phase out the use of security contractors in war zones.
As President, Obama pretends the occupation of Iraq is ending with the withdrawal of combat troops while he and Secretary of State Clinton quietly hire a shadow army to replace them.
For more information about Saleh v. Titan, please see: http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/saleh-v-titan
Bill Quilgley and Laura Raymond work at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Contact Bill at quigley77@gmail.com and Laura at lauraraymond21@gmail.com
Another false ending to the Iraq war is being declared. Nearly seven years after George Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, President Obama has just given a major address to mark the withdrawal of all but 50,000 combat troops from Iraq. But, while thousands of US troops are marching out, thousands of additional private military contractors (PMCs) are marching in. The number of armed security contractors in Iraq will more than double in the coming months.
While the mainstream media is debating whether Iraq can be declared a victory or not there is virtually no discussion regarding this surge in contractors. Meanwhile, serious questions about the accountability of private military contractors remain.
In the past decade the United States has dramatically shifted the way in which it wages war – fewer soldiers and more contractors.
Last month, the Congressional Research Service reported that the Department of Defense (DoD) workforce has 19% more contractors (207,600) than uniformed personnel (175,000) in Iraq and Afghanistan, making the wars in these two countries the most outsourced and privatized in U.S. history.
According to a recent State Department briefing to Congress’s Commission on Wartime Contracting, from now on, instead of soldiers, private military contractors will be disposing of improvised explosive devices, recovering killed and wounded personnel, downed aircraft and damaged vehicles, policing Baghdad’s International Zone, providing convoy security, and clearing travel routes, among other security-related duties.
Worse, the oversight of contractors will rest with other contractors. As has been the case in Afghanistan, contractors will be sought to provide “operations-center monitoring of private security contractors (PSCs)” as well as “PSC inspection and accountability services.”
The Commission on Wartime Contracting, a body established by Congress to study the trends in war contracting, raised fundamental questions in a July 12, 2010 “special report” about the troop drawdown and the increased use of contractors:
“An additional concern is presented by the nature of the functions that contractors might be supplying in place of U.S. military personnel. What if an aircraft-recovery team or a supply convoy comes under fire? Who determines whether contract guards engage the assailants and whether a quick-reaction force is sent to assist them? What if the assailants are firing from an inhabited village or a hospital? Who weighs the risks of innocent casualties, directs the action, and applies the rules for the use of force?We’d like to pose an additional question to the ones listed above: when human rights abuses by private military contractors occur in the next phase of the occupation of Iraq, which certainly will happen, what is the plan for justice and accountability?
“Apart from raising questions about inherently governmental functions, such scenarios could require decisions related to the risk of innocent casualties, frayed relations with the Iraqi government and populace, and broad undermining of U.S. objectives.”
This massive buildup of contractors in Iraq takes place at a time when the question of contractor immunity – or impunity - is at a critical point.
In one example, since 2004 our organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights, has been demanding- in US courts and through advocacy- that private military contractors who commit grave human rights abuses be held accountable. Contractors have responded by claiming something known as the “government contractor defense,” arguing that because they were contracted by the US government to perform a duty they shouldn’t be able to be held liable for any alleged violations that occured while purportedly performing those duties – even when the alleged violations are war crimes. Contractors also argue that the cases CCR has brought raise “political questions” that are inappropriate for the courts to consider. These technical legal arguments have been the focus of human rights lawsuits for years – and so far the question of the contractors’ actual actions have not been reviewed by the federal courts.
One case that should be watched closely this fall is Saleh v. Titan, a case brought by CCR and private attorneys against CACI and L-3 Services (formerly Titan), two private military contractors who military investigations implicated as having played a part in the torture at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers throughout Iraq.
Saleh v. Titan was filed six years ago on behalf of Iraqis who were tortured and otherwise seriously abused while detained and currently includes hundreds of plaintiffs, including many individuals who were detained at the notorious “hard site” at Abu Ghraib. The plaintiffs in Saleh v. Titan, many of whom still suffer from physical and psychological harm, are simply seeking their day in court, to tell an American jury what happened to them.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed the case last
September and the Supreme Court will be deciding whether or not to take the case this fall. This and a handful of other cases will signal how civil lawsuits on behalf of those injured or killed by contractors will be handled in US courts –and decide whether victims of egregious human rights violations will obtain some form of redress and whether contractors who violate the law will be held accountable or be granted impunity.
And how will human rights abuse by contractors be handled by criminal prosecutors in the coming years? Given its track record, it is safe to say that Iraqi civilians cannot count on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to prosecute many contractor abuse cases. The DOJ was given an “F” by Human Rights First in their 2008 report Ending Private Contractor Impunity: Report Cards on the U.S. Government Response since Nisoor Square. The DOJ has never pursued criminal prosecutions for contractor involvement in the crimes of Abu Ghraib; something CCR still demands today.
Iraq’s Parliament signed the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in 2008 which gave it the power to prosecute some US contractors who commit crimes against Iraqi civilians. We can all hope Iraq’s justice system will be able to overcome the political challenges involved in prosecuting US companies or US contractors and other foreigners in Iraq’s courts. But even that will not stop the common practice of contractor companies simply pulling their employees out of the country when a crime happens.
With these fundamental questions left unanswered and legal loopholes left open, thousands more armed contractors will soon be filing into Iraq, onto the streets where Iraqis work, study and go about their everyday lives.
As Senator, Obama called for less dependence on private military contractors and for accountability when they committed human rights abuses. He told Defense News in 2008 that he was “troubled by the use of private contractors when it comes to potential armed engagements.” Senator Clinton co-sponsored legislation to phase out the use of security contractors in war zones.
As President, Obama pretends the occupation of Iraq is ending with the withdrawal of combat troops while he and Secretary of State Clinton quietly hire a shadow army to replace them.
For more information about Saleh v. Titan, please see: http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/saleh-v-titan
Bill Quilgley and Laura Raymond work at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Contact Bill at quigley77@gmail.com and Laura at lauraraymond21@gmail.com
Claim for Native Title Threatens Jewish State: Documents prove Bedouin own much of Israel
CounterPunch - By JONATHAN COOK
Huri al Uqbi’s small cinderblock home in a ramshackle neighbourhood of Hura, a Bedouin town in Israel’s Negev desert, hardly looks like the epicentre of a legal struggle that some observers say threatens Israel’s Jewish character.
Inside, the 68-year-old Bedouin activist has stacks of bulging folders of tattered and browning documents, many older than the state of Israel itself, that he hopes will overturn decades of harsh government policy towards the Negev’s 180,000 Bedouin.
For the past few months, Mr al Uqbi has been in court pursuing a case that has pitted his own expert witnesses against those of the state.
Mr al Uqbi claims the right to return to a patch of 82 hectares in the Negev, close to the regional capital, Beersheva, that he says has belonged to his family for generations. But as both the government and the judge in the case, Sarah Dovrat, seem to appreciate, much more is at stake.
Should Mr al Uqbi win his case, tens of thousands of Bedouin, who long ago had their properties confiscated, could be entitled to repossess their agricultural lands or seek enormous sums in compensation.
Theoretically, it might also open the door to claims by millions of Palestinian refugees scattered across the Middle East.
The Negev, constituting nearly two-thirds of Israel’s territory, has been almost entirely nationalised by the state, with the land held in trust for world Jewry. But the Bedouin have outstanding legal claims on nearly 80,000 hectares of ancestral property.
Tom Segev, an Israeli historian, observed that the historical documents presented by Mr al Uqbi “raise a fundamental question: Who does this country belong to?”
The lawyers and witnesses in the case, Mr Segev added, were not just “arguing over a plot of land. They are arguing over the justness of Zionism”.
Such high stakes may explain why over the past few weeks, as Ms Dovrat has been considering her verdict, the authorities have sped up plans to plant over Mr al Uqbi’s land a “peace forest”, paid for by an international Zionist charity called the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
Until now the main obstacle in their way has been a small village, Al Araqib, re-established a decade ago by several Bedouin families who, rather than pursue Mr al Uqbi’s legal route, have simply reoccupied the land.
Last week, about 300 Bedouin were again evicted when the police destroyed the village’s 40 homes for the fourth time in less than a month.
Mr al Uqbi, a father of eight, said that five years ago – after years of challenging the land confiscation with protests and appeals to the authorities – he launched the lengthy legal process that has finally reached the Beersheva court.
“I realised that the authorities were simply waiting for me to die. When all the old people are gone, who will be left to come and testify?”
Mr al Uqbi said his father, Sheikh Suleiman al Uqbi, and the other villagers were “tricked” by the authorities in 1951. They were told that they would have to relocate “temporarily” while military exercises were carried out in the area.
Mr al-Uqbi, who was nine at the time, remembers the tribe being forcibly moved to a new site, next to Hura, where they have lived ever since, although their neighbourhood has never been recognised by the state.
All these years later, Mr al Uqbi’s home, like his neighbours’, is still illegal, and they are all denied water, electricity and other services.
The only option they had been offered to make their lives legal again, Mr al Uqbi said, was to move to one of seven government “townships” set up in the 1970s. All are sunk at the very bottom of Israel’s social and economic tables.
The families have refused, protesting that they would also have to renounce both their claim to their ancestral lands and a pastoral and agricultural way of life known by the Bedouin for centuries. The Uqbi tribe’s fate is far from unique. Tens of thousands of other Bedouin were also moved by the army and have been faced with a similar, stark choice.
Today, 90,000 Bedouin, or half the Negev’s Bedouin population, live in unrecognised communities, according to a human rights group.
Mr al Uqbi’s court case has set two noted Israeli geography professors in sharp opposition.
The state’s position is represented by Ruth Kark, of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who claims that the Negev Bedouin were nomads with no ties to the land. Instead, she argues, most of the Negev was considered “mawat”, or dead, and its ownership passed to Israel in 1948 as the new sovereign ruler.
On these grounds, the state has long classified the Bedouin as “trespassers” and “invaders”.
But Mr al Uqbi’s expert, Oren Yiftachel, of Ben Gurion University in Beersheva, has countered that there was a well-established system of Bedouin land ownership and crop cultivation in the Negev long before Israel’s creation.
He says Bedouin deeds – though never formally recorded – were recognised by the Ottomans, the British and even early Zionist organisations such as the JNF, which bought land from the Bedouin.
A 1921 document from the public records office in London unearthed by Mr Yiftachel shows that Winston Churchill, the colonies minister, signed an agreement with Bedouin in the Beersheva area that exempted them from registering their lands and set up a special tribal court to settle land disputes.
Mr al Uqbi has kept a large store of documents passed on to him, showing that his father cultivated crops on the land and paid regular tithes on the profits to the Ottoman and British authorities.
He also has a copy of the treaty signed in 1948 between 16 Bedouin tribes, including the Uqbi, and the new Israeli army, pledging loyalty in return for a guarantee that they could continue living on their lands.
Mr Yiftachel said the legal battles of the Bedouin should be compared to those waged by other indigenous peoples in countries such as Australia, Canada, South Africa, India and Brazil. “Like them, they are fighting for recognition of ‘native title’,” he said.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East”Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net. (Pluto Press) and “
Huri al Uqbi’s small cinderblock home in a ramshackle neighbourhood of Hura, a Bedouin town in Israel’s Negev desert, hardly looks like the epicentre of a legal struggle that some observers say threatens Israel’s Jewish character.
Inside, the 68-year-old Bedouin activist has stacks of bulging folders of tattered and browning documents, many older than the state of Israel itself, that he hopes will overturn decades of harsh government policy towards the Negev’s 180,000 Bedouin.
For the past few months, Mr al Uqbi has been in court pursuing a case that has pitted his own expert witnesses against those of the state.
Mr al Uqbi claims the right to return to a patch of 82 hectares in the Negev, close to the regional capital, Beersheva, that he says has belonged to his family for generations. But as both the government and the judge in the case, Sarah Dovrat, seem to appreciate, much more is at stake.
Should Mr al Uqbi win his case, tens of thousands of Bedouin, who long ago had their properties confiscated, could be entitled to repossess their agricultural lands or seek enormous sums in compensation.
Theoretically, it might also open the door to claims by millions of Palestinian refugees scattered across the Middle East.
The Negev, constituting nearly two-thirds of Israel’s territory, has been almost entirely nationalised by the state, with the land held in trust for world Jewry. But the Bedouin have outstanding legal claims on nearly 80,000 hectares of ancestral property.
Tom Segev, an Israeli historian, observed that the historical documents presented by Mr al Uqbi “raise a fundamental question: Who does this country belong to?”
The lawyers and witnesses in the case, Mr Segev added, were not just “arguing over a plot of land. They are arguing over the justness of Zionism”.
Such high stakes may explain why over the past few weeks, as Ms Dovrat has been considering her verdict, the authorities have sped up plans to plant over Mr al Uqbi’s land a “peace forest”, paid for by an international Zionist charity called the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
Until now the main obstacle in their way has been a small village, Al Araqib, re-established a decade ago by several Bedouin families who, rather than pursue Mr al Uqbi’s legal route, have simply reoccupied the land.
Last week, about 300 Bedouin were again evicted when the police destroyed the village’s 40 homes for the fourth time in less than a month.
Mr al Uqbi, a father of eight, said that five years ago – after years of challenging the land confiscation with protests and appeals to the authorities – he launched the lengthy legal process that has finally reached the Beersheva court.
“I realised that the authorities were simply waiting for me to die. When all the old people are gone, who will be left to come and testify?”
Mr al Uqbi said his father, Sheikh Suleiman al Uqbi, and the other villagers were “tricked” by the authorities in 1951. They were told that they would have to relocate “temporarily” while military exercises were carried out in the area.
Mr al-Uqbi, who was nine at the time, remembers the tribe being forcibly moved to a new site, next to Hura, where they have lived ever since, although their neighbourhood has never been recognised by the state.
All these years later, Mr al Uqbi’s home, like his neighbours’, is still illegal, and they are all denied water, electricity and other services.
The only option they had been offered to make their lives legal again, Mr al Uqbi said, was to move to one of seven government “townships” set up in the 1970s. All are sunk at the very bottom of Israel’s social and economic tables.
The families have refused, protesting that they would also have to renounce both their claim to their ancestral lands and a pastoral and agricultural way of life known by the Bedouin for centuries. The Uqbi tribe’s fate is far from unique. Tens of thousands of other Bedouin were also moved by the army and have been faced with a similar, stark choice.
Today, 90,000 Bedouin, or half the Negev’s Bedouin population, live in unrecognised communities, according to a human rights group.
Mr al Uqbi’s court case has set two noted Israeli geography professors in sharp opposition.
The state’s position is represented by Ruth Kark, of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who claims that the Negev Bedouin were nomads with no ties to the land. Instead, she argues, most of the Negev was considered “mawat”, or dead, and its ownership passed to Israel in 1948 as the new sovereign ruler.
On these grounds, the state has long classified the Bedouin as “trespassers” and “invaders”.
But Mr al Uqbi’s expert, Oren Yiftachel, of Ben Gurion University in Beersheva, has countered that there was a well-established system of Bedouin land ownership and crop cultivation in the Negev long before Israel’s creation.
He says Bedouin deeds – though never formally recorded – were recognised by the Ottomans, the British and even early Zionist organisations such as the JNF, which bought land from the Bedouin.
A 1921 document from the public records office in London unearthed by Mr Yiftachel shows that Winston Churchill, the colonies minister, signed an agreement with Bedouin in the Beersheva area that exempted them from registering their lands and set up a special tribal court to settle land disputes.
Mr al Uqbi has kept a large store of documents passed on to him, showing that his father cultivated crops on the land and paid regular tithes on the profits to the Ottoman and British authorities.
He also has a copy of the treaty signed in 1948 between 16 Bedouin tribes, including the Uqbi, and the new Israeli army, pledging loyalty in return for a guarantee that they could continue living on their lands.
Mr Yiftachel said the legal battles of the Bedouin should be compared to those waged by other indigenous peoples in countries such as Australia, Canada, South Africa, India and Brazil. “Like them, they are fighting for recognition of ‘native title’,” he said.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East”Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net. (Pluto Press) and “
The Business of Killing: A Speech for Endless War
CounterPunch - By NORMAN SOLOMON
In the last night of August, the president used an Oval Office speech to boost a policy of perpetual war.
Hours later, the New York Times front page offered a credulous gloss for the end of “the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq.” The first sentence of the coverage described the speech as saying “that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home.” The story went on to assert that Obama “used the moment to emphasize that he sees his primary job as addressing the weak economy and other domestic issues -- and to make clear that he intends to begin disengaging from the war in Afghanistan next summer.”
But the speech gave no real indication of a shift in priorities from making war to creating jobs. And the oratory “made clear” only the repetition of vague vows to “begin” disengaging from the Afghanistan war next summer. In fact, top administration officials have been signaling that only token military withdrawals are apt to occur in mid-2011, and Obama said nothing to the contrary.
While now trumpeting the nobility of an Iraq war effort that he’d initially disparaged as “dumb,” Barack Obama is polishing a halo over the Afghanistan war, which he touts as very smart. In the process, the Oval Office speech declared that every U.S. war -- no matter how mendacious or horrific -- is worthy of veneration.
Obama closed the speech with a tribute to “an unbroken line of heroes” stretching “from Khe Sanh to Kandahar -- Americans who have fought to see that the lives of our children are better than our own.” His reference to the famous U.S. military outpost in South Vietnam was a chilling expression of affinity for another march of folly.
With his commitment to war in Afghanistan, President Obama is not only on the wrong side of history. He is also now propagating an exculpatory view of any and all U.S. war efforts -- as if the immoral can become the magnificent by virtue of patriotic alchemy.
A century ago, William Dean Howells wrote: “What a thing it is to have a country that can’t be wrong, but if it is, is right, anyway!”
During the presidency of George W. Bush, “the war on terror” served as a rationale for establishing warfare as a perennial necessity. The Obama administration may have shelved the phrase, but the basic underlying rationales are firmly in place. With American troop levels in Afghanistan near 100,000, top U.S. officials are ramping up rhetoric about “taking the fight to” the evildoers.
The day before the Oval Office speech, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs talked to reporters about “what this drawdown means to our national security efforts in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia and around the world as we take the fight to Al Qaeda.”
The next morning, Obama declared at Fort Bliss: “A lot of families are now being touched in Afghanistan. We’ve seen casualties go up because we’re taking the fight to Al Qaeda and the Taliban and their allies.” And, for good measure, Obama added that “now, under the command of General Petraeus, we have the troops who are there in a position to start taking the fight to the terrorists.”
If, nine years after 9/11, we are supposed to believe that U.S. forces can now “start” taking the fight to “the terrorists,” this is truly war without end. And that’s the idea.
Nearly eight years ago, in November 2002, retired U.S. Army Gen. William Odom appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program and told viewers: “Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war. We're not going to win the war on terrorism."
With his Aug. 31 speech, Obama became explicit about the relationship between reduced troop levels in Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan. “We will disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda, while preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists,” he said. “And because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to apply the resources necessary to go on offense.” This is the approach of endless war.
While Obama was declaring that “our most urgent task is to restore our economy and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work,” I went to a National Priorities Project webpage and looked at cost-of-war counters spinning like odometers in manic overdrive. The figures for the “Cost of War in Afghanistan” -- already above $329 billion -- are now spinning much faster than the ones for war in Iraq.
One day in March 1969, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Our government has become preoccupied with death,” George Wald said, “with the business of killing and being killed.” More than four decades later, how much has really changed?
Norman Solomon is the author of Made Love, Got War.
In the last night of August, the president used an Oval Office speech to boost a policy of perpetual war.
Hours later, the New York Times front page offered a credulous gloss for the end of “the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq.” The first sentence of the coverage described the speech as saying “that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home.” The story went on to assert that Obama “used the moment to emphasize that he sees his primary job as addressing the weak economy and other domestic issues -- and to make clear that he intends to begin disengaging from the war in Afghanistan next summer.”
But the speech gave no real indication of a shift in priorities from making war to creating jobs. And the oratory “made clear” only the repetition of vague vows to “begin” disengaging from the Afghanistan war next summer. In fact, top administration officials have been signaling that only token military withdrawals are apt to occur in mid-2011, and Obama said nothing to the contrary.
While now trumpeting the nobility of an Iraq war effort that he’d initially disparaged as “dumb,” Barack Obama is polishing a halo over the Afghanistan war, which he touts as very smart. In the process, the Oval Office speech declared that every U.S. war -- no matter how mendacious or horrific -- is worthy of veneration.
Obama closed the speech with a tribute to “an unbroken line of heroes” stretching “from Khe Sanh to Kandahar -- Americans who have fought to see that the lives of our children are better than our own.” His reference to the famous U.S. military outpost in South Vietnam was a chilling expression of affinity for another march of folly.
With his commitment to war in Afghanistan, President Obama is not only on the wrong side of history. He is also now propagating an exculpatory view of any and all U.S. war efforts -- as if the immoral can become the magnificent by virtue of patriotic alchemy.
A century ago, William Dean Howells wrote: “What a thing it is to have a country that can’t be wrong, but if it is, is right, anyway!”
During the presidency of George W. Bush, “the war on terror” served as a rationale for establishing warfare as a perennial necessity. The Obama administration may have shelved the phrase, but the basic underlying rationales are firmly in place. With American troop levels in Afghanistan near 100,000, top U.S. officials are ramping up rhetoric about “taking the fight to” the evildoers.
The day before the Oval Office speech, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs talked to reporters about “what this drawdown means to our national security efforts in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia and around the world as we take the fight to Al Qaeda.”
The next morning, Obama declared at Fort Bliss: “A lot of families are now being touched in Afghanistan. We’ve seen casualties go up because we’re taking the fight to Al Qaeda and the Taliban and their allies.” And, for good measure, Obama added that “now, under the command of General Petraeus, we have the troops who are there in a position to start taking the fight to the terrorists.”
If, nine years after 9/11, we are supposed to believe that U.S. forces can now “start” taking the fight to “the terrorists,” this is truly war without end. And that’s the idea.
Nearly eight years ago, in November 2002, retired U.S. Army Gen. William Odom appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program and told viewers: “Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war. We're not going to win the war on terrorism."
With his Aug. 31 speech, Obama became explicit about the relationship between reduced troop levels in Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan. “We will disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda, while preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists,” he said. “And because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to apply the resources necessary to go on offense.” This is the approach of endless war.
While Obama was declaring that “our most urgent task is to restore our economy and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work,” I went to a National Priorities Project webpage and looked at cost-of-war counters spinning like odometers in manic overdrive. The figures for the “Cost of War in Afghanistan” -- already above $329 billion -- are now spinning much faster than the ones for war in Iraq.
One day in March 1969, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Our government has become preoccupied with death,” George Wald said, “with the business of killing and being killed.” More than four decades later, how much has really changed?
Norman Solomon is the author of Made Love, Got War.
A Grisly Form of Stability: What Is the US Legacy in Iraq?
CounterPunch - By PATRICK COCKBURN
A few days after the US announced that it had withdrawn its last combat brigade from Iraq, the local branch of al-Qa'ida staged a show of strength, killing or wounding 300 people in attacks across the country.
Its suicide bombers drove vehicles packed with explosives into police stations or military convoys from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south.
The continuing ferocious violence in Iraq, where most days more people die by bomb and bullet than in Afghanistan, is leading to questions about its stability once US forces finally withdraw by the end of next year.
American politicians, soldiers and think tankers blithely recommend American troops staying longer, though at their most numerous US troops signally failed to stop the bombers.
The unfortunate truth may be that Iraq has already achieved a grisly form of stability, though it comes with a persistently high level of violence and a semi-dysfunctional state. Bad though the present situation is in the country, there may not be sufficient reasons for it to change.
A few days after the US announced that it had withdrawn its last combat brigade from Iraq, the local branch of al-Qa'ida staged a show of strength, killing or wounding 300 people in attacks across the country.
Its suicide bombers drove vehicles packed with explosives into police stations or military convoys from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south.
The continuing ferocious violence in Iraq, where most days more people die by bomb and bullet than in Afghanistan, is leading to questions about its stability once US forces finally withdraw by the end of next year.
American politicians, soldiers and think tankers blithely recommend American troops staying longer, though at their most numerous US troops signally failed to stop the bombers.
The unfortunate truth may be that Iraq has already achieved a grisly form of stability, though it comes with a persistently high level of violence and a semi-dysfunctional state. Bad though the present situation is in the country, there may not be sufficient reasons for it to change.
Homicidal Rabbi Finds Wide Support in Israel - may also affect Americans
Truthtellers.org - By Harmony Daws with Rev. Ted Pike
Early this month, intrepid reporter Jonathan Cook told of a powerful Israeli rabbi, Yitzhak Shapira, under investigation for allegedly inciting the slaughter of Gentile babies. He advocates doing whatever necessary to drive out Palestinians.
Shapira argues—correctly— that Talmudic “halachic” law permits killing Gentiles for a wide variety of reasons, including any time “a non-Jew’s presence endangers Jewish lives,” even if the non-Jew is “not at all guilty for the situation that has been created.”
The book sanctions the killing of non-Jewish children and babies: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”
The rabbis suggest that harming the children of non-Jewish leaders is justified if it is likely to bring pressure to bear on them to change policy. (emphasis mine)
The authors also advocate committing “cruel deeds to create the proper balance of terror” and treating all members of an “enemy nation” as targets for retaliation, even if they are not directly participating in hostile activities.
The chaplain for the IDF forces has said the same: “In war, when our forces storm the enemies, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians that are ostensibly good.” (Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, p. 76)
Judaism’s most sacred Scriptures, the Talmud and Zohar, contain many admonitions to kill Gentiles and Christians. Probably the most widely referenced by ultra-Orthodox in Israel today is that of the preeminent Talmudic sage Simeon ben Yohai. In Abodah Zarah 26b, he cries out, “The best of the Gentiles deserves to be killed.” (Jewish Encyclopedia, “Gentile,” p. 617) Simeon ben Yohai is regarded with the highest respect by modern religious Jews, meriting praise by the Encyclopedia Judaica as one of the giants of Judaism. In Israel today, during the Festival of Lhe-ba’Omer, “tens of thousands assemble in Meron, the traditional resting place of R. Simeon ben Yohai…” to honor him in a week of Kabbalistic singing and dancing. (“ Israel, State of (Religious Life),” Encylopedia Judaica, p. 903)
This, I suppose, explains how an Israeli rabbi can write what Shapira wrote… and be defended.
Brutality Goes Mainstream in Israel
If you are in too much shock, let me restate. A rabbi says it’s a good idea to kill Gentile babies if Jews think they might someday be dangerous—or if their deaths can be used as political leverage. He was then supported by numerous rabbis and members of the Israeli parliament!
Translate this to America. A white pastor advocates killing black babies if it looks like they might become criminals or if their deaths could be used to coerce some kind of action from their parents and family members. A white pastor says this, and numerous Congressmen and other pastors support him. Are you finding that a little difficult to imagine? Me, too. In Israel, it’s not a bad daydream; it’s reality.
A Haaretz opinion piece titled, “Fundamentalism into the Mainstream,” says Shapira’s ruthless ideas are being mainstreamed. “What is new is that these are no longer "hilltop rabbis," "wild weeds" or "fence hoppers" …They and their supporters are transforming zealous fundamentalism and the shameful "The King's Torah" into the mainstream…No religious protest movement stood against the content; no one wrote a text to counter…”
The article says fundamentalist rabbis are responsible for training (instilling homicidal hatred) in tens of thousands of yeshiva students who go on to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. Perhaps one of them was the girl responsible for posing in front of bound Palestinians and posting the Abu Ghraib re-runs to Facebook. Ha’aretz reported her words, “I would gladly kill Arabs—even slaughter them.”
Rabbi Lior, who supports the King’s Torah, was invited to speak to IDF intelligence soldiers. They were told, “When there is a conflict between orders based on the ethics code and a halakhic instruction, of course one must follow halakha (Jewish law).” The Ha’aretz opinion piece concludes, “It's not incitement that's dangerous, but rather its transformation into the accepted and central form of discourse.” (emphasis mine)
Time to Look Deeper
Yet what do the words of a bloodthirsty rabbi in Israel mean for suburban Americans settled comfortably far from Palestine’s dusty violence? It means plenty. Ha’aretz comments, “The book says that any Gentile who supports war against Israel can also be killed.” (Will this include Gentiles who support the Palestinian claim that they were robbed of their homeland and deserve a return?) A recent Israel-endorsed poll shows that following Israel’s terrorist attack on the "Free Gaza" flotilla, 49 percent of Americans disapprove of further support of Israel. (See, Support for Israel Sags in US) Yet many of these Americans may not suspect that the sacred rabbinic scriptures of modern Judaism, the Talmud and Zohar, undoubtedly motivated these expressions of brutality by IDF forces on the Mavi Marmara, shooting over 50 and killing nine.
While Christianity and Islam are subject to severe and serious scrutiny, Judaism and its religious ambitions remain off limits. It is forbidden to speak of Judaism the way we now commonly speak of Christianity—or to consider that Israel’s slaughter of Gentiles aboard the Mavi Marmara and the threat in the rabbi’s words are undoubtedly related events.
Consider the double standard of what it is acceptable to say about Christianity: In early, predominantly Calvinist America, Christians dominated the political arena, holding the vast majority of public offices and writing their Biblical morality into American laws. They founded our elite universities, including Harvard, Rutgers and Yale, as Puritan Bible schools. They criminalized premarital sex, profanity, public immodesty, homosexuality, and other "sin." Their aim was to establish a nation of religious freedom yet always informed by worship of the Christian God. Until the 1960s, America was still largely ruled by the influence of its Puritan founders; concepts such as the gender binary, nuclear family, male-female marriage, objective morality and God’s existence were taken for granted by most Americans.
The previous paragraph is not “anti-Christian.” It is not “anti-Aryan.” It is history.
The competitive dominance of Jewish Americans has also profoundly shaped our nation, and is now—in the third century of American life—clearly outstripping the power of her Christian founders. Jewish Americans, 1.5% of the population, are now vastly overrepresented in seats of American power. They form an unstoppable, pro-Israel lobby in the halls of Washington and hold a large and ever increasing number of Congressional seats and positions as cabinet members and senior administration officials. They fill a third of the Supreme Court bench. American Jews also dominate culture formation in America by maintaining an impressive majority as owners, producers, and writers in all major American news and entertainment media. (See, Jews Confirm Big Media is Jewish)... Full story
Early this month, intrepid reporter Jonathan Cook told of a powerful Israeli rabbi, Yitzhak Shapira, under investigation for allegedly inciting the slaughter of Gentile babies. He advocates doing whatever necessary to drive out Palestinians.
So far the policy has chiefly involved violent harassment of Palestinians, with settlers inflicting beatings, attacking homes, throwing stones, burning fields, killing livestock and poisoning wells.Shlomo Aviner, one of the settlement movement’s leaders, defended the book’s arguments as a “legitimate stance” and one that should be taught in Jewish seminaries.
It is feared, however, that Shapira’s book The King’s Torah, published last year, is intended to offer ideological justifications for widening the scope of such attacks to include killing Palestinians, even children.
…Shapira was released a few hours after his questioning last Monday, dozens of rabbis, as well as several members of parliament, rallied to his side, condemning the arrest.
Shapira argues—correctly— that Talmudic “halachic” law permits killing Gentiles for a wide variety of reasons, including any time “a non-Jew’s presence endangers Jewish lives,” even if the non-Jew is “not at all guilty for the situation that has been created.”
The book sanctions the killing of non-Jewish children and babies: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”
The rabbis suggest that harming the children of non-Jewish leaders is justified if it is likely to bring pressure to bear on them to change policy. (emphasis mine)
The authors also advocate committing “cruel deeds to create the proper balance of terror” and treating all members of an “enemy nation” as targets for retaliation, even if they are not directly participating in hostile activities.
The chaplain for the IDF forces has said the same: “In war, when our forces storm the enemies, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians that are ostensibly good.” (Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, p. 76)
Judaism’s most sacred Scriptures, the Talmud and Zohar, contain many admonitions to kill Gentiles and Christians. Probably the most widely referenced by ultra-Orthodox in Israel today is that of the preeminent Talmudic sage Simeon ben Yohai. In Abodah Zarah 26b, he cries out, “The best of the Gentiles deserves to be killed.” (Jewish Encyclopedia, “Gentile,” p. 617) Simeon ben Yohai is regarded with the highest respect by modern religious Jews, meriting praise by the Encyclopedia Judaica as one of the giants of Judaism. In Israel today, during the Festival of Lhe-ba’Omer, “tens of thousands assemble in Meron, the traditional resting place of R. Simeon ben Yohai…” to honor him in a week of Kabbalistic singing and dancing. (“ Israel, State of (Religious Life),” Encylopedia Judaica, p. 903)
This, I suppose, explains how an Israeli rabbi can write what Shapira wrote… and be defended.
Brutality Goes Mainstream in Israel
If you are in too much shock, let me restate. A rabbi says it’s a good idea to kill Gentile babies if Jews think they might someday be dangerous—or if their deaths can be used as political leverage. He was then supported by numerous rabbis and members of the Israeli parliament!
Translate this to America. A white pastor advocates killing black babies if it looks like they might become criminals or if their deaths could be used to coerce some kind of action from their parents and family members. A white pastor says this, and numerous Congressmen and other pastors support him. Are you finding that a little difficult to imagine? Me, too. In Israel, it’s not a bad daydream; it’s reality.
A Haaretz opinion piece titled, “Fundamentalism into the Mainstream,” says Shapira’s ruthless ideas are being mainstreamed. “What is new is that these are no longer "hilltop rabbis," "wild weeds" or "fence hoppers" …They and their supporters are transforming zealous fundamentalism and the shameful "The King's Torah" into the mainstream…No religious protest movement stood against the content; no one wrote a text to counter…”
The article says fundamentalist rabbis are responsible for training (instilling homicidal hatred) in tens of thousands of yeshiva students who go on to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. Perhaps one of them was the girl responsible for posing in front of bound Palestinians and posting the Abu Ghraib re-runs to Facebook. Ha’aretz reported her words, “I would gladly kill Arabs—even slaughter them.”
Rabbi Lior, who supports the King’s Torah, was invited to speak to IDF intelligence soldiers. They were told, “When there is a conflict between orders based on the ethics code and a halakhic instruction, of course one must follow halakha (Jewish law).” The Ha’aretz opinion piece concludes, “It's not incitement that's dangerous, but rather its transformation into the accepted and central form of discourse.” (emphasis mine)
Time to Look Deeper
Yet what do the words of a bloodthirsty rabbi in Israel mean for suburban Americans settled comfortably far from Palestine’s dusty violence? It means plenty. Ha’aretz comments, “The book says that any Gentile who supports war against Israel can also be killed.” (Will this include Gentiles who support the Palestinian claim that they were robbed of their homeland and deserve a return?) A recent Israel-endorsed poll shows that following Israel’s terrorist attack on the "Free Gaza" flotilla, 49 percent of Americans disapprove of further support of Israel. (See, Support for Israel Sags in US) Yet many of these Americans may not suspect that the sacred rabbinic scriptures of modern Judaism, the Talmud and Zohar, undoubtedly motivated these expressions of brutality by IDF forces on the Mavi Marmara, shooting over 50 and killing nine.
While Christianity and Islam are subject to severe and serious scrutiny, Judaism and its religious ambitions remain off limits. It is forbidden to speak of Judaism the way we now commonly speak of Christianity—or to consider that Israel’s slaughter of Gentiles aboard the Mavi Marmara and the threat in the rabbi’s words are undoubtedly related events.
Consider the double standard of what it is acceptable to say about Christianity: In early, predominantly Calvinist America, Christians dominated the political arena, holding the vast majority of public offices and writing their Biblical morality into American laws. They founded our elite universities, including Harvard, Rutgers and Yale, as Puritan Bible schools. They criminalized premarital sex, profanity, public immodesty, homosexuality, and other "sin." Their aim was to establish a nation of religious freedom yet always informed by worship of the Christian God. Until the 1960s, America was still largely ruled by the influence of its Puritan founders; concepts such as the gender binary, nuclear family, male-female marriage, objective morality and God’s existence were taken for granted by most Americans.
The previous paragraph is not “anti-Christian.” It is not “anti-Aryan.” It is history.
The competitive dominance of Jewish Americans has also profoundly shaped our nation, and is now—in the third century of American life—clearly outstripping the power of her Christian founders. Jewish Americans, 1.5% of the population, are now vastly overrepresented in seats of American power. They form an unstoppable, pro-Israel lobby in the halls of Washington and hold a large and ever increasing number of Congressional seats and positions as cabinet members and senior administration officials. They fill a third of the Supreme Court bench. American Jews also dominate culture formation in America by maintaining an impressive majority as owners, producers, and writers in all major American news and entertainment media. (See, Jews Confirm Big Media is Jewish)... Full story
Media & Leaders in Hiding: Give Me That Old Time Racism on the "Mosque" at "Ground Zero" (both terms are fallacious)
CounterPunch - By JAMES ABOUREZK
I can still remember in the 1950s when, in Rapid City, South Dakota, a black African diplomat tried to get served in a Rapid City restaurant. He was asked to leave. After the newspaper reported the story, the owner of the restaurant said if he had known the guy was a diplomat, he would have served him instead of throwing him out.
When we think back, it wasn't that long ago that blacks were not allowed to sit in restaurants, but were, instead, asked to go around to the kitchen to get served out of the back door. That was a time when blacks were not allowed to buy homes in white neighborhoods. I spent part of my youth visiting my older sister and her family in West Virginia. There, blacks were told they could only sit in the balcony of movie theaters, a place expressly reserved for them should they want to enjoy a film. There were white only drinking fountains in public places, such as bus stations. And, of course, we all remember who had to sit in the back of the bus.
I have not yet heard anyone on television making the comparison between how blacks were treated in the god awful days of segregation and how Muslims are being treated by some of our political leadership today.
I remember when the Cold War came to an end. That was when the Zionist movement lost an enemy--the Soviet Union--and had to look around for another group to hate. That's when the demonization of Muslims--and Arabs--began. The pro-Israeli propagandists, aided and abetted by the mainstream media, leaned heavily into the Arab and Muslim population, making them the villains. It was easy then, as the Arabs, either in the Arab world or in the United States were not well organized, so they didn't fight back. That failure to resist has cost them, as has the actions of some--Al Qaeda for example--which made it easier to hate them.
Those of us who have read some history also know what happened to the Irish when they first came to America. We also remember how Jews were assaulted, both in the press and in person, until the remainder of the country put a stop to it by making it unpopular to isolate a community so they could be demonized.
Now, it's the turn of the Arabs and the Muslims to receive the same treatment that blacks, the Irish, [Poles], [Italians], and the Jews did before that treatment became unpopular.
How similar is the assault on the Muslims and Arabs when compared to what happened to other ethnic groups in our shady past. Where the similarity ends is how the media is treating the entire "mosque" at ground zero. The proposed building is neither a mosque, nor is it at ground zero. It is a community center that, among other activities, includes a prayer room. I know of no one who would build an eleven-story mosque, and I know of no mosque that would allow a swimming pool and recreation center to be built in it, or even above it.
I can still remember in the 1950s when, in Rapid City, South Dakota, a black African diplomat tried to get served in a Rapid City restaurant. He was asked to leave. After the newspaper reported the story, the owner of the restaurant said if he had known the guy was a diplomat, he would have served him instead of throwing him out.
When we think back, it wasn't that long ago that blacks were not allowed to sit in restaurants, but were, instead, asked to go around to the kitchen to get served out of the back door. That was a time when blacks were not allowed to buy homes in white neighborhoods. I spent part of my youth visiting my older sister and her family in West Virginia. There, blacks were told they could only sit in the balcony of movie theaters, a place expressly reserved for them should they want to enjoy a film. There were white only drinking fountains in public places, such as bus stations. And, of course, we all remember who had to sit in the back of the bus.
I have not yet heard anyone on television making the comparison between how blacks were treated in the god awful days of segregation and how Muslims are being treated by some of our political leadership today.
I remember when the Cold War came to an end. That was when the Zionist movement lost an enemy--the Soviet Union--and had to look around for another group to hate. That's when the demonization of Muslims--and Arabs--began. The pro-Israeli propagandists, aided and abetted by the mainstream media, leaned heavily into the Arab and Muslim population, making them the villains. It was easy then, as the Arabs, either in the Arab world or in the United States were not well organized, so they didn't fight back. That failure to resist has cost them, as has the actions of some--Al Qaeda for example--which made it easier to hate them.
Those of us who have read some history also know what happened to the Irish when they first came to America. We also remember how Jews were assaulted, both in the press and in person, until the remainder of the country put a stop to it by making it unpopular to isolate a community so they could be demonized.
Now, it's the turn of the Arabs and the Muslims to receive the same treatment that blacks, the Irish, [Poles], [Italians], and the Jews did before that treatment became unpopular.
How similar is the assault on the Muslims and Arabs when compared to what happened to other ethnic groups in our shady past. Where the similarity ends is how the media is treating the entire "mosque" at ground zero. The proposed building is neither a mosque, nor is it at ground zero. It is a community center that, among other activities, includes a prayer room. I know of no one who would build an eleven-story mosque, and I know of no mosque that would allow a swimming pool and recreation center to be built in it, or even above it.
So what we have here is a political football that leaves it open for the gaggle of demagogues and hustlers -- I'm thinking specifically of Newt Gingrich, Rick Lazio and Sarah Palin -- to try to reap some kind of political popularity from denouncing the project.
It used to be that both political leaders and the media would denounce this kind racism, and that such denunciations would soon bring such demagoguery to an end. But not this time. Most of the media, MSNBC being the major exception, has ducked its head, being content to just report on the onslaught against the Islamic Center, but not denouncing the demagoguery.
So far, this has resulted in someone setting fire to the construction of a real mosque in Tennessee. This usually follows acts of violence against Arabs and Muslims in different parts of the country. We've seen it before.
All this won't stop unless and until all the political leaders--now silent--come down hard on what is happening, when the haters begin themselves to feel isolated. Cheers to President Obama and to Mayor Bloomberg, who have tried to lead the way, but who lost Howard Dean and Harry Reid in the process. The rest of the political leadership--both Republican and Democratic--predictably are in hiding.
James Abourezk is a former U.S. Senator, who practices law in Sioux Falls. He is the author of Advise & Dissent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the US Senate. He can be reached at georgepatton45@gmail.com
It used to be that both political leaders and the media would denounce this kind racism, and that such denunciations would soon bring such demagoguery to an end. But not this time. Most of the media, MSNBC being the major exception, has ducked its head, being content to just report on the onslaught against the Islamic Center, but not denouncing the demagoguery.
So far, this has resulted in someone setting fire to the construction of a real mosque in Tennessee. This usually follows acts of violence against Arabs and Muslims in different parts of the country. We've seen it before.
All this won't stop unless and until all the political leaders--now silent--come down hard on what is happening, when the haters begin themselves to feel isolated. Cheers to President Obama and to Mayor Bloomberg, who have tried to lead the way, but who lost Howard Dean and Harry Reid in the process. The rest of the political leadership--both Republican and Democratic--predictably are in hiding.
James Abourezk is a former U.S. Senator, who practices law in Sioux Falls. He is the author of Advise & Dissent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the US Senate. He can be reached at georgepatton45@gmail.com
The Washington Farce: Mahmoud Abbas - Double Agent
CounterPunch - By JEFFREY BLANKFORT
This coming week we will witness the latest challenge for the man who is arguably the most extraordinary double agent in the Middle East. What is unusual about Mahmoud Abbas, or Abu Mazen, as he was known when his fellow Palestinians had yet to take his measure, is that most of what he does for his Israeli and US masters he does in plain sight.
To which of the two he is most beholden will be determined during his upcoming visit to Washington for the latest chapter in what has euphemistically been referred to as the “peace process” since it was launched in the aftermath of the Oslo Agreement. The odds are it will be Israel. In Oslo, it should be recalled, Abbas, as the chief Palestinian negotiator, played Neville Chamberlain for Tel Aviv, agreeing to surrender occupied Palestinian land with a view toward putting a permanent end to Palestinian resistance and, immediately, to the first Intifada.
If any reader still harbors the illusion that Oslo was anything but a sell-out by the Palestinian leadership, Abba’s negotiating counterpart, former Israeli military intelligence chief, Shlomo Gazit, put that notion to rest on the evening of November 17,1993. When challenged during a speaking engagement at Congregation Beth Shalom in San Francisco; by an angry questioner who compared the agreement to that signed with Nazi Germany in Munich in 1938, Gazit calmly replied that while he was reluctant to make such comparisons, “if it’s another Munich, we’re the Germans and the Palestinians are the Czechs.”
Since assuming the leadership of the Palestinian Authority with the death of Arafat, Abbas has continued on the same path, using the US and Jordanian trained PA militia, for example, to suppress demonstrations protesting Israel’s 2008-2009 bombardment of Gaza, and just last week, to violently quash a protest in Ramallah against his going to Washington to negotiate with Netanyahu. He has become what critics of Oslo had predicted would be Arafat’s role, Israel’s sheriff in the West Bank.
It has not gone unnoticed.
“There has been a surge in cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) ever since Hamas ousted security officials and the mainstream Fatah Party from Gaza more than three years ago,” wrote the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s David Makovsky in the Washington Post, April 24.
“Security cooperation between the PA and Israel has substantially improved. In 2002, 410 Israelis were killed by suicide bombings and other attacks emanating from the West Bank; in the past three years, Israel has suffered one fatality from one such attack….[Since 2007, Israel troops have killed 158 West Bank Palestinians. JB] Israeli charges that the Palestinians have a "revolving door" approach of releasing terrorists after quick arrests -- rampant during the Arafat era -- are no longer heard…
“For its part,” Makovsky pointed out, “the PA no longer attempts to hide its daily security cooperation with Israel. In recent months, the PA even hosted Israeli senior security officials in Jenin, Tulkaram and Jericho. During the Gaza conflict of 2008-09, the PA kept the West Bank calm. Because of the improved security, Israel has reduced the number of major manned checkpoints in the West Bank from 42 in 2008 to 14.”
Let’s recall that Abbas also joined with Israel in its attempt to suppress a UN investigation into the Goldstone Report and that his criticism of Israel’s siege of Gaza had been relatively muted until the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara after which he obviously could no longer keep silent.
Belief in Gaza and among sectors of the West Bank that Abbas actually supports the continuation of the blockade was reinforced in June when Mahmoud Ramahi, a Hamas legislator from the West Bank, pointed out that “Amr Musa [the Arab League general secretary] had to ask permission from Abbas to come to Gaza. This shows that the PA is participating in the siege because it doesn’t want the world to deal with the government there and grant legitimacy to Hamas.”
Given the rivalry between the PA and Hamas, Diana Buttu, a former legal advisor to the PLO, and now a Ramallah-based analyst, was quoted in The National as suggesting that Abbas’ failure to clearly denounce the blockade in 2007 and his actions since indicate that there is some “indirect support” for the blockade. “It’s easy for people to believe the report with that in mind,” she said.
Given that background, is there any reason to assume that this “cooperation with Israel” will not continue when Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu and Abbas meet with Obama in Washington and is there any reason not to suspect that they have been in close communication well before this?
We have been led by the media to believe that Abbas is only coming to Washington due to pressure from the Obama administration, that he had been forced to back down from his insistence not to hold direct talks with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu unless Netanyahu agreed ahead of time to extend the so-called “settlement freeze” that expires on Sept. 26. That is no doubt true.
However, if one looks at the upcoming scenario in Washington from the perspective I have suggested, that they are both on the same side, master and servant, then Abbas’ subsequent statement that he would leave the talks and return to Palestine if Netanyahu resumes settlement construction on the 26th is exactly what the Israeli prime minister wanted him to say since he has absolutely no interest in pursuing negotiations and reaching any settlement with the Palestinians.
But is that also Abbas’ position? Unpopular even within the ruling circles of the PA and legally out of office since his presidential term ended in January, 2009, his only hold on power is based on the situation remaining as it is and his ability to keep a modest amount of aid flowing from the US Treasury’s coffers.
And what of Obama? His hands are tied by the fact that the US Congress answers to AIPAC and not to him when it comes to Middle East issues.
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank bravely pointed out his problem in his July 7 column the day after Obama rolled the red carpet out for Netanyahu after being widely criticized for having been rude to the Israeli premier on his previous visit in March. It was initially headlined, “Alliance or Dysfunctional Relationship,” but was softened by the Post for its internet edition to read, “Netanyahu hears no discouraging words from Obama.”
“Four months ago,” wrote Milbank, “the Obama administration made a politically perilous decision to condemn Israel over a controversial new settlement. The Israel lobby reared up, Netanyahu denounced the administration's actions, Republican leaders sided with Netanyahu, and Democrats ran for cover…
“Obama came to office with an admirable hope of reviving Middle East peace efforts by appealing to the Arab world and positioning himself as more of an honest broker. But he has now learned the painful lesson that domestic politics won't allow such a stand.” (Emphasis added)
Milbank’s column predictably drew the rage of the pro-Israeli zealots with his very first paragraph, one that graphically captured the nature of the Israel-US relationship under the current administration and the two that preceded it.
“A blue-and-white Israeli flag hung from Blair House, “he wrote. “Across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Stars and Stripes was in its usual place atop the White House. But to capture the real significance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's visit with President Obama, White House officials might have instead flown the white flag of surrender.” Can we expect more from Abbas?
Thus, the upcoming "negotiations" are little more than a late summer farce and a distraction from Israel's ongoing plans for its next war which, as before, will be waged with US support.
Jeffrey Blankfort can be contacted at jblankfort@earthlink.net
This coming week we will witness the latest challenge for the man who is arguably the most extraordinary double agent in the Middle East. What is unusual about Mahmoud Abbas, or Abu Mazen, as he was known when his fellow Palestinians had yet to take his measure, is that most of what he does for his Israeli and US masters he does in plain sight.
To which of the two he is most beholden will be determined during his upcoming visit to Washington for the latest chapter in what has euphemistically been referred to as the “peace process” since it was launched in the aftermath of the Oslo Agreement. The odds are it will be Israel. In Oslo, it should be recalled, Abbas, as the chief Palestinian negotiator, played Neville Chamberlain for Tel Aviv, agreeing to surrender occupied Palestinian land with a view toward putting a permanent end to Palestinian resistance and, immediately, to the first Intifada.
If any reader still harbors the illusion that Oslo was anything but a sell-out by the Palestinian leadership, Abba’s negotiating counterpart, former Israeli military intelligence chief, Shlomo Gazit, put that notion to rest on the evening of November 17,1993. When challenged during a speaking engagement at Congregation Beth Shalom in San Francisco; by an angry questioner who compared the agreement to that signed with Nazi Germany in Munich in 1938, Gazit calmly replied that while he was reluctant to make such comparisons, “if it’s another Munich, we’re the Germans and the Palestinians are the Czechs.”
Since assuming the leadership of the Palestinian Authority with the death of Arafat, Abbas has continued on the same path, using the US and Jordanian trained PA militia, for example, to suppress demonstrations protesting Israel’s 2008-2009 bombardment of Gaza, and just last week, to violently quash a protest in Ramallah against his going to Washington to negotiate with Netanyahu. He has become what critics of Oslo had predicted would be Arafat’s role, Israel’s sheriff in the West Bank.
It has not gone unnoticed.
“There has been a surge in cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) ever since Hamas ousted security officials and the mainstream Fatah Party from Gaza more than three years ago,” wrote the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s David Makovsky in the Washington Post, April 24.
“Security cooperation between the PA and Israel has substantially improved. In 2002, 410 Israelis were killed by suicide bombings and other attacks emanating from the West Bank; in the past three years, Israel has suffered one fatality from one such attack….[Since 2007, Israel troops have killed 158 West Bank Palestinians. JB] Israeli charges that the Palestinians have a "revolving door" approach of releasing terrorists after quick arrests -- rampant during the Arafat era -- are no longer heard…
“For its part,” Makovsky pointed out, “the PA no longer attempts to hide its daily security cooperation with Israel. In recent months, the PA even hosted Israeli senior security officials in Jenin, Tulkaram and Jericho. During the Gaza conflict of 2008-09, the PA kept the West Bank calm. Because of the improved security, Israel has reduced the number of major manned checkpoints in the West Bank from 42 in 2008 to 14.”
Let’s recall that Abbas also joined with Israel in its attempt to suppress a UN investigation into the Goldstone Report and that his criticism of Israel’s siege of Gaza had been relatively muted until the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara after which he obviously could no longer keep silent.
Belief in Gaza and among sectors of the West Bank that Abbas actually supports the continuation of the blockade was reinforced in June when Mahmoud Ramahi, a Hamas legislator from the West Bank, pointed out that “Amr Musa [the Arab League general secretary] had to ask permission from Abbas to come to Gaza. This shows that the PA is participating in the siege because it doesn’t want the world to deal with the government there and grant legitimacy to Hamas.”
Given the rivalry between the PA and Hamas, Diana Buttu, a former legal advisor to the PLO, and now a Ramallah-based analyst, was quoted in The National as suggesting that Abbas’ failure to clearly denounce the blockade in 2007 and his actions since indicate that there is some “indirect support” for the blockade. “It’s easy for people to believe the report with that in mind,” she said.
Given that background, is there any reason to assume that this “cooperation with Israel” will not continue when Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu and Abbas meet with Obama in Washington and is there any reason not to suspect that they have been in close communication well before this?
We have been led by the media to believe that Abbas is only coming to Washington due to pressure from the Obama administration, that he had been forced to back down from his insistence not to hold direct talks with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu unless Netanyahu agreed ahead of time to extend the so-called “settlement freeze” that expires on Sept. 26. That is no doubt true.
However, if one looks at the upcoming scenario in Washington from the perspective I have suggested, that they are both on the same side, master and servant, then Abbas’ subsequent statement that he would leave the talks and return to Palestine if Netanyahu resumes settlement construction on the 26th is exactly what the Israeli prime minister wanted him to say since he has absolutely no interest in pursuing negotiations and reaching any settlement with the Palestinians.
But is that also Abbas’ position? Unpopular even within the ruling circles of the PA and legally out of office since his presidential term ended in January, 2009, his only hold on power is based on the situation remaining as it is and his ability to keep a modest amount of aid flowing from the US Treasury’s coffers.
And what of Obama? His hands are tied by the fact that the US Congress answers to AIPAC and not to him when it comes to Middle East issues.
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank bravely pointed out his problem in his July 7 column the day after Obama rolled the red carpet out for Netanyahu after being widely criticized for having been rude to the Israeli premier on his previous visit in March. It was initially headlined, “Alliance or Dysfunctional Relationship,” but was softened by the Post for its internet edition to read, “Netanyahu hears no discouraging words from Obama.”
“Four months ago,” wrote Milbank, “the Obama administration made a politically perilous decision to condemn Israel over a controversial new settlement. The Israel lobby reared up, Netanyahu denounced the administration's actions, Republican leaders sided with Netanyahu, and Democrats ran for cover…
“Obama came to office with an admirable hope of reviving Middle East peace efforts by appealing to the Arab world and positioning himself as more of an honest broker. But he has now learned the painful lesson that domestic politics won't allow such a stand.” (Emphasis added)
Milbank’s column predictably drew the rage of the pro-Israeli zealots with his very first paragraph, one that graphically captured the nature of the Israel-US relationship under the current administration and the two that preceded it.
“A blue-and-white Israeli flag hung from Blair House, “he wrote. “Across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Stars and Stripes was in its usual place atop the White House. But to capture the real significance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's visit with President Obama, White House officials might have instead flown the white flag of surrender.” Can we expect more from Abbas?
Thus, the upcoming "negotiations" are little more than a late summer farce and a distraction from Israel's ongoing plans for its next war which, as before, will be waged with US support.
Jeffrey Blankfort can be contacted at jblankfort@earthlink.net
The Reut Report on the Assault on the Gaza: Flotilla Israel's Vision Problem
CounterPunch - By PAUL LARUDEE
Israel and I are close in age, so it is not surprising that we suffer some of the same ailments. I have both myopia and hyperopia (nearsightedness and farsightedness), due to stretching of the eye globe and increasing rigidity of the lens, making it difficult to focus on both nearby and distant objects without correction. In addition, cataracts filter and reduce the incoming light. In Israel’s case, these vision impairments are due to overstretching of credibility and rigidity of mindset, while paranoia filters incoming facts and reduces the perception of reality. Israel also needs correction.
Israel’s vision deficiencies are both the subject of and evident in The Gaza Flotilla: A Collapse of Israel’s Political Firewall, a report from the Reut Institute (RI), an Israeli think tank devoted to government policy and strategy. Although the report criticizes the Israeli government for its lack of vision, it suffers the same impairment, and therefore fails to recognize and address the problem that the RI calls the “delegitimization challenge,” i.e. increasing worldwide public criticism and reaction to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians (the “collapse of its political firewall”).
In cruder terms (my own), the RI accuses the Israeli government of trying to put lipstick on a pig, an exercise in futility. However, the RI recommendation is cosmetic surgery – not really much better. “Take our advice,” it says, “and change Israeli policy, so as to project a better image.” Neither of these approaches addresses the underlying reality: it’s a pig. The problem is with the nature of the animal itself, which Israel (and RI) is unable to see because of its limited vision.
The deficiencies of the report begin with its description and analysis of the problem. It perceives the challenge to come from two “extremist” forces. The first is the “Resistance Network,” which is Arab and Islamist, and the second is the “Delegitimization Network,” which is global, liberal and radical. The report concludes that incapacitation of these forces will remove the threat.
The failure of this analysis is stunning. In order to accept it, one must conclude that the “delegitimization network” must be spectacularly effective, despite their relatively small numbers and modest resources. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla cost millions of dollars, but that is minuscule compared to the resources of Israel and its supporters. For Israel (and the RI) to consider this relatively small convoy of humanitarian aid to be a threat to its existence speaks volumes to the paranoia that filters its thinking.
The fact is that resistance and “delegitimization” are a natural outgrowth of the historical and actual ethnic cleansing requirements of the state of Israel and of the ideological underpinnings that motivate such requirements. Neither the Palestinians nor the Arabs, nor the world community, nor even the Jewish community will remain complacent in the face of the continued dispossession and expulsion of Palestinians from their land, or of Israel’s repeated attacks and wars on its neighbors for the sake of maintaining a demography that privileges particular citizens within the state. This is the pig that neither lipstick nor cosmetic surgery can effectively disguise. The surgery may keep some from immediately identifying the animal, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
In order to fool itself, however, the RI must resort to distortions of fact, with which the report is replete. To cite only one example, it reports that “Israel managed to take over five of the six vessels in the…flotilla without violence.” This would be news to the passengers who were beaten and suffered broken bones on those vessels. The RI is apparently relying on the propaganda of its own client for information. Other sections clearly borrow from hysterical Zionist websites that treat rumor as fact and even fabricate for purposes of vilification. It is one thing to purvey misinformation but quite another to believe it oneself.
This is typical. The RI ascribes almost superhuman powers to Hamas (“Hamas’ Agility, Israel’s Rigidity”), Hezbollah and the groups of Palestine solidarity groups trying to survive on a tiny fraction of the income of organizations like the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This is very flattering to the groups, but a much more realistic explanation is that far fewer resources are necessary when the facts speak for themselves, while much greater resources are needed to mislead the public.
The RI addresses this to a partial extent by advocating policy changes so as to make the deceit more plausible. This is a reasonable and pragmatic strategy, given the preservation and welfare of a Jewish supremacist state as an axiomatic objective. To an extent, in fact, such changes may represent a vindication for the efforts of human rights advocates that the RI describes as “delegitimizers.” In order to be completely realistic, however, the RI would need to recognize that Israel’s credibility problem is inherent in the axiom itself – i.e. that such a state is essentially racist to the core. Obviously, it cannot do this, which limits the extent to which it can provide objective advice to its client.
If, however, the RI is incapable of providing objective advice, it can nevertheless influence Israeli government policy, and should therefore be taken seriously by the human rights groups that are the targets of its recommendations. Those targets are primarily the global Palestine solidarity (“delegitimization”) network and its supporters, which the RI lumps together with Israel’s more conventional adversaries like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Unfortunately for RI and Israel, the recommendations are little more than a change in emphasis and “more of the same.” Israel and its supporters already actively work to “delegitimize” Palestine solidarity groups, and the strategies that the report proposes (e.g. “re-branding” Israel and “naming and shaming delegitimizers”) are nothing new. Palestine solidarity groups, and especially those named in the report, might possibly expect renewed efforts to undermine them. Even if such efforts are partially successful, however, they are unlikely to remain so for long, given the difficulty of promoting a racist agenda in today’s world.
We who have been engaged in civilian human rights advocacy for Palestinians (sometimes called the “peace” movement) can take a perverse satisfaction in the recognition and importance given to us in the Reut report. It is an error, however, to describe us as “delegitimizers.” We are incapable of legitimizing or delegitimizing anything. Israel’s own actions do that. At most, we draw attention to those actions and to the nature of the Israeli state, much as M. K. Gandhi did in the Indian independence movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did in the U.S. civil rights movement.
If the Reut Institute and Israel wish to address the fundamental problem, they will have to reconsider the premise upon which they are founded, namely that a state that expels, excludes and represses people simply because they are not Jews can achieve and convince others of its moral legitimacy. No amount of lipstick can disguise a pig, and even cosmetic surgery will not change the underlying reality. The only thing that will provide such legitimacy is a society that welcomes all who call it home. Even those of us who are past our prime and have limited vision can see that.
Israel and I are close in age, so it is not surprising that we suffer some of the same ailments. I have both myopia and hyperopia (nearsightedness and farsightedness), due to stretching of the eye globe and increasing rigidity of the lens, making it difficult to focus on both nearby and distant objects without correction. In addition, cataracts filter and reduce the incoming light. In Israel’s case, these vision impairments are due to overstretching of credibility and rigidity of mindset, while paranoia filters incoming facts and reduces the perception of reality. Israel also needs correction.
Israel’s vision deficiencies are both the subject of and evident in The Gaza Flotilla: A Collapse of Israel’s Political Firewall, a report from the Reut Institute (RI), an Israeli think tank devoted to government policy and strategy. Although the report criticizes the Israeli government for its lack of vision, it suffers the same impairment, and therefore fails to recognize and address the problem that the RI calls the “delegitimization challenge,” i.e. increasing worldwide public criticism and reaction to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians (the “collapse of its political firewall”).
In cruder terms (my own), the RI accuses the Israeli government of trying to put lipstick on a pig, an exercise in futility. However, the RI recommendation is cosmetic surgery – not really much better. “Take our advice,” it says, “and change Israeli policy, so as to project a better image.” Neither of these approaches addresses the underlying reality: it’s a pig. The problem is with the nature of the animal itself, which Israel (and RI) is unable to see because of its limited vision.
The deficiencies of the report begin with its description and analysis of the problem. It perceives the challenge to come from two “extremist” forces. The first is the “Resistance Network,” which is Arab and Islamist, and the second is the “Delegitimization Network,” which is global, liberal and radical. The report concludes that incapacitation of these forces will remove the threat.
The failure of this analysis is stunning. In order to accept it, one must conclude that the “delegitimization network” must be spectacularly effective, despite their relatively small numbers and modest resources. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla cost millions of dollars, but that is minuscule compared to the resources of Israel and its supporters. For Israel (and the RI) to consider this relatively small convoy of humanitarian aid to be a threat to its existence speaks volumes to the paranoia that filters its thinking.
The fact is that resistance and “delegitimization” are a natural outgrowth of the historical and actual ethnic cleansing requirements of the state of Israel and of the ideological underpinnings that motivate such requirements. Neither the Palestinians nor the Arabs, nor the world community, nor even the Jewish community will remain complacent in the face of the continued dispossession and expulsion of Palestinians from their land, or of Israel’s repeated attacks and wars on its neighbors for the sake of maintaining a demography that privileges particular citizens within the state. This is the pig that neither lipstick nor cosmetic surgery can effectively disguise. The surgery may keep some from immediately identifying the animal, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
In order to fool itself, however, the RI must resort to distortions of fact, with which the report is replete. To cite only one example, it reports that “Israel managed to take over five of the six vessels in the…flotilla without violence.” This would be news to the passengers who were beaten and suffered broken bones on those vessels. The RI is apparently relying on the propaganda of its own client for information. Other sections clearly borrow from hysterical Zionist websites that treat rumor as fact and even fabricate for purposes of vilification. It is one thing to purvey misinformation but quite another to believe it oneself.
This is typical. The RI ascribes almost superhuman powers to Hamas (“Hamas’ Agility, Israel’s Rigidity”), Hezbollah and the groups of Palestine solidarity groups trying to survive on a tiny fraction of the income of organizations like the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This is very flattering to the groups, but a much more realistic explanation is that far fewer resources are necessary when the facts speak for themselves, while much greater resources are needed to mislead the public.
The RI addresses this to a partial extent by advocating policy changes so as to make the deceit more plausible. This is a reasonable and pragmatic strategy, given the preservation and welfare of a Jewish supremacist state as an axiomatic objective. To an extent, in fact, such changes may represent a vindication for the efforts of human rights advocates that the RI describes as “delegitimizers.” In order to be completely realistic, however, the RI would need to recognize that Israel’s credibility problem is inherent in the axiom itself – i.e. that such a state is essentially racist to the core. Obviously, it cannot do this, which limits the extent to which it can provide objective advice to its client.
If, however, the RI is incapable of providing objective advice, it can nevertheless influence Israeli government policy, and should therefore be taken seriously by the human rights groups that are the targets of its recommendations. Those targets are primarily the global Palestine solidarity (“delegitimization”) network and its supporters, which the RI lumps together with Israel’s more conventional adversaries like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Unfortunately for RI and Israel, the recommendations are little more than a change in emphasis and “more of the same.” Israel and its supporters already actively work to “delegitimize” Palestine solidarity groups, and the strategies that the report proposes (e.g. “re-branding” Israel and “naming and shaming delegitimizers”) are nothing new. Palestine solidarity groups, and especially those named in the report, might possibly expect renewed efforts to undermine them. Even if such efforts are partially successful, however, they are unlikely to remain so for long, given the difficulty of promoting a racist agenda in today’s world.
We who have been engaged in civilian human rights advocacy for Palestinians (sometimes called the “peace” movement) can take a perverse satisfaction in the recognition and importance given to us in the Reut report. It is an error, however, to describe us as “delegitimizers.” We are incapable of legitimizing or delegitimizing anything. Israel’s own actions do that. At most, we draw attention to those actions and to the nature of the Israeli state, much as M. K. Gandhi did in the Indian independence movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did in the U.S. civil rights movement.
If the Reut Institute and Israel wish to address the fundamental problem, they will have to reconsider the premise upon which they are founded, namely that a state that expels, excludes and represses people simply because they are not Jews can achieve and convince others of its moral legitimacy. No amount of lipstick can disguise a pig, and even cosmetic surgery will not change the underlying reality. The only thing that will provide such legitimacy is a society that welcomes all who call it home. Even those of us who are past our prime and have limited vision can see that.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Giraldi: Somebody’s Son or Daughter is Our Tragedy - All the killing in faraway lands makes Americans less secure
Antiwar.com - Philip Giraldi - Abraham Lincoln referred to the "terrible arithmetic" of war, meaning that sometimes a general or statesman would have to accept large numbers of casualties in fighting that would bring the conflict to an end and thereby save even more lives. Whether Lincoln’s war really needed to be fought at all is debatable, but most Americans would accept that war has sometimes been necessary throughout history for a nation to survive when confronted by enemies.
When a war must be fought, the key objective should be to end it as quickly as possible and with a minimum loss of life. We Americans of the twenty-first century are now experiencing our own "terrible arithmetic," but an arithmetic that goes on and on without end. Worse, we are engaged in several conflicts that have nothing to do with national survival and did not have to be fought. At least Lincoln hoped that his bloody battles would lead to an end to killing. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama appear to have had no such expectations and instead have been and are accepting of permanent American engagement in the Middle East and Central Asia. Both have contrived the necessity of fighting a long war against an enemy they can hardly identify and repeatedly have failed to understand.
Americans should realize that they have come 180 degrees from the views of the Founding Fathers about the dangers of a standing army when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen can call a sinking economy the nation’s greatest security threat because it does not generate enough money to support the Pentagon’s "needs." America’s political culture, increasingly on a permanent war footing, is fueled by the fact that the status quo is painless for the country’s elites, almost none of whom have children in the military and many of whom actually benefit personally from the military industrial complex that exists symbiotically with the unending conflict. They are immune to the consequences of their bad decisions.
But the rest of us, who do not sit on the board of Grumman or Boeing, perhaps are able to see the war in more personal terms as it is our dead children and neighbors who are returned home for burial. As I watched the funeral of a young soldier who went to high school with my daughter last year I had to wonder what his life might have been like if it had not ended in a senseless war fought in a godforsaken corner of the globe. All his hopes and dreams vanished in the time it took to be killed by a bullet fired by a tribesman who was quite possibly fighting to defend his home. Our young American will never marry, never hold his firstborn. Never grow old surrounded by his grandchildren.
"Somebody’s daughter" is a phrase used sometimes in the media to remind the reader that when a woman is on the receiving end of abuse or violence one should personalize the tragedy by remembering that the victim was once a child, full of hope, who was loved and cherished by those around her. That way a horrible event does not become just a statistic or a line in a newspaper and the reader is better able to relate to the loss, identifying personally with the loved ones who remember the daughter they once held in their arms. Nor should one forget that she is also, quite likely, somebody’s wife or mother or sister. "Somebody’s son" or husband or father or grandson should likewise be on our lips every day as we read about the death toll from the never ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, apparently soon to be joined by increased American military engagement in Yemen and Somalia.
"Somebody’s daughter" speaks to our better angels, reminding us that everyone’s life is precious and that we should treat every man or woman we meet with respect and caring, just as we would our own children and grandchildren. Those sons and daughters that Washington has sacrificed in a series of wars that have no meaning have names, they are not just numbers in the tally of 5,678 American dead in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are Sergeant Ronald Rodriguez, Sergeant Stephen Deluzio, Corporal Christopher Boyd, Lance Corporal Kevin Oratowski, Specialist Jamal Rhett and Specialist Faith Hinkley, all among the fifty-five Americans killed in Afghanistan during the month of August. They all leave family and loved ones behind to mourn them and a community that should increasingly be pondering why they have died.
Is there anyone in either the Obama Administration or in the lickspittle mainstream media who really believes that more killing in Afghanistan and, increasingly again, in Iraq, will turn out well? Do they actually think that five years from now there will be a stable, non-corrupt, and pluralistic regime in either place that will be thanking Washington for its help? Or in Yemen? Or in Somalia?
Do they really think that Rodriguez, Deluzio, Boyd, Oratowski, Rhett, and Hinkley have died for some kind of glorious cause or to defend the United States? They should understand that, on the contrary, all the killing in faraway lands makes Americans less secure. It leaves scars and one of those scars will be a visceral hatred of the United States and all it stands for, anger that will fester for generations. When a US drone blows up a wedding party the survivors will want revenge. This is called "blowback," a desire for retribution that breeds terrorism. If President Obama is truly interested in ending the scourge of terror he would issue orders immediately to begin America’s departure from east of Suez. Leaving other nations to their own devices is immeasurably better than the United States as regional hegemon and policeman.
There is no way to bring the dead back, but remembering that each one of those who has died is somebody’s daughter or son will perhaps help Americans come around to the view that there has been enough of preemptive war, targeted killings, and predator drones. Most of all, there has been too much bloodshed and hatred. We Americans are not safer, we are much poorer, and we have become much more callous and uncaring as a people. And our sons and daughters are dying. That, in the final analysis, will be the only real legacy of the Bush and Obama presidencies.
When a war must be fought, the key objective should be to end it as quickly as possible and with a minimum loss of life. We Americans of the twenty-first century are now experiencing our own "terrible arithmetic," but an arithmetic that goes on and on without end. Worse, we are engaged in several conflicts that have nothing to do with national survival and did not have to be fought. At least Lincoln hoped that his bloody battles would lead to an end to killing. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama appear to have had no such expectations and instead have been and are accepting of permanent American engagement in the Middle East and Central Asia. Both have contrived the necessity of fighting a long war against an enemy they can hardly identify and repeatedly have failed to understand.
Americans should realize that they have come 180 degrees from the views of the Founding Fathers about the dangers of a standing army when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen can call a sinking economy the nation’s greatest security threat because it does not generate enough money to support the Pentagon’s "needs." America’s political culture, increasingly on a permanent war footing, is fueled by the fact that the status quo is painless for the country’s elites, almost none of whom have children in the military and many of whom actually benefit personally from the military industrial complex that exists symbiotically with the unending conflict. They are immune to the consequences of their bad decisions.
But the rest of us, who do not sit on the board of Grumman or Boeing, perhaps are able to see the war in more personal terms as it is our dead children and neighbors who are returned home for burial. As I watched the funeral of a young soldier who went to high school with my daughter last year I had to wonder what his life might have been like if it had not ended in a senseless war fought in a godforsaken corner of the globe. All his hopes and dreams vanished in the time it took to be killed by a bullet fired by a tribesman who was quite possibly fighting to defend his home. Our young American will never marry, never hold his firstborn. Never grow old surrounded by his grandchildren.
"Somebody’s daughter" is a phrase used sometimes in the media to remind the reader that when a woman is on the receiving end of abuse or violence one should personalize the tragedy by remembering that the victim was once a child, full of hope, who was loved and cherished by those around her. That way a horrible event does not become just a statistic or a line in a newspaper and the reader is better able to relate to the loss, identifying personally with the loved ones who remember the daughter they once held in their arms. Nor should one forget that she is also, quite likely, somebody’s wife or mother or sister. "Somebody’s son" or husband or father or grandson should likewise be on our lips every day as we read about the death toll from the never ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, apparently soon to be joined by increased American military engagement in Yemen and Somalia.
"Somebody’s daughter" speaks to our better angels, reminding us that everyone’s life is precious and that we should treat every man or woman we meet with respect and caring, just as we would our own children and grandchildren. Those sons and daughters that Washington has sacrificed in a series of wars that have no meaning have names, they are not just numbers in the tally of 5,678 American dead in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are Sergeant Ronald Rodriguez, Sergeant Stephen Deluzio, Corporal Christopher Boyd, Lance Corporal Kevin Oratowski, Specialist Jamal Rhett and Specialist Faith Hinkley, all among the fifty-five Americans killed in Afghanistan during the month of August. They all leave family and loved ones behind to mourn them and a community that should increasingly be pondering why they have died.
Is there anyone in either the Obama Administration or in the lickspittle mainstream media who really believes that more killing in Afghanistan and, increasingly again, in Iraq, will turn out well? Do they actually think that five years from now there will be a stable, non-corrupt, and pluralistic regime in either place that will be thanking Washington for its help? Or in Yemen? Or in Somalia?
Do they really think that Rodriguez, Deluzio, Boyd, Oratowski, Rhett, and Hinkley have died for some kind of glorious cause or to defend the United States? They should understand that, on the contrary, all the killing in faraway lands makes Americans less secure. It leaves scars and one of those scars will be a visceral hatred of the United States and all it stands for, anger that will fester for generations. When a US drone blows up a wedding party the survivors will want revenge. This is called "blowback," a desire for retribution that breeds terrorism. If President Obama is truly interested in ending the scourge of terror he would issue orders immediately to begin America’s departure from east of Suez. Leaving other nations to their own devices is immeasurably better than the United States as regional hegemon and policeman.
There is no way to bring the dead back, but remembering that each one of those who has died is somebody’s daughter or son will perhaps help Americans come around to the view that there has been enough of preemptive war, targeted killings, and predator drones. Most of all, there has been too much bloodshed and hatred. We Americans are not safer, we are much poorer, and we have become much more callous and uncaring as a people. And our sons and daughters are dying. That, in the final analysis, will be the only real legacy of the Bush and Obama presidencies.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Israeli forces torture 16-year-old Palestinian; victim to be tried in military court; supporters ask for international help
During the arrest operation, Mohammad broke his left leg, just above the ankle. Nonetheless, the soldiers beat him all over his body and intentionally kicked his injured leg. Torture and ill-treatment continued for five consecutive days following his arrest and reached its peak at the Hadassah hospital, where the Israeli soldiers pushed syringes into the boy’s hand and leg multiple times, covered his mouth with adhesive tape, punched Mohammad in the face, hit him in the abdomen with a stick and deprived him of sleep in an attempt to deter the boy from reporting the ill-treatment to the Israeli police.
Mohammad was undeterred and made an official statement to his interrogator in which he attempted to describe the abuse and torture he was subjected to, even after the other interrogators threatened him with killing and sexual abuse.
Mohammad is currently tried before the Israeli military courts on five charges related to throwing Molotov cocktails. He remains in Ofer prison in a section with adult prisoners. The next hearing in Mohammad’s trial is scheduled for 6 September 2010.
Addameer condemns Mohammad’s torture and ill-treatment at the hands of Israeli authorities as a violation of absolute prohibitions against these measures in international law, violations that are made all the more heinous due to Mohammad’s young age. Moreover, Addameer remains very concerned about the legitimacy of Mohammad’s ongoing trial before the Israeli military courts, as it remains clear that these courts operate in blatant disregard for fundamental international fair trial standards and lack any sort of meaningful protection for child detainees.
Addameer therefore calls for the charges against Mohammad to immediately be dropped, for those responsible for his torture and ill-treatment to be investigated and prosecuted.
Addameer also calls the international community to pressure Israel to conduct a thorough and impartial criminal investigation into the conduct of the soldiers who tortured and abused Mohammad Halabiyeh and bring the perpetrators to justice. At the same time, Addameer contends that it is very unlikely that such an investigation will be initiated without the needed political and diplomatic pressure given that the Israeli authorities have consistently failed to investigate and indict its soldiers involved in criminal offenses against Palestinian civilians in the OPT.
Addameer therefore urges foreign government officials, including members of foreign representative offices to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and foreign Consulates in East Jerusalem, as well as the Office of EU Representative in Israel and the OPT, human rights organizations and United Nations bodies to:
· Raise Mohammad Halabiyeh’s case with the Israeli authorities;
· Demand that the Military Police Criminal Investigation Department conducts an impartial and independent investigation into the soldiers actions;
· Demand that the Israeli Ministry of Health conducts an independent and impartial investigation into events that occurred at the Hadassah hospital;
· Raise Mohammad Halabiyeh’s case to the attention of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, in accordance with various human rights monitoring guidelines, including the EU Guidelines on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment;
· Attend Mohammad Halabiyeh’s court hearings at the Israeli Military Court.
More information about Mohammad’s case
ADDAMEER’s FULL STATEMENT WITH MORE DETAILS ON INCIDENT...
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