Israel’s trade in Palestinian body parts

DF: Israel’s organ grinder
21/08/2009 03:00:00 PM GMT

After watching the Israeli army dumping white phosphorous on a civilian population, organ theft seems to be a ‘light crime’.

By Gilad Atzmon

A few weeks ago we learned about a ring of American rabbis who had been arrested in New Jersey on suspicion of trafficking human organ trafficking. Rabbi Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, we read, enticed “vulnerable people to give up a kidney for 10,000 U.S. dollars which he would turn around and sell for 160,000 dollars.” Not bad, I thought to myself then. We are living in hard times, financial melt down, credit crunch, Wall Street is licking its wounds, the car industry is evaporating. Seemingly, kidney trafficking is still booming.

In fact, the ring of rabbi in New Jersey didn’t take me by complete surprise. For years we have been hearing about Palestinians claiming that Israel is “deep into organ trafficking”. We also learned that the family of Alastair Sinclair, a Scottish tourist who hanged himself in an Israeli jail, “was forced to bring suit for his return with missing body parts”.

In 2002 the Tehran Times reported:

The Zionist state has tacitly admitted that doctors at the Israeli forensic institute at Abu Kabir had extracted the vital organs of three Palestinian teenage children killed by the Israeli army nearly 10 days ago. Zionist Minister of Health Nessim Dahhan said in response to a question by Arab member of the Zionist parliament, the “Knesset” Ahmed Teibi … that he couldn’t deny that organs of Palestinian youths and children killed by the Israeli forces were taken out for transplants or scientific research.

But now the news about Israeli trafficking of human organ is spreading to Western mainstream media. Ynet, the biggest Israeli online newspaper, reported: “Leading Swedish daily Aftonbladet claimed in one of its articles that IDF [Israel Defence Forces] soldiers killed Palestinians in order to trade in their organs.”

A few weeks ago we had a debate on Palestine Think Tank on whether or not Zionism is a colonial apparatus. One of the materialist arguments against the perception of Zionism as a colonial practice was that Palestine has never been too attractive economically – it lacks oil, gold and minerals. However, this may change now. People who specialize in organ theft may find Palestine to be heaven on earth. In the light of the latest rapidly spreading news about the Israeli trade in stolen human organs, it would seem that the Jewish national project is colonial after all.

Although the Israeli government denies the accusation that it is trading in stolen human organs, and I myself am far from qualified to know what the truth of the matter is, one cannot deny that we are facing here a shift of consciousness within the Western discourse.

At the end of the day, after watching the Israeli army dumping great quantities of white phosphorous on a civilian population in broad daylight, after seeing Israelis gathering gleefully en masse on the hills around Gaza just to watch their military spreading death and physical suffering on the Palestinians, after reading that 94 per cent of Israelis supported the Israeli armed forces’ campaign against the elderly, women and children, most of whom were refugees with nowhere to escape and seek further refuge, organ theft seems to be a “light crime”.

Whether or not the Swedish paper’s accusations are true is yet to be seen. However, one fact has already been established: after so many years of the West dancing to the relentless crying violin of the Jewish Israeli melancholic victim serenade, the Western media is now changing its mood and is willing to confront the Jewish State’s institutional crime.

– Gilad Atzmon (gilad.co.uk) is an Israeli-born writer and jazz musician living in London. He had previously served in the Israeli military but he is currently an anti-racism campaigner. His latest CD is In Loving Memory of America.

Published in Al-Jazeera.com

US’s larger Middle East policy “necessarily embraces our interest in supporting or facilitating things for Israel.” Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski

Stop killings in Afghanistan
01/08/2009 10:16:00 AM GMT

By Linda Heard

War is abhorrent. There’s a reason the words war, pestilence and plague are related. But out of the three, war is the worst of all because it is deliberately inflicted by man upon mankind. It seems to me extraordinary that while we have the ability to put a man on the moon and possibly produce clones of ourselves, the human race appears unable or unwilling to resolve its differences without resorting to primitive violence.

Harry Patch, who was the last living soldier to have fought at Yves during World War I until he died a few days ago at the age of 111, understood this. “War, is organized murder, and nothing else.” He despised it so much that he refused to speak on the subject until he was over 100-year-old when the terrible memories had faded. Some 15 million people were killed in the so-called Great War and an estimated 60 million during World War II, yet decades on we’ve learned nothing. Today, nations still glorify war.

Moreover, the aggressors often act on the flimsiest of excuses. The US went into Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos as part of its anti-Communist containment policy but achieved nothing except an estimated 6.5 million fatalities, a toll that includes 58,000 American soldiers.

Similarly, the Iraq War was billed as a necessity until the deception was exposed. More than a million died to remove one man from office. Those who perpetrate the killings on “our side” are invariably heralded as heroes; their counterparts on the other side are always dehumanized, while innocent civilian victims are mostly written off as ‘collateral damage.” In reality they are all victims of fat cats in suits with the power to take life and death decisions over the lives of others in the name of policy.

Although Iraq is now acknowledged to have been a blunder of immense proportions until recently, Afghanistan has been generally perceived as a “good war” or, at least, a necessary war. This is because it was sold on two tracks; the first, to get the dastardly brain behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks Osama Bin Laden and, the second, to bring freedom to the Afghan people. On those two counts it has failed miserably. As far as we know Osama is still alive and kicking while most Afghans are not in a position to enjoy the fruits of democracy or an improved lifestyle since most reconstruction projects have been put on ice.

Speaking at a Stop the War Coalition rally last week, Afghan MP Malalai Joya called for NATO troops to quit her country forthwith and for the Afghan government to cleanse itself of criminals, warlords and U.S. puppets. She says Afghans are overwhelmingly against the occupation and must take responsibility for liberating themselves. She maintains that her people have suffered at the hands of occupation forces and Afghan warlords alike and complained about the ongoing lack of security. Indeed, she has been lucky enough to survive five assassination attempts on her own life.

Unable to put on display smiling, happy, liberated Afghans or Bin Laden “dead or alive,” we are now being told by the White House that the reason U.S. and NATO troops will remain there for the foreseeable future is to protect Western cities from a resurgent Al-Qaeda and the Taleban. Of course, this is complete nonsense. If that were the case, then all NATO would have to do is seal Afghanistan’s borders from weapons and foreign fighters while ensuring that those up to no good can’t get out. How can the Taleban be a threat to Washington or London when they don’t have warplanes or sophisticated missiles?

Here it’s worthwhile remembering, too, that not a single 9/11 terrorist was Afghan.

And you may be interested to know that on the FBI’s Web page titled “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” Bin Laden naturally appears. But wait for it…“for the bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.” When columnist Ed Haas contacted the FBI’s headquarters to ask why there was no mention of Sept. 11, he was informed that Bin Laden hasn’t been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 “because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.” If that’s the case, then why was Afghanistan invaded? But with Afghanistan a fait accompli, a far more pertinent question is: What are the US and its allies still doing there, and why are they so intent on remaining despite rising troop casualties (55 fatalities in July) as well as waning public support?

A former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and a former employee of both the Pentagon and the National Security Agency, Karen Kwiatkowski thinks she has answers. But first, she doesn’t believe the war in Afghanistan in winnable because victory hasn’t been defined. “There is no empirical data to support that we’re making any progress whatsoever,” she says.

She believes that U.S. President Barack Obama is pursuing the war under pressure from his political opponents at home because, as a Democratic president, he doesn’t want to appear weak on defense. On a strategic level, she says Afghanistan is a long-term trajectory of U.S. Middle East policy of manipulation and occupation orientated around “not Afghanistan, not Iraq, but Iran.”

“The reason we are in Afghanistan is because of Iran,” she says. “We want to be in a military position, an operational position to threaten in some way, to look good on our threats,” maybe we’ll threaten verbally and with the military right next door to pinch Iran both from Iraq, where we haven’t really reduced troops, and Afghanistan, where we have increased troops.” Ms. Kwiatkowski is adamant that Iran, like Iraq and Afghanistan, is not a threat to the U.S. “in any shape or form” but America’s larger Middle East policy “necessarily embraces our interest in supporting or facilitating things for Israel.” Hers is one view. But one thing is certain. It is time for the people of America and Europe, whose young men are dying or losing limbs on those foreign sands, to demand the truth about a war that is seemingly without purpose or end.

First published in Al Jazeera.com

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu.

On the right of resistance

31/07/2009 11:50:00 AM GMT

By Ramzi Kysia

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu.

We live in an era defined by its brutality. Our challenge is whether to accept this – or to take the risks necessary to transform our world commons in beloved community.

A year ago this August, forty-four ordinary people from seventeen different countries sailed to Gaza in two, small wooden boats. We did what the world would not do – we broke through the siege of Gaza. Over the last year the Free Gaza Movement has organized seven more voyages, successfully arriving to Gaza on five separate occasions. Ours remain the only international ships to reach the Gaza Strip in over forty-two years.

In the Middle-East, the struggle for justice is an uncertain endeavour in the best of times. On all sides human rights workers are beset with difficulties and distress. The Arab states are tyrannies, their peoples subject to secret police, arbitrary arrest, torture, and oppression. Within their societies, the Arab world is equally fractured by ethnic and class tensions, poverty, and political stagnation. From the outside, from the West, the Middle-East faces both open and covert acts of intimidation, intervention, economic destabilization, and even war, invasion, and mass killings.

Standing astride all these troubles, blocking near every attempt at progress in the region are the twin colossi of big oil and Israel. Seldom have a people been cursed with burdens more bitter, more devastating, and seemingly more intransigent than have the Arabs with oil and Israel.

Nowhere is this truer today than in Gaza. In 1999, British Gas discovered huge natural gas fields, worth billions of dollars, in Palestinian territorial waters off the coast of Gaza. Israel has already built a horizontal pipeline to siphon off gas from at least one of these fields. If there is an unspoken reason for the siege of Gaza – this is it.

Israel maintains effective control of all points of entry and exit to Gaza, as well as de facto control of Gaza’s revenues and economy. As such, and despite the closure of settlements in Gaza in 2005, Israel remains an occupying power in Gaza as in the rest of Palestine. As an occupying power, Israel is responsible for the well-being of the people it occupies and cannot legally impose a blockade, particularly one the collectively punishes the entire population of Gaza. These are clear crimes and the Israeli government and military should be prosecuted for them.

For the last three and a half years the Israeli siege has become increasingly ruthless. Less than twenty percent of normal trade is allowed into Gaza today. The siege has caused the local economy to collapse, leading to steep increases in unemployment, poverty and childhood malnutrition rates.

Because of Israel’s siege there is little fuel to run Gaza’s power plant – so electricity is scarce and intermittent. Without electricity, water and sanitation systems do not function. On March 27, 2008 two elderly women in their 70s, a teenage girl, and two babies were killed by a flood of sewage in Umm Naser. Last year alone, well over 16 billion litres of raw sewage had to be dumped in the sea, turning the Mediterranean into a toilet and creating a public health disaster.

Gaza is a tiny coastal plain, barely twenty-five miles long by four to seven miles wide. It does not have the ability to independently support the one and a half million human beings who live in one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Two-thirds of Gaza’s people are refugees, driven out of historical Palestine during Israel’s founding war in 1948. Over half the population are children.

Israel has a long history of violence against Palestinian children. A few examples: In December 2004, the IDF shot and killed seven-year old Rana Siyam. Earlier that year, nine-year old Raghda Alassar was shot and killed in her school while she was taking an English test. Thirteen-year old Iman al-Hams was shot seventeen times by the IDF as she was walking home after class in Gaza. An Israeli captain went up to her corpse and shot her again in the head – “dead-checking” the schoolgirl. The IDF prosecuted him, but not for murder. He was charged with “illegal use of his weapon,” and – despite admitting that he emptied his entire magazine into a little girl – he was found “not guilty.”

Over the summer of 2006, the IDF killed three-year old Bara Habib, three-year old Rajaa Abu Shaban, six-year old Rawan Hajjah, nine-year old Aya Salmeya, and over thirty-five other children just in Gaza alone. On January 16th, 2007, the IDF killed ten-year old Abir Aramin, the daughter of a Palestinian peace activist, as she was walking home from school. These are only a handful of cases. The Israeli human rights organization B’tselem estimates that over 900 Palestinian children were killed by the Israeli military between 2000 and 2008.

Israel has already recreated the worst aspects of the Warsaw Ghetto in Gaza – transforming this small strip of land into the world’s largest open-air prison, and the humanitarian condition of the one and a half million men, women, and children illegally incarcerated in Gaza is now at its worst point in the last forty-two years of Israeli occupation.

But there are darker histories waiting to be reborn. The simple and terrifying truth is that Israel is pushing the world on a path towards genocide. We are all en route to the slow-drip destruction of the Palestinian people. This reality must be forcefully confronted and fully overcome before it’s too late.

It’s now been more than six months since the end of Israel’s latest assault on the Gaza Strip, which led to the killing of over 1,400 Palestinians, and the people of Gaza are still living in rubble. Israel’s hermetic closure has created a man-made and deliberately-sustained humanitarian catastrophe. The continuing failure of the international community to enforce its own laws and protect the people of Gaza demands that we as private citizens directly intervene to take action commensurate with the crisis. We must act because our governments refuse to do so.

Regardless of Israeli threats or intimidation, Free Gaza volunteers intend to continue sailing unarmed boats to Gaza. Now more than ever – we need the people of the world to join with us.

The siege of Gaza only serves to strengthen authoritarian structures on all sides of this conflict, entrenching centralized control, rallying people against a common enemy. The isolation of Gaza reinforces a belief that the world has forgotten Palestine, and little cares how Palestinians are forced to live or even whether they live or die.

In contrast, civil resistance and citizens’ action movements are not only aimed against the injustices that we face – they are also strategies for social change. Nonviolent resistance empowers everyone with the knowledge that any among us can reach out, organize, and act to change the entire world. Time and again, history demonstrates that even the greatest of tyrannies can crumble to the ground when confronted with an organized and determined resistance.

Join us, whether in whole or in part. Join the Free Gaza Movement, the International Solidarity Movement, and the BDS Movement. Join us and other campaigns in the struggle for justice for Palestine. We need volunteers to do research and writing, web updates, translation, graphic design, local organizing in their communities, and much more.

Become part of the resistance.

We are often told that resistance is either unwarranted or impossible. Liberal apologists for Israel, such as Thomas Friedman, are constantly demanding that Palestinians lay down their arms, all the while exhorting Israelis to pick them up in ever increasing acts of violence and degradation.

When faced with violence in our world, our elites tell us that we have two – and only two – choices: capitulate to the violence, or go to war. Of course, which of these two choices is the right and proper course of action depends on who you are. Faced with Palestinian violence, Israelis must, rightly and properly, go to war. Faced with Israeli violence, Palestinians must, rightly and properly, capitulate. In Tel Aviv and Washington D.C. this is called “moral clarity:” the supposed necessity of pursuing Israeli security through deliberately creating massive insecurity among Palestinians. This is lunacy.

But even mainstream “peace” movements in the West try to delegitimize resistance by calling on both Palestinians and Israelis to renounce overt acts of violence, equating Palestinians who commit suicide bombings with Israelis who send F-16s, D9 military bulldozers, and Apache attack helicopters to level entire neighborhoods.

The problem is that the usually random and individual acts of violence by Palestinians against Israelis are not equal to the myriad structural oppressions and cruelties imposed on Palestinians through Israeli government policies. No Palestinian fighter jets bomb Israeli cities – because Palestine has no fighter jets. No Palestinian bulldozers demolish Israeli homes – because Palestine has no military bulldozers. No Palestinian soldiers invade Israeli neighbourhoods, terrorizing the populace – because there is no Palestinian army. The conflict in Palestine is a war of Israeli state terror against a largely unarmed and defenceless civilian population.

Even immoral and self-defeating acts of violence against Israeli civilians (such as suicide bombings are) cannot be equated with the daily humiliations, terror, and death that Israel inflicts on Palestinians by deliberate policy. Contrary to its presentation in the mainstream media, this conflict is neither a righteous war against evil Arab terrorists, nor a religious or ethnic dispute between two opposing and equally self-justified groups of people. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the struggle of two irreconcilable and unequal causes: the struggle of an oppressed people for freedom, justice, and self-determination against their oppressors’ struggle to maintain (and even expand) their domination. Under these circumstances resistance is not only a right – it’s a moral imperative.

This is not to say that any and all acts of resistance are acceptable. Clearly they are not. But it grows tedious to continually hear well-meaning, but otherwise clueless, Westerners try to equate the two sides of this conflict. I am past tired of hearing white people passively whine, or shrilly demand, “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?”

With respect, just because some people have chosen to remain ignorant of the long and deep history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance – from the 1936 Boycott to Bil’in today – does not mean that it does not exist. The Free Gaza Movement struggles in solidarity with an already vibrant Palestinian civil resistance.

Similarly, the other criticism of resistance – that it is futile – is equally mistaken. There is a widespread delusion among many that Israel and the Israeli lobby are simply too powerful to be challenged, let alone defeated. This is not the case.

On June 30th 2009 Israeli Occupation Forces forcibly boarded one of our boats, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, and kidnapped 21 human rights workers and journalists who were on their way to deliver much needed humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to besieged Gaza, including Nobel peace prize laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. They were held in jail for a week before being deported.

Though we were stopped on this particular voyage, it was not a “failure.” In the month after our boat was hijacked, over 100,000 news stories, essays, blog entries, action alerts, and radio and television segments were made on Israel’s violent response to our mission. It’s true that the ordeal of our 21 volunteers pales in comparison to the 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli prisons. The seizure of our small cargo of 3 tons of medical aid and reconstruction kits is insignificant in light of the $4 billion (USD) of aid promised to Gaza – aid that has not and will not be delivered because of the Israeli blockade.

But that too misses the point. By choosing to violently confront and kidnap unarmed human rights workers on a mission of mercy, Israel publicly demonstrated both the illegality and the absurdity of the Gaza siege. The siege is abjectly not about “security.” No one could possibly have believed that our small boat was a physical threat to Israel,

This public demonstration of the siege’s illegality resulted in record action at the governmental level as well. Both the Irish and Greek governments formally intervened to protect their citizens and property. Despite having no diplomatic relationship and refusing to recognize the legitimacy of Israel’s government – the King of Bahrain personally & successfully intervened to force Israel to immediately release the five Bahraini human rights workers kidnapped from the SPIRIT. The British parliament held a formal debate on the issue, and even the U.S. State Department was forced to hold a national conference call on for family and friends of the kidnap victims, as well as for Arab-American civil rights groups.

This was unprecedented, but it’s not enough.

The Free Gaza Movement started our small part in this struggle in 2006. We began on hope alone. Many thought it couldn’t be done, yet we did it. We broke through the Israeli blockade. We will sail again, and we are absolutely determined to reach the Gaza Strip on our next voyage. We intend to non-violently escalate our response. By sending a cargo ship, we will escalate the challenge to the blockade by bringing in significant amounts of banned reconstruction materials. By sending more boats on our next mission, we will significantly escalate the logistical difficulties Israel faces should they decide to violently attack us again.

By sending even more parliamentarians, dignitaries, journalists, and human rights workers to accompany the boats, we will significantly escalate the political difficulties Israel faces should they decide to violently attack us again.

The journey to Gaza is dangerous. The Israeli navy rammed our flagship, the Dignity, when we attempted to deliver medical supplies to Gaza during their vicious assault in December/January. In June, they hijacked our small boat and kidnapped everyone on board. Israel has even threatened to open fire on our unarmed ships, rather than allow us to deliver humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to the people of Gaza.

But the risks we take on our voyages are insignificant compared to the risks imposed every day upon the people of Gaza.

The purpose of nonviolent direct action and civil resistance is to take risks – to put ourselves “in the way” of injustice. We take these risks well aware of what the possible consequences may be. We do so because the consequences of doing nothing are so much worse. Any time we allow ourselves to be bullied, every time we pass by an evil and ignore it – we lower our standards and allow our world to be made that much harsher and unjust for us all.

Israel can threaten our boats and passengers – we will keep coming. Israel can illegally disrupt our communications and navigation systems – we will keep coming. Israel can open fire around our boats, or attempt to ram and sink them. Israel can choose to forcibly board and highjack our boats, and abduct our volunteers.

It doesn’t matter. We will keep coming. Armed only with the love of justice, and in the rite of resistance – we will go to Gaza again and again and again, until this siege is forever shattered and the people of Gaza have free access to the rest of the world.

– Ramzi Kysia is an Arab-American essayist and an organizer with the Free Gaza Movement (www.FreeGaza.org).

This article was published in Al-Jazeera Magazine

Blair committed war crimes against Iraq.

Brown’s inquiry into Blair’s war of choice
22/07/2009 09:09:00 AM GMT

By Dr. Burhan M. Al-Chalabi

When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister he made a number of announcements on the need for the government to earn back the trust and confidence of the British public. The Prime Minister talked about new spirit of public accountability and transparency. It was evident to all concerned that the Prime Minister was going to address and readdress his predecessor’s falsely conceived and failed policy of invading Iraq by setting up an independent public inquiry.

However, when the announcement was made, it was greeted with disappointment and disbelief because, it was originally ruled, the public inquiry was to be held in private. Although this decision was later amended it provided a useful warning of an underlying intent to undermine the right of the British public to get at the truth.

The most disappointing aspect of the inquiry was its declared purpose; to learn lessons about the invasion and not to apportion civil or criminal blame or hold people accountable.

If the purpose of the inquiry is to learn lessons about wars, Britain has been at war more often than most countries and has an unparalleled wealth of war experience. Britain also has one of the most professional armies in the world. Therefore it is hard to see what lessons can be learned from supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Perhaps the only lesson that can be learned is how to get away with destroying a defenceless nation and pretend that nothing wrong has happened.

If the purpose is to learn lessons, Britain is in a unique position, having invaded and occupied Iraq from 1917 to 1958. The rhetoric of the invasion may have changed with the passage of time from freedom and independence to democracy and human rights, but the deception of the British public and the lies to the Iraqis remained the same. General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude’s words did not differ from those of Tony Blair’s: both announced they were entering Iraq as liberators and not invaders, to help the Iraqi people. In both campaigns the death of Iraqis and destruction of Iraq were not addressed and exploiting Iraqi natural resources was continuously denied. The military protection afforded only to the Iraqi Ministry of oil is testimony to the propaganda of deception.

The Prime Minister should consider the following moral and legal arguments to justify the case to apportion civil or criminal blame and to hold people accountable for the war and invasion.

Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity has been violated and destroyed. Its wealth of cultural heritage has been looted and vandalised. Iraq’s natural resources and its once elaborate and sophisticated infrastructure have been laid to waste. Safety, security and the process of the rule of law are virtually non-existent.

More than 3 million Iraqis have left their homes, most of whom fleeing to neighbouring countries and the west. More than 600,000 civilians have been killed and tens of thousands more maimed or injured, traumatised or homeless – often all of these. Wild dogs feast on Iraqi remains, holy places have been desecrated, countless numbers of people are assassinated or kidnapped every day. Because of the invasion and continued occupation, Iraq is a failed state, a lawless country replete with orphans, widows and the bereaved, the maimed and refugees.

On the eve of the war, in the absence of a UN Security Council Resolution or international authority, Tony Blair told the British public that he was sending British soldiers to change the regime in Iraq, a regime that was not at war with Britain and did not pose any threats to British national interest or security.

In Britain, the war has caused the death of more than 170 armed personnel, with hundreds more injured or traumatised. The cost of Blair’s war was more than £9,000m. The British public resent being lied to and losing the respect of Middle Eastern communities for siding with the US in the invasion of Iraq.

On the international front, the invasion was declared illegal by the Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan. The legal and moral authority of the UN has been undermined. Terrorism is on the increase. The whole of the Middle East region has either been destabilised or, as a result of the chaos in Iraq, is at high risk of instability or even meltdown. Iran is an unrivalled power with potential nuclear capabilities and serious regional ambition. To all intents and purposes Southern Iraq has been handed over on a golden plate to Tehran.

Officials of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein were quickly held accountable for their crimes, and punished, some including Saddam Hussein himself were executed for their felonies and atrocities.

Since the invasion, it has become abundantly clear that alleged intelligence failure cannot be held responsible for the invasion of Iraq. In March 2005 it was revealed by The Sunday Times that in 2002 the then head of M16, Sir Richard Dearlove, told Tony Blair and his leading advisers after a visit to Washington that “the facts and intelligence” were being “fixed round the policy” by George W. Bush’s Administration.

In a report published by the Guardian on 4 May, 2009, Nigel Inkster, former deputy head of M16, said, “Britain was dragged into a war in Iraq which was always against our better judgement”.

It is also clear that the war was not about protecting the human rights of the Iraqi people. The death, torture and imprisonment of Iraqi civilians, women and children have deprived them of their human rights.

The report by Lord Bingham, The Law Lord, published in the Guardian on 18 November, 2008, stated that the Iraqi people’s human and civil rights were… and remain… swept aside by the acts of war and continuing acts of occupation.

The Prime Minister is still in an admirable position of being able to set the record straight for the British public, the Iraqi people and the international community. This can only be achieved through an independent judicial public inquiry with the remit to apportion civil and criminal blame and to set up a judicial process to hold people accountable regardless of the position they held.

The British and Iraqi bereaved parents deserve to be told why their sons and daughters died. This was no war of necessity, it was a war of choice. Mr Blair’s choice.

– Dr. Burhan M. Al-Chalabi – FRSA

the article first appeared in Al Jazeera Magazine

Noam Chomsky: Season of Travesties: Freedom and Democracy in mid-2009

chomsky.info, July 9, 2009

June 2009 was marked by a number of significant events, including two elections in the Middle East: in Lebanon, then Iran. The events are significant, and the reactions to them, highly instructive.
The election in Lebanon was greeted with euphoria. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed that he is “a sucker for free and fair elections,” so “it warms my heart to watch” what happened in Lebanon in an election that “was indeed free and fair Ñ not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run. No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.” Crucially, “a solid majority of all Lebanese — Muslims, Christians and Druse — voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri,” the US-backed candidate and son of the murdered ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, so that “to the extent that anyone came out of this election with the moral authority to lead the next government, it was the coalition that wants Lebanon to be run by and for the Lebanese — not for Iran, not for Syria and not for fighting Israel.” We must give credit where it is due for this triumph of free elections (and of Washington): “Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 — and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing — this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter.”

Two days later Friedman’s views were echoed by Eliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign relations, formerly a high official of the Reagan and Bush I administrations. Under the heading “Lebanon’s Triumph, Iran’s Travesty,” Abrams compared these “twin tests of [US] efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world.” The lesson is clear: “What the United States should be promoting is not elections, but free elections, and the voting in Lebanon passed any realistic test. … the majority of Lebanese have rejected Hezbollah’s claim that it is not a terrorist group but a ‘national resistance’ … The Lebanese had a chance to vote against Hezbollah, and took the opportunity.”

Reactions were similar throughout the mainstream. There are, however, a few flies in the ointment.

The most prominent of them, apparently unreported in the US, is the actual vote. The Hezbollah-based March 8 coalition won handily, by approximately the same figure as Obama vs. McCain in November 2008, about 54% of the popular vote, according Ministry of Interior figures. Hence by the Friedman-Abrams argument, we should be lamenting Ahmadinejad’s defeat of President Obama, and the “moral authority” won by Hezbollah, as “the majority of Lebanese … took the opportunity” to reject the charges Abrams repeats from Washington propaganda.

Like others, Friedman and Abrams are referring to representatives in Parliament. These numbers are skewed by the confessional voting system, which sharply reduces the seats granted to the largest of the sects, the Shi’ites, who overwhelmingly back Hizbollah and its Amal ally. But as serious analysts have pointed out, the confessional ground rules undermine “free and fair elections” in even more significant ways than this. Assaf Kfoury observes that they leave no space for non-sectarian parties and erect a barrier to introducing socioeconomic policies and other real issues into the electoral system. They also open the door to “massive external interference,” low voter turnout, and “vote-rigging and vote-buying,” all features of the June election, even more so than before. Thus in Beirut, home of more than half the population, less than a fourth of eligible voters could vote without returning to their usually remote districts of origin. The effect is that migrant workers and the poorer classes are effectively disenfranchised in “a form of extreme gerrymandering, Lebanese style,” favoring the privileged and pro-Western classes.

In Iran, the electoral results issued by the Interior Ministry lacked credibility both by the manner in which they were released and by the figures themselves. An enormous popular protest followed, brutally suppressed by the armed forces of the ruling clerics. Perhaps Ahmadinejad might have won a majority if votes had been fairly counted, but it appears that the rulers were unwilling to take that chance. From the streets, correspondent Reese Erlich, who has had considerable experience with popular uprisings and bitter repression in US domains, writes that “It’s a genuine Iranian mass movement made up of students, workers, women, and middle class folks” — and possibly much of the rural population. Eric Hooglund, a respected scholar who has studied rural Iran intensively, dismisses standard speculations about rural support for Ahmadinejad, describing “overwhelming” support for Mousavi in regions he has studied, and outrage over what the large majority there regard as a stolen election.

It is highly unlikely that the protest will damage the clerical-military regime in the short term, but as Erlich observes, it “is sowing the seeds for future struggles.”

As in Lebanon, the electoral system itself violates basic rights. Candidates have to be approved by the ruling clerics, who can and do bar policies of which they disapprove. And though repression overall may not be as harsh as in the US-backed dictatorships of the region, it is ugly enough, and in June 2009, very visibly so.

One can argue that Iranian “guided democracy” has structural analogues in the US, where elections are largely bought, and candidates and programs are effectively “vetted” by concentrations of capital. A striking illustration is being played out right now. It is hardly controversial that the disastrous US health system is a high priority for the public, which, for a long time, has favored national health care, an option that has been kept off the agenda by private power. In a limited shift towards the public will, Congress is now debating whether to allow a public option to compete with insurers, a proposal with overwhelming popular support. The opposition, who regard themselves as free market advocates, charge that the proposal would be unfair to the private sector, which will be unable to compete with a more efficient public system. Though a bit odd, the argument is plausible. As economist Dean Baker points out, “We know that private insurers can’t compete because we already had this experiment with the Medicare program. When private insurers had to compete on a level playing field with the traditional government-run plan they were almost driven from the market.” Savings from a government program would be even greater if, as in other countries, the government were permitted to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical corporations, an option supported by 85% of the population but also not on the agenda. “Unless Congress creates a serious public plan,” Baker writes, Americans “can expect to be hit with the largest tax increase in the history of the world — all of it going into the pockets of the health care industry.” That is a likely outcome, once again, in the American form of “guided democracy.” And it is hardly the only example.

While our thoughts are turned to elections, we should not forget one recent authentically “free and fair” election in the Middle East region, in Palestine in January 2006, to which the US and its allies at once responded with harsh punishment for the population that voted “the wrong way.” The pretexts offered were laughable, and the response caused scarcely a ripple on the flood of commentary on Washington’s noble “efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world,” a feat that reveals impressive subordination to authority.

No less impressive is the readiness to agree that Israel is justified in imposing a harsh and destructive siege on Gaza, and attacking it with merciless violence using US equipment and diplomatic support, as it did last winter. There of course is a pretext: “the right to self-defense.” The pretext has been almost universally accepted in the West, though Israeli actions are sometimes condemned as “disproportionate.” The reaction is remarkable, because the pretext collapses on the most cursory inspection. The issue is the right TO USE FORCE in self-defense, and a state has that right only if it has exhausted peaceful means. In this case, Israel has simply refused to use the peaceful means that have readily available. All of this has been amply discussed elsewhere, and it should be unnecessary to review the simple facts once again.

Once again relying on the impunity it receives as a US client, Israel brought the month of June 2009 to a close by enforcing the siege with a brazen act of hijacking. On June 30, the Israeli navy hijacked the Free Gaza movement boat “Spirit of Humanity” — in international waters, according to those aboard — and forced it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The boat had left from Cyprus, where the cargo was inspected: it consisted of medicines, reconstruction supplies, and toys. The human rights workers aboard included Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was sent to Ramleh prison in Israel — apparently without a word from the Obama administration. The crime scarcely elicited a yawn — with some justice, one might argue, since Israel has been hijacking boats travelling between Cyprus and Lebanon for decades, kidnapping and sometimes killing passengers or sending them in Israeli prisons without charge where they join thousands of others, in some cases held for many years as hostages. So why even bother to report this latest outrage by a rogue state and its patron, for whom law is a theme for 4th of July speeches and a weapon against enemies?

Israel’s hijacking is a far more extreme crime than anything carried out by Somalis driven to piracy by poverty and despair, and destruction of their fishing grounds by robbery and dumping of toxic wastes — not to speak of the destruction of their economy by a Bush counter-terror operation conceded to have been fraudulent, and a US-backed Ethiopian invasion. The Israeli hijacking is also in violation of a March 1988 international Convention on safety of maritime navigation to which the US is a party, hence required by the Convention to assist in enforcing it. Israel, however, is not a party — which, of course, in no way mitigates the crime or the obligation to enforce the Convention against violators. Israel’s failure to join is particularly interesting, since the Convention was partially inspired by the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985. That crime ranks high in Israel and the West among terrorist atrocities — unlike Israel’s US-backed bombing of Tunis a week earlier, killing 75 people, as usual with no credible pretext, but again tolerated under the grant of impunity for the US and its clients.

Possibly Israel chose not to join the Convention because of its regular practice of hijacking boats in international waters at that time. Also worth investigating in connection with the June 2009 hijacking is that since 2000, after the discovery of apparently substantial reserves of natural gas in Gaza’s territorial waters by British Gas, Israel has been steadily forcing Gazan fishing boats towards shore, often violently, ruining an industry vital to Gaza’s survival. At the same time, Israel has been entering into negotiations with BG to obtain gas from these sources, thus stealing the meager resources of the population it is mercilessly crushing.

The Western hemisphere also witnessed an election-related crime at the month’s end. A military coup in Honduras ousted President Manuel Zelaya and expelled him to Costa Rica. As observed by economist Mark Weisbrot, an experienced analyst of Latin American affairs, the social structure of the coup is “a recurrent story in Latin America,” pitting “a reform president who is supported by labor unions and social organizations against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite who is accustomed to choosing not only the Supreme Court and the Congress, but also the president.”

Mainstream commentary described the coup as an unfortunate return to the bad days of decades ago. But that is mistaken. This is the third military coup in the past decade, all conforming to the “recurrent story.” The first, in Venezuela in 2002, was supported by the Bush administration, which, however, backed down after sharp Latin American condemnation and restoration of the elected government by a popular uprising. The second, in Haiti in 2004, was carried out by Haiti’s traditional torturers, France and the US. The elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was spirited to Central Africa and kept at a safe distance from Haiti by the master of the hemisphere.

What is novel in the Honduras coup is that the US has not lent it support. Rather, the US joined with the Organization of American States in opposing the coup, though with a more reserved condemnation than others, and with no any action, unlike the neighboring states and much of the rest of Latin America. Alone in the region, the US has not withdrawn its ambassador, as did France, Spain and Italy along with Latin American states.

It was reported that Washington had advance information about a possible coup, and tried to prevent it. It surpasses imagination that Washington did not have close knowledge of what was underway in Honduras, which is highly dependent on US aid, and whose military is armed, trained, and advised by Washington. Military relations have been particularly close since the 1980s, when Honduras was the base for Reagan’s terrorist war against Nicaragua.

Whether this will play out as another chapter of the “recurrent story” remains to be seen, and will depend in no small measure on reactions within the United States.

British government sets aside the rights of British citizens in support of Zionist Israel

Official: ‘Reckless’ to sail in international waters

14/07/2009 01:46:00 PM GMT

By Stuart Littlewood

Britain’s foreign secretary David Miliband – or rather, a henchman on his behalf – has written to me about the government’s response to Israel’s hijacking of the mercy ship Spirit of Humanity on the high seas and the outrageous treatment of six peace-loving British citizens (including the skipper), en route to Gaza not Israel, who had their gear stolen or damaged and were thrown into Israeli jails. The letter contains the usual wet and meaningless expressions like deplore and press and raise the issue, which are the familiar hallmark of Foreign Office mentality.

And I’m told it is “reckless” to travel in international waters. It should, of course, be safe – and would be if the high and mighty Western allies, always talking big against terror, were to enforce maritime law and rid the Eastern Mediterranean of marauding Israeli pirates.

Miliband’s spokesman says: “The Israeli Navy took control of the Spirit of Humanity on 30 June, diverting it to Ashdod port in Israel. All those on board, including six British nationals, were handed over to Israeli immigration officials. British consular officials had good access to the British detainees and established that they were treated well. The Israeli authorities deported the detainees on 6 July.”

Treated well? That’s not what the peaceful seafarers say. They were assaulted, put in fear of their lives and deprived of their liberty for fully a week – a long time in a stinking Israeli jail.

Miliband’s spokesman: “The Foreign Secretary said in the House of Commons on 30 June that it was ‘vital that all states respect international law, including the law of the sea. It is also important to say that we deplore the interference by the Israeli navy in the activities of Gazan fishermen’.”

Such fine words. Where is the action to back them up? Gaza’s fishermen suffer increasingly unjust restrictions and are still fired on.

Miliband’s spokesman: “When the Foreign Secretary spoke to the Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, on 1 July he raised the issue with him and asked for clarification about whether or not the Spirit of Humanity had been intercepted in international waters. We will continue to press the Israeli authorities for clarification.”

It’s well over a week and Lieberman hasn’t clarified anything. There’s a surprise! Was the Israeli ambassador in London summoned and given a dressing down? Has London demanded compensation for the Britishers’ losses and damage? Has the boat and its cargo been returned? Have arrangements been made for the aid to be delivered? Our Zionist-leaning government apparently takes pleasure in Britain’s repeated humiliation. Not long ago the British consul-general in Tel Aviv (a woman) was strip-searched by Israeli security perverts.

Miliband’s spokesman: “We regularly remind the Israeli government of its obligations under international law on a variety of issues, including with respect to humanitarian access to Gaza as well as Israel’s control of Gazan waters and the effect this has on Gaza’s fishing industry.”

Ever get the feeling they’ve switched off their collective hearing aid? What is the point of obligations if they never have to be met? Miliband and the rest should hang their heads in shame, particularly over the Gaza fishing scandal.

Miliband’s spokesman: “As I said on the phone, our Travel Advice makes clear that we advise against all travel to Gaza, including its offshore waters; that it is reckless to travel to Gaza at this time; and that medical and other essential specialist staff needing to travel to Gaza should coordinate their entry to Gaza with the major international humanitarian organisations already on the ground.”

Why does London perpetuate the blockade of Gaza by colluding in Israel’s unlawful conduct? Where are the consequences and penalties for breaching international law and all codes of human decency?

On the other point, Gaza’s Ministry of Health is surely best placed to know what’s needed.

Miliband’s spokesman: “Our Embassy in Tel Aviv and our Consulate General in Jerusalem have also similarly advised those wishing to deliver humanitarian assistance to Gaza to do so through existing humanitarian organisations which can advise, particularly with regards to medicines, [and] which items if any are currently required.”

Private suppliers should be free to deliver aid through whatever channels they wish.

Miliband’s spokesman: “The UK has been unequivocal in its calls for Israel to lessen restrictions at the Gaza crossings, allowing the legitimate flow of humanitarian aid, trade and reconstruction goods and the movement of people. This is essential not only for the people of Gaza, but also for the wider stability of the region.”

“Unequivocal”? “Essential”? More splendid but empty words. The needs of the crushed and devastated and half-starved people of Gaza have been urgent for 3 years, ever since Britain ganged up with the Zionist axis to bring Gaza to its knees.

Miliband’s spokesman: “Recent events in Gaza are a tragic reminder of the importance of progress on the peace process.”

No kidding……. They are also a tragic reminder of the West’s perverse failure in its duty to enforce compliance with international law, human rights and UN resolutions.

Miliband’s spokesman: “The UK, with the support of our international allies, will continue to pursue vigorously a comprehensive peace based on a two-state solution, involving a secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state.”

But never vigorously enough. The world is still waiting after sixty-one years. And let’s change those worn-out words around. How does a secure Palestine alongside a viable Israel sound?

Britain and its allies need to try a new tack… like first establishing the rule of international law and forcibly breaking the siege. It’s so blindingly obvious.

Meanwhile, doesn’t the gut-churning, cowardly shambles that is Gaza make you proud to be British? Or American? Or European?

– Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation

Eric Walberg gives the real story behind Iranian protests

Whither the revolutions?
08/07/2009 01:01:00 PM GMT

By Eric Walberg

June was a busy month for two of Washington’s real “axis of evil.”

Venezuela’s Chavez completed his nationalization of oil and Iran’s Ahmadinejad stemmed a Western-backed color revolution, leaving both in place. What drives U.S. foreign policy? Is it primarily the domestic economy, as it logically

should be, or, as many argue, the powerful Israel lobby, or as others argue, the need to secure energy sources? Of course, the answer is all three, in varying degrees depending on the geopolitical importance of the country in question. And woe to any country that threatens any of the above.

Russia is perhaps a special case, as U.S. politics was dependent for so long on the anti-communist Cold War that ideologues found it impossible to dispense with this useful bugaboo even after the collapse of communism. But it was not only Sovietologists like Condoleezza Rice that perversely prospered from this obsession, but the U.S. domestic economy itself, which was transformed into what is best described as the military-industrial complex (MIC). It would take very little to placate today’s Russia — pull in NATO’s horns and stop pandering to the Russophobes in Eastern Europe — but that would hurt the MIC and would hamper the US plans for empire and oil. So it remains an enemy of choice, though not part of the Axis of Evil. This crude characterization by Bush/Cheney lumped North Korea, Iraq and Iran together as the worst of the worst. With the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the current score is one down, two to go. But North Korea is a red herring. It is merely a very useful Cold War foil, beloved of the MIC, justifying its many useless, lethal weapons programs. A popular whipping boy, a bit of innocent ideological entertainment.

Having knocked out Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and ignoring Korea, we are left with Iran. But Bush could easily have added Venezuela to his list, as it is these two countries that pose the greatest real threat to the U.S. empire. Both have charismatic leaders who not openly denounce US and Israeli empire but do something about it. And both have large, nationalized oil sectors. Chavez’s successful defiance of the U.S. has directly inspired Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay to elect socialist leaders and given Cuba a new lease on life. Ahmadinejad has defied the many Israel-imposed bans on supporting the Palestinian resistance and even publicly questioned the legitimacy of Israel itself. These bold and principled men are thereby pariahs, albeit useful ones for the MIC, along with their Cold War ghost Kim Jong Il. That is the catch. While the empire officially frets, the U.S. military-based economy thrives on its official enemies. It would collapse without them. This is the supreme irony to be noted by observers of what can only be described as the bizarre and contradictory world of U.S. foreign policy.

Venezuela and Iran are indeed threats to the U.S. empire. President Hugo Chavez not only thoroughly nationalized the oil sector after the crippling strike led by oil executives in 2002-03, but proceeded to use the revenues to transform his country, putting it on the albeit bumpy road to socialism — subsidized basic goods, mass literacy and free health care. He has even been providing poor Americans with discount gas. “The oil belongs to all Venezuelans,” Chavez emphasized recently to reporters last month in Argentina, after the government announced it was taking over oil service companies along with U.S. -owned gas compression units, adding to the heavy oil projects Venezuela took over in 2007. Natural gas looks like it will be next. The point of this is to “regain full petroleum sovereignty,” that is, full political sovereignty. No more attempted color revolutions for Venezuela.

What brings us to Iran. When Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, with the backing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he tried to wrest control of key ministries, especially oil, and the government’s National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) from the Rafsanjani/Mousavi capitalist elite, replacing officials with his own choices — primarily from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It was not till 2007 that he was able to install his candidate for oil minister, head of the NIOC Gholamhossein Nozari. Like Chavez, he proceeded to use state oil revenues to consolidate his base among the poor, something which the so-called reformists under his predecessor Mohammad Khatami or earlier nonreformists under Rafsanjani/Mousavi were not noted for.

While Rafsanjani was parliamentary speaker with Mousavi his prime minister in the 1980s, younger Iranians, including Ahmadinejad, were fighting in the IRGC (many martyring themselves) in the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Rafsanjani became Iran’s first president in 1989 and added to his family’s vast fortune, much of it connected with oil, during his privatization program when he opened the oil industry to private Iranian contractors. This continued under the “reformist” Khatami, who took over the presidency in 1997.

Ahmadinejad’s ascendancy in 2005 on a platform to fight and eliminate the “oil mafia,” confirmed the IRGC as the underlying force confronting Rafsanjani and the reformists. Throughout the 2009 electoral campaign, Ahmadinejad attacked his opponents as leaders of the corrupt elite, now trying to claw back control.

The elite had had enough, and the election ruckus last month was their last stand against the clearly populist, essentially leftist Ahmadinejad. Some call Ahmadinejad’s decisive win a coup d’état by the IRGC, but the recent demonstrations in Tehran look eerily similar to those in Caracas in 2002-03 when Venezuelan society was paralyzed by its economic elite, mobilizing its own Gucci crowd, strongly backed by the U.S., protesting a populist president’s determination to use oil revenues to help the common people. Chavez risked his life in the process, but his careful planning foiled the plotters and he survived to carry out his agenda. Whether Ahmadinejad can do the same, and to what extent the IRGC is a vehicle for promoting social welfare is a drama which is only now unfolding.

Both the Venezuelan and Iranian thorns have incensed Washington for daring to use their oil revenues to redistribute wealth in their societies and then organize resistance to U.S. hegemony in their respective neighborhoods. They are examples, which continue to inspire and which pose a threat to U.S. imperial policy, both international and domestic. For what better way to solve all the ills of U.S. society — lack of secure health care, poverty, violence — than dismantling the MIC and initiating a foreign policy based on peace rather than war?

The big difference between these two thorns, of course, is Islam and Iran’s interference with the U.S.-Israeli agenda. Now that the oil companies have resigned themselves to Venezuela’s new assertiveness, they and their government spokesmen are not so concerned with trying to overthrow Chavez. However, the extra weight of the Israel lobby in Washington makes sure that another Iranian revolution remains at the top of the list of Obama’s things-to-do.

Another curious difference is that U.S. attempts to turn Venezuela’s neighbors against it backfired, as they came to Chavez’s defense and followed his example, while similar efforts to conspire against Iran have had considerable success.

The schism in both Venezuelan and Iranian societies is very real and is being taken advantage of by the U.S. and friends, who are doing their “best” to engineer a collapse of the populist governments to make room for more U.S.- friendly color revolutions. But there is too much Yankee baggage for this to work anymore. It is time for a color revolution at home.

Netanyahu’s peace plan is just a front for legitimising ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing as a state policy
05/07/2009 07:34:00 PM GMT

By Nicola Nasser

In his speech at Bar Ilan University on June 14, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a new Israeli “peace plan,” with preconditions that a Palestinian negotiator must first meet before he would “promptly” engage in “unconditional” bilateral talks to meet an international consensus demanding the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. His preconditions added to the fourteen conditions the former Israeli government of comatose Ariel Sharon attached to Israel’s adoption in grudge of the 2003 Road Map blueprint for peace with the Palestinian side, on the basis of which the U.S. administration of President Barak Obama and his presidential envoy George Mitchell are now urging an early resumption of “immediate” Israeli – Palestinian peace talks, which Mitchell on June 26 hoped “very much to conclude this phase of the discussions and to be able to move into meaningful and productive negotiations in the near future.”

Sharon’s conditional approval of the Road Map has condemned the blueprint as a non-starter, led to the Israeli military reoccupation of the Palestinian autonomous areas, aborted former U.S. President George W. Bush’s promise to Palestinians to have their own state twice in 2005 and 2008, and doomed the twenty – year peace process since the Madrid conference in 1991 to its current impasse that Obama and Mitchell are trying to break through. It is a forgone conclusion that Netanyahu’s preconditions — Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state,” “demilitarization” of the prospective Palestinian less-than-a-sovereign state and preserving Israel’s illegitimate “right” to expand its illegal colonial Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories — will fare worse than Sharon’s conditions.

Netanyahu demanded that the “Palestinian population,” and not the Palestinian people — who live “in Judea and Samaria,” and not in the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territory, where there is an “Israeli presence,” and not an Israeli military occupation — should first agree to a “public, binding and unequivocal” recognition that Israel is “the nation state of the Jewish people” worldwide, and not the nation state of the Israelis. His demand was an arrogant precondition ridiculed by Gideon Levy in Haaretz on June 15 as an “excessive demand that Palestinians recognize the Jewish state by one who has failed to recognize the Palestinians as a people,” sarcastically welcomed the next day by Ma’ariv’s chief political columnist, Ben Caspit, who wrote: “Welcome, Mr. Prime Minister, to the 20th century. The problem is that we’re already in the 21st.” Moreover, such a precondition “is almost humiliating and it is unlikely to be met,” by the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to Avi Issacharoff, writing in Haaretz on June 17.

Israeli analyst M.J. Rosenberg wrote on June 19: Acceptance of Israel as a “Jewish state” is a non-starter at this point. And Netanyahu knows it. If that is a precondition for negotiations, there will be no negotiations. But without any definition of borders and with Netanyahu committed to expanding settlements in the West Bank, how can anyone seriously expect Palestinians to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state?” Aaron David Miller, a former senior U.S. negotiator in the Mideast, said Netanyahu’s speech “was less about pursuing Arab-Israeli peace and much more about pursuing the U.S.-Israeli relationship.”

PA’s Prime Minister in Ramallah, Salam Fayyad, noted in a speech at Al-Quds (Jerusalem) University on June 22 that his Israeli counterpart’s speech missed all reference to the Road Map blueprint as well as to the thorny issue of expanding settlements and described the speech as “a new blow to efforts to salvage the peace process.” Head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s department of negotiations affairs, Saeb Erakat, condemned Netanyahu’s speech as a “non-starter.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the international community to isolate him and his government. His Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, a close ally of Abbas and the U.S. and Israel’s 30-year unwavering peace partner, said Netanyahu’s precondition “aborts the chance for peace,” although he declined to heed Abbas’ call for the isolation of Netanyahu and received him and others of his cabinet. Al-Baath, the mouthpiece of Syria’s ruling party, commented: “Netanyahu has confirmed that he rejects the Arab initiative for peace.” In an editorial on June 16, the Saudi Arabian English daily, “Arab News,” said his speech was “a challenge to the world community.” Walid Jumblat, a leading figure of the March 14 bloc, which recently won the Lebanese elections, lambasted the speech as dragging the region into a “dangerous stage” and one that “completely crippled” any possibility to reach a peace settlement, adding that, “any talk about Israel as a Jewish state means closing the file on the (Palestinian right of) return,” on which there is a consensus among rival Lebanese factions to reject the resettlement of half a million Palestinian refugees hosted by Lebanon since 1948.

However Obama and Mitchell insensitively ignored all negative Palestinian and Arab reactions, repeatedly and on record renamed Israel as the “Jewish” State of Israel, with Obama lightly trying to defuse the explosiveness of Netanyahu’s demand by stating that it was “exactly what negotiations are supposed to be about,” because “this is what both America and Europe are asking,” according to Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini.

Angrily describing Netanyahu as a “swindler” who plays “tricks” with peace – making, Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary general of the PLO’s executive committee, said the Israeli premier wants Palestinians to “become Zionists.” Mere heartfelt commitment to Zionism will not be enough, however, Hasan and Ali Abunimah wrote in The Electronic Intifada on June 17, for the Palestinians’ conversion to have “practical meaning,” Netanyahu explained, “there must also be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel’s borders.” In other words, “Palestinians must agree to help Israel complete the ethnic cleansing it began in 1947-48, by abandoning the right of return,” Abunimah brothers added.

In a statement, five PLO member factions, namely the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestinian People’s Party, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement and the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, said Netanyahu’s speech was “tantamount to a declaration of war on Palestinians’ national rights.” For the first time since the Palestinian – Israeli “peace process” was launched some twenty years ago, the voice of the PLO peace partners was much louder and harsher in criticizing Israel than that of their opposition among the non-PLO factions, like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Netanyahu seems to have succeeded where four years of Egyptian efforts have failed to make Palestinians speak in one voice.

When Netanyahu makes Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” as the cornerstone of his “peace” policy and has Avigdor Lieberman, who calls on record for the transfer of Israeli Arab Palestinians, as the foreign minister of his ruling coalition, he officially raises ethnic cleansing to the level of state policy, and may be this is why French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly urged visiting Netanyahu on June 30 to replace his top diplomat and “to get rid of that man,” whom he declined to meet when Lieberman was recently in Paris, leading Israeli member of Knesset Afu Aghbaria (Hadash) and ten others of his parliamentary colleagues to call on world leaders to declare what they condemn as the “racist” Lieberman a persona-non-grata. Another Hadash MP, Hanna Swaid, wrote to Mitchell: “The recognition of Israel as a Jewish state harms the Arab citizens (25% of the population), undermines their legal status in the country and puts them at the heart of the struggle with no representation in the negotiations.”

Recognizing Israel as a/or the “Jewish state” should be rejected not only because it politically forecloses whatever chance remains for the resumption of peace talks and sets the regional stage for the alternative, which another peace partner to Israel, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, has repeatedly warned against because it “would have adverse and catastrophic consequences on the whole region,” but more importantly because strategically such a precondition, if it gains international recognition, would inevitably be used by Israel as a casus belli to officially resume — what has been so far claimed an unofficial policy by neutral monitors and officially denied by Israeli politicians – and defend its ethnic cleansing of native Arab Palestinians as an internationally –recognized state policy inside its borders, and in the Palestinian territories it occupied in 1967 outside them, and as an international carte blanche vindicating what the Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe documented as its more than sixty-year old “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.”

Politically this would rule out the Palestinian refugees’ “Right of Return” and legitimize Lieberman’s “transfer” dreams (expulsion en masse of Israel’s Arab – Palestinian citizens as well as Palestinian natives of East Jerusalem) to be made true as soon as the political timing render their realization feasible, to throw “the Arabs into the sea,” according to Aharon Barak, the former president of the supreme court of Israel from 1995 to 2006, who was speaking at the Rabin Center in Tel Aviv on June 25.

Israeli governmental and parliamentary officials of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition criticized Barak’s support for “a state for all its citizens.” It would be very instructive here to recall the first Prime Minister of Israel and forefather of ethnic cleansing David Ben-Gurion’s reaction to the news that the world renowned physicist Albert Einstein declined the offer of the Israeli presidency in 1952: “Tell me what to do if he says yes! If he accepts, we are in trouble,” he said, because Einstein “would distinguish between Jewish homeland and state, and argued for a bi-national state where Jews and Arabs shared a common land, not a strictly defined “Jewish state,” according to Fred Jerome, who in June published his new book, “Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas about the Middle East” (St. Martin’s Press).

More instructive than Einstein’s arguments and Ben-Gurion’s reaction was the U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s proclamation, just 11 minutes after the state’s unilateral declaration, that, “The United States recognizes the provisional government (proclaimed by Jews “in Palestine”) as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel,” and NOT as “the new Jewish State” as proposed by the American Jewish leaders, crossing out the proposed words and replacing them in his own handwriting with “the new state of Israel.” Obviously, Netanyahu’s precondition “was devised because Netanyahu understands that Palestinians will never accept it because it negates their standing in a land they have inhabited from time immemorial.” (Rosenberg on June 14)

Czech Republic Foreign Minister Jan Kohout, visiting Israel on June 28, said in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post: “First we have to understand what is meant by this [Jewish state demand]. So far, I can say that I don’t have a clear picture on that.” “Resolution 181 (UN Resolution 181, also called the 1947 UN Partition Plan) calls for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. But at the same time it gives equal rights to all of its citizens,” said Kohout, who seemed not interested in recent history to note that the Israel recognized by the UN Resolution 181, which at the time had a population of some (500,000) Jews and (438,000) Arab Palestinians, is very much smaller than the one we know now, which enjoys a de facto, but not yet a de jure, international recognition, thanks to Israel’s “War of Independence” using Plan D to “cleanse” Palestine, according to Pappe and to five major territorial expansionist wars, dubbed “preventive” or “pre-emptive” wars by Israeli strategists, who launched them to secure their ethnic cleansing exploits, claiming with their former premier, Golda Meir, that there was “no Palestinian people” to cleanse.

To ethnically cleanse the Palestinians was the very basis of Israel’s raison-d’être. Speaking of the Arabs of Palestine (Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry), Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, said: “Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment… Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” The tragic result was summarized by Israel’s minister of defense during the 1967 war, Moshe Dayan, in an address to the Technion, Haifa, (Haaretz, April 4, 1969): “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”

It seems clear now that the UN General Assembly Resolution 4686 of 1991, which revoked an earlier one equating Zionism with racism (the 1975 Resolution 3379), was a premature measure.

Kohout, whose country was the former rotating president of the European Union, is not a rare species in demanding to “understand what is meant” by the “Jewish state” precondition. One could not but recall the Venetian word “ghetto,” once meant for the Jews of Europe. The Israeli leadership seems now in the grips of a “ghetto mentality” racing against the modern times of pluralism and coexistence, when nations are moving towards a globalized 21st-century identity of citizenship by allegiance, regardless of race, creed or gender, and at a time when the French translation of Israeli academic Shlomo Sand’s “The Invention of the Jewish People” is granted this year’s French prestigious Aujourd’hui Award for a book which argues that Zionism in modern times “invented” the concept of the “Jewish people” as well as their “imaginary” historical connection to Palestine.

– Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit of the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territories.

Gideon Levy: the world only wants to know Gazans when they fire rockets

Spoil them rotten

By Gideon Levy in Haaretz

For the past several weeks it has been very hard to get coffee in Gaza. Gas is dirt cheap (NIS 2.40 per liter), and diesel is even cheaper (NIS 1.70); it’s all flowing through the tunnels from Egypt. But there is no coffee. Only after inquiring at a number of grocery stores might you find a bag of coffee, but the grocer will sell you only 250 grams for NIS 18 shekels – an exorbitant price in Gaza. Coffee, as you know, is not a “humanitarian” item; you can live without it. And indeed, Gaza has gone over to tea. Spoil them rotten – that’s Israel’s Gaza policy.

Every few weeks there’s a shortage of another item. Water is in sufficient supply for the time being, but electricity is intermittent. They are repairing the power station but there aren’t any spare parts. You try living in the Gaza heat and poverty without electricity. On Tuesday, for example, the electricity supply to Beit Lahia was cut off for hours. They have begun to clear away the rubble from Operation Cast Lead, but they haven’t started to rebuild, not even a room, except for mud houses, because there is no cement and gravel.

The $2 billion promised with much ceremony at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit about six months ago – of it $900 million from the new America under President Barack Obama – is lying in vaults at the international banks. A senior American diplomat explained a few days ago that his country is not transferring the money “because Israel is objecting,” and an American law prohibits trading with Hamas. He said this in utter seriousness, as if there were no American commitment to transfer the money, and as if the great America were dependent on Israel. However, the burden of Gaza’s suffering is also weighing on Obama’s shoulders: Without its rehabilitation, his great promise is hollow.

The Hamas government has been in existence for two years and the siege on Gaza continues at full strength and cruelty. Washington is busy with the fate of the Migron settlement, Israel is busy with the Dudu Topaz case, and the world has lost interest. When there are no terror attacks, there are no Arabs: When Gaza isn’t shooting, it is abandoned to its fate. That is the message Israel is sending its imprisoned neighbors: Launch Qassams and we’ll take an interest in you, don’t launch Qassams and we won’t take an interest. Only abducted soldier Gilad Shalit is still reminding us of Gaza’s existence: The activists for his release demonstrated again last week. But instead of demonstrating for the release of Palestinian prisoners, they demonstrated for tightening the siege and collective punishment. Only Gilad was born to be free.

The mass experiment on human beings has failed miserably; two years is enough time to determine this. Not one of the siege’s aims have been achieved and the damage is only piling up, perhaps for all eternity. Folly and malevolence, a fairly common combination, have melded into one of Israel’s most fateful mistakes. Even if we leave aside the moral aspect of the inhumane and illegal siege, it is no longer possible to ignore its stupidity as a policy. Shalit has not been released – no siege is going to free him. Hamas has not fallen – the group is only more firmly establishing its regime. And above all, a new reality is developing before our eyes that is worse for Israel than all its predecessors.

The siege has splintered the Palestinian people even more. This is not the first time Israel has split up the Palestinians: Since 1948 it has been systematically separating Palestinians from Palestinians, dividing and ruling. The diaspora abroad, the refugees in the Arab countries, the inhabitants of the territories, the Arabs of East Jerusalem and the Arabs of Israel – sometimes members of a single family – are developing into separate splinter peoples.

Now the next splintering has come along, the most stupid of all: the split between Gaza and the West Bank. While Israel is preventing Gaza from having any connection with the West Bank, it complains that there is no Palestinian partner. While we are strengthening the Hamas regime, thanks to the siege’s hardships and the wrongs of Operation Cast Lead, we are lamenting “the Hamastan in Gaza.” And what would happen if Israel were to lift the siege, enable the reconstruction and bring Gaza and the West Bank closer together? A huge disaster; a chance for moderation.

Leave aside, then, the moral aspect – it doesn’t have any takers in Israel. But what about good sense? What is Israel getting out of the siege, apart from the enjoyment of the other side’s suffering and another stage in its disintegration? Yasser Arafat was too strong, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is too weak and now there is a new ray of hope for all the spoilers: The Palestinians are split and there’s no one to talk to.

Sarah Leah Whitson: Israeli settlements are illegal

Israel’s settlements are on shaky ground

International law mandates that they must be removed and that the Palestinians should be compensated for their losses.
By Sarah Leah Whitson
June 28, 2009

The debate over Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is often framed in terms of whether they should be “frozen” or allowed to grow “naturally.” But that is akin to asking whether a thief should be allowed merely to keep his ill-gotten gains or steal some more. It misses the most fundamental point: Under international law, all settlements on occupied territory are unlawful. And there is only one remedy: Israel should dismantle them, relocate the settlers within its recognized 1967 borders and compensate Palestinians for the losses the settlements have caused.

Removing the settlements is mandated by the laws of the Geneva Convention, which state that military occupations are to be a temporary state of affairs and prohibit occupying powers from moving their populations into conquered territory. The intent is to foreclose an occupying power from later citing its population as “facts on the ground” to claim the territory, something Israel has done in East Jerusalem and appears to want to do with much of the West Bank.

The legal principles were reaffirmed in 2004 by the International Court of Justice, which cited a U.N. Security Council statement that the settlements were “a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” The International Committee of the Red Cross and an overwhelming number of institutions concerned with the enforcement of international humanitarian law have concurred in that view.

The economic and social cost of Israeli settlements to the Palestinian population, stemming in part from Israel’s need to protect them, are enormous. The 634 (at last count) roadblocks, barriers and checkpoints erected to control the movement of lawful residents of the territory make travel an ordeal. Sometimes even getting to work, school or the home of a relative is impossible for Palestinians. Every day, they must wait in line for hours to show their IDs, and some days they are randomly rerouted, told to go home or, worse, detained for questioning.

Similarly, the fact that Israel is building 87% of its projected 450-mile “security barrier” on Palestinian territory has less to do with protecting Israel from suicide bombers — which could have been accomplished by erecting a wall on the Green Line — than it does with putting 10% of West Bank territory, including most settlers, on the Israeli side. And while Israeli troops protect the settlers from armed Palestinian groups, there is little protection for Palestinians from the settlers’ marauding militias and gangs, which have terrorized the local population, destroying their crops, uprooting their trees and throwing stones at their houses and schools.

Too little attention is given to the pervasive system of government-sponsored discrimination against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Israel has constructed roads exclusively for settlers and established vastly unequal access to water, fuel, education, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure and virtually every other social service. Israeli authorities readily grant settlers building permits that they deny to Palestinians, whose “illegal” homes they often demolish at short notice. The glaring discrepancy in Israel’s treatment of two populations living on the same land has taken a significant moral toll on Israel, as well as a political one, with wide coverage of humiliation and abuse at the hands of its security forces.

The common refrain of Israeli and even American politicians who recognize that the settlements must go is that it would be politically difficult to dismantle them, in part because it would stir the ire of the settlers and their supporters, an important voting bloc in Israel. Instead, politicians argue that settlements must be a part of future negotiations and a possible land swap.

But this only serves as further incentive to expand settlements and makes a political resolution even more difficult. It also condones in the interim Israel’s continuing human rights abuses in the name of settler security, leaving respect for Palestinians’ rights a second-tier consideration that must await the conclusion of peace talks that have already gone on for decades.

Israel has a duty to protect its citizens, but not in a way that violates the rights of Palestinians. The lawful, rights-respecting way to protect the security of settlers is to move them back to Israel. That should be the starting point of any discussion on settlements.

Sarah Leah Whitson is Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.