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.

UK active involvement in regime change in Iran

European Parliament should investigate UK’s meddling in Iran
01/07/2009 11:30:00 AM GMT

By Kaveh L. Afrasiabi

The affable Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has no qualm about criticising Iran’s mullah’s “problem of credibility” in light of the post-election street furor and, yet, one wonders if he can dodge the bullet of an incoming crisis over the mounting evidence of British complicity to engineer a regime change in Iran recently?

The European Parliament, which has been quick to denounce Iranian authorities’ heavy-hand with the peaceful protesters, should conduct a thorough investigation and, if need be, issue a stern censure of British government for violating Iran’s sovereignty by, among other things, deliberately and through various questionable methods, trying to fuel the fire of a “velvet revolution” in Iran, undermining the Iranian government, supporting armed opposition groups, etc.

There is no doubt that all the elements of an “Iran inquiry” that could rival the still ongoing “Iraq inquiry” in London are already in place, except the political will to confront the facts instead of appeasing the government of Gordon Brown that is desperately seeking damage control for a bold, and ultimately foolish, gambit to cause a regime change or, at a minimum destabilize the nuclearizing Iran, that violated international law.

It is ironic that the European politicians who are exceeding themselves in support of rule of law and respect for human rights in Iran should turn a blind eye to the rogue behavior of the British government that has done everything possible to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. Such a double standard is untenable however and must be replaced with an enlightened response that is balanced and does not shy away from self-criticism.

The advantage of a European Parliament’s official inquiry into Iran’s allegations against British government is that it demonstrates the even-handedness of European lawmakers who must make clear to the British politicians that no matter what their justifications, their actions in Iran have been against the law and should not be repeated.

A full and impartial such inquiry would probe the following issues in tandem, which suggest a sinister regime change approach by London that has been abusive of the UN Charter and respect for Iran’s national sovereignty, no matter how unpopular the results of the recent presidential elections in Iran:

* Evidence that the British forces in Afghanistan have provided training, arms and ammunition, including sophisticated to anti-regime ethnic terrorists;

* Evidence that the British government, which removed the MKO group from its terrorist list recently, has been in cohort with the MKO and may have supported the group’s effort to dispatch its activists to Iran on the eve of the presidential election for the purpose of fomenting disorder;

* Evidence that at the height of the post-election crisis, the British government engaged in psychological warfare against Tehran by freezing Iran’s bank assets, mainly to convey the impression of lack of international confidence in the regime’s survivability;

* Evidence that the British government through the soft power of BBC and other means targetted Iran’s supreme leader, in order to destabilize Iran by politically beheading Iran that is a prerequisite for regime change in Iran, and that concerted efforts to smear Iran’s supreme leader went hand in hand with the anti–regime propaganda that filled the air on BBC and other British media outlets throughout the crisis;

* Evidence that instead of maintaining objective neutrality as called for by BBC’s own guidelines, its correspondents covering the (post) election in Iran deliberately gave biased, one-sided coverage that in some instances was meant to agitate the population against the regime. A thorough and impartial review of BBC’s coverage especially after the June 12 election is called for to ascertain the horrendous scope of BBC’s complicity in triggering a velvet revolution in Iran;

* Evidence that the British Embassy in Iran both directly and indirectly engaged in unlawful and illicit contacts with the anti-government forces and provided moral and material support;

* Evidence that not content with the above-said efforts, the British government under the guise of “objective and scientific” studies by its foreign policy arms did it best to undermine the legitimacy of Iran’s democratic process and to cast doubt on the fair election results.

In addition to the above-said, a European inquiry into this matter should also probe the “known unknown,” that is, the distinct possibility of a concerted effort involving other governments, principally the U.S. and Israel, in pulling resources together via the window of opportunity afforded by Iran’s presidential elections to destabilize Iran and, if possible, to cause a violent regime change.

This would mean, among other things, investigating the issue of mysterious murder of a young Iranian female by the name of Neda Soltani on June 20th, a day after Iran’s supreme leader had warned against street agitations. Neda’s cold-blooded murder may have been calculated to incite the passions and thus to trigger a violent reaction against the Iranian regime at a critical time in post-election. Regarding this matter, suffice to say that an Iranian expatriate doctor who works in Oxford, England, has been widely received in the British media and his accounts of his efforts to save Neda and his subsequent observations about a militiaman confessing that he shot Neda, etc., should be scrutinized for potential fraud due to the following:

* Contrary to Dr. Hejazi’s claim that Neda died “in less than two minutes,” other witnesses including her music teacher who took her to the hospital, have confirmed that Neda was still alive when she was rushed from the crime scene;

* Instead of accompanying the wounded Neda to hospital, Dr. Hejazi rushed to the internet to upload a video with a succinct description that cites his futile effort to save Neda who “died in less than a minute”;

* At a minimum, Dr. Hejazi’s failure to attend Neda until she was under medical care constitutes a case of medical malfeasance and this is an issue for official probe by the medical establishment in UK, as well as by British parliamentarians and media to determine if this is in any way connected to the suspicious circumstances of Neda’s cold-blooded murder.

In conclusion, the failure of European Parliament to commence an independent probe of British government would, indeed, set a bad precedence as it would embolden the tortuous British government to repeat its unlawful activities against this and other Middle East regimes, that are branded as “rogue”, in the future, when it is abundantly clear that there is no legal justification for the transgressive and violative rogue behavior of the British government cited above.

— Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, Ph.D.

Articled published in the internet edition of Al Jazeera Magazine

Israel does not want peace, only mastery over the Arabs

The Gaza ghetto
30/06/2009 01:00:00 PM GMT

Al Jazeera Magazine

The report on life in Gaza just issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross six months after the brutal Israeli attacks which killed between 1,100 and 1,400 people makes bitter reading.

According to the ICRC, there has been almost no improvement since the Israelis stopped their brutal onslaught. The daily round of killing may have stopped but Gazans are still condemned to living in a war zone. It remains a bombsite. Even if they had the money to rebuild their shattered homes and lives, they cannot get hold of the equipment.

The reopening of the Rafah checkpoint on the border with Egypt has slightly improved matters — some trucks with medical aid have got through but it is a tiny fraction of what is needed. Israel’s blockade of the strip remains devastatingly effective. Gaza is, as the ICRC report so horrifyingly points out, a state of despair. Imprisoned by the Israelis, still mourning the deaths of family and friends (there is hardly a family that did not lose someone), with woefully insufficient medical care, a destroyed economy, no hope of a job and living in what looks like an earthquake zone (the reports’ own words), there is a hopelessness that shocks.

A state of despair… facing, on the other side of the prison wires, a state of arrogance. For over 60 years now, the Israelis have treated the Palestinians with contempt and hatred. Time after time, the latter’s human rights are trampled over, their political aspirations crushed, UN resolutions ignored, international outrage scorned and efforts to mediate peace spurned.

It is not merely a state of arrogance, it is a state of insanity. The despair sown by the Israelis in Gaza breeds militancy and hatred. It breeds, too, a counter arrogance which displays itself in a refusal to countenance Palestinian-Israeli cohabitation, indeed to countenance anything other than Israel’s complete destruction.

The Israelis blockade Gaza to punish the Palestinians for electing Hamas and to force its supporters from firing rockets at Israeli towns and settlement; it does the exact opposite. It fuels hatred of Israel. It ensures the rockets continue. It pushes the Gazans into the rejectionists’ embrace and creates a breeding ground for a fresh generations of bombers. Only a lunatic would claim that it is in Israel’s interests.

The cycle of oppression and misery has to be broken if Israel is to have the security it claims it wants. As a first step, it has to lift the restrictions and allow Gaza to start working and living again. Israel can never live in peace while it grinds the Gazans into the dust, while it keeps the territory as one giant prison whose inmates are forced to live in misery and squalor and humiliated daily. Nor should it.

The only way forward is the two-state solution proposed by the then Crown Prince and now Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah and adopted by Arab states in 2002 and again revived at the Riyadh summit two years ago in which, in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from all lands occupied in 1967, Arab states would recognize it. The whole world understands that, including the U.S.; only the Israeli government baulks at the idea and consistently finds reasons to block it — which calls into question its claims it wants peace. It seems far more interested in wanting mastery — brutal mastery if necessary — over the Palestinians.

Gaza seems proof of that.

Evidence grows that Zardari may have been behind the killing of 11 Frenchmen

‘Bribes and bombs’ scandal returns to haunt Sarkozy
Families of 11 engineers murdered in Karachi in 2002 point finger of blame at French government

Published in the Independent

By John Lichfield in Paris
Friday, 26 June 2009S

A political scandal is gathering pace over claims that 11 French submarine engineers were murdered in a bomb attack in Karachi seven years ago to punish France for the non-payment of arms contract “commissions” to senior Pakistani officials.

Lawyers for the French victims’ families believe the attack, allegedly carried out by Islamist terrorists, was in fact part of a web of financial chicanery and political manoeuvring which may yet severely embarrass senior figures, including the French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari.

Two French magistrates investigating the bombing of the engineers’ bus in May 2002 have ruled out the possibility that it was an attack by al-Qa’ida on Western interests. They have told the victims’ families there is “cruel logic” to an alternative explanation. They believe unknown figures in the Pakistani establishment may have fomented the attack in retaliation for the non-payment of part of the €80m (£68m) in sweeteners promised to senior officials when Lahore bought three Agosta 90B submarines from France in 1994.

Documents seized by French police allege that part of these “commissions” – legal under French law at the time – were illegally “kicked back” to help finance the 1995 presidential campaign of the then prime minister, Edouard Balladur. When Jacques Chirac won the election the following spring, it is alleged that he punished his old friend and acolyte for running against him by cancelling the remaining payments to senior Pakistani figures.

M. Chirac’s then defence minister, Charles Millon, confirmed in an interview with Paris Match magazine yesterday that, soon after he took office in 1995, he was ordered to block the Pakistani commissions and all other arms payments on which “retro-commissions”, or kick-backs to France, were suspected. When the €800m submarine sale was negotiated, M. Sarkozy was the budget minister and M. Balladur’s right-hand man. He was also a key figure in the then prime minister’s decision to break with M. Chirac that autumn and run for the presidency the following spring. There is no direct evidence linking him with either the legal commissions or the alleged illegal kick-backs but, as budget minister, he would have had to sign documents authorising large, untaxed payments to foreign officials.

According to investigation documents leaked to the Agence France Presse news agency, a large part of the €80m was paid out before M. Chirac intervened and had already been “distributed” by the then Pakistani investment minister, Asif Ali Zardari. Mr Zardari, husband of the late prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, is now President.

The legal implications of the affair are unclear but the political implications could be explosive. If clear evidence emerges to link the submarine commissions to the killing of the 11 French engineers and three Pakistanis, there would at the very least be deep embarrassment for M. Balladur, M. Chirac and for President Sarkozy.

When asked about the suspicions of the two French investigating judges, M. Sarkozy flew into a temper. He said any suggestion that the murders were a Pakistani retaliation for non-payment of French commissions was a “fable”. “This is ridiculous. It is grotesque,” he added. “Let’s have some respect for the grief of the victims. Who could believe a fable like that?”

The answer is that the “fable” is being taken seriously by the victims’ families, lawyers and the investigating judges, Marc Trévidic and Yves Jannier. “The al-Qa’ida line of inquiry has been totally abandoned,” said Maître Olivier Morice, a lawyer for seven of the families, after meeting the judges in Cherbourg, where the engineers were based. “This is all linked to the payment of commissions… they were blocked by Jacques Chirac to prevent kick-backs to the presidential campaign of Edouard Balladur. This is turning into a [state scandal].”

On 8 May 2002 – just after M. Chirac won a second term as president – a bomb exploded in Karachi beside a bus transporting French shipyard workers who were assembling one of the Agosta submarines. Fourteen people were killed, including 11 French workers. Both Pakistani and French authorities blamed Islamists close to al-Qa’ida, but it appears that US intelligence agents told Paris at the time that the attack was linked to blocked payments on the submarine contract. A self-confessed militant, Asif Zaheer, was convicted in 2003 of playing a part but his conviction was quashed on appeal last month.

The investigating judges are said to believe that M. Chirac’s re-election convinced figures in Pakistani they would never receive their missing money – hence the timing of the attack.

In a speech at a remembrance service for the dead shipyard workers in Cherbourg in June 2002, President Chirac said France would not surrender to “blackmail” – a word which caused some puzzlement at the time.

The key figures: 15 years ago and now

Edouard Balladur, 80

THEN Centre-right prime minister in cohabitation with the Socialist president, François Mitterrand. Ran for presidency in 1995 but was knocked out by Chirac in first round.

ROLE It is alleged in documents seized by French police that his campaign – quite possibly without his knowledge – benefited from illegal kickbacks.

NOW Retired.

Jacques Chirac, 76

THEN Mayor of Paris and leader of the centre-right RPR party. Ran for the presidency in 1995 for the third time and won.

ROLE As president, he ordered the cancellation of the Pakistani “commissions”, allegedly in pique against M Balladur.

NOW Retired.

Charles Millon, 63

THEN Chirac’s defence minister in 1995.

ROLE Admits he cancelled Pakistani commissions on Chirac’s orders.

NOW Faded from mainstream politics.

Asif Ali Zardari, 53

THEN Minister in government of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was murdered in 2007 after she returned to Pakistan.

ROLE Alleged to have “distributed” part of the commissions paid by France, which were legal under French law.

NOW President of Pakistan.

Shocking revelations of Britain’s involvement in torture since before 911.

Torture claims against British secret agents go to inquiry
Farid Hilali alleges security services knew he was beaten and given electric shocks while held in UAE and Morocco

• Hilali’s story: ‘I told the British agent they had been torturing me – he wasn’t interested‘ Watch the video.

Vikram Dodd in Madrid
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 June 2009 11.19 BST

Farid Hilali, a Moroccan-born former resident of the UK, alleges he was tortured with the complicity of the British intelligence services
Link to this video
A parliamentary inquiry into allegations of British collusion in torture is set to investigate whether counter-terrorism chiefs ordered the repeated torture and rendition of a former British resident.

Speaking for the first time about his ordeal, Farid Hilali told the Guardian that during his detention in the United Arab Emirates a British secret service agent turned up at the prison where he was being abused and interrogated him, knowing that he had been tortured.

Hilali says he was then rendered to Morocco, where he was tortured for a further 22 days.

Hilali says that throughout this he was questioned extensively about alleged extremists living in the UK, and about surveillance photographs that had been taken in London. He says he believes his torturers were supplied the pictures by Britain.

Hilali’s detention took place in 1999, and if the allegations prove true it would make him the first known victim of Britain’s alleged complicity in torture, indicating that the practice started before the 9/11 attacks that led to George Bush declaring a “war on terror”.

Hilali, now aged 40, was born in Morocco and had been living in London for a decade when he travelled to the UAE.

He says that after being detained he was repeatedly beaten on the soles of his feet, given electric shocks while blindfolded, and handcuffed, kicked and beaten.

The Guardian has obtained some corroboration of Hilali’s account, including details from the former Guantánamo detainee Moazzam Begg.

Begg says that in the summer of 1999 an MI5 officer interviewed him about Hilali. Begg says the agent, whom he can identify, knew Hilali was being held in the UAE and told him that he would not be returning to Britain. Begg further alleges the MI5 agent, who called himself Andrew, ignored allegations that Hilali was being tortured.

Under the 1988 criminal justice act, those who order or collude in torture can be jailed for life. They have a defence if they can show they had lawful authority.

Presented with Hilali’s claims, a member of the foreign affairs select committee, which is investigating allegations of British involvement in torture, said his allegations must be investigated.

Paul Keetch MP, a Liberal Democrat member of the committee, said: “We should invite him to give us the evidence he has. We need to be proactive about investigating what has happened in the past.”

The Labour MP Mike Gapes, chair of the committee, said: “If somebody wishes to send information to us as a committee, we would give it proper consideration.”

Hilali’s lawyers are writing to the committee and to Scotland Yard. The attorney general has asked the police to investigate allegations of British security service involvement or collusion in torture.

Hilali says he will testify before any investigation and still remembers the face of the man he says is a British agent whom he begged for help. “If I’m given a photograph I would recognise him, because I can never forget that face. I am prepared to give evidence to the police, and to parliament.”

The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture called for a special UN inquiry. A foundation spokeswoman, Sonya Sceats, said: “The [British] government insists that it does not condone torture, but where there are credible allegations of complicity by its intelligence officers these must be investigated not only by our courts but also by an international body. It is high time that the UK allowed the UN’s torture committee to scrutinise cases of this sort.”

There is further partial corroboration as Hilali managed to hold on to a UAE document recording his detention that states he is banned from contact with the outside world. He has a copy of the plane ticket transferring him from the UAE to Morocco on 14 October 1999. There was no return flight booked and Hilali says this amounts to a rendering.

Hilali was eventually returned to Britain and made a claim for asylum in 2003 that included his allegations that Britain ordered his torture.

He says he was arrested for terrorism soon afterwards but was never questioned about any specific offence. The case against him was then dropped.

Spain managed to extradite him, claiming he was involved in a terrorist cell based there. In March 2009 a Spanish judge ordered his release from jail as the case against him seemed to founder – leaving him free to tell his full story for the first time.