News from French and Greek Boat to Gaza Concerning the Israeli Seizure of the French Flotilla

Israel seizes French Flotilla

Press Release Athens, 19/7/2011 1:30pm This morning, the French flag ship “Dignité/Al Karama”, carrying 16 passengers -among them the coordinator of the Greek Initiative Vangelis Pissias, and representing the international “Freedom Flotilla II – Stay Human” - started to sail from outside Port Said of Egypt towards the Gaza Strip. The boat gave its last position when in international waters, approximately 50 miles away from Gaza coast. Since 11:00am, while surrounded by 4 Israeli naval ships according to its passengers, every communication has been interrupted. A little while ago, it was reported as confirmed that the vessel was seized. Israel, once again, appears to play the role of the sheriff in the south-eastern Mediterranean. The disregard of any notion of international law, the mobilization of any legal or illegal means to achieve its objectives -to prevent any attempt of expressing practical international solidarity with Palestine- is a permanent well known tactic. The Greek government acted in such a pro-Israeli way that even Israel wouldn't expect, shamelessly accepting congratulations by the Israeli and US governments, while at the same moment Palestinians in Ramallah heavily disapproved of the Greek President -first time for a Greek politician. We demand from the Greek government, of course not to condemn the illegal act of its Israeli friends, who once again intervened militarily and beyond any concept of international law, against unarmed citizens in the international waters of SE Mediterranean, but to do, at least, the minimum and fundamentally self-evident: intervene immediately in order to protect -as required by the Constitution-the life and integrity of all on board and -above all- the Greek Vangelis Pissias. The Greek society will provide the response to the latest Israeli provocative act. The Greek society who -unlike it's government- stands firmly and through time in solidarity to the Palestinian issue and the Palestinian people. We call for a rally today at Syntagma, Tuesday 19th at 7:00pm Passenger List for "Dignité / Al Karama" 1. Stéphane Corriveau (Canadian Boat to Gaza) 2. Dror Feiler (Ship to Gaza-Sweden and European Jews for a Just Peace, composer - musician) 3. Hilary Folacci (Sailor) 4. Jérôme Gleizes (European Greens) 5. Jacqueline Le Corre (MD, Collectif 14 Support to the Palestinian people, PCF/french communist party) 6. Jean Claude Lefort (Honorary Member of french Parliament) 7. Jo Leguen (Navigator) 8. Claude Léostic (Spokesperson of Campaign "A French ship to Gaza" - Association France/Palestine /Solidarity -AFPS) 9. Yamin Makri (Collectif 69 Support the Palestinian people) 10. Omeyya Naoufel Seddik (Tunisian Federation for citizenship on both sides- FTCR, political scientist) 11. Dr. Vangelis Pissias (Campaign "Ship to Gaza - Greece", professor at Higher Institute of Technology, Athens) 12. Thomas Sommer - Houdeville (Spokesperson of Campaign "A French ship to Gaza" and "Campagne Civile Internationale Pour la Protection du Peuple Palestinien - CCIPPP", associate researcher at the IFPO - Institut Français du Proche Orient) 13. Yannick Voisin (captain). Also on board 14. Ayyash Derradji Al Jazeera journalist 15. Stéphane Guida, cameraman for Al Jazeera, 16. Amira Hass (Israeli journalist - Haaretz). The FPM Team

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Palestinians Protest Over Implementation to Teach Israeli Curriculum in East Jerusalem.

Municipality to use Israeli curriculum in Palestinian schools

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

EAST JERUSALEM — Widespread strikes across Palestinian civil society could be in store for East Jerusalem at the start of the next school year, as the municipality moves ahead with its current plan to implement an Israeli curriculum in Palestinian schools.
“I expect that the beginning of the new school year will not be a normal one. There will be lots of problems. There will be lots of demands, strikes,” Samir Jibril, director of the East Jerusalem Education Bureau told IPS. “All [the Palestinian] institutions are going to stand hand-in-hand against this implementation. Even civil society is demanding to stop this plan by the Israelis.”
In March of this year, the Jerusalem municipality sent a letter to private schools in East Jerusalem that receive allocations from the Israeli authorities. The letter stated that at the start of the 2011-2012 academic year, the schools would be obliged to purchase and only use textbooks prepared by the Jerusalem Education Administration (JEA), a joint body of the municipality and the Israeli Ministry of Education.
These textbooks are already in use in East Jerusalem schools managed by the JEA. According to Jibril, however, Palestinians in East Jerusalem have at all levels rejected the plan to use them in private schools, since it is viewed as being politically motivated.
“The real reason behind all this story of curriculum is actually political. We’re talking about a radical [Israeli] government that is trying to impose its own identity on the Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Knowing that Israel doesn’t recognize Palestinian identity, it is a political reflection rather than [for] any kind of educational or pedagogical [reason],” Jibril said.
The move to introduce the Israeli curriculum came after Israeli parliament member Alex Miller from the far-right Israel Beiteinu Party, who heads the Knesset’s Education Committee, stated during a meeting about unauthorized curricula in the education system that, in East Jerusalem, “the whole curriculum should and must be Israeli.”
After Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, Palestinians in the city followed the Jordanian educational system. Then, shortly after the signing of the Oslo II agreement, schools in East Jerusalem began using the curriculum of the Palestinian Authority.
Today, four different authorities govern the education system in East Jerusalem: the JEA, the Islamic Waqf, the private sector, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees.
According to 2010-2011 statistics provided by the East Jerusalem Education Directorate, the JEA runs 50 schools in East Jerusalem, which are attended by 38,785 students, or 48 percent of the total number of Palestinian students in the city. An additional 22,500 Palestinian students attend 68 different private schools in East Jerusalem.
“They are actually pushing towards implementing the Israeli curricula because this will politically mean that East Jerusalem is not an occupied territory and it is just like the 1948 area, Israeli land,” Jibril said.
“If Israel succeeds in this step, there will be other successive steps, and they will target all the remaining schools,” he added. Israeli authorities have tried to exert added influence in East Jerusalem schools under their control earlier, he said, by willfully omitting certain passages in textbooks and removing the Palestinian logo on book covers, among other measures.

Israel Wants to Tear Down Alaqsa Mosque To Rebuild 3rd Zionist Temple, Temple of Solomon

Zionists plan to build 3rd temple, where Alaqsa Mosque currently stands.

The Temple of Solomon is also known as the, First Temple. It was the Temple in Jerusalem, located on the Temple Mount, or Mount Zion as it is also known, which was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II after the Siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC. The site where the Temple once stood is now occupied by Alaqsa Mosque. Israel, in their attempt to rebuild the Temple, has been trying endlessly to find ways of removing Alaqsa Mosque from the site. They've been trying to tunnel under it, hoping it will become unstable, weak and collapse.

Free Palestine

 (Translated from Arabic via Google)

Urgent: Palestinian Information Center: development of a scale model of the structure of the alleged at the top of the door pillar on the wall of Jerusalem, Sheikh Kamal Khatib, calling the nation to move soon and the restoration of the Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem

_________________________________________________________________
I picked up lens photojournalist Afif Hanna Amira Thursday (2-6) image of an embodiment of a temple, a newly developed at the gate of Damascus, known as "Damascus Gate" A main doors of the Old City in Jerusalem.

The deployment of the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights of the stereo image, and said that the subject manner that does not appear visible at this stage, because of the ongoing restoration work, and hidden by the crew of Zionism.

It is noteworthy that the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem, the Antiquities Authority Zionism you several months ago what it calls "the work of restoration and maintenance" of the ancient city wall of Jerusalem.

Seen Jerusalemites suspicion significant of those acts, which are interspersed in the last period changes are not visible on the stone wall, including the removal of stones from it and replace it with another, and the development of forms and figurative-style temple, as was the case in a section of fence near Herod's Gate

American's Lied to About Israel

J-Street advocates genocide with a smile

By Philip Giraldi

J Street is seductive.  Americans have been bombarded with propaganda about Israel ever since the foundation of the country over sixty years ago.  More recently, the United States has been designated by the media and the chattering classes as the protector of the Jewish state with little regard for those actions undertaken by Tel Aviv that impact negatively on US interests.

This is because the Israel Lobby is the most powerful foreign lobby in the United States by far.  The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which has become the ugly side of the Lobby, has rightly drawn criticism for its bullying tactics and its alignment with extreme right-wing parties in Israel.  Progressives and some conservatives in the United States who support Israel as a homeland for the world’s Jews have been eager to find a more respectable alternative lobby.  That alternative is J Street.

J Street, which recently completed its third annual conference in Washington, is a self-proclaimed kinder and gentler advocate of Israeli interests.  It favors peace on equitable terms with the Palestinians and also with Israel’s Arab neighbors.  It opposes expansion of the Israeli settlements on the West Bank because they are an obstacle to peace.  It calls itself "pro-Israel, pro-American, and pro-peace."  If one judges by the enemies it has attracted, including nearly all leading neoconservatives, J Street has to be considered a breath of fresh air and the best option for sustainable peace in the Middle East.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?  But somehow the parts don’t quite add up.  J Street really only differs from AIPAC in tone, not in substance.  It advocates continued and unlimited United States support for Israel, militarily, economically, and politically.  J Street wants Israel to have an overwhelming military advantage over its Arab neighbors and it wants that margin to be provided by Washington.  It wants Republicans and Democrats together to provide political cover for Israel when it attacks Lebanon or bombs the Gazans.  It does not object when Israel exercises a military option against its neighbors. In spite of the fact that the United States is in deep trouble economically while Israel is one of the richest countries in the world and is enjoying an economic boom, J Street was one of the first organizations to complain when Senator Rand Paul called for an end to all foreign aid.

J Street also believes that Israel is and should be a Jewish state with unlimited right of "return" for Jews from anywhere in the world and no such rights for Christians or Muslims who lived in the country before 1948.  A Jewish state, by definition, would have limited rights for the 20% and growing segment of the current Israeli population that is Christian or Muslim.  J Street quixotically supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, even though it knows that the half million Israeli Jews living in settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank cannot be moved and will make two states impossible.  It does not accept a one-state solution, the only one likely to work, that would make the followers of all religions equal citizens in a unified state embracing both Arabs and Jews.  J Street’s Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami has called a one-state solution a "nightmare."

J Street seems a lot better than AIPAC, but much of what it advocates sounds familiar.  Ben-Ami has criticized the highly acclaimed John Mearsheimer-Stephen Walt book on the Israel Lobby for its scholarship and refers to the authors as anti-Semites. J Street opposed Israel’s bloody incursion into Gaza, but only because it was disproportionate, and then rejected the UN’s Goldstone report that detailed the war crimes that were committed.  When Israeli commandoes killed nine Turkish citizens on the Mavi Marmara ship trying to break the blockade of Gaza, J Street mourned the loss of life but blamed the victims for deliberately "using the media coverage to further damage Israel’s standing in world opinion."  J Street supports military action against Iran as a "last resort" to incapacitate the country’s nuclear program and denies to Tehran the right to enrich uranium for any purpose.

Supporters of J Street claim that its positions will become more nuanced as its influence grows, but one of the panels at the just-concluded convention debated "Is the Settlement Enterprise Destroying Israel’s Democracy?"  One might well ask why there was a question mark at the end since it is well documented that the settlements bring with them every imaginable evil. Fifteen months ago, J Street sponsored a speaking tour by an Israeli general Danny Rothschild who was advocating a two-state solution with the Palestinians.  He made the rounds in Washington arguing that demographics and common sense dictate that Israel must come to some kind of settlement.  But then, he added, there is "Islamofascism" and also Iran, genuine threats that must be dealt with by force.  So what was the real message, peace with the Palestinians (on Israel’s terms, it might be added), or expand the war against extremism while bombing Iran?

But the real problem with J Street is that it exists at all.  Why should there be a new and powerful lobby in Washington composed of American citizens arguing for a special relationship with any country?  Why should the United States be providing unlimited support to a nation that claims to be a democracy but which limits rights based on religion?  If J Street truly wants to fix Israel it should be working in Israel, not in the United States, because the settlers and hardline right-wing parties are Israeli problems. J Street knows perfectly well that Congress, the White House, and the media will not challenge the Israel status quo so, at best, it is a bit of scam designed to support Israel while making progressives feel more comfortable in lining up behind the effort.

The United States already has too many special interest lobbies promoting policies that do absolutely nothing good for the American people.  If Israel has become a rogue state, which it has, the problem must be resolved by the Israelis themselves and the diaspora Jews who believe that they have a stake in the outcome.  If the latter really want to have an impact, they should turn in their US passports and move to Israel.  From the American perspective, which should be the only one that matters to US citizens, the best policy for the United States is to disengage from the Arab-Israel conflict, not to become even more deeply involved from another, slightly more palatable perspective offered by J Street.

 

Israel None Too Happy About Egypt

Israel loses its Egyptian ally

LRB

The challenge to Israel of the revolutionary changes now underway may well be existential, depending on how it responds to these events. With Mubarak gone, Israel may once again be a pariah nation in the region.

Netanyahu’s government has already proved that even if Zionism is not racism, Zionists can be racists.

By denying Palestinians a state of their own and bringing about an apartheid state, it may yet succeed in persuading the world that Zionism as practised by Israel is indeed no different from the settler colonialism that existed in South Africa.

Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt is what ruled out a successful military challenge by the other countries in the region. Egypt has by far the most effective military force in the Arab Middle East, and no Arab military challenge to Israel would have been dared without Egypt’s participation.

A change of government in Egypt that brings to an end Mubarak’s policy of supporting America’s coddling of Israel will seriously undermine Israel’s strategic situation.

Moreover, Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel is unlikely to survive if Egypt’s treaty is abrogated – Jordan wouldn’t want to risk being the only Arab country to maintain normal relations with Israel.

No matter what further changes there may be in the region, developments in Tunisia and Egypt have already drastically curtailed the ability of surviving Arab regimes to move towards a rapprochement with Israel.

It is unlikely that the Arab Peace Initiative, disdained by Israel for nearly a decade, will remain on the table. No surviving Arab regime will dare challenge the popular rage against Israel for the humiliations it inflicts on the Palestinians.

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the prime cause of the current upheavals, the failure of Arab regimes to halt Palestinian dispossession is not far from the top of the list of popular grievances.

New York Times, Spins Wikileaks Cablegate to Favor America

New York Times plays the role of America's, Spin Dr.

Sharmine Narwani

The New York Times' lengthy explanation of why it decided to publish the WikiLeaks Cables leaves out one important consideration. What on earth would the State Department have done if a major US paper had not "interpreted" the information dump for the American masses?
Someone had to take on the "national responsibility" of "crafting" the leaks into supporting US policy initiatives, after all.

The Wikileaks Cables are plump with evidence of US doublespeak, proof that "conspiracy-minded" Middle Easterners are, well, correct on most counts.

Iran Was Right

Here is a startling September 2009 Cable from the US Embassy in London summarizing a high level US-UK meeting that included British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and US Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher. Discussing the upcoming P5+1 talks on Iran's nuclear program, the principals agree to push through an unrealistically short time frame for negotiations, and initiate plans for sanctions almost immediately.

One can hardly fault the Iranians for believing that the US was never serious about negotiations, and the Cable is a reminder of the days before our invasion of Iraq, when Baghdad complained that every time they tried to make concessions on IAEA inspections, "the goalposts were moved."


 Arabs Vs Iran -- The New York Times Refrain

Instead of honing in on significant disclosures that shed some light on the many Middle East policy failures that have marked US decision making in the region for decades, the US press went with "silly" and "sully." Those much-touted Cables reporting the acidic -- and not very diplomatic -- barbs of Arab leaders against Iran do not represent any "new" thinking, and need instead to be examined in context:

Firstly, these rulers have never recovered from their 1979 "bogeyman" fear of a Shia-majority, non-Arab, Islamist regional hegemon on their doorstep -- one that continued to thrive even after the predominantly Sunni, Arab Persian-Gulf nations, Egypt, Jordan and others misguidedly backed Saddam Hussein's hostile 1980 invasion of Iranian territory.

Secondly, many of these rulers are viewed - internally and throughout the Arab world -- as corrupt, often illegitimate and beholden to foreign interests. These heads of state are bitterly resentful that, by comparison, leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syria's Bashar al Assad are viewed vastly more favorably by populations throughout the Mideast and Muslim world.

In fact, when asked in a July 2010 Brookings poll about the prospects of a "nuclear" Iran, 57% of the populations of the same Arab nations whose leaders were caught in this Wikileaks pants-down-moment supported a nuclearized Iran. Why? Because only 10% of the Arab public view Iran as a threat, as opposed to their leaders. Instead, 88% of Arabs views Israel as their main threat, followed closely by 77% who worry about the United States.

To be honest, the "real" story is that this many Arab nations had secret dealings with Israel, which they bash very publicly for domestic and regional consumption. I suppose the theme here is Iran-in-secret, Israel-in-public.

Wikileaks "Beef" -- Some Random, Informative Analysis
 
The Wikileaks Cables do disclose some very telling snippets of information that provide critical information on a changing Middle East. I research shifting centers of influence in the region, and have long pointed out that we are erroneously lumping Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas together as a exclusive club of four. This grouping -- often referred to as the "Resistance Bloc" -- is perhaps the ground zero of a new and fast-growing "Worldview" emanating from the Mideast, but there are other important participants, namely Qatar, Turkey, maybe Oman, Iraq, and more.

This worldview -- put simply -- reflects a "desire to act in their own self-interest," and its adherents, who come from varying backgrounds, place "opportunism" ahead of "ideology" which has led to new and unexpected political and economic alliances, both regionally and internationally.

A revealing March 2009 Cable from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv shows that we are aware of these subtleties, but obviously choose not to assign importance to the regional shifts in influence and alliances. They simply and inconveniently do not "fit" our own worldview.

In a July 2007 Cable, Israel's Mossad Chief Meir Dagan characterizes Qatar as "a real problem," and accused its Emir Sheikh Hamad of "annoying everyone." The Cable continues: "In his view, Qatar is trying to play all sides -- Syria, Iran, Hamas -- in an effort to achieve security and some degree of independence."
Bingo. There is your New Middle East right there.

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General for the Middle East Yacov Hadas provides a March 2009 briefing for US political counselors along the same lines, stressing "that he thought Qatar's policies were not a matter of a shift in ideology toward the radical camp, but linked to their rivalry with the Saudis and, by extension, with Egypt. "

America, Meet The Israeli Settlers

Abuses against the Palestinian people by Israeli Settlers


Keep your anger in check as you watch. It is important to know what is going on in this part of the world.
 

“To understand everything is to forgive everything” - Buddha

 

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. - Plato

¹⁴If you forgive others for the wrongs they do to you, your Father in heaven will forgive you. ¹⁵But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 6:14-15

Caution: strong language, violence

American Liberals Fail To Stand for Human Rights

Israel's murderous attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla has served to focus international attention on its longstanding, immoral siege of Gaza. Since the election of Hamas in 2007, Israel has tightened its hold on Gaza's borders, blocking essential goods from entering and Gazan products from leaving, effectively destroying Gaza's economy. Eight out of ten Gazans depend on international food aid to survive, and ninety-five per cent of its drinking water fails to meet safety standards for consumption. Seventy per cent of the population suffers from food insecurity. Thirteen per cent of the children of Gaza suffer stunted growth from malnutrition.

Do American liberals care about the fact that Gaza is a concentration camp? Some do. Some criticize Israel. But the prevailing image that continues to dominate is that of the vulnerable Jew, the perennial victim. Liberals are complicit in this myth.

The ostracism of Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, over her comment that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and elsewhere is revealing in several ways.

In spite of an apology, the 89-year-old has been summarily retired by the Hearst newspaper group, dropped by her agent, spurned by the White House, and denounced by long-time friends and colleagues.

Ms Thomas earned a reputation as a combative journalist, at least by American standards, with a succession of administrations over their Middle East policies, culminating in Bush officials boycotting her for her relentless criticisms of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the reaction to her latest remarks suggest that, if there is one topic in American public life on which the boundaries of what can and cannot be said are still tightly policed, it is Israel.

It is true, as she says, that Palestine was occupied and the land taken from the Palestinians by Jewish immigrants with no right to it barring a Biblical title deed.

But 62 years on from Israel’s creation, most Jewish citizens have no home to go to in Poland and Germany -- or in Iraq and Yemen, for that matter.

But Ms Thomas did apologize and, after that, a line ought to have been drawn under the affair -- as it surely would have been had she made any other kind of faux pas. Instead, she has been denounced as an anti-Semite, even by her former friends.

The reasoning of one, Lanny Davis, counsel to the White House in the Clinton administration, was typical. Mr. Davis, who said he previously considered himself “a close friend”, asked whether anyone would be “protective of Helen's privileges and honors if she had been asking Blacks to return to Africa, or Native Americans to Asia and South America, from which they came 8,000 or more years ago?”

It is that widely accepted analogy, appropriating the black and Native American experience in a wholly misguided way, that reveals in stark fashion the moral failure of American liberals.

In their blindness to the current relations of power in the U.S., most critics of Ms Thomas contribute to the very intolerance they claim to be challenging.

Ms Thomas is an Arab-American, of Lebanese descent, whose remarks were publicized in the immediate wake of Israel’s lethal commando attack on a flotilla of aid ships trying to break the siege of Gaza.

Unlike most Americans, who were half-wakened from their six-decade Middle East slumber by the killing of at least nine Turkish activists, Ms Thomas has been troubled by the Palestinians’ plight for much of her long lifetime.

She was in her late twenties when Israel ethnically cleansed three-quarters of a million Palestinians from most of Palestine, a move endorsed by the fledgling United Nations.

She was in her mid-forties when Israel took over the rest of Palestine and parts of Egypt and Syria in a war that dealt a crushing blow to Arab identity and pride and made Israel a favored ally of the U.S.

In her later years she has witnessed Israel’s repeated destruction of Lebanon, her parents’ homeland, and the slow confinement and erasure of the neighboring Palestinian people.

Both have occurred under a duplicitous American “peace process” while Washington has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Israel’s coffers.

It is therefore entirely understandable if, despite her own personal success, she feels a simmering anger not only at what has taken place throughout her lifetime in the Middle East but also at the silencing of all debate about it in the U.S. by the Washington elites she counted as friends and colleagues.

While she has many long-standing Jewish friends in Washington -- making the anti-Semite charge implausible -- she has also seen them and others promote injustice in the Middle East.

Doubtless she, like many of us, has been exasperated at the toothless performance of the press corps she belongs to in holding the White House to account in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine.

It is with this context in mind that we can draw a more fitting analogy. We should ask instead:

How harshly should Helen Thomas be judged were she a black professional who, seeing yet another injustice like the video of Rodney King being beaten to within an inch of his life by white policemen, had said white Americans ought to “go home to Europe”?

This analogy accords more closely with the reality of power relations in the U.S. between Arabs and Jews. Ms Thomas is not a representative of the oppressor white man disrespecting the oppressed black man, as Mr. Davis suggests.

She is the oppressed black man hitting back at the oppressor. Her comments shocked not least because they denied an image that continues to dominate in modern America of the vulnerable Jew, a myth that persists even as Jews have become the most successful minority in the country.

Palestinian Refugees Speak

Occupation 101 - Voices of the Silenced Majority (Documentary) (2007)

Lebanon, in Israel's Sights?

Spy Trade: How Israel's Lobby Undermines America's Economy


Analyst says Israel, more likely to initiate hostilities

By Jim Lobe

While speculation over a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities intensifies, at least one influential analyst is calling on Washington to focus more on the likelihood of a new war breaking out between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia and how to prevent or contain it.

In his eight-page “Contingency Planning Memorandum” released last week by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), retired U.S. ambassador Daniel Kurtzer argued that Israel was more likely than Hezbollah to initiative hostilities and that it could “also use a conflict with Hezbollah as the catalyst and cover for an attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

He also warned that, as in the 2006 war that was touched off by Hezbollah’s attack on an Israeli border patrol, “even small-scale military engagements with limited objectives can escalate into a major conflict” involving outside powers – notably Syria – with “significant implications for U.S. policy and interests in the region.”


“If the next Israeli-Hezbollah confrontation were to result in a sharp decline in Hezbollah’s military capabilities and was not accompanied by substantial civilian casualties or destruction of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, the result would be beneficial for U.S. interests,” he wrote. “However, such an outcome is slim.”


“The more likely unfolding of an Israeli-Hezbollah war would hold almost no positive consequences for the United States, which is focused on three Middle East priorities: trying to slow or stop Iran’s nuclear program, withdrawing combat troops from Iraq, and helping Middle East peace talks succeed,” according to his report, titled “A Third Lebanon War.”


In an e-mail exchange with IPS, the author, Kurtzer, who served as ambassador to both Israel and Egypt and specialized in the Middle East during a distinguished foreign-service career spanning three decades, stressed that he did not believe war was imminent, despite an escalation of rhetoric in recent months on both sides of the border.


“My time frame for the crisis to erupt was 12-18 months,” he wrote. “I don’t think the immediate term poses risks, but the situation could change or deteriorate rapidly and without much advance warning.”


Speculation about an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program has grown in recent weeks, as both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his neoconservative allies have argued that recently adopted U.S. and international economic sanctions are unlikely to persuade Tehran to curb its nuclear program before it accumulates enough highly enriched uranium to manufacture a bomb.


In just the past week, since Netanyahu returned home from a summit with President Barack Obama, neoconservatives, who have been close to Netanyahu’s Likud Party since the early 1980s, have stepped up calls for Washington to provide support for Israel should it decide to carry out an eventual attack, or, better yet, for Washington to carry out its own.


Indeed, the cover story of this week’s Weekly Standard, a hard-line neoconservative publication headed by William Kristol, is titled “Should Israel Bomb Iran?” The story, by Reuel Marc Gerecht, who worked previously at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and is currently employed by another Likudist group, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is subtitled “Better Safe Than Sorry.”


While Kurtzer’s study does not address the likelihood of such an attack, it argues that Hezbollah’s increasingly potent missile arsenal – much of it believed to be supplied by Iran, as well as Syria – and the security threat it poses to Israel may move policymakers in the Jewish state to “take preemptive military action.”


While it does not exclude the possibility that Hezbollah could launch an attack, possibly to unify its supporters, particularly after the passing of Shia cleric Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah or at the urging of an Iranian leadership eager to deflect international pressure on its nuclear program, the more likely scenario is for Israel to either initiate hostilities or “lure [Hezbollah] into a war to destroy capabilities that threaten Israel’s security,” according to Kurtzer, who also served as a key Middle East adviser to the Obama during his presidential campaign.


“The combination of … the size and quality of Hezbollah’s missile inventory; the possible acquisition of long-range, accurate missiles; and the possible upgrading of Hezbollah’s surface-to-air missile capability changes the equilibrium on the ground to an extent that Israel views as threatening,” according to the report. The report argues that Israel would likely exploit an “operational opportunity,” such as an attack against a convoy carrying long-range weapons or a storage facility in Lebanon or even in Syria that it claims Hezbollah is using.


The study noted that indicators and other warning signs of war are “already evident” and include an increase in anti-Israeli rhetoric on Hezbollah’s part and in official statements on Hezbollah from Israel – specifically, recent allegations that the group had acquired Scud missiles from Syria and that its fighters are being trained there in their use. It also pointed to heightened levels of Israeli military and civil-defense preparedness on the northern front.


If war breaks out, according to Kurtzer, Washington could suffer serious setbacks to its regional priorities, including a resumption of Syrian support for Iraqi insurgents in Iraq and the likelihood that U.S.-encouraged Arab-Israeli peace efforts would “enter another deep freeze.”


Washington’s capacity to prevent a war, according to the study, is “limited” given both Israel’s perception of the threat and the fact that Washington has no relations with Hezbollah or Iran and that Obama’s initial efforts to upgrade ties with Syria have largely stalled as a result of opposition by Republicans and the right-wing leadership of the so-called Israel Lobby.


Nonetheless, Kurtzer calls for Washington to upgrade U.S.-Israeli intelligence exchanges; reiterate U.S. support for Israel’s right of self-defense and concerns about Hezbollah’s rearmament; increase pressure on Syria to halt arms shipments to Hezbollah; support international monitoring efforts; and prepare both for the likelihood of war and its aftermath, including the possibility of launching a post-conflict diplomatic initiative to promote a broader Arab-Israeli peace process.

Dr. Norman Finkelstein

Which side of the debate are you on?

 

Helen Thomas is let go

Helen Thomas criticizes Israel

By Patrick Martin

The sacking of veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, after an anti-Zionist comment on Sunday, is yet another demonstration of the politically foul and utterly conformist milieu of official Washington. No one dares criticize Israel.

Hearst Newspapers announced the “resignation” of Thomas Monday a day after her comments were widely publicized in the media.

Thomas, an 89-year old veteran reporter, made the statements May 27 when approached by Rabbi David Nesenoff, who was visiting the White House for a ceremony honoring Jewish Heritage Month.

Asked what she thought of Israel, Thomas said:

"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land. It’s not German. It’s not Poland."

Asked where to go, she added, "They could go home…Poland. Germany. And America. And everywhere else. Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries?"

In her decades-long career as a White House reporter, no one has suggested that Thomas, known for her opposition to US wars and Israeli policy, is anti-Semitic.

The resulting media uproar was predictable and disgusting. It was prompted not so much by Thomas’s reference to Jews going back to Germany and Poland, but by her reference to the Palestinian people as suffering under occupation in the land they had lived in for centuries.

Thomas showed anger over the basic injustice that underlies the establishment of Israel, the dispossession of the Palestinians.

She therefore violated the self-censorship rules of the American mainstream media, which effectively prohibits not only any challenge to the legitimacy of the state of Israel, but any questioning of the predatory motives of American foreign policy.

The venom of the White House press corps against its senior member was expressed in the online posting of Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, who noted snidely that “her hostility toward Israel has been no secret within the Beltway.

"Though she gave up her correspondent’s job a decade ago, she retained her front-row briefing-room seat, even as colleagues sometimes rolled their eyes at her obvious biases.”

In a 2006 article in the New Republic, cited by Kurtz, Jonathan Chait denounced Thomas for “unhinged rants,” including such supposedly bizarre questions, asked of Bush “Why are we killing people in Iraq? Men, women, and children are being killed there… It’s outrageous.”

CBS correspondent Mark Knoller made the clearest statement of the reasons for press hostility to Thomas, telling Kurtz:

“She asked questions no hard-news reporter would ask, that carried an agenda and reflected her point of view, and there were some reporters who felt that was inappropriate.

"As a columnist she felt totally unbound from any of the normal policies of objectivity that every other reporter in the room felt compelled to abide by, and sometimes her questions were embarrassing to other reporters.”

No doubt her fellow reporters were embarrassed when she challenged Bush and Obama administration lies and propaganda for what they were.

Helen Thomas was doing what any self-respecting journalist should have been doing, but few among the hacks and shills in the White House briefing room would dare to do.

Thomas was born to a Lebanese immigrant family on the east side of Detroit, in one of the oldest Arab-American communities in the United States. She has long been a critic both of Israel and of US military intervention in the Middle East.

She was also a path breaker as a female journalist, the first woman White House correspondent for a major wire service, network or newspaper, and the first woman to head the White House correspondents association.

In 2000, when her longtime employer, United Press International, was bought by the ultra-right Unification Church, she quit UPI in protest and took a position at Hearst.

The campaign against Thomas was spearheaded by two of the most odious figures in Washington circles, Ari Fleischer, the former Bush administration spokesman, now working for a sports and entertainment firm, and Lanny Davis, a Clinton White House aide, who last year served as Washington spokesman for the Honduran military junta.

With his usual instinct for accommodating himself to right-wing bourgeois public opinion, President Obama joined in the pileup against Thomas after her resignation was announced, calling her comments about Israel “offensive” and her forced retirement from Hearst “the right decision.”

Israel and the NY Times

Israeli propaganda

 By Bill Van Auken


Who is threatening whom? Israel is the one state in the world that recognizes no permanent boundaries.

In the north, it has repeatedly invaded Lebanon. In the east, it has imposed unbearable conditions of life on West Bank Palestinians. And in the south, it is now pounding Gaza's population.

Benny Morris, a prominent Israeli historian, has written an opinion piece for the New York Times called Why Israel Feels Threatened.

His views were formerly identified with the Israeli left, but who in the past several years has swung decisively over to the extreme right.

The article provides a lengthy and sophisticated justification of the slaughter in Gaza and a sinister warning of greater crimes still to come.

He presents a portrait of Israel surrounded by increasingly dangerous enemies, while confronted with dwindling support from its allies in the West.

"To the east, Iran... to the north, the Lebanese fundamentalist organization Hezbollah... To the south, Israel faces the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip."

As a result of these "dire threats," Morris insists, "Israelis feel that the walls—and history—are closing in on their 60-year-old state."

Who is threatening whom? Israel is the one state in the world that recognizes no permanent boundaries. In the north, it has repeatedly invaded Lebanon, on the last occasion in July 2006, carrying out massive bombings of the country's south and Beirut's suburbs and killing thousands of civilians.

In the east, it has imposed unbearable conditions of life on West Bank Palestinians, sealing them behind an apartheid wall and subjecting them to restrictions, roadblocks and repression.

And in the south, it is now pounding Gaza's teeming neighborhoods with high explosives, while preparing for a ground invasion.

As for Iran, Morris spoke for the bullying state that he represents in an op-ed piece that the Times published in July, essentially threatening the Iranian people with nuclear annihilation.

Urging a conventional bombing attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Morris wrote then that the operation would result in "thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation" for Iran.

He added that, if this attack failed to halt Iran's nuclear program, "The alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland."

In his latest piece, Morris reserves what he perceives as the darkest threat for last: demography.

The very existence of 1.3 million Arab citizens inside Israel's pre-1967 borders, he warns, "offers the recipe" for the "dissolution of the Jewish state."

These Arab-Israelis, he states, have become "radicalized" and are "embracing Palestinian national aims." Moreover, higher birthrates among Arab-Israelis, if the trend continues, mean that they would constitute the majority of Israel's citizens by as early as 2040.

Within as little as five years, Arabs could become the majority within the borders of pre-1948 Palestine (including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza).

"Most Jews," Morris asserts, "see the Arab minority as a potential fifth column."

He concludes that the threats facing Israel are "difficult to counter" because of Israel's commitment to "Western democratic and liberal norms."

He adds darkly that the sense of danger from these developments "has this past week led to one violent reaction. Given the new realities, it would not be surprising if more powerful explosions were to follow."

For the casual reader of the Times, this piece by Morris is clearly meant to inculcate a weary acceptance of still greater atrocities in the name of Israeli "self defense."

The politics of Benny Morris

But, as the Times is well aware, Morris is a fervent and public advocate of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. For those more familiar with his political record, the genocidal conclusions that flow from his arguments are clear.

Morris first gained a name for himself as one of Israel's so-called "new historians," who in the 1980s exposed the founding myths of the Zionist state.

he provided documentary evidence that Israel was established only through the violent and forced expulsion of up to three-quarters of a million Palestinians from their land. This population of stateless refugees has now swelled to nearly 4 million.

While he was then considered a man of the left, beginning in 2000, with the onset of the second Intifada and the collapse of the Camp David "final status" talks, he turned sharply to the right.

He upheld his earlier findings—and produced new ones showing that Israeli military forces were responsible for a deliberate campaign of massacres and rapes aimed at driving out the Palestinians—but then defended these crimes as necessary and justifiable.

In a January 2004 interview with Ha'aretz Magazine, Morris spelled out his position: "Under some circumstances expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."

Morris went further, declaring that Israel's founder, David Ben-Gurion, "should have done a complete job" and "cleaned the whole country" of Arabs. As historical justification, he added, "Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians."

"There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing," he continued. "I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing."

Morris was not merely offering his opinions on history. He insisted in his 2004 interview that under "other circumstances... which are likely to be realized in five or ten years," characterized by war and crisis, "acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential."

Elsewhere in the Ha'aretz interview, he described the Palestinian people as "a wild animal that has to be locked up in one way or another," and he concluded, "When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy."

This is the language of fascism. It offers a pseudo-intellectual justification of the policy known in Israel as "transfer"—that is, the forced expulsion of the remaining Arab population from Israeli territory, and potentially from the West Bank and Gaza as well.

Initially championed by such fascistic elements as the late Meir Kahane, it has been increasingly embraced by Israel's main parties and leaders.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a leading candidate for prime minister, expressed this policy somewhat delicately recently, declaring that as Israel's leader she would "approach the Palestinian residents of Israel ... and tell them: ‘Your national aspirations lie elsewhere.'"

The distinction that Morris makes between ethnic cleansing and genocide is a false one. One practice leads to the other. The Nazis' "final solution" initially called for forced emigration, the expulsion of Jews from Germany. Then came the death camps.

The Times' publication of Morris's column only underscores its own opportunistic and cynical attitude towards ethnic cleansing and genocide. Whether it opposes these practices or tacitly accepts them is entirely dependent on who is carrying them out and whose interests are served.

Thus, on Sunday it published a piece by its columnist Nicholas Kristof urging Obama to take military action against Sudan over what he described as genocide in Darfur.

Similarly, the newspaper was a major proponent of US intervention in the former Yugoslavia in response to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and charges of the same in Kosovo.

When opposing ethnic cleansing serves to further US consolidation of its control over oil-rich countries in Africa or to expand eastward the domination of NATO, it becomes a moral imperative. When it is practiced by US allies, it is quietly supported.The slaughter in Gaza and the more horrific crimes being suggested by the likes of Morris are a telling indication of the political, social and moral blind alley reached by the nationalist project initiated under the banner of Zionism.