Settlers set fire to home as seven Palestinians sleep inside
By Samuel Nichols | Mondoweiss | December 31, 2010
In the early morning hours of 29 December 2010, settlers set fire to a family’s dwelling in Susiya village.
The great majority of Susiya residents live in tents as their historic stone and cave dwellings have been demolished several times over by the Israeli military. Many of the tents now used have been provided by humanitarian organizations and serve as bedrooms, kitchens, storage and sitting areas for the families living in them.
The Palestinian village of Susiya is sandwiched between a handful of settlements and outposts, an army base, and an ancient synagogue. Shepherds are unable to graze their flocks freely on their own land and farmers are unable to access their fields to harvest wheat and olives due to the area’s designation as a ‘closed military zone’ (see the video below). Israeli settlers in the South Hebron Hills, who have a reputation for being some of the nastiest settlers around, often direct their venemous aggression at Palestinians from Susiya who are surrounded on all sides.
Palestinians have no recourse to defend themselves, access their privately-owned land, or to seek prosecution for attacks against their persons or their property. The collusion between the Israeli authorites and the settlers — many of whom are on a first-name basis with policeman and soldiers stationed in the area, or in many cases stationed inside the settlements — is palpable after spending mere hours in the area. Israeli police and military often refuse to respond, or respond with tardiness and negligence, when Palestinians report crimes and file complaints against Israeli settlers. Many Palestinians whom I have worked with in the area, have stopped bothering to file complaints because of the fruitless hours spent at the nearby Kiryat Arba Police Station trying to convince Israeli policemen to hear their testimony or view their video and photographic evidence.
In the incident which occurred on 29 December 2010, there were seven members of a family asleep in the tent when settlers set fire to the structure. Fortunately, a hajji (an elderly matriarch) was awake and heard the dogs warning of the intruders. Nasser Nawa’jah, a field researcher for B’tselem and a resident of Susiya, said that the villagers were unsure whether the intruders had poured petrol on the tent and then lit the flammable liquid or whether they had thrown a molotov cocktail at the tent, the latter a tactic which settlers have used previously in Susiya.
The hajji woke those sleeping in the tent in time for them to escape and to remove the tanks of gas that were in the kitchen. As they emerged from the tent, they saw a car on the dirt road escaping in the direction of Susiya settlement (the Palestinian village and the nearby Israeli settlement have the same name).
The Villages Group, an Israeli organization which routinely provides assistance to Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills, reported on the incident and expressed little hope of any investigation:
The military and police authorities are, of course, well aware of the identity of the natural suspects for both attacks. Unfortunately, given the track record showing the settlers and military as two arms of the same effort to uproot the local population, and the total impunity accorded to the settlers by the military, there is little hope that any serious investigation will take place.
Unfortunately that rings true with my experience, and is a repetition of the statements made by the Palestinian man from Susiya who despaired in the above video:
If this happens to one of the settlers, they would arrest all the people, all the Arabs here. But here, three settlers come at night with a car and try to kill Arabs, they didn’t even arrest one of the settlers. We want the police to investigate fairly here to arrest the settlers, not to help the settlers.
Samuel Nichols is an activist from the US working with Christian Peacemaker Teams, an organization that supports Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation. He lives in al-Tuwani, a small village in the South Hebron hills, amongst Palestinians committed to nonviolent resistance to land confiscation and settler violence. Following Samuel on his blog, Do Unto Others, at samuelnichols.blogspot.com and on Twitter, twitter.com/samuelnichols.
Biofuel Delusions
Thomas Freidman’s Folly
By ROBERT BRYCE | December 31, 2010
Debunking the tsunami of hype about biofuels doesn’t require much. A standard calculator will do. Alas, Thomas Friedman can’t be bothered to do the handful of simple calculations that prove the futility of the biofuels madness.
In a recent piece, the New York Times columnist and best-selling author praised the Navy and Marines for, as he put it “building a strategy for ‘out-greening’ Al Qaeda, ‘out-greening’ the Taliban and ‘out-greening’ the world’s petro-dictators.”
Hmm. I’ve never heard of Taliban fighters using tanks or F-15s. And if Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda operatives are worrying about the size of their carbon footprints, that revelation might eclipse the latest news about Lady Gaga – at least for a few hours.
Nevertheless, Friedman reports that the military is planning to “run its ships on nuclear energy, biofuels and hybrid engines, and fly its jets with bio-fuels.” Friedman goes on to say that the brass at the Pentagon is only pursuing “third generation” biofuels made from algae and non-food sources. But here’s the reality: the commercial viability of advanced biofuels is a lot like the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy: lots of people believe in it but no one ever sees it.
To be sure, the logisticians at the Pentagon know that the US military’s profligate use of oil on the battlefield is a strategic liability. And while it’s obvious that the Defense Department could – given its nearly $700 billion in annual spending — make significant contributions in the development of new energy technologies, those advances are unlikely to happen on the biofuels front.
For decades, various pundits have been proclaiming that biofuels will displace our need for oil. Back in 1976, energy analyst Amory Lovins, a darling of the Green/Left, wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs in which he said that there are “exciting developments in the conversion of agricultural, forestry and urban wastes to methanol and other liquid and gaseous fuels.” He went on, saying that those fuels “now offer practical, economically interesting technologies sufficient to run an efficient U.S. transport sector.”
Today, 34 years after Lovins said that biofuels “now offer” the ability to run the transport sector, biofuels remain little more than a sinkhole for taxpayer dollars. According to the Congressional Budget Office, producing enough corn ethanol to match the energy contained in a single gallon of conventional gasoline costs taxpayers $1.78. Even with those subsidies, which total about $7 billion per year, corn ethanol still only provides about 3 percent of America’s oil needs. And by mandating the consumption of ethanol, Congress has created an industry that now gobbles up about one-third of America’s corn crop.
Those numbers are germane to Friedman’s claim that biofuels will be an essential part of the DOD’s new “green” future. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist lauded the Navy for its experiments with jet fuel derived from camellina, a plant in the mustard family. In April, the Navy flew an F-18 using a mixture of conventional jet fuel and camellina-based fuel. The cost of that biofuel: about $67.50 per gallon.
The fundamental problem with using plants to make liquid motor fuel isn’t want-to, it’s physics. We pump oil out of the earth because of its high energy density. That is it contains lots of stored chemical energy by both weight and volume. Camellina, like switchgrass, and nearly every other plant-based feedstock now being considered for “advanced” biofuel production, has low energy density. Thus, in order to produce a significant quantity of liquid fuels that have high energy density – such as jet fuel, diesel, or gasoline — from those plants, you need Bunyanesque quantities of the stuff.
Friedman would have understood that had he done a bit of math on soybean-based biodiesel. The US produces about 3.2 billion bushels of soybeans per year and each bushel can be processed into about 1.5 gallons of biodiesel. Thus, if it made sense to do so, we could convert all US soybean production into diesel with total output of about 4.8 billion gallons.
How much fuel is that? By Pentagon standards, it’s not much. In 2008, the DOD consumed 132.5 million barrels of oil products, or about 5.5 billion gallons. Put another way, even if the US decided to convert all of its soybean production into motor fuel, doing so would only provide about 87 percent of the Pentagon’s total oil needs.
Tim Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School who has written extensively about the problems with biofuels, says that biofuels don’t make much sense because it “takes a huge amount of land to produce a modest amount of energy.” The key issue, says Searchinger, is scale. He points out that even if we used “every piece of wood on the planet, every piece of grass eaten by livestock, and all food crops, that much biomass could only provide about 30 percent of the world’s total energy needs.”
Some crops can provide a relatively good feedstock for biofuels. For instance, Brazil utilizes sugar cane to produce ethanol. (Brazil is the world’s second-largest ethanol producer, behind the US.) But even if the US military commandeered all of Brazil’s ethanol production — which totaled 6.5 billion gallons in 2008 – that volume of energy still wouldn’t be enough to keep the Pentagon’s planes, trucks, and tanks moving. Recall that ethanol contains just two-thirds of the heat energy of gasoline. Therefore Brazil’s 6.5 billion gallons of ethanol is equal to 4.3 billion gallons of refined oil product, far less than the US military’s consumption of 5.5 billion gallons per year.
Going beyond Brazil, biomass-based fuels may be worthwhile on tropical islands, like Hawaii, that have lots of rainfall and plenty of arable land. Furthermore, fuels derived from photosynthetic algae might – repeat, might – someday become commercial.
Friedman ended his column by saying that “we might really get a green revolution in the military.” Sure, that’s a possibility. But before Friedman writes another article about the promise of biofuels he should invest in a calculator.
Another Tunisian protester dies
By Yasmine Ryan | Al-Jazeera | 31 December 2010
A Tunisian protester has died of his injuries after police shot him in the town of Menzel Bouzaiene, according to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).
Chawki Belhoussine El Hadri, a 44-year-old man, was shot during protest on December 24. He died on Thursday, the FIDH said in a statement.
Mohamed Ammari, a Tunisian teenager, had been killed by police bullets the same day that El Hadri was injured. Another young man, Houcine Falhi, committed suicide by electrocuting himself in the midst of another demonstration on December 22, after shouting out that he was tired of being unemployed.
The protests began in the town of Sidi Bouzid when a young university graduate, Mohamed Bouazizi, attempted to end his life by setting himself on fire. Bouazizi is receiving treatment for his severe burns at a hospital in Tunis.
Security forces broke up a demonstration in Monastir peacefully on Thursday, but used violence in Sbikha on Thursday, the FIDH said. The same happened in Chebba, where one protester had to be hospitalised.
Protests entered their twelfth day on Friday.
“The FIDH again firmly condemns the use of firearms by the Tunisian security forces, and calls for an independent inquiry to caste light on these events, to hold those responsible accountable and to guarantee the right to peaceful protest,” the organisation said.
Officials have said that the police’s use of firearms against protesters last week in Menzel Bouzaiene was necessary after rioters barricaded a police station during the unrest, and used Molotov cocktails to torch the building and some police cars.
Lawyers speak out
Mokhtar Trifi, president of the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH), told Al Jazeera that lawyers across Tunisia have been “savagely beaten” on Friday morning.
Lawyers gathered in central Tunis, while others assembled in the capital’s suburbs, the town of Monastir and elsewhere in the country, after the national lawyers’ order called on them to speak out against the government’s repression.
“It was to demand the release of lawyers arrested over the past two days, and to express solidarity with the wider protests in Sidi Bouzid,” Trifi, who has participated in the gathering outside the courthouse in Tunis, said.
“There was a savage attack on the lawyers, who were protesting extremely peacefully,” he said.
He said many people have been injured, some severely, when police beat the lawyers with clubs and punched and kicked them, arresting some and breaking up the meeting. The repression was the most violent in Tunis, he said.
The police also confiscated cell phones to prevent people from filming the incident in the capital.
Many lawyers have been arrested for supporting the protesters. Abderrahman Ayedi, pictured above, says he was tortured by police on December 28, after they arrested him.
Governor sacked
President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali sacked the governor of the region of Sidi Bouzid where the protests had begun.
Mourad Ben Jalloul was dismissed on Thursday, as Ben Ali’s government struggles to respond to the political crisis the protests have provoked.
Three ministers and two governors have now been removed for reasons relating to the popular uprising, including Oussama Romdhani, the communications minister.
But Khadija Cherif, the secretary-general of the FIDH, told Al Jazeera that Ben Ali’s response to the crisis hasn’t taken into account the major reforms the protesters are calling for. Neither has it allowed for the debate to be opened, she said, noting the Tunisian media’s failure to report accurately on the events.
International ‘indifference’
Most Western governments have stayed silent over the violent repression of the protests, in a marked contrast to the international outcry over popular protests in Iran in 2009.
By keeping silent over what is happening in Tunisia, Cherif said the world is “showing indifference to a population that is rising up in the face of massive repression”.
“We can clearly see that it’s self-interest that counts, not values like democracy or freedom,” she said. “This discredits European and Western countries.”
She condemned the tendency to describe Tunisia as an economic miracle.
“Just look at what this ‘miracle’ has led to,” she said, referring to those marginalised by the liberalising economic path the government has taken.
France’s Socialist Party, the main opposition, condemned the “brutal repression” of the protesters on Thursday, calling for those arrested to be released.
“It’s unfortunately not the first time that the Tunisian security forces distinguish themselves by sometimes fatal repressive measures,” Pouria Amirshahi, the party’s national secretary, said in a statement from France.
Amirshahi called on the Tunisian authorities “to guarantee the safety of activists, journalists and lawyers, and to protect the right to information and the right to peaceful protest.”
Simmering resentment
Some 80,000 Tunisians graduate from higher education annually, but analysts say the Tunisian economy is incapable of absorbing so many highly skilled workers.
The unemployment rate is 14.7 per cent, according to the World Bank.
Nouredinne Miladi of the University of Northampton points to unemployment figures from non-governmental sources. In the town of Sidi Bouzid, where the protests started, around 25 per cent of male university graduates are jobless, as are 44 per cent of female graduates.
He said the simmering resentments that led to the recent protests are rooted in years of systematic marginalisation of not only the young, but of significant parts of the country.
Flourishing coastal cities receive the bulk of the government’s attention, he told Al Jazeera, while much of the rest of Tunisia goes overlooked.
The World Bank may have recently praised Tunisia’s weathering of the global economic crisis, but the economic reality within the country is very different from how it is typically viewed abroad, he explained.
“What is promoted around the world is this lovely picture of tourism and so forth,” he said.
The Tunisian government deserves praise for having made education a higher priority than other countries in the Maghreb like Algeria or Morocco, Lahcen Achy of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Al Jazeera.
But the problem lies in the type of sectors that have been developed in Tunisia, which offer mostly low-skilled employment.
Highly educated young people are blocked from entering public life, whether it be politics, media or commercial spheres. Instead, economic development has focused on sectors such as tourism and textiles, which don’t meet the expectations of these graduates.
The government has a responsibility to design policy that encourages domestic and foreign investment in sectors that would provide jobs suitable for so many highly educated graduates.
“We have much more investment coming from Europe … just looking for cheap labour,” Achy said.
Little freedom of expression
Beyond the employment dilemma, Miladi said there is a need to allow for greater freedom of expression.
“There has to be new initiatives with regards to opening up the media in the country,” Miladi suggested.
Government has controlled television, radio and print media for decades.
“Only the internet remains probably the only source of opportunity for young people and others to voice their opinion,” he said.
International media face many barriers in reporting from Tunisia. The government has banned Al Jazeera completely. The main source of information on the protests is coming from information Tunisians are posting to YouTube and Twitter.
Many of those tweeting about the popular uprising are beginning to question what they see as the failure of international media to cover the protests, compared to the outcry over pro-democracy protests in Iran in 2009.
Right for the Wrong Reasons
Two Truthful Statements From Avigdor Lieberman
By RANNIE AMIRI | December 31, 2010
The foreign policy mantra of Israel’s radical, Moldovan-born foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, can be accurately summarized in just four words: always blame the victim.
He may be more vocal than most, but it is the paradigm by which all Israeli ministers operate: the victims, not the perpetrators, are responsible for their own suffering. Whether it was the July 2006 war on Lebanon or the 2008-2009 assault on Gaza, the innocents killed effectively brought Israel’s wrath upon themselves.
The doctrine also applies to those accidentally/deliberately killed (always a murky distinction) by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for standing up for Palestinian rights, such as when an armored bulldozer crushed American peace activist Rachel Corrie to death as she tried to prevent a home’s destruction; or when an IDF sniper shot British activist Thomas Hurndall in the head while he was rescuing Palestinian children in the line of fire; or when American student Emily Henochowicz lost an eye after being shot in the face with tear gas grenade as she peacefully protested the Israeli raid on the Turkish flotilla.
So when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogen demanded a formal apology from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the May 31 commando raid on the MV Mavi Marmara (the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s lead relief vessel aboard which nine Turkish aid workers were murdered) Lieberman replied that it was Ankara who owed Israel the apology for attempting to break the inhumane Gaza embargo.
“I think the matter of an apology borders on chutzpah or beyond. If anything, we are waiting for an apology from the Turkish government, and not the other way around.”
But in the midst of his speech to Israeli ambassadors, two rare statements of truth emerged from the mendacious Lieberman.
Mahmoud Abbas is an illegitimate president
“It is forbidden for us to reach a comprehensive deal today with the Palestinians. To put it clearly, you have to understand that their government is not legitimate … It is a government that has postponed elections three times, that lost elections, that does not hold elections, does not plan to hold elections and there are no guarantees that next time they do hold elections, that Hamas won’t win again.”
Peace is certainly not dependent on an elected party or person to take effect. It remains true, however, that the four-year term of the Palestinian Authority’s ostensible leader, Mahmoud Abbas, expired on Jan. 9, 2009 (he unilaterally extended his term for an additional year thereafter). Abbas’ authority can thus legitimately be called into question.
Because he holds no love for Hamas—the landslide victor in the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections—Abbas has remained in the good graces of the United States and is regarded by Israel as a leader with whom they can do business.
Little headway has been made in Fatah–Hamas reconciliation ever since Fatah was ousted from Gaza in June 2007 when Abbas dissolved the unity government and declared he would rule by presidential decree. Indeed, his protestations of Israel’s brutal December 2008 attack on the tiny enclave were notably feeble, if not mute.
Lieberman is technically correct in his statement although it remains the hollowest of excuses, meant solely to avoid substantive negotiations with the Palestinians (and an ironic one, considering what Israel was able to accomplish under the docile Abbas).
Peace is impossible
“It’s not only that it is impossible [to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians], it is simply forbidden.”
Once again putting aside the ridiculous assertion that peace is “forbidden,” Lieberman is correct in contending that it is impossible at present.
Peace cannot occur when West Bank land is being expropriated by new and expanding settlements. Peace cannot occur when Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are evicted from their homes. Peace cannot occur when 1.5 million residents of Gaza are not free to obtain medical care, leave their open-air prison to visit relatives in the West Bank, or adequately rebuild their homes, hospitals and schools.
For once Avigdor Lieberman got it right … for all the wrong reasons.
Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.
Knesset Approves $ 564 million for Settlements in the New Year’s Budget
By Ane Irazabal – IMEMC & Agencies – December 31, 2010
The Israeli Knesset approved its 2011-2012 budget on Wednesday, which includes two billion shekels (approx. US$ 564 million) for settlements construction, services and security, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
According to the budget, in 2011, 200 new housing units will be marketed in the settlement of Maaleh Adumim, west Jerusalem, and another 500 units in Har Homa, in the occupied territory that lies across from Bethlehem, beyond the Green Line. A total of 238 million shekels will be spent on Har Homa by 2012.
In addition, a large amount of money will be transferred to roads, mainly, to join different settlements with other areas. 180 million will be spent on the road between the Jerusalem settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev and Tel Aviv, which human rights group Peace Now recently called “a clear obstacle to peace.”
Also, some NIS 225 million will be transfered to repair the road between the Adumim plain and the Good Samaritan junction, and Pisgat Ze’ev and the Zeitim intersection.
With regard to East Jerusalem, the budget for settlers living in the occupied area, defined as a security expense, represents a rise of 40 percent in the new budget, reaching NIS 3,160 per settler.
In addition, the state will compensate the loss incurred by exporters from settlements to the European Union with NIS 22 million, due to settlement produce no longer being recognized as from Israel by the E.U., and thus losing free trade status under the Euro-Mediterranean Agreement.
The budget also shows a contradiction between the information provided by The Central Bureau of Statistics and the World Zionist Organization, while the first organization indicates 120 official settlements in the West bank, the WZO claims 136 “communities”, which indicates that the WZO could support at least 16 illegal outposts.
The protection for settlers will also be the responsibility of the state’s expenses; as the “overall reinforcement and security ingredients in settlements and conflict zone areas reaches over NIS 630 million.” Haaretz quoted.
Every settler may request the state to have extra protection in his personal car, and subsidies for public transport for settlers and the ultra-orthodox will reach NIS 31 million per year. In addition, the protected buses with special window frames will cost another 10 million NIS.
How Zionist lobby shapes UK politics
Press TV – December 31, 2010
The wealthy Jewish lobby in Britain working under the title of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) has been tipped as the Conservative Party’s paymaster.
The CFI as described by British political analysts is beyond doubt the most well- connected and probably the best funded of all Westminster lobbying groups. It works in support of the interests of the Israeli regime.
The CFI’s finances may be legal but they are hardly transparent as the lobbying group is an unincorporated association. This is how the British media report on the CFI’s financial transactions.
The register of MPs’ interests shows that CFI board members and their businesses gave the Conservatives over 2 million pounds in the last 8 years.
The reports also say more than 30,000 pounds from CFI members went to campaign funds of the members of Prime Minister David Cameron’s team when he was first elected as the party leader in 2005.
Also in 2005, Cameron himself had received 15,000 pounds from a pro-Israeli lobby facilitator. The facilitator had also donated 50,000 pounds to the Conservative Central Office.
“Donations from all CFI members and their businesses to the Conservative Party of Britain have topped over 10 million pounds over the past 8 years”, according to reliable sources inside the UK.
Here’s an example of how the pro-Israeli lobby works in the UK.
After the 22-day Israeli war on the Gaza Strip a fact-finding team was appointed to conduct an inquiry into the war and identify the culprits.
A few weeks after the UN was to vote on a resolution following judge Goldstone’s report which condemned Israel for abusing human rights in Gaza, the CFI ran to now foreign secretary William Hague’s office and after consulting with them David Cameron gave them this quote:
“Unless the draft resolution is redrafted to reflect the role that Hamas played in starting the conflict we would recommend that the British government vote to reject the resolution”.
But, it was under former Prime Minister Tony Blair that the Israel lobby first acquired real influence in government.
Former chairman of the Labour friends of Israel John Mandelson boasted:
“Zionism is pervasive in new Labour, it’s automatic that Blair will come to Labour friends of Israel’s meetings”.
Shortly before Blair became Labour party leader in 1994 he met Michael Levy the pop music millionaire at a social event arranged by the Israeli embassy. They became friends, played tennis and Levy became Blair’s fundraiser. It’s estimated that he raised almost 15 million pounds for Labour before the row over cash for peerages.
When Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997, he awarded Michael Levy a life peerage and made him his special envoy to the Middle East, but because Levy was unpaid and working directly with the prime minister, what he negotiated between the Israeli entity and Arabs on behalf of Britain was kept secret.
Detention and Torture
Obama’s Plan for Indefinite Detentions
By JENNIFER VAN BERGEN and DOUGLAS VALENTINE | December 30, 2010
Author’s Note: With the news of President Obama’s plan to make indefinite detentions a permanent feature of our legal landscape, we thought it apropos to re-publish an updated, edited excerpt from a law review article we wrote in 2006 THE DANGEROUS WORLD OF INDEFINITE DETENTIONS: VIETNAM TO ABU GHRAIB.
Where you find administrative detentions, you are likely to find torture. This connection exists even where it is clear that investigations and screenings leading to such detentions are, as Alberto Gonzales put it, “not haphazard, but elaborate, and careful . . . reasoned and deliberate.”
This reason is simple and can be traced to the elements of administrative detention itself: the absence of human rights safeguards and normal legal guarantees such as due process, habeas corpus, fair trial, confidential legal counsel, and judicial review; vague and confusing definitions, standards, and procedures; inadequate adversarial procedural oversight; excessive Executive Branch power stemming from prolonged emergencies; and the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency, or other secret, thus unaccountable, Executive Branch agencies.
Without such protections, justice does not work and human rights are jeopardized. As William F. Schultz, Executive Director of Amnesty International, put it:
“[W]e are witnessing not just a series of brutal but fundamentally independent human rights violations committed by disparate governments around the globe. [W]e are witnessing something far more fundamental and far more dangerous. [W]e are witnessing the orchestrated destruction by the United States of the very basis, the fragile scaffolding, upon which international human rights have been built, painstakingly, bit by bit by bit, since the end of World War II.”
This is a remarkable statement that was originally made about the Bush Administration, but it applies equally as well now to the Obama Administration. The system was intentionally broken by the Bush Administration, just as it was by the Johnson and Nixon Administrations during the Vietnam War. And now Obama plans to sanctify this wrong and make it a permanent feature of American law.
Obama’s indefinite detention follows, at least in idea, the precedent set by and codified in the PATRIOT Act, enacted six weeks after 9/11. Section 412, which is still on the books, provides for the “mandatory detention of suspected terrorists.” This section nowhere refers to the detentions as “administrative detentions,” which result from administrative (that is, Executive Branch), not judicial, determinations. Yet this is exactly what they are. And they have been used before. The U.S. government’s internment of Japanese immigrants during the Second World War is perhaps the most recognizable example.
Section 412(a) authorizes the Attorney General to take into custody any alien whom he certifies as a terrorist. The alien may be detained indefinitely, in renewable periods of six months, as long as the Attorney General determines that he is a threat to national security, or endangers some individual or the general public.
In addition to PATRIOT Act detentions, the November 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which preceded the PATRIOT Act, has been used by the DOJ to justify administrative detentions.
Scholars have raised concerns about the PATRIOT Act detention provisions, as well as detentions under AUMF, which allow the Secretary of Defense to detain designated alien terrorist suspects without the restrictions that Section 412 contains. Additionally, military detentions of U.S. citizens Yaser Esam Hamdi, Jose Padilla, and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri have raised concerns. President Bush, citing his power as Commander-in-Chief and the laws of war, unilaterally declared these individuals “unlawful enemy combatants” subject to indefinite detention without trial or access to an attorney and without providing for a status determination hearing by a competent tribunal, which is required by the Geneva Conventions. The central concern raised by qualified legal observers about these detentions generally involves the important issues of due process and other constitutional and/or human rights guarantees.
Administrative detentions — sometimes called preventive detentions — are, by definition and practice, sought only during “national emergencies.” The emergency is the rationale for depriving suspected terrorists of adequate due process or human rights safeguards. A declaration of a national emergency is generally made unilaterally by the President and, once declared, the administrative detention laws may stay on the books for decades. This is one of the primary reasons why they are so dangerous, for without any Congressional determination of the beginning or end of hostilities, these inherently anti-democratic laws may be used for purposes of political repression.
However, few legal scholars or government officials have discussed the historically established connection between administrative detentions and torture. The subject only came into public consciousness with the revelation that U.S. soldiers were torturing terrorist suspects at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and the detention facilities at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Since then, American and foreign journalists and human rights activists began to raise suspicions, subsequently borne out, that U.S. soldiers and CIA officers were routinely torturing terrorist suspects at numerous detention centers around the world. Nonetheless, to date, nothing has been done to ameliorate concerns about these detentions.
The conjoining of administrative detentions and torture is sadly by no means new to U.S. Government policies and practices. Specifically, during the Vietnam War, the United States engaged in a massive program of indefinite administrative detentions in South Vietnam of persons considered “dangerous to the national security” that engendered widespread torture and deaths of terrorist suspects.
There are many similarities between the Vietnam detentions and those used in the War on Terror, and those similarities are found not only within the procedures themselves but in the rationales for and policies behind them and even in the conditions of fear that created them.The Vietnam detention procedures provide a clear and compelling flow chart of the web of connections between administrative detentions, intelligence laws, national security courts (i.e. courts intended to deal exclusively with national security concerns), violations of international law (particularly the Geneva Conventions), and torture. These components now also appear in U.S. law and policies in the War on Terror and are continued, codified, and sanctified in Obama’s intended executive order.
One would have thought that a nation which was in large part responsible for the rescue of tens of thousands of Concentration Camp survivors and was a judicial participant in one of the most significant war crimes tribunals in history, the Nuremburg trials, would know better. How American officials could justify the detention camps in Vietnam, knowing about the torture and murders of innocents in them, after having witnessed Hitler’s internment camps and learned of the horrors he perpetrated in them, is an unanswered question. But, after the revelations of Vietnam — which all came out in congressional hearings in 1971 that led to both the repeal of the EDA and ultimately by degrees to “reforms” of the CIA’s Phoenix Program, contributing to the end of that protracted War, — Section 412 of the PATRIOT Act, Bush’s Military Commissions and unlawful enemy combatant designations, and now, Obama’s executive order establishing permanent indefinite detention are inexcusable.
For the full law review article, click here.
Jennifer Van Bergen, J.D., M.S.I.E., is the founder of the 12th Generation Institute, and author of THE TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: THE BUSH PLAN FOR AMERICA (Common Courage Press, 2004) and Archetypes for Writers: Using the Power of Your Subconscious (Michael Weise Productions, 2007). She is currently working under contract with Bucknell University Press on a biography of Leonora Sansay, an early American novelist who was involved in the Aaron Burr Conspiracy, and on a screenplay about the conspiracy. She can be reached at jennifer.vanbergen@gmail.com.
Douglas Valentine is the author of numerous articles and five books: THE HOTEL TACLOBAN (1984), THE PHOENIX PROGRAM (1990), TDY (2000), THE STRENGTH OF THE WOLF (2004), and THE STRENGTH OF THE PACK (2009) (the latter two are histories of federal drug law enforcement). See: http://www.douglasvalentine.com/.
Related article
Book Review: Europe’s Alliance with Israel
Sarah Irving, The Electronic Intifada, 30 December 2010
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From the eastern side of the Atlantic, it’s easy to pin all the world’s ills on the United States. Other Western countries may have perpetrated their share of imperialistic crimes but since World War II, Washington’s global might has meant that other nations’ evils can often be chalked up as following-the-leader, willingly or otherwise.
David Cronin’s immensely valuable new book, Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation, does not entirely reject this position. But in charting how the European Union (EU) and its member states back Israel, Cronin dispels the idea that the US is the only game in town (and that those of us who aren’t resident there can therefore change nothing), while also offering activists new targets for institutional lobbying and boycotts.
The bulk of Europe’s Alliance with Israel is a meticulous documentation of the ways in which a variety of institutions — the European Union (and its major constituent bodies, the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission), North American Treaty Organization (NATO) and various European states — have, despite superficial commitments to the “peace process,” consistently sold out Palestinian rights and interests. And the list is a long one.
Cronin starts by cataloging European toleration of Israeli human rights abuses and infringements of international law. He cites the fact that just five EU states (Ireland, Cyprus, Portugal, Malta and Slovenia) supported the UN General Assembly acceptance of the Goldstone Report into war crimes in Gaza, with the remaining 22 opposing or abstaining. This is contrasted with the strong EU positions taken on, for example, the Georgia-Russia conflict of summer 2008, controversies over the treatment of civilians by the Sri Lanka government during its offensive against the Tamil Tigers in spring 2009, or attacks on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Cronin quotes senior EU figures such as Javier Solana and Benita Ferrero Waldner on the ever-nearer relations between the EU and Israel. At a presidential conference in Jerusalem in October 2009, Solana even claimed that the relationship was closer, even, than the EU’s ties to new and recent additions like Croatia. “There is no country outside the European continent that has this type of relationship that Israel has with the European Union,” the then EU foreign policy chief was quoted as saying in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, going on to joke that: “I am sorry to say, but I don’t see the president of Croatia here. His country is a candidate for the European Union, but your relation today with the European Union is stronger than [our] relation to Croatia.”
Cronin’s background and experience as a journalist covering European affairs is evident in these and other details. The direct quotes from senior — often anonymous — sources and access to obscure or confidential correspondence and reports demonstrate his exhaustive knowledge of the famously Byzantine workings of the EU’s institutions.
Cronin examines Israel’s progressive integration into the EU’s scientific research and development programs, and the collaboration of EU researchers with Israeli arms manufacturers. He notes that Israel was the first country outside the EU to be brought into its research funding programs and cites the huge sums involved — 204 million euros during the 2002-2006 finance round and possibly over half a billion euros in 2007-2013.
Discussing the incorporation of Israel into supposedly civilian aviation and aerospace projects such as the “green” Clean Sky initiative and the Galileo satellite project, Cronin quotes his interview with Janez Potocnik, the EU commissioner for scientific research from 2004-2009, whose position he calls “Jesuitical and deceptive.” Responding to questions on whether working with the Israeli military had been excluded as an option for European-funded researchers, Potocnik said, “Defense is not part of the 7th Framework Programme [on scientific research]. We have space and security as themes for the first time [neither were included in previous versions of the multi-annual programs]. But there is nothing that would be defense-related in any context.”
But Cronin also quotes contacts within the EU who have confirmed that Israeli ministry of defense staff were present at negotiations on EU bankrolling of research projects. He reports that some Commission negotiators were concerned about the pressure being exerted by Israeli officials at their meetings, but that, “As part of a tacit policy of trusting the Israeli authorities, the Commission does not normally carry out background checks on Israeli officials that it deals with. ‘These guys [defense officials] are present in the system,’ a Commission insider told me. ‘It is unbelievable that their backgrounds aren’t checked.'”
According to Cronin, millions of euros in research funding have also gone to Israeli companies with major military operations, including direct funding of drone development by Elbit and Israel Aviation Industries.
Cronin’s access to EU officials willing to talk off the record also illuminates the huge gap between EU claims to fund and collaborate only with organizations within “Israel’s legally recognized borders,” and the reality of its relationship with Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights. Research finance has, according to Cronin, reached academic institutions in settlements in both the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights, while cultural funding has ended up with organizations based in occupied East Jerusalem.
In the case of funds allocated to corporations, he recounts how EU officials on the ground are denied information which would reveal whether they were in fact dealing with settlements. “After they were made aware of how grants they were administering were going to Israeli settlements, EU officials pledged to do what they could,” writes Cronin. But instead of making firm commitments to block settlement products taking advantage of trade preferences, Palestine solidarity activists reported that the EU kept its promises verbal, and that its rules remained painfully easy to get around. “All a firm in a settlement would have to do is set up a front company in Tel Aviv or another Israeli town or city and it could apply for EU funding, without EU officials knowing that its real work is done on occupied land,” Cronin concludes.
EU bodies are also revealed to have dragged their feet over excluding settlement goods from trade preferences (which mean they can be imported into Europe without duties being paid), with the German and Dutch governments “staunchly opposing” efforts to stop settlement products getting preferential treatment.
Even after the bar was in theory enforced, evidence that settlement produce was being illegally sneaked into Europe without taxes being paid on it was sidelined. “Although they learned through the grapevine that the British authorities had discovered that two out of 26 companies based in Israeli settlements that they had investigated were benefiting illegally from EU trade preferences, Brussels officials said they could not do anything until a dossier had been transmitted to them through formal channels,” writes Cronin.
By actively bankrolling parts of the Israeli military-industrial complex and settlement economy, Cronin argues that the EU is both ignoring its legal duties and cheating its own taxpayers by enabling Israel to abdicate its responsibilities under international law. The EU makes much of its status as the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority (PA), arguing that this demonstrates its commitment to the welfare of the Palestinian people and its position as an “honest broker” in the Middle East conflict.
But as Cronin demonstrates, the 1907 Hague Regulations impose upon occupying powers the duty to ensure the welfare of occupied populations. But by continuing to pay for food and other basic aid, the EU is assuming Israel’s responsibilities under international law and underwriting its occupation. In addition, the huge sums spent on aid to the PA often go straight to Israeli food and utility companies, many of which are directly complicit with human rights abuses such as the siege on Gaza, now in its forty-second month.
On top of this, Cronin says, senior EU figures have consistently shown “cowardice” in refusing to pursue the Israeli military for the cost of European-funded infrastructure projects which have been damaged or destroyed in repeated Israeli invasions. “Privately, EU officials acknowledge that the aid policies they are implementing have become hugely problematic. ‘Are we subsidizing activities that should fall on Israel as a consequence of its responsibilities as an occupying power?’ a well-placed Brussels source said to me. ‘The answer is unquestionably yes,'” writes Cronin.
While the EU’s continued aid to the PA is said to be part of a “tacit division of labor” with the US, whereby Washington holds the political reins and Europe the financial ones, Cronin provides examples of US refusal to allow joint donor statements which criticized Israel for damage to donor-funded projects illustrating the EU’s junior role in that relationship. In the meantime, the EU’s “aid” is also revealed by Cronin’s writings — both in the book and for The Electronic Intifada — to include the far-from-benign training given by European police organizations to PA security forces.
Cronin offers a range of causes underlying the EU’s sometimes pyrrhic support for Israel. He cites the power of justifiable Holocaust guilt, whilst pointing out that this doesn’t excuse imposing military occupation on a Palestinian population which had nothing to do with the Shoah. The common fear of “militant Islam” also raises its ugly head.
Cronin mentions the economic interests which European companies such as Volvo and Dexia maintain in Israel, and the fascination which Israeli technological development seems to hold for EU officials. Economic influences have included, says Cronin, the “‘EU-Israel business dialogue,’ a forum in which senior businessmen (with perhaps one or two women) could brainstorm on how best ‘barriers to trade and investment’ can be stripped away.”
The strength of the European Israel lobby is a key point in the book’s arguments. Cronin highlights groups such as European Friends of Israel, the highest profile pro-Israel lobby in the European Parliament with links to better-known US campaigners such as AIPAC, or the pseudo-respectable Transatlantic Institute (its opening graced by senior EU figures like Javier Solana). The Transatlantic Institute is an offshoot of the American Jewish Committee which also runs the UN Watch organization that infamously called author Naomi Klein “Goebbels-like” for her criticisms of Israel.
First and foremost, Cronin sees the US dominance of foreign policy — of the EU itself and of many of its member states — as key to the EU’s support for Israel. Whether through the desire of European states like the United Kingdom to maintain their “special relationship” with the US, or through the influence of US-based lobby groups and the impact of their lobbying and “monitoring” activities on parliamentarians, officials and the press, the hand of American politicians and lobbyists is seen as a major force shaping EU policy and practice.
David Cronin has written a very important book. Its detailed cataloguing of the links between European institutions and the Israeli state and economy is long overdue. The book benefits from Cronin’s journalistic roots and is written in a readable style.
If any criticism can be leveled at Europe’s Alliance with Israel it is that it presupposes, or deems unnecessary, a level of knowledge about the workings of the EU and other European institutions that many readers won’t possess. The activities of the European Union, European Parliament, Council of Ministers, European Commission and other institutions in relation to Israel are discussed without explanations for the uninitiated of how these organizations interact, what their powers and spheres of interest are or what countries and regions they represent.
This book should be required reading for anyone trying to understand the scale of international support for the State of Israel, for any European Palestine Solidarity activist looking to assess how their energies are best used, and for students of the EU wanting to understand the workings and wider impacts of European policy.
Sarah Irving is a freelance writer. She worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the occupied West Bank in 2001-02 and with Olive Co-op, promoting fair trade Palestinian products and solidarity visits, in 2004-06. She now writes full-time on a range of issues, including Palestine. Her first book, Gaza: Beneath the Bombs, co-authored with Sharyn Lock, was published in January 2010. She is currently working on a new edition of the Bradt Guide to Palestine and a biography of Leila Khaled.
US war addiction needle hits on health & kids
RussiaToday | December 29, 2010
The U.S. federal debt has hit its highest level in over sixty years. But while the public sector is certain to suffer major cuts, the military budget continues to get rubber stamp approval. RT’s Jihan Hafiz finds out how necessary wars are for America or whether they are just an addiction.
Students for Justice in Palestine condemns US government witch hunt
Students for Justice in Palestine | 29 December 2010
“For if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”
– James Baldwin, in an open letter to Angela Davis, 19 November 1970
As students at over fifty American universities, we unequivocally condemn the abuse of grand jury subpoenas to chill the exercise of First Amendment rights by university students and anti-war activists speaking and organizing against Israel’s continued oppression of the Palestinian people. Since 24 September 2010, the FBI has served at least 24 grand jury subpoenas on students and activists in a secret investigation that many have called a witch hunt. We call upon Attorney General Eric Holder and United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to respect the civil rights and free speech of all those who support the Palestinian struggle for freedom by immediately withdrawing grand jury subpoenas which threaten the First Amendment rights of students and activists around the country.
The government’s assault on organizations and individuals who support the Palestinian struggle for freedom has become increasingly authoritarian. The abuse of laws criminalizing “material support for terrorism” is unprecedented and, had they been implemented at the time of South African apartheid, would have effectively criminalized broad American support for the anti-apartheid movement. At the apparent behest of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the government today has cast a net so wide that it has entangled journalists, college students, and peace activists. We know that a campaign so indiscriminate will seriously impinge on the First Amendment and other civil rights of people living in the United States. This will, in particular, affect active and outspoken students on university campuses, especially those of Palestinian descent.
It is not only our right but also our moral duty to speak and act against American foreign policy and its destructive impact on innocent people around the world. Today, America unfortunately stands behind Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people with money, weaponry, and diplomatic support. We seek to reverse this situation so that American foreign policy stands on the side of people who work towards justice. We reject the government’s efforts to isolate the Palestinian people by severing them from their non-violent supporters abroad. Therefore we stand in solidarity with the victims of our government’s campaign both in America and around the globe.
If Attorney Fitzgerald’s campaign marks the morning of a new day, then we are certain of what awaits us in the night. Like Baldwin before us, we live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal — we shall, therefore, make as much noise as we can.
Signed:
* American University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Arizona State University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Bard College, International Solidarity Movement
* Benedictine University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Boston University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Brandeis University, Brandeis SJP
* Brooklyn College CUNY, The Palestinian Club
* Columbia University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Cornell University, United for Peace and Justice in Palestine
* DePaul University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Eastern Washington University, SLAC
* Florida International University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* George Mason University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* George Washington University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Georgetown University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Hampshire College, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Harvard Law School, Middle East Law Students Association
* Harvard University, Alliance for Justice in the Middle East
* Harvard University, Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee
* Harvard University, Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine
* Hunter College, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Loyola University, Middle Eastern Student Association
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Palestine@MIT
* New York University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Northeastern Illinois University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Northwestern University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Ohio State University, Committee for Justice in Palestine
* Pennsylvania State University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Rutgers University – New Brunswick, BAKA: Students United for Middle Eastern Justice
* San Diego State University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Temple University, Temple Students for Justice in Palestine
* Tufts University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Arizona, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Berkeley, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Berkeley Law, Law Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Davis, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Irvine, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Los Angeles, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Riverside, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, San Diego, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Chicago, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Florida, Students for Justice In Palestine
* University of Illinois at Chicago, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Michigan, Students Allied for Freedom & Equality
* University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Palestine Solidarity Committee
* University of Pittsburgh, Pitt Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of South Florida, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Southern California, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Texas at Austin, Palestine Solidarity Committee
* University of Washington, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Vermont Law School, Law Students for Justice in Palestine
* Wellesley College, Justice for Palestine
* Yale University, Yale Students for Justice and Peace in Palestine
1,100 Palestinian Children Detained During 2010
By Ane Irazabal – IMEMC & Agencies – December 30, 2010
The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Detainees’ Affairs reported, on Wednesday, that Israeli forces arrested 1,100 Palestinian children in 2010, most of them in East Jerusalem and Hebron.

File (photo from Al-awda.org)
In a report, PA Detainees’ Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe claimed that these arrests are reflecting the systematic attacks that Palestinian youth suffer in the Occupied Territories on the daily basis.
He also stressed that during 2010 the higher number of detentions were made in the occupied East Jerusalem, about 500, and Hebron, stressing that children were often put under house arrest.
In addition, the report also denounced other practices that the Palestinian children suffer from the Israeli army, especially, its use as human shields.
According to Defence of Children International – Palestine, since April 2004, 16 Palestinian children suffered from this practice, although it is considered illegal by both international and Israeli law.
Recently, two soldiers from the Givati Brigade became the first soldiers to be charged and convicted of using a child as a human shield. The two soldiers were demoted from the rank of staff sergeant to sergeant and each given a three-month suspended prison sentence.