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‘Israel plans to resume assassination campaigns’

By Saleh Naami | Ahram Online | April 4, 2011

The Israeli army awaits the improvement of weather conditions to resume its assassinations operations targeted at leaders and activists affiliated with Hamas military wing. In a report published by the Hebrew version of Ynet Monday, a military commentator, Ron Bin Yeshay, said that the resumption of assassinations comes in an effort to excursive deterrence in confronting Palestinian factions two years after the bloody war launched on the Gaza Strip.

Bin Yeshay, indicated that the decision to take these operations to the next level was made recently in a small ministerial meeting presided over by Benjamin Netanyahu. Also at the meeting were leaders of Israel’s security organs.

Netanyahu reportedly was reserved over the idea of launching a full-fledged military operation.

According to Bin Yeshay, in the event that Hamas steps up its operations against Israel in the wake of the assassination operations planned, the Israeli army may resort to targeting the movement’s political leadership.

The Israeli intelligence, he says, hopes the assassinations would prompt Hamas to prevent other Palestinian factions from launching rockets onto the Israeli entity.

Bin Yeshay warns that this kind of provocation would put thousands of ‘settlers’ around the Gaza Strip under the mercy of resistance rockets as well as jeopardize chances for trading prisoners with Hamas.

April 5, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Another war on Gaza?

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2011

In recent weeks an escalation in violence between Israel and Palestinian resistance factions in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip has claimed the lives of more than a dozen Palestinians, the youngest of them 10-year-old Mahmoud Jalal al-Hilu.

Does this escalation increase the likelihood of another large-scale assault on Gaza similar to “Operation Cast Lead” in winter 2008-2009 that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians? There are worrying signs Israel — by its words and deeds — could be laying the ground for an attack.

The ratchet of violence took another turn in the small hours of 2 April when Israel carried out an air attack on the Gaza Strip killing three members of Hamas’ military wing.

Israel did not claim that the three Hamas men were engaged in any hostile activity at the time they were killed (riding in a car), but a statement from the Israeli army alleged that they were “planning to kidnap Israelis over the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover” — several weeks in the future.

Israel’s latest attack constituted an extrajudicial killing, in which Israel, the occupying power, acted as judge, jury and executioner, issuing allegations for which it offered no evidence, after it had already carried out the death sentence. Under international law, this is a war crime.

Global media tend to report these events as Israeli “retaliation” for Palestinian attacks, but a close reading of Israeli media presents a very different picture: deliberate provocation and escalation by Israel.

On 23 March, Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that, “The current tensions began exactly a week ago when Israel launched an air attack on a Hamas base in the ruins of the settlement of Netzarim, killing two Hamas men. That attack came in response to a Qassam [rocket] fired from Gaza that landed in an open area.” Palestinians responded with a barrage of 50 projectiles into Israel.

Israel then “launched a series of air attacks in which a number of Hamas militants were wounded.” And on 22 March Israeli forces launched the shelling which killed Mahmoud al-Hilu and three other civilians, allegedly in response to mortar fire from an olive grove on the Gaza side (“A small war is starting along Gaza border“).

On 24 March, Issacharoff and Harel observed, “Despite the escalation, Hamas does not seem to want large-scale clashes yet. The organization actually has good reasons to believe that Israel is the one heating up the southern front. It began with a bombardment a few weeks ago that disrupted the transfer of a large amount of money from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, continued with the interrogation of engineer and Hamas member Dirar Abu Sisi [whom Israeli agents kidnapped from Ukraine] in Israel, and ended with last week’s bombing of a Hamas training base in which two Hamas militants were killed. It is noteworthy that Hamas has not fired at Israel over the past two days, even after four Palestinian civilians were killed by errant IDF [Israeli army] mortar fire on Tuesday [22 March]” (“Hamas not likely behind Jerusalem bombing“).

Issacharoff and Harel added in a 25 March analysis that the Israeli attack on the Hamas outpost at Netzarim “is believed to have been authorized by the defense minister and the chief of staff, who should have known there would be people at the outpost during the day and that causing casualties would have different consequences than a routine attack on empty offices. Israel assumed — mistakenly — that Hamas would not respond to the bombing. In fact, Hamas responded by firing 50 mortar shells on Saturday morning” (“Escalation approaching“).

It is difficult to believe, especially in light of the extrajudicial executions on 2 April, that Israeli leaders did not know that killing Palestinians would prompt further retaliation from the Palestinian side. It seems very likely this was their intention.

These events are worryingly similar to the sequence that preceded “Operation Cast Lead.” After a bloody spring of 2008 in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed and injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza, Israel and Hamas negotiated a mutual ceasefire beginning on 19 June 2008. By Israel’s own admission, this mutual truce resulted in a 97 percent reduction in rockets being fired from Gaza over the subsequent four months, and none of the handful of projectiles that were fired were launched by Hamas, nor did they cause any injuries to Israelis.

A mutually agreed ceasefire proved to be the most effective way to achieve the goal Israel claimed was most important: protecting Israeli civilians from rocket fire from Gaza. But on the night of 4-5 November 2008, Israel decided to end the truce. As The Guardian reported on 5 November 2008, “A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory” (“Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen“).

Then, just as it has with its latest attack, Israel justified the killings with the unverifiable claim that those it killed were involved in a plot to kidnap Israelis.

On 21 March, amid the escalating violence, Hamas’ military wing itself stated that it would be willing to abide by another mutual truce if Israel agreed to one, but Israel showed no interest (“Gaza: Hamas calls for truce,” Ma’an News Agency, 21 March 2011).

Israel’s seemingly constant and deliberate provocation of violence along the border with Gaza comes against a backdrop of belligerent statements and propaganda exercises by Israeli leaders. On 15 March, Israel intercepted a ship en route from Turkey to Alexandria in Egypt, which it alleged without providing evidence, was carrying arms destined for Gaza.

Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Radio on 23 March that Israel may have to carry out another large scale attack on Gaza to topple Hamas, adding, “I say this despite the fact that I know such a thing would, of course, bring the region to a far more combustible situation.”

Culture minister Limor Livnat warned, according to Haaretz, Israel might have no choice but to carry out “Operation Cast Lead 2.”

Shalom, reversing the facts and laying the blame for the escalating violence on the Palestinians, put the possibility of a renewed war on Gaza in an overtly political context. Hamas, the vice premier claimed, according to Haaretz, “might have opened a new front with Israel ‘to stop any possibility of dialogue among the Palestinians or to come to the intra-Palestinian negotiation in a far stronger position'” (“Netanyahu: Israel will continue to operate against terrorists in Gaza,” 23 March 2011).

In other words, according to Shalom, it is the continued strength of Hamas that prevents an intra-Palestinian reconciliation on terms favorable to the Israeli-backed Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) of Mahmoud Abbas.

Whether Israel is deliberately laying the ground for a new assault on Gaza, or stumbles into one — if the current escalation does not stop — any such attack must be understood in political terms. It would be an effort to finish the unfinished business of destroying Hamas and any other island of Palestinian resistance.

The commitment of any significant Palestinian group to resistance — political or military — remains a major obstacle to the full legitimation of the warm embrace between Israel and the Abbas-led PA, whose extent was recently laid bare in the Palestine Papers. Indeed the relationship is so friendly that last October the top echelons of the PA in Bethlehem received then Israeli Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi — who commanded Operation Cast Lead — as their honored guest, even providing him with a guided tour of the Church of the Nativity (“Israeli army chief visits Bethlehem,” Ma’an News Agency, 3 October 2010).

Ironically, Hamas remains much less intransigent than Israel, as evidenced by the movement’s repeated offers of ceasefires which Israel rejects or violates; its constant noises about “reconciliation” with Abbas without insisting that the latter terminate his “security” relationship with Israel; and its embrace of the defunct “two-state solution.” Despite these unacknowledged political concessions, Hamas retains a military capability that Israel is unwilling to tolerate either as a challenge to itself, or to the PA.

Until now, there have been good reasons to believe Israel would hesitate to launch a new major military assault on Gaza. It is still suffering the diplomatic and political fallout of Cast Lead, including the UN-commissioned Goldstone report, as well as its massacre of nine activists aboard the Mavi Marmara during last spring’s Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

Without exaggerating the risks, the constraints on Israel may be loosening. In the wake of the revolution in Egypt and amid the political upheaval in the Arab world, some Israelis may think they have a “last chance” to act in the interregnum before a new and less friendly government is seated in Cairo. Western and Saudi military interventions in Libya and Bahrain respectively have also provided new respectability to using military force for political ends.

International complicity also continues to send Israel a clear message that its impunity is guaranteed. The Obama administration’s recent veto of a UN Security Council resolution that merely restated US policy on Israel’s settlement construction in the West Bank was one sure sign that Israel still has a blank check from the United States.

Tragically, the biggest contributor to renewed confidence in Israel that it could once again get away with murder in Gaza, may be Judge Richard Goldstone himself. Israeli leaders have seized on his apologetic 1 April op-ed in The Washington Post as vindication and proof that Israel never committed war crimes in Gaza, and was the victim a “blood libel,” as Jeffrey Goldberg, former Israeli occupation army volunteer and The Atlantic blogger put it.

While Goldstone was clearly trying to appease Zionists who subjected him to an intense campaign of personal vilification and ostracism his article did not in fact repudiate one single concrete finding in the report that bears his name (“Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes,” 2 April 2011).

Two important analyses of Goldstone’s op-ed, and how it is in no way a repudiation of the Goldstone report, appeared on Mondoweiss on 2 April: “What the Goldstone op-ed doesn’t say” by Yaniv Reich, and “Goldstone op-ed praises Israeli investigation of Gaza war crimes, but UN committee paints a different picture,” by Adam Horowitz. Goldstone’s op-ed is the personal opinion of one person. The Goldstone report, an official UN document authored by a commission, remains a compendium of acts by Israel — and indeed by Hamas — uncontradicted by any new evidence, much less by Israel’s self-serving “investigations.”

Yet as we have sadly learned so many times, proper analysis and respect for basic facts have little bearing in the “fog of war,” especially when Israel is that party that launches that war.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and is a contributor to The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.

April 4, 2011 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Challenging the evangelical bias against Palestinians

By Aziz Abu Sarah | +972 | April 4, 2011

Last week Ynetnews.com published an article by Johnnie Moore, a Christian evangelical pastor and vice president of Liberty University (the largest evangelical university in the world, founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell). Moore was visiting Israel with a group of students on a trip that ended 24 hours before the bombing in Jerusalem. A Christian tourist was killed in the bombing, and Pastor Moore was moved to write about the terror attack and his views on Israel and the Palestinians. The article, entitled “No Excuse for Brutality,” was one-sided and inflammatory, asserting that Palestinians are entirely to blame for the conflict.

Normally, as a Palestinian I would brush off such an article as an example of the natural, emotional responses that arise from tragedies and traumas like last month’s bombing. However, Moore’s article is more than a reactionary piece; his comments also reflect the views of many Christian evangelicals in the United States. As a result, I feel it is important to respond to some of the points Moore raised.

Moore opened his article by claiming that the media is biased against Israel, and has justified the terror attack. The effort of some media outlets of putting the attack in context is not to be interpreted as a bias. The political stalemate, the continuation of the occupation, the confiscation of land and demolishing of Palestinian homes, and the “price tag” attacks by settlers executed all over the West Bank explains the rise of violent tendencies. These things should not be used as a justification but rather provide contextual analysis for the cycle of violence endemic to the conflict.

Moore writes that the Jerusalem bombing “should be an embarrassment to every supporter of the Palestinian cause. Instead… this act of war will be met with cheers in Hamas’ training camps even as Palestinian leaders give lip service to the international community and condemn the attacks in English, while praising them privately in Arabic.” This is problematic, first because many supporters of the Palestinian cause did view the bombing as shameful, and second because Moore assumes that the Palestinians are praising the attack in Arabic. As a writer for Al-Quds I can testify that Arab leaders condemned the attack in Arabic just as they did in English, and many Palestinians were outraged by the bombing.

In fact, those who criticize the Palestinian Authority for failing to prevent attacks like these should take a hard look at the situation in the West Bank. The PA controls around 14% of the West Bank, and cannot even issue a building permit for most Palestinians.  However, it is expected to police the West Bank in ways that even Israel, with its vastly superior training and weaponry, has been unable to do.

Perhaps the most ill-informed statement in Pastor Moore’s article is his statement that “I knew the message [of Israeli victimization] was understood when one of our students asked, ‘I see Palestinian neighborhoods all over Israel, what is the problem with Israelis having neighborhoods (settlements) within Palestinian areas?’ [The student’s] point was poignant as it highlighted Israel’s preparedness to live in peace with its neighbors and the refusal with which this has been met.”

The comparison between settlements and Arab villages in Israel shows a complete lack of knowledge of historical context. This is not surprising, as few American Christians are familiar with the Palestinian narrative. Palestinian villages in Israel were all founded long before the 1948 war, and since the formation of the Israeli state the Israel government has not allowed new Arab towns to be created within its borders.

On the other hand, in the Palestinians territories (which currently comprise only 22% of the area of the British mandate for Palestine), all Israeli settlements were built in the last 44 years.  Moreover, settlements in the West Bank are generally built on privately owned Palestinian land that has been confiscated, while Arab towns in Israel were not built on confiscated land. Another important fact is that Prime Minister Fayyad has indicated on more than one occasion that Jews are welcome to become Palestinian citizens in any future Palestinian state.

Ironically, Moore and his student also seem unaware that many of the “Arab neighborhoods” in Israel are populated by Palestinian Christians. This is a common oversight in American Christian rhetoric about Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When Americans do recognize the existence of Palestinian Christians, it is often only to use their situation to support anti-Muslim propaganda. For example, according to a poll conducted by Zogby International, 45.9% of Americans blame Muslims for the Christian immigration out of the Holy Land, while only 7.4% of Americans cite Israeli restrictions as contributing to Arab Christian immigration. However, when Palestinian Christians from Bethlehem were asked about the primary cause for Christian immigration out of the area, 78% cited Israeli restrictions as their reason for leaving.

Ultimately, Dr. Moore concludes that Israel has a right to exist without the threat of terrorism. There is nothing wrong with this idea: Moore is completely correct in saying that Israel has that right to exist free from fear. However, rights are symmetrical, and Palestinians also have the right to live free of fear and free from the yoke of occupation.

Palestinians often feel the West views Palestinian rights as less important than Israeli rights, and that our blood is valued less than Jewish blood. When American Christian leaders like Moore write articles condemning bombings in Israel but are silent about bombings in Gaza (the most recent of which resulted in the death of 3 children), it tells Palestinians that we are viewed as sub-human. However, we also bleed, just as we care for the blood of others. I myself felt disgusted at the Itamar attack and the bombing in Jerusalem.

I must say that I don’t understand Christians who value the life of one group over another. Even if American Christians consider Muslims as enemies, in the New Testament Jesus commanded his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.  The word he used for “love” in Greek (agapao) means to entertain or to welcome in. This concept seems to be in direct opposition to the doctrine of Islamophobia spread by many Christian evangelical groups in the United States. Moreover, Isaiah says “”Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?” The scripture does not apply only to Jews, to the “foreigner” and “alien.” Hundreds of millions of Americans profess to be Christians and believe in the divine inspiration of these verses, so where are these “believers” when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Moore’s article is a reminder that many American Christians view supporting Israel as a tenant of faith, without thinking critically about the theological and practical implications of this viewpoint. As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.” Like many Christian groups who visit Israel, Moore’s group did not bother to visit any Palestinian towns. My guess is that neither Moore nor any of his church members have ever even met a Palestinian. Perhaps then their demonization of Palestinians is unsurprising.

When I was ten, my brother was murdered by Israeli soldiers. As a result, I understand how easy it is to seek revenge and find justifications for violence. As Solomon said, “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” However, I long to see more religious people practice these verses which speak of justice as a higher form of religion, and I long for the day when religion becomes more a tool for bringing people together than for dividing them. On that day the prophecy of Isaiah will be realized “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

Aziz Abu Sarah is a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem who spends his time between Jerusalem and Washington D.C. Aziz is a columnist with Alquds Newspaper and is the director of the Middle East Projects at the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. Aziz runs alternative tours to Israel and the West-Bank through MEJDI a social enterprise he co-founded. His blog can be found at http://azizabusarah.wordpress.com

April 4, 2011 Posted by | Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Radiation and Everyday Life

The FDA is Asleep at the Switch

By ROBERT ALVAREZ | CounterPunch | April 4, 2011

Recently, a senior scientist with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made this comment to the news media about radioactive fallout being detected in milk in the United States from the nuclear catastrophe in Japan:

“Radiation is all around us in our daily lives, and these findings are a miniscule amount compared Fukushima-Daiichi to what people experience every day. For example, a person would be exposed to low levels of radiation on a round trip cross country flight, watching television, and even from construction materials.”

No matter how small the dose might be, it is disingenuous to compare an exposure to a specific radioisotope that is released by a major nuclear accident, with radiation exposures in every-day life. The FDA spokesperson should have informed the public that radioactive iodine provides a unique form of exposure in that it concentrates rapidly in dairy products and in the human thyroid. The dose received, based on official measurements, may be quite small, and pose an equally small risk. However, making a conclusion on the basis of one measurement is fragmentary at best and unscientific at worst. As the accident in Fukushima continues to unfold, the public should be provided with all measurements made of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima reactors to allow for independent analyses.

Moreover, the FDA has been asleep at the switch when it comes to protecting public health from medical radiation exposures. According to the National Council on Radiation Protection, radiation exposures to the American public from medical devices, which the FDA regulates, have soared by nearly 600 percent since 1982. In 2002, the NCRP estimated that the public received an extra 53 millirem (0.53 mSv) per person per year from medical radiation sources. In 2006, the NCRP estimates that this dose has jumped to 300 millirem (3mSv)–nearly three times the annual dose allowed by the U.S. EPA from nuclear facilities.

The single largest contributor responsible for half of this dose to the American public is from Computed Tomography or CT Scans, whose use has skyrocketed over the past several years. According to a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, as many as 29,000 future cancers could be related to CT scans performed in 2007 alone.

According to several articles in the New York Times, an alarming number of people have been severely overexposed to CT scans. FDA has yet to comment on how this may be affecting the health of the Americans in every-day life.

Robert Alvarez, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary from 1993 to 1999.

April 4, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Nuclear Power | Leave a comment

Killing Libya in Order to Save It

By Conn Hallinan | Dispatches From The Edge | April 1, 2011

Gulf War SyndromeThere were two images from the Libyan war that are likely to spell real trouble in the coming years. One was of several U.S. A-10 attack planes, ungainly looking machines ugly enough to be nick named “Warthogs,” taxiing down a runway. The other was of several rebel fighters dancing on top of a burning tank.

That tank, an old Russian-era T-72, was likely knocked out by one of those A-10s, which means those rebels fighters are almost certainly going to be in a world of hurt. Because, while they were celebrating, they were also breathing in the residue from the shell that killed that tank, a 30 mm depleted uranium munition (DUA).

DUA is the weapon of choice when it comes to killing armored vehicles, and A-10s are specialists at using it. The U.S. used 320 tons of it in the first Gulf War, 10 tons in Kosovo, and over 1,000 tons in the invasion of Iraq. It is lethal to tanks, but it also damages anything that comes into contact with it. Common photos back in 1991 were of U.S. soldiers climbing on top of knocked-out Iraqi tanks to have their pictures taken or to look for souvenirs. When they did, they inhaled uranium oxide or impregnated their uniforms with it.

The soldiers didn’t know better because the U.S. Defense Department (DOA) told them DUA was harmless, even though the DOA knew better. In 1991 the U.S. Army’s Armament Munitions and Chemical Command concluded that “any system struck by DUA penetrator can be assumed to be contaminated with DU,” and instructed soldiers to wear protective masks, clothes and respirators “as a minimum,” and dispose of the clothing afterward.

The only problem was that the Army never told the troops, even those whose job it was to deal with vehicles hit by DUA. No one said a word to the 144th National Guard Supply Company of the 24th Infantry Division which picked up 29 U.S. armored vehicles hit by DUA “friendly fire” to ship them home. When the tanks and armored personnel carriers arrived in South Carolina, they were interned in a radioactive waste dump. If the soldiers didn’t know the objects were “hot,” the brass did.

Many of those members of that National Guard company subsequently came down with the “Gulf War Syndrome” (GWS) that afflicted at least 118,000 out of the 700,000 soldiers who served in the 1990-91 conflict. Veterans suffer from chronic fatigue, headaches, muscle spasms, joint pains, memory loss, anxiety and balance problems; were twice as likely to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig Disease); and between two and three times more likely to have children with birth defects.

DUA is one of the most deadly anti-tank weapons around. The enormous weight of the DUA “arrow” in each shell can penetrate four inches of armor as if it were margarine. It then explodes in a 10,000-degree fireball that reduces up 70 percent of the munition to powder. The powder can travel up to 25 miles from the initial blast site.

Depleted uranium is not highly radioactive, but it has a half-life of 4.4 billion years, and, if it gets into your system, it can be very dangerous. According to the U.S. Environmental Policy Institute, DUA “has the potential to generate significant medical consequences.”

“People have always assumed low doses are not much of a problem,” Alexander Miller of the U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute told the Guardian (British), “but they can cause more damage than people think.” A study by the Institute found that DUA could damage bone marrow chromosomes.

Not all of the Gulf War butcher bill can be laid at the feet of DUA. After 11 years of denying there was anything to GWS, the Pentagon finally admitted that at least 130,000 soldiers had been exposed to chemical weapon residue when the Iraqi arms depot at Kamisiyah was blown up. Modern battlefields tend to be toxic nightmares, and that was doubly so in Iraq.

But there is no question that DUA was a major contributor to the syndrome, particularly for those who developed immune related diseases. A standard effect of radiation is suppression of the immune system.

The effects of low-level radiation are hard to track, because many “hard” cancers take 16 to 24 years to develop. Iraqi medical authorities claim that the cancer rate in Basra—an area that was saturated with DUA in the Gulf war and the Iraq War—has jumped ten fold, and birth defects are much higher than in the rest of the country.

DUA is also used in 25 mm cannon shells, and 105 MM and 120 MM tank shells. The Army is using it to manufacture 50-caliber machine gun ammunition and is experimenting with using it for standard issue infantry weapons. It is also used to coat armored vehicles, making them almost impervious to non-DUA shells.

The U.S. is selling DUA to Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, some of our NATO allies—Germany and Italy won’t use it—Sweden, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Thailand, and other countries that the Pentagon will not reveal in the name of “national security.”

Depleted uranium is also a highly toxic metal and can damage the liver and kidneys, particularly if it gets into the water supply. If a DUA round misses a target, its “penetrators” are so heavy that they tend to go deep into the soil. “A major concern of the potential environmental effects of intact [DUA] penetrators or large penetrator fragments,” notes the World Health Organization, “is the potential contamination of ground water after weathering.”

Because of the dangers associated with DUA, in August 2002 a subcommittee of the United Nations found that the weapons violated seven international agreements, including the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. Efforts to ban it, however, have been vetoed by the U.S., France and Britain. In 2009 Belgium became the first country to ban the use of DUA, and in the same year the Latin American Parliament voted for a moratorium on its use.

The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons that includes 120 non-governmental organizations is currently lobbying to get the weapons eliminated.

There are other rough beasts being visited on the Libyans these days as well, including cluster weapons, highly explosive canisters that can shred everything from people to tanks. U.S. warplanes have been dropping CBU-103, 104, 105, and AGM-154 A and B, all of which have a failure rate of anywhere from 5 to 23 percent. These unexploded “bomblets” can kill for decades.

During the bombing of Laos from 1964 to 1973, 90 million cluster munitions were dropped, killing more than 12,000 civilians. The bomblets continue exact a yearly toll of 100 to 200 people. More than 50 million clusters were dropped during the 1991 Gulf War, and in the two years that followed the war’s end, they killed 1,400 Kuwaiti citizens. A U.S. company hired to clear cluster weapons from a small area in Kuwait found 95,700 unexploded MK-118 submunitions from the notoriously unreliable CBU-99 “Rockeye” cluster bomb.

Unexploded clusters are still causing problems in Kosovo, and they take a steady toll of civilians in Afghanistan.

Libya has no-go areas dating back to the Second World War, when Italians, Germans and British seeded their fronts with land mines. Whatever government emerges in Libya today will have to deal with the aftermath of yet another war, this time created by DUA and cluster weapons. “The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without,” Dwight Eisenhower once remarked.

A problem indeed. One hopes Libya manages to avoid what a village in Vietnam experienced, the one that was destroyed in order to save it.

April 4, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Israel targets international activists in Bil’in raid

Ma’an – 04/04/2011

RAMALLAH — Israeli forces entered the central West Bank village of Bil’in on Monday morning, searching homes and harassing residents, reportedly in search of international solidarity activists who often remain in the area to document rights violations.

A spokesperson for the local popular committee said the raid began at 1:30 a.m. and lasted approximately an hour. The official said the homes of village residents Ali Birnat and Khamis Abu Rahma were targeted and searched.

Local committee members attempting to document the raid were prevented from accessing the scene of the searches.

An Israeli military spokeswoman did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

A statement from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee said Abu Rahma was questioned about who was residing in his house, noting soldiers were “interested in internationals, although they could not find any,” noting that soldiers and police searched Abu Rahma’s home and garden, including the garbage and inside cars located nearby.

Groups of solidarity activists have for the past year stayed frequently in the village, which hosts the longest running weekly protest against Israel’s separation wall.

The prominent popular committee in the village has organized a yearly conference on popular non-violent resistance, and gained international support for its initiatives.

Since the early years of the protests, international solidarity activists have joined the demonstrations in an effort to mitigate the use of violence against the villagers. The use of high-velocity tear-gas canisters have caused death and injury to residents, and solidarity activists say an international presence witnessing and documenting the action often reduces the use of force.

Once activists left the village at the close of the protests, particularly during 2009 and 2010, Israeli forces would enter and detain teens they said were throwing stones at the soldiers, and later targeted protest leaders for detentions.

Activists began staying overnight in the village to document the night raids they said were being used to intimidate villagers, who have also launched court actions against the confiscation of land by Israel’s separation wall.

Sixty percent of the village lands now stand on the far side of the wall, and are largely inaccessible but for a gate that opens periodically allowing farmers to tend crops, without the use of heavy machinery or equipment.

April 4, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Yemeni Forces Martyr 15 Protesters in Taez

Al-Manar – April 4, 2011

Yemeni security forces shot dead 15 anti-regime demonstrators and wounded scores more on Monday, on the second day of lethal clashes in Taez, south of the capital, medics said.

The bloodshed came as demonstrators staged a march on the governorate headquarters in the city to demand the ouster of Yemen’s embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Witnesses said the demonstrators stormed the courtyard of the governorate and that plainclothes gunmen opened fire in an attempt to push them back.

The bloodshed, a day after another protester was shot dead in Taez, sent the death toll to more than 100 in a crackdown on protests in the impoverished Arabian peninsula state since late January.

In a similar confrontation, 13 people were shot and wounded late on Sunday as police clashed with tens of thousands of demonstrators in the western city of Hudaydah, according to witnesses.

Police opened fire as the protesters marched on to the Red City sea’s main local government building, the witnesses said. Thirteen were wounded by live bullets, another 30 by batons and rocks, while 400 others suffered from the effects of tear gas inhalation.

According to a report in the New York Times on Sunday, citing US and Yemeni officials, the US government is dropping its support for Saleh and taking part in efforts to negotiate his departure and a transitional handover.

US officials have told allies they see Saleh’s position as untenable due to the widespread protests, and believe he should leave office, the paper said, adding that negotiations over his departure began more than a week ago.

April 4, 2011 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Report: 32 Palestinians died during 2011 Israeli aggression

Palestine Information Center – 04/04/2011

GAZA — 32 Palestinians have died and 118 have sustained injuries in Israeli aggressions during the first quarter of 2011, said Adham Abu Salmiyya, spokesman for the Gaza emergency services.

Many of those deaths took place in the second half of March and included children as the Israeli army bombed numerous targets amid threats of a new war on the Gaza Strip.

The count is high compared to first three months of the previous year, when 15 Palestinians died and 70 were injured.

According to Salmiyya, several civilian sites had been targeted, including the largest, one of the Gaza health ministry’s drug reserves in mid-February. A health clinic also sustained damage during the Israeli escalation on the Gaza Strip late March.

In the aftermath of the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Strip, 18 have been killed, including 5 children, and 52 have been injured, including 17 children and six women, according to the official figures.

Israel has launched so far 34 air strikes against civilian targets and fired at least 90 artillery shells. The latest attack was an admitted assassination of leaders in Hamas’s armed wing Saturday morning in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army targeted more than 15 sites in February and killed seven Palestinians and caused injury to 46 others, among them children. Two others were killed the same month by artillery shells fired by Israeli forces.

He pointed out that explosive objects left behind by occupation forces killed two men and wounded six in January. Three others died that month in air strikes.

Salmiyya highlighted that a number of government and private buildings underwent significant damage during the recent attacks. They include a soft drink factory east of the Al-Zatoun district in Gaza, a health clinic in Tawam, a metal workshop, a brick factory, a tire shop and a warehouse in Khan Younis.

April 4, 2011 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Yemen police injure over 400 protesters

Press TV – April 4, 2011

Thousands of demonstrators had planned a 2 a.m. march to protest Sunday’s crackdown on protesters in Taiz, south of capital Sana’a, that killed two people and injured over a hundred others.

Police fired live rounds and tear gas against the crowd that wounded at least 409 people.

The protesters are demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Salah who has often signaled that he has no intention of resigning soon.

“A successful revolution in Yemen could mean the whole Persian Gulf region erupting into revolution,” Chris Bambery, a Middle East expert, told Press TV on Sunday.

“Yemen has been an important staging post for the Americans … It is one of the major centers of the CIA in the region,” he said.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is an important ally for the US and the Saudis and they are trying to keep him in power to maintain their control over the Persian Gulf region, the analyst underlined.

Therefore, “There is no attempt [by the West] to reveal the realities of the Saleh regime: the torture, the repression, or the record of the Saudis constantly intervening in Yemen, carrying out bombing missions, etc.” he argued.

Inspired by the protests of Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen has witnessed daily anti-government protest rallies since mid-February, which demand crucial economic and political reforms, including an immediate end to President Saleh’s 33-year rule

Several opposition members argue that his long-promised political and economic reforms have not materialized.

April 3, 2011 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israeli troops attack Jewish peace protesters

Joseph Dana | April 3, 2011

Yesterday’s unprovoked attack on Israeli peace activists falls in line with the army’s strategy of repression of nonviolent resistance by Israelis or Palestinians against Israel’s increasingly violent occupation in the West Bank.

Beit Ummar has been holding weekly demonstrations against the occupation and the confiscation of its lands by neighboring Jewish-only settlements for the past several years. The demonstrations have ranged from calm to deadly with hundreds injured and jailed. Some have even been killed in settler rampages through the village.

Yesterday, a group of Ta’ayush activists were returning to Jerusalem after spending the morning with Palestinian farmers in the South Hebron Hills. They made the quick decision to check on the closure of Beit Ummar on the drive home.

“Within five minutes of arriving at a series of concrete barriers in front of the village, we were surrounded by soldiers. We walked to a large gate [which the army had installed two months prior in order to seal the village] at another entrance to the village only to find that it was locked shut” Kurz recalled, “At this point there were a lot of soldiers, many of whom were officers. So we decided to have an impromptu nonviolent protest against the closure of the village.” Speaking to one Israeli activist present at the demonstration, the commander in charge threatened that “every time you do this (demonstrate), I will close the village.”

The commander in charge pronounced the area a ‘closed military zone’, after which one member of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity group asked the commander to see the closed military zone warrant. Being a stout guy, soldiers felt threated by his presence and attacked him. This set off a chain of violent events as soldiers attacked anyone bold enough to look them in the eye. Virtually everyone was arrested. According to activists, the commander never showed them the closed military zone warrant, a legal right afforded by Israeli law.

~

Ynet News uses the term “clashes” in describing the event.

April 3, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

On Peace and Critics


Ilan Pappé: I am willing to respond to any concrete question.
By Emanuel Stoakes | Palestine Chronicle | April 3, 2011

(Emanuel Stoakes talks to the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé about the prospect of a peace settlement in the Middle East, the plight of the Palestinian refugees, and his response to his numerous critics.)

After attending the Inaugural Lecture for the European Centre for Palestine Studies at Exeter University (the first institution of its kind in our country), I met the controversial Professor Ilan Pappé, who – with some gentle persuasion on my part – agreed to do an online interview on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In brief, Pappé’s association with “controversy” stems from, amongst other things, his much-debated claim that Palestine was “ethnically cleansed” (in part at least) in the war of 1948; his claim, unpopular in Israel, that “Zionism is far more dangerous to the Middle East than Islam”; and because he has been accused of being, simply, a politically-motivated distorter of the historical “truth” by rival scholars.

Benny Morris, one of the prominent “New Historians” of Israeli history (a category that includes Pappé as well as the venerable Avi Shlaim) described a book by Pappé on Palestine as “appalling… [containing] errors of a quantity and a quality that are not found in serious historiography”; be that as it may, it is worth reviewing Morris’ own justification for Palestinian dispossession.*

King’s College’s Efraim Karsh and the inimitable Melanie Phillips in the Spectator are also voluble detractors; by contrast, John Pilger famously called him Israel’s “bravest” and “most principled” historian, whilst supporters in the academic world, including Noam Chomsky and Nur Masalha, continue to collaborate and concur with him.

Whatever one may think of his opinions, Pappé has borne a heavy cost for his heterodoxy: members of his family have shunned him due to his views, and he faced calls to resign from his former lecturing post at the University of Haifa, prompted by his political activities, and issued by none other than the university’s President.

I began by asking Professor Pappé if he believed that peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority could be achieved through their (apparently moribund) peace talks, and if not, why?

Pappé: I have very little faith in the current phase of the negotiations. As in the past, it seems that the Israeli government is exploiting the ‘peace process’ to receive immunity for its continued dispossession of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the barbaric siege on the Gaza Strip. The current phase has already been exploited by Israel to expand its settlement in the Greater Jerusalem Area – which has been accompanied by demolition of houses and eviction of people – and to tighten its grip over the Palestinian villages and towns which are in the vicinity of the ever-growing Jewish colonies of the West Bank. Similarly, it felt free to tighten the siege over Gaza, despite its promise to the international community to ease it.

At the recent inaugural lecture of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at Exeter University, you introduced Filipo Grandi from United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), who talked about the fate of the Palestinian refugees. Could you briefly outline the current human rights situation of the refugees and comment on their prospects for achieving some sort of improvement in their lives?

These are refugees who have lived in camps for more than sixty years – an unprecedented existence in modern times. Their situation varies between being denied access to meaningful jobs and benefits in Lebanon to a very limited access to the local economy and state benefits in Jordan. And we should not forget the refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where people suffer from the double oppression of being both occupied and refugees.

There are also internal refugees in Israel itself and refugee communities in the world at large. Those in Israel live in better conditions than those in the occupied territories or the Arab world; but psychologically they had to undergo unbearable experiences for the past sixty years, such as watching their houses, businesses, factories, shops, fields and villages being pillaged and taken over by Jews.

There are two elements to this predicament. One is the dismal conditions in which people live, caged in camps that even when they become neighborhoods are on the margins of local society and in a limbo existence. Secondly, there have been more and more refugees as result of Israeli policy since 1948. There is no end to the dispossession, while at the same time the international community had already declared on 11 December 1948 through the UNGA resolution 194 that all these refugees have the unconditional right to return. As long as this continues, there is very little hope for peace and reconciliation in Israel and Palestine.

In the publication “Gaza in Crisis” you mention that you are working on a book with a ‘particular focus on the Israeli decisions taken in the early years’, that you claim ‘have not been deviated from’ up to the present. What were those decisions and how has the political class in Israel consented to their continued application?

The gist of these decisions was that there could be no overall strategy for Gaza after the Israeli ‘disengagement’ from it in 2005. Therefore, there were two options for the Israeli policy makers. Either they would succeed in subjecting the Strip to Israel’s will – and putting it under a joint Israeli and PA control – encircled by barbered and electric wire. In such a case life would have depended on Israel’s goodwill, and the people would have to resign to a life in Ghetto-like conditions. Should the people of Gaza resist the first option they would be subjected to collective punishment until they surrender – this is the second option. There is no real bottom line to collective punishment, but given the circumstances on the ground, by inertia it turns into a slow genocide. The Israeli public did not only endorse this policy, in the main it demands more punitive and more drastic actions against the people of Gaza.

Changing topic slightly, how do you view the Israeli claims that Hamas hides amongst civilian infrastructure and uses human shields, as a justification for civilian deaths as “collateral damage” to IDF offences? What evidence is there for this, and is it a fair point?

This always strikes me as a curious allegation. Gaza is the most densely inhabited urban space upon earth, where can Hamas operate from within a territory that is no bigger than the largest metropolises in the world? When you cage a million and half people in a tiny squeezed space like this, and they resist, and you retaliate, you know in advance what kind of collateral damage you are going to inflict.

Do you see the Palestinian Authority as being possibly “corrupt and complicit” in the oppression of those in the West bank, as has been suggested by some commentators?

I do not think the PA is more corrupt than any government in the world, or let alone in the Middle East. It is complicit but so is anyone who in a way does not actively resist the occupation. And yet, resisting today is almost like signing your own death certificate so that one should be very careful to make moral judgments from the outside.

One can make political judgments and the one I offer is that the PA helps the occupation and the illusion of a peace process and it seems that its dismantlement could be more beneficial for the attempt to expose the rouge nature of the Israeli regime and the criminal character of its policies.

One of your most controversial claims is that Palestine (as it was) was “ethnically cleansed” – at least in part – as a part of a systematic attempt to create a Jewish state at the cost of its Arab inhabitants. In the book “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” you write that the Hagana’s Plan Dalet documents such intentions. Could you clarify and explain your position on this subject? Furthermore, how do you respond to the fierce criticism of your views? For example, David Pryce-Jones, described you in the Literary Review as “an Israeli academic who has made his name by hating Israel and everything it stands for.” Others have simply called you a falsifier. What is your response?

I am not going to respond to name calling – “Nazi”, “Falsifier”, “Communist”, “self-hating Jew” or whatever. I am willing to respond to any concrete question. Plan Dalet is a cluster of orders sent by the Hagana High Command from the beginning of March 1948. Each command instructed a specific unit to occupy villages or urban neighbourhoods, destroy them and expel the people living in them. The famous document Plan D, published on March 10, 1948 referred only to the areas the new state would occupy from the UN Arab states, but it included the same graphic description of how to deal with the native population of Palestine. The plan as published and the systematic cluster of orders, together with other evidence I cite in my book, show a clear intention to ethnically cleanse Palestine from its indigenous population, as indeed happened. Moreover, as shown by Nur Masalha, there is already supporting evidence that this intention existed from early on in Zionist thought and strategy.

Finally, could you comment on the under-discussed issue of resources and their allocation in both the West Bank and Gaza, particularly water. Do you think that there is any hope for parity between Palestinians and Israelis in the future in this area, without a separate Palestinian state?

No hope whatsoever. The Israelis are intent of robbing the Palestinians of land, water and any other natural resources – this is what dispossession is all about.

(*Note: In an infamous interview with Haaretz, Morris controversially justified the “tragedy” of the uprooting of Palestinians thus: “there was no other choice… Even the great [sic] American democracy [sic] could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good [sic] justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history…”)

April 3, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Goldstone’s forced redaction does not clear Israeli war crimes

By Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi | April 3, 2011

Judge Richard Goldstone’s op-ed in The Washington Post is a direct result of tremendous and fierce pressure practiced by the Israeli and the Zionist lobby against him, his family and his friends in a frenzied campaign to force him to retreat from his report, an objective yet strong international condemnation against war crimes committed by Israel during its aggression against the Gaza Strip two years ago.

Goldstone’s personal revision –  done under duress – does not change anything related to the report. While carrying his name, it was not developed or written solely by him, but by a Commission he headed. The report remains a document adopted by the Human Rights Council and UN bodies.

Goldstone cannot undo or change a single fact of the report, which has become the most important document for the international condemnation of Israel and the war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip.

Israel is trying to exaggerate Goldstone’s statements, although it refused to allow him access to the West Bank and has refused to cooperate with the committee. What we are witnessing is the result of a campaign against Goldstone to force him to say things he is not convinced of. It is a model for the ferocity of the Zionist lobby when it decides to target a person or institution.

This campaign against Goldstone is aimed at clearing the face of Israel to justify a new aggression on Gaza. What is required from the Palestinian Liberation Organization is to take the Goldstone report and the decision of the Hague Tribunal on the apartheid wall and settlements, which has been neglected for a period of six years, to the General Assembly of the United Nations. There they should explicitly demand sanctions on Israel and state that any laxity in the use of these important documents would encourage Israel to launch a counter attack to cancel their influence.

While Benajmin Netanyahu said the Goldstone report should go to the dustbin of history, it is the system of apartheid that should be relegated to history’s dustbin. Israel’s apartheid and the policy of the coalition government of the settlers represented by Netanyahu. As the people of South Africa were liberated, the Palestinian people will be liberated and one day Israel will be condemned its war crimes in Gaza and be convicted of all its previous crimes.

April 3, 2011 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

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