Israeli intelligence kidnaps 7 family members of detained Jerusalemite MP
Palestine Information Center – 25/10/2011
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM– Israeli occupation forces and intelligence agents broke into the home of detained Jerusalemite MP Ahmed Attoun in Sur Baher village and took away seven of his relatives including two brothers.
The father of the MP told the Quds media center that a large number of Israeli policemen and border police accompanied intelligence agents and took away two of his other sons in the raid that took place before dawn Tuesday, adding that the police stormed the nearby homes of his brothers as well.
He said that the police forces detained five of Attoun’s cousins, adding that an intelligence officer told him that they had a list of names of his family to be arrested but did not give reasons for the arrest.
The father charged that the Israeli occupation authority wanted to spoil the family’s joy on the release of one of Attoun’s brothers in the recent prisoners’ exchange deal.
Israeli forces kidnapped MP Attoun from his sit-in tent pitched inside the premises of the Red Cross in Jerusalem last month. The lawmaker refused an Israeli court offer to release him in return for leaving the holy city.
Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin promotes call for Palestinian genocide
By Max Blumenthal | Al-Akhbar | October 25, 2011
In a blog post cheering the release of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, neoconservative activist Rachel Decter Abrams descended into a twisted call for genocide, calling for Israel to throw released Palestinian prisoners whom she described as “child sacrificing savages” and “unmanned animals” — along with “their offspring” — “into the sea, to float there, food for sharks.”
Abrams is the half-sister of Commentary editor John Podhoretz, the wife of Iran-Contra felon and former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, and the daughter of Midge Decter and step daughter of neocon founding father Norman Podhoretz. She is also a board member of the right-wing Emergency Committee for Israel, which recently produced baseless ads claiming the Occupy Wall Street movement is anti-Semitic.
The Washington Post’s neoconservative “Right Turn” blogger Jennifer Rubin is one of Abrams’ closest allies in the media. As soon as Abrams tweeted out a link to her exterminationist blog post, Rubin — whose Twitter account is “JRubinBlogger” — retweeted it to her followers, clearly approving of its content. Indeed, Rubin is not known for using Twitter to simply curate news and opinions.
Here is a screenshot of Rubin’s retweet of Abrams’ call for mass murder:
In July 2010, the veteran CNN correspondent Octavia Nasr was fired for writing on Twitter that she was “sad” to hear of the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a figure instrumental in the foundation of Hezbollah whom she said she “respect[ed] a lot.” Despite apologizing and explaining that she merely admired Fadlallah’s strong stance against honor killings and support for women’s rights, CNN heeded calls from pro-Israel groups for her termination.
An Ottawa-based diplomat from the Palestinian Authority, Linda Sobeh Ali, was reassigned by the Canadian government last week after she retweeted a link to a Youtube video that included a call for a war “against the soul of Zionism.” Pro-Israel groups in Canada were responsible for bringing the retweet to the government’s attention, and for pressuring it to act.
In the case of Nasr, CNN took full responsibility for what she wrote and promoted on her personal Twitter account. The news organization saw her tweet as a reflection on its reputation and credibility, and took action. The Washington Post has done nothing, however, about Rubin’s approving promotion of her friend’s call for genocide.
Does the Washington Post have a policy on the promotion of mass murder by its staffers? It is up to Post Ombudsman Patrick Pexton to explain if Rubin’s act was permissible according to his paper’s ethical guidelines, and if so, why.
Pexton can be reached at 202.334.7582 or ombudsman@washpost.com
Israeli Supreme Court Rebuffs Interior Minister, Says Palestinian Councilors Can Live in Jerusalem
PNN – 24.10.11
On Monday, the Israeli Supreme Court gave Israeli Minister of Internal Affairs Eli Yishai 90 days to give “convincing justification” of his cancellation of Palestinian Legislative Council members’ residency rights in Jerusalem. Each of the four councilor’s rights were revoked over the last year for “lack of loyalty to Israel,” but the Supreme Court said Israeli law does not authorize a minister to make that decision.
A statement from the PLC members—Mohammed Abu Tir, Ahmed Attoun, Mohammed Totah, and Khaled Abu Arafeh—said that the Supreme Court decision recognized all Jerusalemites’ rights to live in the city.
The statement also said the councilors considered the Supreme Court decision “a step in the right direction” and assured that their right to live in Jerusalem their city could not be touched. They added that the decision was late in coming but that it was a small correction for a long list of crimes against the council members.
Before the Supreme Court ruling, the accusation of disloyalty as a means of exiling Jerusalemites from the city was seen as an unprecedented step. Quoted in July 2010 in the Guardian, the director of the human rights group Adalah Hassan Jabarin explained, “For the first time Israel is using a claim of disloyalty to revoke residency.The consequences for Palestinians in East Jerusalem are dangerous. This case could open a new window to revoking residency on purely political grounds.”
Of the four council members, Mohammed Totah and Khaled Abu Arafeh are demonstrating in a tent set up outside the Jerusalem headquarters of the International Red Cross. Ahmed Attoun and Mohammed Abu Tir, who represents Hamas, have both been arrested and exiled from the city and are currently living in the West Bank.
New Israel Fund Honors ‘New Generation’ of Israeli Social Justice Activists, No Arabs Need Apply
By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | October 25, 2011
The New Israel Fund will hold its annual young leaders fundraising event in New York on November 2nd. Here is how the website describes the goal of the event and NIF in general:
A new generation of voices is speaking up for social justice and equality in Israel! Celebrate these pioneering activists…fighting for a better Israel.
The New Generations Benefit is the premiere annual event for progressive supporters of Israel in their 20s and 30s, raising funds for the New Israel Fund’s work to strengthen Israel’s democracy and promote justice and equality for all members of Israeli society.
Well, at least they paid lip service to all Israeli citizens in that italicized phrase, because they sure didn’t pay lip service or any attention to over 20% of the Israeli population when they determined their honorees. They will be Zvi Benninga–Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, Idit Menashe–SHATIL, Gil Gan-Mor–Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Inna Zysskind and Pavel Kogan–Fiskha Club and Havaya-Life Cycle Ceremonies Religious Pluralism and Marriage Equality, and Noa Sattath–Religious Action Center.
Who’s missing from this list? Israeli Palestinians, that’s who. None will be recognized. Now, does this mean that no Israeli Palestinians are working for social justice in Israel? To read this list it would. But of course that’s a lie.
While NIF does offer funding to a number of Israeli Palestinian NGOs working for social justice and human rights, over the past year it has allowed itself to be buffeted by smears raised by NGO Monitor, that its grantees were anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. All the charges were fabrications and outright lies. But that hasn’t stopped NIF from running for the hills. It reworked its grantee guidelines in order to exclude Israeli Palestinian NGOs who “rejected Jewish sovereignty” (whatever that means). Presumably they weren’t sufficiently in tune with Bibi Netanyahu’s version of Israel as a Jewish state. Presumably, if you were anti-Zionist or supported anything other than a two-state solution, you stood to get your funding cut.
This is the same organization which has severed ties to a number of its Israeli fellows for stepping out of line, one of whom was Shamai Leibowitz, who made the mistake of speaking at a BDS rally in Cambridge. Even though he didn’t identify himself in any way with NIF, he was thrown out of the program. Similar treatment has been afforded others as well.
By the way, I’m not in any way demeaning the stellar social justice work performed by the Israeli NGOs honored at this event. I’m criticizing NIF. If you attend this event, be sure to ask NIF where the Israeli Palestinians are.
Lynching Black Africans in Libya
By THOMAS C. MOUNTAIN | CounterPunch | October 25, 2011
Bodies of black men hanging from highways. Bound and tortured bodies of Africans dumped along the roadsides. Am I talking about Libya or Louisiana?
And all under the approving eye of the first Black President of the USA.
The lynching of Africans in Libya has been so bad that African leaders across the continent have been forced to raise their voices in protest. When the President of Nigeria, the USA’s unofficial enforcer in West Africa leads an African wide outcry against the lynching of his citizens in Libya one would assume that it was heard in the Obama White House.
With the murder or expulsion of most of Libya’s African migrant population well on its way came the massacre and ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Black Libyans.
And all the while Barack Obama and his band of criminal cohorts in the western capitals and television news channels strung together words like “pro-democracy”, “freedom fighters” and “liberation” to describe the orgy of looting and lynching being carried out.
When Black Libyans took up arms to defend their families and homes from the Libyan lynch mobs they found themselves the beneficiaries of “pro-democracy” high explosives, delivered from on high by a freedom loving NATO air force.
Bombed from on high, lynched on the ground, the only choice is flee for your lives and that is what hundreds of thousands of Black Libyan have been forced to do.
And all under the approving eye of the first Black President in the White House.
Should we be surprised at such serpentine behavior by the first Black President? Isn’t this the guy who raised over $500 million to help him buy the White House, with $300 million of that from Wall Street?
Isn’t this the guy who surrounded himself before his election with the very worst criminals from the Clinton White house such as Anthony Lake, Susan Rice, Gayle Smith and Eric Holder?
But isn’t Barack Obama supposed to know what it’s like to be a black man in America? Didn’t he used to attend a militant black church where the minister preached the Lord’s damnation upon the racist and genocidal rulers of the USA?
The brutal truth is that, like the shepherd’s dog taken as a pup from its mother to suckle at the tit of a sheep, Barack Hussein Obama spent those most critical teenage years being the only black kid in a school of thousands (Note; this writer attended the same school as Barack Obama, Punahou, some half a dozen years before him).
Punahou is one of the most elite schools in the USA, founded in Hawaii by Yankee missionaries who so famously brought the bible and took the Hawaiians land.
Today Punahou’s alumni include names that adorn the headquarters of multinational corporations like Dole Foods.
Barack Obama discovered what the white man wanted to hear from a black boy at an early age and apparently never forgot it.
From Punahou eventually to Harvard, Obama learned what the elite needed to hear if you wanted to get ahead even if it meant black is white, up is down and wrong is right.
So today we have the spectacle of a son of an African, the first Black President in the White house, broadcasting his approval for all the world to see that Libya or Louisiana, if lynching Africans is what it takes, God Bless the USA…and no where else.
Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be contacted at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.
Cambridge students vote to break contract with Veolia
By Ben White – The Electronic Intifada – 10/25/2011
From the Cambridge Bin Veolia campaign:
58% of students vote to break contract with company implicated in Israeli human rights abuses
Students at Cambridge have voted to call on the University to cut ties with a company implicated in Israeli human rights abuses.
The vote calls on CUSU (Cambridge University Students Union) to campaign to have the University cut ties with Veolia, a company involved in infrastructure projects in Israeli settlements, and employed by the University on a waste disposal contract. The referendum, which closed yesterday, passed with a majority of 58% to 41%: there were 898 votes yes, 637 votes no, and 21 ballots spoilt. While a strong majority was in support, the referendum was inquorate: 7.2% of the student body voted, short of the 10% required.
Students involved in the campaign pledged to continue the campaign to ensure that Veolia’s contract, which expires in September 2012, is not renewed.
As previously reported on the blog, student campaigners had been boosted in the lead up to the referendum with letters of support from Palestinian trade unionists and students, as well as a list of Cambridge academics.
While voter participation was too low to make the motion automatically become CUSU policy, the students behind the push to cut the University’s ties with Veolia are encouraged:
Daniel Benjamin, a student involved in the campaign, said: “With this vote, Cambridge students make a strong statement against Veolia’s criminal actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We won’t stop fighting until Veolia is off campus, but this vote itself is a fantastic show of support in the broader campaign for Palestinian human rights through boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli companies and institutions.”
Owen Holland, a student involved in the campaign, said: “The impressive turnout shows significant student support for the campaign. We are concerned with a number of irregularities in the vote, such as lies in the ‘no’ flysheet that went uncorrected, a lack of ballot boxes in colleges, and a number of students who found themselves unable to vote online. Though the referendum did not meet the threshold to become CUSU policy, we will be campaigning to have CUSU adopt it anyway and push the University to drop its contract with Veolia.
The “lies” of the ‘No’ campaign, referred to by Owen Holland, can be read here (and they are rebutted here). The ‘No’ flysheet prepared by members of the Cambridge University Jewish Society described “the wider BDS movement” as “antisemitic”, even if the motion in question “is not explicitly” so. Despite such smear tactics, the majority of Cambridge students who voted backed the call for the University to cancel its contract with Veolia, and the campaign continues.
U.S. Special Operations In Mexico
Moon of Alabama | October 25, 2011
Three puzzle pieces about operations against Mexican drug cartels let me assume that U.S. Special Forces are involved in recent mass killings of alleged Zeta Cartel members in Mexico.
From a piece which ran on October 20 in the LA Times: Mystery group targets Veracruz drug cartel
VERACRUZ, Mexico — Callers to the radio program were voicing support for the Matazetas, the Zeta killers.Better they fight among themselves. Let them kill each other. Anything to rid us of thugs who long ago took control of our city and are slaughtering our people.
…
Yet, it also comes with a disturbing question: Just who is behind the killings of Zetas? Another drug gang? Agents acting on behalf of the government or military? An ad hoc group whose presence is tolerated by authorities as well as the public?
…
On Sept. 20, nearly three dozen half-naked bodies were dumped in broad daylight on a busy highway underpass in a well-to-do tourist area of Veracruz, the state capital. Fourteen more turned up days later — during a convention of the nation’s top state and federal prosecutors. Then, on Oct. 6, barely 48 hours after announcing a major security offensive, military and police found 36 bodies, and 10 more turned up the next day.In videotaped presentations, a group of masked men with military bearing have claimed responsibility for the spate of killings, portraying it as a cleansing operation. Many bodies had a “Z” for Zeta written on the back with ink marker, a witness said.
The mystery group announced it was in Veracruz as “the armed branch of the people, and for the people.”
My first thought after reading the above was “That’s JSOC”.
The U.S. Joint Special Operation Command and its Special Mission Units does dirty work against terrorists, often in cooperation with the CIA. It sometimes uses local forces which it trains, supplies with information and leads into combat. It is also quite good at Information Operations, i.e. issuing propaganda in support of its operations. Those callers to the radio program supporting these mass killings may be something other than random radio listening Mexican civilians.
Are such U.S. units involved in extralegal killing of assumed drug gangsters in Mexico?
The Zeta Cartel was founded by 30 former Mexican Army Special Forces. Anyone who wants to fight them needs some superb military capabilities. The success of the Matazetas, the Zeta killers, points to high qualified military trained personal with additionally very good access to information about the gangs.
Today’s NYT adds to the picture on the intelligence side:
As the United States has opened new law enforcement and intelligence outposts across Mexico in recent years, Washington’s networks of informants have grown there as well, current and former officials said. They have helped Mexican authorities capture or kill about two dozen high-ranking and midlevel drug traffickers, and sometimes have given American counternarcotics agents access to the top leaders of the cartels they are trying to dismantle.Typically, the officials said, Mexico is kept in the dark about the United States’ contacts with its most secret informants — including Mexican law enforcement officers, elected officials and cartel operatives — partly because of concerns about corruption among the Mexican police, and partly because of laws prohibiting American security forces from operating on Mexican soil.
…
[T]he United States, hoping to shore up Mexico’s stability and prevent its violence from spilling across the border, has expanded its role in ways unthinkable five years ago, including flying drones in Mexican skies.
U.S. drones over Mexico do not only allow for visual surveillance, which is often useless, but also for the more effective SIGINT, signal intelligence, side of the drone capability. IMSI catcher on board of the drones allow the operators to know the location of each mobile phone in the surveillance area and to listen to what is said through them. If one has the number of a mobile phone of a suspect the drone can find out where the person who carries it is and which other phone carriers that person is meeting. This method of finding assumed suspects and their networks has been used in Iraq and is widely used by JSOC in Afghanistan, often with deadly consequences for innocent civilians.
A third piece for the puzzle comes from a blog post Col. Pat Lang wrote in December 2009: JSOC and the Mexican drug lords
I suggest that [JSOC] should be unleashed on the Mexican drug cartels. Kill or capture. Kill or capture. Those should be the instructions. The legal niceties could be “cleaned up” through arrest or execution warrants. On the other hand, maybe that is not necessary if recent history is a guide.
As one can tell from the dates of the comments to the piece, Pat Lang reissued that post three days ago on the front page of his blog. It is now back in the archives. But why did he republish it?
In recent days there were reports about mysterious mass killing of Zetas by high qualified military personal, acknowledgment of high-tech U.S. intelligence operations against the drug cartels in Mexico and a former Defense Intelligence Agency head relaunched a two year old blog post that demanded JSOC “kill or capture” operations against drug cartels.
Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, …
Unlike the Taliban the Zetas do have the capability to hit inside the United States. If JSOC is really operating those death squadrons in Mexico we can soon expect some violent retributions on the northern side of the border.
Israeli authorities prevent father from traveling to meet his exiled son
By Mais Azza | IMEMC & Agencies | October 25, 2011
The Israeli authorities have prevented Awad Yonis al-Rugoob, 60, from traveling to the Gaza strip to meet his son, who was released in the first phase of the prisoner-swap deal and exiled to Gaza.
Al-Rugoob said that heads of the Israeli Intelligence Agency held him for several hours before telling him to go home.
He asserted that there is no explicit reason for this, and that he had also been prevented from visiting his son in the Israeli jail for ten years.
He added that Israel keeps placing obstacles in the way, deliberately preventing the ex-detainees families from experiencing happiness.
He issued an appeal for human rights organizations to intervene and allow him to travel to the Gaza Strip and see his son, who he hasn’t seen for ten years.