American Jihadists and Israel’s Lone Soldiers: Come for the Perks, Stay for the War Crimes
(Margarita Korol)
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | August 15, 2012
In his 2011 book entitled Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, author J.M Berger (purportedly in his own words) “uncovers the secret history of American jihadists.” Berger, who refers to himself as a “specialist on homegrown extremism,” tells us that these traitorous terrorists are “Muslims [who] have traveled abroad to fight in wars because of their religious beliefs.”
Please read that definition again. OK, just one more time.
Now read this from Tuesday’s New York Times:
On Tuesday, with talk rampant about the possibility of an imminent Israeli attack on Iran, Mr. [Josh] Warhit became a citizen of Israel to enlist in its army.
“Our parents were freaking out,” Mr. Warhit, now 22, recalled of that first trip [to Israel] during the war against Hezbollah. “It only made us more thirsty. I love the Jewish people. Love involves commitment. Right now we need people to commit.
“Of course it’s scary,” he added, regarding Iran, “but if you feel a commitment, that’s the thing to do.”
Warhit explains his decision to leave the country of his birth in order to join the massively American–subsidized military of a foreign state this way: “I love my family, I love my friends and I love the Jewish people. The Jewish people don’t need another Jew in suburban New York.”
Apparently, according to Warhit, what the “Jewish people” do need are more Israeli soldiers using American-bought weapons to maintain a brutal 45-year-old occupation and apartheid legal system, facilitate ethnic cleansing, impose collective punishment upon millions of civilians by way of walls, checkpoints, blockade and siege, bulldoze homes, orchards and olive groves, protect colonists in violation of international law, oppress and dominate an already devastated and dehumanized indigenous population, conduct night raids, abduct, detain, and abuse children, use sonic booms to deliberately terrorize people, wage more aggressive wars and commit more crimes against humanity with total impunity.
If that’s not terrorism then nothing is.
The article, headlined “Enlisting From Afar for the Love of Israel” and written by the Times‘ new Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren, states that “Warhit, who grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y., and graduated from the University of Rochester after spending several summers in Israel, was one of 127 soldiers-to-be who landed Tuesday morning at Ben-Gurion International Airport.” The enlistees, referred to as “lone soldiers,” were given “a hero’s welcome that included a live band, balloon hats and a speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” who praised them for deciding “to defend the Jewish future.”
In Jihad Joe, Berger writes, “Since 1979, American citizens have repeatedly packed their bags, left their wives and children behind, and traveled to distant lands in the name of military jihad, the armed struggle of Islam.”
Compare that to what Rudoren’s Times report tells us of the young IDF cadets who “left behind parents, girlfriends, cars and stuffed animals to become infantrymen, intelligence officers, paratroopers and pilots in a formerly foreign land.”
“Their motivation is often way higher than the average Israeli,” Colonel Shuli Ayal, who oversees the lone-soldier program, told Rudoren. “They want to make their service as meaningful as possible.”
With such zealous fervor and passionate commitment to his co-religionists and the ethnocentric, exclusivist nationalist ideology of Zionism, it is no wonder that Warhit desperately hopes to join the Givati Brigade, an IDF military unit which Rudoren innocuously writes “has been active around the Gaza Strip” over the past ten years. What she should have told her readership is that the commander of the Givati Brigade, Colonel Ilan Malka, was directly responsible for authorizing the airstrike that murdered 21 members of the Samouni family in Gaza on January 5, 2009 for which no one has been held accountable.
Soldiers in the Givati Brigade are also known to have custom t-shirts designed and printed for their units at end of training or field duty that bear such images as dead Palestinian babies, mothers weeping at their children’s graves, guns aimed at kids and destroyed mosques. These shirts glorify, celebrate, and mock the rape of Palestinian girls, the murder of Palestinian men, women (especially if they’re pregnant) and children.
An anonymous Givati soldier was recently sentenced to a mere 45 days in prison for “illegal use of a firearm,” a charge reduced from manslaughter through a plea bargain. He had willfully murdered 65 year old Ria Abu Hajaj and her 37 year old daughter Majda Hajaj, after they were ordered to evacuate their home in Juhr ad-Dik with their families during the Gaza massacre in early January 2009. They were waving white flags and moving slowly in an area in which there was no combat whatsoever when the Israeli soldier opened fire on the group of 28 Hajaj family members, which included at least 17 children. Apparently, the use of his firearm was illegal, not the execution of civilians.
Clearly, for Warhit, it’s all about the love.
The article continues, “[A]ccording to a military spokeswoman, Israel has enlisted 8,217 men and women from other countries since 2009, 1,661 of them from the United States, second only to Russia’s 1,685,” adding, “They receive a host of special benefits: three times the typical soldier’s salary, a personal day off each month, a free flight home and vouchers for holiday meals.”
How’s that for incentive? Come for the perks, stay for the war crimes.
A March 2012 article in the Jewish online journal Tablet chronicles “Aluf Stone, an organization for Diaspora-born soldiers who have served in the Israel Defense Forces” that was formed in 2008 and is affiliated with the American Veterans of Israel (which is something that apparently exists). The report quotes Aluf Stone co-founder Marc Leibowitz describing service in the Israeli military as “a specific and meaningful shared experience. Deeper than an alumni group or a fraternity, which people are fanatical about.”
Fanatical.
Leibowitz explained that most Jewish groups are wary of associating with Aluf Stone since “[n]o organization wants to be seen as if they are encouraging Americans to fight in a foreign army.” Still, the article’s writer Adam Chandler reveals, in 2011 “the group was invited by the Friends of the IDF to speak at a synagogue in New York and share their stories with an audience composed of family members of IDF soldiers from the States.”
One member of Aluf Stone told Chandler that American-born former IDF soldiers “don’t belong in U.S. veterans’ groups and networks, as they didn’t [all] serve in the American military.” Consequently, “Aluf Stone occupies an interesting middle ground in the U.S.” More accurately, perhaps, the members of Aluf Stone were actually occupying Palestine.
While it’s clear that these Jewish foreigners who join the Israeli military do so out of some sort of fervent compulsion and perceived obligation to their own religious tribe, so much so that they leave their own nation to bear arms on behalf of another, it should be noted that numerous studies have found religious ideology not to be a prime motivating factor in terrorist attacks credited to Muslims.
An unclassified study published by the Pentagon-appointed U.S. Defense Science Board on Sept. 23, 2004 determined that:
Muslims do not “hate our freedom,” but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States.
Professor Richard Jackson of The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in New Zealand concurs that “terrorism is most often caused by military intervention overseas, and not religion, radicalization, insanity, ideology, poverty or such like.”
Political Science professor at the University of Chicago and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, Robert Pape, who has conducted some of the most comprehensive research and written the most respected analysis of terrorist motivation, concluded in a 2010 study that “suicide terrorism such as that of 9/11 is particularly sensitive to foreign military occupation, and not Islamic fundamentalism or any ideology independent of this crucial circumstance.” His data reveals that “[m]ore than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation.”
That U.S. and Israeli policies of invasion and occupation rather than religious extremism are the guiding forces behind acts of terrorist violence is evidenced in a letter allegedly written by those responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and published in The New York Times. It stated, “This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel, the state of terrorism, and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region.”
The letter adds, “The American people are responsible for the actions of their government” and “all of the crimes that their government is committing against other people.”
Tragically, those American lone soldiers, that zealous minority of homegrown ideologues who – in J.M. Berger’s words – “travel abroad to fight in wars because of their religious beliefs,” will now be personally responsible for the actions and crimes of the Israeli government and military as well.
Syrian Australians Demand an End to Foreign Intervention
By CHRIS RAY | CounterPunch | August 17, 2012
Sydney – Around 1500 people, mostly Australians of Syrian descent marched in Sydney on August 5, calling for an end to foreign intervention aimed at destroying the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The Australian media gave the march almost no coverage, unlike well-publicised though much smaller protests against the Syrian government.
It should surprise no one that large numbers of Syrians support the al-Assad government, with its promise of peaceful reform in a direction indicated by the May 2012 parliamentary elections (when, incidentally, the communists won additional seats), rather than the civil war on religious lines now in progress. One does not have to be an al-Assad supporter to suspect that his government’s immediate departure, as demanded by the rebels and their foreign backers, would create a power vacuum, fragment the country and result in far greater bloodshed.
For its Syria project the US has put together a powerful alliance embracing NATO through its Turkish spearhead, and Israel and its Gulf Arab de facto allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Intervention has ranged from sanctions and economic sabotage to funding and equipping foreign mercenaries and “boots on the ground” in the form of Western military advisers and trainers. The current goal appears to be regime change by promoting civil war rather than foreign invasion. But calls for a “No Fly Zone” along Libyan lines can now be heard – no doubt a precursor to another “humanitarian” bombing campaign.
Foreign forces are playing a substantial role in the campaign to topple the government. According to some assessments, foreign jihadis including Al Qaeda units from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya and Jordan are more effective, and engaged in more significant combat than the so-called Free Syrian Army. Al Qaeda is once again enjoying the backing of the ‘Great Satan’ patterned on their 1980s relationship in Afghanistan.
Foreign jihadis have admitted that they formed brigades to infiltrate Syria well before the first protests in early 2011.
Also instructive is the testimony of two Western photographers captured and tormented by a rebel group comprising fighters from Bangladesh, Britain, Chechnya and Pakistan – but no Syrians. Viewers of the ABC’s 7.30 Report on 7.8.12 would have seen a Chechen combatant in Syria threaten an ABC reporter.
We are not only talking foreign jihadi cannon fodder: “It is highly likely that some western special forces and intelligence resources have been in Syria for a considerable time,” says Colonel Richard Kemp, of the Royal United Services Institute which has strong connections to British intelligence services.
Some on the Left argue that the Syrian regime is unworthy of support because it is a dictatorship. Should the political form of the Syrian state absolve the Left of any responsibility to defend it against imperialist aggression? The al-Assad government is under attack by NATO, Israel and the Arab Gulf monarchies not for its denial of democracy, or harsh treatment of dissent, but because of its positive features: support for Palestinian and Lebanese resistance to Zionist expansion; refusal to join the US in isolating and impoverishing Iran; upholding a unique (in the Middle East) degree of religious tolerance and pluralism. For a visitor to Syria this commitment to freedom of religion – and rights for women – comes as a revelation in comparison to the reactionary US/British protectorates of the Arab Gulf. Such freedoms enrage the poisonously sectarian Sunni fundamentalists now sponsored in Syria by the West. Bin Laden always hated Shia Islam more than Zionists or the CIA.
For much of the anti-government opposition, regime change is about establishing Sunni dominance not democratic freedoms. They hate the regime because it is a heretical government responsible for a secular state with constitutionally guaranteed freedom of worship. The popular rebel slogan “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to their graves” raises the spectre of widespread ethnic cleansing – already underway with the expulsion of tens of thousands of Christians by the NATO-backed ‘Free Syrian Army’.
The fall of the al-Assad government is probably inevitable given the forces ranged against it. Some have predicted an Egypt-like power-sharing arrangement between the Muslim Brotherhood and secular nationalist ‘democrats’ will follow. However Syria’s religious and ethnic make-up is far more complicated than almost anywhere else in the region: a Sunni majority with numerous Muslim minorities (Shia, Alawite, Sufi, Ismailis) as well as Druse and several strands of Christianity – altogether about one third of the population. There are significant ethnic minorities such as the Muslim Kurds and Christian Armenians – descendants of refugees from Turkish genocide – as well as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, many of them Christians. These minorities do not share the cheerful assessment that the outcome of this war is likely to approximate post-Mubarak Egypt – itself now a more dangerous home for minorities.
The Syrian government is widely blamed for starting the war with unprovoked attacks on peaceful demonstrators. Western media spent most of 2011 denying the very existence of armed opposition, until the media narrative was recast to that of peaceful protests gradually morphing into armed revolt as a consequence of regime brutality.
The authorities’ initial response to opposition protests in March 2011 was brutal and inflammatory. But it is not contradictory to also acknowledge that government forces were under armed attack from the outset. Syrian TV was broadcasting footage of the funerals of military and police personnel killed by protestors in March 2011. My son who was living in Damascus viewed these reports and discussed them with locals. I saw similar Syrian TV coverage while in Jordan in April-May 2011.
Reporter Robert Fisk identified the murder of a boy by police as the spark for the initial March 2011 protest in Deraa. Fisk, no supporter of the regime, also pointed to the existence of video footage of gunmen on the streets of Deraa that same month and al-Jazeera footage of armed men fighting Syrian troops near the Lebanon border in April 2011. Fisk noted that Al-Jazeera television, cheerleader for the rebels, chose not to broadcast it. The station is of course owned by the emir of Qatar, a principal financier of the war against the Syrian government.
On 21 March 2011 Israel National News reported that seven policemen were killed in Deraa in mid-March.
As early as August 2011 the anti-regime, UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that soldiers and police accounted for about one quarter of Syria’s death toll since the start of the uprising – a casualty proportion not likely to be suffered by an army ranged against unarmed protestors. SOHR, in a rare moment of candour conceded that some of the dead civilians were tortured and killed by regime opponents. This was before Al-Qaeda bombers began their work in co-ordination with the ‘Free Syrian Army’.
Most Syrians would possibly prefer a ceasefire and negotiations in order to avoid the catastrophic fate of Iraq and Libya. Yet the rebel leaderships and their foreign backers have sought only to prolong the fighting. Four weeks into Kofi Annan’s attempted ceasefire, the Washington Post reported: “Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States, according to opposition activists and U.S. and foreign officials.” CounterPunch’s Patrick Cockburn was one of the few western correspondents to report the UN monitoring team’s observation that during the ceasefire “the level of offensive military operations by the government significantly decreased” while there has been “an increase in militant attacks and targeted killings”.
In Libya, war sold to the gullible as a humanitarian necessity has reduced North Africa’s only welfare state to an ungovernable ruin: where rival tribal militias fight perpetual turf wars, blacks are ethnically cleansed, ancient archaeological treasures plundered and the social gains of the revolution systematically erased. All this mostly goes unreported – a non-story now that Libya’s oil contracts are in safer hands (China and Russia need not apply) and Western weapons sales rejected by the murdered Gaddafi are back on the table.
Only the terminally naïve would recommend the Syrian people risk a repeat of the Libyan triumph.
Chris Ray is a Sydney-based Asia business analyst and journalist.
Related articles
- Peace still on table in Syria as China scrambles to set up talks (alethonews.wordpress.com)
New Documents: Big Sis Lied About Canceling Mobile Body Scanner Program
Homeland Security claimed it had “dropped the plans at an early stage”
By Steve Watson | Prisonplanet | August 17, 2012
Newly released documents clearly show that the The Homeland Security Department continued to pursue a mobile surveillance program, moving radiation firing body scanners out of airports and into streets and shopping malls, despite claiming it has dropped the plans altogether.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) yesterday released the documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, showing that the DHS was still operating the program in March 2011, just two days prior to claiming it had “dropped the projects in a very early phase after testing showed flaws”.
Previous EPIC FOIA work produced records showing that the DHS is actively moving to install radiation firing scanners in all manner of public places.
The technologies include “intelligent video,” backscatter x-ray, Millimeter Wave Radar, and Terahertz Wave, and could be deployed at subway platforms, sidewalks, sports arenas, and shopping malls.
EPIC filed a specific lawsuit against the DHS for attempting to keep the program secret.
EPIC’s suit asked a federal court to order disclosure of nearly 1,000 pages of additional records detailing the controversial program – records the agency repeatedly refused to make public, despite freedom of information requests and appeals over the course of several months.
The lawsuit points to an agency under the DHS umbrella, the Science and Technology Directorate, which has released only 15 full pages of documents on the mobile scanners, whilst heavily redacting another 158 pages and withholding 983 pages of documents.
In February 2011, EPIC discovered (PDF) that the DHS had paid contractors “millions of dollars on mobile body scanner technology that could be used at railways, stadiums, and elsewhere” on crowds of moving people.
According to the documents obtained by EPIC, the Transport Security Agency plans to expand the use of these systems to peer under clothes and inside bags away from airports.
The documents included a “Surface Transportation Security Priority Assessment” [PDF] which revealed details of conducting risk assessments and possible implementation of body scanners in “Mass transit, commuter and long-distance passenger rail, freight rail, commercial vehicles (including intercity buses), and pipelines, and related infrastructure (including roads and highways), that are within the territory of the United States.”
The DHS maintained that it had discontinued the program, but refused to provide the proof, invoking several FOIA exemption clauses, ironically including one that cited “invasion of personal privacy”.
EPIC also noted that the DHS has actively deployed “mobile body scanner technology in vans that are able to scan other vehicles while driving down public roadways.”
“These vans, known as ‘Z Backscatter Vans,’ are capable of seeing through vehicles and clothing and routinely store the images that they generate.” EPIC’s lawsuit notes.
As we previously reported, while the focus remained on the TSA’s use of naked body scanners at airports, the feds had already purchased hundreds of x-ray scanners mounted in vans that were being used to randomly scan vehicles, passengers and homes in complete violation of the 4th amendment and with wanton disregard for any health consequences.
WSBTV reported on one instance of the mobile scanners being used to check trucks for explosive devices at an internal checkpoint set up by Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, and the TSA. Officials admitted there was no specific threat that justified the checkpoint, and although it was labeled a “counter-terror operation,” the scans were also being conducted in the name of “safety”.
EPIC will continue to pursue the case in an attempt to discover whether the DHS still plans to roll out mobile body scanners across America.
Related articles
- Court Orders TSA to Explain Lawless Use of Naked Body Scanners (thenewamerican.com)
- TSA flouts the law on body scanners (juneauempire.com)
The Lockerbie Bombing Seen as an Expression of a “Strenuous Disagreement”
Aletho News | September 1, 2009
In light of compelling information available on the Internet about the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 as well as the destruction of three World Trade Center buildings with micro-thermite during the course of a well-planned Israeli linked false flag operation in 2001, the issue of Zionist false flag terrorism against the American people to achieve militarist aims is now widely understood. Less well known and further in the past the Lavon affair is another documented case of Israel framing Arabs in an attempt to generate Western reaction. The planned attack of the Lavon affair was foiled by Egyptian security, more recent attacks have been outside of Arab jurisdictions. Revelations about the details of these particular acts of terror, notwithstanding subsequent efforts by the US government to cover them up by preventing public inquiries, along with ongoing mass media disinformation regarding the facts, have confirmed a disturbing pattern of control that is leading toward mass revulsion amidst the population.
Recently, newspapers reported that a Libyan, Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, accused of being the “Lockerbie bomber”, was released from imprisonment in Scotland. It is truly remarkable that his incarceration dragged on for so long, for it was already evident during the course of the trial, that no credible evidence linking him to the crime existed. In the meantime, mainstream media in Britain have reported that he was framed, through false testimony and the intentional withholding of exculpatory information by the court. His appeal was likely to be granted, and attention would inevitably have focused on the question of who actually did carry out the bombing. The calculation appears to have been, that one might circumvent such a situation by releasing him on “humanitarian” grounds, in exchange for dropping the appeal. No later than two years ago, it must have become clear to anyone following the case, that al Megrahi would have to be released, because the head of a Swiss company Mebo, Edwin Bollier, admitted, after the statute of limitations for such a crime had expired, that key evidence used in the trial had actually been faked. Also, in June 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, upon a three year investigation, reported that there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
Fingering the perpetrators of this act of terror that occurred more than two decades ago is inconvenient because the plausible outcome of an analysis of the situation, back then, while taking into account motive, means, and opportunity, could surely point to a group of known terrorists, enjoying strong support in the United States among influential supporters of Israel, as the primary suspects. These Zionist terrorists and their Jewish supremacist supporters have become so successful through their campaigns of mass murder that they have actually formed and developed a state with a huge military and propaganda apparatus. Indeed, as people have begun to realize, they have effectively taken over the United States government through corruption, coercion and blackmail. Some of their staunchest supporters are in control of financial, media, and academic institutions, thus wielding undue power. Though many have been aware of the facts for a long time, controllers need to present a different story for public consumption, hoping to induce a distorted perception among the masses.
The time elapsed since that fateful bombing over Scotland is half of the time elapsed since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. With the benefit of hindsight and an improved realization of the nature of Zionist inspired terrorism, both historically and currently, a review of the political circumstances during the two final months in 1988 sheds light on what could have been a primary motive for the bombing. On November 1, 1988, elections for the twelfth Knesset took place in Israel, with an outcome that made the formation of a stable government difficult. Exactly one week later, American elections took place, in which Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush beat Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. During the transition phase of the ensuing weeks, certain political developments could take place that might have seemed too risky to push through if Congress had been in session.
One week after the American elections, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), operating from Tunis, attempted to regain control of events in Palestine, where a popular uprising, the Intifada, had been going on for months. Thus, on November 15, in Algiers, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) formally proclaimed a Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, and Yasser Arafat as its president. Additionally, the PNC voted to revise the PLO charter and recognized the UN resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis of an international peace conference. This announcement was an important milestone in the Palestinian struggle against the ongoing, forceful, and illegal occupation of their land by an oppressive Israeli regime, and the lame-duck administration of Ronald Reagan would have to address the issue somehow.
According to a 1975 memorandum agreement with Israel, arranged by Henry Kissinger, the United States agreed to not recognize or negotiate with the PLO unless the organization formally recognized Israel and accepted UN resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis for peace in the Middle East. Even engaging in curt small talk with a PLO representative at a party in Amman during the summer of 1979 was taboo. One may recall that Ambassador Andrew Young was forced into resignation from his position as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the Carter Administration. Zionist leaders had somehow convinced themselves, that these conditions were too onerous for the PLO to adhere to, and were thus complacent in believing that the US government would continue to refuse any dealings with the PLO. They felt much assured when Secretary of State George Schultz refused a visa to PLO Chairman Arafat a day after he had requested one at the American Embassy in Tunis, so that he could address the UN General Assembly in New York in December. This decision, by Schultz, based on the PLO’s alleged association with terrorism, surprised the diplomatic community.
In early December of 1988, at the invitation of the Swedish government, Arafat met in Stockholm with a group of five American Jews, including Stanley Sheinbaum, one of the Regents of the University of California at the time, to discuss the Middle East situation. After a couple of days of talks, on December 7 Arafat announced the existence of Israel and denounced all forms of terrorism. However, George Schultz proclaimed that the PLO “still has a considerable distance to go” before the United States would deal with it. Israel’s expectations were thus upheld again. During this time, Israel had still not formed a government. However, a week later, on December 14, Arafat gave a press conference in Geneva and clarified the points he had given in a speech at the UN there the previous day. Though the language he used was barely different from that of previous statements rejected by Schultz as being insufficient, this time Schultz accepted the formula and promptly announced that the US State Department would begin discussions with the PLO.
News of this development was greeted with great shock and dismay at the time by Israeli politicians and the public. The PLO was their archenemy, regarded as a group of terrorists bent on destroying them. Extremist Zionists in particular perceived the announcement to recognize the PLO as the end of their dreams for a greater Israel, a genuine existential threat to their future survival. They had just been publicly stabbed in the back by the American administration. This decision could not stand, a strong message, would have to be sent, in response. The Americans could not get away with this, how “dare they” act independently.
With this pace of development, what might the new American regime do upon Bush’s inauguration? This was indeed a most serious development, and Israeli politicians gathered to engage in crisis discussions and expedited negotiating sessions in order to form a new government and deal with this unexpected threat. The possibility of events occurring beyond their control seemed real, and it became an imperative to forestall the U.S. engaging with the PLO.
Exactly one week after the formal American recognition of the PLO, Pan Am Flight 103, exploded in the air on its journey from London to New York on December 21, 1988. Only a few hours after news of this event became public, the reporter for a local television station in California interviewed an “expert on terrorism” live from his location at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica. Interestingly, when asked which group might have engaged in such an act of terrorism, the expert from RAND, upon citing the usual Arab suspects, cautioned that one should not exclude the possibility that a rogue group inside the Israeli military might have felt compelled to carry this out. This was truly unfiltered commentary, as the initial news came trickling in. Afterward, once the mainstream television media had regained their grip, explicit suggestions like this were presumably not heard again. (In contrast, with the benefit of months of operative planning, on September 11, 2001, the media worked from a prepared script; Osama bin Laden was declared the suspect within minutes of the demolition of the second World Trade Center tower, and the collapse of WTC Building 7 was announced at least twenty minutes before it actually occurred.)
Initially, one angle of speculation had been, that the attack was meant to target South Africa because a high level delegation of officials from its government, most notably foreign minister Pik Botha, were said to have been on that flight. Yet later the media reported that Botha had changed his scheduled flight to an earlier one that day and was indeed to arrive in New York. Ad hoc, raw news items like this, with the connotation of a possible advance tip-off, naturally arouses suspicion, especially since the South African government had few close political allies at the time, and so the media did not dwell on this message either. As it turned out, the South African government officials had been booked for Flight 103 but wound up flying to New York on an earlier plane. The next day they were present at UN headquarters to sign the Tripartite Agreement with representatives from Cuba and Angola. Years later, it was revealed that other people mysteriously chose not to take that flight at the last moment. Students from Syracuse University consequently got last minute seats which earlier were said to have been full. Which group of possible perpetrators could have had the technical means to both access the passenger list of a future flight and forewarn selected people? One cannot but help recall what seems to have been an analogous situation, many years later on September 11, 2001, when a select group of individuals received advance warning about the impending operation through an Israeli-based text messaging service, Odigo.
According to a former American ambassador to Qatar, Andrew I. Killgore, who has written articles about the Lockerbie bombing in the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, there are other interesting facts surrounding the Lockerbie bombing that are not widely known. For instance, in 2002 (but presumably also earlier during investigations) a retired security guard, Ray Manly, revealed that the Pan Am baggage area at Heathrow Airport had been broken into 17 hours before Flight 103 took off. Certainly, planting a bomb directly onto an intended plane is a surer method of targeting that flight than sending an unattended piece of luggage laden with a bomb from Malta to Frankfurt, and then from there to London, which is the narrative that prosecutors concocted to frame al Megrahi. In the case of the latter method, there is no way of being sure that the suitcase will actually be on the target flight, but alternatively there is a slight chance, due to general sloppiness, that it could wind up on a flight one definitely would not want to target.
Killgore refers to reports that Pan Am had commissioned a team to handle the baggage security at 25 branches around the world. One member of that team was Isaac Yeffet, who headed a company by the name of Alert Management Inc. Employees of Yeffet’s company had full access to the Pan Am facility at Heathrow Airport and thus might have been expected to detect an unattended bag coming from Malta, or prevent the introduction of a bomb at Heathrow.
According to media reports, Isaac Yeffet is the former chief of security for El Al and an ex-director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, and now runs a security company based in New Jersey. In this context, the reader might recall, that responsibility for security at all three airports of alleged hijackings on September 11, 2001 also lay with an Israeli owned company.
One feature of grand scale terrorist events, such as airplane bombings, is that perpetrators tend not to reveal themselves to the public, so the question of culpability becomes a mystery. One method of following up is for the perpetrators to attempt to make it appear as if though an enemy was actually responsible. Israeli operatives have repeatedly deployed this trick for at least half a century, at least since the incident in Cairo that led to the Lavon Affair. However, it is impossible to fool the entire population. After the Lockerbie bombing, the predominately Jewish controlled media in America planted several accusations against various groups or governments, Ahmed Jabril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Nidal, Syria, Iran, and of course Libya. Yet none of these groups really had the means or opportunity to carry out such an operation. Palestinians certainly didn’t have a motive in light of the breakthrough for their cause a week earlier, which didn’t preclude hypotheses of some rival Palestinian group committing the act out of sheer jealousy or disagreement from being presented.
As if these accusations and hypotheses in the media were not enough to distract and saturate the public with psychological propaganda, the New York Times Magazine, on Sunday March 18, 1990 (which coincided with the date of the only parliamentary elections in East Germany) proffered yet another malicious insinuation. Appearing as a bold headline on its cover, above a photo of the front of the jumbo jet lying on its side in Lockerbie, one could read the following words: “The German Connection”. This was likely part of the New York Times’ conspicuous “hate campaign” against Germany in general, but also against the impending German reunification in particular, which during early 1990, during the time of the negotiations leading to the so-called “Two Plus Four Agreement”, had reached a feverish pitch, spearheaded by former executive editor A. M. Rosenthal in various vitriolic editorials.
Another noteworthy piece of information relates to the disappointment of some British family members of persons who had been on that flight, with the way the case was developing. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was said to have blocked a full judicial inquiry into the issue. This raises the question, which group in Britain would have had sufficient influence to prevail upon the highest governmental official? An alternate explanation is, that President George H. W. Bush had prevailed upon her to tone down the investigation, which merely shifts the same question of complicity or cover-up toward power circumstances in the United States.
However, it was reported in 1993 that according to Minister of Parliament Tam Dalyell, Thatcher, who also had the role of being the head of intelligence services, stated unequivocally, that Libya did not carry out the bombing. It would seem that there was pressure to hide certain facts.
The violent destruction of an airplane with innocent people is also a highly political statement directed toward an élite group of decision makers in order to affect a particular policy. Therefore, it is fair to surmise that the perpetrators, who had to have had the motive, means, and opportunity to carry out the heinous crime, intended to signal their involvement, without stating it explicitly. If the intended recipients of such hints of involvement were themselves top-level criminals or terrorists, with blood on their hands, they would tend to acknowledge the hints in a different manner than the public inevitably would and, unlike the public, not get emotional about the situation. This can be viewed as part of a political game engaged in by psychopaths. Therefore, one should monitor official statements or communiqués for clues. During the Cold War there were American specialists called Kremlinologists, who would notice subtle and innocuous messages or announcements with important meaning. This is the diplomatic language of polite understatement.
On December 23, 1988, within two days after the Lockerbie bombing Israeli politicians agreed to form a coalition or unity government, headed by Yitzhak Shamir, who had gone to high school in Bialystok and became a terrorist in Palestine before World War II, after Hebraizing his surname from Jeziernicky. On that day, Shamir addressed the newly formed twelfth Knesset, in which he made multiple references to the PLO and the implications of its international recognition (which on the following day, Christmas Eve, included a meeting between Chairman Arafat and Pope John Paul in the Vatican). Below are key passages, translated into English by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
It is regrettable that we were forced to strenuously disagree with the recent U.S. decision regarding a dialogue with the PLO which, as far as we see and know, has not changed its character or ways, its malicious covenant and the terrorism that it perpetrates. We know this from the statements of its central figures, and from its actions in the field, and the government of Israel, in accordance with its guidelines, will not negotiate with it. We still hope that the U.S. will reconsider its decision vis-a-vis the PLO. We have paid close attention to the statements made by administration spokesmen regarding their approach to the issue of terrorism; we hope that after due consideration, they will draw the necessary conclusions regarding the PLO. The developments in the international arena and the challenges that we will face oblige us to overcome our differences in order to confront the problems together, and to overcome the obstacles and dangers that have been placed in our way. I am referring chiefly to the large-scale propaganda and diplomatic offensive being conducted now against Israel in the international diplomatic arena by the terrorist organizations and their friends and supporters, an offensive which is based on deception and on misleading. Its obvious objective is to gain international support for the establishment of a PLO-Palestinian state within Eretz Israel. In addition, we see special preparations being made to exert great pressure on us to cause us to make a complete withdrawal to the suffocating borders of 1967.
At that time there was no Internet, so only a few of the people who do not understand Hebrew were actually privy to the text at the time. Adopting a Talmudic perspective and the aggressive mindset that prevails among militant Zionists in Israel, one could certainly rationalize the Lockerbie bombing as an act of self-defense, a means to prevent suffocation and encirclement before such efforts can attain momentum. Shamir’s violent life had been filled with acts of terror. In this light the Lockerbie bombing can be viewed as an irate expression of “strenuous disagreement”.
– by reader submission
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- Author calls Megrahi’s cancer ‘a gift for those with something to hide’ (scotsman.com)
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Top 10 Myths of the Jobs Argument Against Military Cuts
By Miriam Pemberton | IPS | August 14, 2012
Members of Congress, led by the team of Senators McCain, Graham and Ayotte, are touring military contracting plants, bases and defense-dependent communities this summer raising the alarm about “sequestration.” This is the part of the current budget deal that will force $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts to federal spending, unless Congress comes up with the same amount of money some other way. Half is supposed to come from the military, half from domestic programs, beginning January 2.
It is true: cutting everything indiscriminately is no way to run a government. But this alarm-raising campaign, buttressed by defense industry spending to buy and promote “independent”studies, and mount lobbying campaigns, is focused not on federal spending in general, but on military cuts in particular. And the centerpiece of their pitch against these cuts is not the standard line that we need to spend ever more on the Pentagon because it needs every penny to keep us safe. Instead the focus is: jobs.
We’re in the process of ending two wars. Since 9-11, spending on the Pentagon has nearly doubled. Clearly we’re due for a military budget downsizing.
And the urgent need for job creation is on everyone’s mind.
That’s why the military contractors and their congressional allies are departing from the usual script to argue for more military spending. Instead of saying, as usual, that the Pentagon needs every penny to keep us safe, they’re saying it needs every penny to preserve jobs.
From the crowd that wants to shrink government because this will create jobs, we are now hearing that we can’t shrink the Pentagon because that would cost jobs.
Here are main points of their case, rebutted one by one.
Myth # 1: The military cuts will cost a million (or, according to the Pentagon, a million and a half) jobs.
You don’t need to get into the details of the many reasons to question these figures to recognize the big flaw: Cutting military spending will only cost jobs if nothing else is done with the money. As economists from the University of Massachusetts have shown, (findings recently corroborated by economists at the University of Vienna [i]) military spending is an exceptionally poor job creator. Taking those cuts and investing them in other things—clean energy, education, health care, transportation—will all result in a net gain in jobs. Even cutting taxes creates more employment than spending on the military.[ii]
Myth # 2: More Pentagon spending will create more jobs.
A researcher at the Project on Government Oversight recently exposed the shaky foundation of this argument. He found that since 2006 the largest military contractor, Lockheed Martin, has increased its revenues from military contracts, even as it was cutting jobs.[iii]
Myth # 3: Defense sequestration will gut our military industrial base.
Hardly. The Pentagon cuts contained in the budget deal will bring the military budget, adjusted for inflation, to where it was in 2006. Close to its highest level since World War II. More than the next 17 countries (most of them our allies) put together.[iv]
These cuts are easily doable, with no sacrifice in security, because they are being made to a budget that has nearly doubled since 2001.
Myth # 4: The public is buying the myth.
President Obama is actually running an ad criticizing his opponent for advocating military spending increases. The clear pattern in recent polling shows that this is a smart move. Majorities agree military spending is too high.[v]
Myth # 5: The military economy is part of the bedrock of our jobs base.
A researcher at the Project on Defense Alternatives looked at this one. He cited a Congressional Research Service study of aerospace employment. More than 500,000 Americans are employed in aerospace manufacturing. About two-thirds of this is commercial, however. Though the defense industry has worked hard to spread itself around for maximum political effect, more than half (61%) of the nation’s aerospace industry jobs are concentrated in six states.[vi]
By contrast, more than 8 million Americans are employed in education, law enforcement, fire fighting, and other emergency and protective services — working in every community in America.
The effects on the jobs base from cuts on the domestic side of the budget, in other words, will be much larger and more widespread than the effects of military cuts.
Myth # 6: The military economy is part of the bedrock of our overall economic health.
Alan Greenspan, among many others, has contrasted spending on infrastructure, education, and health care with military spending. The former, he noted, strengthens the productivity—the performance—of the economy as a whole; the latter does not.
Military spending is like a family’s insurance policies, he said. The family should spend enough to insure against disaster, but not a penny more, because that family should put as much as possible toward increasing its well-being through education and other enhancements to its quality of life.
Myth # 7: Military workers have already taken their share of the hits.
No. The global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas tracks layoffs month by month. For the past three years, while military spending has absorbed more than half of the discretionary budget (the part Congress votes on every year), the private sector contractors it supports have absorbed an average of only 4% of the nation’s job loss. See this spreadsheet (docx).
During those three years, the defense industry laid off a total of 106,000 workers. During the same period, state and local governments laid off more than 500,000 workers.
Myth # 8: The political campaign against sequestration is consistent with the dominant economic philosophy of the politicians doing the campaigning.
No again. The free marketeers who think shrinking government will create jobs are preaching that the Pentagon budget can’t be shrunk because this will cost jobs.
Congressman Barney Frank has summed up nicely what they are asking us to believe: “that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.”
Myth # 9: The contractors have their workers’ interests at heart.
If they did, they might narrow the gap a bit between the CEO’s and the average worker’s salary. For Lockheed Martin (CEO: $25 million[vii]; average worker: $58,000[viii]) this gap is more than 400 to 1.
Myth # 10: Sequestration will force contractors to warn most of their workers of an impending layoff.
Lockheed is threatening to send these notices a few days before the November election. The argument for this bit of political blackmail is that since the cuts aren’t specified, all workers are at risk. While Lockheed claims these notices are required by law, the Labor Department, i.e. the controlling legal authority, says they are not.
In fact, as researchers from Win Without War and the Center for International Policy recently pointed out,[ix] the defense and aerospace industry is sitting on a pile of cash from yet another year of record revenue and profits in 2011.[x] Lockheed alone has $81 billion in backlogged orders, and more coming in.[xi] They have it a lot better than most companies.
And this cushion gives them time to plan for the downsizing, and keep the workers they profess to care about employed, by developing new work in other areas. See Fact Sheet: Replacing Defense Industry Jobs for some ideas on how.
Footnotes
[i] https://www.dropbox.com/s/6s4ix8muj2kmhhx/a%20non%20linear%20defense%20growth%20nexus.pdf
[ii] http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/0b0ce6af7ff999b11745825d80aca0b8/publication/489/
[vi] “US Aerospace Manufacturing: Industry Overview and Prospects,” Congressional Research Service, December 3, 2009. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40967.pdf.
[viii] http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/0b0ce6af7ff999b11745825d80aca0b8/publication/489/
[ix] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-hartung/lockheed-martin_b_1625183.html
[x] http://www.pwc.com/en_US/us/industrial-products/assets/pwc-aerospace-defense-review-and-forecast.pdf
[xi] http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120620-709424.html
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- House Republican Calls Warnings On Military Spending Cuts ‘A Hysteria Parade’ (thinkprogress.org)
- Romney Campaign Can’t Explain How He Would Boost Military Spending To $945 Billion And Cut The Deficit (thinkprogress.org)
- Guess What % of Americans Know Military Spending Is Increasing (my.firedoglake.com)
- CATO Study: Reshaping the Pentagon Budget Won’t Negatively Impact on the Economy (pogoblog.typepad.com)
UN replaces Syrian observer mission with civilian office
The United Nations Security Council has decided not to extend the body’s observer mission in Syria, setting up a civilian liaison office instead. Russia called for the Syria Action Group to meet in New York on Friday in response.
The Council’s members have agreed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s proposal to establish a liaison office in Damascus, France’s UN Ambassador Gerard Araud announced on Thursday following a Security Council meeting.
The new body will include military advisers to the head of the office on military affairs, as well as civil affairs and human rights components.
The exact size of the office is yet to be determined, but it will be significantly smaller than the current UN observer mission, peacekeeping department chief Edmond Mulet said.
“We are already identifying some staff already working there that will be willing to continue working in Damascus under this new office,” Mulet stated.
According to Mulet, the Syrian government has already given its agreement for the UN liaison office in Damascus.
Mulet also said he expected the new UN-Arab League Syrian envoy to be announced “very soon.” The new envoy will fill the shoes of Kofi Annan, who has announced his resignation effective August 31, noting that the conflict was spiraling out of control and that the Syrian government, rebels and incessantly-bickering Security Council members were to blame.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Annan said Syrian authorities have backed former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran UN diplomat who had previously served as the UN’s representative for Afghanistan and Iraq, as the new UN Syrian envoy. Several UN diplomats said Brahimi has already accepted the post, but with an altered mandate and title. Brahimi also reportedly conditioned his acceptance on “strong support” from the Security Council.
Currently there are 101 military observers and 72 civilian staff working in Syria’s UN observer mission. The last observer is to leave the country by August 24, but the observers will stop all their duties after August 19, when the mandate ends.
Meanwhile, Moscow has invited the members of the Syria Action Group to meet in New York on Friday.
The purpose of the meeting is to ensure that the group’s members are committed to the consensus document signed in Geneva in June, Russian envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin said.
“Foreign ministers of countries, members of the action group, agreed to certain things and they need to do those things,” Churkin stated.
The meeting will take place at 11 am somewhere at the UN headquarters, he added.
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US Realists, Neocons and the War in Syria
Pletka wants Washington to ‘stop subcontracting Syria policy.’ (C-SPAN)
By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | August 15, 2012
In US political circles, the Syria conflict is increasingly being presented as a discussion pertaining to Israeli interests. This attitude is not substantially different from the way US politicians and media weighed in on the Egyptian January 25 revolution and its aftermath. Egypt mostly matters because of the US-brokered Camp David treaty of 1979, which benefited Israel beyond all expectations. The treaty had ushered in a false period of peace; it turned Egypt into an American ally, largely alienating it from its Arab political context.
When it comes to US foreign policy in the Middle East, Israel represents a point of departure for many in the US political establishment. Neoconservative groups have long defined US foreign policy in the region. Their most crucial and unifying concern is Israel’s security and any threat, real or imagined, to Israel’s regional domination.
The neocons clustered through various organizations and think tanks. Most visible among them was the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which included very influential foreign policy individuals. PNAC’s ‘vision’ was seen as the roadmap that guided George W. Bush in his war against Iraq, the sanctions against Iran, and the overall hostile relationship that defined (and continues to define) US foreign policy in the Middle East. Tainted by the disastrous foreign policy, PNAC folded, only to be reinvented two years ago with the advent of the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI).
The neocons are duly challenged. Their critics in the establishments are the ‘realists’ (as described by former Secretary of State James Baker in a recent interview with Foreign Policy). The so-called realists are far less organized than the neocons. They were simply empowered by the latter’s mammoth failures. Now the neocons are making a comeback, thanks to the golden opportunities presented by ongoing conflicts throughout the Middle East.
“Our biggest threat today isn’t Syria, or even Iran, or Russia or China,” Baker told Foreign Policy. “Our biggest threat today is our own economy, and we cannot continue to be strong diplomatically, politically, and militarily and be weak economically” (August 9). Baker, of course, hasn’t completely abandoned Israel. The problem is that the pro-Israel camp is asking for a military intervention in Syria and an escalation against Iran, both of which come with a high political and financial price tag — one that the US cannot afford.
Another ‘realist’ is Aaron David Miller, a former US adviser on the Middle East (to six Secretaries of State) and a member of the US Advisory Council of Israel Policy Forum. Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 6, in an article entitled ‘Syria: Let’s Stay out of It’, Miller stated, “Syria today is a mess — but it’s a Syrian mess. Afghanistan and Iraq should teach us that America can’t control the world. It’s time for the United States to focus on fixing its own broken house instead of chasing the illusion that it can always help repair somebody else’s.”
However, this ‘realist’ estimation by Miller was further discussed in his article in Foreign Policy two days later. In ‘Winners and Losers of Syria’s Civil War,’ Miller argued that Israel was a possible winner in case of Bashar Al Assad’s fall.
“The good news for the Israelis is that Iran and Hezbollah will be weakened by Al Assad’s fall. The bad news is that like so much of the Arab Spring/ Winter, the impending transition brings with it enormous uncertainty.”
US intervention in Libya was a much easier decision for both neocons and realists. A letter was organized by the Foreign Policy Initiative and signed by 40 policy analysts, calling on President Barack Obama’s administration to arm Libyan rebels and to “immediately’ prepare for military action to bring down the Libyan regime under Muammar Gaddafi. The neocons’ calls at the time were hardly rejected as ‘unrealistic’. According to Jim Lobe, they were “a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage US intervention in the Balkans and Iraq.” Of course, they got what they asked for in Libya. Now, the neocons are pushing for another intervention in Syria.
“Washington must stop subcontracting Syria policy to the Turks, Saudis and Qataris. They are clearly part of the anti-Al Assad effort, but the United States cannot tolerate Syria becoming a proxy state for yet another regional power,” wrote Danielle Pletka, a leading neocon and vice-president of Foreign and Defence Policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (Washington Post, July 20).
Despite immense hesitation from the Obama administration, the neocons are now trying to weasel in their version of an endgame in Syria. Their efforts are extremely focused and well-coordinated, making impressive use of their direct ties with the Israeli lobby, major US media and Syrian leaders in exile. Writing in CNN online, Elise Labott reported on a recent neoconservative push to upgrade American involvement in Syria, urging “the Obama administration to increase its support of the armed opposition” (CNN, August 1).
The ‘experts’ included Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), another pro-Israel conduit in Washington, established in 1985 as a research department for the influential Israeli lobby group, AIPAC. Obama obliged under pressure from the ‘experts’. According to CNN, he signed a secret order “referred to as an intelligence ‘finding,’ allow[ing] for clandestine support by the CIA and other agencies.”
More, On July 31, AIPAC urged all members of Congress to sign on a bill introduced by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman. Entitled ‘The Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (H.R.1905)’, the bill, if passed, “will establish virtual state of war with Iran,” according to the Council for the National Interest. The old neoconservative wisdom arguing for an unavoidable link between Syria, Iran and their allies in the region is now being exploited to the maximum. Their hope is to settle all scores left unsettled by the Bush administration.
US foreign policy in Syria is likely to become clearer once the signs of an endgame become easier to read. Until then, the neocons will continue to push for another campaign of intervention. For them, influencing the endgame in favor of Israel is much more beneficial than dealing with a divided country, which is ‘subcontracted’ to other regional powers, per Pletka’s unrelenting wisdom.
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Palestinian hunger striker ‘beaten unconscious in prison’
Al Akhbar | August 16, 2012
A Palestinian hunger striker in Israel’s Ramleh prison was knocked unconscious by prison guards earlier this week in the most recent abuse of prisoners, a coalition of human rights groups said on Thursday.
Hassan Safadi, who has gone 57 days without food, had his head slammed against the steel door of his prison cell during an assault on him and another hunger striker, Samer al-Barq.
The assault occurred after they refused to be transferred to a new cell, Addameer, al-Haq and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel said in a joint statement.
“During the attack, Mr Safadi’s head was slammed against the iron door of the cell two times, causing him to fall to the ground, unconscious. Prison guards then dragged him through the hall to be seen by all the other prisoners,” it said.
Safadi announced after the beating that he would no longer be drinking water.
The two prisoners are refusing food to protest their detention without trial under a system Israel calls administrative detention.
Over 2,000 Palestinian prisoners ended a mass hunger strike in May after reaching a deal with Israel.
The deal specifically stipulated that Safadi would be released following the expiration of his detention order, but the agreement was not upheld.
Two other Palestinian prisoners, Ayman Sharawna and Samer al-Issawi, have also been refusing food for 47 and 16 days, respectively.
Israel’s draconian administrative detention allows for the imprisonment of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable six month periods.
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United Church of Canada Decides To Boycott Settlement Products
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | August 16, 2012
Following around six hours of deliberation, the United Church of Canada (UCC), the largest Protestant denomination in the country, voted for boycotting products made in Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
The Toronto Star reported that a spokesperson of the UCC general council identified as Bruce Gregersen, stated that the decision is considered a significant step.
The UCC will be holding another vote on Friday to decide whether this boycott would be a regarded as a permanent policy of the church.
Israeli Ynet News reported that the Centre for Israel and the Jewish Affairs in Canada said that it was “outraged by this decision”, and considered it “a move that singled out Jewish communities for boycott”.
The Centre claimed that this decision is considered a “reckless path”, and added that the decision just dismisses the concerns of the Jewish community in Canada.
According to the Ynet, Chairman of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, David Koschitzky, stated that mainstream Jewish organization, including the Canadian Friends of Peace Now, “do not approve of this boycott decision”.
He added that this decision ignored around 100.000 families, members of different Jewish federations in Canada, and said that this decision “also ignores written rejection letters of 70 Canadian Rabbis, representing tens of thousands of Jewish families in the country”.
Israel’s settlements are located in the occupied Palestinian territories, including in and around occupied East Jerusalem. There have been several churches and organizations around the world, including educational facilities that have previously voted in favor of boycotting products made in Israel’s settlements.
Israel’s settlements in occupied Palestine are illegal under International Law, and even violate the Fourth Geneva Convention to which Israel is a signatory.
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Does Kevin Barrett Seek to “Absolve Islam of a Terrible Crime”?
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
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