Iran sanctions cost US economy $175bn: NIAC
Press TV – July 17, 2014
The US sanctions against Iran have cost Washington as much as USD 175 billion dollars in losses for not doing business with the Islamic Republic, a Washington-based think-tank has found.
“The United States is by far the biggest loser of all sanctions enforcing nations. From 1995 [when the US imposed trade embargo on Iran] to 2012, the US sacrificed between USD 134.7 and USD 175.3 billion in potential export revenue to Iran,” the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) concluded in a report.
During the same period, the report said, the United States lost 51,000 to 280,000 jobs a year due to the sanctions slapped on Iran.
“Texas and California are likely the biggest losers in terms of lost employment, due to their size as well as the attractiveness of their industries to Iran’s economy,” it said.
The US sanctions also cost the European economies billions of dollars in losses through the 2010-2012 period.
“In Europe, Germany was hit the hardest, losing between USD 23.1 and USD 73.0 billion between 2010 and 2012, with Italy and France following at USD 13.6-USD 42.8 billion and USD 10.9-USD 34.2 billion respectively,” it said.
The think-tank recommended that the US government consider lifting sanctions against Iran as nuclear negotiations are under way between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the Unites States, Britain, France, Russia and China – plus Germany.
“Decision-makers must… ask themselves if the cost of sanctions to the US economy is worth shouldering if other options do exist,” it said.
At the beginning of 2012, the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors with the goal of preventing other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran.
Ex-NYT editor Jill Abramson on how flak and ‘anti-terrorism’ help discipline corporate media
Interventions Watch | July 16, 2014
She didn’t quite put it in those words, but it’s essentially what she’s saying: that the U.S. government would contact the New York Times and tell them that publishing this, that or the other story would ‘help the terrorists’. And that the New York Times would take those threats seriously and bring the story to a halt (even if they did eventually work out that the U.S. government’s intentions may not always have been entirely honourable).
Here’s a quote from an interview Abramson recently gave to Cosmopolitan :
‘Sometimes the CIA or the director of national intelligence or the NSA or the White House will call about a story . . . You hit the brakes, you hear the arguments, and it’s always a balancing act: the importance of the information to the public versus the claim of harming national security . . . Over time, the government too reflexively said to the Times, ‘you’re going to have blood on your hands if you publish X’ and because of the frequency of that, the government lost a little credibility . . . But you do listen and seriously worry . . . Editors are Americans too . . . We don’t want to help terrorists’.
Interesting, as well, that Abramson seems to be suggesting that being ‘against terrorists’ – or at least, people who the U.S. government claim are terrorists – is somehow an inherent part of being an American, like it’s a national religion or something.
Which for the political and media classes, I suppose it is – except when it comes to the terrorism of the U.S. government and its allies, in which case being ‘against terrorism’ is blasphemous.
Full Disclosure and Accountability Said to be Missing from $7 Billion Citigroup Misconduct Settlement
By Steve Straehley | AllGov | July 17, 2014
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday trumpeted reaching a $7 billion deal with Citigroup to settle charges of “egregious misconduct” in its sale of mortgage-backed securities. But despite evidence that Citigroup covered up massive problems with securities they sold, no company executives are being held personally liable and there has been no accounting of the money Citigroup made through its actions.
“Despite the fact that Citigroup learned of serious and widespread defects among the increasingly risky loans they were scrutinizing, the bank and its employees concealed these defects,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.
The settlement includes a $4 billion penalty, $2.5 billion for relief to struggling homeowners and $500 million in payments to state prosecutors and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
“DOJ brags about and wants everyone to focus on the $7 billion settlement dollar amount, but that amount is meaningless without disclosure of the key information about how many hundreds of billions of dollars Citigroup made, how many tens of billions investors lost, how many billions in bonuses were pocketed, which executives were involved and what positions they now have with the bank,” Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, a group that promotes reform of the financial industry, said in a statement.
“Citigroup, the Wall Street bank that received the largest amount of Federal bailouts to prevent its bankruptcy in 2008 (almost $500 billion), was a conveyor belt for toxic securities throughout the world and is now being handed another big bailout by the government: a sweetheart immunity deal and ongoing concealment of how its executives, officers and staff defrauded the American people and almost caused a second Great Depression,” Kelleher continued.
The settlement is far more than what Citigroup originally proposed: $363 million. But some say it’s not nearly enough. “Seven billion sounds like a lot. But compared to the number of families that lost their homes, it is not very much at all,” Isaac Simon Hodes, a community organizer with Lynn United for Change, a group that advocates on behalf of Boston-area residents facing foreclosure, told The New York Times.
As part of the settlement, the government is not going after Citigroup for its business in collateralized debt obligation derivatives, where pools of loans are packaged and sold to investors, which have been described as “designed to fail.”
JP Morgan Chase reached a $13 billion settlement with the DOJ last November in a similar case. On deck is Bank of America, with whom Justice will begin settlement negotiations now that the Citigroup case is over.
To Learn More:
Still No Real Accountability: Citigroup to Pay $7 Billion for Its “Egregious Misconduct” (by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams)
Worse Than Settlements with JP Morgan Chase and Goldman (Better Markets)
Citigroup Settles Mortgage Inquiry for $7 Billion (by Michael Corkery, New York Times)
Citibank Accused of Tricking New Customers about “Free” Frequent Flyer Miles (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Israeli strike kills three children playing on Gaza roof
Al-Akhbar | July 17, 2014
Brothers Jihad and Wissam were playing on the roof of their Gaza apartment with their cousin Fulla, when an Israeli strike came from the blue skies above and killed them.
Fulla, a nickname given to 10-year-old Afnan, was the eldest. All three were from the Shaheber family, in Gaza City’s Sabra district.
After being cooped up at home for days on end, neighbors said the children were taking advantage of the relative calm that followed a brief truce between Israel and Hamas.
“They were playing on the roof,” said neighbor Raed al-Kurdi, 33, his white vest stained with blood.
“We were sitting on our roof next to our neighbor’s one and we found all of a sudden a rocket coming from above and it hit their roof,” he added.
“The people who were injured were from the Shaheber family, there were children, two girls, two boys and two grown men.
“They were in serious condition, we carried them out in our arms.”
Three of the children died en route to the Shifa hospital, where they were laid out on steel tables in the morgue as doctors in blue coats moved around them, cleaning them.
Each had coin-sized pieces of flesh gouged out from their limbs by shrapnel.
Next to them, their uncle Mohammed wept openly.
An employee at the hospital, he heard the call go out for ambulances after the strike that hit the Shaheber home.
“They were children, just playing on the roof. And now they’re dead, lying in front of us,” he said, his voice anguished but also angry.
“How can this be, how can this be?”
The morgue chief asked the distraught family members if they want to allow media waiting outside into the room.
“It is up to you, but if you want to show the world what happened here, we will let them in,” he told Mohammed and other relatives inside, who assented tearfully.
The three children were lined up beside each other, along with a fourth child brought in from an earlier strike in Gaza City.
Fulla was laid in the middle and her cousins one on either side.
Her curly hair framed her face, specked with blood.
Her T-shirt might once have been white, but now it was completely red, soaked through with her blood.
To her right was 8-year-old Jihad, his turquoise T-shirt and trousers torn through by shrapnel.
To her left was Wissam, seven years old, his eyes still open as though he was staring into the middle distance.
His trousers had been removed, revealing his blue and yellow superhero underwear.
Pathology of Zionist siege of Gaza: Victim blamed
By Yuram Abdullah Weiler | Press TV | July 17, 2014
“At the heart of the blame approach is a system of warfare, which centers on the outcome of moral or legal battles rather than on the resolution of conflict and the prevention of future violence. As such, it neither reduces pathology nor protects the victim.” – Ofer Zur, Ph.D.
Once again, the Zionist entity has unleashed a massive bombing campaign on Gaza, killing over 200 people and injuring 1500, supposedly in retaliation for being targeted by “an ever-escalating number of missiles.”
The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, by responding with over 1,000 rockets aimed at targets within the Zionist entity, is being portrayed as the aggressor and “Israel” as an innocent victim that even agreed to a cease fire while its “terrorist” adversary did not. U.S. President Obama has justified Zionist assaults on Gaza since “there’s no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.”
To clarify who is the victim and who is the perpetrator here, we must briefly examine history to see the pathology of the Zionist entity, which has repeatedly launched similar assaults on Gaza under the pretext of its right to defend itself. Most news coverage of the current carnage points to the deaths of three kidnapped teenagers as the immediate cause, falling in line with the allegations of Zionist Prime Minister Netanyahu, who insisted on blaming Hamas for the tragedy. However, taking such a short-sighted perspective can only yield a distorted view of this ongoing colonial confrontation whose roots date back to before the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
To understand what led to the current onslaught, we can begin with the unilateral withdrawal of Zionist occupation forces and settlers from Gaza in August 2005. Engineered by Ariel Sharon, the butcher behind the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, the “disengagement” from Gaza was an excuse to circumvent Zionist responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention as the occupying power, as was clarified in a letter sent to then U.S. President George Bush. The letter stated that, upon completion of the withdrawal, “there will be no basis for the claim that the Gaza Strip is occupied territory.”
By cooperating with Sharon’s disengagement plan, Palestinians expected the Zionists to live up to their word and allow Gazans “to breathe the air of freedom and begin rebuilding their shattered lives.” However, this did not happen: Gaza’s borders remained closed, its airport remained shut down, the sea was still off limits to fishermen, and entry into and exit from the coastal enclave remained a virtual impossibility, subject to the whims of the Israeli entity. Based on the Hague “effective control test,” Gaza remained occupied territory under international law, as research professor of law at the University of London Iain Scobbie wrote, “When we also take into account the views that have been expressed on control of the territory from the air, it is clear that Israeli withdrawal of land forces did not terminate occupation.”
Before the disengagement, Hamas had announced their intention to participate in the May 5, 2005 legislative elections, which resulted in Fatah winning 50 seats and Hamas winning 28, mainly in the major urban areas. Fatah contested the election in court, which ruled in their favor, necessitating a second election that was delayed until January 25, 2006. However, as the date approached, it became increasingly clear, much to the chagrin of U.S. and Zionist officials, that Hamas stood a good chance of winning over the disputing Fatah factions. Their worst fears were born out when Hamas won big, taking 74 seats to Fatah’s 45, something which reportedly surprised even the Hamas leadership.
As a result of the sweeping Hamas victory, rival Fatah, of course, became bitter, but the Bush administration flatly refused to accept the outcome, and announced that they would neither engage the victors in dialogue nor grant economic aid until Hamas met three conditions: First, recognition of the Israeli entity; second, disarming and renunciation of violence; and third, acceptance of all previous Palestinian agreements with Tel Aviv. By placing these conditions on Hamas, the American officials, who, incidentally, were among the staunchest proponents of holding the elections, effectively signaled that, rather than supporting democracy, they were unwilling to accept the will of the majority of the Palestinian people.
In one of the first acts of the newly-elected government, political bureau head Khaled Mish’al unilaterally extended the Hamas truce with the Zionist regime, but instead of welcoming this gesture, the U.S. exerted pressure on countries worldwide not to recognize the incoming Palestinian administration. While Turkey and Russia extended invitations to the newly-elected government, Mahmoud Abbas played no small role in sabotaging meetings between the Hamas leadership and South Africa and Malaysia. Moreover, the outgoing Palestinian Legislative Council gave Abbas sweeping executive powers which gave him the authority as president to have the final word in any disputes arising with the new Hamas government.
The security situation in Gaza became increasingly chaotic due to poor response by Fatah police under the command of Abbas, who himself had a personal security force of 10,000, financed and trained by the U.S. in Jordan with Zionist collaboration. Then, Washington and Tel Aviv imposed economic sanctions and virtually cut off all financial channels by which aid could flow to the Hamas government. Next, armed provocateurs were dispatched to stir the growing unrest into a full-blown confrontation between Hamas and Fatah. Lastly, the U.S. and the Zionist entity resorted to armed conflict in an attempt to bring down the Hamas government.
As the political struggle between Fatah and Hamas intensified, the Zionist regime fired shells into Gaza, allegedly in response to rockets fired from there, and continued to assassinate Palestinian activists from both factions in an obvious attempt to escalate the conflict. Then on June 9, 2006, a Zionist artillery bombardment killed seven Palestinians, one of whom was the father of a ten-year-old girl named Huda Ghalia. The photos of Huda running in tears toward her father after her entire family had been annihilated by an Israeli shell galvanized Gazans, who demanded a response to this Israeli provocation. At that point the Izzadin al-Qassam brigades appealed to Hamas leadership, which finally relented and ended the truce. Nevertheless, Abbas continued to meet with then Zionist prime minister Ehud Olmert, whom the Hamas leaders justifiably referred to as a “terrorist.”
A critical point in the escalating conflict came soon afterward when on June 24 Zionist troops entered Gaza and kidnapped two Hamas members, the brothers Mostafa and Osama Muammar, after severely beating their father who required hospitalization. In retaliation, members of various resistance factions tunneled under the border to the Zionist outpost of Keren Shalom, neutralizing four soldiers and kidnapping corporal Gilad Shalit. The Zionist regime used the abduction, for which Hamas was not directly responsible, as an excuse to bomb bridges, main roads, water plants, power stations and other services in a vicious attempt to dislodge Hamas by destroying Gaza’s infrastructure.
For a time in the summer of 2006, the world was distracted from Gaza while Hezbollah successfully repulsed a full-scale Zionist assault on Lebanon, which killed 1,109 Lebanese civilians and wounded 4,399. Explaining his perspective on cause of the so-called War of Tammuz, one Hezbollah fighter explained, “The Israelis did what they could to destroy our humanity. As a result, the people rose up and resisted. Isn’t that normal?” This statement exposes the Zionist pathology: the desire to destroy the humanity of Palestinians, which is precisely what we see in Gaza, as the victim is blamed for resisting the oppressor.
By 2007, an agreement for a unity government brokered by the Saudis was derailed by the United States, which tasked Lieutenant General Keith Dayton with toppling the Hamas government with the help of Fatah. This act of American adventurism led Hamas to expel Fatah forces from Gaza. In response to Hamas with the backing of the U.S., western allies and Egypt, the Israeli entity launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27, 2008, killing 1,400 during the bloody three-week operation. As if this were not enough, the Zionist regime struck Gaza again in March 2012 for five days, killing another 25 Palestinians in a series of air assaults.
This brings us to the present attack on Gaza, which began on July 8 and so far has claimed the lives of over 200 men, women and children, destroyed 500 homes and cut off water to hundreds of thousands. The Zionist pathology remains the same as it was in Lebanon: the desire to destroy the Palestinians’ humanity. Even more macabre were the actions of some citizens in Sderot who gathered on a hill to watch the bombardment, cheering raucously as each Israeli bomb exploded in Gaza. This is all part of the morbid Zionist pathology.
“Of course, let us not think for a moment, God forbid, that we can be indifferent to the death of innocents. The death of any child, Israeli or Arab, Muslim or Jew, is an unspeakable tragedy that rends the heart,” Rabbi Eric Yoffie, former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, confided sanctimoniously. This is while three teenage Zionists have confessed to murdering a teenage Palestinian boy by burning him alive. This oxymoron is also part of the Zionist pathology.
WaPo’s Gaza dispatch: ugly and dishonest
By Jonathon Cook | July 17, 2014
There’s something deeply ugly, verging on mendacious, about this eye-witness account of the strike against children on Gaza’s beach, which killed four of them, by William Booth in the Washington Post. It begins with what appears to be context but is, in fact, simply an effort to deflect criticism from Israel and blame the victims.
He starts with this: “It is not unusual for militants to launch rockets from sites near my hotel.”
So had rockets been launched from the spot where the children were killed? Here’s the account of veteran Guardian / Observer correspondent Peter Beaumont:
The building that was hit was just a shipping container next to where one of the kids’ father keeps his boat and stores fishing nets. The kids were just playing hide and seek there. They shoot missiles (against Israel) from this neighborhood but none from that location.
So how is Booth’s introduction relevant in any way to the story? Yes, militants have fired rockets from the neighbourhood (after all, from where else but “neighbourhoods” are they likely to fire rockets in one of the most densely populated places on earth). But, as Beaumont points out, they were not being fired from the area that was attacked by Israel.
Israel is supposedly using precision missiles. So this was deliberate targeting of that area, an open area from which no rockets had been fired and where children regularly play. If Booth believes that rockets fired from the general area somehow justify Israel’s missile strikes on the children (and if not, why mention it?), then why the hell is he staying in the al-Deira hotel, which is presumably as likely to be hit as the harbour where the children play?
There is also something unpleasant in his style of writing here. Note this line as the injured children are brought to his hotel.
Two young terrified kids were bleeding and injured, and they were quickly bandaged on the floor of the terrace, where guests usually eat skewers of grilled chicken, suck on water pipes and watch the sun go down.
That incidental reference to the chicken and water pipes is added for colour. It’s a journalistic technique we use when there’s not much happening and you want to set a scene to draw the reader into the story. But here it’s entirely unnecessary. The action – the bleeding children and the dead bodies nearby – are what will draw the reader in, as any rookie journalist would know. So when I see Booth pausing from his description to talk about how the guests entertain themselves in the evenings, I sense – both as a journalist and a reader – that his attention is not fully on the events at hand.
I’d like to believe this is his way of responding to the shock of the events he’s just witnessed. But I suspect something else is at work here, something revealing about the business of journalism.
Most of the time, we write not for ourselves or our readers but for our editors – in short to keep our jobs. Here Booth was called on to stop being the careerist and connect with his humanity. That, rare though it is in journalism, was what the moment required: to see, really see the desperate, terrified little boys in front of him. Instead, all he could think about was technique and what his editors might want.
Health crisis looms in Gaza after Israel bombs water infrastructure
By Ahmed Hadi | Al-Akhbar | July 17, 2014
To either prepare for a ground invasion or to simply to make life for Gazans harsher than it already is, Israel decided to bomb the wells that provide tens of thousands of people in Gaza with water. It has also targeted sewage plants, which means clean water is not coming in and sewage water is not going out.
Bassem Siam carried two plastic gallons as he left his home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza, ignoring the intense bombardment and the continued Israeli military flights. He went to his neighbors who happen to have a small supply of drinking water to get a sip of water for himself and his family and to help his wife wash the dishes that have accumulated in the kitchen because water has been cut off for two days. The 30-something-year-old man held the two gallons tightly to his chest and returned home quickly as Israeli planes bombed farm land near his home. When he entered the building where he lives, he exhaled deeply, having survived the devastating missile shrapnel.
Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza live under the threat of water scarcity due to the fact that Israeli fighter jets bombed wells that provide water to several residential areas in the Gaza Strip. Municipalities in charge of these wells believe that the Israeli targeting of wells is motivated by a decision to destroy the infrastructure in Gaza and to undermine the people’s ability to remain steadfast.
Israeli planes targeted a well located in al-Nasr neighborhood, west of the city of Gaza, which provides water to about 20,000 people and the Ali well in al-Zaitoun area, south of the city, which provides water to about 7,000 people. In addition, three main water lines that feed al-Shujaiya and al-Sabra neighborhoods and provide about 21,000 people with water were also hit.
This targeting appears to be systematic and its obvious objective is to deprive people of water, the single most important element of daily life, especially during the month of Ramadan.
According to the head of the water facilities at the Gaza municipality, Saad al-Din Atbash, it is very difficult to repair the destroyed wells amidst the ongoing violence. Not to mention that the cost for each well to start working again at the same capacity it was working before is $120,000. “In addition, the cost of repairing the three water lines that were damaged is about $6,000 for each line,” he added.
In light of the ongoing war and siege of Gaza, it is hard for the municipality to repair these wells and water lines, Atbash confirmed. He also noted that the electric cables which operate the well pumps that feed the industrial area to the east of Gaza city (known as Karni) have been burned. These pumps provide water to about 5,000 people. He confirmed that the crews working in the field have repaired what can be repaired in order to distribute water again, even if on an intermittent basis. He warned, however, that these crews are working in unsafe conditions because the Israeli military targets emergency work crews.
Gazans are starting to complain about the water shortages that last for days at a time, forcing some of them to fill up their home water tanks with desalinated water to use for drinking, cooking, washing and cleaning. The problem, however, is that the distributors of desalinated water were directly targeted more than once during the 2008 Israeli war on Gaza. Not to mention the additional cost of buying desalinated water which doubles people’s water bills. In addition, several purification water plants announced their inability to provide services to residents, especially to those living in border areas.
Fadi Omran, one of the desalinated water distributors, tells Al-Akhbar : “We can’t risk our lives and go out in the evening. We are trying to work during the day but we don’t have enough time to meet the needs of all the people.” Omran, who drives a huge truck, explained that the Israelis do not differentiate between civilians and Resistance fighters, “they target any moving object at night.” He said that fear for their lives forces them to delay delivering their customers’ orders. In addition to the fact that his plant works only when there is electricity.
This situation prompted the director of the water department in the Gaza municipality to call on people to ration their water consumption “until the damaged water pipes and water wells are repaired.” He also called on international organizations to intervene in order to prevent Israel from bombing the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
On the evening of July 12, Israeli warplanes targeted a vehicle that belongs to the non-governmental Coastal Municipalities Water Utility near its well located to the west of Rafah in southern Gaza. The bombing killed a 42-year-old employee called Ziad al-Shawi, destroyed his car completely and seriously injured two of his colleagues.
Because of this incident, the general director of the utility, Monzer Shiblak, announced the complete suspension of work at the field water utility after the targeting of its staff, “despite the existing coordination with the Israeli side. The suspension will continue until proper field protection is provided for the employees.” At the same time, he expressed commitment to see his utility persist in its vital duties towards the public and in carrying out its water and sanitation services to the best of its ability.
During a press conference, Shiblak called on international humanitarian organizations, especially the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to assume their responsibilities and take action to protect the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility and pressure the Israeli side to stop targeting their crews and the municipalities’ crews.
According to observers, warnings have been issued regarding the consequences of subjecting Palestinians in Gaza to health and environmental catastrophes as a result of the Israeli bombing of sewage pump no. 1. This pump services the area to the west of the city of Gaza and treats about 15,000 cubic meters of waste-water per day, thus protecting about 200,000 of the city’s residents from the potential harm of untreated sewage water.
Israeli Airstrikes Kill 24 Palestinians on Wednesday, Including 6 Children
Children crying for their friends killed on a Gaza beach (image from Joe Catron – Twitter)
IMEMC | July 17, 2014
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Israeli airstrikes and naval and artillery strikes have killed 24 Palestinians on Wednesday, most of whom are civilians.
One Israeli airstrike targeted a civilian car, killing two adults and a child, all from the same family.
In Khan Younis, At approximately 01:00 on Wednesday, 16 July 2014, an Israeli drone fired a missile at the vicinity of ‘Asqalan School in al-Fakhari area in the southeast of Khan Yunis, killing:
1. Farid Mahmoud Abu-Doqqa, 33, Khan Younis.
Three other members of the same family were killed in a separate airstrike, also in Khan Younis. They were riding in a clearly-marked civilian taxi when the taxi was targeted by an aerial missile and blown to pieces. The family members killed in the attack are:
2. Omar Ramadan Abu Doqqa, 24, Khan Younis.
Omar’s little brother:
3. Ibrahim Ramadan Abu Doqqa, 10, Khan Younis.
And their grandmother:
4. Khadra Al-Abed Salama Abu Doqqa, 65, Khan Younis.
The family had been visiting an injured relative at Shifa Hospital, and were on their way home when their taxi was targeted by an Israeli missile. Five others were injured in that attack.
Also in Khan Younis, at approximately 03:00, an Israeli drone fired a missile at
5. Mohammed Tayseer Yousef Shurrab, 23
He was targeted when he was on his way back home in Gizan Abu Rashwan area in the southeast of Khan Yunis. He was instantly killed.
At approximately 06:40, Israeli drones fired 2 missiles at a house belonging to Muneer Abu Hatab in Khan Yunis refugee camp. The house was damaged.
In Rafah, in the early hours of Wednesday, July 16, 2014, an Israeli airstrike killed a Palestinian civilian in Shabura camp:
6. Ashraf Khalil Abu Shanab, 33, Rafah.
An Israeli airstrike around the same time targeted the Abu Audah family home in Rafah, killing two:
7. Mohammad Ismael Abu Odah, 27, Rafah.
8. Mohammad Abdullah Zahouq, 23, Rafah.
Four others were injured in that attack.
In a separate airstrike in Rafah, a Palestinian man associated with the Islamic Jihad was killed (he was not engaged in any hostilities at the time of his assassination):
9. Mohammad Sabri ad-Debari, Rafah.
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, between 22:00 on Tuesday until 08:15 on Wednesday, 16 July 2014, Israeli warplanes bombarded and destroyed 7 houses in Gaza City:
1 house belonging to Sami Hashem in Tal al-Hawa neighborhood; 1 house belonging to the heirs of Nabeel Shabet in al-Tuffah neighborhood; 1 house belonging to Mahmoud ‘Atallah in al-Ghefari area; 1 house belonging to Mahmoud al-Zahhr, a leader of Hamas, 1 house in al-Sabra neighborhood belonging to Na’im al-Harazinin al-Zaytoun neighborhood; 1 house belonging to Tayseer al-‘Ashi in al-Remal neighborhood; and 1 house belonging to ‘Adnan Killab in al-Shati refugee camp.
Israeli warplanes bombarded 2 flats in Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, as well: a minaret of a mosque in al-Shati refugee camp, a building of the Ministry of Interior and al-Wafaa’ Hospital, which Israeli forces ordered its evacuation.
On Wednesday morning, a Palestinian man died from injuries sustained when a missile struck his car in Rafah before midnight.
10. Ahmad al-Nawajha
Midday on Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza beach killed four children between the ages of 9 and 11 – IMEMC has a full report on this killing in a separate article
The children killed are:
11. Ahed Atef Bakr, 10, Gaza beach.
12. Zakariya Ahed Bakr, 10, Gaza beach.
13. Mohammad Ramiz Bakr, 11, Gaza beach.
14. Ismail Mahmoud Bakr, 9, Gaza beach.
Later on Wednesday afternoon, a Missile fired by a reconnaissance aircraft in west of Gaza, in the Sheikh ‘Ejleen region of Gaza City killed:
15. Mohammad Kamel Abdul-Rahman, 30, Sheikh ‘Ejleen, Gaza City.
A Palestinian died Wednesday afternoon of wounds sustained in earlier airstrikes:
16.Husam Shamlakh, 23, Sheikh ‘Ejleen, Gaza City.
died of wounds sustained in a previous attack on a house in west Gaza/ Sheikh ‘Ejleen:
Four people were killed, including two small children and an elderly woman, and three others injured, when Israeli fire targeted them near the al-Katiba mosque west of Khan Younis. They were all members of the same family:
17.Usama Mahmoud Al-Astal, 6, Khan Younis .
18. Yasmin al-Astal, 4, Khan Younis.
19. Hussein Abdul-Nasser al-Astal, 23, Khan Younis.
20. Kawthar al-Astal, 70, Khan Younis.
Airstrikes continued throughout Wednesday afternoon and evening, killing:
21. Kamal Mohammad Abu ‘Amer, 38, Khan Younis.
22.Akram Mohammad Abu ‘Amer, 38, Khan Younis. (brother of Kamal, injured in same incident, then later same day died of his injuries)
23. Abdul-Rahman Ibrahim Khalil as-Sarhi, 37, Gaza City.
Also on Wednesday,
24. Hamza Raed Thary, 6
died of wounds he sustained in an airstrike several days ago in Jabalia.
From ‘God’s Wrath’ to ‘Protective Edge’: Israel’s Four-Decade-Long Assault on Palestine
By Derek Ide | The Hampton Institute | July 16, 2014
In Beirut on July 8, 1972, thirty-six year old Ghassan Kanafani entered into his Volkswagen for the last time. The prolific writer and editor of Al Hadaf (“The Goal”) was headed to the newspaper’s office. His seventeen year old niece Lamis Najm was with him. Not long before, he had penned these words to her:
“Dearest: You are rising now, while we start to fall. Our role is almost complete. The role of this generation was the shortest for any generation in history. We live in crucial times for the history of humanity and people are divided between participants and spectators… The battle is harsh and human capacity cannot tolerate this much. I, young one, chose not to be a spectator. It means that I chose to live the crucial moments of our history, no matter how short…”[1]
It was around 11 a.m. that Saturday when the explosion occurred, judging from the watch later found on what remained of Lamis’ hand.[2] Kanafani was a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the heart of the left-wing secular opposition to Israel. He was a noncombatant, and although pictures of Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara adorned his office, he never personally picked up a gun against his Zionist enemies, despite having every right to resist the ongoing occupation by whatever means necessary. Yet, he still became a victim of Israeli terror.
The car bomb attached to Kanafani’s vehicle killed him and his teenage niece on July 8, 1972. The assassination was part of a secret operation known as God’s Wrath. The plan, carried out under the tutelage of Prime Minister Golda Meir, was intended to murder leading militants and officials within the Palestinian resistance movement carried out by Israel’s “Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations,” more commonly known as Mossad.
Operation God’s Wrath was a covert operation that utilized methods, such as car bombs, akin to what Arundhati Roy once referred to as the “privatization of war.”[3] Forty-two years later, to the day, after the car bomb killed Ghassan and Lamis, the terrorist state of Israel began a new public operation of a different sort. On Tuesday, July 8, 2014 Israel unleashed Operation Protective Edge onto Gaza, a much more hasbara-friendly initiative. This spectacle of sheer force – conventional terrorism, it might be called – had indiscriminately slaughtered nearly 200 Palestinians within the span of one week.[4] Seven days in and Israel’s casualties had reached a stunning zero.
Unlike the names of the three Israeli teenage settlers who were kidnapped and murdered not long before Operation Protective Edge was initiated, the names of the 192 victims of Israeli aggression have not yet been plastered on the front pages of every newspaper or the headlines on every television set. Sa’ad Mahmoud al-Hajj was 17, the same age as Kanafani’s niece Lamis, was murdered along with seven members of his family when an Israeli bomb destroyed their home in Khan Younis. Sa’ad’s brother Tarek, age 18, and his sister Fatima, age 12, died with him. Ziad Maher al-Najjar, 17 years old, was also killed in Khan Younis days later. 17-year-old Anas Youssef Kandil was murdered by Israeli terror in Jabalia, and 17-year-old Mohammed Isam al-Batash was killed in Gaza city. 10-year-old Bassim Salim Kawareh, 11-year-old Maryam Atieh Mohammed al-Arja, 12-year-old Qassi Isam al-Batash, all victims of this most recent terrorist attack. These names may not find their way onto the pages or television screens of major news outlets in the west, where Palestinian blood has always been worth less than Israeli blood, but they, along with all the other names of victims of Israeli barbarity, should grace the lips and enter the hearts of those engaged in the struggle for a free Palestine.
Thus, forty-two years after the terrorist state martyred Kanafani, its reign of terror continues. The world is a different place from 1972, however, and the voice of worldwide opposition is growing. Just as the movement against apartheid South Africa took decades to build, so did the opposition to the settler-terrorist state of Israel. Today, however, the movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), put forward by Palestinian civil society in 2005, is growing at an even more rapid pace than did its predecessor. Across US campuses, student governments have passed resolutions calling for divestment, and victories in the name of a free Palestine have been on the rise.[5] While the puppet Arab leaders, sheikhs and Israeli pawns wring their hands, donate a pittance of their enormous wealth to clean up the aftermath, and send fighters off to die in Iraq or Syria, they cannot be the face of the Palestinian resistance.
As Ghassan Kanafani explained: “If we are failed defenders of the cause, it is better to change the defenders, not to change the cause.” Since his time, the defenders have changed more than once, but Kanafani’s cause lives on. For those of us who live outside the “harsh battle,” we too should “chose not to be a spectator.” Let us, like Kanafani, “chose to live the crucial moments of our history” and contribute to the struggle for a free Palestine. For those of us who face no imminent threat of retaliation, no fear of bombs dropping onto our homes while we eat with our families, no chance of a car bomb detonating as we head to our offices, it should not only be our choice, but our obligation, our duty, to support the movement to boycott and divest from the terrorist state of Israel. As Alice Walker, who refused an Israeli publisher’s offer to publish “The Color Purple,” once said, “Activism is my rent for living on this planet.” Indeed, when it comes to Palestine, it is time for Americans to pay some rent.
Notes
White House Spokesperson Insists Obama Is The Most Transparent President In History, Because… Visitor Logs!
By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | Jul 15, 2014
The rather astoundingly named Josh Earnest is the recently appointed press secretary of President Obama, and he’s kicked off his tenure with quite a whopper: insisting that, despite complaints from basically every corner, President Obama really is “the most transparent President in history.” As you may recall, President Obama promised upon election that he would be “the most open and transparent” President, and one of his first orders of business in the White House was to promise the same.
Of course, as many folks have been documenting for years, the reality has been anything but. The Obama administration has been ridiculously secretive for years, when it comes to FOIA requests, literally setting records in denying them. The NYT’s former executive editor, who has covered many administrations, has directly noted that the Obama administration was the most secretive she could recall. Even federal judges have regularly dinged the administration for refusing to hand over documents required by law. As Stephen Colbert has noted, the administration is really only good at the most transparent bullshit legally allowed.
In fact, just as Mr. Earnest was insisting that the Obama administration was so damn transparent, Mother Jones had a good article about how often the Obama administration was making use of the “state secrets privilege” to get lawsuits tossed out, such as in various no fly list challenges. In 2008, then candidate Obama insisted that the use of the state secrets privilege by the government was dangerous. But, now that he’s in charge, he’s quick to use it himself:
In 2008, Obama griped that the Bush administration invoked the state secrets privilege “more than any other previous administration” and used it to get entire lawsuits thrown out of court. Critics noted that deploying the state secrets privilege allowed the Bush administration to shut down cases that might have revealed government misconduct or caused embarrassment, including those regarding constitutionally dubious warrantless wiretapping and the CIA’s kidnapping and torture of Khaled el-Masri, a German car salesman the government had mistaken for an alleged Al Qaeda leader with the same name. After Obama took office, his attorney general, Eric Holder, promised to significantly limit the use of this controversial legal doctrine. Holder vowed never to use it to “conceal violations of the law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency of the United States Government.”
Despite this promise, Obama continued to assert the privilege to squelch cases about Bush-era abuses. In one instance, the Justice Department scuttled a lawsuit brought by a man who claimed he had been kidnapped by the CIA and had his penis and testicles cut with a scalpel in a Moroccan prison. And now Obama is broadening the use of this legal maneuver: In the past 18 months, the Obama administration has twice cited state secrets to prevent federal courts from considering lawsuits challenging its use of the no-fly list.
So, given all this evidence that the Obama administration is incredibly secretive, what could Earnest’s reasoning possibly be? Well, you see, President Obama has released his visitor logs at the White House. Because, you know, that’s what everyone really means when they talk about White House transparency.
Earnest noted that previous administrations had “gone to the Supreme Court” to prevent the release of White House visitor information, but that the Obama administration “releases it voluntarily on the Internet on a quarterly basis.”
“Reporters for years clamored to get access to fundraisers the president hosted or attended that were hosted in private homes,” Earnest continued. “Reporters now have access to those when this president goes to a private home.”
So, the President has made a few tiny concessions to transparency on issues that really don’t matter at all, but has doubled down on secrecy on the things that do actually matter.
Sure, I know that the Press Secretary’s job is to basically cover for the President and do whatever possible to defend the White House’s claims, no matter how bogus, but wouldn’t the world be better off if there were actually a tiny bit of honesty from such folks? They could admit that they’ve tried and failed. They could say that transparency promises seemed easier from the outside, but turned out to be more difficult in reality. They could admit that it’s still a work in progress. Any of those would at least acknowledge reality. Pretending reality isn’t reality doesn’t convince anyone. In fact, it just appears to be yet another example of the very non-transparency that everyone’s complaining about in the first place.
E. Ukraine open to ‘any dialogue’, wants to stop war ASAP – opposition leader
RT | July 16, 2014
A local resident near a house destroyed in the Ukrainian army’s artillery attack on Lugansk.(RIA Novosti / Mikhail Voskresenskiy)
Eastern Ukraine leaders want to stop war as soon as possible and are open to any dialogue, Donetsk People’s Republic PM Aleksandr Boroday said. He denied that they “ignored” a video conference with the Kiev side and mediators as reported by the OSCE.
Earlier on Wednesday one of Donetsk People’s Republic’s Vice Premiers reached an agreement with the OSCE mission about consultations via video link to be held on July 17, he added.
“I hope that they [consultations] will really take place. The format of these consultations we will discuss tonight [Wednesday night],” Aleksandr Boroday told Rossiya-1 TV channel.
“Literally an hour ago one of the representatives of our government, vice-PM Andrey Purgin, visited the OSCE mission and reached an agreement to hold this kind of consultation, not negotiations, I stress, tomorrow, possibly, in a videoconference format,” Boroday said.
Purgin has confirmed to Rossiya-24 TV that the talks will take place on Thursday. He said that he is going to represent Donestk region and Aleksey Koryakin, Chairman of the Supreme Council, will be taking part on behalf of Lugansk region.
Earlier, on July 15, the OSCE said that a video conference, involving opposition and the contact group, scheduled for that day “did not materialize”. The organization voiced concerns “about the fact that since June 27 [second round of trilateral consultations], no such consultations have taken place.”
Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic Alexander Boroday.(RIA Novosti / Mikhail Voskresenskiy)
The Trilateral Contact Group involves senior representatives of Ukraine, the Russian Federation and OSCE members.
However, leaders of Lugansk and Donetsk say that they were not informed about the consultations and only learned about it from the OSCE’s statement that post factum accused them of ignoring the conference.
“We are really open to any kind of dialogue. Yes, we have significant military success, but with all that we really want to stop the war as soon as possible,” Boroday said.
But Boroday claims that Kiev has made no attempt to organize talks or consultations with the opposition in the east.
“OSCE representatives, some journalists and public men called me – everyone wanted to know when those consultations would take place,” he says. “But, actually, there were no attempts from Kiev to [organize] talks or consultations. I personally called Mr. Medvedchuk [leader of “Ukrainian Choice” political organization] and asked if there were going to be any kind of consultations. He said he was himself reading about that in newspapers.”
On June 27, the second round of trilateral consultations on implementing Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s plan to restore peace to Ukraine’s south eastern regions took place.
The second round of consultations, followed the similar meeting between Ukrainian, Russian and OSCE representatives in Donetsk on June 23, when peaceful settlement of the conflict was discussed. The meeting was also attended by the former president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma and aimed at defining stages of a peace plan.
‘Shells were chasing them’: Four Palestinian children killed on beach by Israeli rockets
RT | July 16, 2014
Four Palestinian children were killed by rockets while playing football on Gaza beach, with local officials saying the attack came from an Israeli gunboat. Dozens of international journalists witnessed the tragedy.
“This is a cowardly crime,” said Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry.
The children have been named as Ahed Atef Bakr and Zakaria Ahed Bakr, both aged 10, Mohamed Ramez Bakr, 11, and Ismael Mohamed Bakr, 9, and another boy remains in critical condition. All the victims were relatives.
“The kids were playing football on the beach,” Ahmed Abu Hassera, who witnessed the explosions along with dozens of foreign journalists located nearby, told Reuters. “When the first shell hit the land, they ran away but another shell hit them all. It looked as if the shells were chasing them.”
“We live by the coast. There was a headline on the news that four children were injured … so we went looking for the kids and we could not find them, so we came here to the hospital to look for them and we found them all, including my son … oh my God,” a man who introduced himself as the father of Zakaria, told NBC.
The Israeli Defense Forces have denied targeting the children, who came from the family of a fisherman whose shack on the beach was decimated by the strike.
“We do not target civilians, we target Hamas terrorists,” IDF representative Peter Lerner told RT.
“I have seen the footage of the incident, and indeed it does look tragic, and we will have to look into the circumstances.”
The strike brought the total of Palestinians killed by the Israeli counter-offensive to 214.
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Provoking a Path to Persia
The Saban Center’s prescient paper on war with Iran
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | October 20, 2011
In June 2009, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy published “Which Path to Persia?—Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran.” Writing in a tone strikingly reminiscent of the Project for a New American Century’s infamous pre-9/11 paper “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the six co-authors noted that, “It seems highly unlikely that the United States would mount an invasion without any provocation or other buildup.” For a think tank specifically established by media mogul Haim Saban to protect Israel, this could prove to be a formidable obstacle impeding their desired march—of U.S. troops—to Tehran.
“In fact, if the United States were to decide that to garner greater international support, galvanize U.S. domestic support, and/or provide a legal justification for an invasion, it would be best to wait for an Iranian provocation, then the time frame for an invasion might stretch out indefinitely,” Saban’s think-tankers ruefully observed.
“With only one real exception, since the 1978 revolution, the Islamic Republic has never willingly provoked an American military response, although it certainly has taken actions that could have done so if Washington had been looking for a fight. Thus it is not impossible that Tehran might take some action that would justify an American invasion. And it is certainly the case that if Washington sought such a provocation, it could take actions that might make it more likely that Tehran would do so (although being too obvious about this could nullify the provocation). However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocative move, which Iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all.”
Seemingly undeterred by Iran’s frustrating unwillingness to provide the requisite provocation, the analysts continued to examine this option… continue
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