ISRAELI AMBASSADOR ADMITS ROGUE OPERATIONS, SPYING AND WORSE
ROGUE ISRAELI-SOVIET SPY, JONATHAN POLLARD
ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES, MICHAEL OREN “WE DON’T SPY ON AMERICA, ROGUE ISRAELI GROUPS DID IT”
“…we’re talking about an event that was run by a rogue organization in the Israeli intelligence community” (Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren on the Jonathan Pollard spy case)
In a shocking revelation today, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren admitted that super-spy Johnathan Pollard, responsible for the murder of 100 CIA agents and the turnover of 360 square feet of vital intelligence to the Soviet Union wasn’t really working for Israel at all. In 1998, the government of Israel admitted that Jonathan Pollard was a spy for Israel, having stolen nearly every NATO defense plan needed to assure a Soviet victory in case of war. Israel claims that a defense agreement, not in evidence, makes any information held by the United States, found useful to Israel, no matter its security classification, property of the State of Israel. The Israeli news agency Haaretz quotes as follows:
“Israel’s ambassador to the United States on Monday said that convicted spy Jonathan Pollard was not working for Israeli government spymasters but for a rogue intelligence agency – apparently contradicting an official state position.”
In this instance, secrets meant to defend NATO from Soviet invasion were useful to Israel who traded them in order to get Jews released from Russia and allowed to immigrate to Israel. Israel contended that it was their inherent right to that information because they had a vital need for it. In that information, along with locations of all vital NATO nuclear facilities, were the names of all CIA operatives working behind the Iron Curtain and details on their contacts. After this information went to Israel, then to Russia, all involved, CIA handlers, agents and their families were murdered, the biggest intelligence disaster in American history.
As a result of the Pollard incident, a reminder of the slaughter of the crew of the USS Liberty in 1967, many members of the FBI, CIA and US military had become extremely resentful of Israel. The payment of $1 million to Pollard by the Israeli government in 2001, just prior to 9/11 and his status as Israel’s greatest living hero, was seen as proof of official sanction for his spying, sanction backed by the 1998 admission. Now, however, Ambassador Oren has announced this was simply cover for Israel’s embarrassment at its inability to control a massive rogue operation, not only of spies but special operations groups of every kind, working around the world but in no way, whatsoever, answerable to the Israeli government.
Thus, the suppression of Israeli involvement in the 9/11 attacks, including the arrests in New York of Israeli operatives as terrorists involved in the attack, and their subsequent release, can now be understood. As to what part this rogue organization that has misrepresented itself as government sanctioned, typically as Mossad, was involved in the planning of 9/11 is unclear other than their foreknowledge of the attacks.
Were Israeli’s warned in order to incriminate Israel? An examination of casualty figures for the 9/11 attacks shows a number of victims with Jewish names but no holders of Israeli passports, although many were employed in the World Trade Center, the largest group of foreign passport holders by far. Citizens of 57 countries perished on 9/11.
By far the foreign country with the largest loss of life was the United Kingdom, with 67 deaths (excluding the overseas territory of Bermuda). India had 41, South Korea had 28 and Canada and Japan had 24 each. Colombia had seventeen and Jamaica, Mexico and the Philippines had sixteen each. Australia and Germany had eleven each, while Italy had ten.
There is absolutely no evidence that a rogue intelligence operation had contacted Israeli passport holders or given out any warning at all. However, when the fact of the bizarre statistical anomaly in 9/11 casualties came to light immediately after the attack, news organizations universally misrepresented these facts, now in “public domain.”
COWBOY MANIACS, DESTROYING ISRAEL’S GOOD NAME
With the admission of a conspiracy, operating worldwide with one goal, the destabilization of the State of Israel, not by attacks on Israel but by attacks done in Israel’s name, we enter a new region in the analysis of security threats. Most serious, of course, is the door this opens regarding culpability for 9/11, something Israel has been increasingly subject to. Now it has become clear that the ties between groups that were involved in the proven demolition of Building 7 and the Israeli terrorists arrested by the NYPD in no way lead to the Israeli government. As to whether the companies owned by Israeli nationals whose catastrophic series of security failures on 9/11 contributed to the disaster are part of this terrorist ring is, in no way clearly established either.
A similar set of circumstances during the 2009 Christmas “crotch bombing” in Detroit may, however, bring into question the possibility of a pattern of conduct within this organization that Ambassador Oren has exposed.
It remains to be seen how many terrorist operations that have been tagged as Mossad can be tied to the group Oren refers to. Attempts to get details from the Israeli embassy in Washington on the make-up of these groups, whether they are Israeli nationals, Americans of Jewish heritage, former Mossad or IDF has not yielded results. Whether operations like the PKK attack on Turkey or the assassination of an Hamas agent in Dubai can be credit to this group remains to be seen.
Trial Delayed in New Fake Terror Case
By Carl Strock | Schenectady Gazette | June 22, 2010
We are in the middle of another manufactured-terrorism case, this one in Newburgh, and it was going very smoothly until last week, when the presiding federal judge postponed the scheduled trial indefinitely, ordering the government to turn over more evidence that might be helpful to the defense. The defendants are four petty criminals, three black Americans and one Haitian, all of whom converted to Islam in prison and upon their release took to frequenting a mosque in Newburgh.
They were recruited into a fake terrorist plot by the same wretch who a few years ago duped two Albany Muslims into an exchange of checks for cash that could be sold to a jury as money-laundering in support of terrorism.
The FBI is still working him. I had thought such efforts to create terrorists in order to arrest them was an artifact of the Bush administration, which seemed unable to distinguish between real enemies and imaginary, but I was wrong. Here we are with a new, supposedly more enlightened, president and it’s still going on.
The wretch is Shahed (or Shaheed) Hussain, a Pakistani who immigrated to this country in the early 1990s and soon began making his living in the Albany area by cheating on drivers license exams for immigrants who knew less English than he did. He was supposed to interpret for them but actually took their tests for them, for substantial fees.
He got caught and faced a string of felonies, to be followed by deportation, when the FBI got hold of him and put him to work in exchange for keeping him out of jail and allowing him to remain in this country. Undoubtedly a great boon to us all.
A miserable liar and cheat who couldn’t distinguish truth from falsehood even when he was under oath in the Albany trial of Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain and was trying his best to make a good impression.
In the Newburgh affair, he presented himself in a black Mercedes, and, in a script apparently much favored by the FBI, let on to have a great deal of money, which he was very free with. Also to be a radical jihadist, or at least in league with radical jihadists.
He recruited these disaffected petty drug dealers and misfits with promises of money and cars, according to the FBI’s own secret tape recordings, some of which have become public through court filings by the defense.
It took him a year to do it, but he did it. He got them to accompany him to the Air National Guard base at Stewart International Airport and take photographs, supposedly with a view to eventually shooting down airplanes with surface-to-air missiles.
He got them to plant what they thought were explosives at a synagogue and a Jewish community center in the Bronx.
There is no sign they would have done any of this on their own or even imagined doing it. Shahed Hussain, acting not as an informant as the government calls him but as an agent provocateur, coaxed them, urged them and bribed them.
“I told you I can make you $250,000, but you don’t want it, brother,” he said to his principal recruit, James Cromitie, a 45-year-old native of Brooklyn with 27 arrests on his record, when Cromitie showed reluctance.
At another point he told Cromitie he would pay lookouts $25,000 each, to which Cromitie responded, “If you can assure them that they gonna see that much money, they gonna go for it; They will do it for the money; they’re not even thinking about the cause.”
Cromitie dreamed of a new car. “You’re getting your car, brother — the Beamer,” Shahed Hussain told him.
A swell way for the government to protect us, no? Bribe some low-life ex-cons to participate in a fake plot and then arrest them on charges of terrorism and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. Possible sentence: life in prison.
After which Shahed Hussain will presumably ride off to his next slimy assignment, and the government will bask in glory for having blocked a terrorist attack.
Slimy?
“You should believe me, because I am your brother, I am your true brother,” he told Cromitie regarding the promise of a new car. “I love you to death, brother.”
Which is pretty much the approach he took when he was pressing money on Mohammed Hossain, owner of a hole-in-the-wall pizza shop on Central Avenue in Albany.
The difference: Back then his nomme de guerre was Malik; in Newburgh it was Maqsood.
I shouldn’t be so hard on him, maybe. He’s trying to save his skin. It’s the FBI that writes the script and puts him to work acting it, and it’s U.S. attorneys who prosecute these cases.
How dangerous would this Cromitie character have been in Newburgh without Shahed “Maqsood” Hussain to egg him on?
Apparently not very. The FBI agent running the operation, Robert Fuller (who also ran the celebrated Fort Dix operation), wrote to officials at Stewart Airport alerting them that Cromitie would be out there scouting for a possible attack site but assured them he would pose no danger without Hussain.
It was the revelation of a memo referring to that letter that prompted Judge Colleen McMahon last week to call a halt to the proceedings until the FBI produces all materials that might tend to exculpate the defendants, as the law requires.
She also noted that “the Government has retreated from its original position that the defendants had any connections to any international terrorist organization.”
At this point the legal-minded reader might be asking, isn’t the inducing of criminal activity forbidden? Isn’t it called entrapment, and isn’t it grounds for acquittal?
To which your legal correspondent answers, yes, it’s forbidden, yes, it’s called entrapment, and yes, it’s grounds for acquittal — except in cases of alleged Muslim terrorism, and then all rules are suspended. Not as a matter of law, of course, but as a practical matter.
I know this from the unhappy case of Aref and Hossain in Albany, who were equally induced to do things they would not have done otherwise and which they showed no previous inclination to do — like launder money, which they didn’t even understand — and yet are now serving 15-year prison terms.
The federal appeals court that reviewed their case dismissed the entrapment argument without rebuttal but just with a wave of the hand.
If a government agent cajoles an ordinary citizen into a robbing a bank who had never robbed a bank before nor shown any inclination to rob a bank, that citizen has a sturdy defense and can expect to be exonerated.
But if a government agent cajoles a Muslim man into participating in a terrorist plot, no matter how far-fetched, and no matter how little inclination the Muslim man had previously shown for such activity, that Muslim man is dead meat.
I wait to see if things turn out any differently in Newburgh. And I also wait to see what Shahed Hussain’s next assignment will be.
I hope it’s not me. My car is getting run down, and if he offered me a new Beamer, heaven knows what I would do.
Carl Strock can be reached at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
Copyright (c) 2010 The Daily Gazette Co. All Rights Reserved
And what of all the other deaths?
The decision to indict Staff Sgt. S. for killing two women during Cast Lead has caused a stir. But his lawyer will rightly ask, ‘Why him, and not all the others who killed civilians?’
By Amira Hass | Haaretz | June 21, 2010
Why was Staff Sgt. S., out of all the Israel Defense Forces’ soldiers and officers, chosen to stand trial for killing two women in the Gaza Strip on January 4, 2009, the first day of Israel’s ground incursion there? The IDF killed 34 armed men that same day. Was S. chosen because he was the only one who killed civilians?
Should his lawyer argue that he is being scapegoated, he can safely rely on the following statistics: The IDF also killed 80 other civilians that day – by close-range shooting, artillery fire, aerial fire and naval fire. Among them were six women and 29 children under the age of 16. Just go to B’Tselem’s website and read the list: a 7-year-old boy, a 1-year-old girl, another 1-year-old girl, a 3-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl.
B’Tselem is careful to differentiate between Palestinians who “took part in the hostilities” and Palestinians who “did not take part in the hostilities.” Its list of fatalities states: “Farah Amar Fuad al-Hilu, 1-year-old resident of Gaza City, killed on 04.01.2009 in Gaza City, by live ammunition. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed while she fled from her house with her family after her grandfather (Fuad al-Hilu, 62 ) was shot by soldiers who entered the house.” The grandfather also did not participate in hostilities.
Or perhaps S. was chosen because Riyeh Abu Hajaj, 64, and Majda Abu Hajaj, 37, a mother and daughter, were the only ones killed while carrying a white flag that January 4? No. Matar, 17, and Mohammed, 16, were also killed. They were shot from an IDF position in a nearby house as they pushed a cart carrying the wounded and dead of the Abu Halima family, who were hit by a white phosphorous bomb that penetrated their home in northern Beit Lahiya. Five members of the family were killed on the spot, including a 1-year-old girl. Another young woman would die of her injuries a few weeks later.
The news that Staff Sgt. S. would stand trial created something of a stir – for a day. The military advocate general was praised. So was B’Tselem, and rightly so, for giving the army testimony about the Abu Hajaj killings that its field investigators, Palestinian residents of Gaza, had gathered. Palestinian organizations gathered similar material, while Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both published detailed reports about slain civilians. Everything is accessible on their websites. But we in Israel do not believe the gentiles, so let us focus only on B’Tselem.
B’Tselem also gave the army dozens of statements about the killing of other civilians who “did not take part in the hostilities.” So why was Staff Sgt. S. chosen, rather than any of the others? Did someone from his unit violate the code of solidarity among soldiers for the sake of a higher code? This is indeed most likely to happen in the ground forces: All the witnesses who spoke to Breaking the Silence activists – i.e., those who were shaken by something that happened – came from the ground troops; they were the ones who saw the destruction, and the human beings, with their own eyes.
“The amount of destruction there was incomprehensible,” said one soldier. “You go through the neighborhoods there and you can’t identify anything. No stone is left unturned. You see rows of fields, hothouses, orchards, and it’s all in ruins. Everything is completely destroyed. You see a pink room with a poster of Barbie, and a shell that went through a meter and a half below it.”
But the breakdown of casualties shows that those killed by direct fire – where the soldier who shoots sees those he is shooting with his own eyes – are a tiny minority. At the request of Haaretz, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza analyzed the breakdown of casualties according to the type of fire. It found that 80 were killed by rifle fire, 13 by machine guns and 134 by artillery fire. It is unclear whether the 11 killed by flechette shells (shells filled with metal darts ) are or are not included in the latter figure.
Undoubtedly, these are estimates, with margins of error. Around 1,400 Palestinians were killed in Operation Cast Lead; at least 1,000 – most of them civilians – were killed from the air, by bombs dropped from planes or missiles fired from other airborne vehicles. To the soldiers responsible for the launches, they looked like characters prancing around on a computer screen.
B’Tselem and Haaretz, as well as the gentile organizations that need not be considered, all documented incidents of aerial killing. The IDF acknowledged two errors (the killing of 22 members of the a-Diya family in Zeitun with a single bomb, and the killing of seven people who were removing oxygen tanks from a metalworking shop, which on the computer screens looked like Grad missiles ).
“One characteristic of the recent IDF attack on Gaza is the large number of families that lost many members at one stroke, most of them in their homes, during Israeli bombings: Ba’alousha, Bannar, Sultan, Abu Halima, Salha, Barbakh, Shurrab, Abu Eisha, Ghayan, al-Najjar, Abed-Rabo, Azzam, Jebara, El Astel, Haddad, Quran, Nasser, al-Alul, Dib, Samouni,” Haaretz wrote in February 2009. Are there no sergeants involved in those cases who ought to be investigated? Or is it that in these cases, an investigation would have to target people of higher rank than a mere staff sergeant?
The disclosure that Staff Sgt. S. will be tried created something of a stir. The military advocate general won praise. But S.’s attorney will rightly ask: Out of all the testimonies and reports, he is the only one you found?
And what of the commanders’ attitudes, as described by those interviewed by Breaking the Silence: “When the company commander and the battalion commander tell you ‘yalla, shoot,’ soldiers will not restrain themselves. They wait for this day – to have the fun of shooting and feeling the power in your hands.” What of the battalion commander’s speech “the night before the ground incursion”: “He said that it’s not going to be easy. He defined the goals of the operation: 2,000 dead terrorists.”
And if this was the operation’s objective, perhaps we should investigate the supreme commander – Defense Minister Ehud Barak – about the gap between the objective and the result?
EU and Israel collaborate on cleaner, quiter and deadlier aircraft engines
David Cronin | IPS | 22 June 2010
BRUSSELS — European Union subsidies earmarked for reducing air travel’s contribution to climate change may help develop deadlier warplanes than those already found in the world’s arsenals, Brussels officials have admitted.
Some 1.6 billion euros ($2 billion) has been allocated to the EU’s Clean Sky project, which aims to develop aircraft engines that emit half as much carbon dioxide as those now in use. With the funding being divided between industry and the European taxpayer, plane and engine manufacturers have stated that the project underscores their eagerness to be more ecologically responsible.
Yet a closer look at the glossy brochures promoting the scientific research initiative reveals that the list of participants reads like a who’s who of major arms producers from Europe and further afield. These include Dassault, EADS, Safran, Israel Aerospace Industries, Saab and Westland Helicopters.
Under the terms of their involvement, individual companies may apply for patents on innovations realized during the course of their research. The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, says that there will be nothing to stop such firms from using the technology they develop for military purposes.
Rudolf Strohmeier, deputy head of the Commission’s scientific research department, said that having EU-funded engines inserted into warplanes is “something which you can’t really exclude from the outset” as such engines are “easily switched over” from civilian to military aircraft.
“If a military airplane uses this type of technology, then it will be greener,” he told IPS. “But to my knowledge, this [potential military applications] is definitely not the objective.”
The participation of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in the project has drawn criticism from some human rights advocates. This firm supplied many of the weapons used by Israel in its attacks on Gaza during late 2008 and early 2009. Even though it is not a fully-fledged member of the EU, Israel is a participant in its scientific research program and has proven more adept at drawing down grants than most of the Union’s own states.
An EU official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Israeli firms had recently asked the Commission to support a project explicitly focused on military aircraft but the request was turned down. While the source said that the EU’s research activities are nominally civilian, no guarantees can be given that their fruits will not have military applications. “The Israelis don’t play by the same rules as everybody else,” the source added.
Frank Slijper from the Dutch Campaign Against the Arms Trade said: “It is beyond my comprehension how Israeli arms companies get Brussels money for their research. This really is a very weird situation. As far as I know, IAI does very little civilian business, it is just an arms company. IAI has made a clear and direct contribution in the Middle East against the Palestinians and the Lebanese.”
As well as lowering their emissions of climate-changing gases, Clean Sky’s goals include the introduction of aircraft that consume less fuel and are less noisy. A project of this nature is bound to prove enticing for arms companies, Slijper added. “Mostly, they say it works the other way around: subsidies that go into European military aircraft research have a spin-off effect for civilian aircraft research work. But this could be an example where subsidies for environmental flying ultimately also benefit the military. The more silent aircraft are, the closer they can get to where they can pick their targets to bomb before anyone might notice.”
Eric Dautriat, who directs the team overseeing the implementation of Clean Sky, said “I don’t see what the problem is” with involving arms manufacturers, who will have “the same rules of participation” as the other firms and research institutes involved.
Due to be completed in 2017, Clean Sky is one of the largest research projects ever financed by the EU. Gareth Williams, a representative of Airbus, the French aviation firm, said that air traffic tends to double every 15 years and is likely to double once more in the coming 15 years. “With this growth in the sector, we must address the issues around emissions,” he told a conference held in Brussels 18 June… Full article
All rights reserved, IPS — Inter Press Service (2010).
Noam Chomsky’s Hypocrisy
By Ghali Hassan| June 20, 2010
“I don’t regard myself as a critic of Israel. I regard myself a supporter of Israel … I think the U.S. should continue to support Israel”. [1] – Noam Chomsky
The American linguist Noam Chomsky is often described by Western media as “arguably the world’s most influential intellectual today”. To his friends, Chomsky is a “relentless thorn” in U.S.-Israel Zionist policies. But reading between the lines of his repetitive and recycled propaganda, Chomsky is an opportunistic hypocrite.
On May 16 2010, Noam Chomsky was illegally denied entry to the Israel-Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank. Chomsky was scheduled to meet with members of the Palestinian Authority (PA), including the unelected U.S.-imposed and Israel-backed collaborationist “Prime Minister”, Salam Fayyad.
We know that the Israeli military controls all the borders of Israel-Occupied Palestinian Territories, and subjects Palestinians to prison-like living conditions. Thousands of Palestinians, pregnant women, the elderly, and the sick are denied free movement every day. While Chomsky failed to condemn this Israeli illegal behaviour, he could have entered via Tel Aviv (as he did many times in the past) and gone on to meet Salam Fayyad in Ramallah. Israel has since apologised to Chomsky.
In an interview with Democracy Now on May 17, 2010, Chomsky said:
“I was going to meet with the [unelected] Prime Minister. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. But his office called me here in Amman this morning, and we had a long discussion. He is pursuing policies, which, in my view, are quite sensible, policies of essentially developing facts on the ground. It’s almost – I think it’s probably a conscious imitation of the early Zionist policies, establishing facts on the ground and hoping that the political forms that follow will be determined by them. And the policies sound to me like sensible and sound ones. The question, of course, is whether – the extent to which Israel and the United States, which is a determining, factor – the extent to which they’ll permit them to be implemented. But if implemented, and if, of course, Israel and the United States would terminate their systematic effort to separate Gaza from the West Bank, which is quite illegal, if that continues, yes, it could turn into a viable Palestinian state.”
Noam Chomsky sounds like Shimon Peres.
Chomsky’s argument does not withstand the slightest scrutiny. How could Chomsky, who claims to defend the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, be prepared to meet with an unelected stooge of a Vichy-like collaborationist regime? To present Fayyad as a saviour for the Palestinian people is to ignore his despicable record of collaboration with the criminal oppressors of the Palestinians.
The PA is a corrupt administration and has no significant support among the Palestinian population. Its security apparatus is a brutal militia acting to enforce the Occupation on behalf of Israel. Fayyad was a U.S. servant at the World Bank from 1987 to 1995 and remains so in a different capacity. He is known in Israel as “the Palestinian Ben-Gurion”. David Ben-Gurion – a criminal Zionist much admired by Noam Chomsky as a “great statesman” – was the architect of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes and lands in 1948. This period of Palestinian history has come to be known as al-Nakbah (Arabic for ‘The Catastrophe’) which was, according to Chomsky, a “war of independence”. More than 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes, thousands of defenceless Palestinians were murder in countless cold-blooded massacred by Jewish terrorists, and more than 500 villages were destroyed. The same continues today.
Chomsky is said to be “encouraged” by Fayyad’s recent ranting that “the birth of a Palestinian state will be celebrated as a day of joy by the entire community of nations … it will come around August 2011”. It is a repackaged Camp David proposal, which was concocted in 2000 by Bill Clinton and his Zionist handlers and courageously rejected by the late Yasser Arafat. According to Fayyad, the new state will:
- recognise Israel as a Jewish “biblical country”;
- allow Israel to build Jewish colonies ‘within the valleys and hills of the West Bank’;
- suppress – using U.S.-trained and Israeli-approved Palestinian militias (Keith Dayton-trained death squads) – all forms of resistance to Israel’s Zionist colonisation of Palestine; and
- relinquish the Palestinian people’s right of return to their homes from which they were ethnically cleansed in 1948.
The so-called “two-state” solution, which Chomsky supports, is a Zionist fraud. It has been around for decades. Israel and the U.S. use this fraud to manipulate the world’s public opinion and to continue forcing more Palestinians out of their homes and land. Most of the Palestinian arable land and water resources have been stolen and colonised by illegal Jewish colonists (‘settlers’) from the U.S., Poland, and the former Soviet satellite states. The new Palestinian “state” will be just a collection of Nazi-like ghettoes similar to the South African Bantustan hemmed in by Jews-only highways and the Apartheid Wall. Like the “peace process”, the “two-state” solution enables Israel to stall for time and continues the ghettoization of the Palestinians.
The largest of these ghettoes, Gaza, is now complete. Gaza is a state of the art Concentration Camp. It has been under complete Israeli military blockade since 2006, essentially imprisoning 1.5 million men, women, and children, and denying them food, medicine, and essential materials for building their demolished homes. Even the pro-Israel Western humanitarian agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Amnesty International (AI), described the Israeli blockade is an illegal collective punishment , and an economic warfare aimed at terrorising the civilian population and toppling the democratically-elected administration of HAMAS. Even the Nazis wouldn’t resort to such wholesale brutality against 1.5 million innocent civilians. Instead of bragging about his meeting with Fayyad, Chomsky should call for an immediate and total end to the Israeli-imposed blockade and the withdrawal of the Israeli army and the illegal Jewish settlers from Palestinian lands.
For his support of the Palestinians, Chomsky opposes pressure to force Israel to behave according to international law and civilised norms. For example, Chomsky is against the peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Campaign against Israel. Chomsky believes the boycott will hurt Israelis. The Campaign is based on the international boycott campaign used to end South Africa’s Apartheid rule. The BDS Campaign is a call by Palestinian and international civil societies, human rights organisations, unions, and NGOs to boycott Israel and expose Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinians. The Campaign is calling upon people of conscience around the world to boycott Israeli products and Israeli institutions that are complicit on Israel’s brutal oppression and war crimes. Successive Israeli regimes have violated international law and committed more crimes against the Palestinians. Without international pressure, Israel will not end the Occupation.
The Campaign is part of peaceful international resistance to force Israel to end its Occupation of Palestinian land and end Israel’s apartheid system. Chomsky is against boycotting a state with a regime that is enforcing an apartheid system worse than that of South Africa. “Under Israeli military occupation, repression is worse than South Africa’s. It’s a sophisticated form of social, economic, political and racial discrimination, strangulation, and genocide, incorporating the worst elements of colonialism and apartheid as well as repressive dispossession, displacement and state terrorism to separate Palestinians from their land and heritage, deny them their rightful civil and human rights, and gradually remove or eliminate them altogether”, writes the American writer, Stephen Lendman. Chomsky’s objection to the Campaign only underlines the hypocrisy and doublespeak of his alleged support for the oppressed people of Palestine.
For all Israel’s crimes and flagrant violations of international law, Chomsky blames the U.S., precisely the White House and the President. Chomsky has no quarrel with the powerful U.S. Congress, where the Zionist Jewish Lobby (the ‘Lobby’) exerts complete control. Indeed, the U.S. Congress is far more pro-Israel than the Israeli Knesset. For example, the recent premeditated barbaric murder of at least nine defenceless humanitarian aid volunteers on board the Free Gaza-bounded Mavi Marmara Flotilla by Israeli commandos is unconditionally defended by U.S. Democrat and Republican congressional leaders as an act of “self-defence”, not an act of state terrorism. Chomsky rejects the role of the Lobby and Zionist Jewish Organisations controlling U.S. foreign policies, particularly in the Middle East. Chomsky argues fiercely that the U.S. supports Israel because of Israel’s strategic position (close to the oil-rich region) and is “a reliable pro-Western military force protecting Arab dictators”. This argument is flawed and its aim is to deflect attention away from Israel and the Zionist Jewish organisations defending Israel’s terror. Credible research by respected scholars shows that Israel is unconditionally supported – financially, militarily, and politically – by the U.S. and European governments because of pressure from wealthy and powerful Zionist Jewish Organisations who are also in total control of nearly all mainstream media outlets, including the Internet, TV channels, and the print media. Indeed, Zionist control over the mainstream media is clearly demonstrated by the biased reporting through an Israel-Zionist lens [2, 3, & 4].
The U.S. does not need Israel to control the oil-rich region of the Middle East. For decades, the U.S. directly dominated the region through its massive military bases in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The U.S. does not need to pay Israel more than $3 billion a year in order to commit war crimes. It is true: Israel doesn’t act and commit crimes without the approval of its allies, particularly the U.S. government. They are accomplices to murder.
On Iran, Chomsky is very unclear. While he rightly argues that the U.S. and Israel are seriously threatening Iran, Chomsky has yet to show any evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Quoting Martin van Crevel, the Zionist military historian at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and adviser to the Israeli military, Chomsky argues that Iran is developing nuclear weapons to deter any U.S.-Israel aggression. If not, the Iranians “are crazy”. There is absolutely no evidence that Iran is enriching uranium for military use. Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. The rest is anti-Muslim Zionist warmongering propaganda. Iran has broken no agreement and is fulfilling all its obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The real violator is Israel which stands in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and IAEA safeguards obligations. To date, Israel is refusing to open its nuclear facilities for inspection and threatening to use nuclear weapons against Iran.
Furthermore, Chomsky’s attack on the Iranian Government is unjustified. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the choice of the majority of the Iranian people (3-1), according to an analysis of multiple polls of the Iranian public conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). [5] Like most Western “Leftists”, Chomsky believes the elections were rigged and supports the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who was complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity at the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. Chomsky’s reliance on anti-Muslim propaganda organs, such as the BBC, FOX News and CNN shows that he is a propagandist.
Given Chomsky’s defence of freedom and democratic principles, it was ironic that in 2005 Chomsky and his leftist friends supported the U.S.-staged fraudulent elections in Iraq to install a puppet government as “democratic” and “worthy of praise”. If people like Chomsky fail to condemn fraudulent elections staged by foreign military occupation, then the U.S. will continue to manipulate democracy to serve U.S. imperialist interest. He called the murderous Occupation “incompetence” and attacked the Iraqi Resistance as a “violent insurgency”. It is sad that Chomsky, a leading critic of U.S. imperialism and injustice, could have ignored U.S. imperialist motives.
Furthermore, according to Chomsky, Iraq has become ‘an incubator or a university for advanced training for terrorists’. Where is the evidence? And since when is legitimate resistance to illegal aggression called terrorism? Instead, Chomsky and his leftist friends should condemn the Occupation and demand the immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. troops and mercenaries from Iraq.
It is important to remember that while Chomsky protested against the criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq, he later justified the illegal invasion on the basis that it has “removed” not only Saddam Hussein but also the genocidal sanctions. Seven years after the criminal U.S. invasion, Iraq is far worse today than under Saddam Hussein and the genocidal sanctions. An entire nation has been deliberately destroyed. More than 1.5 million Iraqis have been killed and at least 5 millions Iraqis are refugees, including 2.7 million internally displaced Iraqis. According to the U.S. think-tank, the Brookings Institute, only 20 per cent of the Iraqi population have access to proper sanitation, 45 per cent to clean water, 50 per cent to more than 12 hours a day of electricity, 50 per cent to adequate housing, and 30 per cent to health services. A quarter of Iraq’s population is living in extreme poverty. Iraq remains under murderous U.S. military Occupation. The motive remains conspicuous; defending the Zionist state of Israel and enforcing long-lasting imperialist-Zionist control of the region.
It is important to acknowledge that despite Chomsky’s contradictions, he is a respected scholar. In addition to his contribution to the field of linguistics, Chomsky has on many occasions provided useful analyses of U.S. terrorism, propaganda, and U.S. imperialist foreign policy. However, his contradictions are not possible to redress.
As a scholar, Chomsky has admitted that all intellectuals (including Chomsky himself) are propagandists who serve power by manipulating the public. “Chomsky feeds our need for truth by providing analysis, an intellectual framework that resides in inaction. [He] feeds the false notion that one can understand the world and one’s place in it and oneself by reading books”, writes Denis Rancourt, a former professor of Physics at the University of Ottawa.
Finally, in an opinion poll conducted by the European Union Commission in Brussels between 8 and 16 October 2003 (published in the El Pais and the International Herald Tribune newspapers), a majority of 7,500 Europeans polled from 15 European Union countries (500 citizens from each EU member) said that Israel posed the most serious threat to regional and international peace, ahead of North Korea, Iran, and Afghanistan. The poll proved to be accurate. On 02 March 2010, Martin van Crevel, the Zionist military historian and adviser to the Israeli army, told the Western media: “We [Jews] possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force … The Palestinians should all be deported … The people [Israeli Jews] who strive for this are waiting only for the right man and the right time. Two years ago only 7 or 8 percent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago [January 2010] it was 33 percent and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent”. The comment shows that Israeli Zionists and those who defend their crimes lack morality and respect for international law.
How can any progressive-minded person support a state that was built on the ruins of Palestinian villages, genocide, and dispossession? How can anyone support a state that openly espouses a racist and fascist ideology and is in flagrant violation of international law and civilised norms?
“I don’t think there is one moral person in the world that supports what Israel stands for”, said Ilan Pappé, a Haifa-born Jewish history scholar at the University of Exeter in the UK and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. It is not unfair to describe Chomsky as the most influential pro-Israel propagandist.
Notes:
- ? Noam Chomsky interviewed in Israel
- John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt, The Israel lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy , Middle East Policy . 13(3),29-87, 2006 ;
- James Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States , Clarity Press, 2006;
- M. Shahid Alam, Chomsky on Oil and the Israel Lobby , Dissident Voice , 31 January, 2009.
- Steven Kull, Clay Ramsay, Stephen Weber & Evan Lewis, An Analysis of multiple polls of Iranian Public , The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), WorldPublicOpinion.org, Washington DC, February 2010.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
American Military Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan Now Exceed 500,000
Pentagon fudges the numbers
18 June 2010 | by Matthew Nasuti | Kabul Press
Since 2001, the Pentagon has sought to downplay overall U.S. military losses by artfully redefining what is a combat-related “casualty.” It has published and then changed the rules several times regarding the reporting of casualties. Currently the Pentagon uses DoD Instruction 1300.18 to arbitrarily separate out “wounded in action” from non-battle injuries. Wounded in action is narrowly defined to essentially be an injury directly caused by an adversary. So called “friendly fire” injuries and deaths would apparently not be counted. The emphasis is on acute injuries caused by enemy munitions which pierce or penetrate.
Under this scheme, chronic injuries and many acute internal injuries such as hearing impairment, back injuries, mild traumatic brain injuries, mental health problems and a host of diseases suffered by personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are usually not counted as being war-related regardless of how debilitating they are. They are either generally lumped into the category of “non-hostile wounded” or simply not counted at all.
Officially, the Pentagon admits that approximately 5,500 troops have been killed and only 38,000 wounded, amounting to 43,500 total casualties. What is left out (according to such sources as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the New England Journal of Medicine and the U.S. Navy) are:
– 170,000+ cases of hearing damage;
– 130,000+ cases of mild traumatic brain injuries; and
– 200,000+ cases of serious mental health problems.
If these data are included, the total well exceeds 500,000. Even that total would not include:
– over 30,000 serious disease cases, including a disfiguring, parasitic disease called leishmaniasis, which results from bites of sand flies;
– hundreds of thousands of minor disease cases which can be generally characterized as gastrointestinal (i.e., resulting in diarrhea, headaches, stomach cramps etc.). They are all the result of bacterial, viral or parasitic infections which usually have limited, short-term consequences, but not always;
– hundreds of accident injuries. For example, roadway accident injuries suffered by members of a quick reaction force heading to an ambush location are apparently not counted as combat-related;
– thousands of cases of respiratory disease linked to exposure to toxic burn pit smoke;
– hundreds of suicides;
– thousands of cases of back, spinal and foot injuries due to the wearing of cheap and unnecessarily heavy body armor (when lighter titanium layered Kevlar is available).
In a March 25, 2009, report by Hannah Fischer of the U.S. Congressional Research Service on American military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, she included the following initial statement:
“This report presents difficult-to-find statistics regarding U.S. military casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OIF, Afghanistan), including those concerning medical evacuations, amputations, and the demographics of casualties. Some of these statistics are publicly available at the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) website, whereas others have been obtained through contact with experts at DOD.”
Casualty data should not be “difficult-to-find” for the U.S. Congress and especially for the American public. There is unquestionably a serious transparency problem within the Pentagon on this issue which problem should not exist in a democracy.
If the Pentagon told the truth to the American people about military casualties, the public would learn that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have been stunningly effective adversaries and that both wars seem more akin to defeats than victories. Such revelations might prompt a public discussion over the value of preemptive (and unnecessary wars) and even worse, raise the issue of the competence of Pentagon generals and admirals to wage such wars. To forestall such a public review, the Pentagon has opted to endorse the maxim that truth must remain the first casualty of war.
This two-part series examines the Pentagon’s policy towards and treatment of hearing injuries, brain injuries and mental health problems. This article begins the series and focuses on hearing injuries suffered by American troops.
Battlefield noise can be divided into two parts: continuous noise, and blast or impulse noise. Continuous noise can cause hearing damage over time is the levels are above 85 decibels. The American way of war seems to be inherently noisy. Its addiction to heavy armored vehicles and helicopters guarantees that troops are assaulted by a steady stream of noise. Under the Pentagon’s own studies, riding in a Bradley combat vehicle, at 15 miles per hour, will produce continuous noise of 115 decibels, which presents very serious health concerns to all personnel within the vehicle. While personnel are encouraged to wear hearing protection, such protection, even if worn, is not protective. The reason is that noise does not simply enter the body through the ear canal, but also enters the body cavity. There is extensive evidence that such exposures can lead to a variety of diseases, including vibroacoustic disease (VAB). VAB is a general category of organ and cardiovascular illnesses that can result from exposure to excessive noise.
The other type of noise is impact noise or sudden spikes in noise levels. These are caused by gunshots, explosions or even the sound of a hammer slamming into a nail. There is some disagreement regarding the danger levels for impulse noise. While experts within the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Diseases agree that any exposure to impulse noise at or above 140 decibels (even for a second) will cause some permanent hearing damage, many experts believe that the danger level is in fact 130 decibels and still others believe it to be as low as 120 decibels.
Some examples of impulse noise are:
– An American M-4 rifle will produce 157 decibels to the shooter;
– An American SAW rifle will produce 160 decibels;
– An American Javelin anti-tank weapon will produce 172 decibels;
– An American TOW missile will produce 180 decibels;
– An American light anti-tank weapon will produce 182 decibels; and
– An American 60 mm mortar will produce 185 decibels.
In order to protect one’s hearing while firing a 60 mm mortar, the operators must wear hearing protection that reduces (attenuates) the impulse noise by 46 decibels (if one believes the American Government) or up to 66 decibels if one wants to be completely safe. The problem for American troops is that the Pentagon does not provide hearing protection that will permit the safe operation of the 60 mm mortar, even though such protection is available.
In order to achieve a satisfactory level of hearing protection, soldiers must be outfitted with multiple layers of hearing protection, including hearing inserts which are custom-made for their ears (as every ear is slightly different). Companies, such as Westone, have experts who will create impressions of each soldier’s ears and will then custom manufacture devices for each of them but this author has found no evidence that the Pentagon has ever purchased these services or products. The U.S. Army’s inventory consists of CAE (combat arms earplugs) which are cheap and inadequate, and some better, but still inadequate, musicians’ earplugs, along with a variety of headset ear protection. Even if one combined the CAEs with a headset, it still would not provide adequate protection. This author has confirmed that American retailer Home Depot carries better hearing protection than most American troops are issued.
The Pentagon seems to be “nickel and dimming” (to use an American expression) its troops by purchasing cheap hearing protection. A package of 24 ear plugs costs the Pentagon $15.55, while musician’s ear pieces can cost $102.60 (according to the General Services Administration). Custom ear pieces can cost hundreds of dollars a pair and computerized headsets with built-in communications gear can cost over $1,000 a pair.
The January/February 2010, issue of “Hearing Loss Magazine” carried a story entitled “Hearing Loss — The Price of War.” That caption is misleading. While some hearing loss is inevitable during war (such as that suffered in a sudden ambush or due to a rocket attack on a Forward Operating Base or due to traumatic brain injury resulting from an IED strike), other hearing losses (such as resulting from firing at the range, operating heavy equipment, riding in a Bradley fighting vehicle or operating a mortar) are preventable. The attitude that hearing loss is natural and inevitable helps to explain why the Pentagon does not consider hearing damage resulting in a combat zone to be an injury or a casualty.
Hearing Loss Magazine reported on a survey that revealed that 28% of American soldiers returning from Iraq had diminished hearing. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has certified that over 90,000 veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have service-connected tinnitus (permanent ringing in the ears), with another 80,000 suffer actual hearing damage. This does not include those who have completely lost their hearing due to an IED explosion. VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) Magazine’s July 2006 issue reported on a U.S. Army study that found that 16% of soldiers surveyed had hearing loss so severe that it “would likely affect their performance in combat.” The test the Army used was one where a soldier with normal hearing could detect a weapon being cocked from 1,000 meters, while a soldier with degraded hearing could only hear such a sound from 46 meters.
These injuries, in many cases, were probably preventable, but these types of injuries are likely to continue because the Pentagon refuses to recognize that there is a problem. An Associated Press story from March 7, 2008, entitled: “Hearing Loss is Silent Epidemic in U.S. Troops” found the military hearing injury rate to be “staggering.”
The Pentagon’s refusal to acknowledge all the consequences of the decision to go to war (because of fear of repercussions), will not make these casualties go away. These casualties are real and are a direct result of fighting two wars. The soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who have suffered these combat injuries deserve to be recognized and the American people deserve a proper accounting of the mounting costs of their two seemingly endless wars. That accounting begins with an honest casualty count.
Copyright© Kabul Press
Flotilla Check: Facts and Israeli Lies
By Haitham Sabbah on June 18, 2010
Flouting international demands for an independent investigation of its deadly attack on a humanitarian aid flotilla in international waters, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formed an internal commission composed of three Israelis and two, non-voting international observers. The commission chair, retired Israeli Supreme Court justice Jacob Turkel, expressed his hope that the panel would finish its work as “quickly” as possible. And Netanyahu has promised that the “Gaza flotilla probe will show the world Israel acted lawfully.” Both comments leave many observers wondering how seriously the findings of a quick, internal investigation with a seemingly pre-determined outcome can be taken. Skepticism is heightened by the way in which Israel handled evidence of the incident and by what many see as its misinformation campaign designed to discredit the flotilla’s humanitarian aid workers.
How did Israel handle evidence of its deadly raid in international waters?
According to Australian journalist and flotilla passenger Paul McGeough, “The systematic attempt and very deliberate first priority for the Israeli soldiers as they came on the ships was to shut down the story, to confiscate all cameras, to shut down satellites, to smash the CCTV cameras that were on the Mavi Marmara, to make sure that nothing was going out. They were hellbent on controlling the story.”
After seizing all recordings of the event, Israeli authorities then began releasing highly-edited footage, including footage stolen from journalists and others on board the ships. The Committee to Protect Journalists denounced Israel’s use of stolen footage. And the Foreign Press Association in Israel, representing hundreds of foreign correspondents, called the use a “clear violation of journalistic ethics and unacceptable” and warned news outlets to “treat the material with appropriate caution.”
Israel claims its heavily-armed Navy commandos were “lynched” by the flotilla passengers and acted in self-defense. Do the facts support this claim?
CLAIM #1: The violence onboard the Mavi Marmara resulted from the surprising resistance the Israeli commandos encountered when they boarded the ship. According to an Israeli military spokesman, “We had in mind a sit-down, a linking of arms.”
IN FACT:
- Testimony from passengers confirms that Israeli commandoes began firing before boarding the ship. According to Al-Jazeera correspondent and Mavi Marmara passenger Jamal El Shayyal, “Commandos on board the choppers joined the firing, using live ammunition, before any of the soldiers had descended onto the ship. Two unarmed civilians were killed just meters away from me. Dozens of unarmed civilians were injured right before my eyes”
- An Israeli soldier’s testimony shows that “the commandos threw a number of stun grenades and fired warning shots before rappelling down onto the deck.”
- Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren acknowledged that Israel considered the Mavi Marmara to be “simply too large to stop by nonviolent means.”
- And Israel’s Maariv newspaper documented the significant planning that went into the raid, including the approval of the use of force by senior government officials well ahead of the incident.
CLAIM #2: “when IDF forces tried to quietly carry out their mission to stop the flotilla, they unfortunately met violence, including from firearms on deck of the ship that were used against IDF soldiers.” Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon
IN FACT: The IDF could provide no evidence of this claim. The boats and passengers were thoroughly searched before setting sail and were only cleared to sail because they were found to be free of weapons. IDF sources then changed their story claiming that firearms may have been thrown overboard. Mavi Marmara passengers confirm that firearms were in fact thrown overboard – firearms which passengers confiscated from the Israeli commandos in self defense. According to Swedish Mavi Marmara passenger and professor of religion Mattias Gardell, “An Uzi and a pistol were seized, emptied of ammunition and were thrown into the sea. We would by all means show that there was a peaceful campaign and that we did not have weapons….Then came the paratroopers in four helicopters and they shot sharply already from the time they were in the air.”
CLAIM #3: When Israeli soldiers boarded the ship “they were going to be killed and they had to act in self-defense” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
IN FACT:
- As a result of the IDF’s violence, which began prior to boarding the ship, nine passengers on the Mavi Marmara were killed, having been shot a total of 30 times. Five of the nine were shot in the head, some at close range, some from the back, and one, a 19 year old American citizen named Furkan Dogan, was shot in what can only be seen as execution-style: once in the chest and four times in the head from a range of less than 45 centimeters.
- Photographs from the incident show that, once they were disarmed, IDF soldiers had their wounds treated and were given water by passengers, further disproving the claim that they were intent on killing Israelis.
- The testimony of filmmaker Iara Lee who was onboard the Mavi Marmara shows that passengers called for medical help for the injured, “but [they] were ignored, and a lot of people who were injured actually ended up bleeding to death and died.” Her testimony is supported by other eyewitness accounts.
What other claims did Israel make that were then retracted or proven false?
“GO BACK TO AUSCHWITZ”
The Israeli military released what it claimed were audio transmissions of flotilla passengers responding to radio calls from the IDF by telling the soldiers to “go back to Auschwitz” and to quot;remember 9/11.”
IN FACT:
- Investigative journalists uncovered the fact that IDF had previously released what appeared to be identical video of the exchange between this Israeli sailor and the Mavi Marmara in which the only reply from the ship was “Negative, negative. Our destination is Gaza. Our destination is Gaza.”
- One of the individuals whose voice appears on the IDF’s tape, Huwaida Arraf, confirmed that she was not even on the Mavi Marmara, but on another ship altogether.
- The IDF then admitted that the audio transmission was edited and released what it claims was the full, unedited transmission. Though as New York Times reporter Robert Mackey points out, “since they are snippets of audio over a black screen, it is impossible to verify their authenticity.”
IHH LINKS TO TERROR
Israel claims that groups participating in the flotilla, particularly the Turkish aid group , Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH) “are non-governmental organizations that support terror and are affiliated with terror” and that the flotilla’s organizers “have close, longstanding ties with agents of international terror, international Islam, Hamas, Al-Qaeda and others.”
IN FACT:
- The Israeli government failed to provide evidence of individual claims of terrorist affiliations or intentions.
- The Israeli government edited its own websites to remove Al-Qaeda assertions after it could not substantiate claims that flotilla passengers had connections to Al-Qaeda.
- The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, a think tank with ties to Israel’s Defense Ministry, concluded that there is “no known evidence of current links between IHH and ‘global jihad elements.”
- Not only does the IHH not appear on the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, the group played an active role in delivering humanitarian aid to Haiti after the devastating January earthquake while the US military directed relief efforts there.
What about Israel’s claims regarding the humanitarian situation in Gaza?
Israel claims that it told the flotilla that if they docked in Ashdod, the Israeli government would “transfer their aid through the existing land crossings, in accordance with established procedures.”
Did the flotilla passengers have reason to doubt that Israel would in fact let the humanitarian aid enter Gaza?
Yes. According to a guide produced by the BBC, for much of the last three years, Gaza’s “1.5 million people have relied on less than a quarter of the volume of imported supplies they received in December 2005.” This falls far short of the minimum required to avoid malnutrition, poverty, and prevent or treat a variety of illnesses. According to Amnesty International’s recently-released annual report, the siege has resulted in “mass unemployment, extreme poverty, food insecurity and food price rises caused by shortages.”
Israel claims that “there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza“
Consider the following statistics:
- 61 percent of households face food insecurity, defined as inadequate physical, social or economic access to food, and rely on assistance from aid agencies. An additional 16.2 percent are considered vulnerable to food insecurity.
- 65 percent of the food insecure are children under the age of 18.
- Unemployment is at 40 percent.
- 10 percent of children under five are stunted (low height for age, usually attributed to a chronic lack of protein and micronutrients, including iron and essential vitamins), a steadily increasing trend over recent years, according to UNICEF.
- More than 10 percent of children are chronically malnourished, according to the World Health Organization, a significant increase since siege began.
- The number of children under five suffering from acute malnutrition nearly doubled between 2006 and 2008 from 1.4 to 2.4 percent, according to UNICEF.
- 65 percent of children aged 9-12 months, and 35 percent of pregnant women are anemic.
- According to a recent poverty survey conducted by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the number of Palestinian refugees completely unable to secure access to food and lacking the means to purchase even the most basic items, such as soap, school stationery and safe drinking water (‘abject poverty’) has tripled since the imposition of the blockade in June 2007.
Israel claims that its blockade of Gaza is in response to rockets fired into Israel.
- As documented by the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, “Beginning in September 2007, Israel openly stated that it would restrict the movement of goods into and out of Gaza not in order to protect against security threats stemming from the transfer, but rather as part of a policy to apply “pressure” or “sanctions” on the Hamas regime.” This amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s civilians, and as such is a violation of international humanitarian law (Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949). Further, as an occupying power, Israel is required under Articles 55, 59 and 60 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to ensure free, unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief and is prohibited from impeding the full realization of the occupied people’s human rights. Israel’s blockade impedes Gazans’ rights to food, to an adequate standard of living, to work, and to the highest attainable standard of health.
- Further, according to Amnesty International, Hamas upheld its end of the 2008 cease-fire and halted rockets, yet Israel did not respond by lowering the blockade on Gaza. The cease-fire had been “the single most important factor in reducing civilian casualties and attacks on civilians to the lowest level since the outbreak of the uprising (intifada) more than eight years ago. The ceasefire [had] brought enormous improvements in the quality of life in Sderot… However, nearby in the Gaza Strip the Israeli blockade remains in place and the population has so far seen few dividends from the ceasefire.”
- The cease-fire was unilaterally broken by Israel on November 4th, 2008 and led to an escalation of hostility and the eventual Operation Cast Lead.
- Those “22 days of death and destruction” resulted in the deaths of roughly 1,400 Palestinians, destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure, schools, and hospitals, and left its citizens in even greater humanitarian crisis than before.
- The items blockaded by the Israeli government at various times include “light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee, chocolate, nuts, shampoo and conditioner.” These items have no connection to Hamas rocket capacity and serve only to punish Gaza’s civilian population , half of which is comprised of children.
***
For more information on the legal issues surrounding Israel’s blockade of Gaza and attack on the flotilla: Israel’s Siege of Gaza and Attacks on the Humanitarian Aid Flotilla – Legal Background
For more information on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza: The Facts Behind Israel’s “Gourmet Gaza” Claims
Source: IMEU
Why Lithium Can’t Save Afghanistan
There will never be a “Saudi Arabia of lithium” anywhere
By Michael Reilly | Discovery News | June 15, 2010
Following the news Monday that geologists have found a mother lode of minerals in Afghanistan — reports argued deposits of iron, copper, gold and other goodies could collectively be worth close to $1 trillion — it’s worth asking a few extra questions.
In particular, there’s been an unusually strong focus on the lithium portion of the find. A key ingredient in high-tech batteries for laptops, smart phones, electric cars and the like, its been heralded as the future cornerstone of the world’s energy infrastructure.
But is lithium really going to save Afghanistan, as many media outlets seem to think? Nope, not even close.
In the words of Brian Jaskula, a lithium commodity expert with the United States Geological Survey, “We’ll be extracting lithium from the ocean before we’ll be extracting it from Afghanistan.” (Jaskula was not involved with the Afghanistan work.)
Extracting lithium from the ocean is a real thing, but it’s expensive. Instead, most lithium we use starts off dissolved in super-salty water underneath several feet of hard salt pan in Chile’s Salar de Atacama, one of the largest lithium producing regions on the planet. Argentina and Australia are also big producers of lithium.
Drilling for brines and then evaporating them in the arid desert air is the cheapest way to get the element, and it’s by far the most common. After that comes mining lithium-bearing minerals right out of granites. Until recently, sucking the element out of seawater, where it occurs in concentrations of just a few parts per million, was purely theoretical. But forecasts calling for steadily increasing prices have led South Korean interests to start building a factory to do just that.
According to Jaskula, South Korea’s decision is more than just a gamble on the market. “They want a steady supply of lithium, and they don’t want to have to rely on hostile countries for their supply, even if they have to pay a little more to get it,” he said.
Of course, no one anticipated the Pentagon’s recent announcement about Afghanistan; Jaskula was referring to Bolivia, whose Salar de Uyuni region contains vast stores of lithium. But the country has very little infrastructure for setting up a mining operation, not to mention a history of political unrest.
“And Afghanistan is a century behind Bolivia,” in terms of infrastructure, Jaskula said.
Then there’s the whole business of calling Afghanistan the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.” Turns out that’s not right either, for a number of reasons. […]
Even if the country does turn out to have vast stores of lithium, it will be almost certainly useless. There will never be a “Saudi Arabia of lithium” anywhere, according to Jaskula.
For one thing, the term “lithium batteries” is somewhat misleading. Lithium is a crucial ingredient, but it makes up just a tiny fraction — maybe 2-3 percent — of the weight and cost of the batteries. For another, lithium prices nosedived in 2009, and are expected to drop again this year (PDF; lithium currently goes for about $5,000 per ton). Why? Mostly because of the economic downturn, producers have piles of lithium they can’t get rid of.
Even if demand recovers, electric cars take off, and all of our wildest dreams about lithium-based battery technology come true, Jaskula said current suppliers would have no trouble meeting our needs through the next ten years.
What’s more, the lithium in batteries is recyclable. It’s just not profitable to do it now. Common wisdom among industry experts is that as prices rise, recycling programs will blossom. By 2030, the need for virgin lithium will cease to exist, replaced by a self-sustaining lithium loop… Full article
Copyright © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC.
Russia cancels S-300 delivery to Iran
Press TV – June 18, 2010
Russia says it is determined to maintain solid defense ties with Iran, despite its decision to cancel the delivery of the S-300 missile system to the Islamic Republic.
Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrey Denisov said Thursday that the country will continue to uphold its defense cooperation with Iran, but has no choice but to freeze the delivery of the S-300 air-defense missiles system to Iran “as it runs counter to the new round of UN Security Council sanctions on the country.”
He was referring to the UNSC session on June 9, in which 12 member states voted in favor of a US-drafted resolution to impose tougher sanctions against Iran.
“Moscow believes that article 1929 of the sanctions resolution clearly forbids the sale of the S-300 system to Iran,” Ria Novosti quoted Denisov as saying.
Under a contract signed in 2005, Russia was required to provide Iran with at least five S-300 air-defense systems, but the Kremlin has since oscillated between delivering the systems to Tehran and Washington’s demands for the deal to be scrapped altogether.
The truck-mounted S-300PMU1, codenamed the SA-20 by NATO, can detect and shoot down any aircraft within a 120 km (75 miles) range.
If delivered, military experts believe, the SA-20 would make Iranian nuclear sites “invincible” in the face of an attack, notably aerial saturation bombings of the sort that could be carried out by Israel.
‘Democracy’ Means the U.S. and Israel Approve
By Alex Kane on June 16, 2010
Thomas Friedman sure knows how to flip reality on its head. In his New York Times op-ed column today, Friedman hops on the bandwagon of bashing Turkey for “joining the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran resistance front against Israel.”
Friedman accuses Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan of no longer promoting democracy and instead being more focused on “praising Hamas instead of the more responsible Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which is actually building the foundations of a Palestinian state.” Friedman says of Erdogan:
I’d love to see him be the most popular leader on the Arab street, but not by being more radical than the Arab radicals and by catering to Hamas, but by being more of a democracy advocate than the undemocratic Arab leaders and mediating in a balanced way between all Palestinians and Israel. That is not where Erdogan is at, though, and it’s troubling.
Siding with the Palestinian Authority against Hamas would be a peculiar way of advocating for democracy in the Middle East, though. History lesson time: In the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Hamas categorically defeated Fatah in what former President Jimmy Carter called “free and fair” elections. The U.S., EU and Israel rejected those results, and after Fatah’s U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Hamas in Gaza failed, an “emergency government” composed of members of Fatah was installed. This “emergency government,” still in place to this day in the West Bank, was not democratically elected and consolidated its power illegally.
In Friedman’s alternate universe, the Turkish prime minister is not advocating for democracy because…he supports the democratically elected government in Palestine that Israel has been trying to overthrow by way of “economic warfare” instead of the unelected government approved by the United States.
The NYT and the Flotilla Inquiry
Another Compromised Reporter
By ALISON WEIR – June 16, 2010
The New York Times, whose regional bureau chief has a son in the Israeli military, reports that Israel has just appointed a panel charged with investigating its attack on an aid flotilla that killed nine aid volunteers, including a 19-year-old American.
Isabel Kershner, who is an Israeli citizen and has refused to answer questions about her possible family ties to the Israeli military, writes the report.
Kershner reports that the White House hailed the announcement of the panel as an “important step forward,” stating that “the structure and terms of reference of Israel’s proposed independent public commission can meet the standard of a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation.”
In her story, Kershner reports that the panel will include eminent Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Lord David Trimble as an observer, but omits the fact that Trimble is a leader of the newly formed pro-Israel organization “Friends of Israel” and is close to Netanyahu associate Dore Gold.
Irish journalist Patrick Roberts writes, “This is a little like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.”
Kershner reports that the other foreign observer is Brig. Gen. Ken Watkins, former judge advocate general of Canadian Forces, but fails to mention that Watkins is known for stonewalling a 2009 House of Commons investigation into Afghan prisoner abuse.
One House of Commons member commented at the time about Watkins’ lack of cooperation with the investigation: “Obviously the cover-up continues.”
Kershner informs readers that the panel will be led by a retired Israeli Supreme Court Justice, but fails to mention reports that he does not believe in such a panel and opposed foreign participation.
Kershner reports in the bottom half of her story that Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper calls the proposed panel a “farce,” but does not mention that this is a longstanding pattern for Israeli governmental investigations (and lack thereof) into military human rights abuses. For example:
° From 2001 through 2006 the Israeli State Attorney’s office received more than 500 complaints about abuse of interrogees. There was not a single criminal investigation.
° In 2005 Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released a report entitled “Israeli military grants impunity when soldiers kill Palestinian civilians,” finding that although Israeli soldiers had killed at least 1,694 Palestinian civilians, including 536 minors, only one soldier had been convicted of “causing the death of a Palestinian.”
° In 2009 eleven Israeli human rights organizations released a joint report in which they called on the Israeli government to “Stop whitewashing suspected crimes in Gaza.”
° In 2010 B’Tselem found that the Israeli military’s “cover-up of phosphorous shelling in Gaza proves army cannot investigate itself.” An Amnesty International report concurred in this conclusion, finding that Israel’s investigations into Cast Lead had not met “international standards of independence, impartiality, transparency, promptness and effectiveness.”
In her story Kershner reports Netanyahu’s allegation that the blockade “is necessary to prevent Hamas from smuggling in weapons or materials needed to make them, and to weaken Hamas control.” She goes on to acknowledge that “there is a growing consensus abroad that the blockade has taken a toll mainly on civilians,” but neglects to report the fact that Israeli closures of Gaza preceded the election of Hamas and that the “toll” is massive and calamitous.
She also fails to include any of the vast evidence for such a consensus, for example:
Nearly 99 percent of Gaza’s 4,000 fishermen are now considered either poor (making between $100 and $190 a month) or very poor (earning less than $100 a month); there are acute, sometimes lethal shortages of fuel, cash, cooking gas and other basic supplies; 98 percent of industrial operations have been shut down since 2007; and 3,500 families are still displaced from last year’s invasion due to Israel’s blockade on building materials.
Although the Israeli government has failed to investigate itself honestly and thoroughly through the years, a great many respected international human rights organizations from Christian Aid to the Red Cross have done so, documenting a pattern of widespread human rights abuses by the Israeli military.
In 2006 independent researchers Patrick O’Connor and Rachel Roberts found that since fall 2000:
“[T]hree of the leading human rights organizations focusing on Israel/Palestine – Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli organization B’Tselem – published 76 reports focused primarily on Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights, and four reports primarily focused on Palestinians abuses of Israeli or Palestinian rights. This weighting suggests that Israel has committed a disproportionate share of the human rights violations.”
During this time, the New York Times published two news stories on reports documenting Israeli human rights abuses and two stories on reports documenting Palestinian human rights abuses.
In other words, in its “even-handed” style, the New York Times covered fifty percent of the reports on human rights abuses committed by Palestinians, while covering under three percent of those detailing human abuses perpetrated by Israelis.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and a board member of the Council for the National Interest. She can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org
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Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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