By Thomas L. Knapp | Garrison Center | August 2, 2019
America, John Quincy Adams said in 1821, “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” That’s as good a summary ever spoken of the non-interventionist position.
US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) disagrees. He opposes President Trump’s quest for a peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan as “reckless and dangerous,” entailing “severe risk to the homeland.”
Nearly 18 years into the US occupation of Afghanistan, at a cost of trillions of dollars, more than 4,000 Americans dead and more than 20,000 wounded, Graham and his fellow hawks clearly aren’t really looking for monsters to destroy. They want those monsters alive and at large, to justify both their own general misrule and the perpetual flow of American blood and treasure into foreign soil (read: into the bank accounts of US “defense” contractors).
The US invasion of Afghanistan was never militarily necessary. The Taliban offered to hand over Osama bin Laden upon presentation of evidence that he was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, an offer President George W. Bush arrogantly declined in favor of war.
The extended US occupation of, and “nation-building” project in, Afghanistan, was even less justifiable. Instead of relentlessly pursuing the supposed mission of apprehending bin Laden and liquidating al Qaeda, US forces focused on toppling the Taliban, installing a puppet regime, and setting themselves to the impossible task of turning Kabul into Kokomo.
It hasn’t worked. It’s not working now. It’s not going to start working. Ever. It should never have been attempted. Afghans don’t want Lindsey Graham running their affairs any more than you want him running yours. Can you blame them after as many as 360,000 Afghan civilian deaths?
Afghanistan is not and never has been a military threat to the United States, let alone the kind of existential threat that would justify 18 years of war. Yesterday isn’t soon enough to bring this fiasco to an end. But Graham and company would, given their way, drag it out forever.
They’re the kind of grifters H.L. Mencken had in mind when he noted that “[t]he whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” But they’d rather keep old hobgoblins alive than have to manufacture new ones.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org)
Sputnik | August 2, 2019
MOSCOW – Russia is urging the United States and European countries to withdraw forces from Syria, but can see the increase in their military presence there instead, Russian Special Presidential Envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said Friday.
“We are always calling on the United States and other — European — countries, whose troops are also illegally in Syria, to leave this sovereign state. Nevertheless, they are still justifying it by the need to fight Daesh* and other terrorist groups”, Lavrentyev said at a press conference.
The Russian presidential envoy stressed that these countries were in reality pursuing their own agenda.
“So far we have not been able to convince them to withdraw forces. Despite the words of [US President Donald] Trump that US forces would be pulled out, we can see, on the contrary, the increase in these forces, partly because of the presence of private military companies”, the envoy said.
The number of US troops in Syria has been declining since US President Donald Trump claimed victory over the jihadists in December, promising to withdraw at least 2,000 troops from the country in the near future.
US forces have been operating in Syria as part of an international coalition to fight the Daesh terrorist organisation for about four years without the permission of either Damascus or the UN Security Council.
Sputnik – August 1, 2019
2020 presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard has skyrocketed to No. 1 in Google Trends after blasting the current US administration’s “warmongering” foreign policy during the second Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday.
Democratic House Representative for Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard has blasted the Trump administration for pushing the United States closer to the “brink of nuclear catastrophe” since relations with a number of nuclear armed countries have dramatically escalated in the past few months.
“Donald Trump and warmongering politicians in Washington have failed us. They continue to escalate tensions with other nuclear armed countries like Russia and China, and North Korea, starting a new Cold War, pushing us closer and closer to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. Now as we stand here tonight, there are thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at us… As president, I will end this insanity”, she added.
Following her speech, Gabbard took the number one spot in Google Trends, becoming the most searched Democratic candidate on the platform.
‘Trump Betrayed US on Afghanistan Pullout’
Speaking at the second Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday, she also accused the US president of betraying the American people by failing to deliver on his promise to quickly withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
Gabbard pledged to pull out all American forces from Afghanistan if elected president next year and end the 18-year war in the country:
“The leadership I will bring to do the right thing to bring our troops home within the first year in office. We have to do the right thing and end the wasteful regime change wars and bring our troops home. Every single month we are spending $4 billion on a continuing war in Afghanistan, $4 billion dollars every single month, rather than ending that war, bringing our troops home and using those precious resources into serving the needs of the people here in this country.”
The Iraq War veteran cited the example of the 2003 conflict, which broke out after the George W. Bush administration falsely claimed that Baghdad produced weapons of mass destruction.
“We were all lied to. This is the betrayal. The problem is that this current president continues to betray us”, she added.
Gabbard’s comments follow an interview by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Economic Club of Washington President David Rubenstein in which he emphasised that President Trump had ordered to “end the endless wars, draw down, reduce” the number of US troops stationed in Afghanistan before the 2020 elections.
Pompeo as well noted that he was hoping for a positive outcome of US negotiations with the Taliban, an Islamic insurgent movement, the Afghan government and opposition groups inside the country that will result in a peace agreement to put an end to the 18-year war.
President Trump has long expressed a desire to pull out American troops from Afghanistan, saying that the future reductions in US forces would be tied to progress in peace talks. In June POTUS indicated that the US was “doing fine” there and will soon see its soldiers halved to 8,000.
“As you know in Afghanistan, when I got there, it was 16,000 people. It’s now 9,000 people. And some good things are happening there frankly. No, I’d like to get out of the Middle East, we should have never been in the Middle East. We should have never been there, and I’d like to get out”, he told Time magazine.
Back in February, The New York Times reported that a Defence Department proposal for the peace talks with the Taliban stipulated that all American troops – an estimated 14,000 – be withdrawn in the next three to five years along with the rest of the international forces in the country.
The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on American soil and overthrew the Taliban, which seized power in the Central Asian country in 1996. At the time, Washington said that Kabul had become a safe haven for al-Qaeda while the Taliban was in power.
Most US troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but a relatively small contingent has continued to support the Afghan Armed Forces in combating terrorism.
By Andrew Korybko | Eurasia Future | 2019-07-30
A Military Deployment For Political Ends
The indigenous population of Indian-occupied Kashmir is becoming seriously concerned that New Delhi is preparing to rescind Article 35A ahead of the country’s upcoming independence day celebrations next month following the planned deployment of 20,000 more paramilitary forces to the region. The aforementioned provision bars non-residents from purchasing property there, which was thought at the time to be a clever tactic for quelling pro-independence unrest following India’s occupation of the formerly independent country. Popular international political commentator and former Indian diplomat Melkulangara Bhadrakumar, however, revealed in a recent op-ed curiously published just a few days before the phased deployment began that “the Modi government plans to integrate J&K by divesting or eroding some of its so-called ‘special status’”, hinting that there might be some credence to the locals’ concerns given that such a well-connected individual as Mr. Bhadrakumar himself thought it fitting to publicly make his “reasonable guess” at such a coincidental time.
No Comparison To China
Should this scenario come to pass, then it could dangerously lead to the disruptive large-scale influx of foreigners along the lines of Ivy League scholar Kelly M. Greenhill’s “Weapons of Mass Migration” model whereby demographic changes in a targeted area are triggered and/or manipulated by certain actors for strategic ends. The Indian government no doubt considers occupied Kashmir to be what it terms as an “integral part of the country” despite its internationally disputed status and previous UNSC Resolutions being passed in the past demanding that the locals be allowed to hold a plebiscite on their political status, which is why it would frame events as a “purely internal matter” and might even provocatively attempt to draw comparisons to the situations in China’s Tibet and Xinjiang Autonomous Regions in order to deflect criticism (though doing so might also counterproductively provoke its own separate criticism from other quarters). Such a comparison would be very deceptive, however, since both Chinese regions are universally recognized components of the People’s Republic whereas Kashmir isn’t regarded the same way vis-a-vis India.
The Khalistan Factor
This means that the large-scale movement of Han and other Chinese from elsewhere in the People’s Republic to Tibet and Xinjiang is by legal definition a purely internal matter, whereas the large-scale movement of Indians to Kashmir is a purely international one because of the region’s UN-recognized status as a disputed territory. India’s motivations in curtailing some of Kashmir’s “autonomy” at this specific moment might also stem from the increasingly popular Khalistan movement in neighboring Punjab, which has revived interest in the revolutionary 1973 Anandpur Sahib Resolution‘s decentralization principles and could eventually form the core of an alternative national vision to the ruling Hindutva one. It could partially be because of those fast-moving developments that the Indian government is panicking and wants to gradually remove as much of the occupied Kashmiris’ “autonomy” as possible in order to preempt the scenario of the other minority-majority regions under its control demanding similar rights as well after becoming reacquainted with the aforementioned manifesto and realizing that there’s no reason why they can’t have their own special status too.
A Dangerous Mistake
As the Modi government has been prone to do over the past half-decade, this speculated policy would represent yet another massive mistake if it’s ever implemented. Not only has the planned military deployment already generated intense talk about occupied Kashmir’s “autonomy” — thus negating the possible purpose of keeping such discourse out of the national discussion following the revival of the Khalistan movement — but it could also lead to more forceful resistance from the locals who fear an impending demographic invasion of ‘Weapons of Mass Migration”. Modi clearly wants to deliver on his party’s recent election promise to eliminate Articles 370 and 35A granting “autonomy” to Kashmir and the right to residents to be the sole purchasers of property in the occupied region respectively, but the blind devotion to electioneering rhetoric could prove to be extremely dangerous in this context because of the high likelihood that it’ll backfire by drawing intense international condemnation and possibly even provoking uncontrollable violence.
RT | July 29, 2019
US-trained saboteurs are being sent from Al-Tanf to other parts of Syria to try to destabilize the situation, Col. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy, chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff, said on Monday. A ‘major armed unit’ of Jaish Magawir al-Saura militants is being trained in the 55km zone surrounding the Al-Tanf base, he said.
Almost 2,700 militants are being trained in the US-controlled Al-Tanf zone for activities including the destruction of the oil and gas infrastructure and conducting terrorist attacks against Syrian government forces, RIA Novosti quoted Rudskoy as saying at the Defense Ministry.
He said that some of these militants are being transferred by US Air Force helicopters to the trans-Euphrates region.
In November last year, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said that Moscow has information about the US military training militants in the Al-Tanf region. The big US military base is adjacent to the borders of Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, and is close to the highway connecting Baghdad with Damascus.
RT | July 26, 2019
A unit of German multinational Siemens has been awarded an $829 million contract from the Pentagon “for energy savings and performance measures” at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
According to a statement by the US Department of Defense, the work to be performed provides for the construction, operations and maintenance of energy conservation measures to improve energy efficiency and reliability.
That includes heating, ventilation and air conditioning upgrades, lighting upgrades, commercial refrigeration upgrades, distributed generation, renewable energy photovoltaic for both demand and supply sides, energy storage, power control, supervisory control and data acquisition, water retrofits and wastewater.
Work is expected to be completed by April 2043, the Pentagon said.
“No funds will be obligated with this award, as private financing obtained by the contractor will be used for the 31-month construction (i.e. implementation) phase of the project.”
According to the report, eight proposals were received for the task order. It specified that the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center, Port Hueneme, California, is the contracting activity for the task order.
The Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Golden, Colorado, is the contracting activity for the basic contract.
The US naval base in Guantanamo Bay is also known for its notorious prison, which has been widely criticized for violations of human rights. Established in 2002, it is known for indefinite detention without trial and numerous tortures which have led to scores of suicides and unsuccessful suicide attempts by detainees.
MEMO | July 24, 2019
US Special Representative for International Negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, has said that the creation of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem is an “aspiration not a right”.
Speaking at the United Nations Security Council yesterday, Greenblatt said that while “it is true that the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] and the Palestinian Authority [PA] continue to assert that East Jerusalem must be a capital for the Palestinians, […] let’s remember, an aspiration is not a right.”
Greenblatt also shunned international law as the foundation of any future peace agreement: “We have all heard cogent arguments claiming international law says one thing or another about this or that aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some of those arguments are persuasive, at least to certain audiences. But none of them are conclusive.”
“There is no judge, jury, or court in the world [to which] that the parties involved have agreed to give jurisdiction in order to decide whose interpretations are correct,” he added.
International law considers East Jerusalem occupied territory after it was captured by Israel during the 1967 War; it likewise does not recognised Israel’s annexation of the city in 1980.
The top US envoy also appeared to rule out international consensus, which has long worked on the premise of dividing or sharing Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and a future Palestinian state.
“If a so-called international consensus had been able to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would have done so decades ago. It didn’t,” he quipped.
Greenblatt’s comments will be seen as yet more evidence that the administration of US President Donald Trump does not intend to fulfil Palestinian rights in Jerusalem.
Since President Trump announced his recognition of the Holy City as Israel’s capital in December 2017 and moved the US embassy there in May 2018, any such prospect has grown increasingly distant.
This was compounded by rumours surrounding the so-called “deal of the century”, which Greenblatt has spearheaded alongside Senior Advisor to the President and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Last month a senior Israeli source told Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon that under the “deal of the century” Abu Dis – a neighbourhood of Jerusalem located beyond Israel’s Separation Wall in the occupied West Bank – would be the Palestinian capital.
Other leaks have suggested that, under the deal, Jerusalem is to be shared by Israel and “New Palestine”, a new state created in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip (minus the vast swathes of land on which Israel’s illegal settlements now sit, which would become part of Israel). Under this alleged agreement, Israel would maintain general control of “shared” Jerusalem.
Exactly when the political elements of the “deal of the century” will be revealed is not yet clear. Though the economic aspects were unveiled at the “Peace to Prosperity” conference in Bahraini capital Manama last month, the second half of the deal has been repeatedly delayed; a number of excuses have been provided, including “political instability” in Israel as a result of repeat elections and religious holidays.
Questions have been raised as to whether the political part of the deal will be unveiled at all, given the proximity of the 2020 US elections in which President Trump will seek re-election. Greenblatt told the Security Council yesterday that the president has still not decided when to release the plans’ political portion, adding only that “we hope to make that decision soon”.
The broad rejection of the deal both by Palestinian factions and Israel, as well a lack of support from key figures in the US – most notably Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – is suspected to be a key factor behind the repeated delays.
See also:
US’ Greenblatt: ‘Israel is victim in conflict with Palestinians’
MEMO | July 18, 2019
The US Special Representative for International Negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, has said that Israel is the “victim” in its conflict with the Palestinians and that he “cannot think of single instances” when Israel made a mistake.
In an interview aired yesterday by US broadcaster PBS, Greenblatt was asked what responsibility Israel bears for its now 71-year-old conflict with the Palestinians. The US envoy replied:
I think that Israel is actually more the victim than the party that’s responsible. From the moment of its formation, they were attacked multiple times. They continue to be attacked with terrorism. So — I’m not sure I understand the premise of the question.
He added that he “cannot think of single instances” in which Israel made a mistake or overstepped its authority, saying: “I think that they’re trying their best to succeed. They have actually succeeded in many ways, especially economically, under very, very trying circumstances.”
Greenblatt also doubled down on previous comments in which he argued Israel’s illegal settlements should be referred to as “neighbourhoods and cities”, saying that the term “settlements” is “pejorative”.
On the occupied West Bank – where over 500 illegal settlements are located – and the besieged Gaza Strip, the envoy said: “I would argue that the land is disputed. It needs to be resolved in the context of direct negotiations between the parties. Calling it occupied territory does not help resolve the conflict.”
Under international law, both the West Bank and Gaza Strip remain classified as occupied territories.
Greenblatt’s comments are the latest in a series of controversial remarks that have drawn fierce criticism and rebuke of the US envoy.
Earlier this month, Greenblatt came under fire after criticising the Palestinian Authority (PA) for failing to provide adequate funds for a Palestinian child’s blood cancer medication. This came after Gaza-based Palestinian journalist Fathi Sabbah accused PA Prime Minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, and Ahmed Abu Houli, a member of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), of reneging on promises to assist with his daughter Rima’s treatment.
This prompted Greenblatt to write on Twitter: “Mr. Shtayyeh, how about keeping your word & paying for Rima’s treatment? The PA has the funds and it would be a wise and compassionate use of them. Mr. Sabbah, my thoughts are with you and your family. I pray Rima will have a full and speedy recovery.”
Twitter users – including Sabbah – were quick to point out the irony of Greenblatt blaming the PA for the family’s plight while ignoring Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip, regular refusal to grant exit visas for medical treatment, and the US’ almost-unconditional support for Israel.
The US envoy – who is one of the chief architects of the US’ long-awaited “deal of the century” – has also made a number of provocative claims about Israel’s policy in the occupied West Bank.
In June, Greenblatt stood behind comments made by US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, in which the latter stated Israel has “the right” to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.
Friedman told the New York Times that “under certain circumstances, I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank”, provoking international outcry and prompting the Palestinian Foreign Ministry to consider filing a complaint against the ambassador at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Greenblatt backed Friedman’s stance, saying: “I will let David’s comments stand for themselves. I think he said them elegantly and I support his comments.” For his part, Friedman has also refused to back down, since claiming he does “not understand why this issue was faced with such criticism. There is no scenario in which Israel is leaving the whole West Bank.”
His comments have been interpreted as an effort to normalise discussion of Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed ahead of the country’s April general election that he would annex the territory if he were re-elected.
Though the political elements of the “deal of the century” have not yet been unveiled, the plan is not expected to demand that Israel dismantle its West Bank settlements. Though the US has not yet changed its policy on annexation, the precedent set by President Donald Trump’s recognition of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as Israeli could pave the way for a similar move in the West Bank.
Press TV – July 17, 2019
An Israeli group with links to the regime’s secret service Mossad is seeking to seize an Iranian oil tanker and its cargo held by British troops off Gibraltar.
The supertanker tanker Grace I, capable of carrying two million barrels of oil, was seized on July 4 by a detachment of British Royal Marines, in what has been denounced as “piracy” by Iran.
Shurat Hadin, which wages “legal battles” on behalf of Israelis claiming victim to Palestinian attacks, is asking the supreme court of Gibraltar to grant an injunction to seize the vessel and its cargo, the UK’s Daily Express reported.
The group claims to be a “civil rights” organization, but its intimate links with Mossad were first exposed in 2013, when a US embassy cable was published by WikiLeaks.
In that classified document, the group’s director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner told US embassy staff that the group “took direction” from Israeli spy agencies, including Mossad.
In 2017, Shurat Hadin won a $178.5 million US court judgment against Iran and Syria in 2017 over the death of an American in Jerusalem al-Quds.
Darshan-Leitner told AFP that the vessel’s sale would not raise more than a fraction of the court’s award, but it could pave the way for the seizure of other Iranian assets.
Those assets have already been subject to a witch hunt by the Americans who have used US animosity toward the Islamic Republic to easily win lawsuits against Tehran in courts.
In 2016, the US Supreme Court ruled that about $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and other attacks.
Iran has denounced US attempts to expropriate its frozen assets as “highway robbery”.
A spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in London, quoted by the Express, denounced the latest attempt against Iran’s supertanker.
“The position is clear. The tanker has been seized illegally and should be released as soon as possible,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said Tuesday Iran would respond to Britain’s “piracy” as he called on London to immediately release the oil tanker.
“The malicious Britain commits piracy and steals our ship. They perpetrate a crime and give it a legal appearance,” the Leader said.
“The Islamic Republic and faithful elements of the establishment will not leave this evil deed unanswered and will respond to them at an appropriate time and place,” he added.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Saturday that Britain would facilitate the release the ship if Iran provided guarantees the vessel would not go to Syria.
Iranian officials have repeatedly denied the vessel is bound for Syria.
The struggle of Jawad Siyam perfectly illustrates the relentless oppression faced by all Palestinians
By Jonathon Cook | The National | July 14, 2019
Israeli police forced out the Siyam family from their home in the heart of occupied East Jerusalem last week, the final chapter in their 25-year legal battle against a powerful settler organisation.
The family’s defeat represented much more than just another eviction. It was intended to land a crushing blow against the hopes of some 20,000 Palestinians living in the shadow of the Old City walls and Al Aqsa mosque.
Dozens of families in the Silwan neighbourhood have endured the same fate as the Siyams, and the Israeli courts have approved the imminent eviction of many hundreds more Palestinians from the area.
But, unlike those families, the Siyams’ predicament briefly caught public attention. That was because one of them, Jawad Siyam, has become a figurehead of Silwan’s resistance efforts.
Mr Siyam, a social worker, has led the fight against Elad, a wealthy settler group that since the early 1990s has been slowly erasing Silwan’s Palestinian identity, in order to remake it as the City of David archeological park.
Mr Siyam has served as a spokesman, drawing attention to Silwan’s plight. He has also helped to organise the community, setting up youth and cultural centres to fortify Silwan’s identity and sense of purpose in the face of Israel’s relentless oppression.
However, the settlers of Elad want Silwan dismembered, not strengthened.
Elad’s mission is to strip away the Palestinian community to reveal crumbling relics beneath, which it claims are proof that King David founded his Israelite kingdom there 3,000 years ago.
The history and archeological rationalisations may be murky, but the political vision is clear. The Palestinians of Silwan are to be forced out like unwelcome squatters.
An Israeli human rights group, Peace Now, refers to plans for the City of David as “the transformation of Silwan into a Disneyland of the messianic extreme right wing”.
It is the most unequal fight imaginable – a story of David and Goliath, in which the giant fools the world into believing he is the underdog.
It has pitted Mr Siyam and other residents against not only the settlers, but the US and Israeli governments, the police and courts, archaeologists, planning authorities, national parks officials and unwitting tourists.
And, adding to their woes, Silwan’s residents are being forced to fight both above and below ground at the same time.
The walls and foundations of dozens of houses are cracking and sinking because the Israeli authorities have licensed Elad to flout normal safety regulations and excavate immediately below the community’s homes. Several families have had to be evacuated.
Late last month Elad flexed its muscles again, this time as it put the finishing touches to its latest touristic project: a tunnel under Silwan that reaches to the foot of Al Aqsa.
On Elad’s behalf, the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, and Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, wielded a sledgehammer to smash down a symbolic wall inaugurating the tunnel, which has been renamed the Pilgrimage Road.
Elad claims – though many archaeologists doubt it – that in Roman times the tunnel was a street used by Jews to ascend to a temple on the site where today stands the Islamic holy site of Al Aqsa.
The participation of the two US envoys in the ceremony offered further proof that Washington is tearing up the peacemaking rulebook, destroying any hope the Palestinians might once have had of an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Mr Friedman called the City of David complex – at the core of occupied Palestinian Jerusalem – “an essential component of the national heritage of the State of Israel”. Ending the occupation there would be “akin to America returning the Statue of Liberty”.
While Israel, backed by the US, smashes Silwan’s foundations, it is also dominating the sky above it.
Last month Israel’s highest planning body approved a cable car from Israeli territory in West Jerusalem into the centre of Silwan.
It will connect with the City of David and a network of boardwalks, coffee shops and touristic tunnels, such as like the Pilgrimage Road, all run by Elad settlers, to slice apart Silwan.
And to signal how the neighbourhood is being reinvented, the Israeli municipality enforcing the occupation in East Jerusalem recently named several of Silwan’s main streets after famous Jewish rabbis.
Former mayor Nir Barkat has said the goal of all this development is to bring 10 million tourists a year to Silwan, so that they “understand who is really the landlord in this city”.
Few outsiders appear to object. This month, the tourism website TripAdvisor was taken to task by Amnesty International for recommending the City of David as a top attraction in Jerusalem.
And now, Elad has felled the family of Jawad Siyam in a bid to crush the community’s spirits and remaining sense of defiance.
As it has with so many of Silwan’s homeowners, Elad waged a decades-long legal battle against the family to drain them of funds and stamina.
The Siyams’ fate was finally sealed last month when the Israeli courts extended the use of a 70-year-old, draconian piece of legislation, the Absentee Property Law, to Silwan.
The law was crafted specifically to steal the lands and homes of 750,000 Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948 by the new state of Israel.
Ownership of the Siyams’ home is shared between Jawad’s uncles and aunts, some of them classified by Israel as “absentees” because they now live abroad.
As a result, an Israeli official with the title Custodian of Absentee Property claimed ownership of sections of the house belonging to these relatives, and then, in violation of his obligations under international law, sold them on to Elad. Police strong-armed the family out last week.
To add insult to injury, the court also approved Elad seizing money raised via crowdfunding by more than 200 Israeli peace activists, with the aim of helping the Siyams with their legal costs.
Palestinians such as Jawad Siyam exist all over the occupied territories – men and women who have given Palestinians a sense of hope, commitment and steadfastness in the face of Israel’s machinery of dispossession.
When Israel targets Jawad Siyam, crushes his spirits, it sends an unmistakeable message not only to other Palestinians, but to the international community itself, that peace is not on its agenda.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
Aletho News 