The war Israel can’t win
By Paul Woodward on July 6, 2010
At The Daily Beast, historian Thaddeus Russell writes:
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the White House Tuesday, President Obama will have the chance to be the first American president since the founding of Israel to ask The Question.
The Question is never addressed by Israel’s supporters and rarely raised by Israel’s detractors. But for those of us who are taxpayers in a nation that has been the state of Israel’s chief benefactor for 42 years — or those of us with Jewish ancestry — it is becoming the only question to ask. It is simple, self-interested, and fundamental: Does the existence of Israel make Americans and Jews safer?
And here is the paradox: Though support for Israel among Americans, and especially Jewish Americans, remains high according to recent Gallup polls, historical evidence says the answer to The Question is “no.”
The history of Israel and its relationship with the U.S. is infinitely complex, but there’s one damning fact that’s ignored as often as The Question: There was not a single act of Arab terrorism against Americans before 1968, when the U.S. became the chief supplier of military equipment and economic aid to Israel. In light of this fact, it’s difficult to credibly sustain the argument that Arab terrorism is spawned by Islam’s alleged promotion of violence and antipathy toward American culture or by a “natural” Arab anti-Semitism. It also suggests that no matter what policies Israel enacts to protect itself — even a withdrawal from the occupied territories or a two-state “solution” — it must be a perpetual wartime state.
Very few Americans today are aware that the question of American and Jewish self-interest was first raised at the time of Israel’s founding by officials in the highest levels of the U.S. government. In 1948, several members of Harry Truman’s Cabinet predicted that the creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East would spur Arab violence against Jews and Americans, advising the president to shun Israel.
These included Secretary of State George Marshall, Defense Secretary James Forrestal, and George Kennan, then the leading policy strategist in the State Department. They argued that if the United States helped to set up an independent Jewish nation it would provoke terrorist attacks on Americans and inaugurate an endless war between Arabs and Jews. “There are 30 million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other,” Forrestal told those in the administration who favored recognizing Israel. “Why don’t you face up to the realities?”
Israel apologists will plead that Thaddeus Russell’s commentary is one more instance among international efforts — rapidly gaining steam — to delegitimize Israel.
Strangely, in response to what is perceived as a campaign of degitimization, there is, as far as I’ve seen, no Israel legitimization campaign. Those mounting a defense, do nothing more than attack their critics — and usually do so with an unbridled viscousness.
For instance, Robin Shepherd, writing in the Jerusalem Post about a decision last week by the Methodist Church of Britain to launch a boycott against goods emanating from settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, says:
Overall, a church that behaves in the manner of the Methodists has buried its credibility under a gigantic dunghill of intransigence, pedantry, lies and distortions.
But let us not allow this matter to rest with a mere recognition of whom and what they have chosen to become.
If the Methodist Church is to launch a boycott of Israel, let Israel respond in kind: Ban their officials from entering; deport their missionaries; block their funds; close down their offices; and tax their churches.
If it’s war, it’s war. The aggressor must pay a price.
While it’s often said that attack is the best form of defense, that principle does not hold in the art of persuasion (and rarely for that matter in national security). The ranks cheering an attack such as Shepherd’s are small and shrinking. Indeed, the more venomous Israel and its supporters become, the less sympathy the Jewish state will evoke and the closer we will move to a critical juncture: where the world has given up on Israel and Israel has given up on the world. At that point, Israel’s isolation becomes the world’s nuclear peril.
Recalling the ‘successful’ counterinsurgency
July 6, 2010 – Kuala Lumpur
Do we not care about the massacres of our lifetime?
December 1948 was just six months into a 12-year campaign to crush communists, who were trying to drive British occupiers out of the Malay Peninsula.
From 1874 to mid 1950s, the British struggled to suppress resistance to occupation. The brutality of some British forces in the Malay Peninsula drove many ethnic Chinese to communism. People who supported communists were literally fenced in. People who opposed communism were co-opted and their communities offered food, medicine and protection. The guerrillas were starved out in the jungle with the gorillas.
Survivors recall
“Did the soldiers bring you outside all at once or in groups?”
“I cannot remember, I fainted. The spirits pushed me. They shot us.”
He was not well in his 70s. He went to the spot where he fainted and fell from British bullets that killed 24 of his fellow workers 55 years before. The rubber trees these deceased tapped were felled long ago. Only stumps remain of the “rumah kongsi” that was once their communal home. His wife had throat cancer. She could eat only un-spiced fish and vegetables. She remembered the brutalities. She was 16 then, a fiance to the man. Another survivor, in her 80s, could recall seeing her husband, the estate supervisor, led out and shot in cold blood with the others.
“The British said that the man who had a receipt for fruit was supplying communists with food. ” “They shot him.” “I wanted to stay and die with them.”
“So cruel those British, so cruel.”
The British soldiers came in trucks and accused the villagers of helping communists. The men and women of the village were separated. The women were loaded onto trucks to be taken away. The younger woman asked where the men were. The soldiers said the men would have to be shot. She remembered watching as the men were led out in groups of four and five, told to turn around by the waiting troops and shot in the back. After two days, she returned to look for her fiance. The bodies had been mutilated, heads hacked off and genitals smashed.
This was 8 months after the massacre of 250 Palestinians on 9th April, 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin in the district of Jerusalem in British-occupied Palestine. The soldiers who made Batang Kali into a killing field in December 1948 were not illegal illegitimate immigrant thugs of the Haganah, Vladimir Jabutinsky’s Irgon, Abraham Stern’s the Stern gang, Palmach and Golani supported and funded by Anglo-American Zionists in the premeditated and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They were British Scots Guards struggling to hold on to imperialism, colonialism and may be even Zionism in the face of widespread resentment and resistance. This killing field in the Malay Peninsular as brutal as the Sharpeville massacre of 69 young demonstrators in apartheid South Africa in March 1960 was not unlike so many killing fields made by Americans up north in late 1960s. It was worse with the massacre of 150 unarmed Vietnamese at My Lai on 16th March 1968. It was so much worse with the massacre of at least 1000 unarmed Palestinian refugees in September 1982 at Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon ordered by Ariel Sharon as Israeli defense minister conspiring with Elie Hobeike’s Lebanese Forces militia, and another Israeli proxy, Major Saad Haddad’s South Lebanon Army after the American-backed invasion of West Beirut.
Justice was never seen to have been done about these massacres and many more. The killers are still at it in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan.
Are we not weaklings held to account for indifference or inaction?
These, our deceased, had the right of resistance; they might be labeled communists or terrorists, but they were our people, dead or alive; anytime anywhere they were braver than those people who shot them in the back.
Cut Social Security to Fund the War?
By DEAN BAKER | July 2, 2010
In a remarkable interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, House Republican Leader John Boehner explicitly called for cutting Social Security in order to pay for the war in Afghanistan. The article reports:
“Ensuring there’s enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country’s entitlement system, Boehner said. He said he’d favor increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation and limiting payments to those who need them.”
In principle Boehner gave the Democrats as much ammunition as a serious political party could want. After all raising the retirement age and cutting Social Security benefits to pay for the war in Afghanistan is an idea that consistently polls in the high single decimals. We should expect every Democratic politician in the country to be jumping up and down demanding to know whether the Republican leader speaks for all Republicans.
That would be the case, unless of course the Democrats actually hold similar views. After all, several prominent Democrats have been saying in public recently that we will have to cut Social Security benefits (benefits workers have already paid for). These prominent Democrats also support the war in Afghanistan.
So, they may not use the same words as Mr. Boehner, but it seems that many Democrats may effectively agree that we have to cut Social Security to pay for the war in Afghanistan. It would be nice if they would insist that this is not true.
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy
Obama renews call for civilian expeditionary force
By Aletho News | July 1, 2010
President Obama Thursday at a town hall meeting called for a civilian expeditionary force as large as the military, while the Department of Defense issued Defense Directive 1404.10 which describes the workforce deployments as support for combat operations including restoration of order, drug interdiction and contingencies. This while having already raised US military spending by double digits to the highest level of any nation in history.
Having bet on being able to subdue the Afghan people by force and failed, Obama seems to be doubling down. The present military force which costs the nation nearly half of the federal budget is described as “overburdened.”
No indication was offered as to where the funds for the new force would come from as other areas of federal spending are being cut.
European counterparts in the UK and Germany meanwhile are reining in military spending as part of a balanced reduction of deficit spending.
Over recent years various Democratic party leaders have proposed a compulsory service for American youth including basic [military] training. Some proposals call for full military conscription.
Campaigning in 2008, Obama also called for a civilian “national security” force, we can expect to see action moving these plans forward so long as the American public continues to tolerate wars of choice and endless occupations.
June deadliest month yet for NATO in Afghanistan, 310 killed
DPA | June 27, 2010
Kabul – Two NATO soldiers were killed in an attack in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, while the British Defence Ministry said a British soldier had died of wounds he sustained in an attack earlier this month.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement that two foreign soldiers had died following a small- arms attack in the eastern region. It did not reveal the nationalities of the deceased.
Most of the NATO troops in the eastern provinces are from the United States, while small units of French and Polish military forces are also based in the restive region.
The British soldier died of wounds he had sustained during a blast in the Nahre Saraj district of the southern province of Helmand on June 10, the Defence Ministry said. The soldier died in hospital in Birmingham, the ministry said in a statement posted at its website.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Defence Ministry said two of the six soldiers killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan on Saturday were Canadians. In a statement the ministry said a female Canadian soldier and her male comrade were killed in the Panjwayi district of the southern province of Kandahar when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb.
At least 310 international soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in June, the deadliest month for NATO troops in the country since the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001.
Both Taliban and NATO-led troops are preparing for major battles this summer, when the total number of foreign troops is set to peak at 150,000 from the more than 130,000 currently based in the country.
Shalit, for example
By Uri Avnery | June 26, 2010 | Excerpt
[Gilad] Shalit has become a living symbol – a symbol of Israeli reality, of the inability of our leaders to make decisions, of their moral and political cowardice, of their inability to analyze a situation and draw conclusions.
If there had been an opportunity to free Shalit through military action, the Israeli government would have seized it eagerly.
So much is obvious, because the Israeli public always prefers solving a problem by force than doing anything that might be interpreted as weakness. The rescue of the hostages at Entebbe in 1976 is considered one of the most glorious exploits in the history of Israel, even though there was only a hair’s breadth between success and failure. It was a gamble with the lives of the 105 hostages and the soldiers, and it was successful.
In other cases, though, the gamble did not succeed. Not in Munich in 1972, when they gambled with the lives of the athletes, and lost. Not in Ma’alot in 1974, when they gambled with the lives of the schoolchildren, and lost. Not in the attempt to free the captured soldier Nachschon Wachsman in 1994, when they gambled with his life, and lost.
If there had been any chance of freeing Shalit by force, they would have risked his life, and probably lost. Fortunately for him, there has been no such chance. So far.
Actually, this is quite remarkable. Our security services have hundreds of secret collaborators in the Gaza Strip, in addition to high tech surveillance. Yet it seems that no reliable information about Shalit’s whereabouts has been obtained.
How has Hamas succeeded in this? Among other measures, by not allowing any contact with the captive – no meetings with the Red Cross or foreign dignitaries, just two short videos, almost no letters. They simply cannot be pressured. They refuse all requests of this nature.
This problem could possibly be overcome if our government had been ready to give assurances that no attempt would be made to free him by force, in return for a Hamas undertaking to let him meet with the Red Cross. To be credible, such an undertaking would probably need a guarantee by a third party, perhaps the US.
Absent such an arrangement, all the sanctimonious speeches by foreign statesmen about “letting the Red Cross meet with the soldier” are just so many empty words.
No less hypocritical are the demands of foreign personalities to “free the kidnapped soldier.”
Such demands are music to the Israeli ear, but completely disregard the fact that the subject has to be an exchange of prisoners.
Shalit is alive and breathing, a young man whose fate arouses strong human emotions. But so are the Palestinian prisoners. They are alive and breathing, and their fate, too, arouses strong human emotions. They include young people, whose lives are being wasted in prison. They include political leaders, who are being punished for simply belonging to one or another organization. They include people who, in Israeli parlance, “have blood on their hands,” and who, in Palestinian parlance, are national heroes who have sacrificed their own freedom for their people’s liberation.
The price demanded by Hamas may seem exorbitant – a thousand for one. But Israel has already paid such a price for other prisoners in the past, and that has become the standard ratio. Hamas could not accept less without losing face.
The 1,000 Palestinian prisoners have families – fathers, mothers, husbands, wives and children, brothers and sisters. Exactly like Gilad Shalit. They, too, cry out, demand, exert pressure. Hamas cannot ignore them.
The whole affair is shocking evidence of the inability of our government – both the previous and the present one – to take decisions and even to think logically.
Hamas already fixed the price four years ago, according to past precedents. Their demand has not changed since then… Full article
2 bodies pulled from bombed Gaza tunnel
Ma’an – 26/06/2010
Gaza: Medics pulled two bodies from a Rafah-area tunnel following overnight airstrikes launched by Israeli fighter jets Friday.
Officials said the young men were inside the tunnels during the strike and were crushed by falling rock and sand.
One was identified by medics as Amer Abu Hadid, 23, while the second remains unnamed. A third was said to have been injured. All three were taken to the Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah.
No injuries were reported on the strikes in northern Gaza, but severe damage to buildings was recorded.
The deaths mark the first resulting from Israeli fire since commandos boarded an aid ship in international waters and commandeered the vessels, killing eight Turkish nationals and one dual Turkish-US citizen.
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).
Flashback: Oakland Police Settle Lawsuits for Bloody Monday
4 April 2006
Almost three years after the bloody police riot at the Port of Oakland, California, that left nine longshore workers and dozens of anti-war demonstrators injured and scores of protesters and one union business agent arrested, the City of Oakland finally settled the lawsuits against the police.
The settlement included not only monetary damages for the injuries and constitutional rights trampled, but new, more restrictive policies on the Oakland Police Department’s use of force during protests.
But the waterfront employers in the Pacific Maritime Association who colluded with the police in those actions have yet to pay for their crimes.
Shortly after the US invaded Iraq, peace activists organised a protest at the port to highlight war profiteering by some ship companies. Stevedoring Services of America received a no-bid contract to operate the Iraqi port of Um Qasr for the occupying forces and American President Lines had a contract with the US Government to ship munitions and other war materiel to Iraq.
Before the first shift on Monday, April 7, 2003, protesters set up picket lines outside the terminal gates. They had organised their action publicly, advertising it through flyers and web postings.
The employers and the police were aware of it and plotted their response in secret. Documents obtained through the lawsuits’ discovery process revealed that representatives of management and the Port of Oakland met with police several days before the demonstration. Oakland Police Department Lieutenant Edward Poulson, in charge of the police response, was granted his request that company and port representatives be present at the police command centre during the protest, and actually deputised an employer representative as part of the police command and support team to assist in arresting people.
The Tribune quoted the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center spokesman Mike Van Winkle justifying his agency’s tactics: If you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that’s being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that [protest], Van Winkle said. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.
With that kind of information and arguments the OPD greeted the demonstrators in full riot gear and armed with so-called less-than-lethal munitions, including wooden and rubber bullets, concussion grenades and lead-shot filled bean bags.
Longshore workers arriving for their morning shift at the terminals saw hundreds of people picketing the gates and a line of trucks backed up down the road. They stood by a good distance away as local officers had instructed, awaiting the arbitration. But the police did not.
One police officer, using a barely audible bull horn, declared the demonstration an illegal gathering and ordered everyone to disperse. Then the police moved in formation toward the demonstrators with rifles drawn and aimed head high. Suddenly shots rang out and concussion grenades arced overhead and boomed. Protesters and longshore workers alike fell to the fire. Others were run into by cops on motorcycles, beaten and arrested. Local 10 Business Agent Jack Heyman, rushing to help his members get out of harm’s way, was pulled out of his obviously marked ILWU Business Agent car, thrown to the ground, handcuffed and arrested.
Many of the injuries were severe enough to require hospitalisation and surgery. Video and photos showed the police aiming at people’s heads, in direct violation of the munitions manufacturers’ warnings that such practice could result in death. Injuries to heads and shoulders confirmed the violations were common. The multitude of wounds in the back showed police were shooting at retreating people.
The next day’s New York Times quoted Police Chief Richard Word saying the police dispersed the crowd at the behest of management. Outraged that ILWU members would be shot on orders from the employers, as if this were 1934 and Bloody Thursday once again, the Coast Committee fired off a letter to the Oakland mayor demanding an independent investigation.
While Local 10 and injured and arrested protesters prepared their lawsuits against the city and its police department, Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff moved preemptively. He charged 24 protesters with failure to disperse and interfering with a business, and charged BA Heyman with obstructing justice and failure to comply with a police officer’s order. Those charges were all eventually dropped.
From the day of the event the Mayor and City Council President defended the police action, claiming they were responding to demonstrators throwing rocks and bottles. But the police department’s own video showed no violence on the part of the demonstrators. Rather than go to trial without supporting evidence, the city offered an out-of-court settlement.
In total the police use of excessive force on peaceful citizens exercising their Constitutional rights of free speech, assembly and dissent cost Oakland taxpayers $1.25 million to settle 59 lawsuits, not including attorney and court fees.
City politicians spent all this money to suppress civil liberties and trade union rights when it could have gone to Oakland schools and paid teachers decent wages and benefits, said Jack Heyman.
Closing the deal, the Oakland City Council voted unanimously in February to pay up and get out of this embarrassing mess, all the while claiming they were not admitting guilt.
Local 10 declared victory and voted to accept the settlement. Only the employers have yet to answer for their role in putting ILWU members and protesters lives at risk that day-so far.
The documents we got from the police in this case show without a doubt how today’s employers still turn to the police to enforce their power over workers just as they did in 1934, Heyman said. We won’t forget that.
MUA Solidarity
To Jack, all our brothers and sisters in the ILWU and all progressive men and women who stand in defence of workers’ rights and the rights of people to peacefully protest against corporate war mongering, government corruption and police brutality, the members of the Maritime Union of Australia send you this message of support.
If the profits of war go unquestioned there will be no peace and if police brutality and government deception goes unchallenged, there will be no freedom.
The bloody attack on Monday April 7, 2003 against you, other anti-war demonstrators and longshore workers at terminal gates in the port of Oakland was a gross act of repression, condemned by the UN Rights Commission, progressive Americans and working people worldwide.
That the Oakland government turned its guns on its own people accusing you of terrorism for speaking out against war profiteers, giant corporations American President Lines and Stevedore Services of America is a gross violation of civil rights.
Blood flowed, but you refused to cower.
We congratulate all those involved for taking a stand against your persecutors and for your victory. In so doing you not only defend your rights, but our rights and the rights of all.
Paddy Crumlin
Maritime Union of Australia National Secretary
EU Considering Aid to Israeli Military
By David Cronin | IPS | June 18, 2010
BRUSSELS: A leading Israeli supplier of warplanes used to kill and maim civilians in Gaza is in the running for two new scientific research grants from the European Union.
Israel’s attacks on Gaza in late 2008 and 2009 provided its air force with an opportunity to experiment with state-of-the-art pilotless drones such as the Heron. Although human rights groups have calculated that the Heron and other drones killed at least 87 civilians during that three-week war, EU officials have tentatively approved the release of fresh finance to the Heron’s manufacturer, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
Two projects involving IAI have recently passed the evaluation stages of a call for proposals under the EU’s multi-annual programme for research, which has been allocated 53 billion euros (65.4 billion dollars) for the 2007-13 period.
The Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, has confirmed that IAI is one of 34 Israeli “partners” involved in 26 EU-funded projects for information technology which are under preparation.
Among the other Israeli firms being considered for such funding are Afcon, a supplier of metal detectors to military checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territories, including the Erez crossing between southern Israel and Gaza. Afcon was also awarded a contract in 2008 for installing a security system in a light rail project designed to connect illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem with the city centre.
Mark English, a Commission spokesman, said that the procedures relating to the projects have not yet been completed. But the Israeli business publication Globes reported last month that Israeli firms stand to gain 17 million euros from the latest batch of EU grants for information technology. According to Globes, this will bring the amount that Israel has drawn from the EU’s research programme since 2007 to 290 million euros.
Israel is the main foreign participant in the EU’s science programme. Officials in Tel Aviv say they expect Israeli firms and research institutes will have received around 500 million euros from the programme by the time of its conclusion.
Chris Davies, a British Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament (MEP), expressed anger at how the Commission’s research department appears willing to rubber-stamp new grants for Israeli companies. Such a “business-as-usual” approach is at odds with tacit assurances from officials handling the EU’s more general relations with Israel, he said.
In late 2008, the EU’s 27 governments agreed to an Israeli request that the relationship should be “upgraded” so that Israel could have a deeper involvement in a wide range of the Union’s activities. But work on giving formal effect to that agreement has stalled because of the subsequent invasion of Gaza.
Approving EU finance for Israel Aerospace Industries “should be regarded as utterly unacceptable, incoherent and outrageously naive,” Davies told IPS. He argued that there appears to be “no communication” between different sets of EU representatives on how Israel should be handled. “Where’s the joined-up thinking?” he asked.
While the European Commission claims that all of its scientific research cooperation with Israel is civilian in nature, the Israeli government has been eager to publicise the almost umbilical links between the country’s thriving technology sector and its military. A brochure titled ‘Communications in Israel’ published by its industry ministry earlier this year refers to a “symbiosis” between the security and technology sectors in Israel. Several technology breakthroughs – such as the invention of voice recognition devices for computers by the Israeli army in the 1980s – have resulted from this “convergence”, the brochure claims.
Other likely Israeli beneficiaries of the new round of EU funding do not conceal how they have benefited from this convergence either. The Israeli subsidiary of SAP, the software manufacturer, has issued publications about how it has provided specialist equipment for the Israeli army. And both Emza and LiveU, two “start-up” companies, are examples of the numerous makers of surveillance equipment in Israel that have seen their order books fill up since the country tried to position itself as an indispensable part of the “war on terror” declared by former U.S. president George W. Bush.
Marcel Shaton, head of the Israel-Europe Research and Development Directorate (ISERD) in Tel Aviv, said that EU citizens should not have any qualms about financing Israeli arms companies. “All research supports the arms industry,” he said. “Non-military technology is used for military purposes all over the world.”
But Yasmin Khan, a specialist on the arms trade with the anti-poverty group War on Want, said that the EU has been complicit in the occupation of Palestine through its support for Israel’s military industry.
She noted that drones made by IAI and other Israeli companies have been bought by several European countries taking part in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. “The military industry is a central point of the Israeli economy,” she said. “The equipment it makes is sold as ‘battle-tested’, which is a dark way of describing its use in the occupied (Palestinian) territories.”
War is no game, so why is it marketed to children as one?
In the post-conscription era, parents have subtler enemies to fight
AVRIL MOORE | Sydney Morning Herald | June 15, 2010
IT’S been nearly 40 years since five Melbourne women – Jean McLean, Joan Coxsedge, Irene Miller, Chris Cathie and Jo McLaine Ross – were sent to Fairlea prison for 14 days for their activities in the Save Our Sons (SOS) movement.
In the 1960s and early ’70s, SOS successfully campaigned against conscription and Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Times are different now; we no longer have such barbaric laws, our boys simply ”volunteer”.
Last week, the front pages of most Australian newspapers displayed heartbreaking images of two young men – Jacob Moerland, 21, and Darren Smith, 25 – who died in Afghanistan from an exploding roadside bomb.
I wonder how I would react in the event that either of my two sons, the same ages as the two dead soldiers, decided to ”join up”?
So it is that mothers today must try to save their sons from themselves.
David Simon and Ed Burns are all too aware of young men and their often-misguided call to adventure. In their award-winning TV series Generation Kill, based on Evan Wright’s embedded reporting for Rolling Stone, the series documents the first three weeks of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In it a new generation of young marines or ”warriors”, who have been raised on hip-hop, heavy metal and video games, request the evacuation of a young Iraqi boy badly wounded by one of their more trigger-happy colleagues.
Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen ”Godfather” Ferrando acknowledges the situation is worse than ”shitty” but refuses their request. He reminds them that ”nobody put a f—ing gun to our heads and forced us to come here. We’re all volunteers.”
But surely this is disingenuous. Every year, the Pentagon spends $US6 billion using the latest digital gaming technology for training for the armed forces. This in turn has given rise to an effective recruitment tool called ”militainment”.
According to Peter W. Singer, director of the 21st Century Defence Initiative at the Brookings Institution, ”America’s Army” is one of the top 10 downloaded games on the internet.
Singer describes it as a ”first-person shooter”, where the player is a soldier who goes out on various missions. However, to access the game online you must sign up and give your personal information, which helps recruiters find you.
Although Singer acknowledges that a large number of the players engage for the fun of playing the game, it has turned out to be, according to one study, ”more effective than any other form of recruiting that the US Army has”.
Furthermore, in another survey of Americans between the ages of 16 and 24, 30 per cent reported they had a more positive view of the US military after playing the game.
We know from studies carried out on young men that the brain is only fully formed at about 24 years and that the last part of the brain to develop is responsible for impulse control and risk assessment.
So what possible influence do parents of Generation Y have when the modern theatre of war is aggressively marketed to their children (who, given this evidence, really do only have half a brain) via the excitement of computer games?
The irony is not lost on Simon and Burns, whose characters, barely 18 years of age, continually parody the idea that they are killing people due to all the ”Nintendo” they played as kids.
However, no amount of Simpson-esque or South Park-style wisecracking saves them from the horror of Iraq.
I live near Irene Miller and whenever I see her at the local shopping strip I am struck by how her tiny stature did not inhibit her maternal instinct to defy authority and protect her offspring.
In John Irving’s semi-autobiographical novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, set during the Vietnam War, Owen, in an act of love, removes the right index or ”trigger” finger of his best friend John who has been conscripted, thus ensuring he fails his physical.
Would I deliberately injure one of my children to stop them from joining up? Possibly. How many years do you get for grievous bodily harm?
Given that 30 per cent of men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have a mental health disorder, are nine times more likely to commit suicide than veterans from previous wars and that horrific physical injuries are so prevalent that accurate statistics are unattainable, surely half a finger is a minor disability.
There is a scene in Generation Kill where armed marines who have surrounded a small Iraqi village watch as a fearless but clearly angry woman runs towards them.
“Women are the fiercest,” one of them observes. “You always gotta look out for the women. Doesn’t matter if it’s a black bitch from South Central or some rich white bitch from Beverley Hills. Don’t matter if you got a gun or whatever. They’ll come after you screaming.” Ooh-rah! to that.
Avril Moore is a Melbourne writer who lectures in visual culture at the Photography Studies College, Southbank.
Copyright © 2010 Fairfax Media
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China names world’s ‘hacking empire’
RT | March 15, 2022
Calling the US a “hacking empire” of the world, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Washington to stop “malicious” cyber activities following reports that American hackers subverted a network in China to launch attacks on Russia and Belarus.
“China is gravely concerned about cyberattacks against other countries that originate from the US and use China as a springboard,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a press briefing on Monday.
Zhao was commenting on recent Chinese media reports that hackers, mainly from the US but also from NATO allies Germany and the Netherlands, recently hijacked a Chinese computer network for cyberattacks, 87% of which targeted Russia.
“Against the background of the Ukraine situation, such a move may produce the negative effect of misleading the international community and spreading disinformation,” Zhao said, pointing out that “a former US senior official called publicly for launching cyberattacks on Russia not long ago.”
This appeared to be a reference to Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state and presidential candidate, who made the calls in an MSNBC interview at the end of February. … continue
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