Non-violence or surrender
By Hasan Abu Nimah | Ammon News | July 21, 2010
One major item on Israel’s menu for agreeing to talk to its enemies has always been “renunciation of violence”.
Under Yasser Arafat, the PLO had to commit to renouncing violence, in addition, of course, to other harsh conditions, before it qualified to exit Israel’s rejection list.
Among the many other conditions put by the so-called international community to Hamas nowadays is “renunciation of violence”. Because Hamas has refused so far to meet such a condition, it remains boycotted by almost every state regionally and internationally, including Arab states.
Currently Hamas is not engaging in any form of anti-Israel violence. In fact, the organisation that controls Gaza is strictly observing a unilateral ceasefire with Israel despite the siege and the sporadic Israeli air raids often killing innocent people and destroying private property. Hamas is now often blamed by its Fateh opponents for preventing other resistance groups from attacking Israel.
The Arab states, just less than a decade ago, also collectively renounced violence. That was when they pronounced peace as their strategic choice, through their 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.
That was one of the most unusual policy statements in history. Did the Arabs have other choices until they made that declaration? Were they engaged in wars and conquests against other nations before they decided to so drastically change course and have peace as their strategic choice? And with the specific reference to the Arab-Israeli conflict, was it the Arabs or the Israelis who started it?
The facts of history are still there for any verification. During the six-decade-long Arab-Israeli conflict, whose roots are in the Zionist project to turn Palestine into a national home for Europe’s persecuted Jews, in flagrant defiance of Arab objection, the Arab states only started one war against Israel, Egypt’s and Syria’s 1973 attempt to recover their occupied territories.
In 1948, there had been months of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population by Zionist militias before the Arab states belatedly intervened, in May of that year.
While Israel was moving from one war to another, expanding beyond the historical lands of Palestine, the Arab states often responded with verbal condemnations and empty threats, along with appeals to the ineffective United Nations.
Large areas of Syrian land have remained under Israeli occupation since 1967, in addition to the West Bank and Jerusalem, and parts of Lebanon. Since 1973, there has been total quiet – and that during a state of “war”.
For all Israel’s propaganda against them, the Arab states have been accommodating, some of them signing peace treaties with Israel even while their neighbours remained technically at war. Israel continues to build settlements and create irreversible facts on the ground, and the Arabs continue to protest and issue statements.
In the meantime, the Palestinian Authority, which is widely recognised, by the Arab League as well, as the official voice of the Palestinian people, continues to reassure Israel that whatever it does, the Palestinian people will never use violence to defend themselves, their rights or their existence. Moreover, the armed forces, created for the Palestinian Authority under the supervision of US General Keith Dayton with donor money, are there to suppress any Palestinian attempt to oppose the occupation or resist its practices.
So what has been so un-peaceful in the Arab, or Palestinian, behaviour towards Israel that requires another declaration of peace?
Unquestionably, peace and non-violence are, and should always be, the rule in governing peoples’ relations with each other. Nevertheless, neither our assumed civilised behaviour nor international law have succeeded so far in eliminating violence from our conduct as states or people.
As a last resort, violence could be used in self-defence, according to international law. The instinct of survival automatically drives all creatures to defend themselves when under attack. All states and peoples do the same. But besides that, there is the violence of choice. Warmongering remains a very active sentiment driving democratic leaders to wars against easier targets, with accountability hardly demanded when such adventures turn wrong, illegal, costly, counterproductive and disastrous.
The peculiar case of the Arab states and Arab peoples is that they volunteered to drop their intrinsic right to legitimate self-defence while under attack and while their lands are under occupation and their rights are repeatedly violated.
Calls for non-violence could not be but noble and right. Even in the most legitimate cases, resorting to violence should only be considered when every other option for a peaceful settlement has been tried. This is not what world powers themselves do when they use force to deal with disputes. Under no circumstance, however, should such calls require that a nation, a group or an individual renounce their right to defend their legitimate rights or to compromise their dignity.
This is precisely what Israel means when it requires its enemies to renounce violence.
While in most cases parties locked in conflict agree to mutually renounce violence as part of a dispute settlement, Israel requires renunciation of violence to enable its continued aggression unchallenged. This is exactly what happened with the PLO, and this is why the Arab states’ positions, including the generous Arab Peace Initiative, are never taken seriously by Israel.
Diplomacy can only be effective when supported by force, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan used to say to justify superpower threats to vulnerable countries like Iraq. But he was right. States have armies and they stock weapons not because they necessarily prepare for war, but because they prepare themselves to go to war or to respond to threat if necessary.
If they don’t do that, they would become vulnerable and invite aggression. States or organisations that declare in advance that they will drop violence from their political dictionary under any circumstances have shown that they expose themselves to all kinds of aggression.
He impersonated a human
Sabbar Kashur wanted to be a person, a person like everybody else. But as luck would have it, he was born Palestinian.
By Gideon Levy | Haaretz | July 22, 2010
Sabbar Kashur wanted to be a person, a person like everybody else. But as luck would have it, he was born Palestinian. It happens. His chances of being accepted as a human being in Israel are nil. Married and a father of two, he wanted to work in Jerusalem, his city, and maybe also have an affair or a quickie on the side. That happens too.
He knew that he had no chance with the Jews, so he adopted another name for himself, Dudu. He didn’t have curly hair, but he went by Dudu just the same. That’s how everyone knew him. That’s how you know a few other Arabs too: the car-wash guy you call Rafi, the stairwell cleaner who goes by Yossi, the supermarket deliveryman you know as Moshe.
What’s wrong? Is it only fearsome Shin Bet interrogators like “Capt. George” and “Abu Faraj” who are allowed to adopt names from other peoples? Are only Israelis who emigrate allowed to invent new identities? Only the Yossi from Hadera who became Joe in Miami, the Avraham from Bat Yam who became Abe in Los Angeles?
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Palestinian Sabbar Kashur, who was convicted of raping a woman after impersonating a Jew |
Photo by: Emil Salman |
No longer a youth, Sabbar/Dudu worked as a deliveryman for a lawyer’s office, rode his scooter around Jerusalem and delivered documents, affidavits and sworn testimonies, swearing to everyone that he was Dudu. Two years ago he met a woman by chance. Nice to meet you, my name is Dudu. He claims that she came on to him, but let’s leave the details aside. Soon enough they went where they went and what happened happened, all by consent of the parties concerned. One fine day, a month and a half after an afternoon quickie, he was summoned to the police on suspicion of rape.
His temporary lover discovered that her Dudu wasn’t a Dudu after all, that the Jew is (gasp!) an Arab, and so she filed a complaint against the impostor. Her body was violated by an Arab. From then on Kashur was placed under house arrest for two years, an electronic cuff on his ankle. This week his sentence was pronounced: 18 months in jail.
Judge Zvi Segal waxed dramatic to the point of absurdity: “It is incumbent on the court to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth, sweet-talking offenders who can mislead naive victims into paying an unbearable price: the sanctity of their bodies and souls.” Sophisticated offenders? It is doubtful that Dudu even knew he was one. Sweet talk? He says that even his wife calls him Dudu.
The court relied, as usual, on precedents: the man who posed as a senior Housing Ministry official and promised his lover an apartment and an increased National Insurance pension, and the man who posed as a wealthy neurosurgeon who promised free medical care and other perks. Dudu had nothing to offer but his good name, Dudu, and still his fate was sealed, just like those who promise apartments and perks. Not only fraud, but rape, almost like the convicted serial rapist Benny Sela.
Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein had, after all, defined the test of conviction for rape on “false pretenses”: “if in the view of an ordinary person this woman would have agreed to have sexual relations with a man who did not have the identity he invented.”
In tune with the public, Kashur’s judges assumed, rightly, that the woman would not have gotten into bed with Dudu were it not for the identity he invented. She also might not have gotten into bed with him if he had told her in vain that he was available, that he was younger than he really is or even that he is madly in love with her. But people are not prosecuted for that, certainly not on rape charges.
Now the respected judges have to be asked: If the man was really Dudu posing as Sabbar, a Jew pretending to be an Arab so he could sleep with an Arab woman, would he then be convicted of rape? And do the eminent judges understand the social and racist meaning of their florid verdict? Don’t they realize that their verdict has the uncomfortable smell of racial purity, of “don’t touch our daughters”? That it expresses the yearning of the extensive segments of society that would like to ban sexual relations between Arabs and Jews?
It was no coincidence that this verdict attracted the attention of foreign correspondents in Israel, temporary visitors who see every blemish. Yes, in German or Afrikaans this disgraceful verdict would have sounded much worse.
Lieberman’s settlement bars Russian-Israeli families from buying homes
By Chaim Levinson | Haaretz | July 11, 2010
The Nokdim secretariat ruled two weeks ago to bar non-Jewish Russian-Israelis from buying homes in the small Bethlehem-area settlement where Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman makes his home. The decision came after a frenzied debate between residents over whether the entry of individuals not considered Jewish by religious law would lead to “assimilation” or improper behavior on the part of veteran residents and their children.
The current fracas was sparked after a number of families of Russian origin applied to be accepted in the community. In each of the families, at least one member is not Jewish according to halakha, or religious law. Nokdim is a mixed community of religious and secular Israelis, both native and Russian-speaking, in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc southeast of Jerusalem.
After several residents expressed opposition to admitting the families, the settlement’s absorption committee decided to bring up the issue at a secretariat meeting. Two weeks ago the panel decided the families’ applications would be rejected.
Nokdim’s secretary, Yossi Heiman, told Haaretz: “If there were an easy solution to this issue, we wouldn’t have to hold hearings on it. There are many considerations both ways; there are also strong arguments in favor of accepting these families. But, ultimately, the majority decided they were opposed to such a high number of these families coming in and changing the community’s demographics.
“The biggest problem is that if you accept 10 families in which the mother isn’t Jewish, then soon there will be 30 children, and tomorrow your son could fall in love with the good-looking girl next door. It’s a real problem,” Heiman said.
“It’s difficult enough with the dozens of terrorists who enter each morning,” added Nokdim resident Amit Gruen, in apparent reference to Palestinians employed in home construction in the settlement.
“We have to separate ourselves from the gentiles in commerce and everything else – particularly when it comes to living with them. It could lead to assimilation or idol worship; it opens the door to all kinds of trouble. They might lead us into committing offenses that Jews normally don’t do, like idolatry and incest and all kinds of other perversions. That’s why we have no place for them here,” he said.
“In principle, the fact that they serve in the army is a problem. They must not serve in the army – the fact that the state brought them over doesn’t mean a thing. Just as it brought them over, it can send them back to their own countries,” Gruen said.
Gil Gan-Mor, an attorney heading the branch on housing rights at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said any decision not to accept a family as residents in a community on the basis of race, religion or sex is illegal discrimination.
Obama’s Collapse
By Jeremy Salt – Ankara – July 11, 2010
The spectacle of an American sucking up to an Israeli Prime Minister is familiar but no less sickening every time it happens. Not since Eisenhower has an American president had the guts to stand up to Israel. With this single exception, all of them have fallen over in their haste to give Israel whatever it wants and to hold it responsible for nothing, not even the murder of its own citizens. The recent meeting between Barack Obama, effectively apologising because his middle name is Hussein, and Benyamin Netanyahu surely marks the lowest point in this sick relationship. Obama has now thrown in the towel. That is what the White House meeting represented. He talked of a peace process which does not exist and Israeli ‘concessions’ which have never been made. Obama wants the non-existent peace process to be resumed with a Palestinian government that is not the Palestinian government and a Palestinian president who is not the president.
Everyone can see that the emperor is wearing not new clothes but no clothes. Can Obama see it himself? Almost certainly. He is a highly intelligent man, but with midterm elections coming up in November this is what he feels he has to say to appease the Israeli lobby. He has thereby gone the way of all American presidents with that single exception of Eisenhower. He has turned himself into a straw man before our eyes.
The Obama who last year demanded a halt to all Israeli construction in the occupied West Bank and occupied Jerusalem is now a figure of history. He had his moment and he did not have the backbone to stand up for his declared convictions. Netanyahu went back to Israel and thumbed his nose at him. Obama challenged Netanyahu, then backed off and has now surrendered obsequiously. It is a sad moment for the United States, and another disastrous moment for the Palestinians and the Middle East and perhaps even for the world.
The Obama who spoke when in Cairo last year of a ‘new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world’ has been revealed as an eloquent windbag. The war on Afghanistan has been accelerated and with it the deaths of more civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The President who declared that ‘we will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own’ has done just that.
Obama’s refusal to heed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s repeated calls for an international inquiry into the Israeli attack on the Gaza aid flotilla is part and parcel of his collapse before the perceived might of the Israeli lobby. The flotilla was surrounded by a ring of 30 Zodiac fast boats, each carrying ten to 15 heavily armed representatives of the state of Israel. Beyond this inner ring stood four warships and two submarines, with three helicopters circling overhead, yet it was Israel which claimed it was attacked. The Israelis were shooting as they boarded the Mavi Marmara and they were shooting to kill and not to disable. The attack was launched in international waters. Of the nine passengers killed, one was a Turkish-American. The captain of the Mavi Marmara was forced to steer the ship towards the coast of occupied Palestine. Hundreds of passengers were abducted and ‘detained’. All their possessions, including passports, credit cards, mobile phones and camera equipment were taken from them. Illegal use has since been made of their stolen credit cards.
None of this was enough to make Obama heed calls for an international inquiry but then the US government did nothing when 34 of its sailors were killed in the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, did nothing when Rachel Corrie was murdered by bulldozer and did nothing more recently when a Israeli border policeman fired a tear gas canister at a young American woman on the occupied West Bank and blinded her in one eye. As John Mearsheimer told an audience of Americans recently, any of them could go to Israel and be killed there and the US would do nothing.
But the attack on the Mavi Marmara does matter to its passengers, to the families of the nine men who were murdered, to the Turkish government and the Turkish people and to the ‘Muslims around the world’ Obama addressed in Cairo. What kind of message does Obama think he is sending out to the world by failing to condemn the murder and kidnapping of Muslims by Israel on the high seas (the Israelis targeted only Turks and not passengers of European or American appearance)? The message received yet again is that Israel literally has been given a license to kill by the US government, whenever and whomever it wants.
Turkey has told Israel that it either apologizes and pays compensation or it agrees to a proper international inquiry. The response from Netanyahu and Lieberman has been abusive. Turkey has done its best to play a bridging role in the Middle East in line with its policy of ‘zero problems’ on its borders. With a state like Israel this is impossible unless Turkey is to follow the example of Arab governments and do nothing. Turkey is already downgrading relations with Israel. The end point of this process may be the suspension of relations or their calibrated reduction to a bare minimum. It is a sign of the madness gripping Israel that it should now have picked a fight with the only country in the Middle East with which it had amicable relations and indeed a strategic working relationship. Obama has backed down but the message coming out of Ankara is that Turkey will not.
– Jeremy Salt is associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Previously, he taught at Bosporus University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne in the Departments of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science. Professor Salt has written many articles on Middle East issues, particularly Palestine, and was a journalist for The Age newspaper when he lived in Melbourne.
Octavia Nasr’s firing and what the liberal media allows
By Glenn Greenwald | July 8, 2010
CNN yesterday ended the 20-year career of Octavia Nasr, its Atlanta-based Senior Middle East News Editor, because of a now-deleted tweet she wrote on Sunday upon learning of the death of one of the Shiite world’s most beloved religious figures: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah . . . . One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” That message spawned an intense fit of protest from Far Right outlets, Thought Crime enforcers, and other neocon precincts, and CNN quickly (and characteristically) capitulated to that pressure by firing her. The network — which has employed a former AIPAC official, Wolf Blitzer, as its primary news anchor for the last 15 years — justified its actions by claiming that Nasr’s “credibility” had been “compromised.” Within this episode lies several important lessons about media “objectivity” and how the scope of permissible views is enforced.
First, consider which viewpoints cause someone to be fired from The Liberal Media. Last month, Helen Thomas’ 60-year career as a journalist ended when she expressed the exact view about Jews which numerous public figures have expressed (with no consequence or even controversy) about Palestinians. Just weeks ago, The Washington Post accepted the “resignation” of Dave Weigel because of scorn he heaped on right-wing figures such as Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh. CNN’s Chief News Executive, Eason Jordan, was previously forced to resign after he provoked a right-wing fit of fury over comments he made about the numerous — and obviously disturbing — incidents where the U.S. military had injured or killed journalists in war zones. NBC fired Peter Arnett for criticizing the U.S. war plan on Iraqi television, which prompted accusations of Treason from the Right. MSNBC demoted and then fired its rising star Ashleigh Banfield after she criticized American media war coverage for adhering to the Fox model of glorifying U.S. wars; the same network fired its top-rated host, Phil Donahue, due to its fear of being perceived as anti-war; and its former reporter, Jessica Yellin, confessed that journalists were “under enormous pressure from corporate executives” to present the news in a pro-war and pro-Bush manner.
What each of these firing offenses have in common is that they angered and offended the neocon Right. Isn’t that a strange dynamic for the supposedly Liberal Media: the only viewpoint-based firings of journalists are ones where the journalist breaches neoconservative orthodoxy? Have there ever been any viewpoint-based firings of establishment journalists by The Liberal Media because of comments which offended liberals? None that I can recall. I foolishly thought that when George Bush’s own Press Secretary mocked the American media for being “too deferential” to the Bush administration, that would at least put a dent in that most fictitious American myth: The Liberal Media. But it didn’t; nothing does, not even the endless spate of journalist firings for deviating from right-wing dogma.
Beyond journalism, speech codes concerning the Middle East are painfully biased and one-sided. Chas Freeman was barred from a government position — despite a long and accomplished record of public service — due to AIPAC-led anger over comments deemed insufficiently devoted to Israel. Juan Cole was denied a tenured position at Yale after a vicious neocon campaign based on his allegedly anti-Israel remarks, and Norman Finklestein suffered the same fate, despite a unanimous committee recommendation for tenure, after an Alan-Dershowitz-led demonization campaign based on his blasphemous scholarship about Israel. Does anyone ever suffer career-impeding injuries of this type — the way Nasr and Thomas also just have — for expressing anti-Muslim or anti-Arab views? No. The speech prohibitions and thought crimes on the Middle East all run in one direction: to enforce “pro-Israel” orthodoxies. Does this long list of examples leave room for doubt about that fact?
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Then there’s the Nasr case itself. Look at how our discourse is completely distorted and dumbed-down by the same stunted, cartoonish neocon orthodoxies that have also destroyed our foreign policy. In our standard political discussions, the simplistic and false notion — obviously accepted by CNN — drives the discussion: Fadlallah is an Evil Hezbollah Terrorist!!, and Nasr probably is as well given the “respect” she expressed for him during his death. Thus: CNN got caught employing an Israel-hating Terrorist-lover, and once she revealed herself, she had to be fired immediately!!!! That really is the primitive level of agitprop churned out by neocon polemicists and then dutifully ingested and embraced by CNN.
The reality, though, is completely different. Fadlallah was a revered figure to a large chunk of the world, and was quite mainstream even in parts of the West. As the AP put it today, Fadlallah was “one of Shiite Islam’s highest and most revered religious authorities with a following that stretched beyond Lebanon’s borders to Iraq, the Gulf and as far away as central Asia.” Ironically, he was the religious guide for Iraq’s Dawa Party: the party of our close ally, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who took the very unusual step of leaving Iraq to attend Fadlallah’s funeral. As ThinkProgress’ Matt Duss put it:
So here’s the neocon logic: When a reporter acknowledges the passing of a revered, if controversial figure in a way that doesn’t sufficiently convey what a completely evil terrorist neocons think that figure was — that’s unacceptable. But when the United States spends nearly a trillion dollars, loses over 4,000 of its own troops and over 100,000 Iraqis to establish a new government largely dominated by that same “terrorist’s” avowed acolytes — that’s victory.
Writing in Foreign Policy — not exactly a radical, Terrorist-loving outlet — David Kenner described how even moderate, U.S.-friendly officials such as Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri praised Fadlallah as “a voice of moderation and an advocate of unity,” and Kenner documents that even Fadlallah’s alleged ties to Hezbollah are dubious at best.
Most striking, the British Ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, heaped praise on Fadlallah far more gushing than anything Nasr said. In a piece she entitled “The Passing of Decent Men,” Ambassador Guy wrote that he was one of the people whom she enjoyed meeting most and with whom she was most impressed; that he was “a true man of religion, leaving an impact on everyone he meets, no matter what their faith”; that “Lebanon is a lesser place the day after his absence”; and that “the world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths.”
And Nasr herself wrote a moving explanation after the controversy over her tweet erupted, explaining that the respect she expressed for Fadlallah had nothing to do with some of his uglier views about the justifiability of civilian attacks on Israel or Holocaust disparagement, but was rather driven by his important and virtuous call for greater rights and respect for Muslim women, his desire for greater religious tolerance in Muslim nations, and the fact that he “spread what many considered a more moderate voice of Shia Islam than what was coming out of Iran.” She recounted the respect he showed her when she interviewed him 20 years ago. And she explained that “it was his commitment to Hezbollah’s original mission — resisting Israel’s occupation of Lebanon — that made him popular and respected among many Lebanese, not just people of his own sect.” By all accounts, Fadlallah became particularly radicalized in his hostility toward the U.S. when the Reagan administration — working in concert with Saudi Arabia — attempted to assassinate him with a car bomb in Beirut, missed, and slaughtered 80 innocent civilians instead.
In other words, like many people involved in protracted and religiously-motivated violent conflicts, Fadlallah was a profoundly complex figure, with some legitimate grievances, some entrenched hatreds and ugly viewpoints, and a substantial capacity for good. Nasr was expressing a very mild and restrained form of sadness and respect for someone who had just died: sentiments shared in much stronger form by hundreds of millions of people in the Muslim and even Western world. The sentiment she expressed, while infuriating neocons, is widespread and completely unnotable for large parts of the world.
What makes Nasr’s summary firing even more astonishing is that Nasr herself was an unremarkable journalist who rarely if ever provoked controversy, had no history of anti-Israel or pro-Terrorist sentiments, and blended perfectly into the American corporate media woodwork. Indeed, Middle East expert and neocon critic Nir Rosen ironically noted yesterday that — as almost happened to Michael Steele — “Octavia Nasr got fired for the one smart thing she ever said.”
This was a banal and very cautious establishment journalist who survived and advanced at Time Warner, Inc. for 20 years by adhering to all the prevailing codes.
But no matter: as we’ve seen repeatedly, in American media and political culture, Middle East orthodoxies are the most sacred and inviolable. Thus, her 2o-year loyal service is brushed to the side because of a 140-character blip of blasphemy. As the Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah put it: she “wasn’t particularly groundbreaking. That’s the point. EVEN someone usually so cautious cannot survive.” He added: “More than ever, [CNN, NPR, The New York Times] are purveyors of official, accepted opinion. Their job is to police what/who we can hear.” That’s what Nicholas Kristof meant when, writing today from Jerusalem, he observed that Israel “tolerates a far greater range of opinions than America”: it’s even more acceptable to utter blasphemy about Israel in Israel than it is in the U.S., as Octavia Nasr was but the latest to discover.
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With the Nasr firing, here we find yet again exposed the central lie of American establishment journalism: that opinion-free “objectivity” is possible, required, and the governing rule. The exact opposite is true: very strong opinions are not only permitted but required. They just have to be the right opinions: the official, approved ones. Just look at the things that are allowed. The Washington Post lavished editorial praise on the brutal, right-wing tyrant Augusto Pinochet, and that caused no controversy. AP’s Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier got caught sending secret, supportive emails to Karl Rove, and nothing happened. Benjamin Netanyahu formally celebrates the Terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel that killed 91 civilians and nobody is stigmatized for supporting him. Erick Erickson sent around the most rancid and arguably racist tweets, only to thereafter be hired as a CNN contributor. And as Jonathan Schwarz wrote of the Nasr firing:
William Barr is on the board of directors of Time Warner, the parent company of CNN. Barr was a senior adviser in the Reagan administration, which attempted to assassinate Fadlallah, missing him and killing more than eighty bystanders.
Having someone who was part of the slaughter of 80 civilians in Lebanon on your Board is fine. And having a former AIPAC official with an obvious bias toward Israel (just watch Blitzer in this 5-minute clip if you have doubts about that) is perfectly consistent with a news network’s “credibility.” But expressing sadness over the death of an Islamic cleric beloved by much of the Muslim world is not. Whatever is driving that, it has nothing to do with “objectivity.”
All of this would be so much more tolerable if CNN would simply admit that it permits its journalists to hold and express some controversial opinions (ones in accord with official U.S. policy and orthodox viewpoints) but prohibits others (ones which the neocon Right dislikes). Instead, we are subjected to this patently false pretense of opinion-free objectivity.
The reality is that “pro-Israel” is not considered a viewpoint at all; it’s considered “objective.” That’s why there’s no expression of it too extreme to result in the sort of punishment which Nasr just suffered (preceded by so many others before her). Conversely, while Hezbollah is seen by much of the world as an important defense against Israeli aggression in Lebanon, the U.S. Government has declared it a Terrorist organization, and therefore “independent” U.S. media outlets such as CNN dutifully follow along by firing anyone who expresses any positive feelings about anyone who, in turn, has any connection to that group. That’s how tenuous and distant the thought crime can be and still end someone’s career. It’s true that much of the world sees some of Hezbollah’s actions as Terrorism; much of the world sees Israel’s that way as well. CNN requires the former view while prohibiting the latter. As usual, our brave journalistic outlets not only acquiesce to these suffocating and extremely subjective restrictions on what our political discourse allows; they lead the way in enforcing them.
General Petraeus’s leaked emails about Israel
Blogger Philip Weiss has them, and they’re not pretty
By Mehdi Hasan – New Statesman – 05 July 2010
I’ve written the cover story for this week’s New Statesman, on the rise and rise of David Petraeus and America’s “cult of the generals”.
Here’s an extract:
Twelve of the 43 men who have served as US president have been former generals – including the very first occupant of the Oval Office, George Washington. Nonetheless, there has not been a general in the White House since Dwight D Eisenhower, the former Supreme Allied Commander in the Second World War and architect of the D-Day landings, left office in 1961 (excoriating the “military-industrial complex” on his way out). But the rise of the generals in recent years, exemplified by the hallowed status of Petraeus, has altered the dynamic. If a general is elected to the White House in 2012 or 2016, the grip of this cult on the US polity will once again have been demonstrated.
Interestingly, in an unrelated story on the supposedly declining power of the Israel lobby in today’s Guardian, the paper’s Washington correspondent Chris McGreal writes:
Senior figures in the American military, including General David Petraeus who has commanded US forces in both wars, have identified Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian land as an obstacle to resolving those conflicts.
McGreal is referring to the general’s official “posture” statement on US Central Command – which Petraeus was in charge of, before being redeployed by President Obama to Afghanistan a fortnight ago – in which it says:
The [Israel-Palestine] conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR [Centcom’s Area of Responsibility] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.
Petraeus’s prepared statement caused uproar in pro-Israeli circles back in March, when it was published, and some on the right and the left automatically assumed he must be a private supporter of the Palestinians and that he had suddenly and bravely decided to stand up to to the Israel lobby inside the United States.
But guess what? In a gaffe which hasn’t yet attracted the same amount of press as Stanley McChrystal’s bizarre interview with Rolling Stone, Petraeus accidentally leaked an email exchange of his – with the belligerent, neoconservative, pro-Israeli columnist Max Boot – to an activist named James Morris, who then passed it onto blogger Philip Weiss:
Last March General David Petraeus, then head of Central Command, sought to undercut his own testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that was critical of Israel by intriguing with a rightwing writer to put out a different story, in emails obtained by Mondoweiss.
The emails show Petraeus encouraging Max Boot of Commentary to write a story– and offering the neoconservative writer choice details about his views on the Holocaust:
“Does it help if folks know that I hosted Elie Wiesel and his wife at our quarters last Sun night?! And that I will be the speaker at the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps in mid-Apr at the Capitol Dome…”
Petraeus passed the emails along himself through carelessness last March. He pasted a Boot column from Commentary’s blog into in an “FYI” email he sent to an activist who is highly critical of the U.S.’s special relationship with Israel. Some of the general’s emails to Boot were attached to the bottom of the story. The activist, James Morris, shared the emails with me.
You can read the full details here.
Meanwhile, here’s a taster of Clayton Swisher’s amusing response on the Al Jazeera blog:
It’s not clear what miracles Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel can work for General Petraeus now that he’s the top officer in Kabul.
Based on these emails Petraeus apparently authored, subsequently leaked to blogger Philip Weiss, it seems the former Central Commander thought a private dinner with Weisel and a Holocaust Museum stint might boost his pro-Israel bonafides (“some of my best friends are Jewish!”).
I guess the good general is keener on being the next US president, and not upsetting the Israel lobby in the meantime, than some had assumed.
The Israel Lobby in San Francisco
By BINOY KAMPMARK | CounterPunch | July 2, 2010
‘I was the child of the survivors of the Holocaust.’ With that, Roz Rothstein of the activist group Stand With Us that hopes to transform the image of Israel on US campuses sets the moral authority before a small audience at an office on Howard Street, San Francisco. One can, she explains, disagree with Israel, but there are ‘limits’ to such doubting behavior. Exceeding those limits constitutes the gravest sort of anti-Semitism. As people devour the food and drink put on by the associates of Blumberg Capital, serious politics is being discussed. ‘We are being demonized,’ she insists. Whether she means Israel, Jews or Jews in the US is hard to tell. Presumably, no true distinction is intended.
The gathering teams with Republicans, many of them competing with each other for various posts in upcoming elections. Candidates who are going to be competing for House positions are also there including John Dennis who hopes to undermine Nancy Pelosi. The room smells of political hustling and over-eager libidos.
All are, however, there for one reason: defending Israel. Israel is besieged, the David in a sea of overly keen Goliaths. A good deal of agitprop is necessary to convince the audience, and perhaps the speakers, of this bizarre scenario. Pro-Palestinian groups are swarming across American campuses attacking Jews and pro-Israeli students alike. The UN is ‘obsessed’ with Israel and prefers, we are told, not to look at the stain of character on other states. One must be on the look out for the ‘Three Ds’ suggested by Natan Sharansky. (The speakers intone this in irritating fashion – we are in a kindergarten of ideological instruction. Remember ‘demonization’, ‘double standards’ and ‘delegitimization’, for one.)
The language merchants are busy attempting to find the right good to sell. ‘We must be out there to counter our enemies.’ Evidently, the Gaza dead, with their galvanic properties must be astonishingly good at public relations – they are, it would seem, the ignoble savages who dare speak from their status as the deceased.
The campaign being waged is yet another indication of how the Israeli lobby, so peevishly dismissed by Israeli supporters as non-existent, arises with effective force when fear is packaged and retailed in this faux salon manner. These are the first people who would insist that such a thing is anathema, only to then gather their forces and funds to effectively provide assistance to a foreign power. Young, well-groomed men listening intently will be doing service at some point with the Israeli Army, a problematic situation given mixed allegiances. The framers of the US constitution would have had something to say about that.
What is most striking in this display is the rehearsed language of doom. (We are ‘besieged’, a ‘well planned tsunami’ is being put into place, argues Rothstein.) The Palestinians do not exist except in the negative, a dark eminence with Satanic overtones. Hamas, a body once supported by Israel for Machiavellian purposes, is not a force that can or should be dealt with other than through force. Beware their Charter.
It all comes down to ‘information’. ‘They do not know the information,’ explains Dr. Michael Harris, who was a founder of San Francisco Voice for Israel before it became the San Francisco chapter for Stand With Us. So, with this in mind, a packet is distributed, bulging with fascinating ‘facts’ rendered on glossy paper. How far it will go is not something these agitprop peddlers make clear.
A brief summary of what is on show then. A booklet entitled ‘Middle East: Apartheid Today’ is designed to focus on Arab and Muslim prejudice (murderous ‘gender apartheid’ is practiced amongst the Palestinians). ‘We don’t do apartheid in the Holy Land’. South African apartheid is also singled out as spectacular, singular and totally different from Israeli policies. And besides, many want to leave Islam – they want to assimilate, to become like ‘us’.
There are pictures of hanged men from Iran reproduced in distributed booklets showing homosexuality to be a capital offence in that benighted part of the world. (Would Orthodox Jews disagree with such treatment, one wonders.) In short, the apartheid fiends, the promoters of segregation, sexually motivated crimes, honor killings and institutionalized racism, lie outside Israel’s sacred, threatened borders. Instead, focus is directed on such things as ‘Israel’s gift to the world’ on a card that speaks about its ‘Intel laptops’ and ‘mobile phone technology’ amongst other things.
On the coattails of doom is that of self-praise. No one would hate us if they knew how humanitarian we really were. An example is adduced: the hospital in Haiti, emphasized in the publication ‘Israeli Heroes in Haiti’. This gesture, it seems, rinses guilt and cheers the consciences. Far better to build hospitals in Haiti than Gaza, where a humanitarian crisis is all too real. The mantras are almost hypnotic, and said with repeated, mechanical hollowness: ‘We are the glowing light in the Middle East’. This is the Winthrop covenant of the Holy Land, Americans who have confused Israel with the ‘light on the hill’ and a puritan assertion of exceptionality, and would prefer to be there than in San Francisco. (Dare one ask?)
The questions posed by the anesthetized audience are variously comical and absurd in their businesslike approach. A political candidate for the twelfth district in San Francisco suggests a screenwriter for an appropriate film to display Israel on American campuses in a good light. Another suggests ‘feel good’ images that re-enforce notions of the genteel Jew. ‘Cuddly, yes, cuddly and warm.’ Things are getting rather slippery here, and the hold on reality, if it was ever there, is now being lost. Another suggests that Israel is ‘the canary in the coal mine.’ An announcement of thanks is made to the speakers: an anonymous donor has just penned a cheque for an undisclosed sum running into the thousands. Money for jam. This place, presumably a refuge from the coalmine, is an asylum of unreality. And one is simply happy to leave it.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and is currently in San Francisco. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
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Choose the winner: Israel or the majors (oil companies)
By Bob Nichols | Online Journal | July 2, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO — Israel has “found” at least 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Mediterranean, a good portion of which “belongs” to Gaza and Lebanon.
Israel says, in effect, “Screw that.”
“The gas and oil is ours to take and sell. We are the strongest militarily in the area and have global thermonuclear weapons – lots of them. Get used to it.” [1]
Israel, with the Israel Defense Forces as enforcers and guards will suck the gas and oil out of the ground and sell it as fast as they can, from the edges, to steal it away from their neighbors — the Lebanese and the Palestinians.
That will depress world natural gas prices worldwide and kill the plans of the major oil companies, who are buying up natural gas companies.
The major oil companies are very anxious to raise prices a little bit on natural gas so they can also raise prices on gasoline. The two fuels have always been closely tied to each other.
The US government is easily pushed around by Israeli hardball politics; but, the majors are not, not at all.
The majors will want to restrict production of natural gas to raise prices.
Israel will want to dump 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over a period of a few years on the world natural gas market as fast as they can to keep it from their enemies, the Lebanese and the Palestinians. Both cannot happen at the same time.
My bet is that Israel will win against the major oil companies and natural gas prices will be depressed for several years.
Why? Simple. Israel, its intelligence agency, the Mossad, and their bank cronies have more money to buy politicians and US government “policy” than the major oil companies do.
The US government will do as they are paid and told to do.
Reference
1. Landau: We will defend gas fields,” The Jerusalem Post, 06/24/2010.
Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award winner, a correspondent for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper and a frequent contributor to various online publications. He reports on war, politics and the two nuclear weapons labs in the Bay Area. Nichols is writing a book based on 20 years of nuclear war in Central Asia. He is a former employee of an Army Ammunition Plant. You are encouraged to write Nichols at duweapons@gmail.com.
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Ambition and orthodoxy (Kagan’s hero is also Dershowitz’s)
By Philip Weiss on June 29, 2010
Elena Kagan, the nominee to the Supreme Court, was dean of Harvard Law School in 2006 when she introduced Aharon Barak, chief judge of Israel’s High Court of Justice, during an award ceremony as “my judicial hero.” She explained (per the New York Times):
He is the judge or justice in my lifetime whom, I think, best represents and has best advanced the values of democracy and human rights, of the rule of law and of justice.
Turns out that Kagan (who testified today that “Israel means a lot to me”) is not alone. In The Case for Israel (2003), Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz writes:
This book is respectfully dedicated to my dear friend of nearly forty years, Professor Aharon Barak, the president of Israel’s Supreme Court, whose judicial decisions make a better case for Israel and for the rule of law than any book could possibly do.
Who is Barak? In Beyond Chutzpah, Norman Finkelstein says that Aharon Barak was “a leading proponent” of guidelines allowing torture– making Israel the “only country in the world where torture was legally sanctioned,” according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. He also gave a green light to administrative detentions, even as the judge conceded, “there is probably no State in the Western world that permits an administrative detention of someone who does not himself pose any danger to State security.”
And he approved the barrier wall that crosses through occupied territory, of which Finkelstein says:
If all branches of Israeli government and society bear responsibility for this impending catastrophe [the end of the two-state solution], the share of the HCJ and especially its liberal chief justice, Aharon Barak, is relatively larger. Due to its moral authority the HCJ was in a unique position to sensitize the Israeli public. Beyond helping fend off external criticism of Israel’s annexationist policies, the HCJ chose to mute the collective Israeli conscience.
Of course Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul not long after he published that book.
Martha Minow replaced Kagan as dean of Harvard Law School. In 2006, she co-authored an Op-Ed for the Boston Globe with an Israeli army lawyer; the piece is titled, “The Israeli model for detainee rights,” and touts Israeli measures developed “during a long and difficult experience with terrorism.”
P.S. Andrew Sullivan has recently asked whether there are any vocal anti-Zionists on any Op-Ed pages in the U.S. Good question; the answer is No. You can’t be.
Today I was reading Geoffrey Wawro’s book Quicksand when I came across this passage that resonates with the above examples.
“There was no Iraqi who was not in the [Baathist] party,” an ex-factory manager in Baghdad told an American reporter in April 2003. He meant Iraqis who were “highly educated and technical.” Among that cohort, “if you weren’t a Baathist, you wouldn’t be able to rise in the hierarchy.”
Our Precious Elites
Where is leadership?
By Sinan | Aletho News | July 1, 2010
Istanbul: Our Prime Minister and the chief of the Military together visited a border military station between Iraq and Turkey where a few soldiers got killed by the PKK the previous week.
What is wrong with this picture? Everything.
Both of them were kneeling down in the photos which emerged. Well, that’s something that they should have never done. A leader should stand up and show courage to the soldiers who stay and fight there everyday.
The Turkish public found the photo appalling. A few days later both the PM and the military chief were forced to make press announcements that it is normal to kneel down in such situations. Of course nobody bought the explanation.
Is it dangerous there? Yes. Snipers around? Maybe. Could you get killed or injured? Remote chance but possibly yes. But all of the risk doesn’t mean that you kneel down. They should have been brave enough to stand up as a leader would.
Another example, take a look at a picture of Gordon Brown during a visit to Afghanistan. He looks very silly. Look at his stressed face. Note that the general next to him doesn’t wear any protective gear. There are countles examples like this.
Cowardliness and paranoia are common problems among todays so called leaders. It’s the same all around the world. Nearly all of them are not real leaders like we have seen in world history.
They surround themselves with hundreds of body guards, Kevlar vests, bulletproof cars, houses like fortresses. When they travel from one place to another, the whole area is cordoned off, streets are closed to traffic. There are policemen every few meters etc… Most of these measures are unnecessary.
Why do they behave like that?
To give an answer we must look at the democratic system we live in today. We go to the polling stations every few years and choose the party (candidate) we think best suited to our beliefs. But the real question is who brought those political parties/leaders before us.
Are they there because the people want them? No, they were carefully handpicked and groomed by the IMF, World Bank, Bilderbergers, CFR etc. Then the controlled media tell us how good they are day and night continuously. After a short time you have a new leader!
We only chose from the candidates that were presented to us. They are all same. Only their names and appearances are different. They are one party with two (or more) heads.
To give you an idea, our present prime minister was presented with a “Courage to Care Award” by Abraham Foxman of ADL in 2004.
For what?
After the Mavi Marmara incident why didn’t he send the award back to the ADL?
Also two of our ministers were graduated from Exeter University in England which is a well known place for recruiting and training foreign agents for MI5 & MI6. One of these guys is a deputy PM.
What a coincidence!
Look at the meetings of Bilderbergers, G-20, G-8. Every year they step up the security measures. In the last G-20 meeting in Canada the security costs were reported to be nearly 1 billion dollars. They have shut down the whole city. If our elites are so thoroughly secured from the public, and are never exposed to risks from the decisions they take, there will be endless expansion of corruption, poverty and wars.
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Vicious
Lies are Unbekoming | January 25, 2026
The waiting room is clean. The receptionist is polite. The forms ask reasonable questions. Nothing in the physical environment suggests danger. The magazines are current. The hand sanitizer dispenser works. Someone has chosen calming colors for the walls.
A pregnant woman sits in a chair designed for her comfort. She has been told to be here. Not ordered—no one orders. Recommended. Strongly recommended. Everyone does this. Her mother did this. Her friends did this. The women in her prenatal group compare notes about their appointments the way they compare notes about nursery furniture. Which provider did you choose? What tests have you had? The questions assume the answers. The answers assume the questions.
She will be offered things today. Offered is the word used. The offers will come with information sheets that list risks and benefits in tabular form. She will sign consent documents. Everything will be voluntary in the legal sense. No one will hold her down. No one will threaten her. She will choose, and her choices will feel like choices, and she will leave feeling she has done the responsible thing.
What she will not feel is the weight of what has been arranged before she arrived. … continue
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