By KATHY KELLY and DAN PEARSON | June 26, 2010
In accepting General McChrystal’s resignation, President Obama said that McChrystal’s departure represented a change in personnel, not a change in policy. “Americans don’t flinch in the face of difficult truths or difficult tasks.” he stated, “We persist and we persevere.” Yet, President Obama and the U.S. people don’t face up to the ugly truth that, in Afghanistan, the U.S. has routinely committed atrocities against innocent civilians. By ducking that truth, the U.S. reinforces a sense of exceptionalism, which, in other parts of the world, causes resentment and antagonism.
While on the campaign trail and since taking office, President Obama has persistently emphasized his view that attacks against civilians are always criminal, unless the U.S. is the attacker, in which case they are justified. We heard this again, on June 23rd, as the President assured the U.S. people that we will persevere in Afghanistan. “We will not tolerate a safe haven for terrorists who want to destroy Afghan security from within, and launch attacks against innocent men, women, and children in our country and around the world.”
When considering the security of Afghan civilians, it’s crucial to ask why, on May 12, 2009, General McChrystal was selected to replace General McKiernan as the top general in Afghanistan. News reports said it was because he had experience in coordinating special operations in Iraq. That experience involved developing death squads, planning night raids, and coordinating undercover assassinations. McChrystal proved, since his appointment, that he could organize atrocities against Afghan civilians and simultaneously present himself as a protector of Afghan civilians. In doing so, he relied on collaboration and cooperation from Defense Secretary Gates, General Petraeus and President Obama. They are united in their culpability. We, ourselves, bear responsibility to examine disturbing patterns of misinformation regarding U.S./NATO attacks against Afghan civilians.
In each of eleven incidents since April 9th, 2009, U.S. forces killed innocent civilians, then engaged in a cover-up, insisting that they had killed insurgents, and eventually acknowledged having killed civilians. Generally, U.S./NATO officials issued an apology. Wikileaks is expected to release a video that establishes U.S. responsibility for a May 4th, 2009 air attack which killed an estimated 86 – 140 civilians, mostly women and children. In the days and weeks after the attack, U.S. and NATO military officials made a concerted effort to avoid blame for this attack. Voices for Creative Nonviolence has maintained a list, assuredly only a partial list, of U.S./NATO attacks, since April 2009, which caused civilian deaths. Below is the entry describing the May 4, 2009 attack.
Date: May 4, 2009
Place: Farah Province near the town of Granai
Circumstances: Mainstream media reports estimate that between 86 and 140 people, mostly children, died in a US air attack. According to Reuters, only 22 of the victims were adult males.
Initial U.S./NATO response: The following chronology indicates multiple attempts on the part of US officials to avoid blame.
May 6, 2009—U.S. officials plea ignorance and state that an investigation is under way.
May 6, 2009—According to The Guardian, a spokesperson for US forces in Afghanistan, Captain Elizabeth Mathias says, “This was not coalition forces. This was Afghan national security forces who called in close air support, a decision that was vetted by the Afghan leadership.”
May 7, 2009—An Armed Service Press Service report announces that a team is “investigating differing accounts of the events leading up to the casualties. Those accounts include allegations that the Taliban tossed grenades into homes to ‘frame’ Afghan and coalition forces.” U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates states that “the United States and coalition partners do everything we can to avoid civilian casualties.” He goes on to say that “While there have been civilian casualties caused by American and NATO troops, they have been accidental. When the Taliban cause casualties, they are on purpose.”
May 8, 2009—Pentagon spokesperson Col. Greg Julian insists that earlier estimates of the death toll were “grossly exaggerated.” May 10, 2009—In an interview with Mike Wallace, General David Petraeus suggests that the Taliban forced people “to remain in houses from which the Taliban was engaging U.S. forces.”
May 15, 2009—Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway again blames the Taliban for civilian casualties. “We believe that there were families who were killed by the Taliban with grenades and rifle fire,” he said, “that were then paraded about and shown as casualties from the airstrike.”
U.S. /NATO acknowledgment that the people killed were unarmed civilians:
May 13, 2009—Referring to the May 4th raids in an Afghan press interview, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry admits that “there were a number of civilians killed, a number of civilians wounded. We don’t know the exact amount. You are aware that our President of the United States and our Secretary of State and our Secretary of Defense have all very explicitly expressed their condolences for what happened.”
June 2, 2009— According to The New York Times “A military investigation has concluded that American personnel made significant errors in carrying out some of the airstrikes in western Afghanistan on May 4 that killed dozens of Afghan civilians, according to a senior American military official.”
With all due respect for Ambassador Eikenberry’s sincerity, and recognizing that condolences may have been relayed to Afghanistan, we nevertheless want to say that we couldn’t find any record of U.S. officials publicly expressing sorrow, explicitly, for the U.S. attack against Afghan civilians on May 4, 2009.
However, we do note that U.S. officials, one week later, nominated General McChrystal to replace General McKiernan. It seems that this appointment signaled U.S. intent to shift assaults against Afghan civilians into the realm of undercover operations, making it much easier to duck the blame.
Kathy Kelly, (kathy@vcnv.org), and Dan Pearson, (dan@vcnv.org), are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)
By Alex Kane on June 26, 2010
When plans were announced in February 2007 to open the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), New York City’s first dual-language Arabic public school, ugly anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia reared its head.
Yesterday, the New York Times profiled a Brooklyn-based Hebrew language charter school. There has been barely a peep about this school–a stark reminder of the privilege Jewish-Americans hold in our society and how racism against Arabs is an accepted part of our national discourse.
Here’s an excerpt from a great New York Times profile by Andrea Elliott of KGIA’s founding principal Debbie Almontaser about the concocted controversy:
In newspaper articles and Internet postings, on television and talk radio, Ms. Almontaser was branded a “radical,” a “jihadist” and a “9/11 denier.” She stood accused of harboring unpatriotic leanings and of secretly planning to proselytize her students. Despite Ms. Almontaser’s longstanding reputation as a Muslim moderate, her critics quickly succeeded in recasting her image.
The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 anxieties. But Ms. Almontaser’s downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life. The fight against the school, participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle.
One of the more pernicious, and completely false, charges against KGIA was that the school had a political agenda to indoctrinate students to believe in “radical Islam.”
The Hebrew-language charter school, on the other hand, does have politics, namely Zionism, infused into it:
There are reminders of Israel everywhere — blue-and-white flags adorn the walls of one classroom, and another class often watches an Israeli children’s show. The students celebrated Israeli Independence Day this year. (In the parlance of 5- and 6-year-olds, the day was known as the country’s “62nd birthday,” and prompted a project of construction-paper birthday cards.)
By Saffi Ullah Ahmad | Pulse Media | June 26, 2010
Twenty five years after the world’s biggest industrial disaster, Union Carbide’s old pesticide factory remains untouched, haunting the crowded city of Bhopal, a constant reminder of the region’s darkest night.
On the night of 3 December 1984 the lethal gas methyl isocyanate (MIC) alongside other noxious fumes, engulfed the city of Bhopal and killed thousands. It is thought that the disaster has claimed 25,000 lives thus far, and adversely affected over 500,00. Gross negligence by Union Carbide is widely viewed as the cause of the tragedy.
Earlier last week, after a quarter century of waiting and sloppy, almost reluctant court action, lamentable sentences were passed down to seven Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) officials. Sentences of two years were administered to some of those presiding over the corporation when the tragedy occurred; a small group of incredibly wealthy Indian men, all in their 70’s, one of whom is a billionaire, and none of whom are expected to serve their sentences. In addition to the sentencing, each of the seven men were fined a paltry £1400, an amount which would barely pay for the yearly healthcare of one of the victims, let alone serve as meaningful punishment for this appalling crime.
These convictions are so far the only to have materialized in a case that was opened the day after the tragedy in 1984. Those ultimately responsible for the tragedy, namely the corporation’s CEO and equally negligent Western officials, remain unpunished.
Survivors and campaigners have been outraged, calling last week’s decision an ‘insult’. However, as we are about to see, this is only the most recent of a long history of insults.
‘That night’
In 1969, a pesticide factory was shoddily built by Union Carbide (UC) on the outskirts of Bhopal.
As noted by Indra Sinha, controversially in the late 70s following the acquirement of several licenses, UC executives decided that the First World War gas MIC, an incredibly volatile substance 500 times deadlier than hydrogen cyanide, would be stored on site. MIC was to be used as a cost-effective intermediary for the production of the pesticide Carbaryl, even though other manufacturers had refused to use the substance on the grounds of safety. Although chemical engineers recommended, if absolutely necessary, that the gas remain stored in the smallest quantities, on this particular site the decision was taken to store the substance in a giant tank. Equally alarmingly is the fact that UC had opted to use previously unproven technology in the Bhopal plant’s MIC unit, and decided not to store the gas at an identical installation in West Virginia.
Following a poor start owing to local farmers not being able to afford their products, UC bosses decided to go on a cost cutting spree which involved the reckless enforced redundancy of maintenance staff, the use of cheaper, often defective materials in repair work, and the disengagement of safety systems such as the MIC unit’s refrigerator (the gas remains more stable when cooled). The few maintenance staff that did remain were expected to understand English safety manuals even though very few had a grasp of the language.
A 1982 safety audit by US engineers noted the filthy condition of the plant, including corroding pipelines and faulty valves, and warned of dangerous toxic release. As the situation worsened and minor gas leaks began to occur, often injuring and even killing workers, journalists and factory staff began warning locals of a terrible danger. Notably, Raj Keswani wrote a series of articles in which he claimed Bhopal was ‘about to be annihilated’ and begged the region’s Chief Minister, unsuccessfully, to investigate the factory before it became ‘Hitler’s gas chamber’.
On the night of 2 December 1984, following an explosive reaction with water, a deadly stream of gas began to seep out of the Bhopal plant’s MIC tank, as all six safety systems designed to contain such a leak failed. The density of the gas, accompanied by a gentle breeze, ensured it rolled along the ground and gradually enveloped the city. Across the city people were waking up in agony, water streaming from their eyes and noses, coughing violently as the gas attacked eye and lung tissue, as well as the central nervous system. No one quite knew what was happening, just that they should run, in whatever clothes they were wearing. In total panic, locals ran alongside dogs and even cattle, with several people being trampled to death in the ensuing commotion.
People were vomiting uncontrollably, frothing at the mouth, suffering visual impairment, and losing control of their bowels – passing urine as they ran. Others suffered convulsions, writhing uncontrollably in the moments before their end. Not even the unborn were spared; over half of all pregnant women caught up in the commotion suffered spontaneous abortions. An Indian Doctor on the scene famously stated ‘Tonight, the Bhopalis are going through Hiroshima’.
By morning Bhopal resembled a scene from hell. In all, 40 tons of MIC which wreaks havoc upon the human body in the tiniest of proportions, had escaped and thousands of bodies were scattered across the old city — along narrow alley ways, road sides and on lawns. In the days to come, the leaves of trees within roughly 40 square miles of the factory were to turn yellow, wither and drop off. Depending on religious custom, some bodies were to be buried in mass graves, and others burnt on mass pyres. Although the authorities give more conservative figures (around the 3000 mark), others estimate up to 8,000 people died that night and anywhere between 15- 25,000 since the event.
Survivors overwhelmed hospitals in which bewildered junior doctors had no idea what treatments to administer. Many were rubbing their eyes with sewage water to ease the searing pain.
Exacerbating the situation, the officials at UC refused to release extensive information they had gathered following years of internal research on the effects of MIC on the human body, nor the exact make up of the gas, calling them ‘trade secrets’, and fearing a dip in profits. With doctors having no proper treatment protocols to follow, the number of deaths multiplied and excessive amounts of drugs for temporary relief, such as steroids, antibiotics and psychotic drugs became the mainstay of medical care, each often causing their own severe side effects.
Roughly 500,000 were injured through exposure to the gas, which in the absence of winds, lingered in the city for days. Ailments directly linked to the disaster include blindness, respiratory difficulties, a variety of cancers and gynecological problems. Many survivors today cannot walk a few steps without gasping for breath, and others suffer sensory delusions, hearing voices in their heads. In addition to the multitude of medical conditions experienced by the victims, the situation wasn’t at all helped by the central government’s abrupt and unexplained decision to stop all research into the medical effects of the gas cloud in 1994.
The second wave of casualties
Adil
Today, instead of leaking gas into the skies, the old UC factory leaks deadly chemicals into the soil and ultimately into the water supply of locals.
Approximately 8,000 tons of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals lie abandoned in the old plant, including mercury, due in large part to a lack of political willpower to enforce the financing of a multimillion dollar cleanup operation. Over two decades of monsoons have washed much of these chemicals in to an underground aquifer which feeds into wells and boreholes used by locals to extract drinking water.
Having no other water supply, many of the locals have been forced to effectively poison themselves by drinking this contaminated water over the years since the disaster. The chemicals leaking from the old plant have been directly linked to a shocking variety of conditions including: skin problems, aches and pains, headaches, nausea, dizziness, anxiety, constant exhaustion, kidney failure, diabetes, a range of cancers, and tuberculosis. Not only are the original survivors still being punished, but so is a subsequent generation; prior gas exposure to mothers coupled with the consumption of these chemicals has led to thousands of gruesome birth defects, with many newborns barely recognizably human, and widespread growth retardation in children.
Despite the Supreme Court ordering that affected children be afforded health insurance, over 100,000 remain without any, and with the majority of affected families being of low social status or caste, outsiders are often reluctant to help, treating victims as untouchables.
UC likely knew of the dangers of such contamination from as early as 1980, when cattle mysteriously began dying in nearby fields. A subsequent internal study in 1989 confirmed this and UC chose not to share these findings with locals, lest cries for compensation multiply. […]
As for levels of contamination, a major water and soil study was conducted by Greenpeace in 1999. After testing samples in and around the factory, deadly chemicals were found everywhere, including in hand pumps that gushed out drinking water. In the water, levels of carbon tetrachloride and chloroform were found several hundred times higher than the US Environmental Protection Agency limits. In the soil, levels of mercury were found to be anywhere up to 6 million times higher than those found in uncontaminated soil. Similarly, organochlorides such as the banned pesticide DDT were present throughout the region.
More recent reports include one released in 2009 by the Sambhavna Trust which show a presence of large quantities of the aforementioned chemicals, as well as nickel, chromium, lead and others in vegetables, and even in the breast milk of nursing mothers. As a result of ongoing and horrific birth defects, mothers in the area had become too scared to breast feed their own children.
‘People are ill in the communities. Babies are sick. There are many deformed births. It’s as if they really hate us. As if they’re trying to punish us for protesting when they gassed us before and killed our families.’ These were the words of Sunil Kumar, an orphaned community leader (following the catastrophe), who went on to commit suicide some years ago.
As each monsoon washes more and more chemicals in to the area’s ground water, an ever increasing number of people are becoming sick. According to the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, upwards of 150,000 remain chronically ill and over 50,000 are not able to work.
The court battle
The day after the disaster began one of the longest running prosecutions in India’s history. Within four days of the tragedy, UC’s CEO Warren Anderson was allowed by Indian authorities to fly back — on a government plane — to the US on bail, never to return.
Recognizing a potential easy ride in Indian courts, UC managed to persuade a US court that the case be heard in India. The Manhattan District Court agreed on the provision that UC Corporation agree to abide by the Indian courts’ decision. However, when the Indian courts summoned US executives to answer criminal charges, UC executives were advised by their lawyers to claim Indian courts had no jurisdiction over them. They have been absconding ever since.
In 1989 Rajiv Gandhi’s government came to an out of court settlement with Union Carbide India Limited without consulting survivors, under which $470m — the exact sum UC was afforded by their insurers — would be paid in compensation resolving all outstanding legal issues.
At first glance this figure may appear significant, but after being divided between roughly 550,000 people, and with various administrative problems, it amounted to approximately $500 per victim to cope with a lifetime of misery, or, as Indra Sinha points out, 7p a day. This is the cost of a cup of tea. Prior to this settlement, victims had received $5 per month, and stunningly, even this figure was stingily deducted from the final pay out. Amazingly, UC also failed to take responsibility for the disaster, speaking instead of ‘sabotage’.
Just how derisory this figure was can be seen when we compare it to the pay out after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, where even Alaskan sea otters were afforded more compensation than Bhopal victims, and the recent BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where BP recently set aside a $20 billion fund for victims along the coastline. Not surprisingly, once news of the UC payout emerged, with investors having expected a much larger sum, their share price went through the roof.
To add to the locals’ problems, this settlement completely ignored environmental damage, despite the ever worsening contamination in the area, and overlooked second and third generation victims. Also, UC’s lawyers saw to it that further court action couldn’t be taken in the US.
In 1994, most probably as a strategy to avoid further liability and in light of threats by Indian courts to seize their assets, UC sold its Indian branch to Eveready Industries India Limited.
UC was then officially purchased by the Dow Chemical Company in 2001, a controversial corporation with a murky history. Whereas Dow was quick to set aside billions for UC asbestos workers in Texas, it immediately denied liability for UC’s doings in Bhopal, stating that the 1989 payment fulfilled their financial responsibility to the disaster.
Having legally acquired all of UC’s assets and liabilities, Dow continues to refuse to clean up the site, administer appropriate compensation or even disclose the composition of the gas leak, despite pleas even by its own shareholders, sending a dangerous message to other corporate giants.
With regard to criminal charges, in 1996 initial charges of culpable homicide were controversially diluted to criminal negligence, reducing potential maximum jail sentences of UC officials from ten years to two, explaining the recently administered sentences.
UC and Dow have been aided along the way not just by the underdeveloped tort law framework in India and the clogged legal system, but also corrupt bureaucrats and potentially even judges. Indian officials and politicians, most notably those from the BJP, are also known to have taken money from Dow, often going on to claim on public platforms that there is no water contamination in Bhopal. The prospect of Dow bringing more business to India has made officials even more reluctant to administer justice to the Bhopalis. With regard to Anderson, the Bhopal Medical Appeal believes that ‘neither the American nor the Indian government seem interested in disturbing him with an extradition.’
In light of the central governments ongoing lack of action, in 2004 campaigners for a clean water supply successfully petitioned the Supreme Court of India, which ordered the piping of safe water into affected communities. When this didn’t happen, several mothers took their damaged children to government offices in protest, only to meet severe hostility including a beating with police sticks. Many police officers wept as they carried out their orders. In a related instance in 2009, survivors chained themselves to railings outside government offices only to receive a similar response… Full article
*Shanu and Adil source site images: http://galleries.bhopal.org/main.php?g2_itemId=30
Unlike in the case of their Jewish counterparts, when it comes to offending Arab drivers, the Israeli Border Police would rather kill than arrest.
By Amira Hass| Haaretz | June 23, 2010
If a policeman had witnessed the hit-and-run accident that took the life of cyclist Shneor Cheshin on Friday, would he have killed the driver after catching him? Of course not. But on Friday, June 11, in broad daylight in the middle of a residential neighborhood, a policeman killed a driver who ran into – but did not kill – pedestrians: police officers on foot.
The killing was buried immediately in the giant cemetery called “of no interest to the Israeli public.” Why? Because all this happened in a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem (Wadi Joz ), and because the driver’s name was Ziad Jilani.
Until his case is decided in court, Tal Mor is rightfully deemed “the suspect in Cheshin’s killing.” But Jilani was treated to a lightning trial: He was convicted on the spot of intending to carry out a terror attack because the people hurt by his car were Israeli policemen. They chased him as one chases someone defined as a terrorist, while shooting (first in the air, but then in a way that endangered passersby. In fact, a 5-year-old girl sitting in a parked car was injured ).
And then, when he was lying on the ground shot, according to witnesses, he also took two bullets to the head. That is, between the second the man was indicted for intending to run people over in a terror attack, and until the moment a gun was allegedly pressed right up to his head and the trigger pulled, the Border Police on the scene were victims, witnesses, prosecutors, judges and executioners.
The Border Police spokesperson wrote to Haaretz: “Citizens have been killed and dozens injured by vehicle terror attacks that occurred in Jerusalem from 2008 to 2009. The lives of other innocent citizens were saved thanks to the intervention of police, Border Police combatants and civilians who neutralized the perpetrators and prevented more killing. The latest running-over incident … only by a miracle ended without combatant fatalities. In this case as well, the perpetrator was neutralized after he tried to flee the scene against the law.”
When Jilani fled his vehicle into a dead-end alley, did he endanger the lives of civilians? Did the police fear that the Palestinian (after all, they were certain he was not Jewish ) would harm Palestinians in the heart of that Palestinian neighborhood, so they had to “neutralize” him? Who knows, maybe so. Perhaps that was the reason they fired at him when he got out of his car and they chased him, lest he pull a pistol or an assault rifle out of his pants and attack innocent passersby, Palestinians like him.
Down the alley, near his uncle’s house, there were no police at the time who could be endangered by a potential weapon or an explosives belt. When he was already lying prone on the ground, apparently injured in his leg, back and arm, were the approaching police still afraid he would draw a rifle and kill them? So that’s why they did not bother handcuffing him?
They call the Border Police “combatants,” going around the streets of East Jerusalem with their long rifles and helmets. Against whom and why are they doing combat there, between a butcher shop, two vegetable stores, a laundry, a car-repair shop and a sidewalk that serves as a playground?
Israeli police, whatever they are called, are sent to the streets of East Jerusalem as enforcers of government and municipal policy. It is that same policy of intentional discrimination that has brought 65 percent of the 303,429 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem below the poverty line (double the number of poor Jews in the city ) and 74 percent of Palestinian children below that line.
The police serve the government that since 1967 has expropriated 24,000 dunams (8,000 acres ) of land from Palestinians and over the years has built more than 50,000 housing units on it – for Jews only. Police accompany the bulldozers that demolish homes built, for lack of choice, without permits.
It should come as no shock that police feel hostility toward them in the occupied city. Perhaps that is the reason they did not stop and think: It might have been a brake malfunction, the man might have lost his senses or not have been aware of police and border police procedures for opening fire. The reasons Jilani ran into the police could have been brought to light in court.
But they chose, allegedly, to return him to his family with his face imploded after being hit by two bullets, apparently fired into his right cheek. The bullets did not even have a place to come out because, lying there, his left cheek was on the asphalt. Neutralize means eliminate.
108morris108 — June 20, 2010
Arthur C Clarke: “Fifty years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal – and power.” — Childhood’s End.
By “Mark Twain” – 06/20/2010
Let’s be honest: you’ll never win the lottery.
On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you’ll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That’s because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let’s face it — you’re a member of the working caste. Sorry!
As a result, you don’t have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you’d probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That’s why we’re so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about “justice” and “equal opportunity” in America.
Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there’s never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it’s already occupied by us — and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there’s usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.
Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy. And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our totalitarian corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!
You also probably don’t have the same greedy, compulsive drive to possess wealth, power, and prestige that we have. And even though you may sincerely want to change the way you live, you’re also afraid of the very change you desire, thus keeping you and others like you in a nervous state of limbo. So you go through life mechanically playing your assigned social role, terrified what others would think should you ever dare to “break out of the mold”.
Naturally, we try to play you off against each other whenever it suits our purposes: high-waged workers against low-waged, unionized against non-unionized, Black against White, male against female, democrat against republican, American workers against Japanese against Mexican against…. We continually push your wages down and take your money by invoking “foreign competition,” “the law of supply and demand,” “national security,” “too big to fail” or “the bloated federal deficit.” We throw you on the unemployed scrap heap if you step out of line or jeopardize our profits. And to give you an occasional break from the monotony of our daily economic blackmail, we allow you to participate in our stage-managed electoral shell games, better known to you ordinary folks as “elections.” Happily, you haven’t a clue as to what’s really happening — instead, you blame “Aliens,” “Tree-hugging Environmentalists,” “Niggers,” “Homos”, “Wet backs”, “Welfare Queens,” and countless others for your troubled situation.
We’re also very pleased that many of you still embrace the “work ethic,” even though most jobs in our economy degrade the environment, undermine your physical and emotional health, and basically suck your one and only life right out of you. We obviously don’t know much about work, but we’re sure glad you do!
Of course, life could be different. Society could be intelligently organized to meet the real needs of the general population. You and others like you could collectively fight to free yourselves from our domination. But you don’t know that. In fact, you can’t even imagine that another way of life is possible. And that’s probably the greatest, most significant achievement of our system — robbing you of your imagination, your creativity, your ability to think and act for yourself.
So we’d truly like to thank you from the bottom of our heartless hearts. Your loyal sacrifice makes possible our corrupt luxury; your work makes our system work. Our governmental, public education, media mind-control, and financial institutions frame a labyrinthine system of lies that you numbingly support for our advancement and your children’s enslavement.
Thanks so much for “knowing your place” — without even knowing it!
Press TV – June 20, 2010
Israel has refused to allow German Development Aid Minister Dirk Niebel to visit the besieged Gaza Strip in order to inspect a sewage plant financed by Germany.
A German ministry spokesman, objecting to the Israeli move, said later on Saturday that talks over Niebel’s visit to the Palestinian areas were still underway.
Niebel had hoped to visit a sewage treatment plant, financed with the German development aid, during his current visit to Israel.
“Sometimes the Israeli government does not make it easy for its friends to explain why it behaves the way it does,” Niebel told the German ZDF TV network program “heute” (today).
He further added that Israel’s latest announcement on easing the Gaza siege was “not sufficient” and that Tel Aviv must “now deliver” on its pledge.
Beyond that, Israel should be “clear” about how, within an international context, it wants to “cooperate with its friends in the future as well,” the German minister of the liberal Free Democratic Party said.
Earlier Saturday, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that the German parliament, with the support of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, is to issue a cross-party demand that Israel allow the passage of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip by sea.
###
Referring to the loosening of the blockade that the Israeli government recently announced, Niebel said, “if the Israeli government expects support for its new Gaza strategy, it must first of all ensure more transparency and for a new partnership.”
He said the blockade, which is aimed at preventing Hamas members in the Gaza Strip from obtaining weapons and materials to build rockets which are fired over the border into Israel, was not a sign of strength.
Rather, he said, it was, “proof of unspoken fear.” And he urged the Israeli government not to let the clock run out on the remaining opportunity for peace talks.
“It is five to twelve for Israel,” he said.
By Ahmad Amr | Palestine Chronicle | June 18, 2010
I bet you’ve never heard of anti-Palestinism? In Israel and the United States, defaming and delegitimizing the Palestinians is a national sport; but have you ever heard anybody complain about it? Why didn’t Americans get worked up when 1,400 Palestinians were incinerated with Israeli phosphorous bombs? Why did the murder of 300 children in last year’s assault not touch a nerve? Why did it take three long years and the slaughter of eight Turks and a Turkish-American citizen to notice that Israel has incarcerated 1.5 million Palestinians in a concentration camp?
What if you were Palestinian shell shocked by decades of the world’s collective indifference? What would you tell your children? Is there any way to explain to a child why his people were ethnically cleansed to make room for a State as Jewish as England is English?
Why do pundits and politicians in the West get away with denying that the Palestinians are the indigenous people of the Holy Land? Why do we allow Israelis and their supporters to denigrate the historic rights of the Palestinians to live in the only homeland they’ve ever known? How is it that we don’t notice that, even today, half the population of historic Palestine is of native stock?
Why do the treasonous intellectuals of the West routinely allow Zionists to unabashedly declare their ‘right’ to settle in the Holy Land? Are they really that ignorant of the ethnic cleansing that dispossessed the Palestinians in 1948 or have they been afflicted by the epidemic of anti-Palisitinism? With or without a state, should we accord the Palestinians the right to exist and what kind of existence are they entitled to?
It’s one thing to talk about the facts on the ground and despair at the remote possibilities of a just solution for Palestinian problem. Because we all know what it would take to accord Palestinians the full spectrum of rights that we all take for granted. We all have the right to leave and return to the places where we were born – to the sacred land where our forefathers are buried. But if the Palestinians make legitimate claims to exercise that most basic of rights, they are accused of denying the right of Israel to exist.
Simply put, if international law applied to Palestinians, we would have to restore their rights to live anywhere in their ancestral homeland. But that’s not in the cards – because they’re nothing more than Palestinians and anti-Palestinism is the law of the land. If we were of a mind to accord them their legitimate rights, we would be obliged to issue every Palestinian refugee a visa to return to the Holy Land and we all know where that might lead – a country where immigrant European Jews and their descendents would be ‘deprived’ of an exclusive Jewish state.
Heaven forbid we should even attempt to persuade Israeli Jews to grant equal rights to the indigenous population. See, that would be considered anti-Zionism which is now deemed indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. The whole notion that there ever was an indigenous population in the Holy Land is a taboo subject. When it comes to the Palestinians, we cast reason aside and conveniently forget history, demographics and DNA. Who died and gave the Israelis and their dispensationalist Armageddon worshiping allies a license to make the absurd claim that Ethiopian and Moldavian Jews are the original natives of Palestine. Who issued the Israeli Lobbyists a pass to substitute their scripture for international law? Who says Jews are chosen and the Palestinians are not. And tell me again; if you’re not chosen, I imagine that means you’re cursed. How derogatory is that?
If you probe Zionist theology, you’ll see the logic behind the core Zionist argument. Palestinian Christians and Muslims deserved to be ethnically cleansed because they abandoned the ‘right’ religious traditions. Think about that because it’s a real simple concept to digest. If the Zionists had shown up on the shores of Palestine and found the natives still practicing Judaism, they wouldn’t have evicted them from their homes or expropriated their lands. Every Palestinian understands that. They also understand that if they had obliged the Zionists and converted to Judaism, they might have been spared an eviction notice and all the carnage that has plagued them for two generations. You want to know the original sins of the Palestinians – some of them put their faith in Jesus and gave up Judaism for Orthodox Christianity and others went a step further and embraced Islam. Had they stuck to their ancient Jewish traditions, they would never have tasted the bitter fruit of exile and dispossession.
Today, we have six million nuclear armed Zionists in full control of the entire historical boundaries of Palestine and another six million Palestinian natives living under the military rule of a Jewish supremacist state. Even in ‘Israel proper’, 20% of the citizens are descendents of the indigenous people of the Holy Land. Just to give you a perspective, at the height of the civil rights movement, only 12% of Americans were of African descent. I challenge anybody to compare the worst excesses of the segregationist south to the draconian laws that apply to Palestinians living under military occupation.
The toll in the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland was 13. Last week, the British finally got around to apologizing for that crime but will they ever get around to making amends for the Balfour Declaration? Even the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa didn’t kill the way Israel kills. In 1976, five hundred Africans were slaughtered in the Soweto uprising. Not that the world paid much attention to the carnage – but compare that figure to the 1,400 civilians who were slaughtered in Gaza last year. Does the State Department keep a tally of how many Palestinians have been butchered since the Zionists came to build a ‘Jewish homeland’ on their native soil?
Did the Palestinians deserve what happened to them? If they had been left unmolested by the British and the Zionists, what kind of country would they have now? That’s what the world looks like from Palestinian eyes? Why us and why doesn’t anybody care? They’ve stolen our homeland – can’t the Israelis at least leave us with the memories of what was and what could have been? Before they set their covetous eyes on our towns and villages in the West Bank, can’t they take a deep breath, hang their head in shame and step back to the land they’ve already vanquished?
Why are the Israelis given a carte blanche to falsify history? Why is Nakba denial not considered beyond the pale? Indeed, why is the ‘Nakba’ not part of our daily vocabulary?
Why was Joseph Biden not taken to task when he publicly avowed his allegiance to Zionist ideology? Where was the public outcry? Why didn’t anybody call for his immediate resignation? What exactly did the Vice President of the United States mean to say? Those words have a very clear meaning – they are an expression of the vilest form of anti-Palestinism? When somebody utters them – every Palestinian understands their meaning? It means that Palestine never had a right to exist – that it was a disposable country that deserved to be eradicated off the face of the earth. I know Joseph Biden is a bigot for uttering those words; the problem is he doesn’t. Worst still, he feels righteous in saying them – as righteous as any true blue segregationist who applauded Jim Crow laws – as righteous as any Nazi German who believed that European Jews deserved to be transferred – as righteous as any Zionist who believes the Palestinians should be ethnically cleansed to make room for Eretz Israel.
The thing about Zionists who openly spew their anti-Palestinism is not their support of the right of Israel to exist but their subscription to the obscene notion that Palestinians deserved to lose their homeland. In formulating a resolution of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, it is one thing to accommodate current demographic and political realities and quite another to say that Israel had the right to come into existence over the carcass of Palestine. We can acknowledge and deal with the end result of the nauseating refuse of Israeli history without justifying the cruelty inflicted on the Palestinians. Tribes have eradicated tribes for centuries. But last I checked, this is the 21st Century. What might have been considered acceptable conduct at the peak of the European colonialism should not be condoned today. We’ve dealt with segregationist southerners and the radical Apartheid regime and we can work a humane resolution to the plight of the indigenous people of the Holy Land without cheering Zionist racists or denigrating their Palestinian victims.
Anti-Palestinism deprives us of the moral clarity that is essential to a resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We need to start recognizing anti-Palestinism for what it is – hate speech. That day will come when every pundit and every politician will rue the day they publicly flaunted their anti-Palestinism. Make no mistake, in the not so distant future, bigots like Joseph Biden will be obliged to eat their words and apologize for their blatant espousal of ethnic cleansing. When anti-Palestinism becomes a crime, Biden is the first person the Palestinians should sue.
– Ahmed Amr is an Arab-American. He is the former editor of NileMedia.com and the author of “The Sheep and the Guardians – Diary of a SEC Sanctioned Swindle.”
By Susie Kneedler on June 16, 2010
Terry Gross once ended an interview with Palestinian human rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh by asking whether he wanted to “mov[e] someplace else so that you wouldn’t be subjected to this… Israeli incursion.” Shehadeh retorted gently, “life…under Occupation” has “never been as difficult and as dangerous…and as frustrating as it is now. But, no, I will not leave.” NPR transcript here.
Terry Gross boasts in her new ad that “often when I’m interviewing people on Fresh Air, they give me a different way of looking at the world,” but her condescension to Shehadeh, a founder of Al-Haq (The Truth), shows how blind she is to Palestinian rights under International Law and how much she assumes Palestinians must make way for Israel’s expansion.
Gross has done no reports on the flotilla raid, and this just bears out her historical pattern. I’ve wondered for years about Gross’s cowardice in the face of Israeli injustice. She truly sides with the oppressors, imagining that they’re still victims. I listened to all three interviews that Gross had with Raja Shehadeh. And each time she administered an immediate antidote of airing an Israel booster, and not just any Israelis, but rightwingers: Yossi Klein Halevi, February 6, 2002; Michael Oren, June 11, 2002; and now Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz, October 28, 2003.
In the prologue to her interviews with Shehadeh, Gross palms off Israeli propaganda as truth: “his town Ramallah was occupied by the Israeli army…This was part of a larger Israeli military operation to root out terrorists in response to suicide bombings” (Oct. 28, 2003). Gross omits the then-35-year Occupation, depicting Israeli aggression rather than Palestinian resistance as self-defense. No, only Ramallah was “Occupied.” Context is all, with news and with history.
Having introduced Shehadeh by reciting Israel’s hype, Gross heralds David Horovitz by peddling Horovitz’s own claims as fact:: “He told me that in Israel fear of suicide bombers is profound and unrelenting.” Gross’s preconceptions bow to establishment stereotypes: Occupied Palestine is riddled with homocidal attackers; mighty Israel is besieged by terror. Gross poses different questions to her two guests, and gets similar replies about great threats. But Gross responds unequally to the comparable answers–not least in neglecting to point out the false equivalency of their suffering. For Shehadeh is Occupied, whereas Horovitz speaks for Occupier. Worse yet, Gross ignores Shehadeh’s plight, the devastating fear in every bit of life–and death–in living under Occupation. Her only reaction is to change the subject.
By contrast, Gross chortles appreciatively when Horovitz chats about the ordeal of being searched at stores, despite being so blond–with a blond family–“we all look like recent arrivals from Sweden.” Terry Gross’s rare talent–one I used to love–is her engaging laugh. Gross’s mirth graces her interviews with ingenuous delight (especially compared to many witless hosts’ awkward guffaws). She could just as easily find glimmers of fun in Shehadeh’s self-deprecating relief that, when the IDF (sic) invaded his house, at least his gate kept the soldiers from terrifyingly banging on his door. Or the IDF’s bewilderment about how unmenacing he was: “I’m not a big person and perhaps that disarmed them.” Gross cuts Shehadeh off from her sympathetic sense of the ludicrous. She withholds empathy even when Shehadeh winningly confides his dread–“Would I break down?”– or describes his efforts to brave danger calmly, without belligerence.
That’s the pattern: Terry Gross refuses to converse with Shehadeh, but, rather, issues a series of insulting non-sequiturs that allow for no actual interaction. When she switches the topic to Israel’s “barrier fence,” Shehadah corrects her by explaining why it is an “Apartheid Wall,” stealing Palestinian land as it encircles their towns. But when Gross later asks Horovitz about the Wall, she reverts to “barrier,” not deigning to press Horowitz on links between Israeli tyranny and South Africa’s Apartheid.
With Horovitz, rather than changing subjects, Gross follows up with concern: “Has [suicide bombing] affected your views of Palestinians?” Horovitz generalizes: “Well, I can only relate to the Palestinian people by the opinion polls,” which “troublingly,” say that “most Palestinians say they support the bombers.” Horovitz justifies Israel scuppering peace talks.
Raja Shehadeh by contrast, speaks sadly of how extremists on both sides try to de-humanize the other. During the soldiers’ raid, ” I found young people dressed in such gear that you could hardly see them.” However, “I tried to make some human contact with them, but it was impossible….So I…felt some pity for them.” He could imagine how “they’d been told perhaps that every Palestinian hates them, and they live with this burden.” What largeness of mind.
But Gross doesn’t inquire whether IDF actions have embittered Shehadeh’s views of Israelis. Instead, Gross prods him to deprecate the president of Malaysia’s “anti-Semitic” remark, which he emphatically does.
Gross examines Shehadeh on his opinion of current Israeli-Palestinian informal peace proposals, but she locks out Shehadeh’s point, that Palestinians would accept compensation in lieu of Actual Return to the land of their ancestors. Gross hears intransigence rather than qualified enthusiasm: “Sounds as though you couldn’t really back this plan because it has no right of return.” Gross’s deafness betrays her prejudice: she imputes to Shehadeh Israel’s obstinacy–and her own?
Gross hops on again, insinuating that Shehadeh might “know anybody who’s directly connected to” “suicide bombers.” No, of course not, but Raja Shehadeh opens his conscience to say that he wants never “to compete in the horror and the tragedy because both sides have suffered horror….But I know victims… Israelis and Palestinians.” Shehadeh “cannot understand why [bombers] are driven to this,” but reminds us, “life in the Occupied Territories is to live in such despair.”
“The fact that Israel is killing babies and children does NOT justify such acts” he declares, explaining that there was “No possibility that anyone would do something like” blowing himself up before 1994, when [illegal] settlers killed worshippers.
Raja Shehadeh offers a beautiful introspection: “What has happened to us? We are at the edge.”
Gross leapfrogs; Shehadeh offers leaps of faith: “The beauty of Palestine historically has been a place of tolerance between the three religions…because Christians, Jews, and Muslims were living side by side….My struggle is for attaining freedom and…tolerance.”
Gross jumps on, disdaining to invite Shehadeh’s exploration of how despair warps the tyrannized–a logical, though deplorable–concomitant of more deplorable Israeli aggression, or his vision of a harmonious future Palestine. She fixates instead on her abhorrence of the bombers: have you, she prods, “witnessed extremist groups manipulating the despair, to try to create the environment where people are willing to blow themselves up?” Terry Gross misses his point: Israel created the environment of despair. Shehadeh though gives Gross the benefit of the doubt, describing how extremists on both sides take advantage of their people’s suffering. Gross might condole with him for all his endearing admissions, but she moves on. Nothing to see here, folks.
David Horovitz extends no such self-examination; he simply blames others, demanding that Palestinians: “stop the bombers,” “because then we can settle down to peace talks.” Horovitz even promises that the Israeli leadership then “would be rushing back to the peace talks.”
Of course, Palestinians have now stopped such bombings. Has Horovitz urged Netanyahu to “rush back to the peace talks”? No. Horovitz now proves his bad faith. He demands new concessions from Palestinians:
“Let Abbas speak in Arabic, to his own people – with his leadership colleagues on hand to publicly support and applaud him – and let him tell them that the Jews, too, have historic rights to Palestine.”
We need to study what Israel’s incessant moving of the proverbial goalposts does to the people of Palestine. Humans perceive such trickery with standards as taunting, and taunting–I know from being a child and now a parent–creates the greatest rage.
Gross surmises that Shehadeh might want to solve his problems by just leaving his home and people and seems almost exasperated. She’s in a muddle: as if she wants to commiserate–except that she can’t–for that means acknowledging Israel’s crimes–so she niggles Shehadeh to abandon all that’s right–though what’s right is giving up whatever Israel covets. Gross’s graceless query reminds me of the false concern and real prejudice of the father, Yaakov Levinson, in Heart of Jenin, to the Palestinian man, Ismail Khatib, who saved the life of Levinson’s tiny daughter. Khatib hoped to create ties through his acts of mercy, but the best gratitude the illegal-colonist Levinson could muster was a patronizing rebuff, “Can’t he emigrate?….There’s nothing for him here.”
What would have been really new sights–and sounds–from the show that labels itself as offering fresh air, is Gross truly listening to those our culture demonizes as Other. But Gross would have to care enough about the unexpectedness of the world–if not her job–to stretch beyond her preconceptions. Emily Henochowicz gives us an exquisite image for such elasticity of vision in an entrancing work of art (below), “Me to then-Me.” Henochowicz depicts her 2010 canvas stretching out to pull her 2009 model forward to catch up with her always-growing self. She posted it on the very eve of the protest where the IDF shot out her eye. Not many of us can equal our Emily’s indomitable ardor–her glorious sense of motion, of play–, but we can try.
Perhaps Terry Gross, the host who sells new ways of looking, can learn from Emily Henochowicz’s “Visual Adventure” to discern anew. Yesterday, Gross’s show featured the one-year anniversary of Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari’s arrest by Iran, then John Powers’s review of Philip Kerr’s thriller about the Nazi era–topics that are both acceptable to the Israel lobby. Why hasn’t Gross tackled recent Israeli attacks, asking Emily Henochowicz to describe her work defending the people of Palestine she has come to love? So brilliant an artist and dedicated a peace-worker has much to teach. When will Gross invite surviving activists from Free Gaza to speak?
Maybe Gross will then reminisce about Raja Shehadeh’s generosity of spirit, his long-suffering valor, to discover new perspectives on Palestine. We all can exercise our spirits, extending ourselves to catch up with Shehadeh’s charity and mercy. We’re lucky to have such reaching souls, among many in Palestine and around the world, to inspire. We, too, can imagine, and thus create, a future that sees the alien, that perceives beyond our expectations, and onward still.
Friday night, Terry Gross, the longtime host of Fresh Air on National Public Radio, will submit to questions in an event at Town Hall in New York, hosted by Brian Lehrer, a talk-show host at WNYC.
By Linda S. Heard | Online Journal | June 16, 2010
Once again, the White House has set aside right in favor of Israel’s self-interest.
The United Nations and the majority of its member countries seek an international inquiry into the killing of eight Turkish activists and one American of Turkish origin who tried to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza. Turkey is adamant that an independent, transparent process should take place and demands that the siege be lifted.
But Israel rejects calls to end its blockade and says it would not cooperate with any such investigation. Instead, it plans to investigate itself. Nothing surprising there! But it is certainly galling for those who care that justice is seen to be done that the United States has apparently blessed Israel’s plan, which is akin to allowing an individual accused of murder to set up his own court of law and try himself. No other country on the planet would be given a similar green light.
Moreover, the White House has endorsed Israel’s rejection of an international inquiry with a statement that reads, “Israel has a military justice system that meets international standards and is capable of conducting a serious and credible investigation.” This is simply laughable. When has anyone in the Israeli Defense Forces been held accountable for anything apart from minor infractions during past decades? Even the few declared to have done wrong get away with a rap on the knuckles.
It’s particularly telling that although Ariel Sharon was found by an Israeli commission to have been “indirectly” responsible for the massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon’s Sabra and Shatilla camps, he was eventually rewarded with the post of prime minister. Since then, dozens of soldiers who would be declared war criminals by any other nation have been awarded medals.
A striking example of this is the drunken IDF bulldozer driver Moshe Nissim, nicknamed “Kurdi Bear,” who, in 2002, demolished homes in the Jenin refugee camp without caring whether anyone was inside them. “If I am sorry for anything, it is for not tearing the whole camp down,” he said, before launching into how much he enjoyed his work. For that, he became a national hero and received a medal of honor from the Israeli Army. The UN actually set up a team to investigate Jenin while the evidence was still in place but as soon as Israel said, “We’re not playing ball,” they all went home.
Likewise, Israel has heaped honors on Jewish terrorists involved in what came to be known as “the Lavon Affair” in the 1950s — people who placed bombs inside American and British installations within Egypt as part of a false-flag operation endorsed by Israel’s current president, Shimon Peres. After decades of denying any connection with the terrorists, in 2005, Israel showered the surviving operatives with medals. The then US President George W. Bush didn’t care about the admission that Israel had authorized the bombing of American buildings in the same way that no US leader has cared to punish Israel for its attack on America’s research ship, the USS Liberty, in 1967.
President Barack Obama is either incredibly naïve and misinformed or is being willfully blind for fear of upsetting America’s pro-Israel Congress and lobby. How on earth can he believe that Israel will conduct an honest and fair inquiry when it has torn up the Goldstone report on Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” in Gaza suggesting that Israelis may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity?
Even more to the point in this particular instance is the fact that Israel’s hard-line, right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his propaganda machine have been spewing lies since the flotilla incident took place. They’ve called the peace activists terrorists with links to Al-Qaeda and have suggested they were armed and ready to murder Israeli commandos.
Yet, Israel not only released those “terrorists” to their home countries, the only weapons on display from the Mavi Marmara were chair legs, slingshots, marbles and metal bars. Let’s face it, could you honestly imagine that Al-Qaeda guys would board that ship with marbles to face off against the full might of the Israeli military? And, secondly, if it was their pre-planned intention to kill Israelis, why did they leave alive the three Israelis who were captured and deprived of their guns?
It’s interesting that the US Defense Minister Robert Gates blames the European Union’s reluctance to embrace Turkey’s membership for Ankara’s drift away from the EU and Israel toward new partnerships in the Middle East. In this case, is he also prepared to blame President Obama for throwing Turkey to the wolves in an effort to appease Tel Aviv and its rah-rah crowd in Washington?
The signs are clear. Israel’s murderous attack on the flotilla will be pushed under the carpet like every other nefarious thing it has perpetrated. And even though the blockade of Gaza has been deemed illegal by the UN, it’s not about to be lifted. The International Committee of the Red Cross has described it as “collective punishment” which violates the Geneva Conventions and is a “crime under international law” but who’s listening? I suspect that Israel will ease the flow of goods into Gaza for awhile to take some heat off itself and then everything will return to the status quo, which is an insult to those courageous Turks who sacrificed their lives.
Now, there’s another storm brewing. Uri Brodsky, an Israeli wanted by Germany in connection with illegally obtaining the German passport that was used by an alleged Mossad agent to assassinate a Hamas commander in Dubai has been arrested in Poland.
Germany seeks his extradition but Israel insists he should be flown to Tel Aviv for investigation there. Here we go again! Israel admits that the accused is an Israeli citizen and is demanding his return so an Israeli probe can be launched. I know. Feel free to laugh out loud. All eyes are now on Warsaw to see which way this dedicated friend to Israel will jump.
In the meantime, Dubai is mulling whether or not to request extradition itself which will largely depend on whether Brodsky is directly linked to the assassination. Dubai’s police chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, says Israel is not a country governed by laws but one that settles its scores “in a gang-like manner.” At least there’s one person in the world who says it like it is!
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News – June 16, 2010
The official Israeli version of an incident last Friday, in which a Palestinian motorist from East Jerusalem was killed by Israeli border officers after a motor vehicle accident, has been challenged by a new report released today by the Israeli paper Haaretz.
Ziad Jilani (photo from haaretz)
According to the new report, witnesses say that the motorist accidentally hit a group of Israeli border officers walking on the road, and was then killed in revenge by the other officers.
The witnesses reported that the motorist, 39-year old Ziad Jilani, was lying prone on the ground when the officers shot him in the face at point-bank range after kicking him in the head.
The incident took place in the Wadi Joz neighborhood, an area of increased tension since Israeli authorities declared it to be part of a planned expansion of Jewish settlements in what has historically been a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
According to witnesses, a number of Israeli border officers on horseback and on foot entered the Palestinian neighborhood on Friday afternoon as Muslim prayers were getting out, creating a tense situation in the midst of heavy traffic. Jilani was driving along the heavily-trafficked road when some Palestinian youth began throwing stones at the officers.
Two witnesses said they saw one of the stones hit Jilani’s front windshield, causing him to swerve to the left and hit the officers. The officers began firing at Jilani, who drove away and pulled into an alley nearby, where they continued to pursue him, firing their weapons.
A witness who lives along the alley said she saw the vehicle pull in, and saw Jilani get out with the officers close behind him. She told a reporter from Haaretz, “There was shooting and I started to scream. My mother ran toward me and threw me to the ground. Everything happened within seconds. I realized he wasn’t walking normally, and saw the shattered windshield of the car, maybe from a stone. He ran until he fell over. He got out of the car, and they came after him. Not just one of them shot, but many of them, and then they started yelling in Hebrew for people to go back into their homes.” She said she saw the officers kicking Jilani in the head and then shooting him twice with rifles at close range, killing him.
A spokesman for the border police refused to comment on the eyewitness reports, instead claiming that the striking of the officers was an intentional act by Jilani, and that “Individuals have been killed and dozens wounded in vehicle attacks in Jerusalem between 2008 and 2009 … All of those attacks were committed by East Jerusalem residents, and in each case those close to the perpetrators described the incidents as ‘accidents.’”
Jilani was married with three daughters. His widow is a US citizen.
By Paul Woodward on June 14, 2010
The National Security Strategy of the Obama administration says: “if nations challenge or undermine an international order that is based upon rights and responsibilities, they must find themselves isolated.”
Israel is currently resisting international pressure to accept an international investigation into the circumstances in which at least nine Turkish civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers on board the Mavi Marmara while the ship was in international waters moving away from Israel.
The UN Security Council, under pressure from the Obama administration, watered down a call for an international investigation into the massacre by saying that such an inquiry should merely meet “international standards.”
When team Obama came up with that phrase — as they surely did — did they first consult with George Bush’s former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton? It’s his kind of language. It cynically gives a passing nod to the idea that an inquiry needs international legitimacy, yet leaves it to Israel — a state that views the international community with contempt — to determine how that requirement might be met.
The answer, as far a Benjamin Netanyahu is concerned, is to toss in a couple of international figures who can observe the workings of the Israeli commission — a three-man body whose members have an average age of 85.
One of the two internationals is David Trimble, former First Minister of Northern Ireland. Are his the eyes that can ensure this commission conducts “a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation”?
On the day of the Israeli assault, the Jerusalem Post reported on the launch of the “Friends of Israel Initiative,” a new project in defense of Israel’s right to exist, led by Spain’s former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar. This group of international leaders includes none other than, David Trimble.
The initiative is being launched now, its sponsors said in a statement, because of their outrage and concern about the “unprecedented delegitimation campaign against Israel, driven by the enemies of the Jewish state and perversely assumed by numerous international authorities.”
So will a commission in which there is an international observer with a declared suspicion of international organizations, meet “international standards”?
The White House calls this “an important step forward” and says:
We believe that Israel, like any other nation, should be allowed to undertake an investigation into events that involve its national security. Israel has a military justice system that meets international standards and is capable of conducting a serious and credible investigation, and the structure and terms of reference of Israel’s proposed independent public commission can meet the standard of a prompt, impartial, credible, and transparent investigation.
Credible perhaps to an American president who serves at the pleasure of the Israel lobby, but on this matter Obama doesn’t even have the support of the New York Times.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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