Drawing the Kafr Qasem Massacre: An Introduction to the Ongoing Project
[Samia Halaby, “The Kafr Qasem Massacre of 1956, the Third Wave of Killing, the Child Fathi” (2012).]
By Samia Halaby | Jadaliyya* | January 19, 2014
When I first accepted the challenge of drawing the Kafr Qasem massacre, I wanted to represent its events as though I were a camera on site. Documentary drawings, I thought, could recreate what photography might have given us if done on a historical basis. I would learn all I could and present the specific individuals and the documented events. I worked on the project in three major periods, each occupying most of a year or several years. I began work in 1999 and continued into 2000. In 2006, on the occasion of the fiftieth memorial of the massacre, I created both a web page and an exhibition of the drawings. In 2012, I returned to the project with the intention of finalizing it by making large-scale drawings and developing a book.
The story of the Kafr Qasem massacre is compelling. At first hidden from the world, it was members of the Communist Party who broke the military and information blockade in order to call attention to the horrific massacre; a detailed press release was finally published by party member Tawfiq Toubi twenty-six days after the massacre on 23 November, 1956 in Arabic, English, and Hebrew. His comrade, the distinguished Palestinian writer, Emile Habibi covered the massacre in issues of the CP organ, Al Ittihad, and in 1976 published a booklet on the subject. In one chapter, Habibi recounted the events and provided a structure whereby the chronology of events were numbered and termed “waves” of killing.
Israel’s military campaign against Egypt and the Suez started at 3pm on 29 October, 1956. One and a half hours later, at 4:30pm, the mukhtar (mayor) of Kafr Qasem was informed of an imminent curfew to begin at 5pm. Twenty-five minutes after this sudden warning, at 4:55, soldiers of the Israeli Border Police began killing anyone they found outside their home—be they man or woman, child or elder. Many were workers unaware of the curfew, as they were just then returning home. At the end of the night, forty-nine civilians lay dead on the roadways. Although each event of the massacre was nightmarish, the last one seemed to shock the villagers most of all, as fourteen women who had been olive picking were forced off a truck and shot at continuously from close range until they all fell dead over each other. The sole survivor of this wave of killing was a fifteen-year-old girl, who, when heavily wounded, lost consciousness, and lay under the corpses of the other women for most of the night. To add terror to brutal injury, the Israelis buried their bodies while their relatives were imprisoned in their homes on pain of death through the use of a twenty-four hour curfew.
A massacre is like a hammer blow that shatters a hard mass to smithereens. At first the pieces, the individuals who suffer this blow, do not all see who wields the hammer nor are they able to attack it. Anger and blame are bottled up. Painful energy flies in all directions. The town receiving the blow is shattered, broken to pieces, and as the pieces settle, loss, recrimination, shock, disbelief, and desperation emerge. Added to all this, as in the case of the Kafr Qasem massacre, is the poverty and depression resulting from a brutal military occupation.
What does a father tell his wife when he returns home alive but their eight-year old child whom she sent to warn him dies in the massacre? Why is a small girl unable to tell her mother that her father lies dead or wounded in the street except to say that dinner need not be prepared for him? Why do men and women, unable to believe their own experience, return to the scenes of the massacre to confirm its reality with those who shared it only to find death instead of fellowship? Why was the only survivor of one of the events of the massacre insensitively asked why she was the only one to survive? Why does a wounded man who had escaped, return on seeing the Israeli soldiers killing fourteen women only to be shot dead himself? Why did some whisper that the pregnant woman in her final month dropped the baby in the agony of her death?
When I first met Aishy Amer of Kafr Qasem, the beautiful scent of revolution permeated her words and manners. We had met through the internet and from her first visit to my loft she began to persuade me that, as an artist, I must do drawings of the massacre. Aishy and I eventually visited Kafr Qasem together, where she introduced me to her large family and friends and opened the way for me into a tightly knit village society made up of only five extended families. Following this first visit, she would assign her friends to help me. After interviewing some individuals several times over a period of thirteen years, they came to trust me as a friend. In fact in 2012, during my last visit to attend the annual memorial march, I found myself receiving extended interviews while members of the press were disregarded.
Along with my interviews, I conducted extensive research for historical materials and found a gold mine in the locally published magazine, Al-Shorok, each October issue of which is dedicated to the massacre. In it are countless long interviews conducted by Majd Sarsour, editor and principal of one of the town’s high schools. In general, the outside press did not match this valuable source of detailed information. It was rare to find newspaper articles that contained more than small bits of quoted information. Yet Al-Shorok allowed each individual to fully tell his or her story. Al-Shorok also insisted on detailing not only the names of victims and their ages, but also those of their children, the gender of the children, and their ages at the time of the parents’ death. In one particular article, the magazine detailed the ages of over four thousand offspring of the victims who had already given birth. An intense need to replenish the village overtook the survivors.
I came to truly respect the village, now grown into a town, regardless of its various types and admire the combination of earthy nobility, innocence, and wisdom they possessed. I learnt of the depth of pain they experienced, causing many to be unwilling to tell their stories. I learnt to value their trust and grew to understand that documentation should respectfully memorialize, avoiding sensation and spectacle.
I began drawing immediately after the first visit and continued to do so in separate periods of intense focus. As I worked and my knowledge grew, many of my initial aesthetic decisions matured. I determined that I would avoid simply showing piles of dead bodies. I would show people in their dignity at the last moments of their life. There would be no blood. I determined that the individual victims should face out towards the viewer, be in control of the aesthetic situation if not the original situation, which brought their violent end.
I began drawing in an illusionist way in the traditions of Renaissance art, but as the project progressed, I often questioned whether I perhaps should use an expressionist method. I admired Diego Rivera and thought that working in that manner, which many of the Palestinian artists of the Intifada were influenced by, might be a more modern path. However, after a lot of thought, I decided that the expressionism and semi-cubist style of Rivera did not suite the ambition of presenting people as specific individuals in documented events.
There is a paucity of visual information on the massacre, leaving written material as the basic source. Transforming verbal description and researched information into visual images presented serious problems. Words can focus on one subject and describe it accurately but not wholly. Pictures describe a scene wholly (from one point of view) but cannot show what happened just before or after. Pictures lack the specificity of time while words lack the specificity of space.
Truthful witness statements can hold up in a court of law but they lack the type of information pictures need regarding the appearance of a whole scene, information about color, light, background, relative positions of parts, and a host of other scenic details. This forced me into a certain amount of invention, which seriously conditioned my ambition to be a camera.
One of my initial inquiries was how to represent the killers, the soldiers of the Israeli Border Police who had executed the massacre. Based on things that I have seen in Palestine combined with my loathing, I made several horrifying renditions. In the end, I decided that the story was not about them and eliminated them from the drawings. However, in the final set done in 2012, I included fragments of them in outlined silhouette although I rendered their weapons carefully. By then I had researched the weapons and noted that they were semi-automatic weapons and that some of them were British made, reminding me of the part British colonialism had in arming and organizing the Zionist terrorists.
I asked for a great deal of criticism from residents of Kafr Qasem and from friends, and their opinions helped me greatly. I was not on a research mission to discover new formal languages but rather on a mission to tell a piece of Palestinian history in comprehensible visual form. I received a rating of seventy over one hundred on my drawing of the sixth wave of killing. I was flattered to have such a high grade for the man grading me, Omar Ahmad Hamdan Amer, known as Abu Naser, was the town’s historian, a man who lived his entire life immersed in the history of the massacre.
Did I meet my own challenge? An inner voice says: do it all over again and do it better. But another voice says: another way to fail is to disregard time. For now, I will be happy when my planned publication of drawings on the subject of the massacre is complete. The book will be called “Drawing the Kafr Qasem Massacre.” It will include a detailed history, a timeline, numerous witness statements, the drawings with my commentary, a roster of victims, and essays by scholars.
Below is a selection of drawings from the series with the artist’s captions:
[The Kafr Qasem Massacre of 1956, Killing Inside the Village, the Easa Family (1999).]
During less than two hours on 29 October, 1956, Israeli Border Police killed forty-nine people in the Palestinian village of Kafr Qasem. They were mostly workers and children returning home in the evening. Most were killed on the western entrance, while inside the village it began when eight-year-old Talal Easa went out to retrieve a goat after the suddenly announced curfew. Talal’s father, Shaker, heard the shots and dashed out to his son. He was also shot. Talal’s mother, Rasmiyya, and, right after, Talal’s teenage sister, Noor, ran to their bleeding family and suffered the same fate. They remained where they fell, bleeding until morning when they were hauled off by truck to a hospital. Talal died. The grandfather, Abdallah Isaa, then ninety years old, was left alone and saw the massacre of his family. The following morning, Abdallah was found dead.
[The Kafr Qasem Massacre of 1956, Killing in the Northern Fields (2012).]
In the northern fields of the village, three shepherd boys were out watering the family’s flock of sheep not knowing that Israel had launched a surprise attack on Egypt just hours before, nor did they know of the curfew imposed on their village. The oldest boy, Abdallah Easa was sixteen and the youngest, Abed Easa, was nine years old. Ibraheem Easa, their uncle who was thirty-five years of age, had learnt of the curfew and left the safety of his home to bring them back. They returned immediately with Ibraheem leading. Abed and Abdallah were just behind him while the third boy, Sami Mustafa, was watching the rear of the herd. The boys were met by Israeli soldiers of the Border Police, who immediately shot and killed Ibraheem, Abed, and Abdallah. Sami saw them being shot and fell to the ground, played dead and survived.
[The Kafr Qasem Massacre, the First Wave of Killing (2012).]
Five minutes before the curfew, and unaware of it, four quarry workers were returning home to Kafr Qasem on bicycles. When confronted by Israeli soldiers, with whose harassment they were familiar, they reached for their identity cards. Instead, an order to “harvest them” was given. Two, Ahmad Freij, age thirty-five, and Ali Tah, age thirty, died. Both were fathers of young children. Two others, Mahmoud Freij and Abdallah Badair, managed to escape. Mahmoud was wounded in the thigh and managed to crawl to an olive tree and hide until morning.
[The Kafr Qasem Massacre of 1956, the Third Wave of Killing, Child Fathi (2012).]
The twelve-year-old shepherd boy, Fathi Easa, was leading his family’s herd of black goats home after pasture. His father was driving the herd from the rear having heard of the curfew and had come to hurry his son home. There were three weapons in the hands of the Israeli Border Police all aimed at the boy, an Uzi, a Bren, and a rifle. All were fired, and the boy collapsed and died.
[The Kafr Qasem Massacre of 1956, the Sixth Wave of Killing (2012).]
Evening was darkening as the Israeli Border Police ordered thirteen or more workers to lineup on one side of the road. They had arrived on bicycles and a mule wagon. One of the workers, seventeen-year old Saleh Easa, had arrived with his two cousins. They had heard about the curfew and only feared a beating. When the execution style shooting began six fell dead. Saleh, wounded, playing dead, was dragged to the pile of bodies. He remained quiet, gritting his teeth in spite of extreme pain. He witnessed the rest of the massacre and later crawled to safety.
[The Kafr Qasem Massacre of 1956, the Ninth Wave of Killing, Implosion (2012).]
Night had fallen when the truck arrived at the location of the massacre. Among the victims of the ninth wave were two men in the cab of the truck and fourteen women with two boys in the back. The driver, seeing the scattered dead, tried to escape at high speed. This interrupted the singing women, who unwittingly began to scream, thus alerting the recumbent soldiers resting at the school’s well. The soldiers ran after the truck, shot its tires and gas tank, and stopped it. Safa Sarsour, having just seen her sixteen-year-old son, Jum’a, dead on the side of the road, now witnessed her second son, fourteen-year-old Abdallah, being killed with the men. The women, some pregnant, elders and girls, pleaded for their lives. The only survivor was Hana’ Amer, fifteen years of age, who said that the women clung to each other for protection, even the two girls who had managed to escape returned to the circle. As they were being shot, they turned in a big group and one by one they fell. The soldiers continued shooting into their heads to insure their death. How does it measure western civilization when soldiers of the Israeli border police line up defenseless women—some pregnant, tired, returning home from work—and kill them with cold deliberation?
*All images copyright the artist.
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Israel lobby has Economist on the run
By Jonathon Cook | January 21, 2014
The Economist has found itself at the centre of another of those “anti-semitic cartoon” rows. The cartoon has upset the Israel lobby because it shows, well, that the Israel lobby has a lot of influence in Congress. The article it illustrated refers to President Obama’s attempts to reach a deal with Iran, a diplomatic process being subverted by AIPAC’s efforts to persuade Congress to intensify sanctions.
And just to prove how little influence the lobby really has, it has made a huge fuss (again) about anti-semitism and the Economist has … quickly pulled the cartoon (from this article). So just how anti-semitic is it? Here it is for you to judge:
In fact, I’m not sure if you’ll notice the Star of David on the cartoon.
To my mind, this cartoon underestimates the influence of the Israel lobby in Congress, certainly on issues relating to the Middle East – which, after all, is what the cartoon is about. Most analysts, even very conservative ones, nowadays concede that the lobby is extremely powerful in Congress, as occasionally do lobby members themselves.
The Israeli media have regularly noted that the Israel lobby is the chief driver for intensified sanctions against Iran.
There’s nothing secret about this. It is on AIPAC’s website: “Congress must pass legislation that will increase the pressure on Iran and ensure any future deal denies Tehran a nuclear weapons capability”.
There is also nothing new about this relationship. A British intelligence report shortly before the British left Palestine in 1948 referred to the “effective pressures which Zionists in America are in a position to exert on the American administration”.
Here are just a few relevant quotes on the lobby’s powers:
Former US President Jimmy Carter: “It’s almost politically suicidal … for a member of Congress who wants to seek reelection to take any stand that might be interpreted as anti-policy of the conservative Israeli government.”
A Congressional staffer supportive of Israel told journalist Michael Massing: ”We can count on well over half the House – 250 to 300 members – to do reflexively whatever AIPAC wants.”
During an interview, AIPAC official Steven Rosen put a napkin in front of him and said: “In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.”
Former AIPAC staffer M J Rosenberg recounts a conversation with Tom Dine, AIPAC’s executive director in the 1980s. Dine told him he did not think a US president could make Israel do anything it didn’t want to do given the power of AIPAC and “our friends in Congress.”
James Abourezk, former Senator from South Dakota, said: “I can tell you from personal experience that, at least in the Congress, the support Israel has in that body is based completely on political fear – fear of defeat by anyone who does not do what Israel wants done.”
Uri Avnery, veteran Israeli journalist and former Israeli MP: “For five decades, at least, US Middle East policy has been decided in Jerusalem. Almost all American officials dealing with this area are, well, Jewish. The Hebrew-speaking American ambassador in Tel Aviv could easily be the Israeli ambassador in Washington.”
Note too this interesting figure: Since 2000, members of Congress and their staffs have visited tiny little Israel more than 1,000 times. That’s almost twice the number of visits to any other foreign country. Roughly three-quarters of those trips were sponsored by AIPAC. These trip are particularly popular with Congress members who serve on foreign policy–related committees.
US, Israel aim to divide and conquer Middle East
By Brandon Martinez | Press TV | January 20, 2014
In a recent broadcast, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes denounced the sordid attempts of 16 leading Democratic lawmakers who, under the influence of the Israeli lobby, are pushing to impose new economic sanctions on Iran, which is designed to sabotage Obama’s rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.
Although this condemnation of the Zionist lobby’s implacable warmongering is admirable, in the strictly confined discourse we see on the mainstream media presenters of this caliber refuse to state the obvious, which is that the United States has no right whatsoever to tell any country what to do on any matter, either foreign or domestic. Economic sanctions are an act of war, yet the US has imposed crippling economic sanctions on dozens of countries around the world, strangling the life out of them like a deadly python suffocating its victims.
The US has utilized sanctions to neuter nations that are not compliant with Washington’s hegemonic agenda. In turn, Washington is driven by Israel’s imperial desire to subjugate its foes, keeping them weak and divided. Using America as its proxy, Israel aims to fragment and destabilize the Arab/Muslim world.
In 1980 the US backed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran. They provided him with material and diplomatic support. They gave him weapons and intelligence assistance. When it became apparent that Iran was going to win that war, the US dispatched a war ship off the coast of Iran called the USS Vincennes. On July 3, 1988, the Vincennes deliberately shot down an Iranian civilian airplane, killing all 290 passengers, including 66 children. This act of state-sponsored terrorism was a “message” from Washington designed to intimidate the Iranians into entering peace talks with a nearly defeated Saddam, instead of seeing the war out to the bitter end. The US has never apologized for this act of barbarism.
The Iran-Iraq war was part and parcel of the US-Israeli divide and conquer strategy in the Middle East. In 1982 an Israeli geo-political thinker named Oded Yinon penned a report entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.” In the document Yinon outlined a diabolical scheme whereby Israel would neutralize its adversaries by instigating internal ethnic and religious conflicts in the Arab/Muslim world. Yinon called for the dissolution of the Arab states surrounding Israel. He envisioned the break up of countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan into smaller, weaker statelets, thereby undermining their ability to resist Israeli domination.
“In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us,” Yinon wrote. “Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation,” he continued, “will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon.”
Skipping ahead to 1991, Iraq entered into another conflict, this time with Kuwait. The US gave Saddam Hussein the green light to invade Kuwait, and then stabbed its ally in the back. America’s entry into that conflict was predicated on a monstrous lie. Tom Lantos, a Jewish-American congressman from California, spearheaded the effort to galvanize public opinion behind an American intervention in the Iraqi-Kuwaiti territorial dispute. He set up a “human rights” front group called the “Congressional Human Rights Foundation.” Working in cahoots with the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, Lantos put on a televised hearing where several people claiming to be “witnesses” to Iraqi atrocities in Kuwait gave testimony.
The star witness was a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl who appeared at the hearing under the assumed name “Nayirah.” She gave a tearful testimony about how she saw Iraqi troops enter a hospital in Kuwait City, whereupon they removed hundreds of babies from their incubators, leaving them to die on the cold floor. “While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the children to die on the cold floor,” she said.
The story spread like wildfire across the mass media and President George H. W. Bush trumpeted it from the Oval Office pulpit. Soon after the atrocity story reached critical mass, the US deployed warplanes and ground troops to “punish” Saddam. American forces killed tens of thousands of Iraqis in the war.
Some time after that war, the incubator babies atrocity story was exposed as an out-and-out hoax. “Nayirah” and her compatriots posing as downtrodden victims of Iraqi aggression were all actors reading from a script prepared for them by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton. Nayirah was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the US, Saud Nasir al-Sabah, and she had lived in the US most of her life. She was never even in Kuwait when Saddam invaded.
Tom Lantos’ propaganda production helped push America into a war for Israel’s interests. The second US war against Iraq in 2003, which was also based upon malicious lies about Saddam’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction,” was similarly engineered by Zionists to facilitate the removal of the Iraqi “threat” to Israeli power. “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 — it’s the threat against Israel,” said Philip Zelikow, a former Bush administration insider.
In 1996 several leading neoconservatives wrote a strategy paper for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud regime entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” In the report they talked about “rolling back Syria” and argued that deposing Saddam Hussein in Iraq was “an important Israeli strategic objective.” Among the authors of the dastardly document were the Israel-first partisans Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, all of whom became high-ranking members of the Bush administration in 2003, leading the drive for a war against Iraq.
Shortly before the 2003 invasion, the Israel-first champion Tom Lantos assured his Israeli counterparts that Saddam Hussein would soon be ousted and an US/Israeli-backed puppet dictator would be installed in his place. “You won’t have any problem with Saddam,” the Jewish congressman told MK Colette Avital of Israel’s Labour Party. “We’ll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we’ll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and for you.”
In 1996 Madeline Albright, the former secretary of state under Bill Clinton, unveiled her utter inhumanity on a CBS News 60 Minutes broadcast. When informed that the genocidal US economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the 1991 [Persian] Gulf War caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, Albright remarked that it was “worth the price.” In that twelve-year period from 1991 to 2003 more than a million Iraqi children as well as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men and women died as a result of US sanctions.
Alongside Israel’s political leaders, Israeli religious leaders were jubilant at the prospect of Iraq’s demise. Yona Metzger, Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi, thanked President Bush for invading Iraq and killing millions of Iraqis. “I want to thank you for your support of Israel and in particular for waging a war against Iraq,” the rabbi told President Bush in a brief verbal exchange at Ben-Gurion airport.
Believing their war of annihilation against the Arab/Muslim world is sanctioned by god, the Jewish-Zionist elite of Israel and the United States will stop at nothing to bring doom upon millions of innocent people who stand in the way of their grandiose dream of a “Greater Israel.” In 1962 Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion made a striking prediction. He candidly outlined his vision of the future, forecasting that the nations of the world would become “united in a world alliance, at whose disposal will be an international police force. All armies will be abolished, and there will be no more wars.”
He further declared that in Jerusalem “the United Nations … will build a Shrine of the Prophets to serve the federated union of all continents; this will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah.” Ben-Gurion also once remarked that the ideals of the United Nations are consistent with Jewish ideals. “We consider that the United Nations’ ideal is a Jewish ideal,” he said.
In his eerie presage Ben-Gurion referenced the Jewish prophet Isaiah. The book of Isaiah in the Old Testament of the Bible contains some interesting passages that illuminate the supremacist mindset of Ben-Gurion and his co-religionists. Isaiah 60:5 says, “Ye shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings.” Isaiah 61:5 speaks of how “Strangers will shepherd your flocks; foreigners will work your fields and vineyards.” Isaiah 60:5 explains how “The wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come.” “And you will be called priests of the LORD, you will be named ministers of our God. You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast,” it says in Isaiah 61:6.
Isaiah 60:12 decrees the destruction of nations not subservient to the chosen people: “For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you will perish; it will be utterly ruined.” Isaiah 49:23 foresees kings and queens becoming slaves of the chosenites: “Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet.”
“For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth,” it says in the book of Deuteronomy (7:6). Driven by religious fanaticism and ethnic chauvinism, the Jewish Zionists and their puppets are pursuing mad policies that will only cause bloodshed and misery.
It is now up to people with a conscience, however many there are left in the world, to recognize this evil for what it is and confront it with the truth.
Brandon Martinez is a freelance writer in Canada with a specialty in foreign policy and international affairs.
Iran may spend unfrozen oil money on plane parts: Official
Press TV – January 19, 2014
Iran is likely to spend oil funds, expected to be unfrozen with the implementation of its nuclear deal with world powers, for aircraft and car spare parts, an Iranian deputy oil minister says.
Ali Majedi made the remarks in an interview with The Wall Street Journal as Iran’s nuclear accord with the Sextet of world powers is to take effect on Monday.
He said Iran may spend its oil money, currently stuck in foreign banks, on machinery and spare parts for aircraft and automotive industries.
World powers are set to ease sanctions on Iran under last November’s interim nuclear accord.
The sanctions relief is targeted at Iran’s aircraft, automotive and petrochemical industries. Billions of dollars in oil revenues will be also unfrozen.
Majedi said unfreezing Iran’s petrodollars opens “a new window of cooperation with the Europeans and the US.”
The official said Iran may also consider buying stocks in Asian refineries in a bid to strike long-term oil sale contracts.
“With sanctions, it’s difficult. We are trying to be ready” for the time when sanctions on Iran’s oil are lifted, said Majedi.
On January 12, Iran and the Sextet of world powers finalized an agreement to start implementing the Geneva nuclear deal from January 20. The accord is aimed at setting the stage for the full resolution of the West’s decade-old standoff with Tehran over its nuclear energy program.
Under the nuclear deal, the European Union will suspend 2012 sanctions against insuring and transporting Iranian crude oil.
The EU will also suspend embargoes on gold, precious metals and petrochemical products and raise the ceiling on financial transfers not related to remaining sanctions.
If everything takes place according to the plan, as of Monday, EU companies will be authorized to insure or transport Iranian crude oil to Tehran’s major customers, China, India, Japan, Korea, Turkey and Taiwan.
Israeli nukes aimed at terrorizing world: Ralph Schoenman
Press TV interview with Ralph Schoenman | January 19, 2014
Press TV has conducted an interview with Ralph Schoenman, author of Hidden History of Zionism, from Berkeley, California, to discuss Israel’s use of nuclear bombs to terrorize and dominate populations with the help of the United States.
What follows is a rough transcript of the interview.
Press TV: First of all, with this report in, will there be any political or legal implications for those who assisted Israel in acquiring these nuclear weapons?
Schoenman: The question is really going to the relationship of imperialism to the Zionist [entity] from its inception, in specific terms now the issue of the use of nuclear weapons.
There is a book,The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, which details the joint development of nuclear weapons by including neutron bombs by Israel and South Africa, and their testing.
The well-known figure Mordechai Vanunu – who was kidnapped by the Israelis when he disclosed the evidence of the Israeli preparations for nuclear capacity and testing of weapons, indeed, with the full panoply of evidence pertaining to this – was kidnapped, taken to Israel and held in incommunicado for 18 years.
There is a very sorted and menacing history of the use of these weapons to menace peoples across the world. I want to give a specific example in illumination of this, namely ‘View of the Cameroon Disaster…’, which Dan Fisher wrote about in the Los Angeles Times on August 27, 1986.
Death occurred in which people were found frozen in place as if they have been killed by gas. This was an event in 1986 in Cameroon – it was immediately described as an event in which the Israelis were involved. The Israeli infantry troops were soon to be on the scene. In fact, Shimon Perez, who was the former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Israel, was quickly on the scene with a team.
Indeed, the evidence about this was documented by Dan Fisher in the Los Angeles Times, as I’ve mentioned, but also there was a detailed account by the Cameroonian journalists which specified the role of the Israelis and the evidence of a neutron weapon: ‘The Lake Nyos Disaster 20 Years After: Revisiting Israeli Connection’, by Dibussi Tande.
My wife and I had a role in this expose because after the time we flew to the big island of Hawaii where leading volcanologist in the island of Hawaii was involved in the report on what occurred in Cameroon, he confirmed that the claims that this was the result of gases emerging from a lake with presumptive latent volcano that emitted gases in Lake Nyos, those gases then reached the atmosphere in causing thousands of people to die in their tracks frozen, while no damage to property occurred, was quickly exposed as a myth.
In fact, what we’re dealing with here is a neutron weapon. One of the people who’s most associated with the neutron bomb, Sam Cohen, who was working with the RAND Corporation in the United States, has detailed the neutron weapon.
There is no question whatsoever, given what Vanunu has exposed, given what evidence there is in Cameroon, that neutron weapons have been used and tested by the Israelis with the approval and collusion of the United States and the imperial powers notably France.
This is not a new development. The story is important. It is the culmination of a series of documentations, revelations over a period of 20, 30 and 40 years. These are crimes against humanity.
These are ongoing threats to the peoples of the world. They define the relationship of Israel and the Zionist [entity] to imperialism and the utilization of the nuclear capacity and of neutron bombs and weapons of this nature to terrorize the populations they seek to dominate, whose sovereignty they wish to destroy.
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FBI Arrests Michael Grimm’s Girlfriend; Meanwhile Another Congress Member Implicated
Diana Durand (L) has been arrested in connection with illegal campaign contributions allegedly made to the 2010 campaign of New York Republican Congressman Michael Grimm (R)
By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | January 18, 2014
Diana Durand, a Texas woman who apparently has been romantically involved with Congressman Michael Grimm, has been arrested and charged with illegally funneling money into the New York congressman’s 2010 campaign.
She is also accused of steering “straw donations” into the campaign of yet another congress member, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL), according to the New York Daily News.
A straw donation is a donation to a political campaign made by one person, though under another person’s name. It is a way of getting around legal limits on the amount of money that can be contributed to political candidates.
Schock, like Grimm, is an avid supporter of Israel.
Durand is 47-years old and was arraigned in federal court in Houston on Wednesday. She has hired an attorney, Stuart Kaplan, who is a longtime associate of Grimm, both having served in the FBI.
Grimm left the FBI in 2006, was elected to Congress in 2010, and in 2012 the FBI opened an investigation into him over possible illegal campaign donations to his 2010 congressional campaign made by supporters of Israeli Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto.
Durand is free on $50,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in court on January 30. The following is from the New York Daily News account:
The single mother of one worked with Grimm before his election when he launched a trucking company near Houston. Records list her brother and sister-in-law as executives at the firm.
Sources said Durand and Grimm, 43, who is divorced, were involved romantically, and that she visited him in Washington after his election.
Durand was busted Friday, nearly five months after a Brooklyn judge first ordered her arrest. Feds spent the intervening months in an unsuccessful bid to win her cooperation in an ongoing probe into allegations that Grimm and supporters encouraged donors to make illegal contributions to his 2010 campaign, people with knowledge of the case said.
As I reported previously, campaign donations totaling more than $500,000 were reportedly solicited on Grimm’s behalf by a top Pinto aide, Ofer Biton, who was arrested in 2012 for immigration fraud and who pled guilty to that charge last August.
The FBI had sought to have Biton turn state’s evidence against Grimm, but he has refused, and apparently Durand intends doing likewise. Also as I repoted before, Grimm has friends in high places—Israel—where he reportedly maintains close ties to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and according to reports, the Israeli police have done their best to sabotage the FBI’s investigation.
Grimm with Benjamin Netanyahu
Schock would appear to be the second congress member implicated in what seems to be a widening investigation. According to the Chicago Tribune:
Schock, 32, is a prolific fundraiser serving his third term in Congress. He had more than $2.9 million in his war chest in September, when the most recent campaign-finance reports were filed.
The House Ethics Committee has been examining Schock’s fundraising after reports that in 2012, he solicited $25,000 for a super PAC, in excess of a $5,000 limit for lawmakers asking for money for that kind of independent-expenditure group.
The Tribune also reports on a statement issued by Schock’s office in which a spokesperson said, “This literally is the first our office has heard of this issue.”
In March of 2010, Schock and 326 other members of Congress signed onto a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton affirming their “commitment to the unbreakable bond that exists between our country and the State of Israel and to express to you our deep concern over recent tension.”
The “recent tension” referred to by the signatories of the letter is an incident I referred to in my first article on the Grimm investigation. On March 9, 2010 the Israeli government announced the construction of 1,600 new homes, for Jews only, to be built in East Jerusalem. The announcement coincided with a state visit to Israel by US Vice President Joe Biden, and was viewed by many as insulting to America. Clinton referred to it as “deeply negative” for US-Israeli relations.
And as I also noted:
Coincidentally, simultaneous to the slight against Biden, the parents of Rachel Corrie were in Israel for the start of their civil trial charging the Israeli military in the wrongful death of their daughter.
Biden’s response to the announcement of the 1,600 new homes was to issue a servile statement in which he declared that “there is no space between the United States and Israel,” whereupon he boarded a plane and jetted home to America without offering any words of support to the Corrie family.
Schock and the other signers of the letter went on to state:
Our valuable bilateral relationship with Israel needs and deserves constant reinforcement. As the Vice-President said during his recent visit to Israel: “Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the U.S. and Israel when it comes to security, none. No space.” Steadfast American backing has helped lead to Israeli peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. And American involvement continues to be critical to the effort to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
We recognize that, despite the extraordinary closeness between our country and Israel, there will be differences over issues both large and small. Our view is that such differences are best resolved quietly, in trust and confidence, as befits longstanding strategic allies. We hope and expect that, with mutual effort and good faith, the United States and Israel will move beyond this disruption quickly, to the lasting benefit of both nations.
Born of Morrocon Jews, Pinto is one of the richest rabbis in Israel and is viewed by some as a religious and financial “guru” and a “wonder rabbi.” His adherents in the past have included some of the wealthiest oligarchs in the world and also Israeli political leaders:
In Israel, the list of those seeking Rabbi Pinto’s advice reads like a high-society gossip column: Multi-millionaires Lev Leviev and Nochi Danker, opposition leader Tzipi Livni and former Industry Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer, who the rabbi supposedly brought out of a coma earlier this year. It is even rumoured that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consults him.
Now, however, he seems to be in hotwater with Israeli police, who have charged him with attempting to bribe a police official—apparently in a bid to sabotage the FBI’s investigation of Grimm. The FBI is hoping to have Pinto testify against Grimm, and reportedly is in possession of a wiretap audio in which Israeli police can be heard threatening the rabbi.
And finally, as I reported yesterday, Grimm apparently isn’t the only Congress member who has accepted donations from Pinto’s wealthy followers. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is reported to have as well.
Cantor’s ties to Pinto have also been commented upon by blogger Richard Silverstein, who has written extensively on the FBI’s investigation of Grimm:
The key question is whether the techniques and solicitors used in Grimm’s campaign match those used by Cantor. If so, then the FBI is very interested in Cantor. If Cantor was smarter than Grimm and didn’t use mafiosi to collect cash as Grimm did, then he may not get into trouble. But the very fact that Cantor dipped into Grimm’s cookie jar so heavily is mighty suspicious. Who knows where it will lead?
Grimm, by the way, is not Jewish but of Italian descent, which makes us wonder why the Israelis are apparently so keen to protect him—and after all, there are plenty of Israel supporters in Congress. But as Silverstein notes, it’s insurance:
To be clear, I don’t have a smoking gun that points to Netanyahu involvement in sabotaging the FBI investigation. But I do have a series of strong circumstantial evidence that leads in that direction. But why would Bibi or Sara care about this enough to take such risky actions as agitating the FBI? Let’s return to that grand strategy of electing even more Israel-friendly GOP members of Congress. If Michael Grimm was their model to see whether Pinto was a new source of campaign cash, they needed to protect him if he might be going down. Rather than lose their investment and shut down this conduit for millions in new campaign funding, they’d go to the mat to help Grimm.
More background on Bibi’s strategy in dealing with the U.S. political process: he’s found that presidents may not like him because they are slightly more independent than members of Congress. But Congress is in his back pocket due to that campaign largess I mentioned earlier. Bibi is hated in the White House but loved (or feared) in Congress. When he can’t get an invitation to the White House, he goes over the president’s head and gets to address a Joint Session of Congress.
This is the same strategy he and the Lobby are following regarding the Iran sanctions legislation. The president doesn’t want new sanctions. Most sane members of Congress don’t want them either. But the Lobby and Israel do. They want a war with Iran. So they want to sabotage Obama’s strategy of negotiating his way out of the impasse. How best to do this? Don’t confront Obama head-on because he’s an immovable object on this matter. But do an end-around. Activate all those pro-Israel IOUs in Congress.
So the more Michael Grimms there are in Congress, the more Israel has its own interests guaranteed in the halls of Congress.
And of course, there’s no shortage of money. In fact, in a manner of speaking, there’s money to burn:
Rabbi Pinto, center, surrounded by oligarchs, including Israeli diamond billionaire Lev Leviev, far right.
Cantor Tied to Controversial Rabbi at Center of Probe
By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | January 17, 2014
Yesterday I posted an article on the FBI investigation of New York Congressman Michael Grimm in connection with campaign donations to his 2010 campaign made by supporters of Israeli Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto. If you haven’t read the article, it’s here.
Pinto is listed as one of the richest rabbis in Israel (he is rabbi to some of the world’s wealthiest oligarchs), and in the article I speculated on whether other supporters of Israel now serving in congress may have received donations from the same source.
Well, a news article posted in 2012 would seem to indicate that there are, and that one of them is Eric Cantor, one of the most powerful members of Congress, and a staunch supporter of the Jewish state (Cantor is himself Jewish). The article in question is posted at Al-Monitor. Here is an excerpt.
Indeed, detailed examination of federal campaign filings by Al-Monitor indicate that the top seven donors to Cantor’s 2008 campaign are followers or associates of Rabbi Pinto. Together, the group of close Rabbi Pinto associates that made up Cantor’s seven top donors in 2008 gave about $330,000 to the Virginia Republican–almost 10% of the $3.9 million total Cantor raised for the 2008 race. None of them are from Virginia, and some had not previously given to US political campaigns.
Josef Ben Moha of New Jersey donated $48,100 to Cantor’s Victory Fund on April 11, 2008 — his only campaign donation in US records. Moha is listed as managing director of Livono (or Livorno) Partners, whose CEO Ben Zion Suky also donated $48,100 to Cantor on the same date. Suky serves as the “right-hand man … translator, gatekeeper and conduit to the outside world” for Pinto, the Forward reported last year. He also owns property with Rabbi Pinto’s wife, as well as a porn DVD distribution business.
Haim Milo Revah, a real estate developer from California who has credited Pinto with offering successful business advice, donated $48,100 to Cantor on April 21, 2008, records show.
Real estate broker Haim Binstock, and his wife his wife, Gallya Binstock, together donated $91,600 to Cantor’s campaign on Oct. 31, 2008. Binstock’s business partner Ilan Bracha, and his wife, Mati Bracha, also donated $91,600 to Cantor’s campaign on the same date, campaign filings show. In 2008, Binstock and Bracha Manhattan property they planned to donate for use as a synagogue for Rabbi Pinto, they told The Wall Street Journal last year.
More recently, George Klein, described by The New York Times as a longtime Republican power broker who attends Pinto’s Shuva Israel congregation at 155 E. 58th St. in Manhattan, donated $50,000 to Cantor’s Victory Fund on Oct. 18, 2011, campaign filings show. Klein, who has donated to several other Republican candidates in smaller amounts, is also a member, with Cantor, of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
As I noted in yesterday’s article, Grimm is reportedly a close confidante of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Israeli police seem to be trying to deliberately sabotage the FBI’s investigation of him.
The FBI is hoping to have Pinto testify against Grimm, but the rabbi has been charged in Israel with bribing a police official, a development which would compromise his credibility as a witness–presumably against Grimm or any other member of Congress who may have broken the law. A wiretap reportedly in the possession of the FBI has Israeli police threatening Pinto.
The case has been written about extensively by blogger Richard Silverstein, who has reported that among the allegations are that donors to Grimm’s 2010 campaign were promised green cards in return for their support (campaign contributions by non-citizens are illegal) and also that some of the donations exceeded the legal limit.
“There is no evidence of any impropriety in Cantor’s contacts with Rabbi Pinto,” notes the 2012 Al-Monitor report.
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A New Year Just Like the Old Year
Jennifer Rubin Wants More War
By Philip Giraldi • The Unz Review • January 16, 2014
Israel’s friends frequently claim that critics hold Tel Aviv to a higher standard than they do other countries that have similar or worse records on human rights. Actually the truth is quite the reverse, with Israel frequently able to escape censure for actions that would normally result in the imposition of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council and condemnation by other international bodies. I am of course referring to the continued brutal Israeli occupation of much of what remains of Palestine and the ongoing colonization of land that is being appropriated illegally, activity that is only allowed to continue because of Washington’s willingness to protect Israel no matter what cost to other American interests.
Some of the gyrations that Israel’s supporters engage in would be describable as comic if the consequences of their obfuscation were not so serious. And there is no one better at throwing mud than Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post’s designated “Right Turn” blogger who is one of those folks who believe that being in love with Israel is a core conservative value. Rubin can hardly write about any current issue without somehow turning the discussion to poor little Israel, or, alternatively, to evil Iran.
On January 5th, Rubin produced what for her might be considered a ruminative piece entitled “What mattered in 2013.” She found “two developments… more significant” than anything else that happened in the past year, namely gay marriage and the continued perfidy of those danged Muslims. Leaving the gay marriage issue aside, Jennifer sees “Iran and its junior partner Syria in ascendancy” while Bashar Al-Assad of Syria “murdered more than 130,000” of his own people and crossed red lines with “near impunity,” a “monstrous event [that] Elliott Abrams tells us, has ramifications far beyond Syria.”
Abrams, a convicted felon and notorious liar but true blue for Israel, believes that inaction in Syria “has been noted in Jerusalem” and will send a signal and encourage Moscow and Beijing to challenge Washington.
Hezbollah meanwhile has “expanded its missile cache” and obtained “a strategic victory” together with Iran and will win in Syria while the US president “thinks up reasons not to act.”
Iran is behind all the instability, benefiting from “advanced centrifuges” and “international acquiescence” it is “on the cusp of obtaining a nuclear arms capability” even as it “pursues terrorism.” Rubin notes that “Sanctions have not dislodged the regime nor caused it to rethink its nuclear arms ambitions” but then goes on to recommend that “Congress can pass sanctions over White House objections and thereby force Iran to capitulate” because “If Congress finds a nuclear-armed Iran horrifying and wants to avoid a Middle East war it will need to pass a final sanctions bill, the last chance to peacefully disarm that mullahs.”
In another blog item posted on the following day, Jennifer is at it again, describing “Middle East bedlam.” She excoriates Secretary of State John Kerry for his eminently sensible suggestion “that Iran might join Syrian peace talks in Geneva” which she describes as “rewarding bad behavior” before stating that Washington has “no will to check Iranian hegemonic ambitions in the region.”
Three hours later, Rubin was at it again explaining how “Iran sanctions opponents [are] desperate,” noting that as of that time 49 senators had signed on to the new Iran bill, which would put an end to talks intended to resolve outstanding issues relating to the Iranian nuclear program. Interestingly, she observes that four “traditionally pro-Israel democrats” had yet to sign, suggesting that she appreciates very well that all the rationalizations about how Iran is a threat to the US are bogus and that it is all about Israel, just as it always is for her.
Rubin observes that the “anti-sanctions crowd remains a gaggle made up of far-left activists, State Department sycophants and reluctant Democratic chairmen dragooned into opposing the measure by the White House.” The lefties, apparently, have been suborned into opposing the measure by a “hit squad and consistently anti-Israel gang” in the progressive media while the “small cadre of ex-State Department and intelligence community hacks” fill out the roster of those who hate American National Security, apparently a subset of American Exceptionalism. Thank God true American heroes like Senators Schumer, Gillibrand, Cardin and Menendez are “showing fortitude on sanctions” and doing what it takes to “dismantle [Iran’s] illegal nuclear weapons program.”
Three days later Rubin again describes how “Obama Iran gambit is unraveling.” She describes the negotiations in Geneva as “a giant stall by Iran to allow it to progress with its nuclear weapons program while getting sanctions relief.” How does she know that? She quotes no less an authority than Mark Dubowitz, a Canadian who claims to be an expert on the Middle East because he lived there but it turns out that he only resided in Israel. He is currently president of the neocon Foundation for Defense of Democracies and heads a staff of 32 dedicated to finding more punishing ways to sanction Iran. Dubowitz claims that “Iran is building an industrial-size nuclear infrastructure that will give it multiple overt and covert pathways to a bomb.” Rubin adds that “either president Obama was snookered or he is snookering us” before quoting Josh Block, a former AIPAC communications director currently heading The Israel Project, who claims that “the ‘interim deal’ is actually just another stalling tactic by Iran… [but] Congress is not fooled. The American people are not fooled. Iran is playing us for the fool.” Block, for what it’s worth, is an Israel Firster who believes that anyone who uses the expression Israel Firster is a “borderline anti-Semite.”
Rubin concludes by warning that “… Congress needs to step forward and exercise leadership. If not, Iran will have gotten the bomb, relief from sanctions, encouragement for its hegemonic ambitions and a nuclear blackmail card. In fact, it’s most of the way there.”
First of all, it is perhaps not surprising that everywhere one turns with Jennifer Rubin Israel comes up, but she lacks the integrity required to appreciate that most of the criticisms she levels against the feckless Arabs and Iranians would apply equally or even more to Israel’s behavior. I sometimes think that it would be a wake-up call for her and her associates if one were able to arrange for all 100 Senators to vote anonymously, without fear of being exposed, on whether or not they really think that Iran threatens the United States. I would bet that an overwhelming number would indicate “no.” But, unfortunately, congress does not vote secretly. A veto proof majority of Senators now appear to be willing to vote for new Iran sanctions, the result of “a massive phone campaign by Concerned Women for America (CWA), a 500,000-member Christian and Zionist conservative group” and by the Emergency Committee for Israel. The White House is correctly warning that voting for new sanctions equates to voting for war.
So the question becomes “Why is the United States inching away from a possible agreement with Iran, a country that has been unfairly designated enemy number one since 1978?” I would suggest that Jennifer Rubin and the hacks (her term) that she assembles to say what she wants to hear have been a major element in pressuring congress and the rest of the media to line up squarely behind Israel, no matter what the issue and no matter what the genuine US interests might be. Rubin proudly reports that former Senator Scott Brown recently e-mailed her “One of the things I miss most [since leaving the Senate] is not being able to fight for Israel.” One has to wonder why any American Senator should be saying anything like that, but the irony apparently eludes Rubin.
And Jennifer is not above repeating over and over again her basic themes: that Iran wants to destroy Israel, that it has a nuclear weapons program, and that its intentions are both aggressive and hegemonic. Unfortunately all of her power points are either flat out false or not demonstrated by available evidence. According to the US intelligence community, Iran abandoned plans for a nuclear weapon in 2003 and does not currently have a program to develop one. Even Israeli intelligence agrees that is so. And Iran has never actually threatened to attack Israel. In fact, it hasn’t attacked anyone since the seventeenth century.
When Rubin launches her diatribes, she assumes that the reader agrees that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that it is a somehow a threat to the rest of the Middle East as well as to Europe and the United States. She piles surmise upon innuendo while making no real effort to explain how Iran with its miniscule military budget and surrounded by enemies is actually a threat, possibly because it is an impossible case to make. And as for poor beleaguered Israel, with its more than 200 secret nukes and delivery systems, she certainly must know that Iran could be destroyed in a matter of hours if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should choose to give the order. Given the fact that the breathtakingly belligerent Netanyahu is far nuttier than anyone running around loose in Iran, he is the real threat to peace that comes out of the Middle East, but it is a tale that Jennifer Rubin is unlikely to tell.
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Ariel Sharon: His Sabra and Shatila Legacy – An Eye Witness Account
By Felicity Arbuthnot and Dr. Ang Swee Chai | Palestine Chronicle | January 15, 2014
As Israel buried Ariel Sharon amid eulogies from world figures, Tony Blair, a Butcher of Baghdad, paid a tribute to the Butcher of Beirut which included the line that Sharon: “didn’t think of peace as a dreamer, but did dream of peace.” Also that: “ … he sought peace with the same iron determination” as he had fought (read slaughtered, across the Middle East.) Re-writing history does not come more blatant, but Blair was ever good at fantasy, think “weapons of mass destruction” and “forty five minutes.”
Surgeon, Dr Swee Chai Ang went to help the wounded of Beirut after the 1982 Israeli invasion and witnessed the Sabra and Shatila massacre of unarmed men woman and children, Palestinian and Lebanese, between the 15th-18th September,1982.
In her book “From Beirut to Jerusalem”, she describes the reality:
“As I walked through the camp alleys looking at the shattered homes (many of these houses had just been rebuilt following earlier bombardments by Israel) I wanted to cry aloud, but was too exhausted emotionally even to do that. How could little children come back to live in the room where their relatives were tortured and then killed? If the Palestinian Red Crescent Society could not function legally, who was going to look after the widows and orphans?
“Suddenly, someone threw his arms around me. It was Mahmoud, a little child who had broken his wrist while trying to help his father rebuild their broken home. He had survived and his wrist had mended, but now his father was dead. Mahmoud cried, but he was glad I was alive because, from his hiding place during the massacre, he had seen the soldiers taking us away. He thought they had killed me.
“Soon I was surrounded by a whole lot of children. Kids without homes, without parents, without futures. But they were the children of Sabra and the children of Shatila. One of them spotted my pocket camera, and wanted a picture taken. Then they all stood together, wanting their pictures taken. “They wanted me to show their picture to the people of the world. Even if they were killed and the camps were demolished, the world would know that they were the children of Sabra and Shatila, and were not afraid. As I focused my camera, they all held up their hands and made victory signs, right in front of their destroyed homes, where many had been killed. Dear little friends, you taught me what courage and struggle are about.”
Dr Swee Chai Ang founded Medical Aid for Palestine as a result of her experiences in Beirut and Sabra and Shatila. On the eve of Ariel Sharon’s burial, she wrote the following. It is published with her permission:
The passing of Ariel Sharon brought back the memories of the horrors of the Sabra Shatilla massacre of September,’82. I arrived in August that year as a volunteer surgeon to help the war victims of Lebanon. The people in Lebanon were wounded, made homeless and lost precious friends and families as the result of ten weeks of ruthless bombardment. That was the “Operation Peace for Galilee”, launched by Sharon who was then the Defence Minister of Israel in June 1982.
No one knew how many were killed as the result of that offensive – the London newspapers estimated a thirty thousand with many times more made homeless. When a ceasefire was agreed with the evacuation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Sharon broke that ceasefire and drove tanks under air-cover launching a land invasion into Lebanon’s capitol Beirut. Part of the tanks sealed Sabra Shatilla and prevented the helpless civilian victims from escaping, while sending in Israel’s allies into the camps to carry out the most brutal massacre of defenceless women, children and old people under Israel’s watch. The blame was quickly and deliberately shifted to the Lebanese as perpetrators of the massacres, so that today no one can mention that massacre without blaming the Lebanese Phalange, yet forgetting the Israeli organisers of that event.
I worked in Gaza Hospital in Sabra Shatilla during the massacre trying to save the lives of a few dozen people, but outside the hospital hundreds were killed. My patients and I knew that Sharon and his officers were in control, and without them the massacre would not be possible. The residents of Sabra Shatilla could at least have escaped. Now more than 30 years later, we know that the killers were brought in by Israeli armoured cars and tanks, obeyed Israeli commands, their paths lit by Israeli military flares, and some of them also wore Israeli uniforms. The mutilated bodies of the victims were thrown into mass graves by Israeli bulldozers.
This Sharon continued on to be Israeli Prime Minister, and built the Wall which imprisoned the Palestinians in the West Bank. Sharon’s Wall cut through their lands, separating people from their homes, children from their schools, farmers from their orchards, patients from hospitals, husbands from wives, and children from parents. He marched into the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem 2000 with fully armed Israeli soldiers and tried to have the West believe that his intention was for peace.
He was responsible for other massacres such as in Jenin, Qibya and Khan Yunis just to name a few. The older generation in Khan Yunis in Gaza remembers that he killed all the grown men in the massacre of 1956 and left only the women and children to bury the dead.
I thought these facts should be publicised. Those who eulogise Sharon in his role of building Israel should also remember that he built his nation over the dead bodies of the Palestinian people, and the continued dispossession of those who are still alive.
– Dr Ang Swee Chai is the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem, Published by International Librarie, Beirut12 January 2014.
– Felicity Arbuthnot. is a journalist and activist who has visited the Arab and Muslim world on numerous occasions. She has written and broadcast on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also senior researcher for John Pilger’s award-winning documentary Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq.
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IRS Targets Cuba Solidarity Group
Weekly News Update on the Americas | January 12, 2014
The New York-based nonprofit Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) announced on Jan. 6 that the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has recommended ending the group’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Founded in 1967 by the late Rev. Lucius Walker [see Update #1048], IFCO is the first national foundation in the US controlled by people of color. It is probably best known as the sponsor of Pastors for Peace, which for the past 22 years has organized the US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan, an annual shipment of humanitarian aid to Cuba; Pastors for Peace has also provided humanitarian aid for Nicaragua, Haiti and other countries.
The IRS’s two-year investigation started with a letter to the service from two members of Congress—Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC)—suggesting that IFCO was tied to terrorist organizations because of some $1.2 million in aid it sent to the people of Gaza through the Viva Palestina group in 2009. In its report, the IRS cites a “comprehensive report” by Steve Emerson’s notoriously inaccurate Investigative Project on Terrorism to suggest that some of the aid may have gone to the Hamas organization, which the US lists as a terrorist group. The IRS also charges that the Friendshipments and some aid for US medical students in Cuba may violate the 50-year US embargo against Cuba. In an appeal by New York attorney Martin Stolar, IFCO denies sending aid to Hamas; notes that the relevant US agency, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), has never penalized it for the Friendshipments; and states that OFAC has licensed the medical students to spend money in Cuba.
IFCO has asked supporters to contact US Congress members “and let them know that we need their support. Ask them to contact the Treasury Department to ask them to stop this political persecution and harassment against IFCO.” Treasure can also be contacted directly by fax at 202-622-6415 or via internet at http://www.treasury.gov/connect/Pages/contact-us.aspx. (IFCO letter 1/6/14; Vice (Montreal) 1/8/14; Ahora (Cuba) 1/10/14 from Radio Havana)
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Flag of paradox
By Kinnan Zaloom | MEMO | January 13, 2014
All my life, the flag of Palestine has been ingrained deeply into my brain. From news reports that my father used to consume incessantly to the many protests I attended as a child, the bold colours of the flag are instantly recognisable to me. Recently, however, have I started to question the Palestinian flag. How is it that an unrecognised state, supposedly a state of non-people, has been able to identify itself with a national flag?
I could make this post into a diatribe on why flags should be obsolete, but I will focus on the one that is supposed to be most important to me. Personally, I find the flag repulsive. Everything from the harsh colours to the simplicity and lack of Palestinian identity makes me think: why this flag? Now, in order to justify my hate towards the blocks of colour that represent a nation, I took it upon myself to research its origins so as to have a legitimate reason to express my distaste towards it. And oh how I was rewarded.
The majority of Arabian flags, those that contain the colours black, green, red and white, are based on the flag of the Arab Revolt (1916–1918). For all those who believe in the beauty and meaning of the Palestinian flag, or in other similar Middle Eastern flags, they can owe their gratitude to Sir Mark Sykes for it was he who designed and produced the fag of the Arab Revolt. The same man who was undoubtedly instrumental in aiding the creation of the state of Israel on Palestinian land.
Sir Mark Sykes is infamous for his part in the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain, France and Russia (The Triple Entente) that determined their intended spheres of influence in the Middle East, should the Ottoman Empire be defeated in the First World War. The agreement led to France’s control over Syria, the formation of the Arab states and ultimately the creation of the state of Israel.
So what does Sykes have to do with the flag? During the First World War, the Triple Entente was up against the Central Powers, which included the Ottoman Empire. Now the British, not having enough influence in the countries surrounding the Ottoman Empire, sought to establish some sort of revolt to aid them in defeating one of the key players in the Central Powers. Sykes, then a diplomat, established a relationship with the Emir of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali. With the promise of an Arab state free of outside influence, whether Western or Ottoman, the Emir was persuaded to lead the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans. Sykes, seeking to establish a feeling of Arabness, a sense of nationality, took it upon himself to design the Flag of the Arab Revolt. Using the colours of previous Arabian caliphates, the production of flags by the British Army in Cairo began. And the only input any Arab had in the design was the Emir, who expressed his distaste towards the shade of red used.
Sure, some might argue that the Palestinian flag’s origins are now irrelevant, as the flag was adopted by the Palestinian struggle and has come to represent it. Of course, people use it as a sign of solidarity with the Palestinian effort in a true an honest manner, but surely a Palestinian, or any Middle Eastern identity, should be established free of all Western intervention? This should also apply to borders and constitutions, which the Western powers have influenced not only in the Middle East, but also worldwide.
An established identity and a solid cultural origin are vital in order to be effective in attaining Palestinian rights. Whether this means a respected constitution, true economic independence or a secure social order, we need to work stronger together. Whatever the political or social ideology, religious or racial background, we cannot work independently to attain a free Palestine. Furthermore, I believe an elevated sense of nationalism does not help. We must seek to clear corruption in the Middle Eastern conflicts, mainly from the West but also from Middle Eastern governments. Nationalism only serves a sense of selfish pride and visceral divisions.
No composition of colour and shapes will help unless it was subliminally controlling, which in any case would be immoral to use anyway. So next time you decide to hoist a flag in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, remember that it was Sir Mark Sykes who created it in order to advance the occupation. The flag of Palestine is a paradox. You might as well hoist up the flag of Mandatory Palestine, because unlike Israel it was not formed from the ideals of Mark Sykes.
70 NEOCONS PETITION CONGRESS TO EFFECTIVELY ALLOW ISRAEL TO SAY WHEN THE U.S. SHOULD ATTACK IRAN
By Damian Lataan | January 10, 2014
Seventy senior Israeli-centric neoconservatives have written an open letter to Congress imploring them to do more to ensure Iran complies with the conditions of any agreement finally reached with the P5+1 over Iran’s nuclear program.
While the neocons are ostensibly asking Congress to ensure compliance, it is clear that their real aim is to convince members of Congress to support the bill currently passing through the Senate which calls for tighter sanctions against Iran in the event of any waywardness on Iran’s part.
The neocons are eager to see the bill currently passing through the Senate with enough support to make it veto-proof, not so much because they are concerned about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program – there’s still not a skerrick of hard evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program – but, rather, because embedded within the bill is this clause:
…if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapon program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with the law of the United States and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence…
Essentially, the clause is an automatic trigger for the US to attack Iran at any time the Israelis choose to launch a first strike – regardless of whether President Obama is in favour or not.
Partial list:
Elliott Abrams
James Kirchick
Dr. Fouad AjamiIrina Krasovskaya
Dr. Michael Auslin
Dr. William Kristol
Congresswoman Shelley Berkley
Dr. Robert J. Lieber
Josh Block
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman
Dan Blumenthal
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Iran UN ambassador calls for destruction of all nuclear weapons
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo
Press TV – March 29, 2017
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo has called for the total eradication of nuclear weapons.
Khoshroo reiterated Iran’s call during a UN conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons ban treaty in New York on Tuesday.
“Iran, as a victim of chemical weapons, strongly feels the danger posed by the existence of weapons of mass destruction and is determined to engage actively in international diplomatic efforts to save humanity from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Khoshroo stressed that Iran is committed to its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, which include negotiations based on effective nuclear disarmament measures.
He added that several countries continue to ignore international calls and treaties for nuclear disarmament and even continue to increase their nuclear stockpiles. “They do not have political determination to abandon doctrines of nuclear deterrence and nuclear terror,” he went on to say.
Iran’s UN ambassador noted that boycotting the talks by many countries, including the US, shows that the world’s nuclear powers are by no means committed to the eradication of nuclear arms. Britain and France were also among the some 40 countries that did not join the talks.
“We note that prohibition of nuclear weapons must be accompanied by the elimination of such weapons. There can be no doubt that without complete abolition of nuclear weapons, there will be no absolute guarantee against the danger of nuclear war and the use of such weapons,” Khoshroo added.
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