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War against Iran more likely — thanks to Wikileaks

By Paul Woodward on July 28, 2010

If the release of the Pentagon Papers epitomized the value of government leaks as a means of speaking truth to power, Wikileaks at this point can claim no such distinction.

As if to underline the extent to which the Afghan war logs are making the fog of war more, not less, dense, Katrina vanden Heuvel says: “more than a few commentators — including Daniel Ellsberg himself — have called [the war logs] a 21st-century Pentagon Papers.”

She may understandably have been misled by a headline in The Guardian that read: “Daniel Ellsberg describes Afghan war logs as on a par with ‘Pentagon Papers’.” However, “These documents are not the Pentagon Papers — we still await their equivalent for Afghanistan,” is what Ellsberg unambiguously told the Financial Times.

While Wikileak’s founder, Julian Assange, is no doubt sincere in his hope that these intelligence revelations will expose the futility of war, the fact is, because intelligence is not intelligent it can very easily be used to serve a host of diverging political agendas.

If opponents of the war in Afghanistan now feel better armed, so do proponents of an expanding war in Pakistan. Likewise, those pushing for military action against Iran will welcome a new supply of ammunition served by Wikileaks.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported:

Cooperation among Iran, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremist groups is more extensive than previously known to the public, according to details buried in the tens of thousands of military intelligence documents released by an independent group Sunday.

U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said some of the most explosive information contained in the WikiLeaks documents detail Iran’s alleged ties to the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the facilitating role Tehran may have played in providing arms from sources as varied as North Korea and Algeria.

The officials have for years received reports of Iran smuggling arms to the Taliban. The WikiLeaks documents, however, appear to give new evidence of direct contacts between Iranian officials and the Taliban’s and al Qaeda’s senior leadership. It also outlines Iran’s alleged role in brokering arms deals between North Korea and Pakistan-based militants, particularly militant leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and al Qaeda.

Here we see one of the most bizarre twists in the story: US government sources now using the leaked documents to buttress the current anti-Iran narrative and in the process acting as though the intelligence reports are providing information that hadn’t been accessible inside government until they were leaked!

At the very same time, the State Department’s leading expert on Iran, John Limbert — a genuine source of intelligence and “the most qualified person on the Iran team at State in the three decades I have lived in the United States,” according to Haleh Esfandiari, head of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars — is about to resign.

At Foreign Policy, Barbara Slavin writes:

[I]t’s hard not to view Limbert’s departure as a turning point and yet another missed opportunity in U.S.-Iran relations. A number of players with more skeptical views about the prospect of rapprochement with Tehran — such as White House aide Dennis Ross and nonproliferation experts like Robert Einhorn and Gary Samore — appear to be driving U.S. policy now, and the president himself blames the Iranian government for failing to respond to his outreach.

What could please the attack-Iran lobby more than to see the departure of the most skilled American proponent of engagement and at the same time to be served a prize piece of propaganda by an outfit aligned with the anti-war movement?!



July 28, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Bigoted idea from WWF employee

In the war on global warming, why not steal Saudi Arabia’s nameplate, break it, and take photos of it in a toilet?

WWF – WWF deeply sorry for nameplate incident at climate meeting

Gland, Switzerland, 28.07.10: Global environment organisation WWF apologised unreservedly for the actions of an employee who was involved in an incident at the June meeting of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The incident was gravely offensive to the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and to the meeting as a whole. It involved the taking and distribution of offensive photographs featuring the official nameplate of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Oxfam apologizes for incident at UN climate [scam] meeting | Oxfam International

An Oxfam employee was part of a discussion with two people from WWF that eventually led to one of the WWF employees taking the nameplate of Saudi Arabia. The nameplate was broken, put in a toilet bowl and photographs of it circulated around the convention center. The Oxfam employee did not take part in the act but was in the room when the nameplate was taken.

Flashback: Ruckus at climate talks over vandalism of Saudi nameplate – World Report – World – Dalje.com

[June 11, 2010] UN climate talks in Bonn were rocked by angry outbursts on Friday after Saudi Arabia’s conference nameplate was vandalised and its national flag was said to have been abused.

H/T – Tom Nelson

July 28, 2010 Posted by | Islamophobia, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

U.S. to pay for Israeli long range missile supremacy

By Reuters and Haaretz Service | July 25, 2010

Israel and the United States have signed an agreement to make the Arrow II ballistic shield capable of shooting down missiles at a higher altitude, the Israeli Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

The Arrow III will allow Israel “to deal with the threat of ballistic missiles with long range” and will give it “the ability to shoot down weapons of mass destruction outside the atmosphere”, the ministry said in a statement.

Israel, which describes its Arrow system as a defense against Iran, says the upgraded version will cap off its multi-tier air defenses.

The Arrow is jointly produced by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and the American firm Boeing Co. and has absorbed close to e1 billion in direct U.S. funds since its 1988 inception.

Israel’s defense forces have been planning to eventually operate three anti-missile systems: Iron Dome to tackle rockets with a shorter range of up to 60 kilometers; David’s Sling – known also as Magic Wand – which has a range of hundreds of kilometers; while the Arrow 3 is designed to shoot down missiles outside the earth’s atmosphere.

All three will be operated by anti-aircraft units of the IAF, which has been working to coordinate the functioning of its layer-cake air defenses.

Last year, the air force said  that the Arrow III would take more than four years to complete and that would depend on what resources were made available for the project.

Two weeks ago U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Andrew J. Shapiro said the United States intended to expand its military aid to Israel in the hopes that such aid would allow Israel to reach tough decisions in its peace talks with the Palestinians.

Speaking at the Brookings Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington D.C., the assistant secretary spoke of the administration’s intention to enhance the annual security aid it provides Israel, saying that in “2010, the administration requested [from Congress] $2.775 billion in security assistance funding specifically for Israel, the largest such request in U.S. history.”

Specifically mentioning the in-development Arrow missile defense system, Shapiro had said that “given the threat Israel faces from short- and medium-range missiles, Israeli air and missile defense systems are an area of particular focus, including the Arrow Weapon System to counter long-range ballistic missile threats and David’s Sling to defend against short-range ballistic missiles.”

“For our part, we are working with Israel to upgrade its Patriot Air and Missile Defense System, which was first deployed during the Gulf War, and have installed advanced radar systems to provide Israel early warning of incoming missiles,” Shapiro added.

A day before that, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said that the United States would continue to maintain Israel’s military advantage as well as protect it in the diplomatic arena, adding that the American commitment to Israel’s security was “not negotiable.”

July 26, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

The Special Tribunal of Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanese Plot. Part 1: “Syria is Guilty!”

By Yusuf Fernandez | Al Manar |  July 25, 2010

Most international experts consider that it is the national jurisdiction of Lebanon, and not the Special Tribunal of Lebanon (STL), that should have investigated and prosecuted the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. They argue that according to the UN Resolution 1664, the bomb attacks are not counted as crimes that needed to be tried by an international tribunal. In fact, the UN had only previously taken such a measure – to set up a new international tribunal – to prosecute the most serious international crimes, as genocide and ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia and the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda. Significantly, the Israeli genocide against Palestinian and Lebanese peoples has never led to the creation of a similar international court.

For example, the July 2006 war caused heavy loss of human life, population displacement and massive destruction in critical infrastructure and properties in Lebanon. Most of them were the result of serious violations of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Protocol on the protection of the victims of international armed conflicts. These violations were war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, there was no UN resolution which recognized them as such, or even condemned them. The UN Security Council did not create an international commission, let alone a court, to investigate the violations of the international law committed during the war.

This is in strong contrast with the case of Hariri’s assassination. It suggests that the Western powers think that some deaths are more important than others from a political view. This hypocritical stance has damaged the credibility of international law and has persuaded many people that international justice is driven by political considerations.

Therefore, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon was the first international court set up exclusively to prosecute less serious crimes that are only international because the UN Security Council decided they should be so. This demonstrates that there was a clear political purpose behind the creation of the tribunal.

There is no doubt either that the enemies of Lebanon, Syria and Arabism – first of all Israel and the Bush Administration- saw the tribunal as a tool to accomplish their goals – those that they failed to achieve in the battlefield against the Resistance or by killing thousands of Lebanese in Beirut, Qana or many other places of the country.

In this context of manifest international injustice and double standards, who can trust an international tribunal which has been set up by those who express day by day their anti-Lebanese views? Someone has only to read UN reports about the implementation of the Resolution 1701 to see that Lebanon is always the guilty party. Israel’s daily provocations and threats, including violations of the Lebanese air space, are mostly ignored or played down.

FALSE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST SYRIA

Shortly after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri on February 14, 2005, the pro-West and anti-Syrian forces in Lebanon launched a campaign to blame Syria for the crime despite the lack of any evidence of Syrian involvement. These forces forgot Syrian efforts to protect Lebanon from the Israeli aggression because they were actually against Arabism and some of them had supported the signature of a “peace treaty” with Israel in 1983, which was only an imposed surrender to the Zionist entity and was later annulled due to the pressure of the Lebanese population.

Amid massive protests from a large number of Lebanese who had been pushed to believe that Syria was undoubtedly guilty of the crime, Damascus put an end to its 29-year military and intelligence presence in Lebanon. Soon after, the United Nations called for an investigation into al-Hariri’s assassination.

Damascus claimed that Washington wanted to use the UN investigation to put an end to Syrian influence in the region. The Bush Administration considered Syria to be one of its main enemies in the Middle East and it explains that the first investigations of the Tribunal were aimed at finding any kind of evidence implicating Syria in the murder. More recently, US neocons believed that the UN probe would undermine the attempts by the Obama administration to engage Syria diplomatically just as it would prevent Damascus from successfully making a case for the Israeli withdrawal from the Syrian Golan Heights, which Israel took over in 1967 and is obliged by the UNSC Resolution 242 to return to Syria in exchange for peace.

In Lebanon, politicians aligned with the March 14 coalition (made up by anti-Syrian and pro-West political parties) insisted once again that Syria was to blame for the former PM´s death. They also extended their criticism to the Resistance, which supported strong links with Syria and opposed to Western and Israeli influence on the country.

Some experts already then warned that the STL was politicized. Joshua Landis, co-director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, claimed that “a lot of people have their hopes pinned on this, particularly the people from the Bush administration.”

Some senior US diplomats claimed that Syria was being uncooperative and, as a consequence of it, the Security Council might impose sanctions on Syrian officials: the president, the prime minister, the defense minister, the foreign minister and members of Parliament. Under these proposed sanctions, UN member states would have been prohibited from hosting these officials and their assets in those countries would have been frozen.

The first reports from the UN International Independent Investigation Committee (IIIC) appeared to support claims by the US and Lebanon´s 14 March camp that Syria was implicated in the murder. Detlev Mehlis, the first IIIC Commissioner released in October 2005 an interim report which claimed that there was “converging evidence pointing at both Lebanese and Syrian involvement” in the assassination.

Mehlis was actually a favorite of the pro-Israeli neocons who served in the Reagan Administration. His investigation of the 1982 La Belle Discotheque bombing attack in West Berlin was used as pretext by the US government to launch a 1986 air attack on Libya. Mehlis concluded that Libya was behind the Berlin attack conveniently at the same time that neocons in the US administration, including Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Scooter Libby, and others were calling for an attack on Muammar Qaddafi. The fact that he was appointed as the IIIC Commissioner is a clear evidence of strong Israeli influence on the tribunal.

Key to Mehlis´s assertions were the testimonies of two witnesses, Hussam Hussam and Mohammed Zuhair al-Siddiq, who said that Syrian and Lebanese officials had ordered the attack on al-Hariri´s convoy. Siddiq claimed that Damascus and former Lebanese President Emile Lahoud had given the order to kill Hariri. He added that four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals and a number of Lebanese and Syrian politicians were also involved.

In October 2005, Mehlis published a report, whose electronic version mentioned the names of some Syrian officials who were allegedly involved in the assassination. Some Western media then claimed that the conclusion of the investigation would show that Syria had played a decisive role in the crime.

However, some weeks after the release of the October 2005 interim report, Hussam and Siddiq’s testimonies were found to be unreliable. Hussam started trying to sell his story to several Lebanese media outlets. When his name and role as a witness were leaked by New TV later that year in November, he abruptly left the country for Syria. Days later, he reappeared on Syrian state television and fully changed his testimony, claiming that he fabricated the tale after being tortured, drugged, and offered money by March 14 leaders.

For his part, former Syrian secret intelligence agent Mohammad al-Siddiq also proved to be a false witness. He left France after obtaining a fake Czech passport and fled to the United Arab Emirates, where he was arrested. He told reporters that he had received his passport from the French General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) in order to escape Lebanese justice. While being in France under the protection of DGSE, the French Police eavesdropped on his telephone calls and found out that Siddiq had lied to the tribunal.

Therefore, the report´s conclusions were proved to be false as well as its anti-Syrian claims. All these scandals undermined the credibility of the tribunal and led to Mehlis´s resignation.

In an apparent acknowledgement that the Bush administration had originally sought to use the al-Hariri case to pressure Damascus, an anonymous US official then told the International Crisis Group that the March 14 coalition could no longer assume that the tribunal will automatically deliver a damning indictment of Syrian complicity in the murder. This new situation sparked outrage among pro-March 14 Lebanese and some Western commentators. Shibli Mallat, a prominent Lebanese law professor, accused Brammertz from the pages of TIME magazine of a “total dereliction of duty” and said that he “single-handedly destroyed” the investigation. Michael Young warned in the Lebanese newspaper Daily Star of “grave damage being done to the UN’s credibility.” March 14 leaders implored the UN to give some kind of public indication that Damascus was still involved in the murder, but to no avail.

July 26, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Beyond a ’strategic liability’–the special relationship has made the U.S. ugly

By Scott McConnell on July 22, 2010

I received one of the coveted invitations to Tuesday’s Nixon Center’s debate between Chas Freeman and Robert Satloff over whether Israel is or is not an American strategic asset. It was a sign of the intense interest in the topic (and perhaps too in Chas Freeman) that, in the dog days of summer, it looked to be the most popular Nixon Center luncheon of the year. The guest list seemed almost scientifically balanced: in apparently equal number were representatives from the sturdy Arabist Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and several more or less like-minded organizations, as well as from AIPAC, the ADL, the JTA. But with one exception, the audience was exceedingly polite throughout.

In his prepared remarks, Chas Freeman described succinctly all that the US does for Israel, financially and diplomatically, then noted that it gets in return virtually none of the strategic benefits one typically receives from allies. Israel is so unpopular in its region that its participation in any joint project is sufficient to drive others away. For his part, Satloff claimed that Israel is America’s best bargain for ally ever. In manner, he was almost smugly confident and self assured. At the outset he talked about his reluctance at accepting the invitation, wondering whether his participation would “lend legitimacy” to a question which is out there “on the fringes, (though not only there)” . He stated that the issue of Israel’s strategic value was never debated “in the Situation Room” and nor by a “vast majority” of military leaders and national security specialists agree, across the political spectrum. I suspect if Satloff was so certain of this, he wouldn’t have bothered to come.

Like David Frum, (but for different reasons) I found the debate interesting but slightly unsatisfying. I think Freeman’s points are unassailable, but there would be many who would also be persuaded that Israel proved itself as a Cold War ally, demonstrating the superiority of American avionics (in dogfights with Syria) and, through its military strength, weakening the Soviet foothold in the region. (Walt and Mearsheimer also wrote there was much to be said for Israel’s strategic value during the Cold War.) And I would acknowledge that these points in Israel’s favor were not anticipated by the early Cold War strategists who felt, initially, that American support for Israel would be incredibly costly in geostrategic terms, in the short and medium term. Satloff of course also emphasized Israel’s technical prowess, its success in devoloping drones so Americans can strike Afghan targets from computer screens in Nevada, and its high tech industry. All very Dan Senor– though it’s never explained why Israel needs to occupy the West Bank and starve Gaza for its computer industry to thrive. Satloff seemed pleased to contrast the relative peace around Israel with the situation in the Gulf: See, Americans, for the cost of a mere $100 billion in aid, the Levant plus Egypt is relatively pacified, while the Gulf is full of war.

I think Freeman was excellent, but what I believe is his most salient point he expressed tangentially, and in segments, and in truth is not the kind of thing that can be argued well in debate, because it is grounded in sentiment and inference rather than cold facts. I would put it this way: that the nature of Washington’s alliance with Israel, and especially the extreme deference to Israeli sensibilities that seems inextricable from it, had pulled the United States into an ever expanding arc of conflict with the Muslim world, a conflict that is far from inevitable and in fact unnecessary—and that this conflict has made us a target of terrorism and has already eroded our constitutional liberties, as well as costing us hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of dead and wounded. Freeman noted that several terrorist operatives have mentioned American support for Israel as an important motivator for their actions, but they have other, also serious, reasons for their hatred. Would the United States have had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, the residue of the first Iraq war, without Israel and its lobby? A case could be made either way. I don’t believe we would be at war with Iraq now without Israel, though the proponents of that war now work overtime to claim that no, Iran was always Israel’s preferred target. We certainly would not be working ourselves into a froth over the remote possibility of an Iranian nuclear deterrent without Israel’s prodding.

But how exactly do you quantify the cost of appearing as blatantly hypocritical (about democracy, about human rights) to hundreds of millions of Muslims? Satloff can and did claim that Arabs (quietly) support a war against Iran and say that when Arab governments complain about American support for Zionism, it is more or less meaningless. Perhaps it is; the governments are weak, autocratic, not very effective and hardly beloved by their own people.

The question period was slightly more expansive. Joe Klein (who I would depict as near neutral in this debate) asked in his signature fashion a pointed question to each figure. I asked Satloff whether his calculus might change if the two-state solution negotiation were to end (or to be generally acknowledged to be over) and Israel was seen, more clearly as a state denying political rights to four million people under occupation. His answer surprised me: there has been a two state negotiation going on since 1937 (the time of an early British partition proposal) and it’s still ongoing. He could not have made it clearer that Israel and its American spokesman enjoy the pretext of a peace process—it can go on forever!– while Israel, which got its state 62 years ago, continues to settle and seize the land it wants.

Satloff was full of condescending praise for the Obama administration for “correcting its error” of asking for a settlement freeze in Jerusalem as a prelude to negotiations. Indeed, he smugly noted that Obama had learned the error of his ways very quickly, so deserved double praise! Generally I found Satloff an interesting character, exuding confidence, expressing forceful talking points at every turn. And they all take a moment to unravel—yes, what he said is a kind of half-truth, and the other half is false. But if the statements come cascading out, expressed rapidly and cogently enough, it can work. I imagine that being in a room with Netanyahu has the same effect.

The one volatile moment came when someone with an Israeli accent (from the guest list I surmise it was Amitai Etzioni, but I’m not certain) challenged Freeman for claiming that one of the things America had learned from Israel was targeted assassination and torture. He was vehement, and mentioned (a good debating point) the Phoenix program in Vietnam. Freeman replied that he had heard first-hand from Israelis about Israeli assassinations and torture, Israelis who had grown repulsed by them. The element that isn’t revealed in the exchange is a complex one—what our interrogators have learned from Israeli ones, whether the entire Israeli colonizing discourse about Muslims, and sex and shame has fed into Abu Ghraib type atrocities. I believe it has, but connecting the dots can’t be done in a debate.

In his post on this, David Frum says that Freeman didn’t play the part of coldly calculated realist. I think there’s something to this, and Chas, though he certainly has excellent realist credentials, does argue and think in terms of values as well. So do most realists I know. Coming away from the debate, I felt more strongly that the question of Israel in the United States is going to be decided on the basis of values, as much as strategic costs and benefits. That’s a realm where Israel as a democracy has an overwhelming advantage, and where Israel as an apartheid occupier has none whatsoever.

July 22, 2010 Posted by | Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Europe Considers New Penalties for Iran

Al-Manar, 20/07/2010

In line with the US unilateral sanctions beyond the UNSC sanctions, the European Union is considering tough new sanctions against Iran to protest its nuclear program, including banning investment in the oil and gas sector and tightening restrictions on shipping and finance.

The new measures, which are subject to agreement by European Union foreign ministers, cover dozens of senior Iranian officials and companies, and aim to put new pressure on the government in Tehran by cutting off Europe’s investment in major sectors of the Iranian economy.

A draft of the proposed new measures names 41 Iranian people, 57 companies or other entities, 15 additional companies thought to be controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and three deemed to be under the control of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines.

Senior European diplomats will discuss the proposed sanctions on Thursday.

Under pressure from the United States and Europe, Russia and China voted last month with 11 other UN Security Council nations for a fourth set of sanctions on Iran over its uranium enrichment. The sanctions target Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, ballistic missiles and nuclear-related investments.

Weeks later, US President Barack Obama signed into law far-reaching new unilateral sanctions on Iran that aim to curb Tehran’s fuel imports and deepen its international isolation. Russia and China denounced the move.

Last month, European Union leaders agreed in principle to go ahead with tighter measures as part of a two-track strategy to try to deal with Tehran’s nuclear program. While trying to tighten the economic screw, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, has also made it clear she is ready for talks with Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili.

Thursday’s meeting of European Union diplomats will give the first indication of whether national governments inside the bloc will exert pressure on it to water down its plans. But discussion at a summit meeting of the bloc in June led to a swift agreement on the sectors to be the focus of penalties.

The draft, which bans the supply of items needed for nuclear materials, weapons and ammunition, spells out detailed new restrictions for the energy sector. These would bar the “sale, supply or transfer of key equipment and technology” for refinement, liquefied natural gas, exploration or production. European companies would not be able to provide technical or financial help “to enterprises in Iran that are engaged in the key sectors of Iranian oil and gas industry.”

European Union governments would be forced to monitor Iranian banks in their jurisdiction closely. Financial transfers above 35,000 euros, or about $45,000, would require prior authorization.

Iranian banks would be prohibited from opening new branches or subsidiaries in the 27-nation bloc. There would be a ban on providing insurance and reinsurance “to the government of Iran, or to entities incorporated in Iran or subject to Iran’s jurisdiction.”

Countries in the bloc would stop “all cargo flights operated by Iranian carriers or originating from Iran with the exception of mixed passenger and cargo flights.”

The measures, which would be issued next Monday, include a list of senior officials who would be barred from entering the European Union, including Ali Akbar Ahmadian, chief of the Revolutionary Guards joint staff; Morteza Safari, commander of the navy; and Hosein Salimi, commander of the air force.

Money and economic resources owned or controlled by companies and entities regarded as close to the government or controlled by it would be frozen. These include First East Export Bank, Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International.

July 21, 2010 Posted by | Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Holy Land 5 case reveals double standard in enforcement of US law

The Electronic Intifada, 20 July 2010
An US federal agent at the Holy Land Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois, as the contents of the office are seized on 4 December 2001. (AFP PHOTO/Scott Olson)

“I had no intention in my mind and my heart but to help the Palestinian indigenous people who are and have been facing unusual economic distress … nothing in my life was as satisfactory and as self-fulfilling as knowing that I could sign a check. It is the only evidence you have against me, signing the check.”

At a special session on Palestinian political prisoners at the US Social Forum in Detroit last month, Noor Elashi recited that statement given by her father, Ghassan, when he was sentenced by a federal court in May 2009. Ghassan Elashi is the co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), which was the largest Muslim charity in the US before it was shut down by the Bush Administration in 2001.

Sending aid not just to Palestinians living under the thumb of Israel’s military occupation, but to people in Bosnia, Albania, Chechnya and Turkey, the HLF was also involved in local and national humanitarian relief. The organization set up food banks on the East Coast, helped victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and provided assistance to people after floods and tornadoes devastated parts of Iowa and Texas in the 1990s.

Three months after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the US Treasury department froze the HLF’s bank accounts as the Executive branch shut down the organization under the auspices of the PATRIOT Act. Using a new provision called the Material Support Law, the US State Department accused the five HLF founders — now dubbed the Holy Land Five — of providing “assistance” to designated “terrorist groups” (namely Hamas) in Palestine. The Bush Administration immediately closed the organization and launched aggressive charges against the charity workers. There was no hearing, and the prosecution was authorized to use secret evidence.

Several other American faith-based relief organizations were also caught in the post-11 September hysteria of charity closures under the same new laws and executive orders. The legislation has been challenged by civil rights groups in the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional, but was upheld and used to sentence Ghassan Elashi, a father of six who immigrated to the US in 1978, to 65 years in prison.

On 21 June 2010, the Supreme Court ruled to continue to authorize prosecutions of charities under the Material Support provision, disappointing families and supporters of the Holy Land Five and troubling US-based organizations that directly support grassroots humanitarian programs in the Middle East.

Noor Elashi, a 24-year-old master of fine arts candidate at the New School in New York City, told The Electronic Intifada that her father’s legal team is in the middle of appealing the entire HLF case. “The attorneys are working with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights,” she said. “The overall impression is that the upholding of the Material Support Law is not the best thing that could happen regarding this case. It’s not the most positive step. But that said, there are so many other grounds for appeal, such as evidentiary issues and the prosecution’s use of an anonymous witness.”

Prosecutors working for the Bush Administration accused the HLF of supporting Hamas by trying to “win hearts and minds” of the Palestinian population through humanitarian assistance, and that the charities HLF worked with were “front groups” for the political party. But after several years of wiretapping phone lines, seizing documents and following money trails, the prosecution couldn’t support its allegations of an HLF-Hamas connection. Elashi said they then resorted to calling on an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer, who called himself “Avi,” as a key witness who told the jury he was an expert who could “smell Hamas.”

“It was the only time in the history of the United States that a witness inside a courtroom was allowed to remain anonymous, so the defense couldn’t cross-examine him,” Elashi said. “That in and of itself is huge grounds for appeal.”

In fact, Israeli intelligence officers, in an unprecendented move, were allowed to testify in secret using pseudonyms and disguises and without the defense being given a full opportunity to cross-examine them during the 2006 federal trial in Chicago of American citizen Muhammad Salah and stateless Palestinian Abdelhaleem Ashqar. Accused of “racketeering” charges related to fundraising for Hamas, both men were acquitted of all the terrorism-related charges, but each was found guilty on single counts of obstruction of justice; Salah for lying on a form in a civil case and Ashqar for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

Additionally, the US government infamously led a lengthy, repressive, and racist assault against the Palestinian-American professor and political activist Dr. Sami al-Arian. Al-Arian, who remains under house arrest following a six-year prison sentence — which included spending 43 months locked in solitary confinement — was also charged, as the HLF were, under the Material Support Law.

Elashi stressed that the HLF was never convicted of giving charity to designated “terrorist” groups, but in the end they were convicted of conspiring to give charity to zakat or charitable committees in Palestine.

“I feel like at this point, anybody is at risk,” Elashi said. “This is the time to be worried. What essentially can happen is that any American can be prosecuted for giving any type of charity, or any type of aid. Even a former president is at risk of being prosecuted,” she said, referring to how Jimmy Carter has helped train election workers in Lebanon.

“The problem with the law is that it’s way too vague,” Elashi added, “and because it’s way too vague, it really singles out groups from the rest of the population, and typically singles out Muslim charities as well as Arab-American individuals. And it’s all being done in the name of national security, but what it’s really doing is shredding the constitution and causing an economic chokehold on occupied Palestine.”

Elashi told The Electronic Intifada that despite the circumstances, her father is extremely hopeful about the appeals process. “Opening the charity was a form of optimism,” she said. “He knew from the first day that when he started the charity it was going to be a challenge. Soon after, he got attacked from pro-Israeli politicians and lobbyists, who tried to link the charity to Hamas and acts of violence. He continued to do everything possible to make sure that the charity kept running, and did pretty much what every other American aid organization did — USAID, the Red Cross, and the UN all gave money to the very same zakat committees that were listed in the HLF indictment.”

The Elashi family has not been allowed to visit Ghassan in prison, Noor Elashi said, for quite some time. In the fall of 2009, after one of the visits, a prison guard told the inmates and the families to disperse. But Noor’s younger brother Omar — who lives with Down’s Syndrome — ran to hug his father, and at that point the prison guard yelled at Ghassan, saying that he disobeyed orders. The guard filed a complaint that led to an internal investigation, and the prison ruled that there would be a six-month to one-year visitation ban.

Even after Ghassan was moved to another prison, the visitation ban moved with him. “We get two phone calls from him every month, which is significantly less than we would get from any other prison,” Elashi said. “We hope to finally see him in September or October.” Ghassan is currently being held inside a Communications Management Unit (CMU) in Illinois, a block within some prisons that are nicknamed “little Guantanamos” due to the overwhelming population of Muslims and people of Arab and Middle Eastern descent.

Defense Attorney Nancy Hollander, on behalf of the Holy Land Five, told The Electronic Intifada that the legal team is optimistic about the appeal. “We are currently working on our brief to the Fifth Circuit,” Hollander remarked. “The current deadline is 3 August, but that might get extended into September. All of our clients have been moved to other prisons. We are in contact with them regularly. We remain hopeful.”

Meanwhile, private, US-based, pro-Israel groups are currently sending millions of dollars every year to support illegal settlement colonies and right-wing Zionist settlers in the occupied West Bank. The New York Times reported on 5 July that at least 40 US-based organizations are actively donating more than $200 million in tax-deductible “gifts” to build and sustain illegal settlements. According to the Times, some of the donations also pay for “legally questionable” items such as bulletproof vests, guard dogs, weapon accessories and armored security vehicles (“Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank“).

Daniel C. Kurtzer, the former US ambassador to Israel, told the Times “a couple of hundred million dollars makes a huge difference” in terms of supporting the settlement industry, and if carefully focused, “helps to create a new reality on the ground.”

As of now, there is no indication that any of these faith-based, pro-settlement groups will face the kind of treatment and lengthy, expensive trials under the guise of the Material Support Law like those the Holy Land Five have faced. Noor Elashi told The Electronic Intifada that there is an obvious double standard being applied and enforced against her father and his colleagues.

However, she said that her father “feels his ordeal like he feels a fly on his shoe … He believes that it’s going to pass, and he’s still very proud of everything he’s accomplished. His work has been the most rewarding part of his life. He’s helped people rebuild homes and has given hungry people food. That’s what nourishes him. So he’s optimistic about the appeal.”

At the US Social Forum in Detroit, Elashi read the last part of her father’s statement upon his sentencing. “We helped Palestinian orphans and needy families, giving them hope and life,” he stated. “We gave them hope and life … And what was the occupation giving them? It was providing them with death and destruction. And then we are turned criminals. That is irony.”

Related:

July 20, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Friends of Israel Initiative: The neoconservatives’ eastern front

By Tom Mills | Pulse Media | July 20, 2010

Today in the House of Commons Britain’s leading neoconservative organisation the Henry Jackson Society hosts the UK launch of the Friends of Israel Initiative.  This new organisation is the latest of a number of well connected advocacy groups in the UK seeking to deflect criticism of Israel’s illegal occupation and repeated human rights abuses.

The Friends of Israel Initiative says it ‘aims to create a network linking private and public figures who agree with the idea of an Israel fully anchored in the West’.  This network will not have to be built from scratch; rather Friends of Israel will be able to integrate itself into extremist networks already well established in UK politics.

The Friends of Israel Initiative is an international operation and was first launched in Paris on 31 May – the same day that Israeli soldiers boarded the Mavi Marmara in international waters and killed nine activists.  The organisation was reportedly established by Dore Gold, an American born Israeli who heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and was formerly an adviser to Ariel Sharon and the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[1]

Gold also has links with UK politicians.  In January 2007 he led an Israeli delegation at a conference at the House of Commons debating possible measures against Iran.[2]  The conference resulted in an Early Day Motion signed by 68 MPs urging ‘the British Government to put forward a resolution at the United Nations Security Council demanding President Ahmadinejad be brought to trial on the charge of incitement to commit genocide’.[3]  The Motion was introduced by the neoconservative MP Michael Gove, a signatory to the Henry Jackson Society’s Statement of Principles and now a Cabinet Minister.

Dore Gold also spoke at the House of Commons more recently in October last year, again focusing on Iran and its supposed threat to the western world.[4]  He was invited to speak by Patrick Mercer MP who as the Conservative’s Shadow Security Minister developed connections with a number of dubious figures involved in fabricating terror threats and spreading alarmist propaganda on Iran.[5]

The leading light in Dore Gold’s Friends of Israel Initiative is the former Prime Minister of Spain José María Aznar.  Whilst in office Aznar committed Spain to the invasion of Iraq in defiance of Spanish public opinion.  He has since been appointed President of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the 175 subsidiaries of which without exception supported the Iraq War.[6]

Other leading figures in Friends of Israel include the former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton – another key architect of the Iraq War – and the Ulster Unionist politician turned Tory David Trimble.  Trimble chaired Dore Gold’s House of Commons conference in January 2007 and has recently been appointed an ‘international observer’ to Israel’s inquiry into the Gaza Aid Flotilla killings.

The group’s source of funding is not disclosed but it is almost certainly bankrolled by its billionaire founder member Robert Agostinelli.  An Italian-American, Agostinelli made his fortune working in Mergers and Acquisitions in London in the 1980s and is currently Managing Director of private equity firm the Rhone Group.  Agostinelli provided funds for the Presidential campaigns of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, has praised Silvio Berlusconi and Nicolas Sarkozy, and once described the left-wing as ‘a cancer that needs to be eradicated’.[7]  He has called Barak Obama a ‘soulless serpent from the deep’ and considers him to be an agent of Marxists who have ‘finally stuck the raw edge of their poisoned sword into the heart of the glorious genie of capitalism and freedom.’[8]

Like its likely paymaster, Friends of Israel is quite open about its extremist agenda.  Last month The Times – a News Corporation subsidiary – published an article by José María Aznar outlining his reasons for promoting the organisation.  In the article Israel is portrayed not as a violent rogue state but as an outpost of Western civilisation and an indispensable strategic asset:

Israel is our first line of defence in a turbulent region that is constantly at risk of descending into chaos; a region vital to our energy security owing to our overdependence on Middle Eastern oil; a region that forms the front line in the fight against extremism. If Israel goes down, we all go down.[9]

In common with many right-wing and neoconservative commentators Aznar chastises ‘The West’ for its supposed failure to assert itself over those who he claims ‘oppose Western values’:

The West is going through a period of confusion over the shape of the world’s future. To a great extent, this confusion is caused by a kind of masochistic self-doubt over our own identity; by the rule of political correctness; by a multiculturalism that forces us to our knees before others; and by a secularism which, irony of ironies, blinds us even when we are confronted by jihadis promoting the most fanatical incarnation of their faith.[10]

This notion of a Western civilisation weakened by liberal guilt is commonly held on the right and is propagated by Britain’s Islamophobic think-tanks.  It is a perception apparently impervious to the reality of growing Islamophobia on Europe’s streets and a proliferation of anti-Muslim legislation.  For Aznar and those like him, this repression is part of protecting Europe’s ‘Judeo-Christian roots’ and Israel is seen as being on the frontline in this imagined war.  Friends of Israel’s founding statement declares that an ‘assault on Israel is itself an assault on Judeo-Christian values.’  The founding statement also provides some clues on the exact nature of this unholy ‘assault’ and the ‘Judeo-Christian values’ so under threat.  It describes with concern how ‘principles of human rights and universal jurisdiction’ are now being ‘turned into weapons against Israeli democracy’.

Tom Mills is a freelance investigative researcher and a doctoral candidate at the University of Strathclyde. He also writes for PULSE.

– Notes –
[1] ‘Lord Trimble’s ‘Israel-friendly’ reputation’, Jewish Chronicle. 17 June 2010

[2] Dore Gold, Biography, http://www.dore-gold.com/biography.php [Accessed 14 July 2010]

[3] Early Day Motion. EDM 900. IRAN AND ISRAEL. 19.02.2007.

[4] Henry Jackson Society, The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran defies the West By Ambassador Dore Gold, 12 October 2009, [Accessed 14 July 2010]

[5] see Tom Mills and David Miller, ‘The British amateur terror trackers: A case study in dubious politics’, Spinwatch, 26 August 2009 and Tom Mills and David Miller, ‘Réalité EU: Front group for the Washington based Israel Project?’, Spinwatch, 30 October 2009

[6] Roy Greenslade, ‘Their master’s voice’, Guardian, 17 February 2003. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/feb/17/mondaymediasection.iraq

[7] Tony Barrett, ‘Rhône Group should not expect a warm welcome at Anfield’, Times Online, 16 March 2010. Available at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/liverpool/article7065086.ece

[8] Robert F. Agostinelli, ‘Letter: Behold the naked hand of socialism’, The Washington Times, 30 March 2010; p.2.

[9] José María Aznar, ‘Support Israel: if it goes down, we all go down’, The Times, 17 June 2010; p.31

[10] José María Aznar, ‘Support Israel: if it goes down, we all go down’, The Times, 17 June 2010; p.31

July 19, 2010 Posted by | Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

BBC: Israel Training PKK

May 04, 2008

The BBC has obtained evidence that Israelis have been giving military training to Kurds in northern Iraq.

A report on the BBC TV programme Newsnight showed Israeli experts in northern Iraq, drilling Kurdish militias in shooting techniques.

PKK officials have refused to comment on the report and Israel has denied it knows of any involvement.


See also:

Israel Escalating Terror in Turkey?

Aletho News | June 22, 2010

And:

Turkey’s tourist resorts threatened with terrorist campaign

The Telegraph | July 18, 2010

Analysts say the PKK, which is considered as terrorist group by the EU and the US and is on Britain’s list of proscribed groups, threats promise a major escalation of the conflict, at a time when Turkey is in the spotlight following its championing of the Palestinian cause in Gaza.

July 19, 2010 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

60 years ago, first Defense Sec’y said ‘Zionist pressure’ endangered US security, all the way to Afghanistan

By Philip Weiss on July 19, 2010

I’ve kept dropping hints about this. It’s time to post some excerpts about the birth of Israel from the Forrestal Diaries– by James V. Forrestal, the first U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Forrestal is famous of course for tragedy: Not long after these thoughts were set down, Forrestal was sacked by Truman in March 1949 and died two months later, apparently jumping from a high floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he was being treated for depression.

My introduction. 1, know your narrator: James Forrestal was a serious man to the point of humorless, rigid/repressed, intelligent, self-made.

The son of a contractor, he became a Roaring 20s socialite and a partner at Dillon, Read in New York and was not at all political in the partisan sense. His Quixotic quest as a Truman appointee was to depoliticize the Palestine issue, to get Republicans and Democrats to cut a secret deal not to pander so that the U.S. interest could be sorted out by elected leaders and their aides without political pressure. It’s a crazy quest in a democracy– but then, just as crazy as the idea that one special interest should essentially control policy in this area unto Armageddon.

2, One lesson here is that Partition, which the UN Gen’l Assembly approved on Nov. 29, 1947 amid heavy lobbying, was opposed by almost all the wise men whom Truman had assembled to steer the ship of state, and meanwhile pushed by political rabbis, including Clark Clifford and Truman’s former business-partner Eddie Jacobson, and other Zionists or envoys for Zionists who beat a track into Truman’s office. Bear in mind that the ’48 election, with Thomas Dewey challenging Truman, is in the wings;

3, Note that Forrestal meets with two powerful senators from opposing parties, J. Howard McGrath, who heads Democratic campaigns, and Arthur Vandenberg, a key supporter of Dewey for president, and they both essentially say, It’s Chinatown, Jake! The issue is too radioactive in terms of donations for us to go near.

Repeat: Money– not voters.

4, All the pressures we see today to nullify Obama’s policy-making visa vis a Palestinian state were there back then, and Forrestal identified them as a lobby. The question I ask again and again on this site is, How stupid are the American media and the people, that an assertion is made by serious people not once but again and again, from Robert Lovett to Forrestal to Rabbi Elmer Berger to Paul Findley to George Ball to Walt and Mearsheimer and David Hirst and Lawrence Wilkerson– asserted again and again over 7 decades, an assertion at the core of our foreign policy today, and the media still won’t touch it?

5, Forrestal was hounded by Zionists. Because of his stance on Israel, columnists Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson smeared him, and exhumed his unhappy marriage, including his role when his glamorous wife was robbed of jewelry on Fifth Avenue 20 years before these events. Speculating about the cause of Forrestal’s tailspin is not my focus. I would only point out the Terrible Pathos/Tragic Arc of being a Defense Secretary who is calling for military support to protect the life of U.N. envoy Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem in summer ’48 and he fails, Bernadotte is killed, and a few months later, he too dies.

And Jerusalem is not internationalized, and Zionist territorial gains well beyond Partition are memorialized. Tragedy. The tragedy of the unfolding of extremist Zionism.

6, The diaries were heavily-edited, and often paraphrased, by editor Walter Millis. (The unredacted original, at Princeton, apparently has even stronger material than what follows.) OK, take it away Mr. Secretary:

29 August 1947 Cabinet

[Under Secretary of State Robert] Lovett reported on [Palestine]…He said that the tendency in the General Assembly toward taking decisions by majority vote could constitute a danger to the United States. There was some indication of a lash-up between the Asiatic peoples and those of the Middle East on a color-versus-white basis. He said that while much emphasis had been placed upon the distress and commotion among the Jews, there was an equal danger of solidifying sentiment among all of the Arabian and Mohammedan peoples against us.

4 September 1947 Cabinet Lunch

At the end of the lunch [Robert] Hannegan [Postmaster General] brought up the question of the President’s making a statement of policy on Palestine, particularly with reference to the entrance of a hundred and fifty thousand Jews into Palestine. He said he didn’t want to press for a decision one way or the other but simply wanted to point out that such a statement would have a very great influence and great effect on the raising of funds for the Democratic National Committee. He said very large sums were obtained a year ago from Jewish contributors and that they would be influenced in either giving or withholding by what the President did on Palestine.

29 September 1947 [Conversation with president]

I asked the President whether it would not be possible to lift the Jewish-Palestine question out of politics. The President said it was worth trying although he obviously was skeptical.. [I said] It was dangerous to let it continue to be a matter of barter between the two parties…

6 October 1947 Cabinet Lunch

Hannegan brought up the question of Palestine. He said many people who had contributed to the Democratic campaign fund in 1944 were pressing hard for assurances from the administration of definitive support for the Jewish position in Palestine. The President said that if they would keep quiet he thought that everything would be all right, but that if they persisted in the endeavor to go beyond the report of the United Nations Commission there was grave danger of wrecking all prospects for settlement.

7 November 1947 Cabinet

[Middle East is a tinder box, warns Secretary of State George Marshall]  I repeated my suggestion, made several times previously, that a serious attempt be made to lift the Palestine question out of American partisan politics. I said that there had been general acceptance of the fact that domestic politics ceased at the Atlantic Ocean and that no question was more charged with danger to our security than this particular one.

26 November 1947

Lunch today with Senator McGrath.

[Summary is by Walter Millis, editor of diaries] Forrestal derived several points from McGrath’s conversation. In the first place, Jewish sources were responsible for a substantial part of the contributions to the Democratic National Committee, and many of these contributions were made “with a distinct idea on the part of the givers that they will have an opportunity to express their views and have them seriously considered on such questions as the present Palestine question.” There was a feeling among the Jews that the United States was not doing what it should to solicit votes in the U.N. General assembly in favor of the Palestine partition. (To this Forrestal objected that it was “precisely what the State Department wanted to avoid; that we had gone a very long way indeed in supporting partition and that proselytizing for votes and support would add to the already serious alienation of Arabian good will.”) …

[The two men discuss a possible Gallup poll to see if Americans would support use of force to preserve Partition.]

I hoped that Senator McGrath would give a lot of thought to this matter because it involved not merely the Arabs of the Middle East, but also might involve the whole Moslem world with its four hundred millions of people—Egypt, North Africa, India and Afghanistan.

1 December 1947

…Lovett reported on the result of the United Nations action on Palestine over the week end [vote in favor of Partition]. He said he had never in his life been subject to as much pressure as he had been in the three days beginning Thrusday morning and ending Sunday night. [Herbert Bayard] Swope, Robert Nathan, were among those who had importuned him… The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which has a concession in Liberia, reported that it had been telephoned to and asked to transmit a message to their representative in Liberia directing him to bring pressure on the Liberian government to vote in favor of partition. The zeal and activity of the Jews had almost resulted in defeating the objectives they were after.

I remarked that many thoughtful people of the Jewish faith had deep misgivings about the wisdom of the Zionists’ pressures for a Jewish state in Palestine, and I also remarked that the New York Times editorial of Sunday morning pointed up those misgivings when it said, “Many of us have long had doubts… concerning the wisdom of erecting a political state on a basis of religious faith.” I said I thought the decision was fraught with great danger for the security of this country….

3 December 1947

Lunch today with [former Secretary of State] Jimmy Byrnes. We talked Palestine… He said that David Niles [adviser to Truman, pro-Zionist] and Sam Rosenman were chiefly responsible for the President’s decision [partition]; that both had told the President that Dewey was about to come out with a statement favoring the Zionist position on Palestine, and that they had insisted that unless the President anticipated this movement New York State would be lost to the Democrats. ….

I said I thought it was a most disastrous and regrettable fact that the foreign policy of this country was determined by the contributions a particular bloc of special interests might make to the party funds…

13 December 1947

At the Gridiron Dinner tonight I spoke to Governor Dewey about Palestine and posed to him the question of getting nonpartisan action on this question, which I said was a matter of the deepest concern to me in terms of the security of the nation. The Governor said he agreed in principle but that it was a difficult matter to get results on because of the intemperate attitude of the Jewish people who had taken Palestine as the emotional symbol, because the Democratic Party would not be willing to relinquish the advantages of the Jewish vote….

(…[T]o his [Dewey’s] inquiry as to what we could do now, I said there would inevitably be two things coming up: (1) the arming of the Jews to fight the Arabs (2) unilateral action by the U.S. to enforce the decision of the General Assembly.

At this point Vandenberg interjected to say that on the question of unilateral action he was completely and unequivocably [sic] against such action because it would breed in his opinion a wave of violent anti-Semitism in this country.)

16 January 1948

[Millis writes that Forrestal prepares a paper for Lovett; and that Forrestal] had discussed the question, the paper concluded, “with a number of people of the Jewish faith who hold the view that the present zeal of the Zionists can have the most dangerous consequences, not merely in their divisive effects in American life, but in the long run on the position of the Jews throughout the world.”

[Lovett produced a paper from the State Department, Millis continues] This, as Forrestal paraphrased it, concluded that the U.N. partition plan was “not workable,” adding that the United States was under no commitment to support the plan if it could not be made to work without resort to force; that it was against the American interest to supply arms to the Jews while we were embargoing arms to the Arabs, or to accept unilateral responsibility for carrying out the U.N. decision…

Forrestal [again per Millis] felt that the State Department was “seriously embarrassed and handicapped by the activities of Niles at the White House in going directly to the President on matters involving Palestine.

“… I gave it as my view that the Secretary of State could not avoid grasping the nettle of this issue firmly, and that it was too deeply charged with grave danger to this country to allow it to remain in the realm of domestic politics.”

12 February 1948 Meeting-National Security Council

[A]ny serious attempt to implement the General Assembly’s recommendation on Palestine would set in train events that must finally result in at least a partial mobilization of U.S. forces, including recourse to the Selective Service.

3 February 1948

[Discusses idea of depoliticizing it with late president’s son, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr, a storng supporter of Jewish state]

I thought the methods that had been used by people outside of the Executive branch of the government to bring coercion and duress on other nations in the General Assembly bordered closely onto scandal. … I said I was forced to repeat to him what I had said to Senator McGrath in response to the latter’s observation that our failure to go along with the Zionists might lose the states of New York, Pennsylvania and California—that I thought it was about time that somebody should pay some consideration to whether we might not lose the United States. …

Had lunch with B[ernard]. M. Baruch. …

He took the line of advising me not to be active in this particular matter and that I was already identified, to a degree that was not in my own interests, with opposition to the United Nations policy on Palestine. He said he himself did not approve of the Zionists’ actions, but in the next breath said that the Democratic Party could only lose by trying to get our government’s policy reversed….

August 1948…

It was also on the 11th that there came… an urgent request from the State Department for a detail of enlisted men from the Mediterranean Fleet to assist Count Bernadotte, the United Nations mediator…

21 October 1948 National Security Council meeting

[according to an assistant’s note.] “Mr. Forrestal said that actually our Palestine policy had been made for ‘squalid political purposes.’… He hoped that some day he would be able to make his position on this clear.”

July 19, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Qualitative Military Edge — assuring Israeli capacity for brutality with impunity

By Paul Woodward on July 19, 2010

On October 15, 2008, just three weeks before the US presidential election, George Bush signed into law the Naval Vessel Transfer Act which had been sponsored by one of Israel’s most loyal supporters in the US Congress, Rep. Howard Berman.

The new law, which from its title might have been assumed to relate primarily to the sale of ships from the US Navy to foreign governments, actually had a much more important purpose: to place every American president under a legal obligation to ensure that Israel maintains its military dominance over the Middle East.

What had previously been a matter of foreign policy, suddenly became law — law written to meet the interests of a foreign government.

Israel’s regional hegemony is legally enshrined in the concept of Israel’s “Qualitative Military Edge” (QME). The US Government must now guarantee that “the sale or export of the defense articles or defense services will not adversely affect Israel’s qualitative military edge over military threats to Israel.”

The law states:

[T]he term ‘qualitative military edge’ means the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means, possessed in sufficient quantity, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition of states or non-state actors. [Emphasis mine.]

Andrew J Shapiro is the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs. One of his primary responsibilities is to ensure that Israel maintains its qualitative military edge. Does he serve the US government or the Israeli government? It’s far from clear.

This is how he presented the United States’ obligation to serve Israel’s interests in a speech he delivered at the Brookings Institute in Washington on Friday:

For decades, the cornerstone of our security commitment to Israel has been an assurance that the United States would help Israel uphold its qualitative military edge — a commitment that was written into law in 2008. Israel’s QME is its ability to counter and defeat credible military threats from any individual state, coalition of states, or non-state actor, while sustaining minimal damages or casualties. The Obama Administration has demonstrated its commitment to Israel’s QME by not only sustaining and building upon practices established by prior administrations, but also undertaking new initiatives to make our security relationship more intimate than ever before.

Each and every security assistance request from the Israeli Government is evaluated in light of our policy to uphold Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge. At the same time, QME considerations extend to our decisions on defense cooperation with all other governments in the region. This means that as a matter of policy, we will not proceed with any release of military equipment or services that may pose a risk to allies or contribute to regional insecurity in the Middle East.

The primary tool that the United States uses to ensure Israel’s qualitative military edge is security assistance. For some three decades, Israel has been the leading beneficiary of U.S. security assistance through the Foreign Military Financing program, or FMF. Currently, Israel receives almost $3 billion per year in U.S. funding for training and equipment under FMF. The total FMF account is $5 billion annually and is distributed among some 70 countries. So it is a testament to our special security relationship that each year Israel accounts for just over 50 percent of U.S. security assistance funding distributed through FMF.

The Obama Administration is proud to carry on the legacy of robust U.S. security assistance for Israel. Indeed, we are carrying this legacy to new heights at a time when Israel needs our support to address the multifaceted threats it faces.

For Fiscal Year 2010, the Administration requested $2.775 billion in security assistance funding specifically for Israel, the largest such request in U.S. history. Congress fully funded our request for FY 2010, and we have requested even more — $3.0 billion — for FY 2011. These requests fulfill the Administration’s commitment to implementing the 2007 memorandum of understanding with Israel to provide $30 billion in security assistance over 10 years.

This commitment directly supports Israel’s security, as it allows Israel to purchase the sophisticated defense equipment it needs to protect itself, deter aggressors, and maintain its qualitative military edge. Today, I can assure you that — even in challenging budgetary times — this Administration will continue to honor this 10-year, $30 billion commitment in future fiscal years. [Emphasis mine.]

Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin challenged Shapiro during Q&A:

[I]t pains me to hear you sound more like an agent of the Israeli government than a U.S. representative because as you travel around the world you see that this “special relationship” really endangers us, makes us more hated around the world. So I wonder if you would be willing to step in other shoes and go to Gaza, see the results of the Israeli invasion there, see the destruction, talk to people in Gaza, talk to the elected government, which is Hamas. You don’t have to like them to talk to them. I also wonder if you’ve spent any time with people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to see what it feels like for Palestinians, the daily humiliations they suffer.

And I also wonder, given the financial crisis here at home and the great needs of impoverished nations around the world, couldn’t you think of a better use of $3 billion than giving it to a wealthy country like Israel that is abusing the human rights of Palestinians on a daily basis?

Benjamin drew a round of applause — Shapiro declined to respond directly to her challenge.

As Shapiro noted, the concept of Israel’s QME has been in use for decades, but it was only when the Bush administration let Israel draft American law, that QME turned into a license to use force with impunity.

In January 2008, William Wunderle, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, and Andre Briere, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, wrote in a paper for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

The US commitment to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge (QME) is a long-standing tradition that every president since Lyndon Johnson has maintained and reiterated. The basic principle behind this commitment is simple: Israel is a bastion of liberal representative government in the Middle East, and, as such, its continued survival is a vital national interest of the United States. To ensure this longtime ally’s continued existence in a sea of nations that reflexively call for its destruction, Israel must be able to defend itself militarily and deter potential aggression. In this effort, Israel will always be militarily outnumbered with regard to the artillery, tanks, and combat aircraft that can be deployed by a coalition of Arab states. Israel’s continued survival can be ensured only if it is able to maintain qualitative military superiority, relying on superior weaponry, tactics, training, leadership, and other factors of military effectiveness to deter or defeat its numerically superior adversaries in the Middle East.

In other words, the US policy advocated that Israel should be able to counter a quantitative disadvantage with a qualitative advantage. It said nothing about supporting Israel’s use of that advantage at minimal cost. The expression after all was qualitative military edge — not supremacy.

These analysts noted however that:

Israel defines QME as “the ability to sustain credible military advantage that provides deterrence and, if need be, the ability to rapidly achieve superiority on the battlefield against any foreseeable combination of forces with minimal damage and casualties.”

The Israeli phrasing went straight into US law which says that Israel must maintain the ability to use military force “while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.”

Let’s put that in context. The law was signed just two years after Israel had visibly lost its qualitative military edge in Lebanon in 2006 when it faced Hezbollah, and less than three months before it used the assault on Gaza to once again demonstrate its ability to wreak massive destruction while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.

The war on Gaza, which President-elect Obama watched in silence, showed not merely the brutality that Israel is willing to use under America’s political protection, but the extent to which Israel’s military agenda is empowered through its ability to control the United States Government.

The war on Gaza was QME in action.

July 19, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

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