Thomas Friedman’s Bizarre Moral Universe: Defending Israel in The NY Times
By Barbara Erickson | Times Warp | August 14, 2015
Thomas Friedman in The New York Times argues for approval of the Iran nuclear deal, and on the way to this conclusion he hauls readers through a morass of false narratives and murky ethics, all of them invoked on behalf of Israel.
The column, however, does more than reveal the contortions of Israeli propaganda. It also points up a defect in the Times op-ed pages: The section allows writers to assert almost any claim without having to supply evidence to the readers, and although the newspaper says that it fact-checks even its editors, plenty of misinformation appears in the op-ed pages.
Thus we have Friedman’s latest, “If I Were an Israeli Looking at the Iran Deal,” which lays out a series of bald statements about Iran, Mideast history and the Israeli military that point to one overriding premise: Israel is a lonely moral force in the midst of lunatic regimes.
Friedman asserts, among other things, that Iran “regularly cheated” in order to expand its nuclear capability and aided Lebanon in “an unprovoked war” against Israel in 2006. Israel, however, “tries to avoid hitting civilian targets,” follows “Western mores” and pursues “war without mercy” only “when it has to.”
We are told, in other words, that Iran is an existential threat to Israel, bent on its destruction. Oddly, just as Friedman’s column was appearing in the Times, the newspaper also published a rebuttal to his claim in a story titled “Reporting From Iran Jewish Paper Sees No Plot to Destroy Israel.”
Here we learn that many Iranians support a two-state solution in Palestine-Israel and that Jewish Iranians are “basically well-protected second-class citizens—a broadly prosperous, largely middle-class community whose members have no hesitation about walking down the streets of Tehran wearing yarmulkes.”
If readers took the time to check out some of Friedman’s specific claims, they would find that the “unprovoked war” of 2006 was something else again. Israel was actually planning to attack Lebanon and seized on one incident (among many skirmishes on both sides) to unleash its arsenal on the country.
They would discover that Iran has not “regularly cheated its way” in its nuclear program. Instead, as investigative journalist Gareth Porter notes, “The evidence adduced to prove that Iran secretly worked on nuclear weapons represents an even more serious falsification of intelligence than we saw in the run-up to the war in Iraq.”
As for Friedman’s claim that the “Israeli army tries to avoid hitting civilian targets,” many readers already know that rights groups have cast grave doubts on this particular bit of propaganda. Most recently, we have heard from Breaking the Silence and Amnesty International, as both groups have exposed the criminal policies and actions that left so many civilians dead last summer in Gaza.
This sloppy approach to the facts is appalling, but even worse in this particular piece is the moral quagmire he creates in justifying Israel’s war crimes. Israel is forced to kill civilians, he says, because it faces enemies that stop at nothing. Therefore, Israel will “play by local rules” because “for all its Western mores it will not be out-crazied.”
Friedman would have it both ways: Israel is a moral society and Israel is the toughest, meanest guy on the block. If Hezbollah or Hamas fire rockets, he writes, Israel “will not be deterred by the threat of civilian Arab casualties.” The threat that concerns him here is the damage to Israel’s reputation, not the deaths of innocent Arabs.
He finds Iran’s alleged nuclear cheating particularly egregious because the country had signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. This observation, however, does not prevent him from threatening Iran with Israel’s nukes: “[Israel] not only possesses 100 to 200 nuclear weapons,” he writes, “it can deliver them to Iran by plane, submarine and long-range rocket.”
Israel, on the other hand, has never signed the NPT and has never allowed inspectors into its nuclear plant, but this is no matter to Friedman. Iran, which has signed the treaty and allows inspections of its facilities, finds this state of affairs used against it in his bizarre moral universe.
Friedman presents Iran as one of the “crazies” that force Israel to break from its “Western mores,” but he can maintain this stance only by ignoring a little-discussed fact: Iran has forbidden the production and use of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical warfare and nuclear arms.
Even when Iraq attacked Iranians with poison gas during the eight-year war, Iran refused to retaliate in kind. Two supreme leaders have pronounced a fatwa against such weapons, including nuclear arms, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khameini. Iran’s nuclear program, they declared, can only be pursued for peaceful purposes, and under the Iranian system, their word is the law of the land.
No wonder we hear not a word of this from Friedman (or the Times): Iran’s fatwa contrasts starkly with the Israeli stance on its own nuclear program.
In Friedman’s piece, facts that would expose his fraudulent narratives are excluded, in spite of the newspaper’s claim to fact-check even opinion pieces and editorials. Readers are denied even the minimal links that appear in most news stories.
Friedman’s columns appear twice a week in the Times. He has won awards for reporting and commentary, and he is a member of the Pulitzer Prize board. Such is the state of mainstream American journalism today.
Israeli settlers torch Bedouin tent near Ramallah
(MaanImages/Zakariyya al-Sidda)
Ma’an – August 13, 2015
RAMALLAH – Israeli settlers torched a Bedouin tent in the area of Ein Samiya near Kafr Malik village in northern Ramallah Thursday morning, local sources told Ma’an.
A group of Israeli settlers raided the village of Ein Samiya and threw flammable material on a Bedouin tent before the residents noticed and attacked the settlers, forcing them to flee the area.
An Israeli army spokesperson confirmed the attack but could give no further details.
The fire caused substantial damages to the tent but locals were able to put the fire out without any injuries, locals said.
Israeli settlers also sprayed “price tag” near the scene and signed slogans calling for the killing of Palestinians and expelling them out of their lands.
Graffiti sprayed in red paint also read “administrative revenge” alongside a crudely drawn Star of David.
The graffiti seemed to refer to the internment without charge — known as administrative detention — of three alleged Jewish extremists in the wake of a July 31 arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma that killed 18-month-old Palestinian Ali Saad Dawabsha and his father Saad.
Locals said Israeli forces and police arrived to the area, investigated the incident, and dusted for fingerprints at the scene.
On Wednesday, Israeli forces had closed the Ein Samiya area road and prevented Palestinians from using it.
Recent weeks have seen a rise in Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.
An 18-month-old Palestinian, Ali Dawabsha, was burned alive when alleged Israeli extremists firebombed their home at the end of last month in the village of Duma near Nablus.
The toddler’s father, Saad Dawabsha, succumbed to his wounds a week later, after suffering third degree burns on 80 percent of his body.
On Saturday morning, Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian home with firebombs and rocks in an area east of Tayba in the Ramallah district. The bombs landed outside of the house, causing no damage, locals told Ma’an.
Israeli settlers have carried out at least 120 attacks on Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank since the start of this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
No room for anti-Israel commentary in Canadian politics
By Hadani Ditmars | RT | August 13, 2015
It would seem the height of Orwellian doublespeak to eliminate a political candidate for calling a war crime a war crime. And all the more so if you’re a leading member of Canada’s New Democratic Party.
And yet that’s exactly what happened this week when Nova Scotian Morgan Wheeldon, an NDP candidate for the riding of Kings-Hants, was forced to step down when a Conservative troll found a statement on his Facebook page from 2014 calling Israel’s bombardment of Gaza a “war crime.”
I suppose that party brass doesn’t read much Orwell, or UN reports on actual Israeli war crimes in Gaza – but perhaps it should become required reading.
Especially if you set yourself up as the main ‘progressive’ opponent to the ruling Conservative Party, whose leader Stephen Harper carries on what is surely the creepiest political ‘bromance’ with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bar none.
And yet in last week’s televised leaders debates it was clear that while the two parties differ on the controversial Harper backed C-51 ‘anti-terror legislation’ the NDP and the Conservatives were duking it out for the pro-Israel vote. When Harper needled him, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair responded that “Israel has no better friend than the NDP.” It seems he was correct.
The damning out-of-context statement on Wheeldon’s Facebook page in the wake of Israel’s 2014 bombing of Gaza that killed over 2,200 Palestinians was this:
“One could argue that Israel’s intention was always to ethnically cleanse the region — there are direct quotations proving this to be the case. Guess we just sweep that under the rug. A minority of Palestinians are bombing buses in response to what appears to be a calculated effort to commit a war crime.”
While the UN itself has accused Israel of war crimes during ‘Operation Protective Edge’, the NDP cried foul, stating:
“Our position on the conflict in the Middle East is clear, as Tom Mulcair expressed clearly in the debate. Mr. Wheeldon’s comments are not in line with that policy and he is no longer our candidate.”
So that’s that then. Call a war crime a war crime on your personal Facebook page, and there’s no room for you in Canada’s ‘progressive’ party.
What has happened to Canada, and for that matter to the NDP? Their take-no-prisoners approach to criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank has recent precedents, and they all lead back to Thomas Mulcair.
In 2008, Mulcair led a caucus revolt against then leader Jack Layton when he criticized the Harper government’s decision not to participate in the United Nations Conference on Racism on the grounds that its mention of certain Israeli violations of international law was ‘anti-Semitic’.
Mulcair successfully muzzled NDP criticism of the January 2009 Israeli bombardment of Gaza, which killed 1,400 civilians, as well as the subsequent Israeli attack on the Gaza Flotilla, which killed nine.
And in 2010, Mulcair joined forces with the Conservatives and the Liberals in calling for the ouster of long time MP Libby Davies, (who has since resigned from politics) as NDP House Leader after her comments to a journalist that occupation of Palestine had begun in 1948.
While the NDP’s position is more than apparent to keen observers (as author Yves Engler notes, even NDP pioneer Tommy Douglas was an ardent Zionist), it’s odd that Israel has suddenly become an election issue in Canada in the midst of recessionary times.
Is freedom of speech completely dead in Canada? Can no one criticize Israeli war crimes without fear of repercussions?
It would seem that only Elizabeth May, leader of the tiny but scrappy Green Party, is free to speak her mind on foreign policy issues. Her candid comments have helped the Green Party usurp the NDP’s former role of ‘unofficial opposition’ to the ruling Conservatives. And indeed, after Paul Manly was barred from running for the NDP on the grounds that his comments about Israel incarcerating his aging father John Manly (captured with other crew members of a ship bearing aid to besieged Gaza) were of concern to the party executive, he joined the Green Party.
The general mood of muzzling any dissent against Israel would seem at odds with Canada’s allies. Comparing the situation here to say that of the UK – where Labour MP’s were asked to vote in favor of a Palestinian state, the prime minister was forced (via growing public opposition) to resign as patron of the Jewish National Fund and Senior Foreign Office Minister Baroness Sayeeda Warsi chose to resign over the government’s policy on Gaza – makes Canada look backward at best.
In an international context, it would now appear that Canada has the least control of any G7 country over its own foreign policy. Perhaps even less than in the US where tax dollars go more directly to maintaining the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Bizarrely, no matter who wins the upcoming election, Canada’s Middle East policy now seems to be firmly based on Likudist agendas.
Hadani Ditmars has been reporting from Iraq since 1997 and is the author of Dancing in the No Fly Zone. Her next book Ancient Heart is a political travelogue of historical sites in Iraq.www.hadaniditmars.com
Third-Reich-sur-Seine: the French collaborationist tradition
It is everyone’s duty to expose as much as possible this new Occupation of Paris by an entity if not hostile, at least foreign, colonial and terrorist, whose most characteristic seal is infanticide.
By Sayed Hasan | 13 août 2015
On August 13th, 2015, Paris-plages (Paris-beaches) will become, for 12 hours, Tel Aviv-sur-Seine. A brilliant idea, and, let us not doubt, a very brave one on the part of the Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. It is especially timely in that it commemorates the Israeli massacre in Gaza in the summer of 2014, in which more than 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including 551 children, and while the ashes of the Palestinian baby Ali Dawabcheh, burned alive by Israeli settlers, are still smouldering. It is true that this time, it was not white phosphorus, but simple Molotov cocktails, and they caused only two victims: one must definitely be blind not to see that Israel is really committed to a sane process of moderation in its Palestinian policy.
According to official voices, it is not a case of whitewashing the Israeli regime or becoming a mouthpiece for its propaganda, on the contrary : Bruno Julliard, the glorious Deputy Mayor of Paris, warned against “amalgams between the brutal settlement policy of the Israeli government and the city of Tel Aviv which is a progressive city, a symbol of peace and tolerance.” Indeed, this project would be nothing short of an initiative for peace, highlighting Tel Aviv not as the internationally recognized capital of Israel, and thus archetypal symbol of its policy, but rather, according to the words of Anne Hidalgo, as “a city open to all minorities, including sexual” (yes, the Palestinians who are not shot down or incinerated are expropriated daily, but homosexuals around the world do come there to celebrate the Gay Pride, is it not so? …), and even nothing less than “the first opposition city in Israel… hated in Israel itself as such by all intolerants”, a statement as meaningless as it is grotesque. And it would be unfair, says Ms Hidalgo, to “make a city or population accountable to the policy of its government. It would be to scorn local democracy and thus democracy itself” – let us not mention the fact that more than 90% of the Israeli public supported the last operation against Gaza, or, in strictly rational terms, the very principle of international sanctions against a country, a supposedly democratic one to boot. Faced with such falsifications, such impudence, such contortionism and such abjection, words fail and nausea stirs in the heart. And from the elected officials, we can only find a semblance of refuge in this statement from Danielle Simonnet, Paris Councillor (Left Party), who denounced “the cynicism of the organization of such a day [that] reaches the heights of indecency”, calling for its cancellation or a radical modification of its program.
Apart from the appalling political sphere, a storm of voices in France have arisen to condemn this event, and social networks are running riot so that the day promises to be incredibly tense, and will certainly bring to Parisians an impression that is a little more faithful to the reality of life in occupied Palestine than the originally scheduled “festive atmosphere”. Because democracy requires it, no question of modifying a program meant to meet the desiderata of a tiny minority of the population at the expense of the vast majority of French who legitimately say they are shocked by such an event (over 90% according to a survey by RMC / BFM).
Everything has been said elsewhere about the ins and outs of this ignominious day, so for our part, we will ask this: does France disown itself by arbitrarily making its capital an auxiliary in the service of propaganda for Israel’s Zionist and terrorist regime, so as to polish up its bloodied image and to promote its sluggish tourism? Does France violate its traditions by becoming a vassal of the all-powerful Zionist lobby, not to say the gay lobby, two infinitesimal cliques who now dictate their most extravagant wishes to the “mother of arms, arts and laws” of yesteryear and see it invariably bow to them? Certainly not. Two telling examples are enough to indicate that collaborationism is deeply rooted in a certain “republican” French elite, and that there would be room for talk of, beyond the famous Stockholm Syndrome, a veritable “Paris Syndrome” to describe this historical “French fin’amor” for foreign Occupants.
You want to see the sea? Hear the sound of waves?
Play on the beach? Admire my beautiful wall! #TelAvivSurSeine
In 1870, after the debacle of Sedan and the fall of the Second Empire, the Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris, to the great fear of the propertied. Despite the state of war and the presence of Prussian troops on national soil, the French political and economic elite did not fear the outside enemy as much as the inside, fearing with a holy terror a victory of the French people in arms which could cause a disruption of economic and social structures. Thus the effort of the “Governmentof National Defence” which was formed by the Jules brotherhood – Favre, Simon, Ferry, capped by Trochu and (Adolphe) Thiers – consisted mainly of sabotaging all impulses of popular resistance and of seeking an armistice with Bismarck as quickly as possible and at any price. The loss of Alsace and Lorraine seemed very insignificant in comparison with “Social Defence”, of preservation of the privileges of the established order, and after the treason of Bazaine and the simulacrum of the Siege of Paris, it could finally be imposed on the Nation. It was then time, finally, to turn the French cannons against the real enemy, namely the suburbs of Paris, under the approving eye of Bismarck. The historian Henri Guillemin, has demonstrated this in minute detail in his trilogy The Origins of the Commune (This curious war of 1870, The Heroic Defence of Paris and The Surrender), synthesized in his series of eponymous conferences .
In 1940, it more or less went the same way. The French political and economic elites saw in Nazi Germany a danger infinitely less great than the socialist threat (at that time this doctrine had not been perverted and carried genuinely progressive values), and, more importantly, considered that a military “disaster” might enable France to reconnect with its reactionary traditions and repeal many heresies introduced by the Popular Front. This was in particular a special effort of Petain, who worked in that direction at least from 1936. And around him, many are they who opted for The choice of defeat, in the words of the historian Annie Lacroix-Riz. Again, Henri Guillemin has established these facts in his works Nationalists and Nationals (1870 – 1940) and The Truth About the Petain Case, condensed into his corresponding series of conferences .
In one case as in the other, Paris was occupied by the enemy, Bismarckian Prussia in 1871, Nazi Germany in 1940. It is difficult to talk about anything other than high treason by the French elites, although the political and historiographical tradition continues to praise most of its protagonists to the skies – except Petain, who some would like to rehabilitate: they are right in the sense that Petain only perpetuated a tradition of collaborationism firmly rooted in the Republic, but by targeting the republican regime itself and the Jews, and not only the French proletariat. It cannot be otherwise, as our elites remain deeply engaged in these infamous ways.
But if it is established that the French elites, corrupt and stateless, have been constantly trampling the interests of the people and of the Nation at least since the Third Republic, then what about the French people? How did it welcome foreign Occupation in 1871 and in 1940?
Henri Guillemin reports that “The Prussians entered Paris on March 1st [1871], and Paris behaved in a very noble way. We must remember what happened at the entrance of the Allies – particularly the Cossacks – in Paris in 1815. There had been hideous scenes. When they had entered the working-class neighbourhoods, nothing moved, but when they arrived in the rich neighbourhoods, on major boulevards, there were ovations. Socialite women rode on the horses behind the Cossacks, who were the ‘Liberators’, the foreigners who came to bring back the King. On 1st March 1871, we see nothing of the kind, while this time, the Germans came through the chic districts of Paris – they came by Neuilly, the 16th and the 8th arrondissements, the Champs-Elysées. Everybody had closed the windows, all the shops were closed: they entered in a deathly silence.” Then, when the mystification of the pseudo-starvation – that would have imposed an armistice – and high treason of the elites were revealed to the people of Paris, there was a general outburst of indignation which culminated with the Commune, to which Parisians of all social classes committed themselves on the 26th of March 1871 by voting overwhelmingly for the “reds”: these had been crushed in the 1870 elections, but now triumphed as the only genuine defenders of the Fatherland.
In 1940, when even a small country like Holland, conquered and occupied by the Nazis, could boast of the appointment of the German Seyss-Inquart to lead them (Queen Wilhelmina proclaimed that “the red of shame would have come to our faces if the invader had chosen for this position someone of our nationality. At least we have been spared this ignominy.”), France did not have that luck. It was the only country to engage in the path of the most disgraceful surrender, collaboration and even frenzied collaborationism with the Occupation through its highest legal representative, what’s more a Marshal of France, crowned with a (false) aura as a hero of the First World War. He was followed by the great majority of the French, who cheered him until April 26th, 1944, during his last visit to Paris, while De Gaulle was long a marginal figure. Only a tiny minority of the French engaged in the fight against the Nazis. Two million French fled Paris before the Germans arrived, but the remaining million coexisted peacefully with the Occupying forces.
If Paris is, as coined by Louis Veuillot, “the cancer of France and the scandal of the world” in the eyes of “worthy people”, that is the propertied (Veuillot was then expressing his hatred for the Commune), it is for Parisians to return the title against their unworthy and corrupt elites who flout democracy and “ride” on the Zionist tanks, giving an “ovation” to the massacres of the Israeli Occupier. Will we go the way of De Gaulle, of Petain or of the majority of the wait-and-sees? It is everyone’s duty to expose as much as possible this new Occupation of Paris by an entity if not hostile, at least foreign, colonial and terrorist, whose most characteristic seal is infanticide. Today’s resistance certainly will not express itself using force or violence as was required in 1940, but if not by protest and civil disobedience, at least by withdrawal. Parisians must at the least, rather than answer to the call from Anna Hidalgo-Collabo to “come in great numbers”, boycott Paris-plages that day and meet this outrage with a “deathly silence”. And for those in whom the flame of resistance and dignity is still burning, may they infiltrate and disrupt this event as much as possible, individually or in groups, at any time, from all sides, by any peaceful demonstration, making the voice of the French people and that of the Palestinian people heard – shouting, slogans (Israel Terrorist! Hidalgo Collabo! Gaza, Warsaw Ghetto, innocent children facing barbarism!…), leaflets and pictures, flags, banners, burned dolls in memory of Ali Dawabcheh, the Bakr children and the 547 other children killed in Gaza last summer, etc. Let them show inventiveness: the French people, and Paris in particular, have always had enough to spare. This has been shown again during summer 2014, when tens of thousands of Parisians defied the ban of the Paris Prefect of Police (the only one in the world!) to demonstrate in solidarity with Gaza.
I am Ali, 18 months, burned alive by a Jewish Israeli settler
Indeed, in this Charlie-pseudo-democracy, a little courage is also required, because we should expect to be bluntly arraigned by police – even beaten by the militiamen of the Jewish Defense League, considered as terrorist and banned in Israel and the United States, but having a storefront in France along with total impunity; anyone who wants to strike back for honour’s sake must make sure not to be dealing with police officers in civilian clothes, which won’t be easy – and then suffer up to 48 hours of police custody. These can even be embellished with false charges of outrages, violence, etc., which will nevertheless be solemnly attested by sworn-in liars – I speak with experience: I have not been in prison or appeared before a judge because the lies were too big and contradictory, but I could well have done; we must know that we are dealing with unscrupulous people without honour (they handed over the Jews and hunted and tortured the Resistance fighters with zeal to please the occupier, and if needed will do it again), but hardly shining lights… But Gaza does deserve that, and this is the price of dignity. I’ll be there, and I hope that many of us will make our voices heard.
Translated from French by Jenny Bright
Zionists provocatively dance over corpses in Paris:
1,312 reported attacks against fishermen since the end of 2014 massacre on Gaza
International Solidarity Movement | August 11, 2015
Gaza, Occupied Palestine – Two days ago, on Sunday night at 3am, the occupation forces kidnapped fishermen Mohamed Ismail Sharafi, 34 years old, and Mohamed Saidi, 22 years old, in Gaza City waters.
According to the testimony of the other fishermen that where working with them the night of the attack, around 10 boats, one of the two fishermen was injured by live ammunition before being kidnapped.
The aggression took place at 5 miles off shore and their boat was also taken to Ashdod.
Two weeks ago Ahmed Sharafi, Mohamed’s brother, was shot in his back with live ammunition while working with his father.
Since the end of the last Zionist massacre against Gaza there have been 1,312 reported attacks against the fishermen.
Since then, 22 boats have been stolen; 26 fishermen have been injured; one fisherman, Tawfiq Abu Riela, has been assassinated; 28 boats have been disabled by bullet fire; 2 big fishing boats have been sunk by rocket fire, one in Deir El Balah at 300 meters from the coast and one in Gaza City at 5 miles; 51 fishermen have been kidnapped while working and 3 fishermen remain prisoners until now.
Those facts, among other practices of the occupation forces, have caused the quantity of fish caught to decrease from 1,600 tons the year before the massacre to 1,000 tons the year after. At the same time the number of fishermen who work in the Gaza Strip has decreased from 3,000 to 1,000 and the fishermen who keep working have seen how their monthly income decreased from 2,000 ILS to the actual 100 ILS.
This last year, just in Beach Camp, 50 children of fishermen have left the school in order to work carrying flour sacks at the doors of UNRWA for 1 ILS each sack.
It’s becoming something common that the fishermen families have to choose between their children and decide which ones will go to school and which ones will have to work in order to support the family.
In this moment there are 900 children of fishermen in Gaza City, and 1,700 in all the Strip, that should start the academic year in 20 days and whose parents can’t afford to buy them school materials.
Repression in Jordan to Protect Israel
The Trial and Sentencing of Amer Jubran
By Noah Cohen | Dissident Voice | August 11, 2015
On July 29, 2015, the trial of Palestinian activist Amer Jubran in Jordan reached its predictable conclusion: 10 years with hard labor for phony “terrorism” offenses, based at least in part on laws manufactured after his arrest.
Last year I wrote an article about the circumstances of Amer’s arrest and detention. At that time he was being held without charges, after being seized from his home in the middle of the night and held incommunicado at an undisclosed location for over 2 months.
In August of 2014, he was finally given a list of charges against him. These included the charge of threatening to “harm relations with a foreign government,” part of a new set of “anti-terrorism” laws enacted in Jordan in June of 2014 (a month after Amer’s arrest in May). The law is a codification of Jordan’s existing practice of arresting dissidents who call attention to the regime’s traitorous collaboration with the main political enemies of its own people: Israel and the United States. A pertinent example would be Mwaffaq Mahadin, tried in 2010 for “endangering relations with a foreign state” for speaking on Al-Jazeera about Jordan’s security cooperation with the US. Under the new legislation, this “crime” became a “terrorism” offense, punishable before the State Security Court.
In a statement about his trial and sentencing recorded from prison (recording here, transcript here), Amer recounts a moment in his interrogation by the GID (General Intelligence Directorate, Jordan’s infamous secret police) which leaves no doubt about the real decision-makers behind his arrest and imprisonment:
During the interrogation period, I was told by the GID that any decision made about me is involving (quote) ‘our American and Israeli friends’ (end-quote). All started when I refused to be a sell-out and work against the Lebanese resistance. I was told then that I will be sent behind the sun for such a refusal. And frankly it is very easy for me to disappear behind the sun rather than to be well outside, but a sell-out and traitor.
The involvement of the US in Amer’s detention and trial comes as no surprise. As I recounted in my earlier article, the US had already detained Amer while he was living in the United States for his political activism on behalf of Palestine and against the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. While living here as a green-card holder, he committed the inexcusable crime of refusing to be intimidated by the wave of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim repression that immediately followed September 11.
In 2002, he stood on a stage in Washington DC, before an anti-war gathering of more than 75,000 people, and spoke against US support for Israel and against the invasion of Iraq.
Amer has clarified in conversation that his refusal “to be a sell-out and work against the Lebanese resistance” was a refusal to act as an infiltrator and informant for the GID. He was thus charged with supporting Hezbollah.
In a similar trial that reached its conclusion a day earlier, another 12 people were sentenced for periods of up to 15 years for supporting Hamas. As one commentator asked in the Jordan Times: “[I]n whose interest is it to try those who support the Palestinian Hamas movement?”
“Anti-terrorism” laws that criminalize support for armed movements of national liberation in Palestine and national self-defense in Lebanon have nothing to do with protecting Jordan or its people. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah has ever threatened the security of Jordan. Such laws are designed purely to protect the interests of Israel and the US in their ongoing violations of the national sovereignty of Arab lands.
Likewise, Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate and its State Security Court function as arms of foreign powers. They are not protecting the security of Jordanians, but rather the security of Jordan’s most violent and militarily aggressive neighbor (Israel), and US soldiers who use Jordan as a base for attacking other Arab countries. Most recently, the US has been using Jordan as a base for training military forces involved in the destabilization of Syria–a conflict that threatens to engulf the entire region in violence.
To do their work effectively, these agencies must necessarily suppress the human and political rights of Jordanians. Journalists, activists, professors, religious leaders and all of Jordan’s ordinary citizens live under the constant threat of Jordan’s secret police and its judicial security apparatus. Trials before the State Security Court lack even the outward semblance of judicial independence, with judges recruited from the military and the GID itself.
In the campaign to free Amer Jubran, we are calling for letters on Amer’s behalf to be directed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al Hussein, a Jordanian. We have no illusions about the UN or its High-Commissioner for Human Rights. The value of such a campaign is to show that people around the world are watching, and to strip away the sham of “human rights” and “democracy” in Jordan.
Jordan is the most valuable regional asset for both Israel and the US. Its GID is one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world, active throughout the region, and does much of the dirty work of suppressing the rights of people in the Arab world. It’s time to expose its crimes, and disrupt the political arrangement behind them.
Noah Cohen is active with the Amer Jubran Defense Campaign and can be reached through the campaign at defense (at ) amerjubrandefense.org
Palestinian Family Victimized by Immolation Ineligible for Compensation
By Stephen Lendman | August 11, 2015
Dawabsha family survivors aren’t afforded the same rights as Jews. Israel’s Property Tax and Compensation Fund Law (1961) provides monetary payments for property damage caused by terrorism.
Its Victims of Hostile Action Law (1970) provides compensation for bodily injuries suffered from terrorist attacks – as well as payments to family members of deceased victims.
Palestinians don’t qualify, only Jews, another example of a racist state, ignoring the rights of all people it’s obligated to protect.
Riham Dawabsha and her four-year-old son Ahmad are the remaining family survivors – both in intensive care precariously clinging to life with severe third-degree burns covering most of their bodies.
They’re physically unable to seek redress. They may not survive their ordeal. Yet Israeli law requires Palestinian victims of terrorism to appeal to a Defense Ministry committee – hostile to their interests – for compensation unlikely to be received.
Palestinian MK Yousef Jabareen called Israel’s system “absurd” and discriminatory. “Victims of nationalistic action must be eligible for compensation, and it doesn’t matter if they’re Arab or Jewish,” he said.
He wants Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to assure Palestinian terrorism victims are treated the same as Jews.
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) attorney Dan Yakir called Israeli discrimination “another example of the intolerable disparity between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank in all areas of life.”
Firebombing the Dawbsha home on July 31 sparked worldwide outrage. Israeli officials called the attack “terrorism.” Riham and Ahmad deserve no less compensation and overall redress than Jews.
Nothing can replace the loss of 18-month-old Ali and Riham’s husband Saad. No amount of redress can reunite all family members in peace and security. Nothing can change what happened that fateful day.
Israeli security forces routinely conspire with settler terrorists against defenseless Palestinian victims – letting them rampage freely, commit near daily acts of violence and vandalism with virtual impunity.
Police states operate this way – including whitewashing their worst high crimes. Israeli forces last summer alone mass murdered over 2,200 Gazans, injured over 11,000, and turned large parts of the Strip to rubble – still not rebuilt because construction materials and other vital supplies are blocked from entering except in too small amounts to matter.
While horrendous crimes of war and against humanity were being committed, Israeli security forces viciously assaulted Arab citizens peacefully protesting ongoing carnage. Jewish activists joined them in solidarity.
On August 11, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel published a report titled “Silencing the Opposition: Israel’s Law Enforcement’s Restrictions on Freedom of Expression in Israel during ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in Gaza, 8 July – 26 August 2014.”
Israeli authorities “adopted a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to citizens opposing” aggressive war against 1.8 million Gazans trapped under siege, said Adalah.
The entire Strip was turned into a free-fire zone. No safe havens existed – not private homes, mosques, refugee camps, schools, or UN facilities to keep civilians out of harm’s way.
Israeli Arabs and Jews were denied their free expression right to protest. Police brutality confronted them. Serious violations of Israel’s Criminal Procedure Code and other statutes were committed.
“The police exhibited a complete disregard for the principles and criteria that apply to its authority for preventing and dispersing demonstrations, which are stipulated in rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court as well as Guideline 3.1200 issued by the Attorney General regarding the right to protest,” said Adalah.
After one month of conflict, over 1,500 protesters were violently arrested – mostly Arabs, some requiring hospitalization. Children were brutalized like adults.
Police viciously attacked every peaceful demonstration held throughout 51 days of conflict. Courts rubber-stamped their actions – ordering lengthy detentions for people exercising their legitimate rights peacefully, committing no crimes.
Judges showed overt sympathy with aggressive war murdering Palestinians in cold blood. They were intolerant of peaceful protesters.
Nearly 350 criminal indictments were filed on bogus charges of violating public peace, congregating unlawfully, acting unruly in public, assaulting police, inciting racism or committing violent acts.
Legitimate anti-war activism was criminalized – Israeli Arab citizens especially singled out for harsh treatment. Arab workers were fired for opposing government policies on Facebook and other social networking sites. Students and faculty members were disciplined the same way.
Adalah concluded its report saying “the attitude of the Israeli law enforcement authorities has not changed since the grave events of October 2000 (start of the second intifada), nor since the police’s gross misconduct against protestors during Israel’s previous military offensive in Gaza in 2009 (Operation Cast Lead).”
“(T)he incidents described in this report indicate that a public atmosphere of intolerance, racism, persecution and incitement characterized the most recent war.”
“Social networking sites became a frontier for targeting individuals opposed to the war on Gaza, with employees harassed and followed by co-workers and sometimes fired for online posts or statements.”
“The situation was just as severe for students and faculty members, whose political activities were closely monitored by universities and who faced disciplinary measures for speaking out against the military operation.”
“Altogether, the widespread phenomenon of Israel’s restrictions on the freedom of expression of Palestinians citizens reached a point to which that freedom was almost rendered non-existent, all with the aim of silencing opposition against a devastating war” – premeditated lawless aggression by any standard.
Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Israeli forces demolish 3-story building in Qalandiya industrial zone
Ma’an – August 11, 2015
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces on Tuesday morning demolished a three-story commercial building in the industrial zone of Qalandiya north of Jerusalem, the owner told Ma’an.
Mazin Abu Diab said that Israeli forces stormed the industrial zone and sealed it completely before bulldozers demolished a three-story building he owns in the area.
He said that the building consisted of two meeting halls, four offices and additional utilities measuring 220 square meters in total.
Abu Diab said that part of the building was constructed in 1971, and another part measuring 100 square meters was added on in 2013.
He said that he had tried to obtain the necessary permits from the Israeli authorities for the additional structure, but said that the Jerusalem municipality decided to demolish the entire building rather than give him a license.
Abu Diab said that he started to refurbish the building about five months ago.
According to the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem, 98 percent of Qalandiya’s territories are classified as Area C.
Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, building permits must be approved by the Israeli Civil Administration for Palestinians to build in Area C.
As a result of rarely-approved permits, however, Palestinian residents are often forced to build structures without permits, which are liable to be torn down later by Israeli forces.
According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Israel has demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian homes and structures since occupying the West Bank in 1967.
Britons sign petition, urging Netanyahu’s arrest
Press TV | August 10, 2015
People in Britain have been signing a petition that calls on the government to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon his arrival in the UK next month.
The petition entitled “Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes when he arrives in London” is available at a petitions website set up by the UK government and parliament.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September. Under international law, he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the UK for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014,” the petition reads.
More than 26,000 people had signed the petition until GMT 1100 on Monday with the number of signatures dramatically on the rise.
The British government is expected to respond to the demand as all petitions that get more than 10,000 signatures should be seen into, according to law.
Rules governing the petition site also stipulate that any petition that receives in excess of 100,000 signatures must be considered by the UK parliament for debate.
The deadline for signing the petition is on February 7, 2016. … Full article
Zionist Entity Releases Suspects in Arson Attack
Al-Manar | August 10, 2015
Israeli occupation authorities released all suspects detained as part of a probe into the firebombing of a Palestinian home that burned to death an 18-month-old child and his father.
“All those arrested yesterday for interrogation have been released,” a spokeswoman for the Shin Bet security agency told AFP, without providing further details.
They did not provide the number of those detained in the raids early Sunday in wildcat Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank near the Palestinian village of Duma, where the brutal firebombing occurred.
Wildcat outposts in the Israeli-occupied West Bank are notorious for housing Zionist settlers, referred to as hilltop youth.
The Palestinian family’s small brick and cement home in Duma was gutted by fire early on July 31, and a Jewish Star of David spray-painted on a wall along with the words “revenge” and “long live the Messiah”.
The arson attack on the family’s home in the occupied West Bank that killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsha and his father, Saad sparked an international outcry over the ongoing Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
Mother Riham and four-year-old son Ahmed were also in an Israeli hospital, where a spokeswoman described their condition last week as life-threatening.
Source: AFP
As Palestinians Die, NY Times Shields Israel
By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | August 9, 2015
One week has passed since a Palestinian toddler died in an arson fire, one day since the boy’s father also perished from burns, and The New York Times has provided us with some half dozen stories on the tragedy. Only one of these was deemed fit to make the front page, however, and this fact is instructive: The favored story was not the original crime or the deaths of two villagers but a report on Israeli angst.
This maneuver was just one more piece of evidence that the Times has tried to provide an Israeli spin to this story. The paper has also adopted the government line that the concern here is extremism, not official policies and actions, and it has failed to provide the full context of settler violence in occupied Palestine.
When the story broke, the Times placed the news that 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was burned to death on page 4 of the Aug. 1 of the print edition. The brief article about his father’s demise appears on page 9 today. Other stories—concerning protests, accusations and additional responses to the news—were also on inside pages.
It was only when Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren filed an article on Israeli “soul searching” that the editors saw fit to give the story a prominent spot in its Friday edition.
The print article, “Two Killings Make Israelis Look Inward,” received a favored site on page 1 above the fold. This, the editors are saying, is the real news here—not the shocking death of a helpless child, the lingering and painful death of his father or even the legacy of settler attacks—but the feelings of ordinary Israelis.
The arson attack has received this much attention in the Times only because it was impossible to ignore: It made headlines worldwide and forced Israeli officials to condemn the act and vow to take action. But the Times stories have failed to report the full extent of violence against Palestinians and official complicity in these actions.
Readers of the newspaper are unlikely to know that Israeli settlers have often resorted to arson and that their actions have never, until now, caused much concern among government officials. B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group, reports that “in recent years Israeli civilians set fire to dozens of homes, mosques, businesses, agricultural land and vehicles in the West Bank. The vast majority of these cases were never solved, and in many of them the Israeli police did not even bother taking elementary investigative actions.”
B’Tselem also notes that West Bank Palestinians are tried in military courts, with minimal rights and protection, while settlers living in the same area appear in civilian courts. Most shocking of all: The conviction rate for Palestinians in military courts is 99.74 percent.
The Times has acknowledged the charges of unequal treatment in an Isabel Kershner story titled “Israeli Justice in West Bank Is Seen as Often Uneven,” but the headline leaves the impression that we are dealing with opinions here, not facts, and the story fails to provide the data that would reveal just how uneven the system is.
In fact, B’Tselem reports that over an 11-year period only 11 percent of settler violence cases resulted in an indictment, nearly a quarter of the cases were never investigated and in the few cases where settlers were tried and convicted, they usually received “extremely light sentences.” The numbers are even more glaring when we note that Palestinians, knowing the outcomes and facing obstacles, often fail to file complaints.
These percentages, however, are less scandalous than the statistics concerning security forces. The Israeli monitoring group Yesh Din reports that 94 percent of the investigations into complaints about Israeli soldiers suspected of violence against Palestinians and their property are closed without action.
Yet the Times, following the lead of the Israeli government, has focused on “extremists” as the problem, ignoring the officially sanctioned destruction wrought by the military: In defiance of international law, the army helps the state confiscate land and destroy property to make room for illegal Jewish settlements.
In recent weeks and months, the Israeli army has been responsible for widespread destruction of Palestinian property in the West Bank. Here are a few examples:
- On July 22 the army invaded the village of Beit Ula and destroyed a Roman-era water well and 450 olive trees.
- On July 2 the army uprooted an acre of agricultural land west of Hebron and issued demolition orders for a home and a water well.
- On June 15 the Israeli army uprooted dozens of olive tree saplings over five acres in Husan, a village west of Bethlehem.
- On May 4 the army evacuated the residents of Wadi al Maleh in the Jordan Valley for “training exercises” and set fire to grazing land using live ammunition. Residents were denied access to the land to put out the fires.
- During the month of June in the Jordan Valley the army forced hundreds of Palestinians from their homes for “military maneuvers” and used live ammunition that set fire to acres of grazing land.
- As of Aug. 3 the army was responsible for demolishing 302 Palestinian structures in 2015, displacing 304 people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Times readers almost never read of these actions taken by the military with the official blessing of the government, and they rarely learn of most settler attacks. (Nor do they learn that settlers are allowed to carry weapons while Palestinians are denied even the most basic arms for defense.)
Now the Times, in the face of an international scandal, has done what it can to minimize the damage to Israel, muting the charges of unequal justice, placing Israeli “soul searching” on prominent display, joining the Israeli effort to blame extremists and ignoring the officially sanctioned crimes against Palestinians.
Israeli angst is fit to print in the Times, but Israeli crimes against Palestinians are something else again. If they are deemed worthy of notice, they may come to light in the back pages, under evasive headlines—all part of an effort to protect Israel at the expense of our right to be informed.
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“Democratic Institutions?” – 10 Lessons from history that will destroy your trust in the CIA
By Kit | OffGuardian | July 20, 2018
… At every corner, we are urged to simply believe what we are told. Whether it is about believing Porton Down and MI6 about “novichok”, or believing the White Helmets about Sarin, or believing the FBI about “collusion”, we are presented with no facts, just assertions from authority. Those who question those assertions are deemed “bots” at best or “traitors” at worst.
Well here, fellow traitors, are the Top Ten reasons to question anything and everything the CIA – or any intelligence agency – has ever told you. … Read full article
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