Daily Archives: December 18, 2009

U.S.-Israeli arms cooperation quietly growing

U.S.-Israeli arms cooperation quietly growing
By Nathan Guttman, The Forward, December 16, 2009

Leaders in Washington and Jerusalem have publicly locked horns over the issue of West Bank settlements. And Israeli public opinion has largely viewed America’s new administration as unfriendly. But behind the scenes, strategic security relations between the two countries are flourishing.

Israeli officials have been singing the praises of President Obama for his willingness to address their defense concerns and for actions taken by his administration to bolster Israel’s qualitative military edge — an edge eroded, according to Israel, during the final year of the George W. Bush presidency.

Among the new initiatives taken by the administration, the Forward has learned, are adjustments in a massive arms deal the Bush administration made with Arab Gulf states in response to Israeli concerns. There have also been upgrades in U.S.-Israeli military cooperation on missile defense. And a deal is expected next year that will see one of the United States’ most advanced fighter jets go to Israel with some of America’s most sensitive new technology.

Amid the cacophony of U.S.-Israel clashes on the diplomatic front, public attention given to this intensified strategic cooperation has been scant. But in a rare public comment in October, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren praised the Obama administration’s response to complaints about lost ground during the close of the Bush years as “warm and immediate.” [continued…]

CIA working with Palestinian security agents
By Ian Cobain, The Guardian, December 17, 2009

Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly torturing supporters of the Islamist organisation Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the Guardian has learned.

Less than a year after Barack Obama signed an executive order that prohibited torture and provided for the lawful interrogation of detainees in US custody, evidence is emerging the CIA is co-operating with security agents whose continuing use of torture has been widely documented by human rights groups.

The relationship between the CIA and the two Palestinian agencies involved – Preventive Security Organisation (PSO) and General Intelligence Service (GI) – is said by some western diplomats and other officials in the region to be so close that the American agency appears to be supervising the Palestinians’ work.

One senior western official said: “The [Central Intelligence] Agency consider them as their property, those two Palestinian services.” A diplomatic source added that US influence over the agencies was so great they could be considered “an advanced arm of the war on terror”. [continued…]

Obama told China: I can’t stop Israel strike on Iran indefinitely
By Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz, December 17, 2009

President Barack Obama has warned his Chinese counterpart that the United States would not be able to keep Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear installations for much longer, senior officials in Jerusalem told Haaretz.

They said Obama warned President Hu Jintao during the American’s visit to Beijing a month ago as part of the U.S. attempt to convince the Chinese to support strict sanctions on Tehran if it does not accept Western proposals for its nuclear program.

The Israeli officials, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the United States had informed Israel on Obama’s meetings in Beijing on Iran. They said Obama made it clear to Hu that at some point the United States would no longer be able to prevent Israel from acting as it saw fit in response to the perceived Iranian threat. Continue reading →

Facebooktwittermail

EU: East Jerusalem is occupied territory

Statement by EU High Representative Ashton at the EU Parliament debate on the Middle East Peace Process
European Parliament, Strasbourg, December 15, 2009

You have invited me here today to talk about our political work but also about the situation in East Jerusalem. This is an area of deep concern for us. East Jerusalem is occupied territory, together with the rest of the West Bank. The EU is opposed to the demolition of Palestinian homes, the eviction of Palestinian families, the construction of Israeli settlements and the route of the “separation barrier”. The EU is addressing these issues at political level, through diplomatic channels and in our public statements. We are also addressing the situation through practical assistance aimed at supporting the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem. For example, there is a lack of 1200 classrooms for the Palestinian children in the city, so we are helping to reinforce education facilities. In addition we enable Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem to remain viable and we do a lot of work with Palestinian young people in the city, who suffer from high rates of unemployment and psychological problems. To date in East Jerusalem the EU is implementing activities costing EUR 4.6 million.

Another aspect of concern for us is of course the situation in Gaza. The EU has consistently called for the flow of aid, trade and persons. We are deeply concerned about the daily living conditions of the Gazan people: since the January conflict donors have not been able to do reconstruction work and serious issues persist like the lack of clean drinking water. Israel should re-open the crossings without delay, which would allow a revival of private sector and a reduction of Gaza’s aid dependency. [continued…]

Israel: EU official’s ‘occupation’ remark casts pall on ties
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, December 18, 2009

Government officials in Jerusalem harshly criticized the new European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, for her scathing remarks about the “Israeli occupation” in her maiden speech.

Ashton on Tuesday leveled scathing criticism at Israeli policy in her first speech as the European Union’s first high representative for foreign affairs and security policy.

The government officials in Jerusalem said they were surprised, dissatisfied and concerned that such a senior figure had expressed criticism before visiting Israel and learning the facts.

They said the remarks cast a pall over relations with the European Union, and that they were particularly angry that she had not welcomed the settlement construction freeze, as had her European colleagues. Continue reading →

Facebooktwittermail

Being anti-Israel and anti-Zionist is the “new anti-Semitism”

Being anti-Israel and anti-Zionist is the “new anti-Semitism”
By Sharmine Narwani, Huffington Post, December 16, 2009

A Jewish woman, deriding protesters at a UK rally on Sunday in support of charging former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni with war crimes, declared loudly into a TV camera that being anti-Israel and anti-Zionist is the “new anti-Semitism.”

Such licentious language. Meant primarily, I might add, to inflame passions and mislead public opinion by invoking a word – anti-Semitism – that we have been well-conditioned to condemn above all other forms of racism or prejudice.

I am sorry the woman fears anti-Semitism, pogroms and hatred around every corner. It’s not my problem, frankly. Let her get therapy. Does that sound harsh? Sorry, again. But I for one get pretty irritated hearing false cries of anti-Semitism against anyone who criticizes Israel, its human rights crimes, its crazy settler movement, its unique brand of crypto-racism against non-Jews living within the state and its occupied territories. [continued…]

Facebooktwittermail

Eikenberry assures Afghans U.S. will stay beyond 2011

Eikenberry assures Afghans U.S. will stay beyond 2011
By Thomas L. Day, McClatchy, December 17, 2009

U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry Thursday further signaled that a strong American military presence will remain in Afghanistan long after July 2011, when President Obama plans to end his troop surge.

Speaking at the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Relations before a group of diplomats, non-governmental organizations and Afghan citizens, Eikenberry drove home the Obama administration’s sometimes contradictory message.

To the Afghan government: act with urgency. To the Afghan people: We will not abandon you.

“After eight years of assistance to Afghanistan, many Americans and many members of Congress are impatient to see results,” he said, while assuring that “our military commitment will not end or decline even as our combat forces [withdraw].” [continued…]

U.S. drone strikes kill 16 in Pakistani region thought to be al-Qaeda home base
By Griff Witte and Haq Nawaz Khan, Washington Post, December 18, 2009

An unusually large barrage of missiles fired by remotely piloted U.S. aircraft killed 16 people in the tribal area of North Waziristan on Thursday, a possible indication that the United States plans to escalate such attacks after Pakistan declined to step up its operations there.

The attacks came in a week in which top U.S. military officials visited Islamabad and asked Pakistani authorities to do more to go after insurgent groups that are based in North Waziristan but are focused on killing U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials say that their military is stretched thin by an operation in South Waziristan and that now is not the time to expand the campaign into the adjacent territory. American officials have countered that if Pakistan does not go after the groups, the United States will. [continued…]

Facebooktwittermail

Onward, Christian Zionists

Onward, Christian Zionists

Christian Zionists believe that in order to fulfill Biblical prophecy, Israel must conquer most of the Middle East. They are a growing force in American politics with ties to many powerful pro-Israel groups in Washington. Once considered a marginal doctrine among evangelicals, the dispensationalist theology of Christian Zionism includes a belief in the rapture, when the faithful are to be lifted up to Heaven while the rest of humanity—including most of the Jews—will perish.

Facebooktwittermail

The inertia option

The inertia option
By Roger Cohen, New York Times, December 18, 2009

I hope Iran policy makers in Washington and Europe are reading histories of that world-changing year, 1989. I hope so because the time has come to do nothing in Iran.

As Timothy Garton Ash has written of the year Europe was freed, “For the decisive nine months, from the beginning of Poland’s roundtable talks in February to the fall of the Wall in November, the United States’ contribution lay mainly in what it did not do.”

That inaction reflected the first President Bush’s caution and calculations. Its effect was to deprive hardliners in Moscow of an American scapegoat for Eastern European agitation and allow revolutionary events to run their course.

The main difference between Moscow 1989 and Tehran 2009 is that the Islamic Republic is still ready to open fire. The main similarities are obvious: tired ideologies; regimes and societies marching in opposite directions; and spreading dissent both within the power apparatus and among the opposition. [continued…]

Facebooktwittermail

Muslims say FBI tactics sow anger and fear

Muslims say FBI tactics sow anger and fear
By Paul Vitello and Kirk Semple, New York Times, December 18, 2009

The anxiety and anger have been building all year. In March, a national coalition of Islamic organizations warned that it would cease cooperating with the F.B.I. unless the agency stopped infiltrating mosques and using “agents provocateurs to trap unsuspecting Muslim youth.”

In September, a cleric in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, sued the government, claiming that the F.B.I. had threatened to scuttle his application for a green card unless he agreed to spy on relatives overseas — echoing similar claims made in recent court cases in California, Florida and Massachusetts.

And last month, after an imam in Queens was charged with aiding what the authorities called a bomb-making plot, a group of South Asian Muslims there began compiling a database of complaints about their brushes with counterterrorism investigators.

Since the terror attacks of 2001, the F.B.I. and Muslim and Arab-American leaders across the country have worked to build a relationship of trust, sharing information both to fight terrorism and to protect the interests of mosques and communities.

But those relations have reached a low point in recent months, many Muslim leaders say. Several high-profile cases in which informers have infiltrated mosques and helped promote plots, they say, have sown a corrosive fear among their people that F.B.I. informers are everywhere, listening. [continued…]

Facebooktwittermail