Author Archives: Paul Woodward

Rabbis fight flu pandemic on a wing and a prayer

Rabbis fight flu pandemic on a wing and a prayer
Reuters, August 11, 2009

Dozens of rabbis and Kabbalah mystics armed with ceremonial trumpets have taken to the skies over Israel to battle the H1N1 flu virus, Israeli media said on Tuesday.

About 50 Jewish holy men chanted prayers and blew ritual rams’ horns known as shofars in an aircraft circling over the country in the hope of stopping the spread of the virus, some of those involved in Monday’s venture were quoted as saying.

“The aim of the flight was to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it,” rabbi Yitzhak Batzri told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, which carried a picture of the bearded men praying while airborne.

“We are certain that, thanks to the prayer, the danger is already behind us,” added Batzri, who could not be reached for further comment on Tuesday. [continued…]

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Shiites in Iraq show restraint as Sunnis keep attacking

Shiites in Iraq show restraint as Sunnis keep attacking
By Rod Nordland, New York Times, August 12, 2009

Shiite clerics and politicians have been successfully urging their followers not to retaliate against a fierce campaign of sectarian bombings, in which Shiites have accounted for most of the 566 Iraqis killed since American troops pulled out of Iraq’s cities on June 30.

“Let them kill us,” said Sheik Khudair al-Allawi, the imam of a mosque bombed recently. “It’s a waste of their time. The sectarian card is an old card and no one is going to play it anymore. We know what they want, and we’ll just be patient. But they will all go to hell.”

The patience of the Shiites today is in extraordinary contrast to Iraq’s recent past. With a demographic majority of 60 percent and control of the government, power is theirs for the first time in a thousand years. Going back to sectarian war is, as both Sunni extremists and Shiite victims know, the one way they could lose all that, especially if they were to drag their Sunni Arab neighbors into a messy regional conflict.

It is a far cry from 2006, when a bomb set off at the sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra killed no one, but ignited a fury at the sacrilege that set off two years of sectarian warfare. [continued…]

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Officials see rise in militia groups across US

Officials see rise in militia groups across US
By Eileen Sullivan, AP, August 12, 2009

ilitia groups with gripes against the government are regrouping across the country and could grow rapidly, according to an organization that tracks such trends.

The stress of a poor economy and a liberal administration led by a black president are among the causes for the recent rise, the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center says. Conspiracy theories about a secret Mexican plan to reclaim the Southwest are also growing amid the public debate about illegal immigration.

Bart McEntire, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told SPLC researchers that this is the most growth he’s seen in more than a decade.

“All it’s lacking is a spark,” McEntire said in the report. [continued…]

Return of the militias
Southern Poverty Law Center, August 12, 2009

The 1990s saw the rise and fall of the virulently antigovernment “Patriot” movement, made up of paramilitary militias, tax defiers and so-called “sovereign citizens.” Sparked by a combination of anger at the federal government and the deaths of political dissenters at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, the movement took off in the middle of the decade and continued to grow even after 168 people were left dead by the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s federal building — an attack, the deadliest ever by domestic U.S. terrorists, carried out by men steeped in the rhetoric and conspiracy theories of the militias. In the years that followed, a truly remarkable number of criminal plots came out of the movement. But by early this century, the Patriots had largely faded, weakened by systematic prosecutions, aversion to growing violence, and a new, highly conservative president.

They’re back. Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country. “Paper terrorism” — the use of property liens and citizens’ “courts” to harass enemies — is on the rise. And once-popular militia conspiracy theories are making the rounds again, this time accompanied by nativist theories about secret Mexican plans to “reconquer” the American Southwest. One law enforcement agency has found 50 new militia training groups — one of them made up of present and former police officers and soldiers. Authorities around the country are reporting a worrying uptick in Patriot activities and propaganda. “This is the most significant growth we’ve seen in 10 to 12 years,” says one. “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.” [continued…]

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Israel clouds Obama’s nuclear summit

Israel clouds Obama’s nuclear summit
By Josh Gerstein, Politico, August 11, 2009

President Barack Obama’s call for a nuclear security summit next March could end up turning an uncomfortable spotlight on at least one nation — Israel — and further strain the administration’s relations with the Jewish state, analysts said.

Obama told leaders at the G-8 summit in July that he planned to ask the heads of 25 to 30 countries to come to Washington to discuss securing nuclear stockpiles. The final invites haven’t gone out yet, and one key question for Obama is this: Does he ask Israel to attend, or not?

There’s no good choice.

Invite Israel, and open its leaders up to questions about the country’s widely reported nuclear weapons program — which the Israelis have long refused to discuss.

But leave out Israel, and the Middle Eastern nations who would seem to be a necessity at any summit discussing nuclear security would feel compelled to point to Israel’s reported efforts as a source of instability in the region. [continued…]

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The two-state solution doesn’t solve anything

The two-state solution doesn’t solve anything
By Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, New York Times, August 11, 2009

The two-state solution has welcomed two converts. In recent weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, have indicated they now accept what they had long rejected. This nearly unanimous consensus is the surest sign to date that the two-state solution has become void of meaning, a catchphrase divorced from the contentious issues it is supposed to resolve. Everyone can say yes because saying yes no longer says much, and saying no has become too costly. Acceptance of the two-state solution signals continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle by other means.

Bowing to American pressure, Mr. Netanyahu conceded the principle of a Palestinian state, but then described it in a way that stripped it of meaningful sovereignty. In essence, and with minor modifications, his position recalled that of Israeli leaders who preceded him. A state, he pronounced, would have to be demilitarized, without control over borders or airspace. Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and no Palestinian refugees would be allowed back to Israel. His emphasis was on the caveats rather than the concession.

As Mr. Netanyahu was fond of saying, you can call that a state if you wish, but whom are you kidding? [continued…]

Hoyer: E. J’lem not same as W. Bank
By Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, August 11, 2009

US House Majority leader Steny Hoyer praised Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, called for the Palestinian Authority to drop any preconditions to negotiations, and said that Congress differentiated between building in east Jerusalem and in the West Bank, during an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Hoyer, currently in the country leading a delegation of 29 Democratic legislators, also said the rhetoric coming out of the Fatah General Assembly in Bethlehem was “unfortunate.”

The delegation, sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, a charitable organization affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, arrived on Sunday evening and met Monday with President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and US security coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton.

Lieberman told the group that the continued control of Gaza by Hamas, along with the rhetoric coming out of the Fatah conference in Bethlehem, essentially buried chances of peace for the near future. [continued…]

Israel PM vows never to evict settlers
AFP, August 9, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Sunday that he will never evict Jewish settlers from occupied Palestinian land as Israel did in 2005 in the Gaza Strip.

“The withdrawal from the Gaza Strip brought us neither peace nor security. The territory has become a base for the pro-Iranian Hamas movement and we will never make the same mistake again,” Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting.

“We will not evict any more people from their homes,” he added in comments carried by public radio. [continued…]

Netanyahu’s sister-in-law detained by police; calls Sheikh Jarrah evictions an unjust folly
By Ira Glunts, CommonDreams, August 9, 2009

Even compared to the low ethical standards which most people, outside the United States, ascribe to the actions of the Israeli government of occupation, the recent decision of their Supreme Court to evict long-time residents of Arab neighborhoods and to replace them with Jewish Israelis signals a particularly low point in the Jewish state’s brutally harsh treatment of Palestinians.

In a sparsely reported incident which occurred on Sunday, August 1,Ofra Ben-Artzi, the sister-in-law of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, was detained by police in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The 58 year-old Ben-Artzi, an editor for the anti-occupation magazine, HaKibush, spent several hours in police custody before being released without any charges being filed. Her apparent crime was her sympathy with the Palestinians who had recently been evicted from their homes. [continued…]

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Karzai offers rival top Cabinet post in effort to avoid election defeat

Karzai offers rival top Cabinet post in effort to avoid election defeat
By Tom Coghlan and Jeremy Page, The Times, August 11, 2009

One of the three main contenders in Afghanistan’s presidential election admitted yesterday that he had been offered a power-sharing deal by President Karzai in an apparent attempt to sideline the other leading candidate and avoid a second-round vote.

Ashraf Ghani, a former academic and World Bank executive, told The Times that a “weakening” Mr Karzai had attempted to persuade him to abandon his campaign in exchange for the position of prime minister in a new Karzai administration.

Mr Ghani, who was Finance Minister in Mr Karzai’s first Cabinet, said that he was “listening” to the approaches from Mr Karzai’s intermediaries but was not giving up his campaign for the election on August 20. “An offer was made. It was for a position as ‘chief executive’ [in the Cabinet],” he said. “The details were not worked out. I am not discontinuing my election campaign.”

The proposed deal could seriously undermine the campaign of the other major contender in the election, Abdullah Abdullah, who is widely regarded as the main threat to Mr Karzai’s continued grip on power. [continued…]

Afghanistan enlists tribal militia forces
By Anand Gopal and Yochi J Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2009

The Afghan and U.S. governments have launched a new effort to enlist tribal fighters from many of the country’s most violent provinces in the war against the Taliban, hoping that a tactic first used in Iraq can help turn the tide here as well.

Thousands of armed tribal fighters from 18 Afghan provinces will initially be hired to provide security for elections on Aug. 20, officials from both countries said. If the security is effective, Afghan officials say they will try to give the tribesmen permanent jobs protecting their villages and neighborhoods.

The tribal initiative is being run by a new branch of the Afghan government called the Independent Directorate for the Protection of Highways and Public Property. In coming days, officials from the agency will ask tribal shuras, or councils, in participating provinces to organize armed militias to guard polling places, roads and public gathering spaces. [continued…]

Al-Qa’ida intervenes in battle for control of the Pakistan Taliban
By Omar Waraich and Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, August 11, 2009

Al-Qai’da militants may be trying to install their own “chief terrorist” to succeed Baitullah Mehsud as the head of the Pakistan Taliban following his death during a US drone strike, Pakistan’s top security official believes.

The head of the country’s interior ministry, Rehman Malik, said the Pakistan Taliban was in disarray following last week’s targeted killing of Mehsud and that in the ensuing uncertainty al-Qa’ida was using its influence to try to ensure it selected his replacement.

Mr Malik voiced his concern as Pakistan said it was trying to collect DNA evidence to conclusively confirm the Taliban commander’s death in the rugged and inaccessible wilds of Taliban-controlled South Waziristan. Pakistani authorities will try to compare a sample to the DNA of one of Mehsud’s brothers, killed in a previous strike. [continued…]

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Iranian lawmakers demand say on cabinet, hinting at a rift among hard-liners

Iranian lawmakers demand say on cabinet, hinting at a rift among hard-liners
By Robert F Worth and Nazila Fathi, New York Times, August 11, 2009

A bout 200 conservative Iranian lawmakers signed a letter on Monday calling on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to consult them about cabinet appointments, the latest sign of a struggle among hard-liners that may limit the president’s political clout as he moves to form a new government in the coming week.

The lawmakers’ demands followed reports that Mr. Ahmadinejad had fired as many as 20 officials in Iran’s Intelligence Ministry. The purge appeared to be aimed at those who disagreed with the handling of the harsh crackdown on opposition protests in the wake of the disputed June 12 presidential election.

The firings have exposed sharp differences among conservatives over how to deal with Iran’s still defiant opposition movement. Last month, Mr. Ahmadinejad fired the intelligence minister, Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, provoking furious criticism from many conservative lawmakers and senior clerics. Mr. Mohseni-Ejei had objected to using televised confessions of jailed protesters — widely believed even in Iran to be coerced — and since his removal, those confessions have been used in a mass trial of reformist figures. [continued…]

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Iraq attacks raise fears of renewed ethnic tensions

Iraq attacks raise fears of renewed ethnic tensions
By Liz Sly, Los Angeles Times, August 11, 2009

A string of bombings in northern Iraq and Baghdad that has killed at least 112 people in the last several days, including 60 on Monday, has raised fears that insurgent groups are embarking on a sustained attempt to kindle ethnic and sectarian warfare.

The toll since Friday represents the worst surge of violence since U.S. troops handed over security in urban areas to Iraqi security forces on June 30.

The attacks serve as a reminder that although the U.S. military says it is on track to complete the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq by next August, the potential for fresh conflict between Arabs and Kurds in the north, and Sunnis and Shiites elsewhere, remains very real. [continued…]

Sectarian bombings pulverize a village in Iraq
By Sam Dagher, New York Times, August 11, 2009

The entire village was gone. Local television broadcast scenes of homes reduced to heaps of rubble mixed with bed frames, mattresses, furniture and bloodstained pillows. A villager cried into the camera, “Look, Mr. Prime Minister and Mr. Interior Minister, where is the security that you speak about?”

The latest wave of sectarian bombings struck northern Iraq and Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 50 people, wounding hundreds more and leveling the village, near Mosul.

Nearly 100 people in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul have been killed in attacks since Friday, raising grave concerns about the Iraqi government’s ability to maintain security. [continued…]

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Judge: CIA interrogations not relevant to 9/11 accused’s sanity

Judge: CIA interrogations not relevant to 9/11 accused’s sanity
By Carol Rsenberg, Miami Herald, August 10, 2009

US military defense lawyers for accused 9/11 conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh cannot learn what interrogation techniques CIA agents used on the Yemeni before he was moved to Guantánamo to be tried as a terrorist, an Army judge has ruled.

Bin al Shibh, 37, is one of five men charged in a complex death penalty prosecution by military commission currently under review by the Obama administration. He allegedly helped organize the Hamburg, Germany, cell of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers before the suicide mission that killed 2,974 people in New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.

But his lawyers say he suffers a “delusional disorder,” and hallucinations in his cell at Guantánamo may leave him neither sane enough to act as his own attorney nor to stand trial. Prison camp doctors treat him with psychotropic drugs. [continued…]

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Zen and the art of foreign relations

US showed support for Iran protestors: Clinton
AFP, August 9, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the United States did a lot “behind the scenes” to show support for demonstrators contesting Iran’s disputed presidential election results.

“We did not want to get between the legitimate protests and demonstrations of the Iranian people and the leadership,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN broadcast on Sunday.

“And we knew that if we stepped in too soon, too hard… the leadership would try to use us to unify the country against the protestors.”

“Now, behind the scenes, we were doing a lot,” Clinton said. “We were doing a lot to really empower the protestors without getting in the way. And we’re continuing to speak out and support the opposition.” [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — If the Iranian revolutionary court recently trying protesters in Tehran had been able to subpoena Hillary Clinton to testify on behalf of the prosecution, this is what they would have wanted her to say: “behind the scenes, we were doing a lot.”

This is not what President Obama should want his chief diplomat to be saying. What the hell was she thinking?

There is one thing that movers and shakers (while they’re doing all their moving and shaking) find almost impossible to grasp: there are times when doing nothing is better than doing something.

Tell the Iranian people: we’re with you in spirit and we’re rooting for you, but this is your fight. The best we can do is to do nothing that will empower those who want to oppress you.

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Iranian officials call for arrest of opposition leaders

Iranian officials call for arrest of opposition leaders
By Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post, August 10, 2009

Revolutionary Guard generals, top politicians and senior clerics have called for the arrest and punishment of opposition leaders, including defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, Iranian state media reported Sunday, while the national police chief acknowledged that protesters had been mistreated while in custody.[…]

“In order to end this mayhem, they need to arrest, try and punish these political figures,” Gen. Yadollah Javani, head of the political office of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, advised the judicial system Sunday, according to state news agency IRNA. “These individuals should be prosecuted, punished and tried as traitors.” He singled out Mousavi, fellow defeated candidate Mehdi Karroubi and former president Mohammad Khatami. The Revolutionary Guard is a force that plays a highly influential role in politics.

Mohammad Karami-Rad, a member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, told Iran’s Journalists Club on Sunday that the government was pursuing a complaint against Mousavi, but he did not provide details.

Coupled with the trials already underway, charges against Mousavi and other top opposition figures would mark an unprecedented attempt to purge a faction that has been part of the nation’s political fabric since the Islamic revolution 30 years ago. It comes after a decades-long dispute between the faction now represented by Ahmadinejad and the one now led by Mousavi, which erupted into open conflict in the run-up to the elections. [continued…]

Iran’s president purges Intelligence Ministry
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, August 10, 2009

Ian’s president has conducted a purge of the nation’s Intelligence Ministry, sweeping aside ranking officials with decades of experience in favor of loyalists, said a lawmaker, several news websites and a former intelligence chief’s son.

The move, chronicled by news outlets Sunday, underscores the deep rifts and disarray within the highest echelons of the country’s security apparatus since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed June 12 reelection. [continued…]

Iran’s Karoubi says some detainees raped in jail
Reuters, August 9, 2009

Iran’s defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karoubi said some of those detained after the country’s disputed June presidential vote had been raped in detention, according to his website on Sunday.

“Some senior officials told me that … really shameful issues … Some young male detainees were raped … also some young female detainees were raped in a way that have caused serious injuries,” the website quoted a letter Karoubi wrote 10 days ago to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of a powerful arbitration body, as saying. [continued…]

Iran admits election demonstrators were tortured
By Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, August 10, 2009

Iran’s police chief admitted yesterday that protesters who were arrested after June’s disputed presidential election had been tortured while in custody in a prison in south-west Tehran. But he denied that any of the detainees had died as a result.

General Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam said the head of the Kahrizak detention centre had been dismissed and jailed. “Three policemen who beat detainees have been jailed as well,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Moghaddam as saying.

Human rights groups had previously identified at least three detainees they said had died after torture at Kahrizak, which was closed last month on the orders of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Moghaddam denied that the abuses were responsible for any fatalities there, claiming that an unspecified “viral illness” had caused the deaths. [continued…]

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Sanctions unlikely to stop Iran’s nuclear quest

Sanctions unlikely to stop Iran’s nuclear quest
By Tony Karon, Time, August 10, 2009

Unless Iran responds positively to President Obama’s offer of talks on its nuclear program by next month, it could face what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls “crippling sanctions.” That was the message from Administration officials touring the Middle East in recent weeks. And it’s backed by congressional moves to pass legislation aimed at choking off the gasoline imports on which Iran relies for almost a third of its consumption, by punishing third-country suppliers. It sounds impressive and, for an undiversified economy like Iran’s, potentially calamitous. But a number of Iran analysts are skeptical that new sanctions will break the stalemate.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government has promised to present a new package of proposals on the nuclear issue to Western negotiators in the coming weeks. But that package is unlikely to reflect any shift in Tehran’s rejection of the U.S. demand that it forgo the right to enrich uranium as part of its nuclear-energy program. “If the U.S. position remains unchanged,” says Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii, “Iran may well come to the table, but only in order to demonstrate to its own people that its regime has been recognized, not to seriously engage with U.S. proposals or give ground.” [continued…]

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The pro-Israel lobby may be headed toward obsolescence

The pro-Israel lobby may be headed toward obsolescence
By Michelle Goldberg, The American Prosepct, August , 2009

Given how influential the lobby is, it’s easy to forget that the airtight relationship between Israel and the United States, and between Zionism and American Jews, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Support for Israel, financial and political, is a crucial component of mainstream American Judaism. But that wasn’t always the case.

American Jewish donations to Israel actually fell throughout much of the 1960s. In 1961, when Commentary published a symposium of Jewish intellectuals contemplating Jewish identity, Israel often seemed like an afterthought, and many respondents professed a skepticism of Zionism that would be anathema to the magazine today. “The support of Israel by American Jews should … not be sentimental and uncritical support, but should be given only in a way that exerts a more liberal, internationalist, and humanitarian influence on Israeli politics,” wrote one New York University philosophy professor. “I believe Israel can effectively represent the historic mission of the Jewish people only when it sacrifices its national interests for the sake of world peace and social justice.” [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Goldberg notes the growing divide between American Jews who, as Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of J-Street, puts it have an “emotional understanding that there’s always got to be some place for the Jews to go” and those American Jews who purportedly lack such an “understanding”.

The article concludes in this way:

Ben-Ami, who loves Israel even if he abhors many of its policies, mourns this growing estrangement, and fears that liberal young people might drift away from the Jewish community altogether. “One of the motivations of J-Street is a deep worry not only about Israel but really about the American Jewish community and the extent to which the Israel issue becomes a reason why younger American Jews disconnect from the community,” he says. “The very same young Jews who don’t have that gut understanding that my grandparents may have had about why there’s a need for an Israel, they also can’t relate to values they’re being brought up with — either the way the situation is playing out on the ground in Israel or advancing within the Jewish community.”

Meanwhile, Orthodox Jews have grown progressively more hawkish on Israel over the years. Thus it’s possible that, should other Jews fall away, they could come to dominate the major American Jewish organizations — resulting in an even greater rift between the values most Jews hold and policies espoused by those who purport to speak for them. “I don’t know that there’s a clear generational happy ending to this story,” Ben-Ami says.

In 1948, the year of Israel’s birth, Hannah Arendt warned that a continuing conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine would result in a fundamental rift with the Diaspora. Under the pressure of constant conflict, Palestinian Jews would degenerate into a Spartan “warrior tribe,” she wrote. “Their relations with world Jewry would become problematical, since their defense interests might clash at any moment with those of other countries where large numbers of Jews lived. Palestinian Jewry would eventually separate itself from the larger body of world Jewry and in its isolation develop into an entirely new people.” This dire prediction hasn’t quite come true yet. But Jews in the United States and those in Israel are evolving in a wholly different direction, and Arendt’s analysis seems more relevant every day.

I hear the angst in a community that fears division, but if I was Jewish and not a Zionist, I would find it patronizing to be told that my lack of support for Israel was a result of my lack of understanding about why there’s “a need” for Israel.

Maybe I don’t understand the nature of this “need” but if it’s the need for a place to which Jews can flee in the event of a dangerous rise in global anti-Semitism, the image of Israel as safe haven seems utterly fanciful.

If on the other hand, the need for Israel is based on the need for the protection of Jewish heritage in a Jewish homeland, then the emerging divide among Jews appears to quite simply be a divide between Zionists and non-Zionists. This division is being obscured, however, by what I will dub the faux Zionists.

Faux Zionists have a passionate believe in the Jewish people’s need for Israel while demonstrating through their own choices that they feel no personal need to live there. Faux Zionists defend Israel in principle yet have turned away from it in practice and within that contradiction lies one of the most potent fuels for their passion.

But hey, I’m not a Jew, so what do I know?

Is the pro-Israel lobby panicking?
By Rami G Khouri, Daily Star, August 8, 2009

Is the Israeli lobby in the United States in panic mode? The Obama administration hit the ground running when it took office in January, quickly appointing George Mitchell as a special envoy to Arab-Israeli peacemaking, and making it clear that President Barack Obama himself would devote time and energy to the goal of a comprehensive peace.

Not surprisingly, an American-Israeli disagreement on Israel’s settlements in occupied Arab lands materialized quickly, and may well expand into a full blown showdown. The US says it is making equal demands of Arabs and Israelis, while Israel and its zealot-like allies and proxies in the US argue that Washington is putting undue pressure on Israel alone.

The unknown wild card in this is the pro-Israel lobby in the US, a combination of American formal organizations and individual politicians who argue Israel’s case so strongly that they are often seen as putting Israeli interests ahead of their own American interests. It remains unclear how the pro-Israel lobby will kick into action to shield Israel from the increasingly vocal demands in the US that Jewish settlements and the Zionist colonization enterprise in occupied Arab lands must stop in order to allow a peace negotiation to start. Continue reading →

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In the beloved Old Country, a Jew has visions of her homeland

In the beloved Old Country, a Jew has visions of her homeland
By Lizzy Ratner, Mondoweiss, August 8, 2009

Jews have a long history in the sprawling eastern European basin that is and has been Poland. Some say this history stretches back over 1000 years, and almost all agree that there have been bona fide Jewish settlements in Polish lands since at least the 11th Century. These Jews seem to have come, at least initially, from the wilds of Western Europe, driven by the rabid Jesus-freakery of the crusaders into the relatively tolerant arms of the emerging Polish kingdom (and the word “relative” really does need to be emphasized). It was hardly a picnic, but Poland’s comparative merits meant that Jews kept coming for decades and then centuries. By the mid-16th Century, as much as 75 percent of the world’s Jews on Polish soil, and by the eve of the Holocaust, Poland was home to the largest Jewish population in Europe. My own grandfather’s shtetl-town was a solid 70 percent Jewish in 1939; my grandmother’s town, Warsaw, was one-third Jewish. And as of 1998, it was estimated that more than three out of four American Jews could trace at least once grandparent to pre-Nazi Poland.

As one of these three-out-of-four American Jews, I can attest to the enduring power of my Old Country roots. My childhood was Roman Vishniac photographs and The Fools of Chelm (along, oddly, with unhealthy doses of WASPy Victorianism courtesy of my all-girl private school). It was Yiddish-accented great-aunts and uncles who’d never managed to slough their Bialystoker ticks. It was an ethos of always needing to prepare for the worst – for famine, plague, or pogroms – despite obvious security and plenty. And it was stories, lots and lots of stories, of my grandpa Harry, né Osher, a small man who barely reached 5’ 4”,who had little more than an eighth grade education but amply made up for it with sechel and chutzpa, who was generous to a fault, and who believed, profoundly, that the fate suffered by Europe’s Jews meant that you did everything possible to prevent other people from suffering the same thing.

Or, put differently, if I have any cultural proclivities at all other than those of the deracinated modern-day American, they clearly belong to the Yiddishe world of Jewish Poland – not the aggressive, militarized one of modern Israel. [continued…]

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Taliban now winning

Taliban now winning
By Yochi J Dreazen and Peter Spiegel, Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2009

The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency’s spiritual home.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that means U.S. casualties, already running at record levels, will remain high for months to come.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the commander offered a preview of the strategic assessment he is to deliver to Washington later this month, saying the troop shifts are designed to better protect Afghan civilians from rising levels of Taliban violence and intimidation. The coming redeployments are the clearest manifestation to date of Gen. McChrystal’s strategy for Afghanistan, which puts a premium on safeguarding the Afghan population rather than hunting down militants. [continued…]

U.S. to hunt down Afghan drug lords tied to Taliban
By James Risen, New York Times, August 10, 2009

Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, reflecting a major shift in American counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan, according to a Congressional study to be released this week.

United States military commanders have told Congress that they are convinced that the policy is legal under the military’s rules of engagement and international law. They also said the move is an essential part of their new plan to disrupt the flow of drug money that is helping finance the Taliban insurgency.

In interviews with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is releasing the report, two American generals serving in Afghanistan said that major traffickers with proven links to the insurgency have been put on the “joint integrated prioritized target list.” That means they have been given the same target status as insurgent leaders, and can be captured or killed at any time. [continued…]

Claims differ on Pakistani Taliban struggle
By Sabrina Tavernise and Pir Zubair Shah, New York Times, August 10, 2009

Contested claims continued Sunday over a reported falling out among factions struggling for control of the Pakistani Taliban, a day after Pakistani officials said they had news that the No. 2 figure in the militant group had been shot to death.

Pakistani officials said Saturday that Hakimullah Mehsud, a young and aggressive commander, had been shot dead in a fight with another leader, Waliur Rehman, during a meeting in a remote area of South Waziristan. The officials said the men were fighting over who would take over the Pakistani Taliban after the apparent death of the group’s supreme leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in an American drone airstrike on Wednesday.

But on Sunday, Reuters reported that in a phone call, Mr. Rehman denied that any special meeting or fight had occurred, and insisted that Hakimullah Mehsud was still alive. [continued…]

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Kurdish faultline threatens to spark new war

Kurdish faultline threatens to spark new war
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, August 10, 2009

It is called the “trigger line”, a 300-mile long swathe of disputed territory in northern Iraq where Arab and Kurdish soldiers confront each other, and which risks turning into a battlefield. As the world has focused on the US troop withdrawal from Iraq, and the intensifying war in Afghanistan, Arabs and Kurds in Iraq have been getting closer to an all out war over control of the oil-rich lands stretching from the borders of Syria in the west to Iran in the east.

The risk of armed conflict is acute because the zone in dispute is a mosaic of well-armed communities backed by regular forces. Kurdish and Arab soldiers here watch each other’s movements with deepest suspicion in case the other side might attempt to establish new facts on the ground. It is to avert a new armed conflict breaking out between the powerful military forces on both sides that Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, travelled to Kurdistan for crisis talks last week with Kurdish leaders, Iraq’s (Kurdish) President, Jalal Talabani, and the President of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Massoud Barzani. Mr Maliki and Mr Barzani had not met for a year during which their exchanges have been barbed and aggressive. [continued…]

Bombs targeting Shiites in Iraq kill at least 48
By Hamid Ahmed, AP, August 10, 2009

A double truck bombing tore through the village of a small Shiite ethnic minority near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, while nine blasts wracked Baghdad in a wave of violence Monday that killed at least 48 people and wounded more than 250, Iraqi officials said.

The attacks provided a grim example of U.S. military warnings that insurgents are targeting Shiites in an effort to re-ignite the kind of sectarian violence that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007.

The U.S. military has stressed that despite the rise in attacks, the Shiites are showing restraint and not retaliating as they did more than two years ago when a similar series of attacks and bombings provoked a Shiite backlash that degenerated into a sectarian slaughter claiming tens of thousands of lives. [continued…]

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Warehousing soldiers in the homeland

Warehousing soldiers in the homeland
By Dahr Jamail and Sarah Lazare, TomDispatch, August 9, 2009

Echo Platoon is part of the 82nd Replacement Detachment of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Soldiers in the platoon are relegated to living quarters in a set of dimly lit concrete rooms. Pipes peep out of missing ceiling tiles and a musty smell permeates beds placed on cracked linoleum floors.

For soldiers who have gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and then voluntarily turned themselves in or were forcibly returned, the detention conditions here in Echo Platoon only serve to reinforce the inescapability of their situation. They remain suspended in a legal limbo of forced uncertainty that can extend from several months to a year or more, while the military takes its time deciding their fate. Some of them, however, are offered a free pass out of this military half-life — but only if they agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq.

Specialist Kevin McCormick, 21, who was held in Echo Platoon for more than seven months on AWOL and desertion charges, was typically offered release, subject to accepting deployment to Iraq, despite being suicidal. “Echo is like jail,” he says, “with some privileges. [You are] just stuck there with horrible living conditions. There’s black mold on the building [and] when I first got there, there were five or six people to a room, which is like a cell block with cement brick walls. The piping and electricals are above the tiles, so if anything leaks or bursts, it goes right down into the room. ” [continued…]

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Time to stop meddling in Somalia

Time to stop meddling in Somalia
By Natalie Parke, World Politics Review, August , 2009

Recently, U.S. policy in Somalia hit a new low, with the shipment of 40 tons of arms to a government on the verge of overthrow, if not nervous collapse. Worse still, last Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the president of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and promised to expand U.S. support. This perpetuates a long history of unsuccessful meddling in the affairs of Somalia, from Black Hawk Down to air strikes against al-Qaida suspects to support for the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006. Somalia would be better off without our spasmodic interference.

That’s not to say the U.S. doesn’t have national interests at stake in the country and region. A humanitarian crisis demanded our attention in the early 1990s, a crisis that still persists. In addition, there are now al-Qaida connections in Somalia to worry about, as well as piracy in the Gulf of Aden. We’ve acknowledged that instability and anarchy in Somalia lie at the root of all of these issues. Yet we find ourselves in policy paralysis as the situation in the country exceeds even the worst-case scenarios.

The best we’ve come up with is to resolutely support Somalia’s internationally backed TFG, which has virtually no governance capacity. Clinton claims that this specter of a government is “the best hope we’ve had in quite some time for a return to stability and the possibility of progress in Somalia” — a tall order, given the state of things. Forty-three hundred African Union peacekeepers have the unenviable task of providing little more than guard duty for the TFG and the buildings that house it. Increasingly, the TFG is coming up short in its fight against al-Shabaab, the leading rebel movement that controls parts of Mogadishu and most of south and central Somalia. [continued…]

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