Category Archives: Issues

UN Special Rapporteur calls on APA, US to remove psychologists from torture sites

UN Special Rapporteur calls on APA, US to remove psychologists from torture sites
By Jeff Kaye, FDL, August 7, 2009

In a major development on the issue of maltreatment at Guantanamo, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak has written today to James Bray, President of the American Psychological Association, indicating that he has determined that Guantanamo prison is “outside, or in violation of, international law.” Nowak cites ongoing arbitrary detention, forced feeding of hunger strikers, use of isolation, rough physical treatment, and past practice of torture as reasons for his decision. He concludes:

Given the now public record of psychologists’ involvement in the design, supervision, implementation, and legitimization of a regime of physical and psychological torture at US military and intelligence facilities, including Guantánamo, it is incumbent upon the APA to ensure that its standards comport with international law as well as the UN Principles of Medical Ethics Relevant to the Role of Health Personnel. These instruments require an absolute ethical prohibition of psychologists’ presence or involvement in these operations. [continued…].

Obama administration asks Supreme Court to block detainee photos
By Josh Gerstein, Politico, August 7, 2009

The Obama Administration is asking the Supreme Court to block the public release of detainee abuse photos that were the subject of a high-profile reversal by President Barack Obama earlier this year.

On Friday afternoon, the Justice Department filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking it to overturn an appeals court decision requiring the Pentagon to disclose the photos, which depict alleged abuse of prisoners in U.S. military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The President of the United States and the Nation’s highest-ranking military officers responsible for ongoing combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have determined that disclosure by the government of the photographs at issue in this case would pose a significant risk to the lives and physical safety of American military and civilian personnel by inciting violence targeting those personnel,” Solicitor General Elena Kagan wrote. [continued…]

Iran years from fuel for bomb, report says

Iran years from fuel for bomb, report says
By Walter Pincus, Washington Post, August 7, 2009

Despite Iran’s progress since 2007 toward producing enriched uranium, the State Department’s intelligence analysts continue to think that Tehran will not be able to produce weapons-grade material before 2013, according to a newly disclosed congressional document.

The updated assessment, by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, emphasizes that the analysis is based on Iran’s technical capability and is not a judgment about “when Iran might make any political decision” to produce highly enriched uranium.

The intelligence community agrees that a political decision has not yet been made. According to the assessment, State Department analysts think such a decision is unlikely to be made “for at least as long as international scrutiny and pressure persist.” [continued…]

When all you have is a hammer, every Iran problem looks like a nail
By Patrick Disney, niacINisight, August 6, 2009

For most of the month of August, Congress will be on recess. Consider this the calm before the storm.

Most in Washington are aware that September will bring with it the biggest push for Iran sanctions in years. AIPAC has been lobbying for months on the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA), and on September 10 the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations will kick off a massive nationwide lobbying effort, which they compare to the “Save Darfur” movement. All of this will culminate at the end of the month when, conveniently enough, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in New York for the UN General Assembly.

Yes, right around the time Ahmadinejad is at the podium in the UN, Congress is expected to impose what it calls “crippling sanctions” on Iran’s economy. The plan is to blockade Iran’s foreign supplies of gasoline, hoping that an increase in the price per gallon at the pump will cause the Iranian people to rise up and demand a halt to Iran’s nuclear program.

But this plan has number of obvious flaws.

First, the Iranian people have already risen up against the government’s hardline leadership. What we have witnessed in Iran for the last two months is unprecedented. To think that marginally higher gas prices will mean anything to a population willing to risk their lives for freedom and democracy is at once naïve and hubristic. According to Juan Cole, imposing broad sanctions on Iran will likely only destroy Iranian civil society and bolster the state’s repressive apparatus–as it did in Iraq. [continued…]

Death of Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mahsud is confirmed

Death of Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mahsud is confirmed
By Alex Rodriguez and Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, August 7, 2009

Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mahsud, Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist and a staunch Al Qaeda ally, was killed in an American missile strike, a Pakistani government minister confirmed today, dealing a severe blow to militants who have been the architects of some of Pakistan’s worst terrorist attacks in recent years.

Mahsud’s death represents a significant victory in the bid by Pakistan and the U.S. to eliminate the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Mahsud, believed to be 35, is aligned with Al Qaeda and is thought to be responsible for dozens of suicide bombing attacks, beheadings and killings throughout Pakistan. [continued…]

Taliban leader in Pakistan was killed, his aides say
By Pir Zubain Shah, Ismail Khan and Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, August 8, 2009

Mr. Mehsud, a diabetic in his late 30s, had been sick for some time and had come to the house of his father-in-law, Mulvi Ikramuddin, in the village of Zanghara. Mr. Ikramuddin’s brother, a medical practitioner, was treating him, the Taliban fighters said.

He had been appointed in 2004 by the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, as the top commander for his tribe, but had a reputation for fairness and modesty, and had risen through the ranks assuming leadership over other factions of the Taliban in Pakistan, including the Wazir tribe.

The apparent death also raises questions for the future of ordinary Pashtuns, the ethnic group that predominates in the tribal areas, the overwhelming majority of whom do not support militancy or Mr. Mehsud directly.

A prominent member of the Mehsud tribe in Karachi, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was afraid of trouble from the military and the Taliban alike, said taking a public position on Mr. Mehsud’s death was a delicate balancing act and that Pashtuns were watching nervously to see who will come out on top: Pakistan’s military or a successor of Mr. Mehsud. [continued…]

Most Americans oppose Afghanistan war: poll
AFP, August 7, 2009

Most Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan, which President Barack Obama has made a priority, dispatching tens of thousands of troops to fight a growing insurgency, a poll has found.

In a new low in public support for the war effort, 54 per cent of respondents said they opposed the US-led fight against the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies, with only 41 per cent in favour in the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.

The survey came as violence hit an all-time high in the nearly eight-year-old war, with 76 foreign troops killed in July, including 45 US troops ahead of elections on August 20. [continued…]

PA officials: U.S. wants borders to top peace talks

PA officials: U.S. wants borders to top peace talks
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, August 7, 2009

The U.S. administration will demand that Israel and the Palestinians address the issue of borders as the first step in the Middle East peace plan, senior Palestinian officials said Thursday.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Wednesday that Washington will present its new plan for a comprehensive Middle East peace soon.

The Americans will also outline proposals for an Israeli peace with Syria and Lebanon, the Palestinian officials said Thursday. The American plan will not specify step-by-step actions for an Israeli-Palestinian solution, but will address final status issues – borders, Jerusalem and refugees.

The Americans will set a timetable of about a year and a half for the negotiations and demand the sides first solve the border issue, under the belief that this will lead to solutions for other issues, such as the settlements and water. After that the sides will discuss the other fundamental issues – Jerusalem and the refugees.

The negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians probably will be conducted in the presence of American officials, the sources said. The American administration is likely to present its plan before or during the UN General Assembly set for September.

Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO’s negotiating team, denied knowledge of the plan.

Erekat said that George Mitchell, the special White House envoy to the Middle East, said in recent meetings that the administration needs several more rounds of talks to draft a peace plan.

Mitchell is supposed to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again within the next two weeks.

During this period the Americans hope to reach understandings about the settlements, which would enable talks to resume.

PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas is refusing to resume talks before Israel halts construction in the settlements. However, once Washington reaches understandings with Israel to suspend construction, Abbas would not be able to maintain his refusal, the Palestinian officials said.

The debating continued Thursday at Fatah’s sixth convention, which is due to end today after delegates elect leaders for the movement’s institutions. It is not clear whether Fatah’s delegates from Gaza will take part in the vote remotely, since Hamas has refused to let them attend.

Tension between Mohammed Dahlan and Fatah’s old leadership flared up again after Dahlan’s associates accused the old guard of appointing cronies as delegates to prevent the middle generation from being elected.

Dahlan threatened to have his supporters boycott the vote unless a solution is found for the Gaza delegates.

Commentators said yesterday that Fatah is unlikely to undergo dramatic leadership changes. Marwan Barghouti and Jibril Rajoub, of the middle generation, are considered to have relatively high chances of being elected to the central committee.

Israeli envoy: Obama row causes strategic damage
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, August 7, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attitude toward the Obama administration is causing Israel strategic damage, in the view of a senior Israeli diplomat in Boston, Channel 10 television reported yesterday.

Consul General Nadav Tamir’s reported comment is a rare internal rebuke, highlighting the growing tension between Washington and Jerusalem.

Tamir is a highly regarded veteran diplomat whose opinions on foreign policy matters carry considerable weight.

Such blunt, pointed criticism of a prime minister’s policies by a professional diplomat is considered unusual.

In an internal memo addressed to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, Tamir wrote that the public spat with the United States over the issue of a settlement freeze has alienated a significant number of American Jewish supporters, Channel 10 reported.

“There are political elements in America and Israel who oppose Obama on ideological grounds and are ready to sacrifice the special relationship between the two countries for the sake of their own political agendas,” he wrote.

While Israel and America have long disagreed over the settlements, “there was always a measure of coordination between the governments,” Tamir continued.

“Nowadays, there is a sense in the United States that Obama is being forced to deal with obduracy from the governments of Iran, North Korea, and Israel.”

“The administration is making an effort to play down the disagreements, and we are the ones who are actually making the differences public,” Tamir added.

Tamir also accused Netanyahu of endangering American Jewish backing for Israel by publicly sparring with Obama administration’s over the construction of Jewish housing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

A spokesperson for Netanyahu said Tamir’s comments were not worthy of comment. A senior associate of the prime minister said that “this is an unprofessional document … reflecting the writer’s personal political views. It’s a pity that an Israeli diplomat should launch an attack like this on Israel’s policy and try to cause deliberate damage.”

The consulate in Boston said the memorandum was an internal Foreign Ministry document that was not for the media’s consumption.

Several Foreign Ministry sources described Tamir as “highly intelligent,” but others said he was too “ivory tower.”

Iraqis speak of random killings committed by private Blackwater guards

Iraqis speak of random killings committed by private Blackwater guards
By Oliver August, The Times, August 7, 2009

Guards employed by Blackwater, the US security company, shot Iraqis and killed victims in allegedly unprovoked and random attacks, it was claimed yesterday.

A Virginia court also received sworn statements from former Blackwater employees yesterday alleging that Erik Prince, the company’s founder, “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe”.

They also accused the company of following a policy of deliberate killings and arms dealing and of employing people unfit or improperly trained to handle lethal weaponry. [continued…]

Police: 37 die in Iraq as bombs target Shiites
By Hamid Ahmed, AP, August 7, 2009

A suicide car bomb devastated a Shiite mosque in northern Iraq, one of a series of attacks Friday that killed at least 37 Shiite pilgrims and worshippers, police and medical officials said.

The incidents are the latest in a series that have targeted Shiites, raising concerns that insurgents are stepping up attacks, hoping to re-ignite sectarian violence that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007.

Though violence has dramatically declined in Iraq in the past two years, U.S. officials have repeatedly called the security gains fragile and cautioned that a waning insurgency still has the ability to pull off sporadic, high profile attacks. [continued…]

Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor denounces Bush-era policies

Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor denounces Bush-era policies
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, August 7, 2009

President Obama’s counter-terrorism chief on Thursday repeatedly rebuked the Bush administration in a speech designed to make the case for a broader approach to fighting Islamic extremism.

In his first public appearance as the White House counter-terrorism advisor, John O. Brennan said that President George W. Bush’s policies had been an affront to American values, undermined the nation’s security and fostered a “global war” mind-set that served only to “validate Al Qaeda’s twisted worldview.” [continued…]

US asks Israel for settlement lull

U.S. asks Israel for one-year settlement freeze
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, August 6, 2009

American Middle East envoy George Mitchell has asked Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak for a “deposit,” an advance commitment of a one-year freeze on construction in West Bank settlements.

Mitchell raised the idea in his talks with Netanyahu and Barak in Israel last week. He argued that the Arab states will not make gestures toward normalization with Israel without a guarantee of an end to building in the settlements. Mitchell said an Israeli agreement to temporarily freeze construction would facilitate concessions from the Arab states.

A senior source in Jerusalem noted that while Netanyahu and Barak did not reject the request, they disagree with the Americans over some of the details. Mitchell asked for a construction freeze of at least a year, but Israel has agreed to suspend building on the settlements for six months, at most.

The Americans have not yet said clearly what will happen at the end of the freeze period. Israel wants a U.S. commitment to reach new understandings with Jerusalem over future developments that would be similar to those between former president George W. Bush and former prime minister Ehud Olmert.

Israel and the U.S. also disagree over the future of 2,500 housing units already under construction in the settlements. Israel wants to complete all of these homes, while Mitchell seeks to reduce the number to be completed as much as possible.

Negotiations over the issue will continue over the coming weeks. Netanyahu and Mitchell are to meet in London on August 26 for another round of talks. A highly-placed source in Jerusalem said he expected agreement on the issue at the meeting.

The Americans presented the deposit concept at a meeting in Jerusalem on Friday of representatives of the Middle East Quartet. Mitchell’s deputy, David Hale, said the administration of President Barack Obama is seeking similar promises from the Arab states. Representatives of the European Union, the United Nations and Russia spoke of the need to consider the next stage – the renewal of peace negotiations – in addition to determining a party to mediate between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Hale said public disclosure in the near future of a formula for the next stage would harm negotiations.

On Monday Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, was summoned to the State Department for a reprimand, for the second time in two weeks. This time it was over the eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The State Department called the eviction a provocation that was contrary to the spirit of the road map. At the previous meeting, two weeks ago, State Department officials conveyed to Oren their displeasure over plans to build housing for Jews on the site of the Shepherd Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah.

Israel’s ambassador in Stockholm, Benny Dagan, was also summoned to the Swedish foreign ministry in protest at the evictions of Palestinians. Sweden currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

From Sheikh Jarrah to Sheikh Munis
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, August 6, 2009

At the top of the hill, a few dozen meters from where a house now stands, there used to be an irrigation pool for the village citrus groves. I swim every morning at the municipal swimming pool built on the ruins of the village irrigation pool. Palestinian Jaffa oranges grew in the now-vanished groves. My house stands there now. The land was “redeemed,” as land acquisition was called in Zionist propaganda. In the case of Sheikh Munis, it was redeemed by force, and Tel Aviv’s Ramat Aviv neighborhood was built there, including Tel Aviv University, a magnificent academic institution built on the ruins of a village whose 2,230 inhabitants were surrounded and threatened. They fled, never to return.

All that remains of the large village is Habayit Hayarok (now a conference and party center) another house on Levanon Street and the cemetery, which sits neglected on the outskirts of the parking lot of an intimidating government facility – no outsiders allowed. Of course, there is neither a memorial nor a monument to the village that was wiped off the face of the earth – one of 418.

Somewhere, perhaps in a refugee camp in terrible poverty, lives the family of the farmer who plowed the land where my house now stands. According to the Israeli judicial system, they have the right to get their land back immediately, destroy my house, return and grow Jaffa oranges for export on its ruins, and remove me by force if necessary. The Jerusalem District Court, which recently ruled that representatives of the Sephardi community committee had the right to take back the Hanun and Gawi families’ apartments in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, has opened the 1948 file.
That is, if Israel had an egalitarian system of law and justice, if the legal system were fair, because then millions of Palestinians would be able to applaud the court and demonstrate their joy in the streets at the ruling. The road to justice denied in 1948 has been opened to everyone. From now on, Jews and Arabs will be able to demand the restitution of their property. The return is in the offing, with the backing of the Israeli justice system.

But of course, it’s not like that. The court that sealed the fate of the two Palestinian families and allowed extremist settlers to live in their place has once again laid bare the rule of law’s true state in Israel: racist and applying a double-standard, with separate legal systems for Jews and Arabs.

We should perhaps thank the court for its scandalous ruling, which not only sparked a justifiable international wave of protest against Israel, but also revealed its true face. “There are judges in Jerusalem,” as Menachem Begin said, and they have made it official: apartheid. Ownership rights are for Jews alone.

The distance between Sheikh Jarrah and Sheikh Munis has been shortened in one fell swoop. Those who contend that Jews must be given back their property cannot in the same breath deny the Palestinians’ property rights because of their national origin. It’s true that a system of strict laws and regulations denies the Palestinians what it allows the Jews, but all reasonable Israelis must now ask themselves if this is the system of justice and the law of the “Jewish” state they want to live in.

It is impossible to ignore the injustices of 1948 while hundreds of thousands of refugees rot in the camps. No agreement will hold water without a solution to their plight, which is more feasible than Israel’s strident scaremongers suggest. But rulings like the current one make it harder to distinguish clearly between Sheikh Jarrah and Sheikh Munis, between the conquest of 1948 and the conquests of 1967. My house stands on land stolen by force, and it is the obligation of Israel and the world to redress the injustice without creating injustice and new dislocation. My house stands on land that was stolen, but the whole world has recognized the Jews’ right to establish their state there. At the same time, no country in the world has recognized Israel’s right to conquer Sheikh Jarrah as well.

In my morning musings on the way to the pool, I sometimes think about the land’s original owners. I long for the day when Israel takes moral and material responsibility for the injustice done to them. Now, because of the court ruling, my right to continue to swim here may also be in doubt.

Israel waging war of nerves against Iran and Hezbollah
Amos Harel, Haaretz, August 6, 2009

This week’s reports by The Times of London give the impression that Israel is raising the bar in the war of nerves against Iran and Hezbollah. On Monday the newspaper reported that Iran had completed its nuclear research program, and that its progress toward building a nuclear bomb depends only on the decision of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The following day, it warned of the danger of escalation between Israel and Hezbollah on the Lebanese border.

Both articles were written by the paper’s foreign news editor, Richard Beeston, who was in Israel last week.

The report on Iran’s nuclear program is based on anonymous “Western” intelligence sources. But at a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee briefing on Tuesday, the head of the Military Intelligence research brigade, Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, used almost identical terms to those of The Times.

Iran, Baidatz told the MKs, will soon reach the point where it can “charge forward toward a nuclear weapon.” Beginning in 2011, he said, use of the Iranian nuclear bomb will depend only the decision to deploy it, not on technological factors.

Sources for the newspaper’s report on Israel-Hezbollah tensions are not known. The Times quotes Israel Defense Forces Deputy GOC Northern Command Alon Friedman as saying the northern border could “explode at any minute.”

The timing of the articles implies that someone in Israel’s defense establishment wanted to deliver an explicit, public declaration on both the Iranian and Lebanese fronts. The fact that this source allowed a senior British journalist, to meet with and quote the Northern Command’s number-two officer appears not to have been accidental. Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and other top officers, seldom grant interviews, much less to the foreign press.

Last week, in the wake of the mysterious explosion at a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket storehouse in southern Lebanon, Haaretz reported on rising tensions on the northern border, though both Ashkenazi and Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Ashkenazi rushed to make reassuring statements.

But Friedman’s remarks to The Times are in stark contrast to those of the other top brass. Perhaps Israel has changed tack, or Friedman simply did not receive the army’s talking points before his interview. Or maybe Friedman gave the customary response to his foreign guests – (“Don’t misjudge this quiet, on the other side the enemy is making preparations”), and the visitor interpreted this as an immediate threat.

The possibility of a confrontation with Hezbollah as a direct result of an Israeli strike appears in every Western assessment of potential developments in the region. But The Times also reported on another, aspect of the conflict, one which had already been hinted at in an Israeli newspaper.

Israel has issued several warnings recently to both Syria and Hezbollah against introducing “destabilizing weapons” to Lebanon. The entry of antiaircraft missiles into the country would seem to be a “red line” from Israel’s perspective, one that could lead it into deterrent action against Hezbollah.

But there are two caveats: It will be exceedingly difficult to rally international support for a Third Lebanon War, particularly if it were to erupt over surface-to-air missiles, which are already today deployed in Syria. And if a confrontation erupts between Israel and Iran, Israel is unlikely to ignite a secondary front that would divert resources from the main theater.

Everything related to Iran seems to be related to the wider picture. In recent months Israel has tried to flex its muscles over Iran’s nuclear program. In press briefings IDF officers no longer hesitate to refer explicitly to the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran – a taboo subject for officers until a year ago. Top Air Force officers take pains to stress their pilots’ elevated state of readiness for battle, should the need arise.

And there are still more transparent processes underway. Missile-equipped Navy ships and submarines passed through the Suez Canal several times recently with Egyptian assent in what appears to be an implied threat to Tehran. Every few months, foreign journalists receive leaks on comprehensive long-range aerial exercises.

The backdrop to all of this is the nuclear timetable – Iran’s progress, the deadline for U.S.-Iranian talks and the possibility of heightened international sanctions.

In this light Israel must stress the concreteness of the military option. Washington, which to Jerusalem seems helpess regarding Iran, finds it convenient to cultivate talk of an Israeli strike to pressure Tehran.

But it could be that Israel is indeed accelerating its preparations for a strike, out of a circumspect reading of the situation and a growing belief that Washington will not come to its aid.

A Jeremiad
By Uri Avnery, Gush-Shalom, August 1, 2009

Dear Dov Yermiya,

I have received the distressing letter that you recently sent to a limited number of friends. You paint the Israeli reality in dark – but true – colors, and end by cutting your ties with it.

“Therefore I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel,

“Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it.” [continued…]

Bingo! U.S. donors fund illegal Jewish settlements
By Emily Dische-Becker, Menassat, August 5, 2009

In a pre-dawn raid on Sunday (August 2) Israeli police clad in black riot gear evicted two Palestinian families—53 people in total—from two buildings in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The evictions followed a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court that claimed Jewish families had owned the land before 1948. Two Jewish families moved in immediately after the evictions, on the same site that Israel plans to build a 200-unit settlement.

The evictions were protested by the U.K., U.S. and the United Nations, and came after the US recently also demanded a halt to Israeli construction at the site of the nearby Shepherd Hotel.

According to Haaretz, “U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman summoned Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, to tell him that the United States views Sunday’s eviction of two Palestinian families from homes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood as a ‘provocative’ and ‘unacceptable’ act that violates Israel’s obligations under the road map peace plan.”

Compared to the Bush Administration’s policy towards settlement construction—which was apparently encouraged behind closed doors at the highest levels—President Obama’s approach is seen as “harsh” by the Israeli government and heralded by commentators who wish to see the U.S. broker a two-state solution.

The Obama administration, however, like its predecessors for the past three decades, has turned a blind eye to what makes the building and maintenance of these illegal settlements possible: donations from American charities. [continued…]

Legitimising Lieberman
By Antony Lerman, The Guardian, August 4, 2009

Avigdor Lieberman is no aberration in Israel’s polity. His aggressive rightwing Zionist rhetoric, racist demonisation of Palestinians and Arab-Israelis, shameless political populism and the tide of corruption allegations now close to engulfing him are all depressingly and dangerously familiar features of a broken system. The immigrant from Moldova has brilliantly exploited and contributed to the fracturing of politics in the state – but anyone who thinks his removal from the governmental scene will signal some sea change is sadly mistaken. The trends Lieberman represents and epitomises are deeply ingrained. Netanyahu is midwife and child of them, too.

There is speculation that were Lieberman to resign as foreign minister if indicted – as he has said he would – this would give the prime minister the opportunity of replacing the Yisrael Beiteinu party in the coalition with Tzipi Livni’s Kadima. But it is not as if Israeli democracy will suddenly return to normal if Lieberman and his party are forced out of government. Nor will Netanyahu miraculously reveal himself as having wanted to accede to President Obama’s demand that Israel halt all new construction of and in Jewish settlements all along. [continued…]

Hiroshima Day: America has been asleep at the wheel for 64 years

Hiroshima Day: America has been asleep at the wheel for 64 years
By Daniel Ellsberg, Truthdig, August 5, 2009

It was a hot August day in Detroit. I was standing on a street corner downtown, looking at the front page of The Detroit News in a news rack. I remember a streetcar rattling by on the tracks as I read the headline: A single American bomb had destroyed a Japanese city. My first thought was that I knew exactly what that bomb was. It was the U-235 bomb we had discussed in school and written papers about, the previous fall.

I thought: “We got it first. And we used it. On a city.”

I had a sense of dread, a feeling that something very ominous for humanity had just happened. A feeling, new to me as an American, at 14, that my country might have made a terrible mistake. I was glad when the war ended nine days later, but it didn’t make me think that my first reaction on Aug. 6 was wrong. [continued…]

Thoughts on Western Jihad

Our suicide bombers
By John Feffer, TomDispatch, August 5, 2009

The actor Will Smith is no one’s image of a suicide bomber. With his boyish face, he has often played comic roles. Even as the last man on earth in I Am Legend, he retains a wise-cracking, ironic demeanor. And yet, surrounded by a horde of hyperactive vampires at the end of that film, Smith clasps a live grenade to his chest and throws himself at the enemy in a final burst of heroic sacrifice.

Wait a second: surely that wasn’t a suicide bombing. Will Smith wasn’t reciting suras from the Koran. He wasn’t sporting one of those rising sun headbands that the Japanese kamikaze wore for their suicide missions. He wasn’t playing a religious fanatic or a political extremist. Will Smith was the hero of the film. So how could he be a suicide bomber? After all, he’s one of us, isn’t he?

As it happens, we have our suicide bombers too. “We” are the powerful, developed countries, the ones with an overriding concern for individual liberties and individual lives. “We” form a moral archipelago that encompasses the United States, Europe, Israel, present-day Japan, and occasionally Russia. Whether in real war stories or inspiring vignettes served up in fiction and movies, our lore is full of heroes who sacrifice themselves for motherland, democracy, or simply their band of brothers. Admittedly, these men weren’t expecting 72 virgins in paradise and they didn’t make film records of their last moments, but our suicidal heroes generally have received just as much praise and recognition as “their” martyrs. [continued…]

Time’s running out for Obama in Iran

Time’s running out for Obama in Iran
By Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, August 3, 2009

Barack Obama’s policy of engagement with Iran – the “unclenched fist” of his January inaugural address – has about 60 days left to run. If Tehran does not respond positively and credibly to his offer of dialogue on nuclear and regional issues by the end of September, all bets are off. At that point, US and European officials say, a new international coalition will set to work on possibly the toughest sanctions imposed on a single country since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The threat of punitive sanctions, with or perhaps without UN security council blessing, is designed to concentrate minds in Tehran distracted by the divisive aftermath of June’s presidential election. But it also serves to discourage the Israelis – at least for now – from taking matters into their own hands by launching a unilateral military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel’s leaders do not believe dialogue or sanctions will work. But they calculate cynically that they must give Obama’s diplomacy a chance to fail. [continued…]

A weakened Ahmadinejad sworn in for a second term
By Tony Karon, Time, August 5, 2009

The failure of the regime to quiet the streets and to close ranks behind Khamenei in his endorsement of a second Ahmadinejad term is without precedent in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history. As leading U.S.-based Iran scholar Farideh Farhi told the Council on Foreign Relations, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad had assumed that “if they use a sufficient amount of violence, they can put an end to the popular anger that has been generated. [Instead], they continue to be surprised by the resistance that is being shown — not only by major players in Iranian politics, but the people of Iran as well. This dissatisfaction has been growing since the election.”

Where the battle lines within the regime initially appeared to be relatively clear-cut — Ahmadinejad, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards on one side, facing off against a coalition of conservative pragmatists and reformists on the other, with each side claiming some support from within the clergy — the picture has grown murkier over the eight weeks of crisis. A number of figures in the conservative clerical and political establishment have begun to question the authorities’ handling of the election’s aftermath, particularly the crackdown on dissent. And there are clear signs from within the conservative clergy that some feared Ahmadinejad and the security establishment were usurping some of the traditional prerogatives of the clerical ruling class. [continued…]

Waiting for Maziar
By Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, August 4, 2009

Paola Gourley, 40, does not want to know whether the baby she’s carrying will be a boy or a girl. At least, not yet. The father, Maziar Bahari, 42, is in prison in Iran, where he has been held without access to a lawyer or any chance to see his family since June 21. Paola, an Italian-English lawyer working in London, has no idea how much longer Maziar will be kept from her, and this is the first child for both of them. So when sonograms show the gender of their baby, she says she will put the results in an envelope and seal it, hoping that Maziar will be freed soon and they can look at the results together. But in the back of Paola’s mind, there is a growing fear that their baby will be born in November and Maziar will still be in prison.

“I try to keep positive, but that’s my biggest fear, that this is going to be a long-term thing,” she told me from London on Tuesday. “I just hope that the people holding Maziar realize just how unfair it is, and that they release him soon. I am petrified that they will use him as a scapegoat and keep him in jail, and that he won’t be with me when the baby is born. It makes me desperately sad.” [continued…]

Blackwater founder implicated in murder

Blackwater founder implicated in murder
By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation, August 4, 2009

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting “illegal” or “unlawful” weapons into the country on Prince’s private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety. [continued…]

Forecasts of West Bank violence may well come true

Forecasts of West Bank violence may well come true
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, August 5, 2009

Last weekend the State of Israel discovered the “other” West Bank. With suspicious timing, almost all the Israeli media devoted broad coverage to the improvement in the living conditions of the Palestinians in the West Bank, the increased freedom of movement permitted by Israel, the law and order that have returned to Palestinian cities and the momentum of construction and development – the new malls, the shows, the cafes.

We hate to admit it, but the Palestinian Authority, as opposed to Israel, is keeping to the requirements of the road map and is operating against the “terror infrastructure.” In the past, one of the easiest tasks for a journalist in the territories was interviewing armed men. Today they cannot be found in the West Bank cities. The government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad disbanded Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and the services subordinate to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas are fighting an all-out war against the armed men of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

It’s true that the West Bank has never been so quiet. But we must make no mistake; the situation remains fragile. In the opinion of many senior members of Fatah, in light of the dead end that characterizes the diplomatic contacts, the next explosion between Israel and the Palestinians is only a matter of time.

Although the PA has succeeded in improving the quality of life of West Bank residents, the Palestinians are still living under occupation. Although many of the checkpoints have been removed, there are enough surprise checkpoints and various obstacles that undermine freedom of movement; the Israel Defense Forces rarely operates in the Palestinian cities, but does so occasionally, and, above all, the PA and Fatah are forced to deal with their image as collaborators, without any diplomatic compensation from the Israeli side.

This time it probably won’t be an intifada-style popular uprising. The Palestinian public seems to be too tired for that. But from within Fatah there is a growing number of rebellious voices, calling to use weapons against the settlers and IDF soldiers.

Activists who were at the center of the last intifada and were pushed to the margins of the political arena are warning that turning the PA into the “Dayton Authority” (named after the U.S. security coordinator Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, who is helping to rehabilitate the Palestinian security forces) will not help Fatah to improve its status in the street. In the final analysis, they claim, the diplomatic crisis vis-a-vis Israel will lead to a renewal of terror attacks in the West Bankand to the formation of armed cells who will operate clandestinely.

The forecast of Hussam Khader, a leader of the Tanzim Fatah faction and one of the prominent figures in the last intifada, is even more pessimistic. He says the diplomatic freeze will lead to the removal of
the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, the strengthening of the Islamic extremists, and within about a year, a violent conflict. “The residents will throw shoes at the PA. A day will come and they will be regarded like Lahoud’s men [a reference to the commander of the South Lebanon Army],” Khader says. “It’s possible that we are marching toward a situation in which there will be two separate Palestinian entities, in the West Bank and in Gaza, but Israel must help to prove that the situation in the West Bank is better.”

Such claims are being heard with increasing frequency on the backdrop of the sixth Fatah convention in Bethlehem, at which the leadership of the organization will be elected for the first time in 20 years. The candidates know that one surefire way to win the support of conference delegates is to speak in praise of the armed struggle. If the Israeli government continues to entrench itself in its position that there is no Palestinian partner, and that this is not the time to discuss a peace agreement, it is quite possible the forecasts of a violent outbreak will, in fact, come true.

Free marriage counseling
By Tom Friedman, New York Times, August 2, 2009

Here’s what Israelis need to understand: President Obama is not some outlier when it comes to Israel. His call for a settlements freeze reflects attitudes that have been building in America for a long time. For the last 40 years, a succession of Israeli governments has misled, manipulated or persuaded naïve U.S. presidents that since Israel was negotiating to give up significant territory, there was no need to fight over “insignificant” settlements on some territory. Behind this charade, Israeli settlers bit off more and more of the West Bank, creating a huge moral, security and economic burden for Israel and its friends.

As Bradley Burston, a columnist for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, put it last week: “The settlement movement has cost Israel some $100 billion. … The double standard which for decades has favored settlers with inexpensive housing, heavily subsidized social services, and blind-eye building permits has long been accompanied by a kid-gloves approach regarding settler violence against Palestinians and their property. … Settlers and settlement planners have covertly bent and distorted zoning procedures, military directives, and government decrees in order to boost settlement, block Palestinian construction, agriculture, and access to employment, and effectively neutralize measures intended to foster Israeli-Palestinian peace progress.”

For years, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the pro-Israel lobby, rather than urging Israel to halt this corrosive process, used their influence to mindlessly protect Israel from U.S. pressure on this issue and to dissuade American officials and diplomats from speaking out against settlements. Everyone in Washington knows this, and a lot of people — people who care about Israel — are sick of it. [continued…]

Israel targets human rights groups
By Jonathan Cook, The National, August 3, 2009

In a bid to staunch the flow of damaging evidence of war crimes committed during Israel’s winter assault on Gaza, the Israeli government has launched a campaign to clamp down on human rights groups, both in Israel and abroad.

It has begun by targeting one of the world’s leading rights organisations, the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), as well as a local group of dissident army veterans, Breaking the Silence, which last month published the testimonies of 26 combat soldiers who served in Gaza.

Additionally, according to the Israeli media, the government is planning a “much more aggressive stance” towards human rights groups working to help the Palestinians. [continued…]

Haaretz website and malicious advertising

As a service to readers of War in Context, I will no longer be linking to the Haaretz English website until its operators get their act together and figure out how to block malicious advertising. Until such a time I will post interesting Haaretz articles in their entirety and would encourage other website operators to do the same.

Fatah conference aims to boost its radical credentials

Fatah conference aims to boost its radical credentials
By Tony Karon, Time, August 4, 2009

While much of the younger generation of Fatah — and many of its leaders who remain in exile — are contemptuous of the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, to which they attribute their movement’s political demise, they don’t plan to try and unseat him just yet. Instead, they’ll seek to tie his hands. But there is a move afoot at the conference to take down Abbas’s national security adviser, the Bush Administration-favorite strongman Mohammed Dahlan. The conference will hear proposals for an investigation into the events that saw Hamas eject Fatah forces and take control of Gaza by force in 2007 — with many blaming Dahlan for having at least partly provoked the takeover. Demanding an inquiry and targeting one of his key allies is seen as another means of weakening Abbas’ authority. A second target will be Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a political independent appointed by Abbas at Washington’s behest, although over strong opposition from both Hamas and Fatah. [continued…]

Fateh conference update #2
By Helena Cobban, Just World News, August 3, 2009

[A report in Al-Quds al-Arabi] says that reliable Fateh sources in Bethlehem say there are some Gaza-origined Fateh people now in Bethlehem/ the West Bank who are credentialed for the conference– and they spell out that this is a reference to Muhammad Dahlan and his supporters– but who are afraid that if the conference goes ahead they could be called to account for the disastrous failure Fateh suffered at the hands of Hamas in Gaza in June 2007… and that if this looks likely to happen, the Dahlan group would prefer to call the conference off on the pretext of the non-attendance of the delegates who are still resident in Gaza, rather than go ahead with it…

Yes, wheels within wheels within wheels there. I guess that’s what happens when you try to run a political “movement” that has no functioning mechanisms of internal accountability except the sloshing around of huge amounts of US-mobilized money. [continued…]

Hamas again accepts a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines
By Amjad Atallah, The Washington Note, August 3, 2009

Meshaal seems to be indicating that Hamas now endorses the US attempt to negotiate an end to the occupation.

In the past, Hamas’ position has been that that they would allow President Abbas, as leader of the PLO, to negotiate while they remained the pious opposition, undoubtedly back-biting his attempts to conclude an agreement and presenting the results as a sell-out. It was politics at its most cynical. But in Friday’s WSJ piece, Meshaal is quoted saying “Hamas and other Palestinian groups are ready to cooperate with any American, international or regional effort to find a just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, to end the Israeli occupation and to grant the Palestinian people their right of self-determination.”

If Meshaal is truly speaking on behalf of all of Hamas (and Hamas is much better at speaking with a unified voice than most Palestinian parties), then he is actually endorsing President Obama’s efforts to quickly negotiate an end to the conflict and is offering Hamas “cooperation” in that regard. [continued…]

Palestinian economy isn’t recovering thanks to Israel, but in spite of it
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, August 4, 2009

The Palestinian economy is not recovering thanks to Israel, but in spite of it.

Although the Shin Bet security services and the Israel Defense Forces agreed to ease pressure on the population, most of the internal checkpoints that Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered removed at the request of U.S. President Barack Obama administration, had already been slated for removal by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in response to pressure from former U.S. president George W. Bush.

In addition, according to the current report of the International Monetary Fund, Netanyahu was somewhat hasty in flaunting the success of his economic peace. The fund’s headquarters in the territories predicted that 2009 would end with 7 percent growth (not 10 percent), a statistic that will, for the first time in three years, represent a substantial improvement in the standard of living.

However, the IMF says that if Israel does not continue to remove the restrictions on internal trade, the gross domestic product per capita will decline later in the year. Incidentally, according to the report the unemployment rate still stands at an extremely high 20 percent (less than Gaza’s 34 percent). [continued…]

Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in our world

Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in our world
By Frida Berrigan, TomDispatch, August 3, 2009

In Hiroshima, Little Boy’s huge fireball and explosion killed 70,000 to 80,000 people instantly. Another 70,000 were seriously injured. As Joseph Siracusa, author of Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction, writes: “In one terrible moment, 60% of Hiroshima… was destroyed. The blast temperature was estimated to reach over a million degrees Celsius, which ignited the surrounding air, forming a fireball some 840 feet in diameter.”

Three days later, Fat Man exploded 1,840 feet above Nagasaki, with the force of 22,000 tons of TNT. According to “Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered,” a web resource on the bombings developed for young people and educators, 286,000 people lived in Nagasaki before the bomb was dropped; 74,000 of them were killed instantly and another 75,000 were seriously injured.

In addition to those who died immediately, or soon after the bombings, tens of thousands more would succumb to radiation sickness and other radiation-induced maladies in the months, and then years, that followed.

In an article written while he was teaching math at Tufts University in 1983, Tadatoshi Akiba calculated that, by 1950, another 200,000 people had died as a result of the Hiroshima bomb, and 140,000 more were dead in Nagasaki. Dr. Akiba was later elected mayor of Hiroshima and became an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament. [continued…]

Iran is ready to build an N-bomb – it is just waiting for the Ayatollah’s order

Iran is ready to build an N-bomb – it is just waiting for the Ayatollah’s order
By James Hider, Richard Beeston and Michael Evans, The Times, August 3, 2009

Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb, Western intelligence sources have told The Times.

The sources said that Iran completed a research programme to create weaponised uranium in the summer of 2003 and that it could feasibly make a bomb within a year of an order from its Supreme Leader.

A US National Intelligence Estimate two years ago concluded that Iran had ended its nuclear arms research programme in 2003 because of the threat from the American invasion of Iraq. But intelligence sources have told The Times that Tehran had halted the research because it had achieved its aim — to find a way of detonating a warhead that could be launched on its long-range Shehab-3 missiles.

They said that, should Ayatollah Khamenei approve the building of a nuclear device, it would take six months to enrich enough uranium and another six months to assemble the warhead. [continued…]

There’s still a war in Iraq. It isn’t ours

There’s still a war in Iraq. It isn’t ours
By Greg Jaffe, Washington Post, August 2, 2009

The Iraq war is over — for us.

That doesn’t mean that the United States won or achieved all of its aims or that fighting among Iraqis will stop. It doesn’t mean that Iraq is stable, democratic and relatively free of corruption.

The war is over for the United States because the Iraqis don’t really need or want American forces around anymore. Every time U.S. troops roll out of the gate with their Iraqi counterparts in Baghdad, they discredit the Iraqi forces in the eyes of their people. They make their Iraqi partners’ jobs harder. Although senior U.S. commanders understand and accept this fact privately, they will never admit it. [continued…]

Iraqi army officers pulled $4.8-million bank heist, police say
By Liz Sly, Los Angeles Times, August 3, 2009

When thieves shot dead eight guards and made off with $4.8 million in one of Iraq’s biggest-ever bank heists last week, fingers quickly pointed at the Sunni-led insurgency.

Extremists must be turning to crime to finance their activities, so the hypothesis went, and $4.8 million would pay for a lot of bombs.

But after a series of arrests and a sweep of a government compound, Iraqi police say the culprits were Iraqi army officers attached to the elite unit guarding Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi. [continued…]

Allegations that Britain colluded in torture of terror suspects reach European court

Allegations that Britain colluded in torture of terror suspects reach European court
By Ian Cobain, The Guardian, August 2, 2009

Amin says that he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep and threatened with an electric drill while being asked questions that would subsequently be put to him again during non-violent interviews by two MI5 officers. Before Amin went on trial, the judge ruled that his conditions in ISI custody had been “physically oppressive” but that he had exaggerated his mistreatment and that it fell short of torture.

Since then, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based NGO, has spoken to a number of Pakistani intelligence officers who they say corroborated the accounts of torture given by several British citizens alleging UK complicity.

In the case of Amin, according to HRW, the Pakistani sources said his account was “essentially accurate”, adding that it was a “high-pressure” case and the desire for information on the part of both British and American authorities was “insatiable”. HRW add that their sources say British intelligence officials were “perfectly aware that we were using all means possible to extract information from him and were grateful that we were doing so”. [continued…]