Ex-Powell aide suggests CIA assassination program was actually active
By David Edwards, Raw Story, July 15, 2009

The secret CIA program allegedly aimed at assassinating suspected terrorists abroad has raised the eyebrows of at least one former senior Bush Administration official who hints that the program may have actually gone into effect, despite the denials of the agency and congressional staff who have been briefed.

The aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, was chief of staff to Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell. He says he heard “echoes” of the program from US ambassadors abroad, who informed him that clandestine military teams were being dispatched to their countries. [continued…]

CIA assassin program was nearing new phase
By Joby Warrick, Washington Post, July 16, 2009

CIA officials were proposing to activate a plan to train anti-terrorist assassination teams overseas when agency managers brought the secret program to the attention of CIA Director Leon Panetta last month, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The plan to kill top al-Qaeda leaders, which had been on the agency’s back burner for much of the past eight years, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of proposals to initiate what one intelligence official called a “somewhat more operational phase.” Shortly after learning of the plan, Panetta terminated the program and then went to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers, who had been kept in the dark since 2001.

The Obama administration’s top intelligence official, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, yesterday defended Panetta’s decision to cancel the program, which he said had raised serious questions among intelligence officials about its “effectiveness, maturity and the level of control.” [continued…]

Our sons are lying again
By Larry Derfner, Jerusalem Post, July 15, 2009

First we saw the destruction of Gaza on TV, then we heard about it from Palestinians, then from journalists (mainly foreign), then from the world’s leading human rights organizations. We didn’t believe it, or we found ways to justify it, but at any rate, we, the Israeli public, made sure the images and words went in one ear and out the other.

Then in March some of our own boys, IDF soldiers, talked about it – the orders that amounted to “when in doubt, shoot,” the sniggering contempt for Palestinian life and property, the exhortations to holy war from IDF rabbis. That seemed to make a small dent in our consciousness for a couple days. But then the IDF conducted its brief, naturally closed investigation, announced that the stories were all hearsay and rumor, there was nothing to the accounts of an old woman and a mother getting shot deliberately, nothing to worry about, you can all go back to sleep now, and, of course, we did.

Now comes “Breaking the Silence,” an organization of IDF combat reservists, with the testimonies of 26 soldiers who served in Operation Cast Lead, and the stories are very, very familiar, only they’re much more detailed than what we’ve heard before. Over 100 pages of testimony about the extraordinary scale of destruction (“like in those World War II films where nothing remained”); the vandalism (“In one house we entered I saw guys had defecated in drawers”); the shoot-’em-up spirit (“The atmosphere was not one of fear but rather people too eager to shoot other people”); the elastic definition of “legitimate target” (“suspects, lookouts, people standing on roofs and looking towards our forces, making suspect movements on the roof, bending down, looking out beyond the rim”); the firing of napalm-like white phosphorous in thickly-populated areas; the killings of unarmed civilians in no-go zones; the rabbis’ anti-Arab pep talks; and much, much more. [continued…]

New testimony from Gaza
By Gershom Gorenberg, The American Prospect, July 15, 2009

“We didn’t see a single house that was not hit. The entire infrastructure, tracks, fields, roads — was in total ruin,” an anonymous soldier says, describing his days in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli incursion last winter. “Nothing much was left in our designated area … A totally destroyed city … The few houses that were still inhabitable were taken by the army … there were lots of abandoned, miserable animals.” The destruction continued daily, he testifies, though Palestinians — fighters and civilians — had fled the area.

So much lay in ruins, says another Israeli soldier, that it was hard to navigate. “I entered Al Atatra [in the northern Gaza Strip] after seeing aerial photos and didn’t identify anything … I remembered that 200 meters further on down the track there should be a junction, with two large houses at the corners, and there wasn’t. I remembered there was supposed to be a square with a Hamas memorial … and there wasn’t. There was rubble, broken blocks.” Later, he says, he was in an operations room where soldiers were directing air strikes. Landmarks that were supposed to serve the pilots as reference points had already been destroyed, he says, making it harder to direct the planes, more likely that they would hit the wrong building. [continued…]

Viva Palestina convoy of US activists breaks the siege of Gaza
By Adam Horowitz, Mondoweiss, July 15, 2009

Viva Palestina, a convoy of US human rights activists has entered Gaza with truckloads of humanitarian aid. The delegation has over 200 people, and is a follow up trip to one led by British MP George Galloway last March. This delegation includes Vietnam vet Ron Kovic, New York City Council member Charles Barron and Cynthia McKinney.

Details are still unclear on how much aid got in. Although Viva Palestina’s website reports that they had over “over one million dollars worth of aide” to bring in, Egypt may not have allowed all of it to enter. As has happened on other delegations to Gaza, Egypt created serious obstacles for the convoy as it attempted to enter Gaza, but they got through. [continued…]

Ex-U.S. diplomat talks with Hamas
By Howard Schneider and Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, July 16, 2009

To Hamas officials Bassem Naim and Mahmoud al-Zahar, a recent meeting in Switzerland with a former senior U.S. diplomat represented an opening in relations with the Obama administration, and a path to easing the Islamist group’s isolation.

“I hope it will be the beginning of addressing some of the mistakes of the last three years,” Naim said of his talks with Thomas R. Pickering, a former undersecretary of state and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “This was a first meeting to investigate the positions in general terms of both parties without any commitment on any side.”

U.S. officials say they see the previously undisclosed June meeting between Pickering and the two senior Hamas officials differently. They said Pickering had not been asked to approach Hamas and had no official standing; U.S. officials learned of the meeting only afterward. Policy toward the Islamist group, they said, remains what it was under President George W. Bush: that Hamas is a terrorist organization with which the United States will not even sanction a meeting. [continued…]

Why Palestinian leaders have banned Al Jazeera
By Ilene R. Prusher, Christian Science Monitor, July 15, 2009

The Palestinian Authority (PA) on Wednesday banned Al Jazeera television from operating in its territory and threatened to take legal action against the Qatar-based Arabic satellite channel because of allegations it made against President Mahmoud Abbas.

Al Jazeera ran an interview a day earlier in which Farouk Kaddoumi, a senior leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), charged that Mr. Abbas conspired with Israel in 2003 to kill Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Mr. Arafat died in November 2004 after being sent abroad for medical treatment. No cause was disclosed, and Palestinian political circuits have since been rife with gossip over possible foul play.

Al Jazeera said it was “stunned” by the PA’s action, noting that several other outlets had carried the story – based on a press conference called by Mr. Kaddoumi, who lives in Jordan. [continued…]

The end of political Islam?
By Nathan Field, World Politics Review, July 15, 2009

Is the long-predicted decline of Political Islam about to occur?

Several French scholars, such as Gilles Keppel and Olivier Roy, have been making this argument since the early 1990s. The only trouble was a subsequent string of Islamist electoral victories that seemed to undermine their thesis.

But in light of Islamist losses in recent elections in Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Bahrain, talk of the decline of Political Islam is reemerging. Influential Washington Post journalist David Ignatius recently wrote of a region-wide, anti-Islamist backlash whose central theme, according to a specialist he cited from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, is that “the Muslim parties have failed to convince the public that they have any more answers than anyone else.”

The sentiment is hardly confined to Washington. The June 30 episode of the popular Al-Jazeera political talk show, the Opposite Direction, debated the question, “Has political Islam begun to decline?”

So has it? Clearly, Islamists are not winning elections. This does not, however, mean a decline of Political Islam, let alone Islamism as a broader movement. First, given the authoritarian nature of Arab political systems, official election results are not necessarily accurate or even meaningful measures of the influence of Islamist groups. [continued…]

Advert ‘implied Gaza in Israel’
BBC, July 15, 2009

An Israeli tourism advert that showed the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as an undisputed part of Israel has been rejected by the advertising watchdog.

The posters, on the London Underground, sparked hundreds of complaints from pro-Palestinian groups and members of the public.

The Advertising Standards Authority said a map labelled Israel implied the occupied territories were in Israel. [continued…]

Britain must tell Obama: the alliance of denial has to end
By Simon Jenkins, Huffington Post, July 15, 2009

Diplomacy, your hour has come. There is no way soldiers will find an exit from Afghanistan. They can deliver defeat or they can deliver bloody stalemate. They cannot deliver victory and every observer knows it. This conflict will end only when the courage being daily demanded of soldiers is also shown by politicians.

Those who said that sending an army to Afghanistan was madness can collect their winnings and go. But diplomacy is a relativist ethic. Its practitioners cannot say “do not start from here.” They must face the fact that Barrack Obama and Gordon Brown are entangled in a mess from which there is no easy release.

Obama made a serious error on coming to power. To honor his pledge to disown Iraq he felt obliged to “adopt” Afghanistan. What had begun as a punitive raid on the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden morphed into a neo-con campaign of regime change, counter-insurgency and nation-building. Obama rashly identified himself with this crusade and thus leapt from the frying pan of Iraq into the fire of the Hindu Kush. [continued…]

Gaza invasion: ‘If you’re not sure – kill’
By Oakland Ross, Toronto Star, July 15, 2009

Israeli soldiers who invaded the Gaza Strip in January received no clear rules of engagement and operated with a shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality that significantly increased the danger to civilians.

“If you’re not sure – kill,” confessed one of the soldiers who gave his testimony anonymously to an Israeli organization that gathers front-line reports from Israeli soldiers. “The firepower was insane. We went in, and the booms were just mad. The minute we got to our starting line, we simply began firing at suspect places. In urban warfare, everyone is your enemy. No innocents. It was simply urban warfare in every way.” [continued…]

Despite Jewish concerns, Obama keeps up pressure on Israel
By Tony Karon, Time, July 14, 2009

Whether or not Obama suffers any domestic political cost for putting pressure on Israel remains to be seen — he won three-quarters of the Jewish vote in last year’s election, and he has good reason to believe he can retain most of that support even if he prods Israel on issues like settlements. After all, the settlements are not fundamental to Israel’s security, to which Obama constantly reiterates his rock-solid commitment. (Watch a video about Israel’s lonesome doves.)

But Obama may be understating the extent of pressure that will be required to bring about a two-state solution to the conflict. The settlement freeze that he has demanded of Israel, for example, is simply a confidence-building mechanism aimed at securing new gestures from Israel’s Arab neighbors and helping restart negotiations. But Israel’s government has pushed back hard, rejecting the principle of a total settlement freeze and insisting on completing some 2,500 housing units currently under construction, excluding East Jerusalem from the freeze, and making it conditional. And Arab governments are reluctant to be seen to offer new “rewards” — such as allowing the opening of diplomatic facilities or overflight rights for commercial aircraft — in return for Israel’s simply complying with its obligations under the 2003 “road map” for peace. Each side seems to doubt the seriousness of the other, and each will cite the other’s reluctance to move forward as a reason to hold back themselves. [continued…]

Netanyahu’s substitute for sovereignty
By Jonathan Cook, The National, July 15, 2009

The most obvious change in Jenin is to the refugee camp, which is no longer the devastated space of a few years ago. It has been rebuilt with funds from the Gulf, though the Israeli army insisted on planning constraints: the roads are wide enough for a tank to navigate them.

If few of Jenin’s inhabitants question the financial benefits of Israel’s more liberal policy, there is a widespread belief that “economic peace” is being tailor-made for Israel’s benefit in much the same manner as the rebuilt camp.

“If Netanyahu thinks we’ll be satisfied with a few more Israeli shoppers, he’s kidding himself,” said Mohammed Larool, a melon seller. “Our rights as a nation are more important than my selling a few extra melons.” [continued…]

CIA hit teams
By Philip Giraldi, The American Conservative, July 14, 2009

My sources are telling me that the secret CIA program involving a Dick Cheney coverup that is currently in the news consisted of dispatching assassination teams to various countries to kill individuals who were known to be al-Qaeda supporters but who, for various reasons, had not been detained by the governments of the countries in which they were residing. A number of those being targeted were living freely in Latin America, Africa, and Europe. The assassins were to be drawn from CIA’s own special ops group and also from delta force. They would enter the target countries as businessmen on false passports, some of which would be non-American, obtain weapons sent ahead through the diplomatic pouch to the US Embassy, kill the target, turn the weapons back over to an embassy contact, and leave the country. The program used delta soldiers initially because CIA SOG was fully engaged in Afghanistan. The first hit attempt was in Kenya, was botched, and the deltas had to be bailed out by the Ambassador who had not been briefed on what was going on under his nose. The program was suspended after that but never quite terminated. [continued…]

Should Obama talk to Ahmadinejad?
By Reza Aslan, Christian Science Monitor, July 14, 2009

The quelling of dramatic public protests in Iran may cause some to despair over the prospects for achieving real social and political change there. But even with another term in office, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the revolutionary regime itself have been permanently altered by June’s uprising.

The emergence of a mass protest movement, reminiscent of the 1979 revolution that brought down the shah, is a signal that Iran will never be the same again. That is why robust engagement with Tehran, as President Obama has promised to pursue, remains essential not only in transforming Western-Iranian relations, but also in transforming Iran itself.

Some observers argue that the price of Mr. Obama’s recent overtures toward Iran has been an Ahmedinejad victory, and that any form of engagement with an Ahmedimejad regime would be tantamount to validating a stolen election, not to mention a slap in the face of a mass movement for democracy in Iran. [continued…]

“Women commandos” in Iran
By Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation, July 13, 2009

On Monday, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington assembled an all-star panel of analysts for perspective on the role of women in the recent Iran election and post-election upheaval.

Among the participants: Pari Esfandiari of IranDokht.com, a web site that describes itself as “an online media platform that connects the global community to Iranian women”; Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of Iran’s parliament (2000-2004); Nayereh Tohidi, a Cal State professor; Norma Moruzzi, a professor from the University of Illinois, Chicago; and Jaleh Lackner-Gohari, from Vienna, a physician, activist, and vice president of innerChange Associates.

The moderator was Haleh Esfandiari of the Wilson Center, whose 2007 arrest in Iran made headlines around the world. So strong is the women’s movement that a web site linked to Iran’s intelligence ministry has begun referring to “woman commandos” in describing post-election protests, according to Haleh Esfandiari, who added that there are reports that Zahra Rahnavard, Mir Hossein Mousavi’s well-known activist wife, is the leading voice behind the scenes urging Mousavi not to accede to pressure to halt his campaign against the election results. (So well known is Zahra Rahnavard that, when Mousavi became prime minister in the 1980s it was said in Iran that “Rahnavard’s husband was named prime minister.”) [continued…]

Iraqis have told U.S. military no patrols permitted in Baghdad
By Mike Tharp, McClatchy, July 14, 2009

Two weeks after U.S. combat troops withdrew from Iraq’s major cities, amid sporadic outbreaks of violence countrywide, Iraqi authorities aren’t asking American forces for help. Although U.S. troops are “just a radio call away,” in Baghdad and five other major urban areas, it appears the Iraqis haven’t asked even once.

In Baghdad, the Iraqis also won’t allow U.S. forces on the street, except for supply convoys.

The failure to trigger the “Onstar option” suggests that the government of Iraq and its military think that they can deal with the car bombings, homemade bombs and attacks with silencer-equipped handguns that have plagued parts of the country in recent days.

As the June 30 deadline approached for withdrawing troops from major cities, U.S. military officials told their Iraqi army and national police allies that they were “just a radio call away” in case they needed American military muscle.

So far, however, it isn’t clear whether there’s been a call. McClatchy special correspondents in Najaf, Basra, Anbar, Diyala and Mosul report that Iraqi forces have made no requests for U.S. combat help. [continued…]

Will Iraq be a global gas pump?
By Michael Klare, TomDispatch, July 14, 2009

Has it all come to this? The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse? In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in: a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet? Will it all end not with a bang, but with a gusher? The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq’s fate.

For modern Iraq, oil has always been at the heart of everything. Its very existence as a unified state is largely the product of oil.

In 1920, under the aegis of the League of Nations, Britain cobbled together the Kingdom of Iraq from the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul in order to better exploit the holdings of the Turkish Petroleum Company, forerunner of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). Later, Iraqi nationalists and the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein nationalized the IPC, provoking unrelenting British and American hostility. Hussein rewarded his Sunni allies in the Baath Party by giving them lucrative positions in the state company, part of a process that produced a dangerous rift with the country’s Shiite majority. And these are but a few of the ways in which modern Iraqi history has been governed by oil.

Iraq is, of course, one of the world’s great hydrocarbon preserves. According to oil giant BP, it harbors proven oil reserves of 115 billion barrels — more than any country except Saudi Arabia (with 264 billion barrels) and Iran (with 138 billion). Many analysts, however, believe that Iraq has been inadequately explored, and that the utilization of modern search technologies will yield additional reserves in the range of 45 to 100 billion barrels. If all its reserves, known and suspected, were developed to their full potential, Iraq could add as much as six to eight million barrels per day to international output, postponing the inevitable arrival of peak oil and a contraction in global energy supplies. [continued…]

Once labeled an AIPAC spy, Larry Franklin tells his story
By Nathan Guttman, The Forward, July 1, 2009

Bound until recently by a plea agreement that barred him from speaking to the press, Franklin has refrained until now from telling his side of the story. But in the Washington office of his attorney, Plato Cacheris, Franklin seemed eager to share his experience. Cacheris, who took on Franklin’s case pro bono, intervened time and again to warn his client against revealing information that is either classified or under a seal imposed by the court. Franklin was quick to agree, calling Cacheris his “angel” who saved him from prison.

In exchange for his cooperation with federal prosecutors, Franklin was initially sentenced to 12.5 years in prison as part of his plea agreement. But before entering his plea in 2005, he was approached by two people who suggested he fake his suicide and disappear to avoid testifying in court. At the request of the FBI, to which he immediately reported the encounter, Franklin had several follow-up conversations on the phone with one of them. “I thought I was in a movie,” Franklin said of the episode. Details of the event are still under court seal, and Franklin declined to identify the individuals who approached him or to offer further details. [continued…]

Advisor to Iran supreme leader calls for tolerance of dissent
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, July 12, 2009

A top advisor to Iran’s supreme leader Saturday urged the country’s establishment to be more tolerant of dissent, even as military officials stepped up their rhetoric in the latest signs of divisions created by the marred reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad one month ago.

Mohammad Mohammadian, a midranking cleric who heads Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office of university affairs, acknowledged the simmering discontent over the vote, which sparked massive protests and a violent crackdown last month.

“We cannot order public opinion to get convinced,” Mohammadian said, according to the Mehr news agency. “Certain individuals are suspicious about the election result, and we have to shed light on the realities and respond to their questions.”

Providing an unyielding counterpoint, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firoozabadi, the armed forces chief of staff, issued warnings against protests.

“God has chosen us in military uniform to sacrifice our lives against the enemies,” he said, according to the Iranian Students News Agency, or ISNA. “Certain individuals and groups imagine that we will back down if they shout slogans against us. We have come to die, and we have proved our determination during the war with Iraq.” [continued…]

Inside the Iranian crackdown
By Farnaz Fassihi, Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2009

Before the election, Mr. Moradani [a midranking Basij member] campaigned for Mr. Ahmadinejad. He printed campaign posters and pasted them on walls. The day after the vote, with his candidate declared the winner, Mr. Moradani bought a box of chocolate cupcakes and drove his motorcycle to one of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s campaign offices to celebrate.

A few hours later, he recalls, he was shocked to see demonstrators filling the streets. They set plastic trash bins afire along Tehran’s long Vali Asr Avenue. Men and women, gathered in clusters across town, shouted “Death to the Dictator.”

Riot police chased them away. The demonstrators regrouped and began chanting again — a cat-and-mouse game that played out for days.

“I never expected the protests to be so intense and last so long,” said Mr. Moradani in a phone interview from Tehran this week. “I thought it would be over in a few days.”

Basij members organized to support riot police and other security officials across Tehran. Some Basij members infiltrated the opposition demonstrations, according to eyewitnesses.

Protesters, most of them young, fought back. “You saw young people on both sides mobilizing with vengeance and willing to kill,” said Issa Saharkheez, a political analyst in Tehran, in an interview shortly after the election. Mr. Saharkheez was subsequently arrested in detentions that followed the unrest.

At the height of the street battles, in Sadaat Abad, a middle-class neighborhood in east Tehran, young men and women organized themselves into an unofficial militia to fight the Basij, with a “commander” taking responsibility for each street. Every afternoon, they would meet to prepare for the evening’s expected battle, according to a 25-year-old student who was involved with the group.

They collected rocks, tiles and bricks from construction sites and spilled oil on the roads, an attempt to sideline the Basij’s motorcycles. When a Basij rider would go down, the young men would beat him, according to the student. Women stood back, screaming “Death to the Dictator” and stoking bonfires in the street. Older supporters remained indoors, throwing ashtrays, vases and other household items from their balconies and windows onto the Basij motorcycle riders below.

“There was a war going on here every night,” the student says. “We are not going to stand and let them beat us.” [continued…]

Iranian foreign minister says Tehran preparing ‘package’ for West
By Edward Yeranian, VOA, July 11, 2009

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is saying, Saturday, that Tehran is preparing to present a “new package” of proposals concerning international, political and security issues to the West for talks, soon. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad also indicated that a “package” was being prepared, several months ago.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki alluded, Saturday, to Tehran’s yet-to-come, but apparently imminent, new “package of proposals.”

He says that Iran is preparing a package on various political, security, economic and international issues and he says Iran considers this package a good basis for talks over different issues that the region and the world is struggling with today. [continued…]

Obama admin: No grounds to probe Afghan war crimes
By Lara Jakes, AP, July 11, 2009

Obama administration officials said Friday they had no grounds to investigate the 2001 deaths of Taliban prisoners of war who human rights groups allege were killed by U.S.-backed forces.

The mass deaths were brought up anew Friday in a report by The New York Times on its Web site. It quoted government and human rights officials accusing the Bush administration of failing to investigate the executions of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of prisoners.

U.S. officials said Friday they did not have legal grounds to investigate the deaths because only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country.

The Times cited U.S. military and CIA ties to Afghan Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, whom human rights groups accuse of ordering the killings. The newspaper said the Defense Department and FBI never fully investigated the incident.

Asked about the report, Marine Corps Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said that since U.S. military forces were not involved in the killings, there is nothing the Defense Department could investigate.

“There is no indication that U.S. military forces were there, or involved, or had any knowledge of this,” Lapan said. “So there was not a full investigation conducted because there was no evidence that there was anything from a DoD (Department of Defense) perspective to investigate.” [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — It sounds like this administration would have encouraged the Israeli government not to establish the Kahan Commission ten days after the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982. It happened on foreign territory (Lebanon) and it wasn’t Israeli soldiers doing the killing (it was Lebanese Phalangist militiamen).

Are we to understand that the Obama administration wants to provide a legal foundation for conducting massacres?

Cheney is linked to concealment of CIA project
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, July 12, 2009

The CIA kept a highly classified counter-terrorism program secret from Congress for eight years at the direction of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, according to sources familiar with an account that agency Director Leon E. Panetta provided recently to House and Senate committees.

The sources declined to provide any details on the nature of the program, but said that the agency had opened an internal inquiry in recent days into the history of the program and the decisions made by a series of senior officials to withhold information about it from Congress.

Cheney’s involvement suggests that the program was considered important enough by the Bush administration that it should be monitored at the highest levels of government, and that the White House was reluctant to risk disclosure of its details to lawmakers.

Panetta killed the program on June 23 after learning of it, four months after he became director of the CIA. He then called special sessions with the House and Senate intelligence committees. [continued…]

Probe of alleged torture weighed
By Carrie Johnson, Washington Post, July 12, 2009

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is leaning toward appointing a criminal prosecutor to investigate whether CIA personnel tortured terrorism suspects after Sept. 11, 2001, setting the stage for a conflict with administration officials who would prefer the issues remain in the past, according to three sources familiar with his thinking.

Naming a prosecutor to probe alleged abuses during the darkest period in the Bush era would run counter to President Obama’s oft-repeated desire to be “looking forward and not backwards.” Top political aides have expressed concern that such an investigation might spawn partisan debates that could overtake Obama’s ambitious legislative agenda.

The White House successfully resisted efforts by congressional Democrats to establish a “truth and reconciliation” panel. But fresh disclosures have continued to emerge about detainee mistreatment, including a secret CIA watchdog report, recently reviewed by Holder, highlighting several episodes that could be likened to torture. [continued…]

To know what Bibi really thinks, listen to his father
By Tony Karon, The National, July 12, 2009

When a top sportsman wants to express opinions that might get him into trouble with his employers, his father often pops up in the media to reveal what his son is really thinking. In the same way, while Benjamin Netanyahu would risk incurring Washington’s wrath if he were to admit the cynicism behind his apparent embrace of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his father has no such qualms.

On Israeli TV last week, the 100-year-old historian and stalwart of the Israeli right, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, was blunt when asked whether his son now supports the creation of a Palestinian state: “He does not support it. He supports such conditions that they [the Palestinians] will never accept it. That’s what I heard from him. I didn’t propose these conditions, he did. They will never accept these conditions. Not one of them.” [continued…]

Thought-police is here
By Rona Kuperboim, Ynet, July 10, 2009

The Foreign Ministry unveiled a new plan this week: Paying talkbackers to post pro-Israel responses on websites worldwide. A total of NIS 600,000 (roughly $150,000) will be earmarked to the establishment of an “Internet warfare” squad.[…]

Foreign Ministry officials are fighting what they see as a terrible and scary monster: the Palestinian public relations monster. Yet nothing can be done to defeat it, regardless of how many foolish inventions will be introduced and how many bright communication students will be hired.

The reason is that good PR cannot make the reality in the occupied territories prettier. Children are being killed, homes are being bombed, and families are starved. Yet nonetheless, the Foreign Ministry wants to try to change the situation. And they have willing partners. “Where do I submit a CV?” wrote one respondent. “I’m fluent in several languages and I’m able to spew forth bullshit for hours on end.” [continued…]

The attack on the Liberty
By John Lancaster, Washington Post, July 10, 2009

The attack began around 2 p.m. [on June 8, 1967] on the fourth day of the war, when the Liberty was about 17 miles from the coast. Almost without warning, French-made Israeli fighter jets tore into the lightly defended ship with rockets, cannons and napalm. “Shells smashed portholes, ripped gashes in sealed metal doors,” Scott writes. “Dead and injured sailors, many of whom had been chipping paint seconds earlier, littered the decks.” Eventually, a torpedo fired by an Israeli patrol boat ripped a 39-foot-wide hole in the Liberty, flooding lower compartments. Nearly 17 hours passed before help arrived from other U.S. Navy ships. In the meantime, surviving officers and crew struggled valiantly to aid the wounded and keep the listing vessel afloat. McGonagle, who suffered a concussion and shrapnel wounds, remained in command throughout the ordeal and later was awarded a Medal of Honor. Armstrong was killed.

The record of the Navy’s civilian and military leadership was less inspiring. Though privately furious, U.S. officials lied about the nature of the Liberty’s mission and, Scott writes, were so eager to avoid stirring up public anger toward Israel that at one point they contemplated scuttling the ship to prevent news organizations from photographing the damage. Adm. John McCain, Jr., the father of the Arizona senator and 2008 presidential candidate, comes in for especially sharp criticism. As the head of the Navy’s inquiry, Scott writes, McCain understood that a “report critical of Israel would trigger diplomatic ramifications for the State Department and create domestic political trouble for the beleaguered White House, which now wanted to deemphasize the attack.” As a consequence, he contends, McCain barred his investigators from traveling to Israel to interview the attackers and allowed only a week to complete the probe, “less time than it took to bury some of the dead.”

Scott cites transcripts of conversations between the Israeli pilots and air controllers in Tel Aviv to show that at least some Israeli commanders were aware of the Liberty’s identity before the attack. He also shows that many U.S. officials — including then-CIA director Richard Helms — were privately scornful of Israel’s explanation. Some believed the attack may have been ordered by a battlefield commander who feared that Israel’s combat orders, if detected by the Liberty, might somehow leak to the Arabs. [continued…]

Another insurgency gains in Pakistan
By Carlotta Gall, New York Times, July 12, 2009

Three local political leaders were seized from a small legal office here in April, handcuffed, blindfolded and hustled into a waiting pickup truck in front of their lawyer and neighboring shopkeepers. Their bodies, riddled with bullets and badly decomposed in the scorching heat, were found in a date palm grove five days later.

Local residents are convinced that the killings were the work of the Pakistani intelligence agencies, and the deaths have provided a new spark for revolt across Baluchistan, a vast and restless province in Pakistan’s southwest where the government faces yet another insurgency.

Although not on the same scale as the Taliban insurgency in the northwest, the conflict in Baluchistan is steadily gaining ground. Politicians and analysts warn that it presents a distracting second front for the authorities, drawing off resources, like helicopters, that the United States provided Pakistan to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda. [continued…]

How to sell Americans on Israeli settlements
By Dan Ephron, Newsweek, July 10, 2009

How do you sell the American public on the idea that Israel has the right to maintain or even expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank? Be positive. Turn the issue away from settlements and toward peace. Invoke ethnic cleansing.

Those are three of the recommendations made by Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster, in an internal study he wrote for the Washington-based group The Israel Project (TIP) on effective ways to talk to Americans about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The 117-page study, titled The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary, was commissioned by the nonprofit group, which aims to promote Israel’s side of the story, and leaked to NEWSWEEK. It includes chapters with such titles as “How to Talk About Palestinian Self Government and Prosperity” and “The Language of Tackling a Nuclear Iran.”

The report is strewn with bolded examples of “Words That Work” and “Words That Don’t Work,” alongside rhetorical tips such as “Don’t talk about religion” and “No matter what you’re asked, bridge to a productive pro-Israel message.” Taken together, the 18 chapters offer a fascinating look at the way Israel and its supporters try to shape the public debate in their favor.

The full report can be viewed here. [continued…]

Netanyahu’s national security adviser: “I prefer to direct the brute-force energies within me at the goyim”
Uzi Arad interviewed by Ari Shavit, Haaretz, July 10, 2009

What will the West do if there is no maritime blockade or if there is one that fails? In that case, will there be any choice but to prevent the bomb by bombing Iran?

Uzi Arad: I was fascinated by Robert Oppenheimer, the Jew who created the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos. Another figure who riveted me was Henry Kissinger, one of the first nuclear strategists. But above all I was drawn to Herman Kahn, with whom I worked at the Hudson Institute.

Kahn is the original Dr. Strangelove. He was a Jewish-American genius who was a salient nuclear hawk and dealt with the planning and feasibility of nuclear wars. Kahn was a towering figure. He was a beacon of intelligence, knowledge and pioneering thought. He combined conceptual productivity, humor and informality. He attracted a group of devotees of whom I was one in the 1970s. But he also had bitter rivals who criticized him for even conceiving of the idea of a nuclear war. In the Cold War it was precisely those who talked about defense and survival who were considered nuclear hawks. The doves talked about “mutual assured destruction,” which blocks any possibility of thinking about nuclear weapons. Like Kahn, I was one of the hawks. One of my projects was a paper for the Pentagon on planning a limited nuclear war in Central Europe.

On the face of it, what is the point of this? Why execute the enemy after deterrence has failed? But according to Dror, it is important to ascertain that the deterrence will work, even if you yourself have been destroyed. He sees this as a contribution to the repair of the world [tikkun olam]. When we say “never again,” this entails three imperatives: never again will we be felled in mass numbers, never again will we be defenseless and never again will there be a situation in which those who harm us go unpunished.

Is the Holocaust relevant to our strategic thought in an era of a nuclear Middle East?

Look at the way memory guides people like Netanyahu, who refers time and again to the 1930s. Bernard Lewis also said a few years ago that he feels like he is in the late 1930s. What did he mean? On the one hand, an imminent threat, rapidly approaching, and on the other, complacency and conciliation and a cowering coveting of peace. When I visited Yad Vashem [the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem] not long ago, I could not bear the psychological overload and left halfway through. I don’t think there is an Israeli or a Jew who can be insensitive to the Holocaust. It is a painful black hole in our consciousness.

When you look around today, what is your feeling? Are we alone?

We are always alone. Sometimes we have partners and lovers and donors of money, but no one is in our shoes.

I still remember Roosevelt and all the wise and enlightened types of the American security hierarchy in the period of Auschwitz, and I have retained the lesson. In Jewish history and fate there is a dimension of unfairness toward us. We have already been alone once, and even the good and the enlightened did not protect us. Accordingly, we must not be militant, but we must entrench our defense and security prowess and act with wisdom and restraint and caution and sangfroid. Never again. [continued…]

U.S. general sees Afghan army, police insufficient
By Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, July 11, 2009

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly arrived top commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that the Afghan security forces will have to be far larger than currently planned if President Obama’s strategy for winning the war is to succeed, according to senior military officials.

Such an expansion would require spending billions more than the $7.5 billion the administration has budgeted annually to build up the Afghan army and police over the next several years, and the likely deployment of thousands more U.S. troops as trainers and advisers, officials said.

Obama has voiced strong commitment to the ongoing Afghan conflict but has been cautious about making any additional military resources available beyond the 17,000 combat troops and 4,000 military trainers he agreed to in February. That will bring the total U.S. force to 68,000 by fall. [continued…]

U.S. inaction seen after Taliban POW’s died
By James Risen, New York Times, July 11, 2009

After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations.

American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation — sought by officials from the F.B.I., the State Department, the Red Cross and human rights groups — because the warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the C.I.A. and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001, several officials said. They said the United States also worried about undermining the American-supported government of President Hamid Karzai, in which General Dostum had served as a defense official.

“At the White House, nobody said no to an investigation, but nobody ever said yes, either,” said Pierre Prosper, the former American ambassador for war crimes issues. “The first reaction of everybody there was, ‘Oh, this is a sensitive issue; this is a touchy issue politically.’ ”

It is not clear how — or if — the Obama administration will address the issue. But in recent weeks, State Department officials have quietly tried to thwart General Dostum’s reappointment as military chief of staff to the president, according to several senior officials, and suggested that the administration might not be hostile to an inquiry. [continued…]

The West’s last stand
By Michael Vlahas, National Interest, July 10, 2009

All of America’s great wars have been “holy” wars, the neon-electric lighting of national narrative: revolution was about a nation’s birthing, civil war was about inner redemption and world war about our redeeming all humanity.

Sparked by 9/11, the global war on terrorism began as another promise to save all humanity. But eight years later we have the once-and-future Long War. We do not have the promised redemption—“transformation of the Middle East” died on the streets of Baghdad—instead we have forever war. And this forever war is bringing about an end to the world order as we know it. [continued…]

Insurgency remains tenacious in North Iraq
By Steven Lee Myers and Campbell Robertson, New York Times, July 10, 2009

Now that American troops have largely pulled back from Iraq’s cities, one violent region remains particularly intractable: Nineveh Province and its turbulent capital, Mosul. Even a major military offensive in the months before the withdrawal did not quell the insurgency or reduce the violence.

On Thursday, a twin suicide attack by bombers wearing explosive vests punctuated a recent string of attacks, a wave of violence that shows little sign of relenting. The blasts killed at least 35 people and wounded dozens more in Tal Afar, a city 40 miles west of Mosul that has been repeatedly scarred by sectarian bloodshed. It occurred the morning after two car bombs killed 12 people and wounded 30 near mosques in Mosul. [continued…]

Kurds defy Baghdad, laying claim to land and oil
By Sam Dagher, New York Times, July 10, 2009

With little notice and almost no public debate, Iraq’s Kurdish leaders are pushing ahead with a new constitution for their semiautonomous region, a step that has alarmed Iraqi and American officials who fear that the move poses a new threat to the country’s unity.

The new constitution, approved by Kurdistan’s parliament two weeks ago and scheduled for a referendum this year, underscores the level of mistrust and bad faith between the region and the central government in Baghdad. And it raises the question of whether a peaceful resolution of disputes between the two is possible, despite intensive cajoling by the United States.

The proposed constitution enshrines Kurdish claims to territories and the oil and gas beneath them. But these claims are disputed by both the federal government in Baghdad and ethnic groups on the ground, and were supposed to be resolved in talks begun quietly last month between the Iraqi and Kurdish governments, sponsored by the United Nations and backed by the United States. Instead, the Kurdish parliament pushed ahead and passed the constitution, partly as a message that it would resist pressure from the American and Iraqi governments to make concessions. [continued…]

‘Inappropriate’ secrecy hurt surveillance effort, report says
By Carrie Johnson and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, July 11, 2009

“Extraordinary and inappropriate” secrecy about a warrantless eavesdropping program undermined its effectiveness as a terrorism-fighting tool, government watchdogs have concluded in the first examination of one of the most contentious episodes of the Bush administration.

A report by inspectors general from five intelligence agencies said the administration’s tight control over who learned of the program also contributed to flawed legal arguments that nearly prompted mass resignations in the Justice Department five years ago.

The program “may have” contributed to successful counterterrorism efforts, some intelligence officials told the investigators. But too few CIA personnel knew of the highly classified program to use it for intelligence work, the report stated, while at the FBI, the program “played a limited role,” with “most . . . leads . . . determined not to have any connection to terrorism.” [continued…]

Khamenei’s son takes control of Iran’s anti-protest militia
By Julian Borger, The Guardian, July 8, 2009

The son of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has taken control of the militia being used to crush the protest movement, according to a senior Iranian source.

The source, a politician with strong connections to the security apparatus, said that the leading role being played by Mojtaba Khamenei had dismayed many of the country’s senior clerics, conservative politicians and Revolutionary Guard generals.

But these conservatives are reluctant to challenge the Khameneis openly out of fear that any conflict would destabilise the Islamic Republic and weaken Iran in the region. Instead they will use their positions in the organs of state to make it hard for the supreme leader and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to govern.

“This game has not finished. The game has only just started,” the source said, on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his own position in Iran. [continued…]

US frees five Iranian diplomats in Iraq
By Mehdi Lebouachera, AFP, July 9, 2009

The US military in Iraq on Thursday freed five Iranian diplomats held since January 2007 in a major source of friction between archfoes Tehran and Washington, Iraqi and Iranian officials said.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the five men were handed over to the government under a security accord which lays out the terms for the US pullout from the war-torn nation and the transfer of prisoners in US custody.

“This process is taking place today and includes the Iranian officials arrested in Arbil,” he told AFP. [continued…]

Iran police tear gas protesters
BBC, July 9, 2009

Iranian police have fired tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators who defied government warnings that any fresh attempt at protests would be “smashed”.

The marchers were heading towards Tehran University to commemorate the 10th anniversary of student unrest.

All gatherings have been banned in a crackdown on mass protests that erupted after the disputed election of 12 June. [continued…]

Iranian exile speaks out against militia he once supported
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, July 9, 2009

For people around the globe, the images of club-wielding men on motorcycles beating demonstrators on the streets of Tehran was just another case of brutality in a far-off land.

But as he watched the violence of recent weeks unfold on television and YouTube, Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, an exiled Iranian, recognized some of the attackers.

They were once good friends.

His life, encapsulating the betrayals and disappointments that followed Iran’s tumultuous revolution 30 years ago, as well as the hopes and fears of Iranians now living abroad, had come full circle.

Once a lonely young man in exile, a rejuvenated Ebrahimi is now using his experience as an insider within Iran’s hard-line militias to “out” members of the group.

On his well-regarded Persian-language blog, he has listed the names and phone numbers of about a dozen militia members whom he has spotted in photos and video of the demonstrations over his homeland’s disputed presidential election. [continued…]

Iran pro-regime voices multiply online
By Christopher Rhoads and Geoffrey A Fowler, Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009

Supporters of Iran’s regime are taking a cue from the opposition’s strategy: They’re mounting an online offensive.

Thousands of Iranians used social-networking sites and blogs after Iran’s election last month to criticize the government and spread news of its violent clashes with protesters.

But over the past week, a growing number of Iranian users of Twitter — the online service that allows users to send short messages — have been “tweeting” in favor of the regime, according to Internet security experts and others studying the development. [continued…]

G-8 nations press Iran on nuclear program
By Peter Baker, New York Times, July 9, 2009

The world’s major industrial nations have given Iran until September to negotiate the dispute over its nuclear program, but remain vague and divided over what consequences they might try to impose should Tehran continue to defy them.

After a long discussion Wednesday night, President Obama and counterparts from the rest of the Group of 8 powers called on Iran to compromise on its uranium enrichment program, condemned its crackdown on the dissent after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election and repudiated the president’s statements denying the Holocaust.

But the Russians succeeded at blocking any further sanctions despite Mr. Obama’s visit to Moscow leading up to the Group of 8 summit meeting, which he used to press the Kremlin to join him in a unified front. Although President Dmitri A. Medvedev told Mr. Obama on Monday that he shared concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, Russian officials on Thursday boasted that they had watered down the Group of 8 statement. [continued…]

Shark attack
By Geneive Abdo, Foreign Policy, July 8, 2009

After weeks of silence, Iran’s mainstream clerics, perhaps the most powerful constituency inside Iran, have spoken out. In a bold statement Saturday, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection illegitimate. The Guardian Council that oversaw the election, the association concluded, no longer had the “right to judge in this case as some of its members have lost their impartial image in the eyes of the public.”

As stunning as it might seem to hear clerics openly condemn an election that the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has sanctified, inside Iran it is less unexpected. Most clerics in the holy Shiite city of Qom have never supported the extremist religious and political ideas of Khamenei and the hard-liners within his inner circle. The clerics in this association — and many other high-ranking ayatollahs — had already individually sided with the opposition now led by Mir Hossein Mousavi. They have done so not to bolster the so-called “green revolution” of the streets, but to save the Islamic republic from extinction. [continued…]

US may move to toughen sanctions against Iran
VOA, July 8, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the United States may call for “stricter sanctions” against Iran if U.S. diplomatic efforts with Tehran fail.

Clinton commented late Tuesday in an an exclusive interview with Venezuela’s Globovision TV.

She responded to a question about how she perceived relations between Iran and Venezuela by saying “Iran has not respected its own democracy.” [continued…]

A peek in Iran: protests fade under withering gaze
By Sam Dagher, New York Times, July 8, 2009

Interviews with more than a dozen Iranians here paint a picture of a nation deeply polarized by the results of the presidential election last month, and a government that, with a daunting display of security might from town to village, appears to be succeeding in silencing dissent.

Given the heavy restrictions Iran has imposed on journalists in the aftermath of the election and the bloody street confrontations that followed, the travelers’ comments provided one of the few remaining sources of unfiltered news from inside Iran, and a rare glimpse of what is happening outside Tehran, where most journalists were not allowed even before the postelection crackdown. [continued…]

Netanyahu’s two-state goal?
By Saree Makdisi, Huffington Post, July 8, 2009

To judge by the next day’s headlines, Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy speech last month was a great success. “Israeli Premier Backs State for Palestinians,” declared the New York Times. “Israel Endorses Two-State Goal,” said the Washington Post. “Netanyahu Backs Palestinian State,” announced The Guardian.

He did no such thing, of course, unless by “state” one understands an amorphous entity lacking a definite territory, not allowed to control its own borders or airspace, shorn of any vestige of sovereignty (other than a flag and perhaps a national anthem), not allowed to enter into treaties with other states–and permanently disarmed and hence at the mercy of Israel. It would make about as much sense to call an apple an orange or a piano a speedboat as to call such a construct a state, and yet those are the conditions that Netanyahu imposed on the creation of such an entity for the Palestinians (if they get that far in the first place).

The strange thing is that Netanyahu’s speech marked both the definitive end and a symbolic return to the beginning of the two-state solution as that hapless notion has been peddled since the Oslo Accords of 1993-95. For what he said the Palestinians might–perhaps–be entitled to is pretty much what Oslo had said they might be entitled to fifteen years ago: a “self-government authority” not allowed to control its own borders or airspace, shorn of any vestige of sovereignty, etc. And on top of that they can also forget about Jerusalem–that is and will forever remain the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish people. [continued…]

Israeli agents to screen judges before appointment
By Ben Lynfield, The Independent, July 8, 2009

Israel’s internal security service has been given a de facto veto over the appointment of judges in an unprecedented decision that has the country’s embattled liberals up in arms.

The move by the Judges Selection Committee on Friday is likely to make it harder for members of Israel’s Arab minority and others with views that are not mainstream to become judges, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (Acri). Zahava Galon, a former MP of the dovish Meretz party, said the decision was “a scandal”. She said: “We are turning into a kind of police state with Big Brother everywhere. A judge shouldn’t have to pass the Shin Bet’s tests. This is just something that isn’t done.”

The selection committee’s membership – partly determined by the ruling coalition – has become more nationalist and intent on limiting the power of the Supreme Court due to appointments made since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office in April.

Increasing the powers of the security service, the Shin Bet, were part of an attempt to erode the judiciary’s ability to protect civil liberties and human rights in a country that lacked a constitution to defend them, Ms Galon said. The security establishment has always enjoyed wide powers but the Supreme Court was seen as a bastion of liberalism that counterbalanced that and helped define Israel as a democracy. [continued…]

Shipwrecked, before reaching Gaza
By Jonathan Guyer, The Washington Note, July 8, 2009

Last week, the mainstream media only touched on the attempt by the Free Gaza Movement to reach the occupied territory by boat. Israel Defense Forces boarded their vessel, The Spirit of Humanity, which was carrying humanitarian aid. In spite of the incarceration of former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire, along with nineteen other activists who were aboard the ship, the story has gained little traction on our side of the ocean.

Yesterday, Congresswoman McKinney arrived safely back in the US, and in an interview, she emphasized the need for a new approach to Gaza: [continued…]

What if Iran got the bomb?
By Robert Farley, Foreign Policy, July 7, 2009

The political survival of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has moved the question of Iran’s nuclear program back to the center of U.S. diplomacy. Iran, it is argued, cannot be allowed to build nuclear weapons because its leaders say crazy things, wear funny hats without ties, and believe that God will reward them with virgins and whatnot for consuming friendly countries in a nuclear firestorm. Iranians, in short, are so different, weird, and threatening that they cannot be trusted with the bomb. Fortunately, no such state has ever successfully developed nuclear weapons…except for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). And this historical analogy holds a highly relevant lesson for today. [continued…]

EDITORIAL: Has Obama already caved on the settlements issue?
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, July 8, 2009

The United States talks today about freezing settlements and the Palestinian state is well and good, but it is not new. Many administrations have spoken about freezing settlements. Furthermore, this talk is not enough. More important is the extent of the response to the rights of our people and the reality of the Palestinian state they are talking about, its borders, and its sovereignty. For this reason, we are still assessing the Obama administration. Khalid Meshaal, Head of the Hamas Political Bureau, Damascus, June 25, 2008

From Maya Bengal in Israel’s Ma’ariv (via IPF) we learn:

Rather surprisingly, the Americans have agreed to allow Israel to construct some 2,500 housing units in the settlements. This is in complete contrast to statements relayed to Israel in recent months, since the new administration took office.

The agreement was secured after Defense Minister Ehud Barak was able to convince the Americans to allow Israel to continue and build those units whose construction had already started. In other words, the Americans gave their consent to letting the construction continue of some 700 buildings, which amount to some 2,500 housing units.

So, while unrest in Iran might have initially looked like a major distraction from the administration’s efforts to apply pressure on Netanyahu to freeze settlements, instead the distraction turns out to have provided cover for the administration to reach a compromise. The recent period of dischord between two old friends is now all water under the bridge — or so some Israelis would like everyone to believe.

It seems though that Barak’s victory might not be as assured as Ma’ariv would like its readers to believe.

According to Reuters:

A report in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, Israel’s most popular newspaper, was more cautious, saying Israel and the United States were “close to an agreement on settlements.” It also cited the same housing figures.

Barak has been seeking a deal with the United States that would include initial steps by Arab states to normalize relations with Israel in return for limiting settlement activity.

Yedioth Ahronoth quoted unidentified cabinet ministers, who attended Barak’s briefing, as saying reports a U.S.-Israeli agreement on settlement had been sealed were wishful thinking on the part of the defense chief.

Reuters also said: “Western officials said the United States was moving in the direction of making allowances so Israel could finish off at least some existing projects which are close to completion or bound by private contracts that cannot be broken.”

Maybe Barak thought a declaration of victory matters more than its substance. We’ll see.

Meshaal delivers speech on Obama’s position on peace process
By Khalid Meshaal, June 25, 2009

On June 25, Khalid Meshaal, head of the Hamas Political Bureau gave a televised speech in Damascus and said, in part:

The Obama administration brought a change in rhetoric, but the question is what brought about this change. Even just the change on the level of the language, who effected this change? Was it for the sake of our beautiful eyes or for some defect? What brought this change about is that uncompromising perseverance of the living peoples of the region, when they resisted in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and rejected the occupiers and their oppression and orders. So, they thwarted the policy of the previous administration and its old and neoconservatives.

“This perseverance transformed that administration’s adventures consisting of hegemony and pre-emptive wars into an utter failure, drowning them in the swamps of the region and creating successive crises which then prompted the American voter to go for the option of change to protect his own interests, not for the sake of our interests. Those who accepted the policy of the former administration, those who went along with it and brought tidings of it are not the ones who made the change or contributed towards it. Had the peoples of the region listened to them, the policy of Bush and his neoconservatives would have succeeded. The conditions in our region would have been in an unimaginably bad state.

“We sense a change in the American tone and rhetoric towards the region and the Islamic world, as was evident from President Obama’s speech in Cairo. We welcome this with great courage. We evaluate any change in an objective manner. However, we are not entranced by speeches. Speeches do not win us over. The effect of rhetoric is temporary. We are looking for change in the policies on the ground. This is the yardstick of our judgment of stances and changes. What is required of the leaders of the superpowers and more important countries is firm actions, decisive stances, and serious initiatives that restore rights to their owners and end illegitimate occupation. What is required is not mere speeches that reveal intentions and promises.” [continued…]

Hamas’ choice: Recognition or resistance in the age of Obama
By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, July 6, 2009

In a major policy speech on 25 June 2009, Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, tried to do what may be impossible: present the Islamist Palestinian resistance organization as a willing partner in a US-led peace process, while holding on to his movement’s political principles and base.

This is the dilemma that every Palestinian leadership, and perhaps almost every liberation movement, has eventually had to confront. It is a choice, as political scientist Tamim Barghouti has pointed out, between recognition and legitimacy. According to Barghouti, the old-guard Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, when confronted with the same dilemma, chose recognition and forfeited its legitimacy, opening the way for Hamas to emerge. Now it is the turn of Hamas: the price demanded by the US and its allies for Hamas to be taken as an interlocutor is the abandonment of the very principles on which the movement built its mass support. [continued…]

Is this natural growth? – Non profits help American Jews move to Israeli settlements in the West Bank
By Joseph Dana, Mondoweiss, July 8, 2009

Yesterday morning, Nefesh B’Nefesh had the first in a series of summer 2009 celebrations greeting its charter flights packed with new immigrants from North America. Nefesh B’Nefesh is a non-profit organization that encourages and facilitates Jewish immigration to Israel from North America and the United Kingdom. They expect to bring over 3,000 immigrants to Israel over the course of the summer, in addition to the 20,000 they have brought since 2002. Attending the ceremony were the Israeli Minister of Transportation, Israeli Minister of Immigrant Absorption, the Chairman of the Jewish Agency, the CEO of EL Al Israel Airlines and the two American Jewish founders of Nefesh B’Nefesh. [continued…]

In Iran, a struggle beyond the streets
By Michael Slackman, New York Times, July 8, 2009

The streets of Iran have been largely silenced, but a power struggle grinds on behind the scenes, this time over the very nature of the state itself. It is a battle that transcends the immediate conflict over the presidential election, one that began 30 years ago as the Islamic Revolution established a new form of government that sought to blend theocracy and a measure of democracy.

From the beginning, both have vied for an upper hand, and today both are tarnished. In postelection Iran, there is growing unease among many of the nation’s political and clerical elite that the very system of governance they rely on for power and privilege has been stripped of its religious and electoral legitimacy, creating a virtual dictatorship enforced by an emboldened security apparatus, analysts said.

Among the Iranian president’s allies are those who question whether the nation needs elected institutions at all. [continued…]

Iran opposition calls for release of detainees
VOA, July 7, 2009

Iranian reformist leaders are urging authorities to release all those detained during the unrest that followed the country’s disputed presidential election last month.

The call was issued by defeated presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi as well as former president Mohammad Khatami following a meeting late Monday. [continued…]

Revealed – the secret torture evidence MI5 tried to suppress
By Ian Cobain, The Guardian, July 8, 2009

The true depth of British involvement in the torture of terrorism suspects overseas and the manner in which that complicity is concealed behind a cloak of courtroom secrecy was laid bare last night when David Davis MP detailed the way in which one counter-terrorism operation led directly to a man suffering brutal mistreatment.

In a dramatic intervention using the protection of parliamentary privilege, the former shadow home secretary revealed how MI5 and Greater Manchester police effectively sub-contracted the torture of Rangzieb Ahmed to a Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), whose routine use of torture has been widely documented.

This is the first time that the information has entered the public domain. Previously it has been suppressed through the process of secret court hearings and, had the Guardian or other media organisations reported it, they would have exposed themselves to the risk of prosecution for contempt of court. [continued…]

Rafsanjani’s party dismisses vote results
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, July 7, 2009

A day after commanders of the Revolutionary Guard warned there was no middle ground in the dispute over the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the political party of one of Iran’s most powerful clerics Monday defiantly issued a statement dismissing the vote.

The statement by the Kargozaran party all but cleared away weeks of ambiguity about the stance of the cleric, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Rafsanjani, who heads two government councils that oversee the supreme leader and mediate disputes between branches, openly backed presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. [continued…]

Obama must be firm on foreign policy
By Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, July 6, 2009

Just a few months into his presidency, Mr Obama’s policy of engagement with Iran has also been all but wrecked by the violent crackdown in that country. His advisers once day-dreamed about a dramatic presidential trip to Tehran, a speech before cheering students, a disarming smile for Mr Ahmadi-Nejad. All of that is unthinkable now. Instead, Mr Obama is left having to cope with a wounded and aggressive Iranian government, intent on pressing ahead with its nuclear programme. The US president will now have to fend off the “bomb Iran” lobby – but without being able to point to a plausible diplomatic alternative.

The policy of American engagement with Russia is going only a little better. Agreements on arms control and transit routes to Afghanistan cannot extinguish the still smouldering antagonisms created by last year’s Georgia war.

Above all Mr Obama is getting nothing on the issue he placed at the centre of his drive for a rapprochement with Russia: Iran.

Mr Obama’s problems with Iran and Russia are merging into a single, nasty mess. The president had seen an improved relationship with Russia as the key to solving Iran. The idea was that the newly friendly Russians would help to talk their Iranian neighbours into a nuclear deal. If that did not work, Russia would help to tighten sanctions on Iran. Without the Kremlin there can be no new United Nations sanctions on Iran (that pesky Russian veto). A package of western sanctions that does not include Russia would be too full of holes to put real pressure on Iran. [continued…]

Obama: No green light for Israel to attack Iran
CNN, July 7, 2009

The United States is “absolutely not” giving Israel a green light to attack Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama told CNN Tuesday.

“We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and resolve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East,” Obama said, referring to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. [continued…]

Israel declines to ask U.S. to OK Iran attack
By Eli Lake, Washington Times, July 7, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top deputies have not formally asked for U.S. aid or permission for possible military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, fearing the White House would not approve, two Israeli officials said.

One senior Israeli official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, told The Washington Times that Mr. Netanyahu determined that “it made no sense” to press the matter after the negative response President Bush gave Mr. Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, when he asked early last year for U.S. aid for possible military strikes on Iran. [continued…]

No change in Iran policy, White House insists
By Laura Rozen, Foreign Policy, July 6, 2009

As White House and Office of the Vice President aides formed a united front against widespread media speculation about a change in policy signaled by Vice President Joseph Biden’s statement on a Sunday news show that Israel is a “sovereign nation” that could “determine for itself” how to deal with threats from Iran, analysts said that Israel may be wary of any such green light in any case.

In e-mails and phone calls today, administration officials insisted that Biden’s comments were neither a signal of any change in policy, nor any sort of freelancing. Asked if Biden’s remarks might have been part of an intentional messaging campaign to step up pressure on Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program, officials gave an emphatic “no.” But for all that, the remarks were widely seen both in Washington and abroad as a message intended less for Jerusalem than for Tehran.

Israel’s “biggest nightmare” is that one day the U.S. government “‘would call it and say ‘OK guys, take care of it,'” said Tel Aviv University Iran expert David Menashri in a call Monday arranged by the Israeli Policy Forum, a U.S. nonprofit organization that supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [continued…]

Minister calls for Jewish takeover of Palestinian areas in Israel
By Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada, July 6, 2009

Israel’s housing minister called for strict segregation between the country’s Jewish and Arab populations last week as he unveiled plans to move large numbers of fundamentalist religious Jews to Israel’s north to prevent what he described as an “Arab takeover” of the region.

Ariel Atias said he considered it a “national mission” to bring ultra-Orthodox Jews — or Haredim, distinctive for their formal black and white clothing — into Arab areas, and announced that he would also create the north’s first exclusively Haredi town.

The new settlement drive, according to Atias, is intended to revive previous failed efforts by the state to “Judaize,” or create a Jewish majority in, the country’s heavily Arab north.

Analysts say the announcement is a disturbing indication that the Haredim, who have traditionally been hostile to Zionism because of their strict reading of the Bible, are rapidly being recruited to the Judaization project in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). [continued…]

Attack on Iran would be ‘very destabilizing’ — US military chief
AFP, July 5, 2009

A US military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be “very destabilizing,” top US military commander Admiral Mike Mullen said Sunday, warning that any attack could have serious “unintended consequences.”

“I’ve been one who has been concerned about a strike on Iran for some time, because it could be very destabilizing, and it is the unintended consequences of that which aren’t predictable,” the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Fox News Sunday television program. [continued…]

Saudi air space is ‘not open’ for attack on Iran
By Wael Mahdi, The National, July 6, 2009

Saudi analysts have rejected media reports that the kingdom has given permission to Israel to use its air space for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Sunday Times reported yesterday that the head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.

Jamal Khashoggi, an expert on Saudi foreign policy and editor-in-chief of Al Watan newspaper, said the report was false and was another attempt to provoke the country into revealing its plans towards Iran. [continued…]

Mousavi reportedly will launch political party in Iran
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2009

The top figure of Iran’s nascent political reform movement, opposition presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, will launch a political party to pursue his goals, a reformist newspaper reported Sunday.

Iranian officials, meanwhile, released a jailed European journalist and the lawyer of an imprisoned employee of the British Embassy in Tehran said he was confident that his client’s case would be resolved.

Beleaguered President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated calls for a live “debate” with President Obama late Saturday in a possible sign Iran was seeking to ease diplomatic strains over his disputed reelection and its violent aftermath. [continued…]

Earn our trust or go, Afghan villagers tell Marines
By Peter Graff, Reuters, July 5, 2009

The mullah’s message was blunt. We don’t trust you and if you don’t earn our trust, our first meeting will be our last.

With that, he stood abruptly and walked out of his first “shura,” or council meeting, with U.S. Marines.

U.S. forces who have moved deep into formerly Taliban-controlled territory in southern Afghanistan this week say they are here to stay and will not leave until they have improved the lives of ordinary people.

But locals — used to seeing NATO troops come through to fight but fail to follow through on promises of development — may not be won over easily. [continued…]

Obama’s strategic blind spot
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2009

Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders?” During the bitter winter of 1914-15, the first lord of the Admiralty posed this urgent question to Britain’s prime minister.

The eighth anniversary of 9/11, now fast approaching, invites attention to a similar question: Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to choke on the dust of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Back in December 1914, the Admiralty’s impatient first lord was Winston Churchill, appalled by the slaughter on the Western Front. Intent on breaking the stalemate, Churchill became a font of ideas. Mired in Flanders? Then launch an amphibious assault against the Dardanelles, he urged. Were German machine guns cutting down British Tommies venturing into no man’s land? Then support the infantry with tanks.

Yet Churchill’s innovations failed to deliver a quick resolution. Instead, they prolonged the war and drove up its cost. When the guns finally fell silent in November 1918, “victory” left Britain economically and spiritually depleted. Revolution wracked much of Europe. And the seeds of totalitarianism had been planted, producing in their maturity an even more horrendous war. Some victory. [continued…]

America searches for means of influence in Iraq
By Alissa J Rubin, New York Times, July 6, 2009

Behind the high walls of the American Embassy here, diplomats are casting about to find a new formula to influence politics in Iraq.

With most troops now on large bases outside the cities, America’s day-to-day involvement in Iraqi life has vanished. The decisions, big and small, that American commanders made are now largely being made by Iraqis; American soldiers no longer have daily contact with tribal sheiks, mayors, insurgents and shopkeepers — a change welcomed by the majority of Iraqis.

Although President Obama has made it clear that his strategic priority is the war in Afghanistan, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived in Baghdad last week to emphasize that America still cared about Iraq. [continued…]

Iraqis say reconciliation is an internal matter
By Gina Chon, Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2009

Iraq welcomes Vice President Joseph Biden’s encouraging words about America’s commitment to Iraq, but government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Saturday that political reconciliation is an internal matter best handled by Iraqis.

Mr. Biden arrived in Iraq on Thursday to visit troops for the July 4 holiday and to also urge Iraq’s political, ethnic and sectarian factions to make more progress on divisive issues. The Obama administration recently announced that Mr. Biden would overseeing Iraq policy for the U.S. government, part of which included encouraging more political progress from Iraq’s leaders.

“Any party that is not Iraqi will not add to the success of this issue,” Mr. Dabbagh said of political progress. [continued…]

The blue velvet hills of my youth have been destroyed
By Raja Shehadeh, The Guardian, July 5, 2009

I can remember the appearance of the hills around Ramallah in 1979, before any Jewish settlement came to be established there. In the spring of that year I walked north from Ramallah, where I live, to the nearby village of A’yn Qenya and up the pine-forested hill. A gazelle leapt ahead of me. When I reached the top I could see hills spread below me like crumpled blue velvet, with the hamlets of Janiya and Deir Ammar huddled between its folds. On top of the highest hill in the distance stood the village of Ras Karkar with its centuries-old citadel that dominated the area during Ottoman times. I had been following the worrying developments of extensive settlement-building elsewhere in the West Bank and wondered how long it would be before these hills came under the merciless blades of the Israeli bulldozers. I didn’t have to wait long. A year later the top of the hill was lopped off and the settlement of Dolev, then a cluster of red-tiled Swiss-style chalets, was established.

Now, more than 25 years later, Dolev has expanded and taken over the hills to its north for vineyards. Numerous highways for the exclusive use of its Jewish settlers connect it to the many other settlements in the area and to Israel’s coastline. Those settlers travelling to and from Israeli cities where they work can only see road signs indicating other Jewish settlements. They encounter no Palestinian traffic on the roads nor do they see any Palestinian villages. No wonder then that I was once stopped by an armed settler and interrogated as to why I was taking a walk in his hills. When I asked him what right he had to be there, he answered: “I live here.” He then pointedly added: “Unlike you, I really live here.”

Not a single year has passed since Israel acquired the territories in 1967 in which Jewish settlements were not built. Had it pursued peace as assiduously, surely it would have achieved it by now. [continued…]

Why don’t Russian-speaking Jews trust Obama?
By Lily Galili, Haaretz, July 6, 2009

In the past two weeks, in advance of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Russia, chapters of the Bible have become hot current events items in the Russian-language media in Israel. This is not necessarily a matter of an increasing link to the Jewish sources, but rather the use of verses found relevant to eroding the American president’s legitimacy.

The Torah portion “Noah” has become particularly popular, and especially his son Ham. This Ham – whose name in Russian also means a very crude person – was punished in the Bible by having his skin turn black, with all his descendants doomed to be blacks destined for a life of slavery. Another very popular text lately is a verse from Proverbs: “Under three things the earth trembles, under four it cannot bear up.” The first of the heralds of evil, according to the verse, is “a slave who becomes king.”

Each of these chapters is important in itself, but the real sparks are created by the connection between the two: Ham the black man who is doomed to eternal slavery and brings suffering to the world when a black slave becomes king – or in this case, ascends the throne of the presidency of the United States. [continued…]

Opposition leaders court arrest by defying ‘unlawful Iranian regime’
By Martin Fletcher, The Times, July 2, 2009

Three of Iran’s most prominent opposition leaders flagrantly courted arrest yesterday by denouncing President Ahmadinejad’s Government as illegitimate, one day after the regime said that it would tolerate no more challenges to the election result.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, the former Prime Minister who lost the election, said that the suppression of dissent was tantamount to a coup. “It’s not yet too late,” he declared on his website. “It is our historical responsibility to continue our protests to defend the rights of the people . . . and prevent the blood spilt by hundreds of thousands of martyrs from leading to a police state.”

Ayatollah Mohammed Khatami, 65, a popular former President, accused the regime of mounting a “velvet revolution against the people and democracy” and called the security crackdown “poisonous”.

Mehdi Karroubi, 72, another defeated presidential candidate, said that “visible and invisible forces blocked any change in the executive power”. He added: “I will continue the fight under any circumstances and using every means.” The regime responded by shutting down his newspaper. [continued…]

Mousavi to disclose tell-all documents
Press TV, July 1, 2009

As the Iranian opposition continues to express skepticism about the election result, defeated candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi says he will present documents that prove electoral fraud.

Mousavi, who has rejected the result of Iran’s presidential election as fraudulent, said on Wednesday that a number of Iranian scholars are set to form a committee to preserve the vote of the people.

The committee aims to “make public documents proving fraud and irregularities in the election,” Mousavi said in his latest statement issued on Wednesday. [continued…]

Time for Obama to make a course correction
By Roger Cohen, New York Times, July 2, 2009

Demonstrations may have disappeared from Tehran’s streets of shame, but Iranian acceptance is at an all-time low. The government is now illegitimate. Power has been usurped. The equation has changed.

I think Mahmoudi’s right. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad may begin to unclench their fist, as isolation and sullen defiance grow, in a bid to deliver what they would not allow the reformists to initiate: détente with America.

Obama must leave them dangling for the foreseeable future. He should refrain indefinitely from talk of engagement.

To do otherwise would be to betray millions of Iranians who have been defrauded and have risked their lives to have their votes count. To do otherwise would be to allow Khamenei to gloat that, in the end, what the United States respects is force. To do otherwise would be to embrace the usurpers.

The slow arc of moral justice is fine but Iran is gripped by the fierce urgency of now. Obama, the realist on whom idealism is projected, is obliged to make a course correction. [continued…]

Europe weighs pulling envoys from Tehran
By Alan Cowell and Stephen Castle, New York Times, July 2, 2009

Iran risked diplomatic isolation from the European Union, as European officials discussed whether to withdraw the ambassadors of all 27 member nations in a dispute over the detention of the British Embassy’s Iranian personnel.

European diplomats said Wednesday that they had made no formal decision to order their envoys home, but that the measure was an option as the European Union — Iran’s biggest trading partner — tried to work out how to defuse the dispute in a way that would shield other embassies in Tehran from similar action.

Withdrawing all 27 ambassadors would be a rare and unusually forceful display of European anger at Iran’s crackdown on dissent after the June 12 presidential election, and several diplomats said the European Union would prefer to avoid such a move. [continued…]

Witness to Neda’s death to be prosecuted
Raye Man Kojast? Where Is My Vote?, July 1, 2009

Fars News Agency in Persian on 1 July 2009 reports that the commander of the Law Enforcement Force said: Arash Hejazi who as the witness of the murder of Neda Aqa-Soltan has created uproar is being prosecuted by the International Police (Interpol).

Speaking to a gathering of reporters, General Esma’il Ahmadi-Moqaddam added: Arash Hejazi is being prosecuted by the Ministry of Intelligence and Interpol forces.

He stressed: The murder of Neda Aqa-Soltan is a scenario which has no links to Tehran’s riots.

Arash Hejazi, the doctor who was present at Neda Aqa-Soltan’s murder scene, has held certain sensational interviews with foreign media on this murder case after departing the country. [continued…]