The Guardian reports: Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are expected to embark on hunger strikes this week to draw attention to imprisonment without charge and solitary confinement. They will build on a protest that has resulted in deals to release two inmates who refused food for prolonged periods.
At least 11 prisoners are already on hunger strike, three of whom have been transferred to hospital. One began refusing fluids last week, increasing concern about the rate of deterioration of his health.
A wave of hunger strikes is planned to begin on or around Prisoners’ Day on Tuesday, held under the slogan: “We will live in dignity.” About 1,600 prisoners have agreed to take part in the protest, according to Palestinian prisons minister Issa Qaraqi. “The situation inside Israeli prisons has become very dangerous and serious,” he was quoted as saying.
There are around 4,600 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, according to the prisoners’ rights group Addameer. More than 300 are held under “administrative detention”, meaning they and their lawyers are not informed of accusations or evidence against them, no trial is held, and their term of imprisonment is determined by an Israeli military judge.
Gideon Levy writes: There’s no country like Israel. The United States is uncertain how many Americans will be unemployed and have health insurance in a decade; Europe is asking how many more immigrants will enter and whether the euro will exist by 2022. In Israel, the existential issues are immeasurably more profound and wide-ranging, but no one bothers to address them.
The prime minister talks as if his problems were of the European kind (not including the Iranian nuclear hysteria ), yet much more fateful issues remain open and somehow nobody discusses them. Israel is 64 years old and the issues remain pending, as if the state had been established yesterday and there are no answers.
Nobody can say what this country will look like in 10 years. Some people even doubt that it will exist by then, an issue not raised about any other country. But even the preoccupation with this groundless question is reduced to sowing fear and whining at Friday night dinner. All other issues, no less critical, don’t even come up. Does anybody know whether Israel will be a democracy in a decade? Can anyone promise that it will be? Will it be a secular state or one based on Jewish law? Will it be a welfare state or a capitalist one? How many nations will live in it in a decade?
Who will be the majority in 10 years – another question you won’t hear anywhere else – and what will the borders be? That question, too, is raised only in Israel, the only borderless state.
Everything is open, fluid and alarmingly fragile. The three future scenarios for Israel as an occupation state – continuing the status quo forever, two states or one – appear groundless, and people have stopped addressing them, as if the absence of discourse will produce a feasible solution. But all other critical questions have no real answer either and hardly appear on the agenda, even though Israelis should focus on them.
A state without a (clear ) future, wallowing in the past and focusing on the present, is tantamount to a short-term state. Even on the eve of our national days of pathos, nobody asks what Israel will be like in a decade, which is no time at all in historical terms.
Last week I joined the pilgrims to Hebron on Passover eve. In the bus, one of them, using a derogatory term for Arabs, said loudly: “All the Arabushim should be sent to the stone crushers straight from the hospital, as soon as they’re born.” The whole bus roared with laughter. Some passengers muttered at us, a reporter and a photographer, the only secular people on the bus: “Collaborators, there are collaborators on the bus.” Nobody protested, naturally.
The thousands of pilgrims to Hebron, with their myriads of supporters, belong to another nation, with no connection or resemblance to the nation of Tel Aviv. Every society has an extreme right wing today, but in a small, fragile society like ours, this could become fatal. The United States can afford its dark Christian right and remain a democracy. Israel cannot. Can anyone guarantee that the hostile tone from the fortified bus to Hebron won’t turn into the prevailing tone? Clearly things are heading in that direction and nobody is doing anything to stop it.
Nobody is doing anything to stop democracy from rupturing, nobody is stopping Israel on its way to becoming a pariah, even more than it is already. Today, when 650 police officers will bravely storm a handful of human rights activists and harshly turn them away from Ben-Gurion International Airport, solely for seeking to visit Bethlehem in a display of solidarity, few people will protest or stop them. Neither the mobilized media nor the flaccid justice system will do anything to stop the disgrace.
This is how things stand regarding several other events and developments shaping Israel’s image, without any real discussion. The strong, not necessarily the many, triumph, battle by battle, and the majority, if it still is a majority, is silent. The question where we are heading remains unanswered.
With 300-plus super PACs and counting, it would be easy to miss CREEP. But last Thursday, a new super PAC ingeniously named the Committee for the Re-Election of the President registered with the Federal Election Commission.
The committee is based out of a post office box at the Watergate Complex2014an homage, of course, to the other Committee for the Re-Election of the President, the fundraising committee for President Richard Nixon that became embroiled in the Watergate scandal.
It’s an inside joke with a serious punchline. The old CREEP (which used the acronym CRP and at one point was called the Committee to Re-Elect the President) helped spur the creation of the FEC. The website for CREEP Super PAC says it’s committed “to raising voices not dollars” and advocates disclosure.
“It’s an excellent chance for people to step back and say, 2018Are we happy with 40 years of campaign finance and the lack of disclosure?'” said Robert Lucas, 22, founder of the new CREEP and a graduate student in public policy at Georgetown University. “There’s a lot of irony, with the 40th anniversary of Watergate and where we are now.”
The latest FEC disclosures show that super PACs are forming at an accelerated pace, taking advantage of court rulings in 2010 that opened the door to political action committees that can raise unlimited amounts of money as long as they don’t coordinate with a candidate.
Seven new super PACs turned up yesterday morning alone, while one dropped out today, bringing the tally to 324. Only 159 have reported raising or spending any money. Of those, just 11 reported having more than $1 million in their coffers in their most recent filings with the FEC, led by GOP super PAC American Crossroads, which had more than $23.5 million at the end of February. (CREEP, being new, hasn’t reported raising any money, and Lucas says he has no plans to do so.)
Another 27 super PACs reported having at least $100,000 in the bank. The rest seem to be counting their pennies and hoping for a millionaire. (The Friends for a Democratic White House PAC, for instance, reported having only $12.02.)
Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney’s decision to put his dog in a kennel strapped to the roof of his car for a 1983 family vacationhas sparked the formation of four super PACs: DogPAC, Dogs Against Romney, I Ride Inside-The Pets Against Romney Committee, and, the latest in the genre, Mitt Is Mean2014The Animal Lovers Against Romney Committee.
Despite being accused of chronic deadlock and doing nothing to rein in super PACs, the FEC has quietly taken action against certain committees. It warned 15 for failing to file annual financial reports from 20112014unless they do, they’ll be off the list. (Which might mean the end of super PACs such as the Brady Bunch PAC, Men Against Prostitution and Trafficking and the Bucket Tea Party Political Action Committee.)
The FEC also has shed 60 super PACs registered by super PAC man Josue Larose. All of Larose’s super PACs were terminated by the FEC on March 7, apparently because they didn’t do much for a year. So farewell to the Unites States Celebrities Super PAC, the United States Billionaires Super PAC and the Wall Street Corporations Super PAC.
It was never quite clear what Larose was doing with all his super PACs. They attracted virtually no donations. (One exception: the $5,000 contributed by a PAC of employees of Contran Corp. to Larose’s Rick Perry 2012 Victory Committee super PAC, which had nothing to do with Rick Perry. Contran is run by billionaire Harold Simmons, the largest single donor to GOP super PACs.)
Florida just filed more than 2,000 counts of state election violations against Larose.
So what does all this mean for the 2012 election? CREEP’s back, but we won’t have Larose to kick around anymore.
Reuters reports: Gunmen launched multiple attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday, assaulting Western embassies in the heavily guarded, central diplomatic area and at the parliament in the west.
Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the assault, one of the most serious on the capital since U.S.-backed Afghan forces removed the group from power in 2001.
“These attacks are the beginning of the spring offensive and we had planned them for months,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters.
The Taliban said the main targets were the German and British embassies and the headquarters of Afghanistan’s NATO-led force. Several Afghan members of parliament joined security forces repelling attackers from a roof near the parliament.
Taliban fighters also launched assaults in at least two provinces, a spokesman for the insurgents said.
Immanuel Wallerstein writes: The two candidates for the U.S. presidency seem to be trying to outshout each other concerning Iran, Syria, and Israel/Palestine. Each is claiming he is doing more to support the same objectives. Isn’t it therefore strange that no similar verbal contest is going on at the moment concerning Afghanistan? [ Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse/Getty] In February 2012, some Korans were burned by U.S. soldiers, which led to violent public protests in Afghanistan. (Photo: Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse/Getty
Not so long ago, we were witness to the same Democratic-Republican game about Afghanistan. Which party was the more macho? Remember the concept that a “surge” in troops would win the war, a concept embraced by President Obama in his speech to the U.S. Military Academy in December 2009. Now all of a sudden, since March 2012, it seems to have become a subject no one wants to espouse too loudly.
There are some simple explanations. In the longest war that the United States has ever waged, the war in Afghanistan, the United States has precious little to show for it. The designated enemy, the Taliban, constitute an ever-resilient force, particularly of course in the Pashtun areas, which constitute the largest single ethnic zone in the country.
The United States more or less single-handedly imposed Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun but not a Taliban, as president of Afghanistan. Karzai was not, is not, appreciated by the leaders of the various other ethnic zones in the north and west of the country, who have tried over the years to oust him. These other groups find support in some external powers: Russia, Iran, and India, all of which are as determined as the United States to prevent the return to power of the Taliban. But the United States won’t work with Iran, is doubtful about working with Russia, and doesn’t seem to co-ordinate with India.
In February 2012, some Korans were burned by U.S. soldiers, which led to violent public protests in Afghanistan. Then 16 Afghan children, women, and men were massacred by a U.S. soldier. The United States apologized for both of these, but that hardly calmed the storm. On March 18, President Karzai denounced the Americans in Afghanistan as “demons” engaged in “Satanic acts.” He said Afghanistan was beset by two demons – the Taliban and the Americans.
The New York Times cited an anonymous European diplomat as saying: “Never in history has any superpower spent so much money, sent so many troops to a country, and had so little influence over what its president says and does.”
Frank Browning and Steve Weissman write: With his controversial poem on Israel and Iran, Günter Grass has irritated, provoked and outraged people everywhere. As Germany’s greatest living writer and a Nobel laureate in literature, he has also raised a question both inconvenient and impolite. How can decent people support a preemptive war against Iran for moving ever closer to a limited nuclear capability and, at the same time, turn a blind eye to Israel’s extensive arsenal of existing atomic bombs?
Especially in a country with so much Jewish blood on its hands, this is – or was – a question that no Good German should ask in public. It was even more verboten when asked by someone who had belatedly admitted that as a teenager he had served, however briefly, in the Nazi paramilitary unit, the Waffen SS. But the 84-year-old Grass dared to break the taboo. He spoke out and said “What Must Be Said.”
Yet why do I hesitate to name
that other land in which
for years—although kept secret—
a growing nuclear power has existed
beyond supervision or verification,
subject to no inspection of any kind?
Predicting he would be branded an anti-Semite, as he has been in full measure, Grass named Israel and called its atomic power a threat to “an already fragile world peace.” Nor did he stop there. He berated his own country for complicity by selling the Israelis “yet another submarine equipped to transport nuclear warheads.”
Germany had already given Israel two Dolphin-class submarines, and subsidized one-third of the $540 million cost of another. The Germans are planning to similarly subsidize the sale of the latest submarine.
Nuclear arms and submarines are enough to drag down any poem, and “What Must Be Said” lacks elegance and grace, at least in the English translation by Breon Mitchell. But as a poet, Grass risks even more in suggesting a political solution. Our leaders should renounce the use of force, he writes, directly countering Obama’s insistence on keeping a military option on the table. And they should “insist that the governments of both Iran and Israel allow an international authority free and open inspection of the nuclear potential and capability of both.”
No other course offers help
to Israelis and Palestinians alike,
to all those living side by side in enmity
in this region occupied by illusions,
and ultimately, to all of us.
Will any significant world leader take up the challenge and publicly support such an even-handed and common-sense approach? Not if the Israeli government of Bibi Netanyahu and his defenders in Europe and the United States have their way. Their purpose in reviling Grass as a Nazi and anti-Semite is precisely to silence anyone who might even consider following his lead.
The Guardian reports: The international network of counter-jihadist groups that inspired Anders Behring Breivik is growing in reach and influence, according to a report released on the eve of the Norwegian’s trial.
Far-right organisations are becoming more cohesive as they forge alliances throughout Europe and the US, says the study, with 190 groups now identified as promoting an Islamophobic agenda.
This week Breivik will appear on trial in Oslo after confessing to the murder of 77 people in Norway last July, killings that he justified as part of a “war” between the west and Islamists.
The report, by anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, states that since the 33-year-old’s killing spree, the counter-jihad movement – a network of foundations, bloggers, political activists and street gangs – has continued to proliferate.
Campaigners cite the formation three months ago of the Stop Islamization of Nations (Sion) group, designed to promote an umbrella network of counter-jihad groups across Europe and the US, as evidence of a global evolution.
An inaugural Sion summit is planned in New York this year to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11. Speakers are set to include Paul Weston, chairman of the anti-Islamic British Freedom Party (BFP), which recently announced a pact with the English Defence League. In the manifesto that Breivik published online 90 minutes before his attacks, he cited blog postings by Weston which discussed a “European civil war” between the west and Islam.
Researchers at Hope Not Hate name the UK as one of Europe’s most active countries in terms of counter-jihad extremism, with 22 anti-Islamic groups currently operating.
In Europe as a whole, 133 organisations were named in the report, including seven in Norway, and another 47 in the US, where a network of neo-conservative, evangelical and conservative organisations attempts to spread “negative perceptions of Islam, Muslim minorities and Islamic culture”.
Max Rivlin-Nadler writes: You walk into an elevator and push the button for your desired floor. The button lights up. The elevator stops at the next floor and another person enters. He or she pushes the same button that’s already lit up.
According to Dario Maestripieri’s new book, “Games Primates Play,” that elevator ride represents a game of dominance — similar to those exhibited by other primates. The University of Chicago professor argues that our social relationships have analogs in nature, especially within groups of primates. While we may not go up and grab our supervisor’s genitals as a sign of respect, we engage in similar acts that help us figure out where we fit in groups.
By exploring our social lives through the lens of an evolutionary biologist, Maestripieri breaks down the most routine of social interactions into deeply embedded behaviors from our genetic forebears. Just like humans, other primates grapple with questions of dominance, reciprocation, nepotism and fidelity. He demonstrates how his own life, the lives of celebrities, and corporate success strategies all derive from a single, primal need to find our place in a group.
Salon spoke with Maestripieri about the primal instincts we exhibit in our emails, whether altruism exists, how nepotism is natural, and why it matters to study our everyday nature. [Continue reading…]
The Washington Post reports: The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to send up to 30 U.N. blue berets to Syria as the spearhead of a U.N. monitoring mission charged with reinforcing a shaky two-day cease-fire between the Syrian government and armed insurgents.
The vote places the United Nations at the center of one of the most volatile crises of the Arab Spring and offers the outside world independent eyewitness to what has unfolded during a 13-month crackdown on anti-government protesters that left more than 9,000 dead and pitched the country into civil war.
The cease-fire that went into effect on Thursday appeared to be fraying. There were reports of renewed tank and artillery fire in several areas of the embattled city of Homs, and in the relatively peaceful city of Aleppo at least five people were said to have been killed when security forces used live ammunition to suppress demonstrators at the funeral of a man killed the previous day.
The Syrian Revolution General Commission, an opposition group, said 17 people had been killed nationwide in the renewed violence, nine of them in the shelling of Homs.
The action by the council followed a contentious round of negotiations that pitted the United States and its European and Arab allies against Russia. Moscow had opposed efforts to include language requiring Syria to empower the monitors with greater freedom of movement and action, saying their mandate needed to be negotiated with the Syrian government.
In order to secure Russian support, the United States and other key sponsors of the resolution were forced to strip out provisions from the resolution that would have required Syria to provide unimpeded access throughout the country. Instead, it merely “calls upon” the Syrian government to guarantee “full, unimpeded, and immediate freedom of movement and access” for the U.N. monitors.
Mya Guarnieri: I’m writing this from somewhere in Europe. Sunday morning, I will board a plane* bound for Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport. Organizers of the “Welcome to Palestine” campaign tell me that more than half the passengers on my flight will be international activists.
When they arrive in Ben-Gurion Airport on Sunday, the activists will openly declare their intent to visit Palestine, more specifically, the West Bank city of Bethlehem, which is in Palestinian Authority-controlled Area A.
While thousands upon thousands of tourists make their way from Israel to Bethlehem every year without a problem, Israeli authorities have made it clear that the activists, who number over 1500, will not be allowed to pass. They will be detained and deported.
The activists have been invited by 25 Palestinian civil society organizations to spend next week in the Bethlehem area building an elementary school, planting trees, and repairing village wells that Palestinians say have been damaged by Israeli settlers.
Israeli authorities say the fly-in is a provocation and an attempt to de-legitimize Israel.
On Sunday, hundreds of undercover policemen and Special Forces will be deployed in Ben Gurion Airport in an attempt to stop the activists–who the Israeli authorities call “hostile elements”– from reaching Bethlehem. Israel has also reportedly sent no-fly lists to foreign airlines and has warned the companies that if they do not comply with the state’s demands to prohibit the activists from boarding, the airlines will have to eat the deportation costs.
Associated Press adds: Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian campaign organizer, said the activists were coming to exercise their right to visit the Palestinian territories.
“The object is not to fly in to make a protest at the airport. The object is for foreigners to visit us,” Qumsiyeh said. “Even prisoners are allowed visits.”
Business Insider reports: Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul revealed this week that he would support moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a surprising position that contradicts conventional wisdom about Paul’s stance toward the Jewish state.
Paul first made this position known Wednesday night, during a private meeting with evangelical leaders interested in helping the Texas Congressman reach out to the conservative Christian community.
According to a transcript of the meeting obtained by Business Insider, the leaders started off the meeting by asking Paul whether he would sign an Executive Order to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a major policy objective for Israeli hardliners and many leaders in the Christian Right.
“The real issue here is not what America wants, but what does Israel want,” Paul told evangelical leaders, according to a transcript of the meeting obtained by Business Insider. “If Israel wants their capital to be Jerusalem, then the United States should honor that.”
“How would we like it if some other nation said ‘We decided to recognize New York City as your capital instead, so we will build our embassy there?'” he added.
Even Paul’s senior campaign aides were surprised by his response.
“We were floored,” senior advisor Doug Wead told Business Insider. “It sounds like pure Ron Paul, but it still caught us off guard…If someone would have asked him that in a national debate, I suppose it would have popped right out, but nobody did!”
Wead added that Paul’s position “makes sense after the fact,” noting that the candidate has frequently emphasized Israel’s sovereignty.
With Rick Santorum out of the GOP contest is Paul now making a bid for the Christian evangelical vote or simply displaying his ignorance about the Middle East conflict, or both?
The New York Times reports: Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has no affinity for the authorities in Iran, who she fears would have her arrested or worse if she returned home. But she has found herself standing with them in opposition to the onerous nuclear sanctions imposed on her country.
As representatives of Iran and six world powers prepared to resume negotiations on Iran’s uranium enrichment activities this weekend in Istanbul, Ms. Ebadi said that the sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union were misdirected.
Although meant to pressure the Iranian government to compromise on its nuclear program, “the very stringent sanctions have really been a tremendous blow to people,” Ms. Ebadi said in a telephone interview. “The people need these sanctions to be removed for a sustainable life.”
The sanctions have contributed to acute shortages of foreign goods there, rising inflation and unemployment and a sharply devalued currency. Further deprivations loom, especially if a European Union ban on Iranian oil sales goes ahead as planned in less than three months.
The Guardian reports: Israel has forced low-cost airline Jet2.com to cancel the tickets of three women from Manchester intending to travel to Bethlehem via Tel Aviv this weekend for a gathering of pro-Palestinian activists.
Jet2.com informed the women by email that the airline would refuse to carry them and no refund would be paid. The move follows pressure on airlines from Israel to ban known activists.
One of the women, retired nurse Norma Turner, said Jet2.com had caved in to pressure. “It never crossed my mind that Israel could stop people with British passports leaving British airports,” she told the Guardian.
Israel has promised to deny entry to hundreds of activists due to arrive at Tel Aviv airport on Sunday en route to the West Bank for a week of educational and cultural activities.
Up to 2,000 mainly European sympathisers plan to board planes in what has been dubbed a “flytilla” in reference to previous attempts to breach the blockade of Gaza by flotillas of boats.
Jet2.com’s decision followed a similar move by the German carrier Lufthansa, which cancelled the tickets of dozens of activists on Thursday, saying it was complying with Israel’s demand not to fly certain passengers to Tel Aviv. Other airlines are expected to follow suit.
In an email sent to the three women, Jet2.com said it had been obliged to provide the Israeli authorities passengers’ names, dates of birth, passport numbers and nationalities.
“As a result of providing that information, Jet2.com has been informed by the Israeli authorities that you will not be not permitted to enter Israel. Consequently, if Jet2.com carries you to Israel, you will be refused entry and Jet2.com will be liable for both a fine and your return to Manchester,” the email said.
“We regret that, in light of the decision taken by the Israeli authorities, we are unable to accept you for carriage to Israel on this occasion and your booking with Jet2.com has been cancelled.”
The airline apologised and said the cancellation was “totally beyond our control” but said the passengers would not be reimbursed.
The Israeli authorities have warned they will not permit entry to “hostile elements” and “provocateurs”. It distributed “no-fly” lists of known activists to airlines, which were warned that they would be expected to bear the costs of flying activists back to their point of departure.
“The provocateurs will be dealt with in a determined and quick way,” Israel’s public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, said this week. “If they arrive in Israel they will be identified, removed from the plane, their entry into Israel will be prevented and they will be moved to a detention facility until they are flown out of Israel.”
Hundreds of police will be deployed to Ben Gurion airport from Saturday night and flights carrying activists will be diverted to a smaller terminal, where security forces and immigration officials will check and question passengers.
