Tent 1948

Abir Kopty writes:

If you are Palestinian, it will be difficult to find anything to identify with in Tel Aviv’s tents’ city, until you reach Tent 1948. My first tour there was a few days ago, when I decided to join Tent 1948. Tent 1948’s main message is that social justice should be for all. It brings together Jewish and Palestinian citizens who believe in shared sovereignty in the state of all its citizens.

For me, as Palestinian, I don’t feel part of the July 14 movement, and I’m not there because I feel part, almost every corner of this encampment reminds me that this place does not want me. My first tour there was pretty depressing, I found lots of Israeli flags, a man giving a lecture to youth about his memories from ’48 war’ from a Zionist perspective, another group marching with signs calling for the release of Gilad Shalit, another singing Zionist songs. This is certainly not a place that the 20% of the population would feel belong to. The second day I found Ronen Shuval, from Im Tirtzu, the extreme right wing organization giving a talk full of incitement and hatred to the left and human rights organizations. Settlers already set a tent and were dancing with joy.

The existence of Tent 1948 in the encampment constitutes a challenge to people taking part in the July 14 movement. In the first few days, the tent was attacked by group of rightwing activists, who beat activists in the tent and broke down the Palestinian flag of the tent. Some of the leaders of the July 14 movement have said clearly that raising core issues related to Palestinian community in Israel or the occupation will make the struggle “lose momentum”. They often said the struggle is social, not political, as if there was a difference. They are afraid of losing supporters if they make Palestinian issues bold.

The truth is that this is the truth.

The truth is, this is exactly what might help Netanyahu, if he presses the button of fear, recreates the ‘enemy’ and reproduce the ‘security threat’, he might be able to silence this movement. The problem is not with Netanyahu, he is not the first Israeli leader to rely on this. The main problem is that Israelis are not ready yet to see beyond the walls surrounding them.

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Worst US loss of life in Afghan war as helicopter crash kills 38

The Guardian reports:

The US suffered its worst single loss of life in the nearly 10-year Afghan war when a helicopter carrying 31 special forces soldiers crashed on Friday night in the east of the country.

Both the Taliban, via a spokesman reached by telephone, and Afghan officials in Wardak province, to the west of Kabul, said insurgents had shot down the Chinook helicoter with a rocket.

Nato would only confirm that “there was enemy activity in the area” and that the US-led alliance was still trying to work out what had happened. US air force captain Justin Brockhoff, a Nato spokesman, said: “We are in the process of accessing the facts.”

A western official said 37 people were on board, all of whom were killed. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said the helicopter was carrying 31 US special forces and seven members of the Afghan national army.

It is very unusual for Nato deaths from a single incident to reach double figures. The previous most deadly day for foreign troops was in June 2005 when 16 US soldiers were killed when a Taliban rocket hit a Chinook in the eastern province of Kunar.

The crash happened at 3am when the helicopter was hovering over the town of Tangi Joi Zareen, in the district of Saidabad, according to a spokesman for the provincial governor.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said Nato attacked a house in the district where insurgent fighters were gathering. He said eight insurgents died in the fighting.

Special forces from many nations, including the UK, conduct up to half a dozen such operations every night, usually targeting mid-level insurgent commanders whose whereabouts are pinpointed by high-tech intelligence gathering teams.

The downing of a helicopter, quite apart from the massive loss of life, will alarm war planners who rely heavily on Nato’s air superiority in the fight against the Taliban. They will want to discover whether the aircraft was downed by a lucky shot from a rocket-propelled grenade, a highly inaccurate weapon, or by something more sophisticated.

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Broadcasting Hama ruins, Syria says it has ended revolt

The New York Times reports:

Syria’s state news media broadcast stark images of the destruction in the besieged city of Hama for the first time on Friday, showing burned buildings, makeshift barricades and deserted streets strewn with rubble in footage that appeared designed to show that government forces had put down a rebellion in the city.

The images were unmistakably Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city and a focal point of the five-month-old uprising that has left President Bashar al-Assad’s leadership isolated and weakened. They suggested the military had retaken control of a city that had briefly wrested itself from four decades of authoritarian rule by the Assad family and enjoyed an unprecedented measure of freedom.

The reports by Syrian television and Sana, the official news agency, portrayed the army as Hama’s savior. The news appeared aimed at reinforcing the leadership’s message to internal opponents that they are regarded as armed insurrectionist gangs inspired by hostile foreign powers and will be dealt with accordingly. But the television footage of the wreckage in Hama also implicitly acknowledged that the violence there had been far more serious than Mr. Assad’s government had until now been willing to publicly admit.

It also underlined a legacy of the assault: Hama was remarkably peaceful after security forces withdrew in June. Violence erupted only when the government, fearing the momentum the city might provide the uprising, began its ferocious assault on Sunday. Although government officials insist the protesters were armed, not a single weapon was seen in the streets on a recent visit, an account confirmed by diplomats in their trips there. Barricades were set up, but only to block the return of the military and security forces.

“Today we are alive, but tomorrow we don’t know,” said a resident reached by telephone who gave his name as Fadi. “The humanitarian situation is getting worse day by day.”

Government officials offered an altogether different version of events, in reports from Damascus, the capital, that appeared more and more to defy reality.

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Breivik’s guru comes out of hiding, briefly

Peder Jensen, the 36-year-old Norwegian blogger, who until now has only been publicly known as “Fjordman“, was cited in terrorist Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto 111 times. The blogger has just given his first and only interview with the Norwegian tabloid, VG, after having been questioned for hours by Norwegian police. He says he is now going into hiding for his own safety.

– I have not read the manifesto, but I have seen bits and pieces referred in the media, and some parts have been shown to me by others, he says.

During the period between 2009 and 2010 he received a handful of emails from Breivik, where he told Jensen that he was working on a book. In one email written towards the end of 2009, he also asked if he could meet his political idol «Fjordman». Jensen refused.

– I don’t know why he wanted to meet me, but I declined. Not because of his extreme views, but because he didn’t seem very interesting – like a vacuum cleaner salesman. «Pie in the sky», I thought to myself when I re-read the emails, says Jensen, again stressing that he never met Breivik personally.

Police sources confirm that Jensen has been questioned as the blogger «Fjordman», and that they are certain of his identity.

– I feel it’s my duty to give a statement to the police, and I wanted to do this interview because my name eventually would have emerged anyway, resulting in a media frenzy. It is also a way for me to clear my name, says Jensen.

Norwegian police confiscated his computer Thursday, and even though he was questioned as a witness, he feels that the police are looking to implicate him.

Maybe one of things the police will be looking for on Jensen’s computer is a copy of Breivik’s manifesto.

I realize this guy must be feeling extremely paranoid right now but the idea that he would be told that he was a guiding light for Breivik and that he had been cited that number of times, and yet to decide not to read the manifesto — that seems hard to fathom.

Having questioned Jensen, I wonder whether Norwegian investigators have also expressed any interest in talking to Jensen’s ideological counterparts in the US, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, and if so, would these “counter-jihadists” agree to help the inquiry?

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Israel’s “July 14” movement

Zeev Sternhell writes:

In these times of hope and anticipation, it is difficult not to wonder what form the protest might have taken, and what results it might already have achieved, if there had been a large and authentic social-democratic party here with a labor union worthy of the name, at its side. Indeed a spontaneous uprising that does not find political expression very soon, and does not threaten those who are in power, will of necessity have very limited achievements.

Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands that when there is no opposition with an ideology of structural social change, and which is capable of garnering electoral support for a comprehensive national economic program, the danger facing him and his party is negligible. The truth is that the protesters themselves have already presented him with a way out. His representatives will anoint the protest leaders with pure oil, will set up teams and present ideas, will throw them a few bones and then will move to the area where there is no greater expert than Netanyahu: drawing out time and making promises that no one intends to keep.

The real problem, however, is not the government but rather the political elite. Except for a small number of politicians on the center-left, like Knesset member Shelly Yachimovich (Labor ), most of the political leadership is partner to the blind belief in the unique qualities of a free market. There were indeed people outside the political arena who for decades contended that a free market creates no less poverty and misery than wealth and welfare; there were those who believed that poverty is not some kind of natural phenomenon but rather something created by man. But all of them were considered “populist.” There were people who saw in the state a tool for correcting distortions and supplying cheap and good-quality services to the entire population, but they were denounced as wanting to return to the 1950s.

Therefore the young demonstrators would do well to remember May 1968 in Europe. Beyond the obvious differences, there is a common denominator: a protest that does not find immediate political expression is destined to disintegrate.

Uri Avnery writes:

It all started in a remote little town in Tunisia, when an unlicensed market vendor was arrested by a policewoman. It seems that in the ensuing altercation, the woman struck the man in the face, a terrible humiliation for a Tunisian man. He set himself on fire. What followed is history: the revolution in Tunisia, regime change in Egypt, uprisings all over the Middle East.

The Israeli government saw all this with growing concern – but they didn’t imagine that there might be an effect in Israel itself. Israeli society, with its ingrained contempt for Arabs, could hardly be expected to follow suit.

But follow suit it did. People in the street spoke with growing admiration of the Arab revolt. It showed that people acting together could dare to confront leaders far more fearsome than our bumbling Binyamin Netanyahu.

Some of the most popular posters on the tents were “Rothschild corner Tahrir” and, in a Hebrew rhyme, “Tahrir – Not only in Cahir” – Cahir being the Hebrew version of al-Cahira, the Arabic name for Cairo. And also: “Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu”.

In Tahrir Square, the central slogan was “The People Want to Overthrow the Regime”. In conscious emulation, the central slogan of the tent cities is “The People Want Social Justice”.

Who are these people? What exactly do they want?

It started with a demand for “Affordable Housing”. Rents in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and elsewhere are extremely high, after years of Government neglect. But the protest soon engulfed other subjects: the high price of foodstuffs and gasoline, the low wages . The ridiculously low salaries of physicians and teachers, the deterioration of the education and health services. There is a general feeling that 18 tycoons control everything, including the politicians. (Politicians who dared to show up in the tent cities were chased away.) They could have quoted an American saying: “Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”

A selection of the slogans gives an impression: We want a welfare state! Fighting for the home! Justice, not charity! If the government is against the people, the people are against the government! Bibi, this is not the US Congress, you will not buy us with empty words! If you don’t join our war, we shall not fight your wars! Give us our state back! Three partners with three salaries cannot pay for three rooms! The answer to privatization: revolution! We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, we are slaves to Bibi in Israel! I have no other homeland! Bibi, go home, we’ll pay for the gas! Overthrow swinish capitalism! Be practical, demand the impossible!

What is missing in this array of slogans? Of course: the occupation, the settlements, the huge expenditure on the military.

This is by design. The organizers, anonymous young men and women – mainly women – are very determined not to be branded as “leftists”. They know that bringing up the occupation would provide Netanyahu with an easy weapon, split the tent-dwellers and derail the protests.

We in the peace movement know and respect this. All of us are exercising strenuous self-restraint, so that Netanyahu will not succeed in marginalizing the movement and depicting it as a plot to overthrow the right-wing government.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports:

Israel’s Interior Ministry gave the final green light Thursday to the construction of more than 900 new homes in a Jewish development built on land seized during the 1967 Mideast war.

Palestinians and anti-settlement groups said the Har Homa expansion, which has been working its way through Israeli regulatory agencies since last year, will occupy one of the last remaining undeveloped hillsides in the area and effectively cut off direct access between Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Palestinians hope to one day include both areas in a contiguous, independent state.

“This is very alarming because it will create a very big obstacle to the two-state solution,” said Hagit Ofran of Peace Now, an Israeli group that tracks settlements.

She said the project, one of the largest planned in East Jerusalem in recent years, appears to have been fast-tracked, based on the speed of the approval process. Nevertheless, she said construction would not likely break ground for three more years.

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Once untouchable, the old despot and his sons faced the wrath of the nation they had terrorised

Robert Fisk writes:

Just when the Arab dictators desperately need to drink the secure, cool waters of an Arab summer, along came the Egyptians yesterday to poison the well. Deep into its depths, those dictators could see a flickering enmeshed face, fragile, fingers playing over its nose and mouth, the arm of a man on a stretcher raised to prevent the light getting too close but – for just a few brief moments – with the same old arrogant eyes. Then the heavy black mike appeared in the man’s left hand. “I am here, your honour,” said a chillingly strong voice. “I have not committed any such crimes.”

Yes, the Egyptians really did put their wretched, ancient dictator on trial yesterday, along with his effete, sullen sons – both dressed in white as if heading for yet another summer tennis party, an illusion broken only by the green Koran under Alaa Mubarak’s arm. An encouragement to his dessicated, 83-year-old father, Hosni? Or an insult to the dead?

The lawyers screamed their clients’ pain; of torture, of snipers, of the murder of Egypt’s own people in the January-February uprising, of the brutality of the security forces, of corruption on a Mafia scale. And to whom else did these terrible charges apply? We thought about Damascus, of course. And Tripoli. And the Bahraini capital of Manama. And of Rabat and Amman and Algiers and Riyadh…

And across the vast, arid wastelands of the Arab despots, the government televisions continued to show game shows and cooking classes and domestic dramas and friendly crowds, all of whom loved their presidents and kings and potentates, who could never – could they? – be accused of these awful crimes. Outside Egypt itself, the only live coverage of the trial was broadcast by post-revolutionary Tunisia and that nemesis of the Mubarak regime and of the United States and of Israel: the Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television.

“Are you Mohamed Hosni Sayed Mubarak?” asked Judge Ahmed Refaat. Or Bachar al-Assad? Or Muammar Gaddafi? Or His Majesty King Hamad? Or even His Highness King Abdullah, Guardian of the Three Holy Places in a place called Saudi Arabia?

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Inside Egypt’s Salafis

Lauren Bohn writes:

“All Americans think I’m a terrorist,” 34-year-old Salafi political organizer Mohammed Tolba exhales with his trademark belly laugh. He grips his gearshift and accelerates to 115 miles per hour down a winding overpass in Cairo. “But I only terrorize the highways.” Since the fall of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Tolba has constantly been on the go. “The media says we all wear galabeyas (long Islamic dress), put our women in niqabs (a face veil), and will cut off people’s hands,” Tolba says, dramatically feigning a yawn. “We’re the new boogey-man, but people need to know we’re normal — that we drink lattes and laugh.”

To this end, the silver-tongued IT consultant shuttles regularly from the modish offices of popular television personality Bassem Youssef (he’s starring in a segment on the “Egyptian Jon Stewart’s” highly anticipated new show) to the considerably less shiny quarters of Cairo’s foremost Salafist centers. He’s been conducting leadership and media-training workshops for Salafis. “These guys don’t know how to talk to the public,” says Tolba, rubbing his eyes in exhaustion. “Once they open their mouths and face a camera, man, they ruin everything.”

The same might be said for their debut on Egypt’s main stage last Friday, as hundreds of thousands of Salafis joined other Islamist groups in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Droves of people from governorates across Egypt got off buses near Tahrir Square, chanting “Islamic, Islamic, we don’t want secular.” One Salafi, Hisham al-Ashry, beamed with pride as he walked back from the square to his tailor shop downtown. “Today is a turning point, we finally showed our strength.” Meanwhile, “the liberals and the leftists are freaking out. God protect the nation and revolution,” noted popular blogger Zeinobia.

Who are the faces and voices of an oft-deemed bearded and veiled monolith that packed the square? And what exactly do they want?

“Salafi” has become something of a catchall name for any Muslim with a long beard, but Salafism is not a singular ideology or movement with one leader. As Stéphane Lacroix, a French scholar of Islamist movements, explains, it’s more a “label for a way of thinking” guided by a strict interpretation of religious text. Salafis aspire to emulate the ways of the first three generations of Islam. Many Salafis have cultivated a distinctive appearance and code of personal behavior, including untrimmed beards for men and the niqab for women.

The Salafi culture has been growing in Egypt for decades, but until the revolution had little formal political presence. “Satellite salafism” hit Egypt in 2003, with around 10 Salafi-themed TV channels broadcasting from Egypt on Nilesat. The intensely popular Al-Nas, Arabic for the People, began broadcasting in 2006. Its programming focuses on issues of social justice and sermons by prominent Salafi preachers, like Mohammed Yaqoub and Mohammed Hassan, whose tapes and books are common fixtures among street vendors throughout Cairo. Nobody knows exactly how many Salafis there now are in Egypt, but Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, a presidential candidate formerly of the Muslim Brotherhood, recently estimated their number at around 20 times the number of Muslim Brotherhood members (unofficial reports estimate Muslim Brotherhood membership between 400,000 to 700,000 members).

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Somalia famine’s devastation

The Associated Press reports:

Kaltum Mohamed sits beside a small mound of earth, alone with her thoughts. It is her child’s grave—and there are three others like it.

Just three weeks ago, Mohamed was the mother of five young children. But the famine that has rocked Somalia has claimed the lives of four of them. Only a daughter remains. The others starved to death before Mohamed’s eyes as she and her husband trekked to Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in search of aid.

Thousands of parents are grieving in Somalia and in refugee camps in neighboring countries amid Somalia’s worst drought in 60 years.

The drought and famine in Somalia have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 in the last 90 days in southern Somalia alone, according to U.S. estimates. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished, suggesting the death toll of small children will rise.

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The U.S. defense establishment is the world’s largest socialist economy

Fareed Zacharia writes:

The Pentagon’s budget has risen for 13 years, which is unprecedented. Between 2001 and 2009, overall spending on defense rose from $412 billion to $699 billion, a 70 percent increase, which is larger than in any comparable period since the Korean War. Including the supplementary spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, we spent $250 billion more than average U.S. defense expenditures during the Cold War — a time when the Soviet, Chinese and Eastern European militaries were arrayed against the United States and its allies. Over the past decade, when we had no serious national adversaries, U.S. defense spending has gone from about a third of total worldwide defense spending to 50 percent. In other words, we spend more on defense than the planet’s remaining countries put together.

It is not unprecedented for defense spending to fall substantially as we scale back or end military actions. After the Korean War, President Dwight Eisenhower cut defense spending 27 percent. Richard Nixon cut it 29 percent after Vietnam. As tensions declined in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan began scaling back his military spending, a process accelerated under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Given the enormous run-up in spending under George W. Bush, even if President Obama made comparable cuts to that of those presidents today, defense spending would remain substantially above the levels under all those presidents. The Bowles-Simpson commission’s plan proposed $750 billion in defense cuts over 10 years. Lawrence Korb, who worked at the Pentagon for Ronald Reagan, believes that a $1 trillion cut over 10 to 12 years is feasible without compromising national security.

Serious conservatives should examine the defense budget, which contains tons of evidence of liberalism run amok that they usually decry. Most talk of waste, fraud and abuse in government is vastly exaggerated; there simply isn’t enough money in discretionary spending. Most of the federal government’s spending is transfer payments and tax expenditures, which are — whatever their merits — highly efficient at funneling money to their beneficiaries. The exception is defense, a cradle-to-grave system of housing, subsidies, cost-plus procurement, early retirement and lifetime pension and health-care guarantees. There is so much overlap among the military services, so much duplication and so much waste that no one bothers to defend it anymore. Today, the U.S. defense establishment is the world’s largest socialist economy.

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Proposed Israeli law would formalize second-class status for Arab citizens

A new bill presented in Israel’s Knesset aims to have the “Jewish nature” of the state preferred over democracy, to end Arabic’s status as one of Israel’s official languages, and to have Jewish law “guide” courts’ rulings. Noam Sheizaf reports:

There is one talking point repeated in every hasbara (the Hebrew term for state sponsored propaganda) talk given by an Israeli representative, or in every booklet your campus’ Jewish Agency representative might hand you. It has to do with “the full rights” of Palestinian citizens in Israel, including the status of Arabic as an official language, and the equality of all Israeli citizens under the law. This is the heart of “the only democracy in the Middle East” claim.

Those who are familiar with Israeli society, know that Arab citizens are discriminated against in many ways: Some of these ways are formal—like the new bill allowing segregated communities; the law against family unification of Arab citizens; the absentees’ property laws, and more—while other are a matter of practice, such as the fact that some government agencies won”t hire Arabs, or the that the courts mete out harsher sentences to Arab citizens convicted of the same crimes as Jewish citizens.

Yet a new bill, signed by members of opposition and coalition alike, aims to strip Israel even of the appearance of democracy. If passed (it has a fair chance), this law will determine that in any case of contradiction between democratic values and the Jewish nature of the state, the Jewish element will prevail. More specifically, the bill aims to cancel the status of Arabic as one of Israel’s two official languages; it orders the state to develop communities for Jews only; and in a passage that seems to be taken from the Iranian constitution, declares that when there is no law referring to a certain case, courts should rule in the spirit of halakha, or Jewish religious jurisprudence.

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Israel’s growing protest movement presents a looming threat to settlers

Israel’s protest movement which has come to life and grown rapidly over the last three weeks has steered clear of the issue of the occupation. Yet the one group in Israel that has been largely absent in the call for social justice is the far right including settlers in the West Bank, this being the segment of Israeli society that has the deepest investment in the perpetuation of the status quo.

Dimi Reider, an Israeli journalist and co-editor of 972 Magazine, speaks to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

In the New York Times, Dimi Reider and Aziz Abu Sarah write:

There are profound and institutionalized economic disparities between Arabs and Jews in Israel. But when it comes to housing prices, an Israeli Arab who makes $1,000 a month and pays $500 in rent can still find common ground with an Israeli Jew making $2,000 and giving $1,000 to the landlord.

On Saturday, approximately 150,000 people flocked to the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba and many small suburbs and towns to protest the rising cost of living. It was Israel’s largest demonstration on any issue in over a decade, and organizers are calling for an even larger protest this weekend, mimicking the snowballing weekly rallies of the Arab Spring.

The protests that are paralyzing Israel began on July 14, when a few professionals in their 20s decided they could no longer tolerate the city’s uncontrolled rents, and pitched six tents at the top of the city’s most elegant street, Rothschild Boulevard. Three weeks later, the six tents have swelled to over 400, and more than 40 similar encampments have spread across the country, forming unlikely alliances between gay activists and yeshiva students, corporate lawyers and the homeless and ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli Arabs.

So far, the protesters have managed to remain apolitical, refusing to declare support for any leader or to be hijacked by any political party. But there is one issue conspicuously missing from the protests: Israel’s 44-year occupation of the Palestinian territories, which exacts a heavy price on the state budget and is directly related to the lack of affordable housing within Israel proper.

According to a report published by the activist group Peace Now, the Israeli government is using over 15 percent of its public construction budget to expand West Bank settlements, which house only 4 percent of Israeli citizens. According to the Adva Center, a research institute, Israel spends twice as much on a settlement resident as it spends on other Israelis.

Indeed, much of the lack of affordable housing in Israeli cities can be traced back to the 1990s, when the availability of public housing in Israel was severely curtailed while subsidies in the settlements increased, driving many lower-middle-class and working-class Israelis into the West Bank and Gaza Strip — along with many new immigrants.

Israel today is facing the consequences of a policy that favors sustaining the occupation and expanding settlements over protecting the interests of the broader population. The annual cost of maintaining control over Palestinian land is estimated at over $700 million.

Noam Sheizaf reports on the political impact the protests may have, as indicated by recent polls.

While it would be unwise to try and predict what sort of effect these unprecedented demonstrations will have on Israeli politics, the polls do confirm some of the hunches we had in the last three weeks, and most notably, a potential for far-reaching changes in the political system in the years to come.

– The support for the protest crosses sectors and party lines. According to Channel 10’s poll conducted on Monday, 88 percent of Israelis support the protest. The middle class parties lead the way: 98 percent of Kadima voters (!), 95 percent of Labor’s and even 85 percent of Netanyahu’s Likud voters find the protest just. Even if these figures dropped in the last couple of days—which had some fractions and public disputes in the protest movement—they are still exceptionally high.

– The attempts to discredit the protest have mostly failed. Government spokesperson and rightwing organizations tried to tie the protest to left wing movements, claiming that it is a politically-motivated move aimed personally against PM Netanyahu. Still, 74 percent of the public think that the protest is a genuine one, and only 22 percent find it to be politically motivated.

– The hard right is the only group not identifying with the protest. Half of Shas’ voters and most of those voting for the settlers’ parties think the protest is politically motivated. Voters of those parties are more inclined to oppose the protest than any other group. I believe that these groups sense that the protest might challenge the dominant political arrangements in Israel – ones with benefit the settlers and the religious parties.

Carlo Strenger writes:

The current uprising has given Israeli liberals a voice again. Its authenticity could not be disputed: to this day there is no clear leadership. The atmosphere on the boulevard, where hundreds of tents fill the tree-lined spaces, feels like a remake of Woodstock. The demands sound eminently reasonable to all sectors of Israel’s population.

But the apolitical character of the protest is being challenged. Netanyahu is already claiming that the protesters are driven by political motivations. His intent is clear: he wants to delegitimise them and claim that their real goal is to topple his government. This, he hopes, will weaken nationwide support for their demands. On Monday, members of the Likud central committee started to say that the demonstrators are just a bunch of sushi eaters with nargilas (Arab pipes) – ie leftist radicals – and that the media was exaggerating their numbers.

Because the process so far has been rather chaotic, it is very difficult to predict what it will lead to. If the Likud and Yisrael Beitenu step up their attack, the protesters will not have any choice but to confront the current coalition in the political arena as well.

They will have to say that taxpayers’ money in Israel has been spent lavishly in the occupied territories; that billions of shekels go to child support for the ultra-Orthodox, most of whom do not contribute to the economy; that the silent collusion of Israel’s governments with the settlers is ruining the country morally, politically and economically. In the end, the call for social justice and the demand to reinstate liberal values in Israel cannot be separated.

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Syrian tanks thrust into Hama, 45 reported killed

Reuters reports:

At least 45 civilians were killed in a tank assault by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to occupy the center of Hama, an activist said on Thursday, in a sharp escalation of a military campaign aimed at ending an uprising against his rule.

Reacting to intensifying assaults on Syrian cities and towns, the U.N. Security Council overcame deep divisions and condemned Assad’s bloody crackdown on civilian protesters. It was the first substantive action by the United Nations on Syria’s five-month-old uprising for political freedoms.

An activist who managed to leave the besieged city told Reuters that 40 people were killed by heavy machinegun fire and shelling by tanks in al-Hader district north of the Orontes river on Wednesday and early on Thursday.

The activist, who gave his name as Thaer, said five more people from the Fakhri and Assa’ad families, including two children, were killed as they were trying to leave Hama by car on the al-Dhahirya highway.

Syrian authorities have expelled most independent media, making it difficult to verify witness accounts and official statements.

Residents earlier said tanks had advanced into central Hama on Wednesday after heavily shelling the city and occupied the main Orontes Square, the site of some of the largest protests against Assad, who succeeded his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.

Snipers spread onto rooftops and into the nearby citadel. They said shelling concentrated on al-Hader district, large parts of which were razed in 1982 when forces loyal to Hafez al-Assad overran Hama to crush Islamist insurgents, killing many thousands of people.

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Italy edges closer to ‘burqa ban’ law

Al Jazeera reports:

An Italian parliamentary commission has approved a draft law that would ban women from wearing veils that cover their faces in public, if passed by parliament in September.

The draft approved by the constitutional affairs commission on Tuesday would prohibit women from wearing a burqa, niqab or any other garb that covers the face in such circumstances.

It would expand a decades-old law that for security reasons prohibits people from wearing face-covering items such as masks in public places.

Women who violate the ban would face fines of $140 to $400, while third parties who force women to cover their faces in public would be fined $42,000 and face up to 12 months in jail.

Italy, an overwhelmingly Catholic country with a small Muslim minority, is the latest European country to act against the burqa. France and Belgium have banned the wearing of burqa-style Islamic dress in public, as has a city in Spain. The Belgium law cited security concerns.

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US troops in Iraq: to stay or to go?

The New York Times reports:

The narrative of American officialdom here, civilian and military alike, is that United States muscle is used merely in service of supporting Iraq’s fledgling democracy. Iraq’s leaders and soldiers are the ones responsible, and seek American support only as needed. That may be literally true, but the reaction to a botched weekend raid in a village north of the capital that left three men dead, none the targeted insurgent, laid bare another truth: In Iraq, where grievances run deep, America will still bear the brunt of the blame when things go wrong, even if the facts don’t completely align.

On Saturday news began filtering out of Al Rufait, the grape farming village near Saddam Hussein’s hometown, Tikrit, that a nighttime operation conducted by Iraqi and American forces aimed at a suspected member of Al Qaeda had turned in to a shootout involving bullets, grenades and American Apache helicopters that left the tribal Sheik and two others dead, and several wounded, including two young girls.

A cloud of competing stories emerged, but the outrage from village residents and local officials was directed at the Americans, even though it was Iraq’s own security forces in charge of the mission, and Iraqi soldiers far outnumbered the amount of American boots on the ground, a United States military spokesman said.

Stories of American complicity in civilian deaths here are rare these days, and we made plans to head to the village the next morning. Before 8 a.m., two tribal leaders met us on the side of the main highway that connects the capital with the country’s north, and we followed their white pickup through winding roads that cut through vast green fields of grape vines. Visiting a village in the Sunni triangle suspected of having Al Qaeda sympathies on a day of anger toward a suspected American role in the killing of a respected tribal leader is a fraught exercise, and for only the second time of nearly a year in Iraq, I heard the metallic clank of one of our guards chambering a round in his assault rifle.

But the villagers were respectful, and just wanted to tell their story to a Western journalist, even if none of the customary tribal traditions such as a cup of chai were on offer. Surrounded by perhaps two dozen men, they took us through the village, recounting the raid and blaming the Americans. Not a cross word was said about Iraqi forces who the Americans said led the raid, nor of the Iraqi legal system, which had validated the raid with a judicial warrant.

“We will follow them to America and file cases there against them,” one of the villagers said. “There were more than 30 people here that saw what happened and all are ready to be witnesses.”

One tribal sheik, Youseff Ahmad, spoke about the debate about the future role of United States forces here that has dominated Iraqi public life of late. “We want them to leave, even before the end of this year,” Mr. Ahmad said. “They’ve destroyed us. They’ve only brought killing and disaster.”

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Where is the American version of Breivik and why has he not struck yet? Or has he?

Max Blumenthal writes:

Few political terrorists in recent history took as much care to articulate their ideological influences and political views as Anders Behring Breivik did. The right-wing Norwegian Islamophobe who murdered 76 children and adults in Oslo and at a government-run youth camp spent months, if not years, preparing his 1,500 page manifesto.

Besides its length, one of the most remarkable aspects of the manifesto is the extent to which its European author quoted from the writings of figures from the American conservative movement. Though he referred heavily to his fellow Norwegian, the blogger Fjordman, it was Robert Spencer, the American Islamophobic pseudo-academic, who received the most references from Breivik — 55 in all. Then there was Daniel Pipes, the Muslim-bashing American neoconservative who earned 18 citations from the terrorist. Other American anti-Muslim characters appear prominently in the manifesto, including the extremist blogger Pam Geller, who operates an Islamophobic organization in partnership with Spencer.

Breivik may have developed his destructive sensibility in the stark political environment of a European continent riveted by mass immigration from the Muslim world, but his conceptualization of the changes he was witnessing reflect the influence of a cadre of far-right bloggers and activists from across the Atlantic Ocean. He not only mimicked their terminology and emulated their language, he substantially adopted their political worldview. The profound impact of the American right’s Islamophobic subculture on Breivik’s thinking raises a question that has not been adequately explored: Where is the American version of Breivik and why has he not struck yet? Or has he?

Many of the American writers who influenced Breivik spent years churning out calls for the mass murder of Muslims, Palestinians and their left-wing Western supporters. But the sort of terrorism these US-based rightists incited for was not the style the Norwegian killer would eventually adopt. Instead of Breivik’s renegade free-booting, they preferred the “shock and awe” brand of state terror perfected by Western armies against the brown hordes threatening to impose Sharia law on the people in Peoria. This kind of violence provides a righteous satisfaction so powerful it can be experienced from thousands of miles away.

And so most American Islamophobes simply sit back from the comfort of their homes and cheer as American and Israeli troops — and their remote-controlled aerial drones — leave a trail of charred bodies from Waziristan to Gaza City. Only a select group of able-bodied Islamophobes are willing to suit up in a uniform and rush to the front lines of the clash of civilizations. There, they have discovered that they can mow down Muslim non-combatants without much fear of legal consequences, and that when they return, they will be celebrated as the elite Crusader-warriors of the new Islamophobic right — a few particularly violent figures have been rewarded with seats in Congress. Given the variety of culturally acceptable, officially approved outlets for venting violent anti-Muslim resentment, there is little reason for any American to follow in Breivik’s path of infamy.

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Dropping of the last mask of democracy

Omar Barghouti writes:

“You should definitely postpone your book launch in Jerusalem”, warned a close friend who felt that the planned event for launching my recently published book on the Palestinian-led movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. He warned it might be too risky in light of the recently passed Israel law that effectively bans support for the thriving boycott movement. At the packed bookshop-cafe in occupied East Jerusalem last Thursday, however, the engaged and Italian-coffee scented atmosphere was almost jubilant, as if declaring a collective defiance of Israel’s latest draconian measure.

Much controversy has arisen since the Israeli parliament passed legislation that would effectively criminalize support for any boycott against Israel or its institutions, under threat of heavy penalties and worse, without the need to prove “guilt”. Dozens of Israeli civil society organizations and leading legal scholars, including many opposing the boycott, have resolutely opposed this exceptionally authoritarian law on diverse grounds, ranging from the most principled to the downright pragmatic.

Missing in most of the debate is the Palestinian perspective, which is undoubtedly most relevant given that this law was entirely motivated by the spectacular growth in recent years of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, which was launched in 2005 and is led by the largest coalition of Palestinian civil society parties, unions, and NGOs: the Boycott National Committee (BNC).

While expressing alarm at this latest repressive attempt by Israel to crush Palestinian peaceful resistance and support for it among conscientious Israelis, a BNC statement conveyed confidence that this law will bolster the spread of BDS even faster among liberal communities the world over. Hind Awwad, coordinator with the BNC, reacted: “This new legislation, which violates international law, is testament to the success of the rapidly growing global BDS movement and a realization within political elites inside Israel that the state is becoming a world pariah in the way that South Africa once was.”

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