YEAR IN REVIEW: We will not go down – a song of hope for Gaza
Christmas in the Holy Land – 2009
Christmas in the Holy Land – 2009
Breaking Palestine’s peaceful protest
“Why,” I have often been asked, “haven’t the Palestinians established a peace movement like the Israeli Peace Now?”
The question itself is problematic, being based on many erroneous assumptions, such as the notion that there is symmetry between the two sides and that Peace Now has been a politically effective movement. Most important, though, is the false supposition that Palestinians have indeed failed to create a pro-peace popular movement.
In September 1967 – three months after the decisive war in which the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem were occupied – Palestinian leaders decided to launch a campaign against the introduction of new Israeli textbooks in Palestinian schools. They did not initiate terrorist attacks, as the prevailing narratives about Palestinian opposition would have one believe, but rather the Palestinian dissidents adopted Mahatma Gandhi-style methods and declared a general school strike: teachers did not show up for work, children took to the streets to protest against the occupation and many shopkeepers closed shop.
Israel’s response to that first strike was immediate and severe: it issued military orders categorising all forms of resistance as insurgency – including protests and political meetings, raising flags or other national symbols, publishing or distributing articles or pictures with political connotations, and even singing or listening to nationalist songs. [continued…]
Israeli repression wave targets activists
There is an internal document that has not been leaked, or perhaps has not even been written, but all the forces are acting according to its inspiration: the Shin Bet, Israel Defense Forces, Border Police, police, and civil and military judges. They have found the true enemy who refuses to whither away: The popular struggle against the occupation.
Over the past few months, the efforts to suppress the struggle have increased. The target: Palestinians and Jewish Israelis unwilling to give up their right to resist reign of demographic separation and Jewish supremacy. The means: Dispersing demonstrations with live ammunition, late-night army raids and mass arrests. Since the beginning of the year, 29 Palestinians have been wounded by IDF snipers while demonstrating against the separation fence. The snipers fired expanding bullets, despite an explicit 2001 order from the Military Adjutant General not to use such ammunition to break up demonstrations. After soldiers killed A’kel Srour in June, the shooting stopped, but then resumed in November.
Since June, dozens of demonstrators have been arrested in a series of nighttime military raids. Most are from Na’alin and Bil’in, whose land has been stolen by the fence, and some are from the Nablus area, which is stricken by settlers’ abuse. Military judges have handed down short prison terms for incitement, throwing stones and endangering security. One union activist from Nablus was sent to administrative detention – imprisonment without a trial – while another activist is still being interrogated.
For a few weeks now, the police have refused to approve demonstrations against the settlement in Sheikh Jarrah, an abomination approved by the courts. On each of the last two Fridays, police arrested more than 20 protesters for 24 hours. Ten were held for half an hour in a cell filled with vomit and diarrhea in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem.
Israel also recently arrested two main activists from the Palestinian organization Stop the Wall, which is involved in research and international activity which calls for the boycott of Israel and companies profiting from the occupation. Mohammad Othman was arrested three months ago. After two months of interrogation did not yield any information, he was sent to administrative detention. The organization’s coordinator, Jamal Juma’a, a 47-year-old resident of Jerusalem, was arrested on December 15. His detention was extended two days ago for another four days, and not the 14 requested by the prosecutor.
The purpose of the coordinated oppression: To wear down the activists and deter others from joining the popular struggle, which has proven its efficacy in other countries at other times. What is dangerous about a popular struggle is that it is impossible to label it as terror and then use that as an excuse to strengthen the regime of privileges, as Israel has done for the past 20 years.
The popular struggle, even if it is limited, shows that the Palestinian public is learning from its past mistakes and from the use of arms, and is offering alternatives that even senior officials in the Palestinian Authority have been forced to support – at least on the level of public statements.
Yuval Diskin and Amos Yadlin, the respective heads of the Shin Bet security service and Military Intelligence, already have exposed their fears. During an intelligence briefing to the cabinet they said: “The Palestinians want to continue and build a state from the bottom up … and force an agreement on Israel from above … The quiet security [situation] in the West Bank and the fact that the [Palestinian] Authority is acting against terror in an efficient manner has caused the international community to turn to Israel and demand progress.”
The brutal repression of the first intifada, and the suppression of the first unarmed demonstrations of the second intifada with live fire, have proved to Palestinians that the Israelis do not listen. The repression left a vacuum that was filled by those who sanctified the use of arms.
Is that what the security establishment and its political superiors are trying to achieve today, too, in order to relieve us of the burden of a popular uprising?
Why war will take no holiday in 2010
Why war will take no holiday in 2010
Our endless wars are nightmares. Few enough would disagree with that, even, I suspect, among the supportive 58% in that poll or the 54% who “approve of the president’s performance as commander-in-chief.” If only we could wake up.
I was reminded of our strange dream-state recently when I reread the article that sparked the creation of what became TomDispatch. I first stumbled across it in the fall of 2001, after the Towers came down in my hometown, after that acrid smell of burning made its way to my neighborhood and into everything, after I traveled to “Ground Zero” (as it was already being called) to view those vast otherworldly shards of destruction via nearby side streets, after I spent weeks reading the ever narrower, ever more war-oriented news coverage in this country, and after I watched George W. Bush and Company mainlining fear directly into the American bloodstream, selling the eternal terror of terror and the president’s Global War on Terror that so conveniently went with it.
It was obvious that war was on the way, and that the men (and woman) who were leading us into it had expansive dreams and gargantuan plans. Somewhere in that period, probably in late October 2001, a friend sent me a piece by an Afghan-American living in California that spurred me to modest action. [continued…]
Strategic Balochistan becomes a target in war against Taliban
Strategic Balochistan becomes a target in war against Taliban
Look around Balochistan, and you may not see much. Pakistan’s largest province is also its poorest and least inhabited – an expanse of rocky deserts and ramshackle villages where hardy tribesmen live by ancient laws. But to outside eyes, Balochistan’s barren sands glisten with hidden value.
Mining companies eye its natural riches: vast and largely untapped reserves of copper, natural gas and possibly oil. Criminals see easy money: the world’s heroin superhighway, a network of smuggling trails, cuts through its lonely borders. Foreign governments consider its location: wedged between Iran and Afghanistan, and covering two-fifths of Pakistan, Balochistan occupies highly strategic real estate.
But for the black-turbaned clerics commanding the Afghan Taliban, the desolate province offers something else: a welcoming rear base. As the Taliban insurgency oozes across Afghanistan, Nato generals complain that the fighting is being directed from Balochistan. [continued…]
n Thursday morning as Pakistan’s Defence Minister was preparing to board a flight to China for an official visit, he was detained by Pakistani security officials and was told he had been barred from leaving the country. An altercation ensued, but the country’s top civilian defence official was told by the police and soldiers that they take orders from senior generals and judges, not government ministers.
Minister Ahmad Mukhtar was told by the security officials that they were acting on instructions from the National Accountability Bureau, an arm of Pakistan’s intelligence service created by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf to harass political opponents with corruption charges. The Defence Minister was told his name was on an ‘Exit Control List’ even though he has never been convicted of a crime. Clearly, Pakistan has entered a decisive stage. Imagine the U.S. Defence Secretary being detained by U.S. marshals at JFK airport or the RCMP telling Peter MacKay, he cannot leave the country.
What was bizarre about this development is that although it was Pakistani’s Interior Ministry that was supposed to have issued the orders, the Interior Minister himself was named as someone not allowed to travel abroad without special permission. Clearly the administration of the government in Islamabad has been taken over by plainclothes military intelligence officials.
A coup by any other name is still a coup. [continued…]
The NYT’s view of “journalistic objectivity”
The NYT’s view of “journalistic objectivity”
I‘ve written many times before about Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman who was abducted by the U.S. in late 2001, tortured at Bagram, sent to Guantanamo for seven years — where he was never charged with any crime and was interrogated overwhelmingly about Al Jazeera’s operations, not about Terrorism — and then suddenly released without explanation last year, as though the whole thing never happened. The due-process-free imprisonment of this journalist by the U.S. government was ignored almost completely by the American media (other than Nicholas Kristof), even as it righteously obsessed on the far shorter imprisonment of journalists by countries such as Iran and North Korea (hey, look over there at those tyrannical countries – they imprison our journalists!!!!!). Aside from al-Hajj, we’ve imprisoned numerous other journalists without charges in Iraq — and continue to this day to do so — including ones who work for Reuters and the Associated Press.
Today, The New York Times’ media reporter Brian Stelter profiles al-Hajj, who is now an on-air correspondent for Al Jazeera. The article recounts the details of al-Hajj’s detention, his description of his torture, and the physical and psychological wounds he still suffers from his treatment at the hands of his American captors. All things considered, the article is a decent effort to explain what happened, and Stelter deserves credit for bringing some desperately needed attention to this story. Nonetheless, the article contains some rather striking and revealing passages, beginning with this:
Among Al Jazeera’s viewers in the Arab world since the 9/11 attacks, perhaps nothing has damaged perceptions of America more than Guantánamo Bay. For that reason, Mr. Hajj, who did a six-part series on the prison after his release, is a potent weapon for the network, which does not always strive for journalistic objectivity on the subject of his treatment. In an interview, Ahmed Sheikh, the editor in chief of Al Jazeera, called Mr. Hajj “one of the victims of the human rights atrocities committed by the ex-U.S. administration.”
It’s amazing that the NYT would claim that Al Jazeera’s description of the Bush administration’s conduct as it concerns al-Hajj and other detainees — “one of the victims of the human rights atrocities committed by the ex-U.S. administration” — departs from precepts of “journalistic objectivity.” How can the lawless detention, brutal torture, numerous detainee deaths, obvious targeting of unfriendly media outlets, and explicit renunciation of the Gevena Conventions be described in any other way? The breach of “journalistic objectivity” comes not from calling this conduct what it is, but from refusing to do so — from obfuscating what took place by using soothing euphemisms and according equal deference to the plainly false denials of those who did it, such as what takes place in these passages Stelter wrote: [continued…]
Cleric’s funeral becomes protest of Iran leaders
Cleric’s funeral becomes protest of Iran leaders
The funeral of a prominent dissident cleric in the holy Iranian city of Qum turned into a huge and furious antigovernment rally on Monday, raising the possibility that the cleric’s death could serve as a catalyst for an opposition movement that has been locked in a stalemate with the authorities.
As mourners carried the body of the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, tens of thousands of his supporters surged through the streets of Qum, chanting denunciations of the leadership in Tehran that would have been unthinkable only months ago: “Our shame, our shame, our idiot leader!” and “Dictator, this is your last message: The people of Iran are rising!” [continued…]
Karroubi: Iran’s problems should be solved by its own people
President Ahmadinejad has betrayed the Iranian Revolution, violated the country’s Constitution and may be unable to serve his full term, his most vocal opposition rival has told The Times.
In a surprising twist, however, Mehdi Karroubi warned the West against exploiting the regime’s weakness to strike a deal to halt a nuclear programme that was, he insisted, for peaceful purposes.
“Nuclear science and achieving peaceful nuclear technology is a right reserved for all NPT [Nuclear Proliferation Treaty] members,” he said. “We ask Western governments not to use this internal situation as a bargaining chip with the present Iranian Government to reach agreements which would undermine the rights of the Iranian people.”
He also urged the West against trying to help the opposition in its battle against the regime, saying that such efforts would “pave the way for suppression and accusations of dependency on foreigners”. He added: “The challenges in this country should be solved by its own people.” [continued…]
US forces mounted secret Pakistan raids in hunt for al-Qaida
US forces mounted secret Pakistan raids in hunt for al-Qaida
American special forces have conducted multiple clandestine raids into Pakistan’s tribal areas as part of a secret war in the border region where Washington is pressing to expand its drone assassination programme.
A former Nato officer said the incursions, only one of which has been previously reported, occurred between 2003 and 2008, involved helicopter-borne elite soldiers stealing across the border at night, and were never declared to the Pakistani government.
“The Pakistanis were kept entirely in the dark about it. It was one of those things we wouldn’t confirm officially with them,” said the source, who had detailed knowledge of the operations. [continued…]
Welcome to Pashtunistan: the aim of America’s secret war?
Few people by now can be unaware of Blackwater, later known as Blackwater Worldwide and now as Xe. The private security agency formed in 1997 and based in North Carolina is owned by Erik Prince, a former member of the US Navy Seal special forces, and has long-standing links with both the CIA and the FBI.
Its presence in Pakistan has been an open secret for some years. The investigative journalist and writer Jeremy Scahill, an authority on Blackwater and author of the bestselling Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, revealed last month that it has been there since 2006. He says Blackwater is being employed for covert ops, essentially intended to target high-value al Qa’eda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, but it has also assisted in providing information for drone attacks and has kidnapped suspects and transported them covertly to the US for interrogation.
In other words, it is an American agency with a licence to kill or kidnap, thus exonerating official American agencies that might one day be held accountable. (Although personally I doubt if the CIA will ever be held accountable. I continue to aver that it is the only real rogue intelligence agency in the world. Mossad might enjoy liberty of action for any operation, but it cannot undertake one without the approval of the Israeli prime minister: no such restriction applies to the CIA.) [continued…]
Gaza’s civilians still unable to rebuild one year after ‘Operation Cast Lead’
Gaza’s civilians still unable to rebuild one year after ‘Operation Cast Lead’
The international community has betrayed the people of Gaza by failing to back their words with effective action to secure the ending of the Israeli blockade which is preventing reconstruction and recovery, say a group of 16 leading humanitarian and human rights groups in a new report released today (22 December) ahead of the anniversary of the start of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza (27 December-18 January).
The Israeli authorities have allowed only 41 truckloads of all construction materials into Gaza since the end of the offensive in mid-January, warn the groups, which include Amnesty International, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Mercy Corps and Oxfam International. The task of rebuilding and repairing thousands of homes alone will require thousands of truckloads of building materials, they add.
Little of the extensive damage the offensive caused to homes, civilian infrastructure, public services, farms and businesses has been repaired because the civilian population, and the UN and aid agencies who help them, are prohibited from importing materials like cement and glass in all but a handful of cases, says the report. [continued…]
Doctor admits Israeli pathologists harvested organs without consent
Israel has admitted pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others, without the consent of their families – a practice it said ended in the 1990s – it emerged at the weekend.
The admission, by the former head of the country’s forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs – a charge that Israel denied and called “antisemitic”.
The revelation, in a television documentary, is likely to generate anger in the Arab and Muslim world and reinforce sinister stereotypes of Israel and its attitude to Palestinians. Iran’s state-run Press TV tonight reported the story, illustrated with photographs of dead or badly injured Palestinians. [continued…]
Challenge to the Jewish Taliban
A struggle for the character of the Western Wall, this city’s iconic Jewish holy site and central place of worship, is under way, and it is being fought with prayer shawls and Torah scrolls.
On Friday, sheets of rain obscured the Old City’s ancient domes. But by 7 a.m. about 150 Jewish women had gathered at the Western Wall to pray and to challenge the constraints imposed on them by traditional Jewish Orthodoxy and a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court.
Under their coats many of the women, supporters of a group of religious activists called Women of the Wall, wore a tallit, or fringed prayer shawl, a ritual garment traditionally worn only by men. Some wore their prayer shawls openly, an illegal act in this particular setting that can incur a fine or several months in jail. [continued…]
MK Tibi: Israel is democratic for Jews, but Jewish for Arabs
he Knesset Law and Constitution Committee conducted a heated debate Tuesday on two parallel law proposals that would enable certain communities in Israel to handpick their residents.
The proposals come amid controversy over a number of Jewish communities in the north who have refused entry to Arabs wishing to reside there.
The laws proposed by MKs Israel Hasson and Shai Hermesh (Kadima) and the committee’s chairman MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu) circumvent the High Court decision that the reception committees are illegal.
MK Ahmed Tibi condemned the bills, which passed a preliminary vote a few weeks ago, claiming they would only allow systemic racism to take hold.
“This law is like pissing in mid-air,” said Tibi. “Racism is starting to be legislated in the statute book. There is an influx of racist law proposals; you aren’t even ashamed of yourselves.”
“This country is Jewish and democratic: Democratic towards Jews, and Jewish toward Arabs,” Tibi said, adding that that if Israel’s declaration of independence was to be voted on in the Knesset today, it would not pass.
The proposals were actually meant to enable communal settlements, like moshavim, to disqualify candidates on grounds of economic status or incompatibility with the settlement’s lifestyle. The debate quickly developed, however, to the fact that the committees would be able to prevent Arab landowners from building on community land.
Lebanon drama adds act with leader’s trip to Syria
Lebanon drama adds act with leader’s trip to Syria
In any other part of the world, a new prime minister’s visit to a neighboring country would be a fairly routine event. But Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s trip to Syria over the weekend has been treated here as a kind of Lebanese national drama, the subject of almost endless commentary in newspapers and television shows.
It is not that anything really happened. Mr. Hariri and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria exchanged some thoroughly forgettable diplomatic banter and posed for photographs.
Instead, the trip epitomized a national story with anguished, almost operatic dimensions: a young leader forced to shake hands with the man who he believes killed his father. And it served as a reminder of this region’s deep attachment to political symbolism.
For many Lebanese, the visit was a measure of Syria’s renewed influence over Lebanon after years of bitterness and struggle since the Syrian military’s withdrawal in 2005. That withdrawal came after Mr. Hariri’s father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was killed in a car bombing that many here believe to have been ordered by Syria.
The withdrawal was a blow to Syrian prestige, and afterward Saad Hariri seemed to have the entire Western world at his back as he built a movement for greater Lebanese independence and pushed for an international tribunal to try his father’s killers.
But since then, the United States and the West have chosen to engage with Syria, not isolate it. And Saudi Arabia, which has long backed Mr. Hariri and competed with Syria for influence here, reconciled with the Syrians earlier this year, leaving them a freer hand to guide politics in Lebanon as they once did. [continued…]
The legacy of the people’s ayatollah: Montazeri
“If you’re going to ask me questions about my regrets, plan to spend the next month or so in my house!” Those were the words with which Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri greeted me when I interviewed him at his home in the holy city of Qum four years ago. He was then 83 years old and could look back on a life in which he’d served as a founding father of the Islamic Republic only to become its most vocal critic. More recently, especially in the last seven months of protest and crackdowns following the disputed June 12 reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Montazeri has emerged as the authoritative voice of religious opposition to a supposedly religious regime. He has been lionized as an idealist speaking truth to those in a power structure riddled with cynical and corrupt ideologues. For many Iranians, Montazeri became more than a hero, more than an ayatollah; he was truly, as Shiites say, a source of emulation.
On Sunday, Iranian state news agencies announced that Montazeri had died at 87 of natural causes, and at first they didn’t even want to call him an ayatollah. The paranoid regime in Tehran did its best to discourage people from attending his funeral on Monday. All major newspapers received a letter from Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance about how to play down Montazeri’s death. The ministry even sent some agents to the printers to make sure that newspapers listened to its orders, according to one newspaper editor. They ordered the telecommunications company to slow the speed of Internet connections, and they shut down mobile phones in Qum for several hours, eyewitnesses said.
Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence warned political activists not to attend the burial service next to Qum’s Masuma shrine. The police and the Revolutionary Guards arrested others before they reached the city. Two Iranian journalists reported that security forces with riot shields and truncheons ringed Montazeri’s house, and the streets were full of police in uniform and in plain clothes carrying walkie-talkies and stun guns. The Basij militia connected to Iran’s increasingly powerful Revolutionary Guards corps attacked buses full of mourners, and the regime’s partisans and thugs filled the main mosque in Qum rather than let a memorial service be held there. But according to eyewitnesses, hundreds of thousands of people came to the city anyway. [continued…]
Cleric’s death, torture case jolt Iran
Iran’s opposition seized upon the death of one of the Islamic republic’s founding fathers — a revered ayatollah who was also a fierce critic of the nation’s leadership — to take to the streets in mourning.
Tens of thousands of Iranian mourners–many chanting protest slogans–joined the funeral procession Monday for Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who had described government crackdowns as the work of power-hungry despots.
Iranian authorities have barred foreign media from covering the processions in the holy city of Qom for Ayatollah Montazeri, who died Sunday at age 87. But witnesses said many mourners shouted protest cries including “Death to the Dictator” in displays of anger against Iran’s ruling establishment.
There were no immediate reports of serious clashes from the witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of arrest by Iranian authorities. Some opposition Web sites noted scuffles and violence, but the reports couldn’t immediately be confirmed.
On Monday, access to the Internet in Iran was slow, and cellular telephone service was unreliable. The government has periodically restricted communications in an attempt to prevent protesters from organizing.
The death of Ayatollah Montazeri, who passed away in his sleep, was only one of two surprises to shake Iran over the weekend.
Hours earlier, on Saturday, military prosecutors alleged that prison guards tortured to death at least three student protesters in July, contradicting months of denials by top leaders. The reversal is one of the biggest blows to Tehran’s credibility since government protests first erupted six months ago.
Either development, by itself, would provide a rallying point for the opposition, which claims last summer’s presidential election was a fraud and is demanding a political overhaul. Together, they represent the widening array of challenges facing the Iranian regime. [continued…]
The remarkable life of Iran’s bravest cleric
Born in 1922 to a poor but pious family, he studied not only with Ayatollah Khomeini but with Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi, easily the most esteemed Shiite leader of his time. In Shiite clerical hierarchy, the stature of your teachers is a significant measure of your own stature. Montazeri’s pedagogical pedigree was singular for it combined the unmatched erudition of Boroujerdi with the political bravura of Khomeini. Moreover, Montazeri had been relentless in fighting on the side of his mentor throughout the ’60s and ’70s when Khomeini lived in exile. After the victory of the revolution, he had emerged clearly as the second most powerful man in Iran. The 1986 decision to name him the successor to Khomeini codified in law what was already evident in practice.
Tensions between Khomeini and Montazeri began when someone on Montazeri’s staff leaked the story of secret deals between Iran and the United States–what turned out to be the Iran-Contra Affair. Khomeini executed the staffer, despite protestations from Montazeri. A few months later, as the nation learned of Khomeini’s ill health, Montazeri learned of mass executions in prisons on the order of Khomeini. Prisoners serving time on earlier charges were to be retried–in procedures often lasting no more than a few minutes–and executed if found to be still opposed to the regime. Instead of keeping a pragmatic silence and awaiting Khomeini’s death, as many of his advisors recommended, Montazeri wrote a harshly worded letter to Khomeini condemning the orders, saying that this is not the kind of revolution they had fought for together.
This time, the price for protesting murder and moral perfidy was the direct wrath of Khomeini. Montazeri was not only stripped of all his power, but ridiculed in the press by many, including Khomeini’s son, as an imbecile–a country bumpkin at best, unwittingly used and abused by “enemies of Islam.” The media began a vicious campaign of character assassination against Montazeri, the man Khomeini had not long before called “the essence of my life” and a “pillar of Islam.” [continued…]
Iran-Iraq standoff over oil field ends
Iraq said Sunday that Iranian soldiers who had been occupying part of a disputed Iraqi oil field had withdrawn, ending a three-day standoff that had strained relations between the countries.
But Labeed Abawi, Iraq’s deputy foreign affairs minister, said some Iranian troops remained in Iraq late Sunday. “They withdrew from the field, but they are not completely out of Iraqi territory,” he said.
Mr. Abawi said representatives of the two countries planned to meet soon to try to agree on the precise border in the vicinity of the Fakka field in Maysan Province in southeastern Iraq.
Iran’s state news media said Sunday that the Iranian troops had returned to their border post, but that the soldiers had never crossed into Iraq.
Iraq claims that it dug oil wells on the Fakka field during the 1970s before the Iran-Iraq war. But Iran says the area near the well that its soldiers had occupied — known as Well No. 4 — is on the Iranian side of the border.
At least four other oil fields in Iraq are within several hundred yards of the Iranian border or straddle the line.
Border disputes between the countries, which set off the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, have become more common in recent months as Iraq has moved to sell development rights to fields near the Iranian border, including Fakka. [continued…]
Hamas using English law to demand arrest of Israeli leaders for war crimes
Hamas using English law to demand arrest of Israeli leaders for war crimes
The Islamist group Hamas is masterminding efforts to have senior Israeli leaders arrested for alleged war crimes when they visit European countries including Britain, a top Hamas official involved in the effort has told The Times.
The claim comes amid continuing diplomatic fallout after a British arrest warrant was issued last week against Tzipi Livni, who served as Foreign Minister during Israel’s Gaza offensive last winter. The warrant was withdrawn when it became clear that Ms Livni, now leader of the opposition, was not in the country. Its existence apparently prompted her to cancel a trip to attend a meeting in London.
President Peres described the incident as “one of the greatest political mistakes” that Britain could have made and calling for the law to be changed. “Everything is based on … a hostile majority public opinion,” he said last week. “The British promised they would fix this and it is time that they do so.” [continued…]
The democratic value of universal accountability
In important global dynamic today bridges the worlds of politics, morality and violence. Societies are grappling with the challenge of how to hold accountable the political leaders who are accused of various degrees of criminal behavior, including war crimes, torture — even genocide or crimes against humanity. The most outrageous cases are tried in special international tribunals or at the International Criminal Court. Other cases reflect more contested situations and raise critical issues of the universality of ethics and law.
Two cases last week in the United States and Israel are interesting in this respect, because these two countries remind us twice a week — and more often in war time and on patriotic national holidays — that they are democracies whose values should be spread around the world. Well, the world at the receiving end of their moral munificence frequently asks an important question to which it has yet to receive a clear answer:
Are the United States and Israel subject to the same standards of accountability for their behavior as everyone else in the world, or do they operate at a higher plane of impunity when it comes to using violence to kill, torture, and invade or occupy other peoples? [continued…]
Settler activist: ‘We are preparing a series of surprises’ for the army
Settler activist: ‘We are preparing a series of surprises’ for the army
ight-wing activists began preparing on Sunday for a fight against the planned demolition of structures built in contravention of the 10-month freeze on construction in West Bank settlements.
The demolition plans were described in an internal Israel Defense Forces memo detailing the intelligence-gathering methods to be used to detect freeze violations. The memo was leaked to the press on Sunday.
One of the issues that most concerns right-wing activists is the IDF’s plan to jam cell-phone signals, so as to prevent settlers from telling other protesters where to demonstrate against implementation of the freeze. Activists have begun consulting with experts on how to overcome the signal jamming.
The memo shows the IDF is focusing on how to deal with problems it has faced in the past, a right-wing activist said on Sunday.
“The army is preparing for yesterday’s war, but we won’t fight it on its turf,” he said. “We are preparing a series of surprises and events that it won’t be prepared for.” Continue reading
Likud MK: Annex West Bank, consider citizenship for Palestinians
Likud MK: Annex West Bank, consider citizenship for Palestinians
K
nesset Member Tzipi Hotovely, one of the leading dissenting voices in the Likud faction opposing the policy adopted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Sunday that the territories should be annexed to Israel.
“Israeli law should be applied on the Judea and Samaria region,” Hotovely said during a conference in the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and stated she did not rule out granting citizenship to Palestinians.
The MK explained that “Judea and Samaria are a part of the land of Israel,” and blamed the Palestinians for the failure of the political process. “We strongly wish to get a divorce, but the other side doesn’t want to separate.”
Hotovely told Ynet later in the evening, “It’s unthinkable that Jews in Judea and Samaria would live under occupation and under a military regime. The distorted policy, which states that every construction permit must be approved by the defense minister harms the most basic rights.
“It’s time to lift the question mark over Judea and Samaria and view the people living there as citizens with an equal status. Thinking ahead, strategically, we should consider granting gradual citizenship to Palestinians based on loyalty tests.” [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — Tzipi Hotovely, at 31 the youngest member of the Knesset, is younger than the occupation. Small wonder that she regards Israel’s control of the West Bank as irreversible. Her proposal to consider granting Palestinians citizenship if they pass a “loyalty test” obviously bears no relationship to the one-state solution that many anti-Zionists favor. Indeed, the Jewish claim to Greater Israel she is expressing has embedded in it a hubris that goes beyond that of the average Zionist — she seems to be implying that Jews could still exercise control over a Jewish state even if they were in a minority. Old hands in the conflict will no doubt dismiss her views as naive, but I have to wonder whether or not she is simply saying what a majority of her generation of Jewish Israelis already think.
Israel continues its assault on Palestinian nonviolent leaders
Israel’s campaign against Palestinian nonviolent grassroots activists is continuing. The latest leader to be arrested is Jamal Juma’. Juma’ has been the coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign since 2002. His arrests follows those of Mohammad Othman, who had been promoting BDS in Europe, and Abdallah Abu Rahmah a leader of the weekly nonviolent protests against the wall in Bil’in. [continued…]
Somalia is greatest victim of President Bush’s War on Terror
Somalia is greatest victim of President Bush’s War on Terror
AQfghanistan and Iraq have monopolised the headlines but Somalia is arguably an even greater victim of George W. Bush’s ill-conceived and lamentably executed War on Terror. America’s interventions have proved so catastrophic that its best hope of salvaging something from the wreckage is a president it chased from power three years ago, who controls a few square miles of a country three times the size of Britain.
It has delivered a people that practised a moderate form of Islam into the hands of religious extremists. Its efforts to combat terrorism have turned Somalia into a launchpad for global jihad. Somalia is now the ultimate failed state whose mayhem threatens to destabilise the region and whose pirates maraud the vital shipping lanes off its shores. Its people endure Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis.
During the Cold War, the US pumped arms into Somalia to counter Soviet support for neighbouring Ethiopia. In 1991 clan warlords ousted the dictator Siad Barre and turned that arsenal on each other. In 1992 President Bush Snr sent in the Marines to help its suffering people — a venture that ended in the Black Hawk Down debacle, a humiliating US withdrawal and a dozen more years of anarchy as the feuding warlords ran amok. [continued…]
How ‘Iran’s stooge’ turned out to have a mind of his own
How ‘Iran’s stooge’ turned out to have a mind of his own
Is it time for the Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, to drop their caution towards the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki and his cabinet, and embrace a neighbour currently emerging from years of tyranny followed by civil strife?
Gulf reservations are understandable. Mr al Maliki was a member of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) parliamentary bloc, the predecessor of the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition of Shiite, mainly Islamist, parties. Fearing Iranian dominance over Iraq, Saudi Arabia distanced itself from him.
By the time of the parliamentary elections in December 2005, the UIA consisted mainly of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (ISCI), Mr al Maliki’s Dawa party, its splinter group Dawa Iraq Organisation, and the Fadhilah party. Other groups known for their close ties with Iran, such as Moqtada al Sadr’s candidates and Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraq National Congress (INC), ran independently. [continued…]
Death of Iran’s top dissident cleric prompts protests
Death of Iran’s top dissident cleric prompts protests
I
ran’s top dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, 87 years old, died in his sleep on Saturday night, his family said, drawing supporters to the holy city of Qom on Sunday to pay their respects.
The impromptu mourning — with reformist supporters reportedly streaming in from Tehran and further afield — threatens to set the stage for another confrontation between opposition protesters and government forces. Antiregime demonstrators have used government-sanctioned holidays and Islamic holy days to rally publicly against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won contested presidential elections in June.
Spontaneous protests erupted across several cities in Iran and at university campuses, according to video circulating on the Internet Sunday afternoon. In one clip in Najaf-Adad, Mr. Montezeri’s home town, crowds chanted, “Our green Montazeri, congratulations on your freedom,” and “Montazeri, your path will continue.” [continued…]
At the height of Iran’s bloody civil unrest this year, a young doctor named Ramin Pourandarjani defied his superiors. He refused to sign death certificates at a Tehran prison that he said were falsified to cover up murder.
He testified to a parliamentary committee that jailers were torturing and raping protesters, his family says. He told friends and family he feared for his life.
And on Nov. 10, the 26-year-old doctor was found dead in the military clinic where he lived and worked. [continued…]
Iran claims an oil field it seized
Iran claims an oil field it seized
The Iranian government said Saturday that an oil field that its troops occupied a day earlier was on its side of the border with Iraq, despite Iraqi claims to the contrary.
A group of about 11 Iranian soldiers seized a portion of the remote Fakka oil field in Maysan Province in southeastern Iraq early Friday, according to Iraq.
Government officials in Baghdad said they had summoned the Iranian ambassador to protest the military action, but diplomatic efforts had so far failed to resolve the dispute. [continued…]
Iraqi troops in standoff with Iran near oil well
Iraq deployed security forces Saturday near a remote oil well seized by Iran, officials said, and its government pressed Tehran to withdraw its forces from the area along their disputed southern border.
U.S. officials applauded Iraq for standing its ground against Iran — an uneasy ally that analysts said was aiming to remind its neighbor of its economic and political pull in its takeover of the oil well Thursday. The site is located in one of the largest oil fields in Iraq and has about 1.5 billion barrels in reserves.
The standoff was a dramatic display of the occasionally tense relations between the two oil-rich nations that fought an eight-year war in the 1980s but now share common ground in Shiite-led governments. [continued…]
U.S. companies shut out as Iraq auctions its oil fields
U.S. companies shut out as Iraq auctions its oil fields
Those who claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to get control of the country’s giant oil reserves will be left scratching their heads by the results of last weekend’s auction of Iraqi oil contracts: Not a single U.S. company secured a deal in the auction of contracts that will shape the Iraqi oil industry for the next couple of decades. Two of the most lucrative of the multi-billion-dollar oil contracts went to two countries which bitterly opposed the U.S. invasion — Russia and China — while even Total Oil of France, which led the charge to deny international approval for the war at the U.N. Security Council in 2003, won a bigger stake than the Americans in the most recent auction. “[The distribution of oil contracts] certainly answers the theory that the war was for the benefit of big U.S. oil interests,” says Alex Munton, Middle East oil analyst for the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, whose clients include major U.S. companies. “That has not been demonstrated by what has happened this week.”
In one of the biggest auctions held anywhere in the 150-year history of the oil industry, executives from across the world flew into Baghdad on Dec. 11 for a two-day, red-carpet ceremony at the Oil Ministry, broadcast live in Iraq. With U.S. military helicopters hovering overhead to help ward off a possible insurgent attack, Oil Minister Hussein Al-Shahrastani unsealed envelopes from each company, stating how much oil it would produce, and what it was willing to accept in payment from Iraq’s government. Rather than giving foreign oil companies control over Iraqi reserves, as the U.S. had hoped to do with the Oil Law it failed to get the Iraqi parliament to pass, the oil companies were awarded service contracts lasting 20 years for seven of the 10 oil fields on offer — the oil will remain the property of the Iraqi state, and the foreign companies will pump it for a fixed price per barrel. [continued…]
Channeling Sunni rage into Iraqi political clout
Sheik Abdul-Rahman Munshid al-Assi has been making up for the time he lost in an American prison, aggressively diving into Iraqi politics after being held nearly a year on charges of aiding the insurgency.
After his release last year, he formed the Arab Political Council to represent Sunni Arabs in Kirkuk. He recruited Sunni candidates to run in the coming national elections. He is forging a political bloc with Arab nationalists, other tribal leaders and former members of Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath Party as a counterweight to Kurds in the province.
At first glance, the fact that a vehement opponent of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad and Kurdish leaders next door is embracing democratic politics may seem to be a purely positive sign. After all, much of the American security effort of the past few years has been to channel Sunnis into just such a course.
But for Sheik Abdul-Rahman the political action is far from a concession. Rather, it is an attempt to tap into the simmering rage he says is still rampant among Sunni Arabs in Iraq. And he and many of his peers are far from becoming fully reformed democrats: he has yet to renounce the insurgency, though he denies directly supporting it, and warns that more violence could come. [continued…]