31 de agosto de 2006

US supports all terrorists and accuses the noble people of Palestine of terrorism

US supports all terrorists and accuses the noble people of Palestine of terrorism.

Orumiyeh, West Azarbaijan prov, Aug 31
Iran-US-President

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that the US supports all the terrorist groups and accuses the noble people of Palestine who are struggling to liberate their territories from occupation of terrorism.

He said in his address to the people of Sardasht that the United States supplied Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with advanced weapons and helped the then Iraqi regime with propaganda machine against Iran.

Ahmadinejad said that Washington also has a record of supporting terrorist attacks against residents of Iranian cities in the province including in Sardasht.

Criticizing the American brand of democracy, President Ahmadinejad said that the so-called advocates of democracy backed an invasion of Lebanon which displaced about five million people and levelled their houses to ground based on a pre-meditated conspiracy.

Ahmadinejad lambasted the White House for refusing to accept his offer to hold a televised debate without any censorship with US President George W. Bush on international issues and said that they are afraid of the logic of the great nation of Iran.

"They say that Iranian nation should not acquire nuclear energy, because there may be deviation in future," he said criticizing the US lobbying with other members of the Security Council against Iranian nuclear program.

"Iranian nation has never ignored provisions of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but, they themselves have both deviated from NPT and used weapons of mass destruction.

"So, if there should be restrictions, they should be subject to it," he said.

Ahmadinejad said that Iran had presented a reply to the package of incentives of the Group 5+1 (five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) which provides an excellent chance for moving in line with justice.

"If they are men of law and justice, they should know that Iranian nation defend their own rights," he concluded.

24 de agosto de 2006

Un grupo supuestamente islamista rapta a 2 periodistas

Un grupo supuestamente islamista radical amenaza con matar a dos periodistas de la Fox secuestrados en Gaza
"Las Brigadas de la Guerra Santa" dan un plazo de 72 horas para la liberación de los presos musulmanes de las cárceles de EE.UU.

Un grupo hasta ahora desconocido, "las Brigadas de la Sagrada Yihad", que tiene todas las características de ser en realidad una operación israelí, ha reconocido que tiene secuestrados al corresponsal y al cámara de la cadena de televisión Fox, capturados hace 9 días, y ha lanzado un ultimátum de 72 horas para cumplir ciertas condiciones; de lo contrario, amenaza con matarlos.

En un comunicado remitido a la prensa, este "nuevo grupo" pide la absurda "liberación inmediata de los musulmanes que están en cárceles americanas" y amenaza de lo contrario con "sacrificar" a sus cautivos. La técnica es utilizar secuestros para presentar a los palestinos como fanáticos locos y sin ideología clara y de paso eliminar personas o periodistas que muestran la realidad en forma incómoda para Israel.

"Vamos a intercambiar a las presas y presos musulmanes que estén en cárceles estadounidenses por lo que tenemos. Vamos a darles 72 horas, a partir de la medianoche de hoy para que tomen una decisión", citó la agencia de noticias palestina Ramattan. "Si aceptan y satisfacen nuestra condición, nosotros cumpliremos nuestra promesa. Si no, esperen, y nosotros vamos a esperar", afirma el comunicado.

"Las Brigadas de la Sagrada Yihad", sobre las que no están vinculadas a ningún otro grupo, emitieron además un vídeo de los secuestrados en los que aparecen solos, vestidos con ropa de deporte y sobre un fondo oscuro que no revela detalle alguno.

Se trata de la primera información que emiten los secuestradores desde que capturaron a los periodistas.

El corresponsal Steve Centanni, estadounidense de 60 años, y el cámara Olaf Wiig, neozelandés de 36, fueron capturados hace diez días momentos después de aparcar su coche delante del hotel en el que residían en la costa de la ciudad de Gaza.

Un grupo de "palestinos" con la cara descubierta y que viajaban en un coche todo terreno metieron a la fuerza a Centanni y a Wiig en el maletero de su vehículo y derribaron de un codazo en la cara a uno de los guardaespaldas extranjeros que protegían al equipo de periodistas.

El suceso, que duró a penas segundos y fue llevado a cabo, según testigos, con bastante profesionalidad, se registró ante un grupo de miembros de las fuerzas palestinas de seguridad que se resistieron a intervenir y se preocuparon de proteger a aquellos a los que escoltaban.

Este secuestro no sigue el mismo patrón que otros que se han producido en los territorios palestinos. Generalmente, los secuestradores han pedido empleos, o la libertad de familiares encarcelados, y los secuestros se han resuelto tras cortas negociaciones.

Los secuestros de periodistas extranjeros se han repetido durante los últimos años en Gaza, pero en casi todos los casos acabaron con la liberación de los rehenes pocos días e incluso horas después de su captura.

Cuando se produjo el secuestro, el Departamento de Estado estadounidense recomendaba a sus ciudadanos no entrar en la franja de Gaza por temor a ser objeto de agresiones.

El ministro palestino de Interior, Said Siyam, condenó hoy miércoles el "fenómeno de los secuestros de extranjeros" que, según sus palabras, contradice "la ética y costumbre de los palestinos".

Siyam hizo estas declaraciones en una reunión con una delegación neozelandesa, encabeza por el diplomático Peter Rider, que llegó a la franja de Gaza para intentar conseguir la liberación de los periodistas.

El ministro palestino dijo que su Ministerio ha puesto a las fuerzas de seguridad "en estado de alerta desde el primer día" y que el Gobierno de Hamás está interesado en acabar con el caos que se registra durante los últimos años en los territorios palestinos.

18 de agosto de 2006

Cheney orchestrated Israel’s losing war

Dick Cheney orchestrated Israel’s losing war against Hizbullah by authorizing George Bush and Condoleezza Rice to encourage Ehud Olmert to launch the war against Lebanon as a prelude to America’s forthcoming war against Iran.

Following briefings from top Israeli military officials, Cheney approved plans for an air war against Lebanon as a preliminary move to disarm Hizbullah in advance of America’s broader military objective - to launch an air war against Iran. Had the US launched its war against Iran without Olmert’s intervention in Lebanon, Hizbullah would have been free to attack Israel. Cheney’s plan was designed to disarm Hizbullah, but it was based on what now appears to have been a false assumption - that Israel would win their war in Lebanon.

According to Seymour Hersh, Israel’s tactical profile for disarming Hizbullah was modelled on US plans to disarm Iran. Following Cheney’s guidance, the Pentagon mapped out a comprehensive campaign of air strikes against Iran’s civilian infrastructure targeting airports, bridges, roads, power stations as well as military command and control centres and other key buildings identified as hostile territory. According to a former senior intelligence official who talked to Hersh, Israel’s attack on Lebanon and Hizbullah is a “mirror image” of US plans for its imminent war with Iran.

Responding to the pressure of time, Cheney and his circle of advisors urged the Israelis to launch their war against Lebanon at the earliest date possible in order to allow the US war against Iran to launch during George Bush’s presidency. Apparently, now that Israel has dealt its blow against Hizbullah, Bush and Cheney feel less constrained about ordering their war against Iran.

A former diplomat who talked to Hersh predicted that the Iran crisis “will really start at the end of August, when the Iranians will say no (sic),” to a UN deadline to halt their uranium enrichment project.

During the autumn campaign for midterm elections, it is becoming increasingly likely that Cheney will encourage Bush to order the launch of the Iran War – a ploy designed to rekindle support for their neoconservative strategy for world domination.

Following the defeat of Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary, the Republicans have seized on the war against terror as their most effective political message for attacking their Democratic Party rivals. Most Democrats now favour a smooth and certain withdrawal of US forces from Iraq rather than the open-ended policy favoured by the Bush-Cheney White House that would leave troops in the field indefinitely.

Even though the cessation of hostilities was scheduled to take place in the early hours of this morning, both sides are prepared for the ceasefire to fail. But, the continuation of war between Israel and Lebanon will make no difference to Bush and Cheney’s plans to attack Iran, a scheme that is driven by political factors rather than geostrategic calculations.

12 de agosto de 2006

Fresh Israel raids after UN vote

Fresh Israel raids after UN vote
Israeli terrorists say it has begun "broadening" a ground offensive in Lebanon - hours after the UN Security Council voted for a ceasefire plan.
Israeli militias are moving towards the strategically significant Litani River, a spokeswoman said. Fresh air strikes inside Lebanon left several dead.
The UN passed a resolution urging a "full cessation of hostilities".
Israel will not halt military action.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is asking the cabinet not to endorse the resolution, describing it as negative and unacceptable.
Even as diplomats finalised the draft, Israel radio said their terrorist groups had been ordered to seize ground as far as the Litani River, up to 30km (18 miles) from the Israeli border.
"We are expanding the combat areas to the Litani River and to areas from which (Hezbollah) rockets are fired on Israel in order to reduce and eventually stop these attacks," a senior commander in northern Israel, General Alon Friedman, was quoted as telling public radio.
Early on Saturday Hezbollah also fired a salvo of 20 rockets at Israel, AFP reported.

Invasion
Long columns of tanks and troops crossed the border under cover of darkness, reports from northern Israel said.
The Security Council emphasises the need for an end of violence, but at the same time emphasises the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis.
According to Lebanese security sources, at least five people were killed in Israeli air strikes in a village near Tyre.
Israeli jets also raided the city of Sidon - north of the Litani River - destroying facilities at a power station. It is only the second time Sidon has been hit in the conflict, which began more than four weeks ago.
However, Israeli officials gave no details as to the scale of the offensive and it is not clear whether this is the big push into Lebanon that Israel has been threatening.
The BBC's Bethany Bell in Jerusalem says there are some indications this could be sabre-rattling before Sunday's cabinet meeting.

Hezbollah factor
An adviser to Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora gave the resolution a cautious welcome, but there was no immediate reaction from Hezbollah.
If the implementation takes place accurately and the Israelis stick to the resolution... I think Hezbollah will also accept it.
Eli Farzli, Lebanese Information Minister said.
Lebanese Information Minister Eli Farzli said Hezbollah would abide by the terms set out at the UN.
"If the implementation of the resolution takes place accurately, and the Israelis stick to the resolution, and if the Lebanese government accept it, then I think it means that Hezbollah will also accept it, and I think that Hezbollah will stick to the 1701 resolution," he said.
The Lebanese cabinet is also due to discuss the issue this weekend.
The new resolution says Hezbollah must end attacks on Israel while Israel must end "offensive military operations" in Lebanese territory.

Other key points include:
* Some 15,000 peacekeeping troops for the existing UN Interim Force in Lebanon, Unifil, which will receive a beefed-up mandate to monitor and enforce the ceasefire
* Lebanon's government asked to deploy troops to the south of the country, previously the domain of Hezbollah.
* Israel required to withdraw troops currently in southern Lebanon as UN and Lebanese forces are deployed
* Drawing up of plans for the disarmament of Hezbollah and the final settlement of the Israel-Lebanon border area, including the Shebaa farms area claimed by Hezbollah.
The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said the deal should not "open a path to lasting peace between Lebanon and Israel".
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomed the resolution, but stressed that fighting should stop immediately following its adoption.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy called the adoption of the resolution "a historic turning point".
But the foreign minister of Qatar, which currently sits on the Security Council, said the resolution still contained imbalances in favour of Israel.

8 de agosto de 2006

Pilotos de combate israelíes pasan por alto objetivos en forma deliberada.

Pilotos de combate israelíes pasan por alto objetivos en forma deliberada
El periódico “The Observer” informa que al menos dos pilotos de combate israelíes pasaron por alto objetivos de bombardeo en el Líbano, porque estaban preocupados de haber recibido órdenes de bombardear civiles.

3 de agosto de 2006

Semitic Genetics

With a new technique based on the male or Y chromosome, biologists have traced the diaspora of Jewish populations from the dispersals that began in 586 B.C. to the modern communities of Europe and the Middle East.
The analysis provides genetic witness that these communities have, to a remarkable extent, retained their biological identity separate from their host populations, evidence of relatively little intermarriage or conversion into Judaism over the centuries.
Jews, Palestinians, and Syrians share a genetic link.
Another finding, paradoxical but unsurprising, is that by the yardstick of the Y chromosome, the world's Jewish communities closely resemble not only each other but also Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, suggesting that all are descended from a common ancestral population that inhabited the Middle East some four thousand years ago.
Dr. Lawrence H. Schiffman, chairman of the department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, said the study fit with historical evidence that Jews originated in the Near East and with biblical evidence suggesting that there were a variety of failies and types in the original population. He said the finding would cause "a lot of discussion of the relationship of scientific evidence to the manner in which we evaluate long-held academic and personal religious positions," like the question of who is a Jew.
The study, reported in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by Dr. Michael F. Hammer of the University of Arizona with colleagues in the United States, Italy, Israel, England and South Africa. The results accord with Jewish history and tradition and refute theories like those holding that Jewish communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, or that they are descended from the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe that adopted Judaism.
The analysis by Dr. Hammer and colleagues is based on the Y chromosome, which is passed unchanged from father to son. Early in human evolution, all but one of the Y chromosomes were lost as their owners had no children or only daughters, so that all Y chromosomes today are descended from that of a single genetic Adam who is estimated to have lived about 140,000 years ago.
In principle, all men should therefore carry the identical sequence of DNA letters on their Y chromosomes, but in fact occasional misspellings have occurred, and because each misspelling is then repeated in subsequent generations, the branching lineages of errors form a family tree rooted in the original Adam.
These variant spellings are in DNA that is not involved in the genes and therefore has no effect on the body. But the type and abundance of the lineages in each population serve as genetic signature by which to compare different populations.
Based on these variations, Dr. Hammer identified 19 variations in the Y chromosome family tree.
The ancestral Middle East population from which both Arabs and Jews are descended was a mixture of men from eight of these lineages.
Among major contributors to the ancestral Arab-Jewish population were men who carried what Dr. Hammer calls the "Med" lineage. This Y chromosome is found all round the Mediterranean and in Europe and may have been spread by the Neolithic inventors of agriculture or perhaps by the voyages of sea-going people like the Phoenicians.
Another lineage common in the ancestral Arab-Jewish gene pool is found among today's Ethiopians and may have reached the Middle East by men who traveled down the Nile. But present-day Ethiopian Jews lack some of the other lineages found in Jewish communities, and overall are more like non-Jewish Ethiopians than other Jewish populations, at least in terms of their Y chromosome lineage pattern.
The ancestral pattern of lineages is recognizable in today's Arab and Jewish populations, but is distinct from that of European populations and both groups differ widely from sub-Saharan Africans.
Each Arab and Jewish community has its own flavor of the ancestral pattern, reflecting their different genetic histories. Roman Jews have a pattern quite similar to that of Ashkenazis, the Jewish community of Eastern Europe. Dr. Hammer said the finding accorded with the hypothesis that Roman Jews were the ancestors of the Ashkenazis.
Despite the Ashkenazi Jews' long residence in Europe, their Y signature has remained distinct from that of non-Jewish Europeans.
On the assumption that there have been 80 generations since the founding of the Ashkenazi population, Dr. Hammer and colleagues calculate that the rate of genetic admixture with Europeans has been less than half a percent per generation.
Jewish law tracing back almost 2,000 years states that Jewish affiliation is determined by maternal ancestry, so the Y chromosome study addresses the question of how much non-Jewish men may have contributed to Jewish genetic diversity.
Dr. Hammer was surprised to find how little that contribution was.
"It could be that wherever Jews were, they were very much isolated," he said. The close genetic affinity between Jews and Arabs, at least by the Y chromosome yardstick, is reflected in the Genesis account of how Abraham fathered Ishmael by his wife's maid Hagar and, when Sarah was then able to conceive, Isaac. Although Muslims have a different version of the story, they regard Abraham and Ishmael, or Ismail, as patriarchs just as Jews do Abraham and Isaac.

2 de agosto de 2006

Confrontation with Hamas and Hezbollah-Noam Chomsky

Confrontation with Hamas and Hezbollah
by Noam Chomsky; July 29, 2006

[The following excerpt is from the Epilogue to Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Noam Chomsky & Gilbert Achcar, edited with a Preface by Stephen R. Shalom, to be published by Paradigm Publishers September 15, 2006

Q: How would you assess the Israeli and U.S. responses to the election of Hamas, and to the ensuing conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon?

Noam Chomsky: The U.S. response reveals, once again, that the United States supports democracy if and only if it conforms to U.S. strategic and economic objectives.

Perhaps it would be useful to review some highlights since Hamas was elected in late January 2006.

On February 12, the statements of Osama bin Laden were reviewed in the New York Times by NYU law professor Noah Feldman. He described bin Laden's descent into utter barbarism, reaching the depths when he advanced "the perverse claim that since the United States is a democracy, all citizens bear responsibility for its government's actions, and civilians are therefore fair targets." Utter depravity, no doubt. Two days later, the lead story in the Times casually reported that the United States and Israel are joining bin Laden in the lower depths of depravity. Palestinians offended the masters by voting the wrong way in a free election. The population must therefore be punished for this crime. The "intention," the correspondent observed, "is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections" so that President Mahmoud Abbas will be "compelled to call a new election. The hope is that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement." Mechanisms of punishment of the population are outlined. The article also reports that Condoleezza Rice will visit the oil producers to ensure that they do not relieve the torture of the Palestinians. In short, bin Laden's "perverse claim"; but when the United States advances the claim, it is not ultimate evil but rather righteous dedication to "democracy promotion."1

These paired articles elicited no comment that I could discover. Also overlooked was the fact that bin Laden's "perverse claim" is standard operating procedure. Familiar examples are "making the economy scream" when Chileans had the effrontery to elect Salvador Allende -- the "soft track"; the "hard track" brought Pinochet. Another pertinent illustration is the U.S.-UK sanctions regime that murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, devastated the country, and probably saved Saddam Hussein from the fate of other monsters like him (often supported by the United States and Britain to the very end). Not quite bin Laden's doctrine; rather, much more perverse, not only in terms of scale but also because Iraqis could not by any stretch of the imagination be held responsible for Saddam Hussein.

The most venerable illustration is Washington's forty-seven-year campaign of terror and economic strangulation against Cuba. From the internal record, we learn that the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations determined that "[t]he Cuban people are responsible for the regime," so they must be punished with the expectation that "[r]ising discomfort among hungry Cubans" will cause them to throw Castro out (JFK). The State Department advised that "[e]very possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba [in order to] bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of the government."2 The doctrine remains in force.

Without continuing, we find ample evidence that it is no departure from the norm to adopt bin Laden's most perverse claim in order to punish Palestinians for their democratic misdeeds.

The United States and Israel then proceeded to implement their "intention," with scrupulous care. Thus, for example, an EU proposal to provide some desperately needed aid for health care was stalled when U.S. "officials expressed concerns that some of this money might end up paying nurses, doctors, teachers and others previously on the government payroll, thereby helping to finance Hamas." Another achievement of the "war on terror." With U.S. backing, Israel also continued its terrorist atrocities and other crimes in Gaza and the West Bank -- in some cases, perhaps, in an attempt to induce Hamas to violate its embarrassing cease-fire, so that Israel could respond in "self-defense," another familiar pattern.3

In May 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert announced his plan to formalize Sharon's West Bank expansion programs, which were announced along with the "Gaza disengagement." Olmert chose the term "convergence" ("hitkansut") as a euphemism for annexation of valuable land and resources (including water) of the West Bank, programs designed to break the continually shrinking Palestinian areas into separated cantons, virtually isolated from one another and from whatever corner of Jerusalem will be left to Palestinians, all imprisoned as Israel takes over the Jordan valley and controls air space and any external access. In a stunning public relations triumph, Olmert won praise for his courage in "withdrawing" from the West Bank as he put the finishing touches on the project of destroying any hope for recognition of Palestinian national rights. We were enjoined to lament the "anguish" of the residents of scattered settlements that would be abandoned as they "converge" into the territories illegally annexed behind the cruel and illegal "Separation Wall." All of this proceeds, as usual, with a kindly nod from Washington, which is expected to fork up the billions of dollars needed to carry out the plans, though there are occasional admonitions that the destruction of Palestine should not be "unilateral": It would be preferable for President Mahmoud Abbas to sign a surrender declaration, in which case everything would be just fine.

The people of Gaza and the West Bank are supposed to observe all of this submissively, rotting in their virtual prisons. Otherwise they are sadistic terrorists.

The latest phase began on June 24, when the Israeli army kidnapped two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from their home in Gaza. They were "detained" according to brief notes in the British press. The U.S. media mostly preferred silence.4 They will presumably join the 9,000 other Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, 1,000 reportedly in prison without charges, hence kidnapped -- as were many of the rest, in that they were sentenced by Israeli courts, which are a disgrace, harshly condemned by legal commentators in Israel. Among them are hundreds of women and children, their numbers and fate of little interest. Also of little interest are Israel's secret prisons. The Israeli press reported that these have been "the entry gate to Israel for Lebanese, especially those who were suspected of membership in Hezbollah, who were transferred to the southern side of the border," some captured in battle in Lebanon, others "abducted at Israel's initiative" and sometimes held as hostages, with torture under interrogation. The secret Camp 1391, possibly one of several, was discovered accidentally in 2003, since forgotten.5

The next day, June 25, Palestinians kidnapped an Israeli soldier just across the border from Gaza. That did happen, very definitely. Every literate reader also knows the name of corporal Gilad Shalit, and wants him released. The nameless kidnapped Gaza civilians are ignored; international law, while rightly insisting that captured soldiers be treated humanely, absolutely prohibits the extrajudicial seizure of civilians. Israel responded by "bombing and shelling, darkening and destroying, imposing a siege and kidnapping like the worst of terrorists and nobody breaks the silence to ask, what the hell for, and according to what right?" as the fine Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote, adding that "[a] state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organization." Israel also kidnapped a large part of the Palestinian government, destroyed most of the Gaza electrical and water systems, and committed numerous other crimes. These acts of collective punishment, condemned by Amnesty International as "war crimes," compounded the punishment of Palestinians for having voted the wrong way. Within a few days, UN agencies working in Gaza warned of a "public health disaster" as a result of developments "which have seen innocent civilians, including children, killed, brought increased misery to hundreds of thousands of people and which will wreak far-reaching harm on Palestinian society. An already alarming situation in Gaza, with poverty rates at nearly eighty per cent and unemployment at nearly forty per cent, is likely to deteriorate rapidly, unless immediate and urgent action is taken."6

The pretext for punishing Palestinians is that Hamas refuses to accept three demands: to recognize Israel, cease all acts of violence, and accept earlier agreements. The editors of the New York Times instruct Hamas leaders that they must accept the "ground rules that have already been accepted by Egypt and Jordan and by the Arab League as a whole in its 2002 Beirut peace initiative" and, furthermore, that they must do so "not as some kind of ideological concession" but "as an admission ticket to the real world, a necessary rite of passage in the progression from a lawless opposition to a lawful government" -- like us.7

Unmentioned is that Israel and the United States flatly reject all of these conditions. They do not recognize Palestine; they refused to end their violence even when Hamas observed a unilateral truce for a year and a half and called for a long-term truce while negotiations proceed for a two-state settlement; and they dismissed with utter contempt the 2002 Arab League call for normalization of relations, along with all other proposals for a meaningful diplomatic settlement. Even when it accepted the "Road Map" that is supposed to define U.S. policy, Israel added fourteen "reservations" that rendered it entirely meaningless, eliciting the usual tacit approval in Washington and silence in commentary.8

The Hamas electoral victory was eagerly exploited by the United States and Israel. Previously, they had to pretend that there was "no partner" for negotiations, so they had no choice but to continue their project of taking over the West Bank, as they had been doing systematically since the Oslo Accords were signed (extending earlier actions). The pace of settlement peaked in 2000, the last year of Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, then escalated under Bush-Sharon. With Hamas in office, Olmert and his cohorts can lament that there is "no partner." Therefore, they must proceed with annexation and destruction of Palestine, counting on articulate Western opinion to applaud politely, perhaps with mild reservations about unilateral "convergence," and to suppress the fact that while Hamas's programs are in many respects entirely unacceptable, their own are comparable or much worse, and are not just rhetoric: They are systematically implementing their denial of any meaningful Palestinian rights, a crucial difference.

The next act in this hideous drama opened on July 12, when Hezbollah launched a raid in which it captured two Israeli soldiers and killed several others, leading to an all-out Israeli attack, killing hundreds and destroying much of what Lebanon has painfully reconstructed from the wreckage of its civil wars and the Israeli invasions. Whatever its motives, Hezbollah took a frightful gamble, for which Lebanon would surely pay dearly. Here we see the danger of processes that have led to the rise of "parallel or alternative leaderships that can protect [civilian populations] and deliver essential services" with their own military wings, as veteran Middle East correspondent Rami Khouri has noted.9

On the motives, analysts differ. "Hezbollah's official line," the Financial Times reports, "was that the capture was aimed at winning the release of the few remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. But the timing and scale of its attack suggest it was partly intended to reduce the pressure on the Palestinians by forcing Israel to fight on two fronts simultaneously." Many agree, recalling Hezbollah's reaction to the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000 -- when it seized soldiers in a cross-border raid that led to a prisoner exchange -- as well as its response to Israel's devastating attacks in the West Bank in 2002 (Amos Harel).10 Others highlight the prisoner motive, which is also suggested by the exchange in 2000, by the fact that Hezbollah had attempted capture of soldiers before the recent crisis, and by the matter of Israel's secret prisons, mentioned earlier. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a Lebanese academic specialist on Hezbollah, regards the Gaza connection as primary, but argues that one should not ignore "the domestic significance of these hostages."11

Still others regard Iran and/or Syria as the main actors. Many experts and Iranian dissidents disagree, though few doubt that Iran and Syria authorized Hezbollah's actions. Most Arab rulers place the blame on Iran. At an emergency Arab League summit, they were willing "to openly defy Arab public opinion" because of their concerns about Iranian influence. One Dubai military specialist commented that the Iranians, by means of Hezbollah, "are embarrassing the hell out of the Arab governments," who are doing nothing while "[t]he peace process has collapsed, the Palestinians are being killed. . . . And here comes Hezbollah, which is actually scoring hits against Israel." The criticism of Hezbollah was opposed by Syria, Yemen, Algeria, and Lebanon; the Iraqi parliament, "in a rare show of unity," condemned the Israeli attack as "criminal aggression," and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose designation Washington applauded, "call[ed] on the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression." The fact that most Arab leaders, however, are willing to "defy public opinion" may have large-scale regional implications, strengthening radical Islamist groups. It is noteworthy that the "Supreme Guide" of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Mahdi Akef, sharply condemned the Arab states. "The Brotherhood would win a comfortable majority" in a free election in Egypt, according to Middle East scholar Fawwaz Gerges, and has broad influence elsewhere, including with Hamas, one of its offshoots.12

A broader analysis is suggested by retired colonel Pat Lang, former head of the Middle East and terrorism desk at the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency: "This is basically tribal warfare. If you have someone who's hostile to you and you're unwilling to accept a temporary truce, as Hamas offered, then you have to destroy them. The Israeli response is so disproportionate to the abduction of the three men it appears it's a rather clever excuse designed to appeal both to their public and to the U.S."13

Speculation about motives and conflicting factors should not blind us to the tragedy that is unfolding. Lebanon is being destroyed, Israel's Gaza prison is suffering still more savage blows, and on the West Bank, mostly out of sight, the United States and Israel are consummating their project of the murder of a nation, a grim and rare event in history.

These actions, and the Western response, illustrate all too clearly the amalgam of savage cruelty, self-righteousness, and injured innocence that is so deeply rooted in the imperial mentality as to be beyond awareness. One can easily understand why Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization, is alleged to have said that he thought it might be a good idea.

-- July 20, 2006

Notes

1. Noah Feldman, "Becoming bin Laden" (review of Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden), New York Times Book Review, February 12, 2006, p. 12; Steven Erlanger, "U.S. and Israelis Are Said to Talk of Hamas Ouster," New York Times, February 14, 2006, p. A1.

2. Louis Pérez, "Fear and Loathing of Fidel Castro: Sources of U.S. Policy Toward Cuba," Journal of Latin American Studies 34, no. 2 (May 2002), pp. 227–254.

3. Steven R. Weisman, "Europe Plan to Aid Palestinians Stalls Over U.S. Salary Sanctions," New York Times, June 15, 2006, p. A10. See also Tanya Reinhart, "A Week of Israeli Restraint," Yediot Ahronot, June 21, 2006. A striking illustration of this pattern is the intense (and failed) effort to elicit Palestinian violence to justify the planned 1982 invasion. Palestinian violence does continue, however, notably in the form of Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza by groups that refused to accept the Hamas truce -- actions both criminal and foolish.

4. Jonathan Cook, "The British Media and the Invasion of Gaza," Medialens (UK), June 30, 2006; Josh Brannon, "IDF Commandos Enter Gaza, Capture Two Hamas Terrorists," Jerusalem Post, June 25, 2006; Ken Ellingwood, "2 Palestinians Held in Israel's First Arrest Raid in Gaza Since Pullout," Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2006, p. A20. Apart from the Los Angeles Times, there were only a few marginal words in the Baltimore Sun (June 25) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (June 25). Moreover, no mainstream media source chose to refer to this event when discussing Shalit's capture. The only serious coverage I know of in the English-language press appeared in the Turkish Daily News (June 25). (Database search by David Peterson.)

5. Aviv Lavie, "Inside Israel's Secret Prison," Ha'aretz, August 22, 2003; Jonathan Cook, "Facility 1391: Israel's Guantanamo," Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2003; Chris McGreal, "Facility 1391: Israel's Secret Prison," Guardian, November 14, 2003, p. 2.

6. Gideon Levy, "A Black Flag," Ha'aretz, July 2, 2006; Christopher Gunness, "Statements by the United Nations Agencies Working in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," July 8, 2006; Amnesty International press release, "Israel/Occupied Territories: Deliberate Attacks a War Crime," AI Index: MDE 15/061/2006 (Public), News Service No. 169, June 30, 2006.

7. Editorial, "A Problem That Can't Be Ignored," New York Times, June 17, 2006, p. A12.

8. Israeli Cabinet Statement on Road Map and 14 Reservations by State of Israel, July 9, 2004, originally released on May 25, 2003.

9. Rami G. Khouri, "The Mideast Death Dance," Salon, July 15, 2006.

10. Roula Khalaf, "Hizbollah's Bold Attack Raises Stakes in Middle East," Financial Times, July 13, 2006, p. 5; David Hirst, "Overnight Lebanon Has Been Plunged into a Role It Endured for 25 Years -- That of a Hapless Arena for Other People's Wars," Guardian, July 14, 2006, p. 29; Megan K. Stack and Rania Abouzeid, "The Nation of Hezbollah," Los Angeles Times, July 13, 2006, p. A1; Neil MacFarquhar and Hassan Fattah, "In Hezbollah Mix of Politics and Arms, Arms Win Out," New York Times, July 16, 2006, pp. I:1; Amos Harel, "Israel Faces a Wide Military Escalation," Ha'aretz, July 12, 2006; Uri Avnery, "The Real Aim," July 15, 2006, Gush Shalom Web site.

11. Mouin Rabbani, Democracy Now!, July 14, 2006, transcript available online; Saad-Ghorayeb, quoted in Halpern and Blanford, "A Second Front Opens for Israel," p. 1. [The number of prisoners is unknown, apart from the one or two officially admitted. In what may be the first mainstream reference, Ha'aretz commentator Nehemia Shtrasler writes that in the course of the six years since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, "no one found it correct to neutralize the central demand of Hezbollah: freeing the Lebanese prisoners. The head of the Lebanese government, Fuad Siniora, stated two days ago that freeing these prisoners is a central condition for any agreement. In addition to Samir Quntar, Israel holds about 15 Lebanese prisoners, who have been held here for many years. It was possible to free them long before -- to the hands of the moderate Siniora." See Shtrasler, "A Path to Strengthen the Extremists," Ha'aretz, July 21, 2006 (in Hebrew). (Information added July 22, 2006.)]

12. Hassan Fattah, "Militia Rebuked by Some Arab Countries," New York Times, July 17, 2006, p. A1; Dan Murphy and Sameh NaGuib, "Hizbullah Winning over Arab Street," Christian Science Monitor, July 18, 2006, p. 1; Edward Wong and Michael Slackman, "Iraqi Prime Minister Denounces Israel's Actions," New York Times, October 20, 2006, p. A1; Fawwaz Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Inc., 2006), p. 26.

13. Lang, quoted in Dan Murphy, "Escalation Ripples Through Middle East," Christian Science Monitor, July 14, 2006, p. 1.

Why ‘two states’ is not the solution for Palestine

The massacre at Qana is typical of the malicious brutality with which Israel has conducted all its wars, not just the present one. It poses the perennial question of how Israel can ever coexist peacefully with the rest of the Middle East.

For over 30 years the Palestinian movement, supported by much of the left and progressive opinion worldwide, has had an official policy for addressing this question - the two-state solution.

The idea is that a settlement could be reached between Israel and the Palestinians allowing the two to live side by side peacefully in separate, democratic states. The late Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), justified signing the 1993 Oslo Accord by arguing it was a step towards a two-state solution.

But the experience of the “peace process” since Oslo has produced very clear evidence that the two-state solution cannot work. One reason is the massive imbalance of power between the two sides.

Israel is one of the greatest military powers in the world, backed and subsidised by the US. In contrast the Palestine Authority (PA) is given limited authority over a fragmented territory, and is financially dependent on outside powers such as the European Union that can withdraw their support at whim, as Hamas has discovered.

Israeli policy has worked to perpetuate this imbalance - to keep the PA weak and dependent.

Supporters of a two-state solution argue that this state of affairs is a consequence of the malevolence of Israeli politicians, and maybe also by the incompetence of their Palestinian counterparts. This argument fails to address the reason that the Israeli leadership gives for all the measures that weaken the PA - the need to preserve the security of the Jewish state. This is more than just hypocrisy.

Israel is a settler colonial state - in other words, a state on territory seized from the original inhabitants and occupied by privileged outsiders backed by the Western imperialist powers. All settler states face the problem of what to do with the people whose land they stole.

Solution

The best solution - from the settlers’ point of view, of course - is extermination, ideally stretched over several centuries. The US, Canada, and Australia bear witness to the success of this policy.

Another solution is to turn the original inhabitants into the settlers’ labour force. This happened in South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya, and Algeria. This has the big disadvantage that sooner or later the dispossessed get organised and take the country back, as they did in all these cases.

The Zionist colonisers drove out millions of Palestinians, most to neighbouring countries. The rest are still subject to Israeli rule, which to differing degrees they resent and resist, with enormous sympathy from the Arab masses.

The result is to leave Israel in a permanent state of insecurity. It lives alongside those it dispossessed, in a state of perpetual war with them.

Israel can’t exterminate the Palestinians - even the Nazis needed the cover provided by the Second World War to attempt the Holocaust. Right wing Israeli politicians advocate expelling the Palestinians to neighbouring states, but this would just increase antagonism with the Arab world.

But Israel can’t make peace with the Palestinians. The only real settlement would be one that allowed the millions of Palestinian refugees to return - but this would destroy the basis of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state.

So any Israeli “settlement” with the Palestinians is necessarily phoney. Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who embarked on the “peace process”, did so on the cynical assumption that the PLO was an undemocratic organisation that could enforce order on the Palestinians. Hence a dose of real democracy - such as Hamas’s election victory - threatens to blow everything apart.

The only real way out lies in the policy that the PLO abandoned in the mid-1970s - a single secular and democratic Palestinian state in which Jews and Arabs, Christians and Muslims live together on the basis of equality. This may seem completely utopian amid the present carnage. But don’t the horrors currently unfolding demand radical solutions?

1 de agosto de 2006

Baghdad gunmen kidnap 26 people

Gunmen wearing Iraqi police uniforms have kidnapped 26 people in a commercial district in central Baghdad, interior ministry officials have said.
The gunmen pulled up in 15 vehicles and rounded up staff and customers of a firm on a shopping street in Arasat.
The head of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce was apparently seized along with 10 of his staff, as well as 15 employees of a mobile phone company nearby.
Mass kidnappings have become a feature of the sectarian violence across Iraq.
Iraqi government officials denied that the gunmen were genuine police officers, branding them "terrorists" on state TV, reports said.
There have been regular reports that Iraqi police are involved in abductions and so-called death squads, but little concrete evidence.
Insurgents have regularly disguised themselves as police to carry out attacks.
The U.S. has in many opportunities kidnapped foreigners and blamed insurgents to boost the War on Terror speech. They have also in the past disguised as Sunnis attacking Shias and inversely to reinforce their antagonisms.

Quick operation
One witness told he saw gunmen handcuff and blindfold the victims.
A guard standing across the street said the kidnappers arrived in police cars without number plates.
They separated the women from the men and took only men.
"I saw police cars without number plates come up to the office. They separated the women employees and took only men. They took some guards, workers and the manager.
"The whole operation took less than 10 minutes."
The Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce is an independent organisation and affiliated with the US government. It has branches around Iraq and in Jordan.