Hersh: Children sodomized at Abu Ghraib, on tape

Posted on March 2, 2009 by kf1

Torture at Abu Gharaib

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon’s custody more horrific than anything made public so far. “If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse,” Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse.

Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it. The speech was first reported in a New York Sun story last week, which was in turn posted on Jim Romenesko’s media blog, and now EdCone.com and other blogs are linking to the video. We transcribed the critical section here (it starts at about 1:31:00 into the ACLU video.) At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say:

“Debating about it, ummm … Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”

“It’s impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we’re dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there’s enough out there, they can’t (Applause). …. So it’s going to be an interesting election year.”

Notes from a similar speech Hersh gave in Chicago in June were posted on Brad DeLong’s blog. Rick Pearlstein, who watched the speech, wrote: “[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, ‘You haven’t begun to see evil…’ then trailed off. He said, ‘horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.’ He looked frightened.”

So, there are several questions here: Has Hersh actually seen the video he described to the ACLU, and why hasn’t he written about it yet? Will he be forced to elaborate in more public venues now that these two speeches are getting so much attention, at least in the blogosphere? And who else has seen the video, if it exists — will journalists see and report on it? did senators see these images when they had their closed-door sessions with the Abu Ghraib evidence? — and what is being done about it?

(Update: A reader brought to our attention that the rape of boys at Abu Ghraib has been mentioned in some news accounts of the prisoner abuse evidence. The Telegraph and other news organizations described “a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, is said to show Iraqi guards raping young boys.” The Guardian reported “formal statements by inmates published yesterday describe horrific treatment at the hands of guards, including the rape of a teenage Iraqi boy by an army translator.”) – Geraldine Sealey

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What Iran’s Jews say By Roger Cohen

Posted on February 25, 2009 by kf1

ESFAHAN, Iran: At Palestine Square, opposite a mosque called Al-Aqsa, is a synagogue where Jews of this ancient city gather at dawn. Over the entrance is a banner saying: “Congratulations on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution from the Jewish community of Esfahan.”

The Jews of Iran remove their shoes, wind leather straps around their arms to attach phylacteries and take their places. Soon the sinuous murmur of Hebrew prayer courses through the cluttered synagogue with its lovely rugs and unhappy plants. Soleiman Sedighpoor, an antique dealer with a store full of treasures, leads the service from a podium under a chandelier.

I’d visited the bright-eyed Sedighpoor, 61, the previous day at his dusty little shop. He’d sold me, with some reluctance, a bracelet of mother-of-pearl adorned with Persian miniatures. “The father buys, the son sells,” he muttered, before inviting me to the service.

Accepting, I inquired how he felt about the chants of “Death to Israel” – “Marg Bar Esraeel” – that punctuate life in Iran.

“Let them say ‘Death to Israel,”‘ he said. “I’ve been in this store 43 years and never had a problem. I’ve visited my relatives in Israel, but when I see something like the attack on Gaza, I demonstrate, too, as an Iranian.”

The Middle East is an uncomfortable neighborhood for minorities, people whose very existence rebukes warring labels of religious and national identity. Yet perhaps 25,000 Jews live on in Iran, the largest such community, along with Turkey’s, in the Muslim Middle East. There are more than a dozen synagogues in Tehran; here in Esfahan a handful cater to about 1,200 Jews, survivors of an almost 3,000-year-old community.

Over the decades since Israel’s creation in 1948 and the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the number of Iranian Jews has dwindled from about 100,000. But the exodus has been far less complete than from Arab countries, where some 800,000 Jews resided when modern Israel came into being.

In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Iraq – countries where more than 485,000 Jews lived before 1948 – less than 2,000 remain. The Arab Jew has perished. The Persian Jew has fared better.

Of course, Israel’s unfinished cycle of wars has been with Arabs, not Persians, a fact that explains some of the discrepancy.

Still a mystery hovers over Iran’s Jews. It’s important to decide what’s more significant: the annihilationist anti-Israel ranting, the Holocaust denial and other Iranian provocations – or the fact of a Jewish community living, working and worshiping in relative tranquility.

Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran – its sophistication and culture – than all the inflammatory rhetoric.

That may be because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that all the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian television, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it’s because I’m convinced the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 – a position popular in American Jewish circles – is misleading and dangerous.

I know, if many Jews left Iran, it was for a reason. Hostility exists. The trumped-up charges of spying for Israel against a group of Shiraz Jews in 1999 showed the regime at its worst. Jews elect one representative to Parliament, but can vote for a Muslim if they prefer. A Muslim, however, cannot vote for a Jew.

Among minorities, the treatment of the Bahai – seven of whom were arrested recently on charges of spying for Israel – is brutally harsh.

I asked Morris Motamed, once the Jewish member of the Majlis, if he felt he was used, an Iranian quisling. “I don’t,” he replied. “In fact I feel deep tolerance here toward Jews.” He said “Death to Israel” chants bother him, but went on to criticize the “double standards” that allow Israel, Pakistan and India to have a nuclear bomb, but not Iran.

Double standards don’t work any more; the Middle East has become too sophisticated. One way to look at Iran’s scurrilous anti-Israel tirades is as a provocation to focus people on Israel’s bomb, its 41-year occupation of the West Bank, its Hamas denial, its repetitive use of overwhelming force. Iranian language can be vile, but any Middle East peace – and engagement with Tehran – will have to take account of these points.

Green Zone-ism – the basing of Middle Eastern policy on the construction of imaginary worlds – has led nowhere.

Realism about Iran should take account of Esfahan’s ecumenical Palestine Square. At the synagogue, Benhur Shemian, 22, told me Gaza showed that Israel’s government was “criminal,” but still he hoped for peace. At the Al-Aqsa mosque, Morteza Foroughi, 72, pointed to the synagogue and said: “They have their prophet, we have ours. And that’s fine.”

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Update on US-Iranian relations – Abid Mustafa

Posted on February 16, 2009 by kf1

Iran - United States

On 13/12/2008, Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defence speaking at international security conference in Bahrain gave some insight about forthcoming relations between America and Iran. He said, “Nobody is after a regime change in Iran…What we are after is a change in policies and a change in behaviour so that Iran becomes a good neighbour of people in the region (rather) than a source of instability and violence.”

In response to a question about Iran, Gates said, “If we say that we want to try to change Iranian behaviour and want to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons and we want to avoid conflict, then the way to get them to change there behaviour is to use every tool at our disposal to bring economic and political pressure on them.” However through the course of the conference Gates made no mention of the military option that characterised much of Bush administration’s parlance about Iran. Furthermore, Gates warned delegates at the conference about testing Obama. Gates said, “Anyone who thought that the upcoming months might present opportunities to ‘test’ the new administration would be sorely mistaken.” The president-elect and his team, myself included, will be ready to defend the interests of the United States, and our friends and allies, the moment he takes office on January 20.” [1]

Do the above comments represent a departure from the policies pursued by the Bush administration to change Iran’s behaviour? What are the implications for Israel’s security and that of the whole region?

To answers these questions that following points need to be considered:

1. The first administration of George Bush was dominated by neoconservatives who held the opinion that the best way to control the people of the Middle East was through the promotion of democracy through forcible regime change. This model failed soon after the invasion of Iraq, and set in motion a vigorous policy debate amongst America’s politicians and academia. The second Bush administration made some adjustments and abandoned this approach. Nevertheless, it was unable change its rhetoric towards Iran because of two factors. First, the bellicose language helped the US aggressively push its missile shield programme in face of stiff Russian opposition. Additionally, it enabled the US to enter into new security pacts with the frightened gulf countries. Second, the close ties between the Jewish lobby and Bush administration prevented it from removing the military option off the table-even though the probability of war between US and Iran had greatly diminished.

2. The political language adopted by President elect Obama and his foreign policy team which includes, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, and his foreign policy advisor Brzezinski suggests that the US will use diplomacy and soft power to not only normalise US-relations with Iran, but also to bolster Iran and encourage it to play an active role in the region. As early as July 2004, Brzezinski and Gates advocated greater engagement with Iran to change Tehran’s behaviour through a system of reward and punishments. Both co-chaired a task force to study on how best to approach America’s relations with Iran. The outcome of the task force was a report entitled ‘Iran: Time for a New Approach’. The substantive nature of the report opposed the neoconservative assertion of regime change. The report stated: ‘The Task Force reaches the important assessment that despite considerable political flux and popular dissatisfaction, Iran is not on the verge of another revolution. From this finding flows its advocacy of the United States adopting a policy of what it describes as limited or selective engagement with the current Iranian government…The Task Force concluded that the current lack of sustained engagement with Iran harms U.S. interests in a critical region of the world and that direct dialogue with Tehran on specific areas of mutual concern should be pursued.”[2] In 2006, Gates was part of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which also advocated diplomatic outreach to Iran. In a speech to a group of retired diplomats this year, Mr. Gates said the U.S. needed to “develop some leverage on Iran” and then “sit down and talk with them.”
More or less, throughout his election campaign Barrack Obama has stressed the importance of talking to Iran and has played down the prospect of employing military action. Writing in Foreign Affairs in July 2007, Obama stated: ‘Throughout the Middle East, we must harness American power to reinvigorate American diplomacy. Tough-minded diplomacy, backed by the whole range of instruments of American power-political, economic, and military-could bring success even when dealing with long-standing adversaries such as Iran and Syria’.[3] In a September 2007 in a speech in Iowa, Obama voiced concern over Bush’s policy on Iran. He said, “…we hear eerie echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq in the way that the President and Vice President talk about Iran. … They issue veiled threats. They suggest that the time for diplomacy and pressure is running out when we haven’t even tried direct diplomacy. Well George Bush and Dick Cheney must hear – loud and clear – from the American people and the Congress: you don’t have our support, and you don’t have our authorization for another war.” In December 2008, Obama gave an interview on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” with host Tom Brokaw. During the interview Obama said that he would pursue “tough but direct diplomacy with Iran.” Obama said that he would offer Iran economic incentives if it abandoned its nuclear program but would seek to punish the country with tougher sanctions if it refused to cooperate.

Brzezinski has been an avid supporter of normalizing relations with Iran. Brzezinski, in his book ‘Second Chance’ chastises the Bush administration for damaging American prospects in the Middle East through the futile pursuit of regime change. In December 2008, The Salt Lake Tribune quoted Brzezinski as saying, “One of the reasons that I do favour a dialogue with the Iranians, and if it is feasible, the establishment of normal diplomatic relationships, is that I think that would help promote political change in a country which is far less centrally controlled, far less subject to effective state authority than was or is the case in the People’s Republic of China.” It might be added here that whilst Hilary Clinton has adopted a hardened posture against Iran during her presidential campaign, it is expected that she will reflect the new approach both in word and deed.

3. Apart from the clandestine cooperation between the two countries to secure American interest in the region-ranging from supporting Hamas and Hezbollah in the Levant, strengthening the Iraqi government and fighting Sunni and Shia resistance fighters, to stabilising Afghanistan-official contact has gradually grown over the past year or so. The Bush administration has progressively taken a number of steps to prepare the ground for Obama to complete the normalisation process. For instance the presence of the highest ranking US official, William Burns in the Geneva talks with Iran came after a series of meetings between the two countries. Another is the administration’s announcement to establish a U.S. diplomatic mission in Tehran to facilitate people to people contact. America has also snubbed Israeli advances to attack Iran. America played down Israel’s show of air power over the Mediterranean a few months ago, and has refused to sell the powerful GBU-29 bunker-busters bombs.

More recently, the US has exploited Israeli apprehensions over Iran’s nuclear programme and offered Tel Aviv new security guarantees. This includes NATO protection and a promise of a nuclear umbrella. On 2/12/2008 NATO authorized a pact to strengthen and expand Israel’s security and political relations with the states in the military alliance. Under Individual Cooperation Program (ICP) agreement permits the exchange of intelligence information and security expertise on different subjects, an increase in the number of joint Israel-NATO military exercises and further cooperation in the fight against nuclear proliferation. It also paves the way for an improvement of collaboration in the fields of rearmament and logistics and Israel’s electronic link to the NATO system. Livni hailed the treaty and said,”Israel’s security capabilities are a household name and we see the strengthening of cooperation between Israel and the international security body as a strategic objective that reinforces Israel.”[4]

According to press reports, the U.S. nuclear guarantee would be backed by a new Israeli missile defence system, and the U.S. early-warning radar system already deployed in the Negev desert to counter Iranian missiles. The report further suggests that by granting Israel a nuclear guarantee the U.S. is willing to come to terms with a nuclear Iran, where the uranium enrichment program has reportedly “passed beyond the point of no return.” [5] No doubt America will use NATO in the future to push for a resolution to the Palestinian question, check Israeli ambitions of expansion beyond Palestine and deploy NATO forces to quell popular uprisings in the region. On 12/12/2008 Brzezinski alluded to some of the US motives behind NATO’s agreement with Israel. He said, “The possible involvement of NATO is not a question of war on terror, but ensuring that the Palestinian state is not a military threat, but at the same time stable and secure, and NATO presence could bring this double benefit. Perhaps a NATO presence [could] ensure a peace agreement, or maybe even an American presence along the Jordan River, to give the Israelis sense of geographical security.”

4. Despite the continuous imposition of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, the West is nowhere close to halting its enrichment programme. This is because America has deftly exploited the five year old negotiations between the EU-3 and Iran to coax the Europeans into a protracted discussion over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Furthermore, America has added fuel to the fire through the bravado of the neoconservatives and doggedness of Ahmadinejad, which has resulted in an atmosphere of war and created perpetual tensions in the region. By doing so, America has gained a strategic advantage by persuading the Gulf Arab countries to acquire nuclear energy, by nudging the Israelis into a security pact and by permitting Iran to divert its civilian programme to build atom bombs. On 12/12/2008 the US State Department announced that United States was close to concluding a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates. The so-called 1-2-3 agreement would be similar to the nuclear cooperation accord the United States reached with India in 2005. It would allow the United States to sell nuclear fuel, equipment and technology to the UAE. Similar agreements are being pursued with Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. [6] In summary, America is working towards the nuclearization of the Middle East.

5. Some Israeli officials have started to prepare the Israeli people for a change in American policy towards Iran. On 18/11/2008 Israel’s military intelligence chief said he saw a positive side to a possible US dialogue with Iran. Major-General Amos Yadlin said, “Dialogue with Iran while at the same time insisting on clear and defined parameters for stopping the Iranian nuclear programme is not necessarily negative.” [7] On 9/12/2008 the Arab News reported that Israeli President Shimon Peres said that the union of western countries against Iran’s policies and the drop in oil prices has rendered the military option against the Islamic Republic unnecessary at this point. Yet there are still some pro-Jewish supporters in the US who pushing Bush administration to attack Iran. In response to their endeavours Brzezinski has warned: “Israel will do harm to its relations with the United States if it insists on lobbying Washington for an American military strike on Iran. It wouldn’t be particularly good for American-Israeli relations, and there will be a lot of resentment against [Israel].”

In conclusion, America under the Obama administration will press ahead with normalising US relations with Iran in exchange for a security pact with Israel. However, the pace of the normalisation process will be slow and will probably gather pace after the Iranian presidential election in 2009 and with the removal Ahmadinejad. America will employ a series of carrots and sticks to mould the Iranian regime to implement its policies and protect US interests.

The introduction of NATO is ominous sign in that America wants to safeguard the hydrocarbons (oil and gas) of the Middle East from Russia and China. Iran will serve as America’s lynchpin in providing energy security and becoming a frontline state against Russia. The spread of nuclear technology in the Middle East under US auspices signals that from a geostrategic perspective, America is looking to completely surround Russia and China with nuclear armed states stretching from the Eastern Europe to the Asian pacific. The intention is to considerable reduce Russian and Chinese nuclear strike capabilities, and limit the theatre of war to these frontline states. Nevertheless, America faces huge challenges and the foremost is to subdue the resurgence of radical Islam accentuated by the Bush years.

The Muslims of the region and beyond have been manipulated before and served as US pawns to bring down the Soviet Union. Today, Obama and some of his advisors believe that this feat can be repeated against Russia and China. The Muslim ummah must learn from its past experience and turn the tables on these major powers by re-establishing the rightly guided Khilafah which will make these powers fight each other and raise high the Islamic banner over their destruction…inshallah.

Abid Mustafa
15/12/2008

References

1 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gukPwZ1QPZ-YyzDTyYD370vQaZHA ; title: Gates warns US adversaries not to test Obama;14/12/2008
2 Council of Foreign Affairs Task Force: Iran: Time for a New Approach; Co-Chair Brzezinski and Gates; July 2004
3 Foreign Affairs : Renewing American Leadership; Barack Obama; July/August 2007
4 Haaretz Online: NATO okays pact to boost security, political ties with Israel; Barak Ravid;2/12/2008
5 RIA Novosti Online: U.S. may offer Israel ‘nuclear umbrella’ against Iran – paper U.S. may offer Israel ‘nuclear umbrella’ against Iran – paper 11/12/2008
6 VOA:US Nears Nuclear Accord With Gulf Emirates; By David Gollust The State Department;12/12/2008
7 Dawn online; General at odds with Tel Aviv on US-Iran talks; 18/12/2008

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The Iranian Revolution and the US Policy of Dual Containment: A Presentation – Powerpoint | PDF

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Pakistan on the Brink By BRIAN M. DOWNING

Posted on February 16, 2009 by kf1

AQ KHAN

Pakistan might collapse. It faces regional insurgencies, political failures, rising Islamism (in the public and army alike), and reprisals from India over the Mumbai attacks of last November. The trouble in the US’s principal though duplicitous partner in the war on terror is all the more worrisome because it has nuclear weapons. A great deal of Pakistan’s trouble is the fault of its military, which has thwarted political development, encouraged Islamism, and supported terrorism.

From its inception in 1947, Pakistan was predisposed to military rule. The British colonial army of the subcontinent was drawn predominantly from the Punjab, a region that became part of Pakistan upon independence. From that point on, the Pakistani army was more unified and capable of concerted action than were the political parties. Seeing itself as embodying the nation far more than they did, the army would push aside civilian governments and take the reins of power when it saw fit. There’s no edifying morality play here. Pakistan’s political parties are corrupt, oligarchic patronage networks that bear considerable blame as well for the situation today.

The Pakistani army, more so than the political parties, benefited from Cold War dynamics. India, though more powerful than Pakistan and hostile to China, chose a path of nonalignment and so Pakistan (along with Iran) became the US’s partner in the region. Arms and money and advisors flowed in, adding to the army’s hypertrophy. The military used its muscle in politics often and the results were not good. Military governments thwarted the development of stable political partnerships and coalitions, failed to integrate the various provinces of the country (Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province) into a national whole, and also failed to find a political arrangement to limit sectarian clashes.

The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 greatly strengthened the army (especially a section of it), which at the time was ruling the country after overthrowing and eventually executing Ali Bhutto. The US and Saudi Arabia poured money into Pakistan to aid the various mujahadin groups fighting just to the north, most of whom could readily be considered Islamist. The supply effort was entrusted to a section of the military – the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). In order to inspire new recruits for the war in Afghanistan (and for the struggle over Kashmir and revanchism over the loss of East Pakistan) madrasas were funded. Along the way, the ISI became a state within a state, an army within an army, a praetorian guard within a praetorian guard.

The Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s was a boon for the Pakistani army and the ISI. They emerged from the war with large amounts of US money and equipment and with institutional prestige infused with victory, which reinforced the conviction that they alone knew best how to lead the country. This sense of national mission had theretofore not been weak but it had been based in part on an uncertain foundation: an hysterical reaction to, and the need to deny, the incompetence it had exhibited in wars with India, one of which, in 1971, had led to the loss of East Pakistan and resulted in a national trauma that shapes national thought to this day.

The chaotic aftermath of the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 presented the Pakistani military and ISI with new security concerns. Though victorious, the guardians saw Afghanistan as a dangerous front in the conflict with India, which had attained influence with Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara peoples of central and northern Afghanistan. These northern groups (essentially the future Northern Alliance) were posed against the Pashtun tribes in the south and in the region across the porous frontier in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province and its Federally Administered Tribal Agencies.

The ISI looked to counter the Indian-backed tribes and also for stability to allow commerce to flow with the independent states of Central Asia that emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The mujahadin had never solidified into a unitary movement, remaining instead an assortment of groups with a common interest in expelling the Soviet Union and its collaborators in Kabul. Following the Soviet Union’s exit in 1989, the groups vied for power cruelly but inconclusively. Warlordism flourished; Pakistan’s security to the north remained in doubt. The ISI found its answer to security and commercial matters in the Taliban, which arose, probably without ISI assistance, in 1994 as a fundamentalist sect that suppressed brigandage preying upon commerce in southern Afghanistan and which, with ISI assistance, spread among the Pashtun tribes, especially those whose structure had been badly damaged by decades of war. The Taliban offered new or restored traditional forms of social integration, authority, and patronage. Most of all, they ended crime and anarchy. By 1996, it had swept across most of Afghanistan, cornering the Northern Alliance. Soon thereafter the Clinton administration negotiated with the Taliban to build oil and gas pipelines to bring the resources of Central Asia to Pakistan, then on to foreign markets. The Pakistani guardians were elated.

The ISI had secured its northern front for the time being and established itself as the hub of a wide-ranging network of militant and terrorist organizations to fight India over Kashmir and to one day restore lost honor over East Pakistan. The Taliban handled the north; various groups such as Markaz Dawa-Wal-Irshad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and others staged guerrilla attacks in and near Kashmir. (Lashkar-e-Taiba likely executed the Mumbai attacks in November 2008.) Both fronts benefited from mujahadin veterans, some of whom became al Qaeda. The soldiers of the Punjab had once been mainstays of British imperial might and ambition; the generals of the Punjab were now players in the newest round of the Great Game.

The 2001 attacks on New York and Washington by a group at least on the fringe of the ISI’s network, and ensuing events, revealed how poorly the Pakistani military and intelligence played the region’s famous geopolitical game. In late 2001 the Northern Alliance, aided by US air power, rolled up Taliban and al Qaeda positions and seized Mazar-e-Sharif, Kabul, and Kandahar. The ISI’s clients were trapped in distant redoubts and on the verge of annihilation. The ISI claimed to support the US but rescued the Taliban and al Qaeda forces, and airlifted them into Pakistan – Operation Evil Airlift, as an aghast but helpless US special forces witness called it.

Pakistan’s duplicity continued for years but has now become apparent to all. The US has cooled toward Pakistan and the ISI’s Islamist clients are turning on it. Overt support for the US has caused Islamist clients to turn on the government (military or civilian) and develop into serious insurgent groups. The Taliban reconstituted in Pakistani sanctuaries, allied with a kindred Pakistani movement (Tehrik-e-Taliban), and is now seizing control of swaths of the North-West Frontier Province. To the west, the Taliban, in concert with Baloch insurgents, are asserting control over the northern part of Balochistan Province. Losing control of these areas means losing US/NATO supply routes but attempts to fight the insurgents makes the military seem even more obeisant to the US, which of course strengthens the insurgencies. US leaders are turning to supply routes across Central Asia; and Russia, concerned about an Islamist empire forming to its south, has recently announced greater logistical support for US/NATO forces, which it otherwise vehemently opposes in Eastern Europe.

Pakistan is of diminishing usefulness to US/NATO efforts in Afghanistan, but of increasing alarm to the region and to much of the world. Its army and ISI are no longer able to govern the country or even hold it together – and neither can the newly installed civilian government, whose capabilities the military has stunted and some of whose leaders it has murdered. A reasonable interpretation of recent events is that the military helped assassinate Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 in order to prevent the accession of a popular civilian government, and that it increased guerrilla operations in Kashmir last summer and aided in the Mumbai attacks of November 2008 in order to rally Islamist militants to the nationalist, anti-Indian cause. Disintegration continues.

The Pakistani army is a highly centralized bureaucracy that is organized for conventional war, praetorian meddling, and authoritarian rule. It lacks the flexibility and willingness to delegate authority necessary for counterinsurgency operations and indeed it has allocated guerrilla expertise to the groups it is now fighting. Other politically engaged armies have come to see political involvement as destructive, withdrawn from politics, and focused on building professional, nonpolitical forces. The French army, after agonizing colonial wars and absurd coup attempts, is a case in point. Late in the Franco regime the Spanish army came into contact with the apolitical officers of NATO and saw their professionalism and mastery of technique as more desirable than political involvement. And numerous South American armies have realized that they are unable to govern and opted to go back to the barracks.

But this might not be possible for the Pakistani army and the ISI. Their encouragement of Islamism brought the militant faithful into the officer corps, as they were thought more dedicated to confronting India than those with more moderate religiosity. Islamist militants are all but dominant in the officer corps now, even in the ranks of those who will control the general staff in a few years. The generals have brought Pakistan to the edge of the abyss. The protégées they took in, nurtured, and promoted may be the ones to push the country in, making the Pakistani generals the most recent losers in the Great Game, which has never had a long-term winner.

Brian M. Downing is a veteran of the Vietnam War and author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at: brianmdowning@gmail.com

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Pakistan hands over DNA profiles

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Endless Propaganda – The War on Terror is a Hoax By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Posted on February 5, 2009 by kf1

According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are spread throughout America, making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and violate most other constitutional protections. Among President Bush’s last words as he left office was the warning that America would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists.

If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events. As there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.

The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist cells is that not a single neocon has been assassinated.

I do not approve of assassinations, and am ashamed of my country’s government for engaging in political assassination. The US and Israel have set a very bad example for al Qaeda to follow.

The US deals with al Qaeda and Taliban by assassinating their leaders, and Israel deals with Hamas by assassinating its leaders. It is reasonable to assume that al Qaeda would deal with the instigators and leaders of America’s wars in the Middle East in the same way.

Today every al Qaeda member is aware of the complicity of neoconservatives in the death and devastation inflicted on Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. Moreover, neocons are highly visible and are soft targets compared to Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. Neocons have been identified in the media for years, and as everyone knows, multiple listings of their names are available online.

Neocons do not have Secret Service protection. Dreadful to contemplate, but it would be child’s play for al Qaeda to assassinate any and every neocon. Yet, neocons move around freely, a good indication that the US does not have a terrorist problem.

If, as neocons constantly allege, terrorists can smuggle nuclear weapons or dirty bombs into the US with which to wreak havoc upon our cities, terrorists can acquire weapons with which to assassinate any neocon or former government official.

Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims, remain unscathed.

The “war on terror” is a hoax that fronts for American control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel’s territorial expansion.

There were no al Qaeda in Iraq until the Americans brought them there by invading and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who kept al Qaeda out of Iraq. The Taliban is not a terrorist organization, but a movement attempting to unify Afghanistan under Muslim law. The only Americans threatened by the Taliban are the Americans Bush sent to Afghanistan to kill Taliban and to impose a puppet state on the Afghan people.

Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine, or what little remains of Palestine after Israel’s illegal annexations. Hamas is a terrorist organization in the same sense that the Israeli government and the US government are terrorist organizations. In an effort to bring Hamas under Israeli hegemony, Israel employs terror bombing and assassinations against Palestinians. Hamas replies to the Israeli terror with homemade and ineffectual rockets.

Hezbollah represents the Shi’ites of southern Lebanon, another area in the Middle East that Israel seeks for its territorial expansion.

The US brands Hamas and Hezbollah “terrorist organizations” for no other reason than the US is on Israel’s side of the conflict. There is no objective basis for the US Department of State’s “finding” that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. It is merely a propagandistic declaration.

Americans and Israelis do not call their bombings of civilians terror. What Americans and Israelis call terror is the response of oppressed people who are stateless because their countries are ruled by puppets loyal to the oppressors. These people, dispossessed of their own countries, have no State Departments, Defense Departments, seats in the United Nations, or voices in the mainstream media. They can submit to foreign hegemony or resist by the limited means available to them.

The fact that Israel and the United States carry on endless propaganda to prevent this fundamental truth from being realized indicates that it is Israel and the US that are in the wrong and the Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Afghans who are being wronged.

The retired American generals who serve as war propagandists for Fox “News” are forever claiming that Iran arms the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents and Hamas. But where are the arms? To deal with American tanks, insurgents have to construct homemade explosive devices out of artillery shells. After six years of conflict the insurgents still have no weapon against the American helicopter gunships. Contrast this “arming” with the weaponry the US supplied to the Afghans three decades ago when they were fighting to drive out the Soviets.

The films of Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza show large numbers of Gazans fleeing from Israeli bombs or digging out the dead and maimed, and none of these people is armed. A person would think that by now every Palestinian would be armed, every man, woman, and child. Yet, all the films of the Israeli attack show an unarmed population. Hamas has to construct homemade rockets that are little more than a sign of defiance. If Hamas were armed by Iran, Israel’s assault on Gaza would have cost Israel its helicopter gunships, its tanks, and hundreds of lives of its soldiers.

Hamas is a small organization armed with small caliber rifles incapable of penetrating body armor. Hamas is unable to stop small bands of Israeli settlers from descending on West Bank Palestinian villages, driving out the Palestinians, and appropriating their land.

The great mystery is: why after 60 years of oppression are the Palestinians still an unarmed people? Clearly, the Muslim countries are complicit with Israel and the US in keeping the Palestinians unarmed.

The unsupported assertion that Iran supplies sophisticated arms to the Palestinians is like the unsupported assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. These assertions are propagandistic justifications for killing Arab civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in order to secure US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

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The economic, social and political disaster produced by the Zionist project – Jean Shaoul

Posted on February 3, 2009 by kf1

We repost below the first a report on Israel and Palestine by Jean Shaoul to an expanded meeting of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board held in Sydney, Australia from January 22 to 27, 2006. Shaoul is a WSWS correspondent and a member of the Socialist Equality Party in Britain.

The present economic, social and political conditions in Israel and Palestine are an indictment of the Zionist project and the nation state as the solution to the oppression of the Jews. The Zionist state was conceived as the answer to the problem of the European persecution of the Jews—a state where the Jews would find a safe haven, social justice and equality.

It was realised in the form of a capitalist state created by the dispossession of another people and maintained through war and repression, and social inequality at home. Indeed, it is impossible when presenting this report, to avoid pointing out that the Jewish people, sections of whom have a long history in every progressive movement, not least the international socialist movement, are now themselves widely regarded as oppressors with blood on their hands.

The Fourth International and Palestine 1948

I think it is pertinent to recall what the Fourth International said about Palestine in 1947-48. One cannot but be struck when reading its statement, Against the Stream, written nearly 60 years, how extraordinarily prescient its warning was. It insisted that Zionism was both utopian and reactionary and denounced the 1947 UN decision to partition Palestine into two tiny states.

“By partition a wedge is driven between the Arab and Jewish worker. The Zionist state with its provocative lines of demarcation will bring about the blossoming forth of irredentist (revenge) movements on either side. There will be fighting for an ‘Arab Palestine’ and for a ‘Jewish state’ within the historic frontiers of Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel). As a result, the chauvinistic atmosphere thus created will poison the Arab world in the Middle East and throttle the anti-imperialist fight of the masses, while Zionists and Arab feudalists will vie for imperialist favours.”

The Fourth International said: “The Jewish state, this gift of Truman’s and Bevin’s, gives the capitalist economy of the Zionists a respite. This economy rests on very flimsy foundations. Its products cannot compete on the world market. Its only hope is the inner market from which the Arab goods are debarred…. The continuous flow of Jewish immigrants, who would come with the remnants of their possessions, is apt to increase the circulation of goods. It will allow the bourgeois producers to dispose of their expensive wares. Mass immigration would also be a very useful means of forcing down wages which ‘weigh so heavily’ on Jewish industry. A state engaged in inevitable military conflicts would mean orders from the Hebrew Army, a source of Hebrew profits not to be underrated at all. A state would mean thousands of snug berths for Zionist veteran functionaries.”

Jewish workers would have to bear the cost in the form of high prices and heavy taxes. Separated from their Arab brothers and sisters and prevented from fighting as a united class, they would be at the mercy of their class enemies, imperialism and the Zionist bourgeoisie. As Chaim Weitzmann, who was to become the first president of the new state, said, “The Jewish state will stem the communist influence.”

In answer to the question, “And what promises does the Jewish state hold out? Does it really mean a step forward towards the solution of the Jewish problem?” the Fourth International warned, “The partition was not meant to solve Jewish misery nor is it ever likely to do so. This dwarf of a state, which is too small to absorb the Jewish masses, cannot even solve the problems of its citizens. The Hebrew state can only infest the Arab East with anti-Semitism and may well turn out—as Trotsky said—a bloody trap for hundreds of thousands of Jews.”

For the Arab feudal leaders, the UN vote for a Zionist state was a godsend, enabling them to divert the attention of the masses away from a united class struggle and any possibility of international class solidarity, with a declaration of war on the newly formed Zionist state. The military conflict and ensuing bloodshed—all in the name of anti-imperialism—also served to break up the workers’ movements in both camps, thereby weakening the working class and strengthening imperialism.

The Fourth International stressed that Zionism was a reactionary and utopian movement. It was utopian to believe that:

1. A harmonious development within an isolated and closed economy in the midst of a capitalist world is possible. Without the expansion of the economy, millions of Jewish immigrants could not be absorbed.

2. A Jewish state could exist amid the open hostility of tens of millions of Arabs, and in the face of an Arab population growing at least as fast as Jewish immigration.

3. That Israel could manoeuvre successfully between the rival imperialist powers, all of which were using Israel to further their own strategic interests in the region.

4. That anti-Semitism could be eradicated simply by granting nationality to the Jews, ignoring its social, historical and ideological roots.

It was reactionary because Zionism:

1. Serves as a support for imperialist domination by giving it the fig leaf of acting as arbiter between the Jews and the Arabs.

2. Produces a nationalist reaction on the part of the Arab masses thereby creating a racial division of the international working class, and strengthening the national “unity” of both the Jews and the Arabs.

3. As a nationalist force, acts as a break on the participation of Jewish workers in the class struggle in the rest of the world, separates them from the world proletariat, gives them their own and different goals to strive for, and above all creates illusions in the possibility of improving their lot within the framework of capitalism.

The Fourth International warned that war on neither side in the Arab-Zionist conflict bore a progressive character: it served only to obscure the class antagonisms and open the gates for nationalist excesses, weakening the proletariat and strengthening imperialism in both camps. It called on the workers of the two peoples to unite in a common front against imperialism and its agents. It warned Jewish workers that they would not be free and safe as long as they had not done away with national discrimination, isolationalism and imperialist loyalty.

What are the conditions within the Zionist state today?

Let us fast forward nearly 60 years and ask: What has been the end result of the Zionist road to the security of the Jewish people? What have been the main tendencies of development that should inform our work on perspectives?

First of all, Israel has from the beginning faced an enormous economic, social and political crisis.

It was carved out as one of five states (Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) from the former Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire. Capitalism within such a tiny state, surrounded by hostile states, with few natural resources and little water, and unintegrated into the wider regional economy, was never economically viable. From the beginning, the Arab regimes refused to trade with Israel and boycotted those companies that did so.

It is this, in part at least, that has forced successive governments to seek to expand Israel’s borders, and thus military and settlement expenditure. This is why Israel has lurched, throughout its entire existence, from one economic crisis to another and why it has been so reliant on external support. This has inevitably affected its role internationally and at home.

In its early years, Israel was kept afloat by the Diaspora, which contributed $200 million a year before 1967 and a massive $700 million a year in the following six years. Even today, Israel receives $1.5 billion a year from private US donations. In the 1950s, German reparations money provided another important source of finance: $125 million a year before 1966. Even after the reparations money came to an end, West German aid continued at a higher level than before.

But by far the most important source of economic assistance has been the US government. While before 1967, US provided very little, at $50 million a year, this had risen to a massive $3 billion a year by 1986 (split between $1.2 billion economic and $1.8 billion military assistance), plus some $500 million a year aid from other parts of the US budget or in some cases, off-budget. It has continued at this level ever since, making Israel the highest per capita recipient of US aid in the world.

But this aid to Israel differed from most US aid. Firstly, normally US aid is tied to specific projects and the purchase of US goods and services, and overseen by the government agency, USAID. Most US aid to Israel goes straight into its Exchequer as a cash transfer. Secondly, aid is a bit of a misnomer. It usually comes in the form of loans that have interest and repayment obligations. But most of the military loans were converted into grants and the remaining military loans were “forgiven” by Congress. Only the economic aid had to be repaid with interest.

To put US aid to Israel into perspective, direct aid to Israel is more than six times all US aid to sub Saharan Africa. But even these annual $3.5 billion grants were insufficient. In 1992-96, the US stepped in to provide $10 billion in loan guarantees and a similar amount in 2002-03. Without such guarantees, Israel would have been bankrupt. Its external debt is now much greater than its GDP.

As well as rescuing the economy, the US also permitted the settlement expansion. While officially Clinton deducted the cost of settlements from the aid, he simply made equivalent amounts available as grants from other sources. Thus in effect, the US subsidised the settlements.

Ninety-nine percent of US military assistance to Israel came only after Israel became stronger than all the Arab armies, and ruled over the Palestinian population. Assistance increased after every military intervention and suppression of the Palestinians. It increased after the Oslo peace talks, and again after they collapsed. It continues today when Israel faces no military threat. Indeed, US aid is to ensure military superiority. Similarly, the US provides economic assistance to a country that has a GDP far larger than the combined GDP of its Arab neighbours, including Egypt, despite having a population of only 6 million compared to 100 million.

As well as economic assistance, the US has provided political cover for Israel at the UN. Between 1972 and 2001, it vetoed 39 resolutions in the Security Council in order to block criticisms of Israel’s policies and actions in the Occupied Territories. It used the veto threat on countless other occasions to get resolutions withdrawn or watered down. Thus the US has ensured that no action has ever been taken against Israel for its defiance of UN resolutions or its development of nuclear weapons.

What has been Israel’s quid pro quo for the US?

Israel prevented victories by the Palestinians and their supporters outside Israel’s own border: in Jordan in 1970, Lebanon 1976-82, as well as in the Occupied Territories. It thus helped suppress the Arab working class and maintain decrepit regimes in power. It kept the Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow at bay during the Cold War: in 1967 and then again in 1973, it defeated Egypt and Syria, both of whom were armed and aided by the Soviet Union. In effect, Israel replaced Britain after its withdrawal “East of Suez” as the policeman of the Middle East on behalf of US imperialism.

Its frequent wars provided the US with live testing for its arms, often against Soviet weaponry. With its nuclear arsenal, Israel had weapons capable of reaching the Soviet Union. It prevented the emergence of Iraq as a nuclear power with the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981.

Israel also provided valuable services as a subcontractor for the US. It has served as a conduit for US arms to regimes that the US could not be seen to be assisting: apartheid South Africa, Khomeini’s Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, and numerous military dictatorships and right-wing rebel forces, particularly in Latin America. Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, provides Washington with intelligence gathering and can be relied upon to carry out illegal and covert operations on behalf of the US that the US itself either does not want, or be seen, to carry out. It trialled novel forms of interrogation and torture, later to be used in Iraq.

In other words, Israel acts as a mercenary for US imperialism, a situation that its own commentators have likened to “the Godfather’s messenger”. This is because Israel carries out the “dirty work” of the Godfather who “always tries to appear to be the owner of some large respectable business”. One Israeli intellectual noted that the state had gathered in three million Jews into Israel and transformed them into “parasites of America”.

Growth of anti-Semitism

Unquestionably one of the most potent factors re-igniting anti-Semitism today is the brutal methods adopted by the Israeli government. This factor has been used to considerable effect by one Middle East regime after another to whip up anti-Semitism as a diversion to obscure their own political bankruptcy. In part, this has been one of the elements that have, amid the present political confusion, encouraged the growth of Islamic fundamentalists who employ populist anti-Semitism to manipulate political discontent.

Two years ago, a leaked European Union report showed a rise in the number of attacks on Jews by European Muslim youth. It linked a rise in attacks on Jews with events in the Middle East, particularly since the start of the Intifada in September 2000 and Israel’s attack on Jenin in the West Bank in April 2003. To recognise this fact is not to endorse anti-Semitic views or to defend those who hold them. Yet, the political basis for a dangerous re-emergence of anti-Semitism among often politically uneducated second generation Arab and African immigrants cannot be ignored.

Israel itself routinely lumps together legitimate hostility to its treatment of the Palestinians with anti-Semitism. Any objective appraisal of what Israel has done is depicted as anti-Semitism. This serves a very definite purpose, in obscuring political understanding.

Breaking out of a national autarky

Zionism’s solution to its economic problems—expanding Israel’s borders—has proved to be no solution at all. That is not only because it turned Israel into an international pariah and incurred massive military costs. While in the immediate post-war period, Israel operated as a nationally regulated economy, the development of globalisation in the late 1970s rendered this impossible. Israel had to seek economic integration into the wider Middle East economy.

The policies of privatisation, economic liberalisation and drastic devaluations espoused by the Likud government after 1985 devastated much of Israel’s traditional enterprises, ruptured the nationally regulated economy, and opened it up into the international economy. Foreign institutional investors began to own an increasing proportion of the Tel Aviv stock market-quoted companies. Many of Israel’s leading high-tech companies began to have their shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange and to operate outside Israel.

These measures also changed the social composition of Israel’s business circles. The shift toward internationalisation upset the old equilibrium that had existed between big business and the military establishment, in favour of a new elite based on Israel’s high-tech sector, IT and pharmaceuticals. Peace with Israel’s Arab neighbours would end its isolation. It promised more new markets than Israel’s garrison state could ever deliver. But the price to be paid for a wider regional role and markets that would make Israel a regional economic power was some kind of deal with Arafat and the Palestinians, even if it was not the full withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and Jerusalem demanded by international conventions and UN resolutions.

That price was the 1993 Oslo Accords. As Labour party leader Shimon Peres explained in a newspaper interview in 1992: “All the world is organised like a house with two floors: in the basement the regional agreements. And on the top floor: multinational groups of companies”. He then spelt it out more clearly: “We do not want a peace between nations. We want a peace between markets.”

In other words, and what tends to be forgotten, beneath all the rhetoric and re-branding of the Labour party as the party of peace, lay Israel’s ambition to become the economic powerhouse of the Middle East. Subcontracting to a Palestinian mini-state would enable access to EU and Arab markets, while excluding the Palestinians from Israel’s workforce and preserving a Jewish majority in Israel itself.

But such a “peace” famously initiated on the lawns of the White House in September 1993 could never be more than a chimera. It could not alleviate the appalling social conditions of the Palestinians. Indeed, it was not designed to do so. Israel closed its borders to Palestinian workers and simply replaced low-wage Palestinian workers with workers from Asia. These immigrant workers are cheaper and have even fewer rights than Palestinian workers. While their numbers may seem low, they are proportionately the highest in the world. They have had a massive impact, forcing down wages and social expenditure in Israel, and increasing poverty in Palestine.

So Oslo was bound to be resisted, despite the capitulation of the PLO.

Moreover, within Israel, Oslo was opposed by the very social forces unleashed by the expansion of Israel—the settlers and ultra-religious as well as Sharon, Netanyahu and the Likud. On their insistence, the settlements were expanded.

The collapse of the Oslo framework, the subsequent Intifada uprising in September 2000, the cost of the military suppression of the Palestinians—currently costing $1.4 billion a year—and the continued expansion of the settlements were an unmitigated disaster for Zionist capital and the Labour party. Israel plunged into its deepest ever recession as tourism, its key foreign currency earner and employer, and foreign investment plummeted.

The Greater Israel policy—the expansion of the settlements and the murderous war against the Palestinians—came at a huge cost to the Israeli working class. Firstly, Sharon appointed former International Monetary Fund staffer, Stanley Fischer, to head Israel’s central bank and his arch rival, Netanyahu, to take over at the Finance Ministry. Together they introduced a raft of market “reforms”:

• privatisations

• opening up Israel’s banking system to competition

• cuts in social benefits such as unemployment, child and insurance benefits, and income assistance

• freezing of benefit levels which are to be linked to the consumer price index, not wages, from 2006

• raising the pension age

• cuts in corporate taxes and income taxes for the rich

• anti-trade union laws, restrictions on the right to strike and a ban on strikes in the public sector.

All this was aimed less at reducing the government deficit than undermining social security and creating “labour market flexibility”. Expenditure on the armed forces and settlements, including the roads and infrastructure, increased. These measures have brought unremitting misery, unemployment and poverty to increasing numbers of workers and their families.

The price for US support for Sharon’s land grab—including the extra land seized by the security wall, even if it was not as large as he would have liked—was that Sharon had to be seen to make some minor concession to the Palestinians. Hence Sharon’s unilateral “disengagement” from Gaza—in the teeth of opposition from the ultranationalists and religious forces—for which he was re-branded by the international media as a “peacemaker”.

In reality and from an economic perspective, the pull-out is part of a drive to deepen the isolation of the Palestinians and ensure their absolute separation from Israel in a glorified militarised ghetto. Exports from Gaza have fallen by half. Sharon intended to massively curtail the use of Palestinian labour within Israel. This must in turn lead to further attacks on Israeli wages and social conditions if Israel is to compete in the world market.

As a result of all these factors—a small unviable and autarkic economy, the failure of the economic perspective that underpinned Oslo, the uprising, the military and settlement costs, cheap foreign labour, unemployment and the gutting of social welfare—Israeli workers and their families have seen their living standards plummet. The Zionist dream of a national home for the Jews and escape from oppression and persecution within Israel has turned into its opposite.

Part Two

Let us consider the social conditions within Israel. First, a few statistics.

Despite some slight improvement in the economic situation over the past year as terrorist attacks have declined, unemployment is nearly 9 percent.

The latest report published by the National Insurance Institute in August 2005 shows:

* Over 1.5 million Israelis, one quarter of the 6 million population, were living below the poverty level, an increase of 119,000 over the previous year

* 23 percent of the elderly live below the poverty line

* Child poverty has increased 50 percent since 1988

* 714,000, or 1 in 5, children go hungry each and every day.

A 2004 survey showed that a shocking 40 percent of children live in poverty, squalor and delinquency, and that another 30 percent could slip into a similar fate. Yitzhak Kadman, director of the National Council for the Child, said: “Israeli society is deluding itself if it thinks that it can give up 40 percent of its children who are the citizens of its future…. There is no chance Israeli society will be able to exist in 20 years, standing on the spindly legs of 30 percent of its children. This criminal negligence of a considerable proportion of Israel’s children who are living in poverty, sickness and neglect is going to cost the state dearly in every way.”

* The proportion of children in Israeli society fell from 39 percent in 1970 to 33 percent in 2002.

* The average number of children per family fell consistently from 2.7 in 1980 to 2.3 in 2002, while the number of single child families doubled.

* There are 50,000 abortions a year, mostly for economic reasons.

All this is in a country where its population is key to its future existence as a Jewish state.

More than 140,000 children living in Israel do not have full Israeli citizenship:

* 71 percent live in East Jerusalem

* 29 percent are children of legal foreign workers in Israel, children of immigrants of unclear status, and children from mixed marriages of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.

In a recent poll, 80 percent of Israelis considered themselves “poor”.

The head of the National Insurance Institute, Yohanan Stessman, warned that: “Without the welfare benefits, Israeli society would fall apart and we would reach a point of civil war.” Opposition politicians have attacked the Sharon government, saying: “Poverty and inequality are becoming the country’s most serious strategic threat, not its neighbours.” Eli Yishai. the leader of Shas, one of the ultra-orthodox religious parties, said: “The government’s policies undermine the cohesion of our society,” pointing to Finance Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s cuts in welfare spending and tax breaks that favoured the rich.

The vacuum created by the government’s retreat from welfare provision is being filled by soup kitchens, not-for-profit organisations that provide food for the poor and religious networks. Children as young as 10 have been arrested for stealing food to quell their hunger. There have been newspaper reports of single mothers in Beer Sheva, whose benefits have been cut by 40 percent, approaching supermarket managers to tell them of their plight, and their intention to fill their trolleys and make off without paying. Managers have stood by and let them do it. “There are so many, we don’t stop them,” one said.

While more than 40 percent of those defined as poor have jobs, the government is determined to see wages fall further in order to make Israel “internationally competitive”.

It is these conditions that lie behind the constant strikes and threats of industrial action. In many cases, the workers seek not so much to improve their wages and conditions but simply to get paid. It is not unknown for municipal and other public service workers, including teachers, to go unpaid for months.

These economic and social conditions also help to explain the attraction of the settlements to hard-pressed Israelis. Central government gives twice as much per capita to local government in the Occupied Territories than in Israel. Investment in housing is 5.3 times that of Israel.

According to one Israeli academic, only 50,000 settlers—out of a total 450,000 settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—are hard-core expansionists. Most have moved for “quality of life considerations, tax breaks and cheaper mortgages…. Many want to leave but … nobody will buy their homes.” According to a Peace Now survey, the majority would leave if offered compensation for withdrawal.

Jewish Israeli society is not just divided between rich and poor. It is riven with divisions based on ethnicity and religion. Jews from the Middle East and North Africa have the worst-paid jobs, while Jews of European origin are generally better paid, with an average income of 1.5 times that of those from the Middle East and North Africa.

Israel is also divided along religious lines; between religious and secular Jews, as the religious authorities seek ever-increasing social control over marriage, divorce and travel on Saturday, making it all but impossible for secular Jews to live in Jerusalem.

If the situation is dire for the average Israeli, the situation is much worse for Arab Israelis:

* Average wages are less than half those of the Jews of European origin

* 42 percent of Arab families live below the poverty line

* Every second Arab child (compared with every fourth child in the general population) lives in poverty

* Unemployment is higher than average. While Jewish unemployment rose 53 percent between 1996 and 2001, it rose 126 percent for Israeli Arabs in the same period

* In 2003, the Orr Commission reported, “decades of discrimination against the Israeli Arab minority”. It found a pattern of government prejudice, neglect and discrimination against the one million or more Arab Israelis—the Palestinians who were not forced out of their ancestral homeland when the Jewish state was created in 1948. Arab municipalities are starved of cash and deprived of government-sponsored industrial development

* Educational facilities are much poorer than their Jewish counterparts

* Many long-standing communities are not recognised by the state, refused all services, including electricity and water, and their homes threatened with demolition

* Arab Israelis are more likely to be subject to verbal and physical abuse by the police and security services, and investigation and trials.

While Israel appears to have a relatively high average per capita income that places it within the top 25 countries, this is deceptive. Average income masks the enormous and ever rising inequality within Israel.

* Despite the recession, in 2003, Israel’s richest 10 percent became richer

* In 1994, top managers earned on average 30 times the minimum wage. In 2002, they earned 36 times more

* Their share of total income rose by 5.6 percent in the same period, while the share of the bottom 80 percent fell by between 0.4 percent and 0.8 percent

* Average annual income of the top 10 percent of households was about NIS 42,000, compared to NIS 3,100 for the poorest 10 percent. That is, the richest households have 14 times more income than the poorest

* The gini coefficient, a widely used statistic to measure income inequality, shows that at .38, Israel has one of the highest rates of inequality in the world, second only to the US in the advanced countries.

As elsewhere, the government’s cuts and reforms are directed at further enriching these layers. The emasculation of the labour movement has removed all constraints on them. Whereas in the 1950s, Zionism offered a level of social equality on a par with Sweden, and from the 1960s to 1980s, a standard of living that was on a par with that of the advanced countries, that perspective is in tatters. It is these economic and social conditions that have led to Israel’s political instability and shifting political alliances.

Political conditions in Israel

Once touted as the region’s only liberal democracy, political life in Israel is now in an advanced state of putrefaction. Israel faces a very real threat of civil conflict—and not just between Jews and Arabs. The rise of ultra-religious and nationalist forces after the 1967 war, largely funded by the US, played a key role in shifting Israeli politics sharply to the right, despite their small numbers. Their foremost political patron was until recently Ariel Sharon.

Israel’s political system is made up of a large number of political parties, with constantly changing alliances and new parties. At no point has the majority party ever been able to rule on its own. Coalitions are the order of the day, and the right-wing small parties therefore have enormous power.

While Labour dominated for the first 30 years, the break up of the post-war order and the expansion of Israel’s territories after the 1967 war required a different type of government. The 1977 elections brought a right-wing Likud government to power and since then it has been the dominant party, in government for 23 out of 29 years.

Consider the nature of the Likud prime ministers. Menachem Begin, as leader of the terrorist Irgun, had blown up the British Headquarters based at the King David Hotel in 1946 and orchestrated the massacre of 256 Palestinians at Deir Yassin. Yitzhak Shamir, the leader of the terrorist Stern gang, was responsible for a string of terrorist attacks, including the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Military Governor in 1944. Ariel Sharon is an unindicted war criminal. Labour prime minister Ehud Barak led murderous raids on the PLO leadership in Tunis in the 1980s, culminating in the assassination of Abu Jihad. No other country in the world has been headed by such a series of infamous thugs.

Israel’s political and business leaders are mired in corruption. Tel Aviv has for some decades been one of the foremost money and stolen diamond laundering countries in the world. Two of the biggest business scandals in Israel’s history took place in 2005, involving money laundering and industrial espionage. Sharon and his predecessors, Ehud Barak, Benyamin Netanyahu and Yitzhak Rabin, were all under investigation for bribery and corruption but charges were never brought.

It seemed at one point when Sharon was prime minister, that he would face the prospect of indictment for bribery when he was foreign minister, in a case that also implicated his successor, Ehud Olmert, until the incoming Attorney General refused to press charges. In a separate case, Sharon’s son, as his campaign manager, is currently awaiting sentencing for illegal campaign contributions during his 1999 election to the Likud leadership.

The Labour party’s perspective is in tatters after a brief and unsustainable makeover as the party of peace by Peace Now. It was this that led them to hand over power to Sharon and Likud, then join and prop up his Likud coalition, and help it force through its military strategy of annexing much of the West Bank. It simply held its nose over Sharon’s Palestinian policy—genocide and ethnic cleansing—that supplanted the promise of a two-state solution embodied in the 1993 Oslo Accords. This is the inexorable logic of the nationalist programme that they embraced, albeit with socialist pretensions, in the early days of the last century.

These economic and social tensions have led to a political realignment. Last November, the left-talking Amir Peretz’s surprise defeat of the 82-year-old Shimon Peres in the Labour party leadership contest triggered a realignment of Israeli politics. He pulled out Labour’s cabinet members from Sharon’s coalition, already rocked by the withdrawal from Gaza, precipitating an early general election, now scheduled for March 28.

While Peretz won the leadership on the basis of ending the conflict with the Palestinians through a negotiated settlement and looking after the interests of ordinary Israeli families hard hit by the Sharon government, he soon began to back-pedal from his leftist rhetoric.

In relation to the Palestinians, he is now insisting that Jerusalem remains the undivided capital of Israel and that the Palestinian refugees be denied the right of return to their former homes in Israel. Such preconditions preclude any possibility of reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians.

In relation to social and economic policies, Peretz offers only minor changes to the government’s free-market policies and an increase in the minimum wage. “I don’t intend to damage the free market and competition,” he declared. “But I intend that the free market in Israel will be a market that serves people and that competition will be fair,” he continued. In other words, he presents no challenge to the basic interests of the capitalist ruling class.

Indeed, Labour’s financial spokesman, a former World Bank economist, hastened to reassure the international financial institutions at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Israel would pursue pro-market policies and would not raise taxes or increase government debt. “We will be more competitive,” he said.

When Sharon’s Likud coalition became unworkable because of settler-religious opposition to Gaza, he pulled out of the Likud party that he had helped to form in 1977 and set up theKadima party, with 14 of his Likud colleagues and several leading Labour MPs, including Shimon Peres and Haim Ramon. Kadima was, until Sharon’s stroke, widely expected to win the most seats in the next parliament, although not sufficient to rule without a coalition.

In so far as Kadima is widely portrayed as a “centrist” formation, this only reflects the extreme right-wing nature of Israeli politics. Its mission is threefold.

* First, to prevent the emergence of any domestic opposition to the annexation of much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, for which Sharon had gained US approval behind the smokescreen of the withdrawal from Gaza.

* Second, to gain a consensus around Sharon’s right-wing economic and social agenda imposed under his Likud government.

* Third, to curb the influence of the settler movement and the ultra-religious parties that had come to dominate within Likud.

As far as big business and international commentators are concerned, these ultra right-wing forces are an obstacle to the consolidation of secure borders of the significantly expanded Israeli state, the removal of what remains of the welfare state and the rationalisation of military expenditure, much of it taken up with defending the settlers.

While Kadima has won important support from Israel’s political establishment and backing from the Bush administration, its popular support rests upon the so-called peace camp’s ability to promote illusions in Kadima’s readiness to end the military conflict. To this end, Israel’s liberal media and political establishment has stepped nobly into the breach, including the architects of Oslo, Peres and Yossi Beilin. This is despite the fact that Sharon’s perspective for “peace”—and that of all his successors in Kadima—is based on confining the Palestinians within a well-guarded and impoverished ghetto. So, far from being a solution, Kadima’s Palestinian policy is a recipe for continued conflict with the Palestinians, while its neo-liberal economic agenda promises civil strife at home.

Taken together, this means that Israeli workers have no party that represents their interests.

In short, Israel with all its cultural advantages, an educated workforce, and massive aid, is an economic and political disaster, dominated by enormous social inequality. The Israeli government does not represent the interests of the majority of the Jewish people who live in Israel, let alone the Jewish people all over the world. It is the political representative of a section of Israel’s financial elite, a corrupt and venal clique of international gangsters who operate on behalf of their masters in Washington.

The future heralds intensifying conflicts both within Israel and with the Palestinians. Furthermore, Israel’s role as a subcontractor for US imperialism means ever-greater military expenditure and attacks on its neighbours, threatening increasing political and military instability both in pursuit of its own interests and those of the US. While Israeli workers have thus far enjoyed a higher standard of living than their Arab neighbours, this is not set to continue.

All this is a far cry from the secure economic future that the Zionist dream seemed to offer the Jewish people.

This brief review has vindicated the principled approach taken by the Fourth International 60 years ago to the situation in Palestine. The conditions in Israel, Palestine and indeed the whole of the Middle East today differ in no fundamental way from the predictions made by the Fourth International.

The central lessons we must draw from this strategic experience concern the critical responsibilities of Marxists. Our task is to build independent revolutionary parties of the working class, sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, which base themselves on implacable theoretical firmness and tell the working class the truth.

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Posted in Empire, Ideaology, Palestine | Leave a comment

Israeli War Crimes – Under the Black Flag By URI AVNERY

Posted on January 29, 2009 by kf1

A Spanish judge has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed.

For those who have forgotten: the then commander of the Israeli Air Force, Dan Halutz, was asked at the time what he feels when he drops a bomb on a residential building. His unforgettable answer: “A slight bump to the wing.” When we in Gush Shalom accused him of a war crime, he demanded that we be put on trial for high treason. He was joined by the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who accused us of wanting to “turn over Israeli army officers to the enemy”. The Attorney General notified us officially that he did not intend to open an investigation against those responsible for the bombing.

I should be happy, therefore, that at long last somebody is ready to put that action to a judicial test (even if he seems to have been thwarted by political pressure.) But I am sorry that this has happened in Spain, not in Israel.

* * *

ISRAELI TV VIEWERS have lately been exposed to a bizarre sight: army officers appearing with their faces hidden, as usual for criminals when the court prohibits their identification. Pedophiles, for example, or attackers of old women.

On the orders of the military censors, this applies to all officers, from battalion commanders down, who have been involved in the Gaza war. Since the faces of brigade commanders and above are generally known, the order does not apply to them.

Immediately after the cease-fire, the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, promoted a special law that would give unlimited backing by the state to all officers and soldiers who took part in the Gaza war and who might be accused abroad of war crimes. This seems to confirm the Hebrew adage: “On the head of the thief, the hat is burning”.

* * *

I DO NOT object to trials abroad. The main thing is that war criminals, like pirates, should be brought to justice. It is not so important where they are caught. (This rule was applied by the State of Israel when it abducted Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and hanged him in Israel for heinous crimes committed outside the territory of Israel and, indeed, before the state even existed.)

But as an Israeli patriot, I would prefer suspected Israeli war criminals to be put on trial in Israel. That is necessary for the country, for all decent officers and soldiers of the Israeli army, for the education of future generations of citizens and soldiers.

There is no need to rely on international law alone. There are Israeli laws against war crimes. Enough to mention the immortal phrase coined by Justice Binyamin Halevy, serving as a military judge, in the trial of the border policemen who were responsible for the 1956 massacre in Kafr Kassem, when dozens of children, women and men were mown down for violating a curfew which they did not even know about.

The judge announced that even in wartime, there are orders over which flies “the black flag of illegality”. These are orders which are “manifestly” illegal – that is to say, orders which every normal person can tell are illegal, without having to consult a lawyer.

War criminals dishonor the army whose uniform they wear – whether they are generals or common soldiers. As a combat soldier on the day the Israeli Defense Army was officially created, I am ashamed of them and demand that they be cast out and be put on trial in Israel.

My list of suspects includes politicians, soldiers, rabbis and lawyers.

* * *

THERE IS not the slightest doubt that in the Gaza war, crimes were committed. The question is to what extent and by whom.

Example: the soldiers call on the residents of a house to leave it. A woman and her four children come out, waving white handkerchiefs. It is absolutely clear that they are not armed fighters. A soldier in a near-by tank stands up, points his rifle and shoots them dead at short range. According to testimonies that seem to be beyond doubt, this happened more than once.

Another example: the shelling of the United Nations school full of refugees, from which there was no shooting – as admitted by the army, after the original pretexts were disproved.

These are ”simple” cases. But the spectrum of cases is far wider. A serious judicial investigation has to start right from the top: the politicians and senior officers who decided on the war and confirmed its plans must be investigated about their decisions. In Nuremberg it was laid down that the starting of a war of aggression is a crime.

An objective investigation has to find out whether the decision to start the war was justified, or if there existed another way of stopping the launching of rockets against Israeli territory. Without doubt, no country can or should tolerate the bombing of its towns and villages from beyond the border. But could this be prevented by talking with the Gaza authorities? Was our government’s decision to boycott Hamas, the winner of the democratic Palestinian elections, the real cause of this war? Did the imposition of the blockade on a million and a half Gaza Strip inhabitants contribute to the launching of the Qassams? In brief: were the alternatives considered before it was decided to start a deadly war?

The war plan included a massive attack on the civilian population of the Strip. The real aims of a war can be understood less from the official declarations of its initiators, than from their actions. If in this war some 1300 men, women and children were killed, the great majority of whom were not fighters; if about 5000 people were injured, most of them children; if some 2500 homes were partly or wholly destroyed; if the infrastructure of life was totally demolished – all this clearly could not have happened accidentally. It must have been a part of the war plan.

The things said during the war by politicians and officers make it clear that the plan had at least two aims, which might be considered war crimes: (1) To cause widespread killing and destruction, in order to “fix a price tag”. “to burn into their consciousness”, “to reinforce deterrence”, and most of all – to get the population to rise up against Hamas and overthrow their government. Clearly this affects mainly the civilian population. (2) To avoid casualties to our army at (literally) any price by destroying any building and killing any human being in the area into which our troops were about to move, including destroying homes over the heads of their inhabitants, preventing medical teams from reaching the victims, killing people indiscriminately. In certain cases, inhabitants were warned that they must flee, but this was mainly an alibi-action: there was nowhere to flee to, and often fire was opened on people trying to escape.

An independent court will have to decide whether such a war-plan is in accordance with national and international law, or whether it was ab initio a crime against humanity and a war-crime.

This was a war of a regular army with huge capabilities against a guerrilla force. In such a war, too, not everything is permissible. Arguments like “The Hamas terrorists were hiding within the civilian population” and “They used the population as human shields” may be effective as propaganda but are irrelevant: that is true for every guerrilla war. It must be taken into account when a decision to start such a war is being considered.

In a democratic state, the military takes its orders from the political establishment. Good. But that does not include “manifestly” illegal orders, over which the black flag of illegality is waving. Since the Nuremberg trials, there is no more room for the excuse that “I was only obeying orders”.

Therefore, the personal responsibility of all involved – from the Chief of Staff, the Front Commander and the Division Commander right down to the last soldier – must be examined. From the statements of soldiers one must deduce that many believed that their job was “to kill as many Arabs as possible”. Meaning: no distinction between fighters and non-fighters. That is a completely illegal order, whether given explicitly or by a wink and a nudge. The soldiers understood this to be “the spirit of the commander”.

* * *

AMONG THOSE suspected of war crimes, the rabbis have a place of honor.

Those who incite to war crimes and call upon soldiers, directly or indirectly, to commit war crimes may be guilty of a war crime themselves.

When one speaks of “rabbis”, one thinks of old men with long white beards and big hats, who give tongue to venerable wisdom. But the rabbis who accompanied the troops are a very different species.

In the last decades, the state-financed religious educational system has churned out “rabbis” who are more like medieval Christian priests than the Jewish sages of Poland or Morocco. This system indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history nothing but an endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen People, indifferent to others, a religion without compassion for anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed genocide described in the Biblical book of Joshua.

The products of this education are now the “rabbis” who instruct the religious youths. With their encouragement, a systematic effort has been made to take over the Israeli army from within. Kippa-wearing officers have replaced the Kibbutzniks, who not so long ago were dominant in the army. Many of the lower and middle-ranking officers now belong to this group.

The most outstanding example is the “Chief Army Rabbi”, Colonel Avichai Ronsky, who has declared that his job is to reinforce the “fighting spirit” of the soldiers. He is a man of the extreme right, not far from the spirit of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose party was outlawed in Israel for its fascist ideology. Under the auspices of the army rabbinate, religious-fascist brochures of the ultra-right “rabbis” were distributed to the soldiers.

This material includes political incitement, such as the statement that the Jewish religion prohibits “giving up even one millimeter of Eretz Israel”, that the Palestinians, like the Biblical Philistines (from whom the name Palestine derives), are a foreign people who invaded the country, and that any compromise (such as indicated in the official government program) is a mortal sin. The distribution of political propaganda violates, of course, army law.

The rabbis openly called upon the soldiers to be cruel and merciless towards the Arabs. To treat them mercifully, they stated, is a “terrible, awful immorality”. When such material is distributed to religious soldiers going into war, it is easy to see why things happened the way they did.

* * *

THE PLANNERS of this war knew that the shadow of war crimes was hovering over the planned operation. Witness: the Attorney General (whose official title is “Legal Advisor to the Government”) was a partner to the planning. This week the Chief Army Attorney, Colonel Avichai Mandelblut, disclosed that his officers were attached throughout the war to all the commanders, from the Chief of Staff down to the Division Commander.

All this together leads to the inescapable conclusion that the legal advisors bear direct responsibility for the decisions taken and implemented, from the massacre of the civilian police recruits at their graduating ceremony to the shelling of the UN installations. Every attorney who was a partner to the deliberations before an order was given is responsible for its consequences, unless he can prove that he objected to it.

The Chief Army Attorney, who is supposed to give the army professional and objective advice, speaks about “the monstrous enemy” and tries to justify the actions of the army by saying that it was fighting against “an unbridled enemy, who declared that he ‘loves death’ and finds shelter behind the backs of women and children”. Such language is, perhaps, pardonable in a pep-talk of a war-drunk combat commander, like the battalion chief who ordered his soldiers to commit suicide rather than be captured, but totally unacceptable when it comes from the chief legal officer of the army.

* * *

WE MUST pursue all the legal processes in Israel and call for an independent investigation and the indictment of suspected perpetrators. We must demand this even if the chances of it happening are slim indeed.

If these efforts fail, nobody will be able to object to trials abroad, either in an international court or in the courts of those nations that respect human rights and international law.

Until then, the black flag will still be waving.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

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As the US Leans Left, Israel Lurches Right – On the Wrong Side of History – URI AVNERY

Of all the beautiful phrases in Barack Obama’s inauguration speech, these are the words that stuck in my mind: “You are on the wrong side of history.”

He was talking about the tyrannical regimes of the world. But we, too, should ponder these words

In the last few days I have heard a lot of declarations from Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert. And every time, these eight words came back to haunt me: “You are on the wrong side of history!”

Obama was speaking as a man of the 21st century. Our leaders speak the language of the 19th century. They resemble the dinosaurs which once terrorized their neighborhood and were quite unaware of the fact that their time had already passed.

* * *

DURING THE rousing celebrations, again and again the multicolored patchwork of the new president’s family was mentioned.

All the preceding 43 presidents were white Protestants, except John Kennedy, who was a white Catholic. 38 of them were the descendants of immigrants from the British isles. Of the other five, three were of Dutch ancestry (Theodor and Franklin D. Roosevelt , as well as Martin van Buren) and two of German descent (Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower.)

The face of Obama’s family is quite different. The extended family includes whites and the descendents of black slaves, Africans from Kenya, Indonesians, Chinese from Canada, Christians, Muslims and even one Jew (a converted African-American). The two first names of the president himself, Barack Hussein, are Arabic.

This is the face of the new American nation – a mixture of races, religions, countries of origin and skin-colors, an open and diverse society, all of whose members are supposed to be equal and to identify themselves with the ”founding fathers”. The American Barack Hussein Obama, whose father was born in a Kenyan village, can speak with pride of “George Washington, the father of our nation”, of the “American Revolution” (the war of independence against the British), and hold up the example of “our ancestors”, who include both the white pioneers and the black slaves who “endured the lash of the whip”. That is the perception of a modern nation, multi-cultural and multi-racial: a person joins it by acquiring citizenship, and from this moment on is the heir to all its history.

Israel is the product of the narrow nationalism of the 19th century, a nationalism that was closed and exclusive, based on race and ethnic origin, blood and earth. Israel is a “Jewish State”, and a Jew is a person born Jewish or converted according to Jewish religious law (Halakha). Like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, it is a state whose mental world is to a large extent conditioned by religion, race and ethnic origin.

When Ehud Barak speaks about the future, he speaks the language of past centuries, in terms of brute force and brutal threats, with armies providing the solution to all problems. That was also the language of George W. Bush who last week slinked out of Washington, a language that already sounds to the Western ear like an echo from the distant past.

The words of the new president are ringing in the air: “Our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please.” The key words were “humility and restraint”.

Our leaders are now boasting about their part in the Gaza War, in which unbridled military force was unleashed intentionally against a civilian population, men, women and children, with the declared aim of “creating deterrence”. In the era that began last Tuesday, such expressions can only arouse shudders.

* * *

BETWEEN Israel and the United States a gap has opened this week, a narrow gap, almost invisible – but it may widen into an abyss.

The first signs are small. In his inaugural speech, Obama proclaimed that “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and nonbelievers.” Since when? Since when do the Muslims precede the Jews? What has happened to the “Judeo-Christian Heritage”? (A completely false term to start with, since Judaism is much closer to Islam than to Christianity. For example: neither Judaism nor Islam supports the separation of religion and state.)

The very next morning, Obama phoned a number of Middle East leaders. He decided to make a quite unique gesture: placing the first call to Mahmoud Abbas, and only the next to Olmert. The Israeli media could not stomach that. Haaretz, for example, consciously falsified the record by writing – not once but twice in the same issue – that Obama had called “Olmert, Abbas, Mubarak and King Abdallah” (in that order).

Instead of the group of American Jews who had been in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Obama, on his very first day in office, appointed an Arab-American, George Mitchell, whose mother had come to America from Lebanon at age 18, and who himself, orphaned from his Irish father, was brought up in a Maronite Christian Lebanese family.

These are not good tidings for the Israeli leaders. For the last 42 years, they have pursued a policy of expansion, occupation and settlements in close cooperation with Washington. They have relied on unlimited American support, from the massive supply of money and arms to the use of the veto in the Security Council. This support was essential to their policy. This support may now be reaching its limits.

It will happen, of course, gradually. The pro-Israel lobby in Washington will continue to put the fear of God into Congress. A huge ship like the United States can change course only very slowly, in a gentle curve. But the turn-around started already on the first day of the Obama administration.

This could not have happened, if America itself had not changed. That is not a political change alone. It is a change in the world-view, in mental outlook, in values. A certain American myth, which is very similar to the Zionist myth, has been replaced by another American myth. Not by accident did Obama devote to this so large a part of his speech (in which, by the way, there was not a single word about the extermination of the Native Americans).

The Gaza War, during which tens of millions of Americans saw the horrible carnage in the Strip (even if rigorous self-censorship cut out all but a tiny part), has hastened the process of drifting apart. Israel, the brave little sister, the loyal ally in Bush’s “War on Terror”, has turned into the violent Israel, the mad monster, which has no compassion for women and children, the wounded and the sick. And when winds like these are blowing, the Lobby loses height.

The leaders of official Israel do not notice it. They do not feel, as Obama put it in another context, that “the ground has shifted beneath them”. They think that this is no more than a temporary political problem that can be set right with the help of the Lobby and the servile members of Congress.

Our leaders are still intoxicated with war and drunk with violence. They have re-phrased the famous saying of the Prussian general, Carl von Clausewitz into: “War is but a continuation of an election campaign by other means.” They compete with each other with vainglorious swagger for their share of the “credit”. Tzipi Livni, who cannot compete with the men for the crown of warlord, tries to outdo them in toughness, in bellicosity, in hard-heartedness.

The most brutal is Ehud Barak. Once I called him a “peace criminal”, because he brought about the failure of the 2000 Camp David conference and shattered the Israeli peace camp. Now I must call him a “war criminal”, as the person who planned the Gaza War knowing that it would murder masses of civilians.

In his own eyes, and in the eyes of a large section of the public, this is a military operation which deserves all praise. His advisors also thought that it would bring him success in the elections. The Labor party, which had been the largest party in the Knesset for decades, had shrunk in the polls to 12, even 9 seats out of 120. With the help of the Gaza atrocity it has now gone up to 16 or so. That’s not a landslide, and there’s no guarantee that it will not sink again.

What was Barak’s mistake? Very simply: every war helps the Right. War, by its very nature, arouses in the population the most primitive emotions – hate and fear, fear and hate. These are the emotions on which the Right has been riding for centuries. Even when it’s the ”Left” that starts a war, it’s still the Right that profits from it. In a state of war, the population prefers an honest-to-goodness Rightist to a phony Leftist.

This is happening to Barak for the second time. When, in 2000, he spread the mantra “I have turned every stone on the way to peace, / I have made the Palestinians unprecedented offers, / They have rejected everything, / There is no one to talk with” – he succeeded not only in blowing the Left to smithereens, but also in paving the way for the ascent of Ariel Sharon in the 2001 elections. Now he is paving the way for Binyamin Netanyahu (hoping, quite openly, to become his minister of defense).

And not only for him. The real victor of the war is a man who had no part in it at all: Avigdor Liberman. His party, which in any normal country would be called fascist, is steadily rising in the polls. Why? Liberman looks and sounds like an Israeli Mussolini, he is an unbridled Arab-hater, a man of the most brutal force. Compared to him, even Netanyahu looks like a softie. A large part of the young generation, nurtured on years of occupation, killing and destruction, after two atrocious wars, considers him a worthy leader.

* * *

WHILE THE US has made a giant jump to the left, Israel is about to jump even further to the right.

Anyone who saw the millions milling around Washington on inauguration day knows that Obama was not speaking only for himself. He was expressing the aspirations of his people, the Zeitgeist.

Between the mental world of Obama and the mental world of Liberman and Netanyahu there is no bridge. Between Obama and Barak and Livni, too, there yawns an abyss. Post-election Israel may find itself on a collision course with post-election America.

Where are the American Jews? The overwhelming majority of them voted for Obama. They will be between the hammer and the anvil – between their government and their natural adherence to Israel. It is reasonable to assume that this will exert pressure from below on the “leaders” of American Jewry, who have incidentally never been elected by anyone, and on organizations like AIPAC. The sturdy stick, on which Israeli leaders are used to lean in times of trouble, may prove to be a broken reed.

Europe, too, is not untouched by the new winds. True, at the end of the war we saw the leaders of Europe – Sarkozy, Merkel, Browne and Zapatero – sitting like schoolchildren behind a desk in class, respectfully listening to the most loathsome arrogant posturing from Ehud Olmert, reciting his text after him. They seemed to approve the atrocities of the war, speaking of the Qassams and forgetting about the occupation, the blockade and the settlements. Probably they will not hang this picture on their office walls.

But during this war masses of Europeans poured into the streets to demonstrate against the horrible events. The same masses saluted Obama on the day of his inauguration.

This is the new world. Perhaps our leaders are now dreaming of the slogan: “Stop the world, I want to get off!” But there is no other world.

* * *

YES, WE ARE NOW on the wrong side of history.

Fortunately, there is also another Israel. It is not in the limelight, and its voice is heard only by those who listen out for it. This is a sane, rational Israel, with its face to the future, to progress and peace. In these coming elections, its voice will barely be heard, because all the old parties are standing with their two feet squarely in the world of yesterday.

But what has happened in the United States will have a profound influence on what happens in Israel. The huge majority of Israelis know that we cannot exist without close ties with the US. Obama is now the leader of the world, and we live in this world. When he promises to work “aggressively” for peace between us and the Palestinians, that is a marching order for us.

We want to be on the right side of history. That will take months or years, but I am sure that we shall get there. The time to start is now.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

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Where Principles Go to Die – In America, Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

A Report from Gaza – Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes – By NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD

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Doubts over “Pakistan militants” foiled by India

Posted on January 29, 2009 by kf1

By Alistair Scrutton

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Doubts have been raised about police reports of a foiled attack on India’s capital blamed on Pakistani militants, with newspapers wondering if the whole episode might have been staged.

The controversy is an unwelcome distraction from India’s efforts to bring to book the Pakistanis it blames for November’s attack on Mumbai.

Police on Sunday said they killed two militants after a car chase in Noida city on the outskirts of New Delhi on the eve of Republic Day. AK-47 rifles, grenades and a Pakistani passport were recovered, according to officials.

But the story sounded to some newspapers too good to be true. The militants not only conveniently carried Pakistani identification, they also asked for directions outside Delhi with an AK-47 poking out of a bag, and then confessed before dying.

The incident came amid heightened tension with Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks late last year. A brutal attack on the capital could have the potential to push the two nuclear-armed neighbours closer to the brink.

“(The doubts) hurt India’s credibility more now than ever before, especially as India is now under international focus and trying to tell the world to act against terrorism after attacks on Mumbai,” retired Major-General Ashok Mehta told Reuters.

Indians even have a phrase for these kind of suspicions — “fake encounters” — when police are accused of killing suspected criminals in cold blood and passing the incidents off as gunbattles to reap either fame or cash rewards.

“Doubts have always persisted about fake encounters and killings in India, but everything looks suspicious in this case,” Mehta, a security analyst, said.

Surprisingly, India’s foreign ministry and home ministry have both been silent on the case.

The doubts highlight a problem for India — that many people doubt the credibility of police accounts just as the Indian government is trying to show the world that Pakistan is behind militant attacks on its soil.

While similar incidents have been reported on the eve of many Republic Days, they did not have the same impact pre-Mumbai.

Now the stakes are higher, given the potential of incidents like these, real or fake, to raise diplomatic tension.

“FAKE ENCOUNTERS?”

One newspaper expressed doubts about the timing of Sunday’s incident.

“We would have been a wee bit surprised had the police not produced some ‘terrorists’ – slain or alive — in the run-up to the Republic Day,” the Mail Today said.

“For the past many years encounters and arrests have been regular as the official ceremony on these occasions.”

The Times of India raised several suspicions, from conflicting police versions to the fact two previous encounters had taken place in the same isolated spot in less than 10 months.

The militants not only advertised their intentions with a gun-laden bag, they also asked for directions from a tea-seller — who just happened to be a police informer, the paper said.

Uttar Pradesh police said they were still investigating.

“People are free to interpret and react to the situation in their own ways,” senior Uttar Pradesh police officer Rajiv Krishna said, when asked about reports of a fake encounter.

Indian security experts say there is no doubt that Indian police are dealing every week with militant cells.

There have been a string of bomb attacks on cities in the past two years, killing hundreds of people, including the most infamous — when gunmen killed 179 in coordinated raids on India’s financial hub.

The Indian government and many experts say there is ample evidence that Pakistan is communicating with many of these cells. Western allies such as the United States are convinced of the evidence that Pakistani militants were involved in Mumbai.

But while the threat is real, doubts about the police will not go away.

“The problem is credibility of the police and the fact that nobody believes the police these days,” Julio Ribeiro, former Mumbai police commissioner, told Reuters.

India’s human rights commission is investigating a previous gunbattle in New Delhi last year against two suspected Islamist militants after media alleged it could have been faked.

In Sunday’s incident, the police came from one of India’s most lawless and corrupt states, Uttar Pradesh.

“These encounters are very murky,” said Ajai Sahni, executive director at the Institute for Conflict Management.

“The fact that it happened in UP raises more doubts, but that doesn’t mean it was a fake encounter.”

(Additional reporting by Bappa Majumdar)

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Pakistan Gun Market Video -Look before you leap.

Posted in India, South Asia | Leave a comment

The BBC’s Day of Shame

Posted on January 29, 2009 by kf1

The BBC finds itself in a serious controversy every few years, but this is the mother of all. The essence of the latest storm is this. A few days ago, the Disasters Emergency Committee of the United Kingdom, an umbrella group of thirteen leading charities, came out with a plan to launch a television appeal to raise funds for humanitarian relief in Gaza. The umbrella organization includes names like the British Red Cross, Save the Children, Care International and Oxfam. The BBC refused to broadcast their appeal. Its Director-General, Mark Thompson, and Chief Operating Officer, Caroline Thomson, came out with two reasons. The corporation’s ‘impartiality would be compromised’ and how could the BBC be certain that money raised would go to the ‘right people’?

The refusal, and the reasons given, by the BBC have infuriated many people in Britain and abroad, where World Service has a devoted audience. There have been angry demonstrations in London. More than ten thousand complaints had been received by Sunday and the number was growing. Blogs and newspaper websites are inundated with messages attacking the decision, despite a determined counter-offensive by a handful of pro-Israel entries that keep repeating themselves. Leaders of all major political parties have criticized the corporation. They include ministers in a British government that pursues pro-Israel policies. Christian clergymen and prominent members of the British Jewish community have called upon the BBC executives to reconsider their decision.

The Archbishop of York summed it all up when he said, “It is not a row about impartiality, but rather about humanity.” He compared the situation to British military hospitals treating prisoners of war as a result of their duty under the Geneva Conventions. “By declining the request of the Disasters Emergency Committee,” the Archbishop said, “the BBC has already forsaken impartiality.”

Not one BBC journalist I know agrees with the decision. Writing in the Observer newspaper on January 25, 2009, the respected former Middle East correspondent of the corporation, Tim Llewellyn, calls it ‘a cowardly decision’ that ‘betrays the values the BBC stands for’. John Kampfner, another ex-correspondent, says in a recent article in the Guardian that, apart from some honorable exceptions, the questioning of Israeli spokespeople during the Gaza conflict has been weak compared with, for example, the widely-acclaimed Channel 4 News. Kampfner’s verdict – Israeli officials have rarely been truly pressed on BBC outlets.

During my 23 years as a BBC journalist, there were many occasions when the corporation stood up to outside pressure. During the Suez crisis in 1956, the British government tried to force the BBC to tow the line in reporting the invasion of Egypt as it began to falter. The corporation refused, despite a real risk that it might be shut down. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India acquired authoritarian powers under emergency rule in the 1970s, foreign correspondents were ordered to submit all their reports to the censors before filing. Mark Tully, the BBC Delhi correspondent, refused to bow. Instead of submitting his reports to the censors, he took the next plane to London.

In 1985, a month after the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had proclaimed that ‘terrorists should be starved of the oxygen of publicity’, she learned that a BBC documentary had interviewed a senior figure in the IRA, which was conducting an armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland. Thatcher’s government tried to ban the documentary, but it was eventually shown. During my time as the BBC correspondent in Afghanistan under the Communist regime of Najibullah, I was threatened with expulsion several times. Every time, I handed in my passport to the relevant official and asked him to issue an exit visa and expulsion order. I knew I had the support from my employer. Every time, the Afghan government withdrew the threat.

Why is today’s BBC so timid? Not only is it due to the relentless pressure on journalists and researchers since the launch of the ‘war on terror’ by George W Bush and Tony Blair. The failure of leadership at the BBC has also played a part. The corporation, under its charter, broadcasts in the national interest. It does so at its best when this obligation is interpreted in the widest possible sense, meaning the ‘national interest’ is served by providing accurate, authoritative and the most wide-ranging perspective on world events that the audiences will trust. The current leadership of the BBC has failed in this important task. The refusal to broadcast an appeal from the country’s leading charities for funds for humanitarian work in Gaza, to which the British government itself will contribute, is difficult to understand for most people.

Editorial independence is about resisting the bully. It requires protection against susceptibilities to pressure from the powerful in the interest of objectivity and the need to give proper coverage to the weak. Some years ago, for expediency and in the name of efficiency, the BBC embarked on a drive to set up large news bureaus in a number of big cities around the world. One such bureau is in Jerusalem, from where much of the coverage of the Middle East is done. The recent Gaza conflict has mostly been covered by BBC correspondents standing in front of cameras miles away from the battle in the safety of the Israeli side and under the close watch of their Israeli minders. Today, the Israelis have a stranglehold on the BBC and it will go to any lengths not to offend them.

While the BBC, once the world’s best broadcaster and still a good one, fights for its reputation, other British news outlets have decided to broadcast the appeal for Gaza. They have accepted the assurance from the Disasters Emergency Committee that it is the committee’s job to see the aid reaches the right people. The Charity Commission supports this assurance. And the BBC Director General stands isolated. Senior executives congratulate themselves for their ‘excellent coverage’ on their own channels. But the corporation has been found deficient when compared to new media players like Al Jazeera English and Press TV. With the latest storm over the Gaza appeal, the BBC also risks losing the battle for the moral high ground. Imagine a day when Al Jazeera carries an appeal by Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee while the British Broadcasting Corporation refuses.

Deepak Tripathi, former BBC journalist, is a researcher and an author. His works can be found on http://deepaktripathi.worpress.com and he can be reached at: DandATripathi@gmail.com

Source

The Way of Izvestia The BBC’s Nadir By MUHAMMAD IDREES AHMAD

‘The BBC cannot be neutral in the struggle between truth and untruth, justice and injustice, freedom and slavery, compassion and cruelty, tolerance and intolerance.’

Posted in Conspiracy, Empire, Middle East, Palestine | 2 Comments

Comparative Holocausts – Photo Essay

Posted on January 23, 2009 by kf1

This photo essay was put together by the head of the Norweigan Embassy in Saudi Arabia. It origanilly appeared on MWC News.THE GRANDCHILDREN OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FROM WORLD WAR II ARE DOING TO THE PALESTINIANS EXACTLY WHAT WAS DONE TO THEM BY NAZI GERMANY …

BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISON

Hitler Yesterday ~ Israel Today

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