“Twenty-six students from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful opposition group, were detained during a police raid on Saturday.
A source from the Brotherhood said the students from Cairo’s Ain Shams University had been on holiday in Alexandria when police raided their lodgings at dawn.
The security source said they had been detained for holding meetings and possessing Brotherhood literature. “
Why does the UAE government have to boast about its support for the US and its allies? Don’t they have an ounce of shame?
Here for story
Thankfully, UAE residents still have some sense in them.
Here for their views
By the way, has anyone noticed that the coverage of English newspapers in the UAE (like The Gulf News) is usually much more balanced and objective than that in Arabic newspapers. Its like Arabic newspapers are monitored much more closely. Or is it just me?
It is understandable that English-language newspapers would focus more on labor issues than Arabic ones (since the majority of the blue-collar labor force speak better English than Arabic), but why the difference when it comes to Arab and world politics?
Check out the June 2007 full report or the summary, both by the Divestment Task Force of the United Methodist Church. Told you the BDS movement is picking up!
Excerpts (from summary):
The urgency of the humanitarian crisis in the occupied Palestinian territories cannot be overstated. Palestinians face soaring unemployment, malnutrition, restrictions on movement, denial of medical care, denial of access to their agricultural lands, humiliation at checkpoints, and extended lockdowns called curfews. More than 4 million Palestinian refugees live in poverty, while Israelis live in their homes and on their lands. Palestinians continue to alternate between often futile non-violent protest and unacceptable violent attacks on Israelis. Israeli soldiers have repeatedly fired on non-violent protesters, killing and wounding not only Palestinians, but international peace activists – including Americans – who have stood with them. In addition, volunteers with the Christian Peacemaker Teams in the West Bank have been attacked by Israeli settlers while escorting Palestinian children to school. Settlers have been involved in many acts of violence against Palestinians.
United Methodists Called to Action
Our Christian faith calls us to reject violence of any kind, and to reject acts of aggression that provoke violence. As United Methodists, we are committed to work for justice, and to refuse to be complacent in the face of such monumental human suffering. We are also called to support other members of the Body of Christ around the world.
In 2005, the New England Annual Conference passed Resolution 204 with regard to divestment from companies supporting the Israeli occupation.
ALLIANT TECH SYSTEMS (NYSE:ATK) is engaged with an Israeli company in the production of rubber-coated bullets. Such bullets are frequently used against Palestinians, as well as Israeli and international peace activists engaged in peaceful demonstrations to protest Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land. Rubber bullets often blind, disfigure or kill those who are hit by them. Alliant is also engaged in other contracts that support the Israeli military, which enforces the occupation. The company produces fuses for cluster bombs and Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems.
BLOCKBUSTER (NYSE:BBI) has kiosks in illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. These settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Companies providing services to these settlements, which violate international law, contribute to their growth and appeal for Israelis. They make it harder to withdraw Israelis from the occupied territories, an essential step for any lasting peace agreement with Palestinians.
BOEING (NYSE:BA) has been a major supplier of the F-15 Eagle and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter to Israel. These aircraft have been used to attack Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, resulting in many civilian casualties. Boeing makes missile systems, F-15 software, Apache Helicopters, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), a guided air-to-surface weapon.
CATERPILLAR (NYSE:CAT) supplies bulldozers to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF uses these to destroy Palestinian homes, orchards and olive groves in the Occupied Territories. They are also used to clear Palestinian land for illegal Israeli settlements, segregated roads and the “Separation Barrier.” Despite years of corporate engagement by investors, Caterpillar is expanding its role in the occupation, recently announcing a joint venture with InRobTech to develop unmanned remote-controlled bulldozers for Israel.
CEMENT ROADSTONE HOLDINGS (CRH) (NYSE: CRH) is an Ireland-based multinational. CRH benefits from a monopoly on cement production within Israel through its 25% holding in the Israeli group Mashav Initiating and Development Ltd., which is the holding company for Nesher Cement. Nesher claims on its web site to be Israel’s sole producer of cement. Cement is being used in the construction of the Separation Wall inside the West Bank, which the International Court of Justice has ruled illegal. Cement is also used to build settlements on Palestinian land.
GENERAL DYNAMICS (NYSE:GD) Land Systems in the USA manufactures the GD 883 diesel engine for Israel’s Merkava 4 battle tanks. It has supplied about 1,000 M60A3 Main Battle Tanks to Israel. These tanks are frequently used against Palestinians in the occupied territories. It also produces equipment used on the F16 Fighting Falcon Jets sold to Israel. General Dynamics will be the general contractor for the production of 3,500 MK-84 “general purpose” bombs, spares and repair parts for Israel in a sale proposed by the Pentagon in April, 2007.
GENERAL ELECTRIC (NYSE:GE) supplies the propulsion system for Israel’s AH-64 Apache Assault Helicopter, which is used in Israeli attacks on Palestinian towns. It also possesses contracts with Israel to sell engines for a variety of military aircraft. In addition, GE possesses several Israeli service contracts for engineering support and testing.
GLOBECOMM SYSTEMS INC (GSI) (New York) (NASDAQ: GCOM) in partnership with Tadiran Spectralink of the Elisra Group (Israel), has a contract to supply the IDF with equipment and facilities for communication between all branches of the IDF ground forces. The system includes mobile stations installed on HMMWV vehicles. These vehicles are used by the IDF in the occupied territories.
ITT CORPORATION (NYSE:ITT) provides the Israeli Defense Forces with intensifier tubes for night vision goggles and has previously provided battlefield communication radios. Night vision goggles are used by pilots, co-pilots and crews of fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft, especially helicopter crews. They enable Israel to attack refugee camps and villages in the middle of the night, the time when many of these raids and assaults take place. Battlefield communication radios allow the military to communicate with troops over a secure channel.
LOCKHEED MARTIN (NYSE:LMT) is the single biggest overseas supplier for the Israeli armaments industry. It has received at least $4.4 billion since 1995 for supplying arms, including missile systems and fighter planes, to Israel. It has many ongoing contracts, including manufacturing F-16I fighter bombers used by the IDF against Palestinians. Lockheed Martin Missile and Fire Control in Orlando, Florida produces the Hellfire missile system for Apache attack helicopters used by Israel against Palestinians. According to a military trade publication, Israel’s main battle tank, the Merkava MK-4 is produced by the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works Group.
MAGAL SECURITY SYSTEMS (NASDAQ:MAGS) is an Israeli company that is providing intrusion detection fencing for the separation wall. It is listed in a government of Israel web site as one of the contractors engaged in the construction of the wall.
MOTOROLA (NYSE:MOT) is engaged in a 400 million NIS ($93 million) project to provide radar systems for enhancing security at illegal West Bank settlements deep inside Palestinian territory. Motorola also has a $90-million contract to provide the Israeli army with an advanced “Mountain Rose” cell phone communications system. Its wholly owned subsidiary in Israel has a contract to develop encrypted wireless communications featuring vehicle-mounted antenna that will enable military use in the occupied territories and other remote areas. Motorola has operations in the Jordan Valley on occupied land.
Continue here
Full article here, excerpts below:
British journalist Brian Whitaker, Middle East editor of the Guardian, dismisses MEMRI as “basically a propaganda machine.”
Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, accuses them of “outright distortion,” and former CIA case officer Vince Cannistraro has written that “they (MEMRI) are selective and act as propagandists for their political point of view, which is the extreme-right of Likud.”
With characteristic bluntness. Norman Finkelstein has written: “MEMRI is a main arm of Israeli propaganda. Although widely used in the mainstream media as a source of information on the Arab world, it is as trustworthy as Julius Streicher’s Der Sturmer was on the Jewish world.” (Der Sturmer was a rabidly anti-Semitic newspaper, and Streicher a notoriously cruel Nazi.)
In an e-mail to InFocus, Cole characterized MEMRI as “a Right-Zionist propaganda organ, which usually does its propaganda unobtrusively, by being very selective in what it translates.”
Insightful article by Israel Shamir. I think he gives Fatah too much credit, and maybe also Hamas. But overall…an excellent and uplifting read. Definitely better than the mainstream analysis, even that in the Arab press…or I should say especially that in the Arab press.
Excerpts below (emphasis added):
Palestinians are the freest people on Earth. They proved it again this June, when they broke open the infamous torture chambers of Dahlan and released the prisoners; when they sent the CIA-trained thugs packing back to their Jewish masters. I feel proud of their unique victory: Americans can’t get rid of Guantanamo and their plentiful other jails with millions of prisoners (more than in Uncle Joe’s Gulag); Brits can’t dismantle their surveillance cameras; Saudis can’t throw away their CIA-bound rulers. Not many people succeeded in removing the machine of fear and oppression, in smashing these Gestapo-clones of security police mushrooming around the globe. In future Palestine, the fall of the Gaza Preventive Security Prison will be celebrated like the French celebrate the Fall of Bastille.
…
However, some lessons can and should be learned: Fatah leadership succumbed to the Israeli-American temptation because of its faulty ideology. Nationalism, this weapon of mass disintegration, was brought eastwards by the Western colonizers in order to divide and conquer. Until the 19th century, the East knew nothing of nationalism, for it was then united by faith and governed by their traditional rulers, the successors of Constantine the Great and Suleiman the Magnificent. T.E. Lawrence delivered the bacilli of nationalism to Hejaz in his Intelligence Service-packed saddle bag, and undermined this Eastern unity. He promised Arabs independence from the “hateful Ottomans”, but nothing good came out of their betrayal: British, American and later Zionist colonizers shared the spoils, while the natives became even more oppressed.
Nationalism is necessarily a particularist, “do it alone” sort of ideology. In Palestine, Egypt, Syria this was compensated for by a universalist socialism, but with the evaporation of this socialist element, Fatah remained with its faulty nationalism, doomed to failure. “They are nationalists like us”, say the Zionists from Sharon to Avnery about Fatah. “They will be happy with a flag, an anthem, a Swiss bank account — like us. They will be content with a Bantustan or two”.
But Palestinians are not likely to betray Palestine for the illusion of independence. All Palestinians, that is, all dwellers of Palestine, native and immigrant, need all of it, not just two percent of Gaza and ten percent of a Ramallah enclave, but all 100%. We may have all of it together, not by dividing, but by sharing. Islam is a universal faith, like Christianity, and the its religious foundations are better suited for our universal state than yesterday’s nationalism, Arab or Zionist. A similar process is taking place in Turkey, where Kemalist nationalism has become an American ally propped up by soldiers’ bayonets, while the Islamic party is the choice of people.
Gaza: Can Disaster Be Avoided?
Mitchell Plitnick (Jewish Voice for Peace)
Click here for the full version of this article
Back in 2005, Jewish Voice for Peace took to the streets in San Francisco to protest the just-commencing Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Of course, JVP was never opposed to Israel withdrawing its soldiers and checkpoints and abandoning its settlements in Gaza. But doing the right thing in the wrong way can be just as bad, in some ways perhaps worse, than doing the wrong thing, and this was what we saw happening with the Gaza withdrawal. Sadly, this prediction has come true, now leaving the Palestinians split between two governing bodies, leaving Gaza in ruin and chaos and leaving Israel with an increasingly hostile and dangerous territory on its western border.
The first thing one sees when looking at the current split among the Palestinians is that the situation is not one that can last. It’s eminently clear that the forces arrayed against Hamas-the US, Israel, Fatah, the moderate Arab states, the EU-are not going to be content with the status quo. Fatah in particular will not just sit idly by and let some 1.5 million Palestinians be governed by someone else. They will have considerable support from outside in pressing Hamas, politically, economically and militarily.
For its part, Hamas has already shown they can and will act aggressively in pursuing their own position atop Palestinian society. Right now, reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas does not seem realistic and there is no third option in the Palestinian polity. This would seem to indicate that, at least for the time being, these two groups will continue to work against one another and that the opportunity to engage the broad spectrum of the Palestinian people by dealing with a broad-based government with Abbas at its head is lost.
Still, even though the leaders of Fatah and Hamas have done little more than pay lip service to the value of national unity among the Palestinians, this value remains strong among the Palestinian populace. That might pressure change and force the two groups together at some point. But such a possibility is not on the radar right now.
On the other hand, the view that seems to be dominating both Washington and Jerusalem right now is quite distorted. It seems that the US and Israel believe that they can crush Hamas for good by strengthening Abbas with a peace summit and encouraging aggressive actions against Hamas in the West Bank. The latter is a foolish strategy, and one that has repeatedly bolstered Hamas, rather than weakened it. Indeed, virtually every attempt by Israel, the US and much of the rest of the world to harm Hamas has helped them over the years, and if foreign hands are seen too clearly in Fatah’s attacks on Hamas, support for Fatah, even from within, will quickly wither.
Many analysts, including this one, have been urging for some time that Hamas must be dealt with, not shunned. By engaging Hamas and forcing them into politics rather than ideological grandstanding, they will be forced to confront the ineffectiveness of their more extreme positions, which is precisely what happened after the election. This is why they were forced to allow Abbas to represent the Palestinian government in the Arab League vote on their peace proposal, and to allow him to keep his leading position in any negotiations and contacts with Israel.
That Abbas will not come back to Ramallah bearing an acceptable final status resolution is inevitable. The only way he can do that is to offer at least the hope that Israel can be convinced to return to something close to the 1967 borders, to share Jerusalem and to agree to acknowledge the refugees’ right of return, allow a token number back to Israel and compensate the rest. Abbas need not actually deliver all of that. But the whole idea of bolstering Abbas with a summit rests on the presumption that a sufficient number of Palestinians can be convinced that Abbas, freed of the burden of Hamas, can deliver the minimal Palestinian demands some time in the near future.
Abbas will need to show some concrete indication that he can pull this off, and he will have to do so with a very skeptical audience. The Olmert government is far too weak to even signal the possibility of such concessions, much less actually make them. It is far from certain that Fatah would win an all-out battle for the West Bank. But it is very likely that Israel would be drawn into a conflict there, either to defend Fatah or because some Palestinians decide to bring them in with an attack on Israelis. The resulting violence would expand very quickly, and would not only quickly bring back, and possibly surpass, the worst days of the last intifada, but is likely to spark off conflicts in other areas of the Middle East.
Wow…the BDS campaign is picking up speed…I can barely keep up…alhamdulilAllah!
And what makes it all even better…they used the word “Palestine”!!
From UNISON’s website:
UNISON Pleadges Support for Palestine
(20/06/07) UNISON delegates today agreed to support a campaign of sustained pressure to end Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
The union was discussing its position after a turbulent few weeks for the Palestinians, which have involved intense fighting between factions, the sacking of the Hamas prime minister and resumption of US and EC diplomatic ties.
Proposing the motion, Tracy Morgan of Wolverhampton General branch said that Palestinians were “living on tenterhooks” and that a renewed campaign would give them “a sense of hope”.
Some delegates were concerned that the move was too extreme and would penalise Israelis.
But Ms Morgan assured them that the intention was not to discriminate against the Israeli people themselves.
“The occupation needs to end so that everyone can live together. And I believe that Israelis and Palestinians do want to live together.”
The motion urges Israel to respect the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and to establish a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with its capital in Jerusalem.
Continue here
Excellent Opine by Saree Makdisi in LA Times, excerpts below:
People voted for Hamas last year not because they approved of the party’s sloganeering, not because they wanted to live in an Islamic state, not because they support attacks on Israeli civilians, but because Hamas was untainted by Fatah’s complacency and corruption, untainted by its willingness to continue pandering to Israel. Fatah leaders were viewed as mere policemen of the perpetual occupation, and the Palestinian Authority had willingly taken on the role of administering the population on behalf of the Israelis. Hamas offered an alternative.
…
Hamas did not run into Western opposition because of its Islamic ideology but because of its opposition to (and resistance to) the Israeli occupation.
A genuine peace based on the two-state solution would require an end to the Israeli occupation and the creation of a territorially contiguous, truly independent Palestinian state.
But that is not happening. Fatah seems to have given up, its leaders preferring to rest comfortably with the power they already have. Ironically, it is Hamas that is taking the stands that would be prerequisites for a true two-state peace plan: refusing to go along with the permanent breakup of Palestine and not accepting the sacrifice of control over borders, airspace, water, taxes and even the population registry to Israel.
Embracing the “moderation” of Abbas allows the Palestinian Authority to resume servicing the occupation on Israel’s behalf, for now. In the long run, though, the two-state solution is finished because Fatah is either unable or unwilling to stop the ongoing dismemberment of the territory once intended for a Palestinian state.
The only realistic choice remaining will be the one between a single democratic, secular state offering equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians — or permanent apartheid.
From this recent article by Ilan Pappe (emphasis mine):
It is within this historical context that we should view the violence raging today in Gaza and reject the reference to the events there as a campaign in the ‘war against terror,’ an instance of Islamic revivalism, a further proof for al-Qadia’s expansionism, a seditious Iranian penetration into this part of the world or another arena in the dreaded Clash of Civilizations (I picked here only few out of many frequent adjectives used in the Western media for describing the present crisis in Gaza). The origins of the mini civil war in Gaza lie elsewhere. The recent history of the Strip, 60 years of dispossession, occupation and imprisonment produced inevitably internal violence such as we are witnessing today as it produced other unpleasant features of life lived under such impossible conditions. In fact, it would be fair to say that the violence, and in particular the internal violence, is far less than one would have expected given the economic and social conditions created by the genocidal Israeli policies in the last six years.
Power struggles among politicians, who enjoy the support of military outfits, is indeed a nasty business that victimizes the society as a whole. Part of what goes on in Gaza is such a struggle between politicians who were democratically elected and those who still find it hard to accept the verdict of the public. But this is hardly the main struggle. What unfolds in Gaza is a battleground between America’s and Israel’s local proxies — most of whom are unintentionally such proxies but none the less they dance to Israel’s tune — and those who oppose it. The opposition that now took over Gaza did it alas in a way that one would find very hard to condone or cheer. It is not the Hamas’ Palestinian vision that is worrying, but rather the means it has chosen to achieve it that we hope would not be rooted or repeated. To its credit one should openly say that the means used by Hamas are part of an arsenal that enabled it in the past to be the only active force that at least tried to stop the total destruction of Palestine; the way it is used now is less credible and hopefully temporary.
But one cannot condemn the means if one does not offer an alternative. Standing idle while the American-Israeli vision of strangling the Strip to death, cleansing half of the West bank from its indigenous population and threatening the rest of the Palestinians — inside Israel and in the other parts of the West Bank — with transfer, is not an option. It is tantamount to “decent” people’s silence during the Holocaust.
We should not tire from mentioning the alternative in the 21st century: BDS — Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions — as an emergency measure — far more effective and far less violent — in opposing the present destruction of Palestine. And at the same time talk openly, convincingly and efficiently, of creating the geography of peace. A geography in which abnormal phenomena such as the imprisonment of small portion of the land would disappear. There will be no more, in the vision we should push forward, a human prison camp called the Gaza strip where some armed inmates are easily pitted against each other by a callous warden. Instead that area would return to be an organic part of an Eastern Mediterranean country that has always offered the best as a meeting point between East and West.
Never before, in the light of the Gaza tragedy, has the twofold strategy of BDS and a one state solution, shined so clearly as the only alternative forward. If any of us are members in Palestine solidarity groups, Arab-Jewish dialogue circles or part of civil society’s effort to bring peace and reconciliation to Palestine — this is a time to put aside all the false strategies of coexistence, road maps and two states solutions.
Excellent interview (of course!), full transcript here, excerpts below:
AMY GOODMAN: Ali Abunimah, can you describe who is arming both sides, Fatah and Hamas?
ALI ABUNIMAH: Yes. What we’ve seen is really a direct result of the Bush doctrine. Since January 2006 when Hamas won the legislative election fair and square, the United States refused the election result and it has been arming several Palestinian militias, particularly those controlled by the Gaza warlord, Mohammed Declan. This is a repeat strategy of the contras. These are Palestinian contras. And the architect of this policy is none other than Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security advisor, who was convicted for lying to congress in the Iran-contra scandal. And Alvaro de Soto, the UN Reporter that you mentioned in the introduction, Amy, confirms in detail the extent of the conspiracy that the United States has been undertaking to overthrow the election result and destroy Hamas. And just a few days before this round of fighting started on June 7, Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper reported that senior Fatah commanders in the Gaza Strip had asked Israel for millions of rounds of ammunition, RPG’s, hand grenades and armored cars to use against Hamas. So I think what we’ve seen is Hamas taking a last resort move to put an end to what it describes as a coup intended to overthrow the election result. It’s a major blow for the United States and for the Bush doctrine, although it’s very hard to see how it helps Palestinians very much considering that Israel and the United States are likely to tighten the siege of Gaza and to continue to fund the militias. We’ve already seen Condoleezza Rice throwing her support behind Abbas and no sign of a letup in US interference and armed intervention in Palestinian affairs.
AMY GOODMAN: How did the weapons get to both sides? And does that aid that Condoleezza Rice is talking about include weapons?
ALI ABUNIMAH: Yes. The weapons that have been delivered to the Fatah militias to the Palestinian contras of Mohammed Declan, come via Egypt and are delivered with the direct coordination of Israel. The Fatah commanders make requests to Israel and Israel coordinates the delivery of the weapons to Egypt. Hamas gets its weapons. There are reports that Hamas receives funding from Iran. Hamas also gets weapons from Egypt. What’s notable is that many of the weapons that Israel delivers to Fatah for use against Hamas are then sold on by corrupt Fatah commanders to the highest bidders, so recently Israel has been actually turning down Fatah requests for weapons because they say to the Fatah commanders you just turn around and sell the weapons to Hamas. So Gaza is absolutely awash with weapons and nobody seems to have any difficulty getting hold of them.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re very much reporting on this as Hamas-Fatah internal fight, a civil war. Where does Israel fit into this?
LAILA EL-HADDAD: Plays a huge part. Every time this discussion comes up I like to remind people this is not something that’s happening in isolation, it’s not as though things just erupt. Certainly the factors were there — the environment was ripe for this to happen, but this was the result of years and years of siege and most recently a US-led global siege and an Israeli siege and aggressive violent occupation of the Gaza Strip that has completely isolated it from the West Bank, from Palestinians, from their counterparts in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the outside world, of course. In addition to the Israeli continued– American, rather, training and funding of Fatah. Something that is not unambiguous in any terms. As Ali mentioned just last week they were asking and actually received training and funding in Jericho. Israel allowed them passage to train in Jericho.
AMY GOODMAN: You talked about the just retired UN Coordinator for the Middle East has warned international hostility to the Palestinian Hamas movement could have grave consequences by persuading millions of Muslims that democratic methods don’t work. He said, “Hamas is in its effervesce and can potentially evolve in a pragmatic direction that would allow for a two-state solution, but only if handled right. Your response to this?
ALI ABUNIMAH: I think Alvaro de Soto’s 53-page report is very revealing. It’s on the internet in p.d.f. form. It was leaked. It is a savage indictment of US, Israeli and European Union policy. I think any objective observer would agree with Alvaro de Soto and would agree that from the moment it won the elections Hamas had tried to be pragmatic and flexible. It had observed the unilateral truce with Israel. It had given up suicide attacks against Palestinian civilians. And there was no response to that. On the contrary. The United States, Israel, the European Union and some Arab states decided to launch a war against Hamas by trying to deny Hamas its fair share. And Hamas offer less than its fair share. It is the one that immediately asked the election offered in national unity government by denying it its fair share they have assured that Hamas has taken the whole pie. It’s time for them to radically change their approach, stop treating the Palestinians like puppets and toys who could be manipulated, and start treating them like human beings who deserve at least their full human rights and freedom just like any other people.
“Today is the last day for the captors to release Alan Johnston,” a senior Hamas official said.The reporter was abducted in March by a group calling itself The Army of Islam.
Hamas, which seized control of Gaza last week and was ousted from the Palestinian government, has said reporters should be treated as guests.
“If he is not released, we would use all means to secure his life and to free him,” a senior Hamas official told Reuters news agency.
How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today “Palestine” - and let’s keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.
Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn’t like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.
Rest of Fisk’s article here
BDS campaign is definetly alive and kicking in the UK…a great example for activists across the globe to follow:
The British front against Israel’s occupation of the territories captured in 1967 is made up of dozens of nongovernmental organizations including Islamic movements, radical left associations, workers unions, Israeli and Jewish panels, Christian organizations and human rights committees, operating various charity funds.
The activists at these groups may differ on issues such as religion and gender equality, but they are united in their perception of Israel as an apartheid state. They all advocate boycotting Israel and believe in diverting funds from it.
And for those who ask “why BDS not debate and discource?” the wonderful Jeff Halper has the answer:
“We tried working with the Israeli public in the past, but we did not manage to make any headway there,” says Jeff Halper, who heads the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions in the U.K.
“The Israelis as a whole believe there is no partner on the Palestinian side, and are thereby making themselves politically irrelevant. This is why we’ve had to address the civil society, represented by human rights groups, churches, universities and other organizations to warn against the Israeli apartheid regime,” he says.
Full Haaretz article here
Please STOP referring to the situation in occupied Palestine as a civil war. It is definetly not. Rather, it is an attempt by Hamas to do what many people say it should have done a long time ago: rid the Palestinians of collaborators. Unfortunately, innocent Palestinian civilians are the ones paying the price. Although Hamas may be winning now, things are probably going to get much more difficult very soon. But, Hamas didn’t really have a choice…as one of my friends recently remarked, “…someone had to take out the trash.”
As usual, Ali Abunimah does an excellent job laying out the facts and offering insightful analysis. This article is particularly important considering the gross media (Arab and foreign) misrepresentation of the situation. I’ve pasted the whole article below and highlighted the really interesting parts…
Opinion/Editorial
A setback for the Bush doctrine in Gaza
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 14 June 2007
Two recent revelations underscore the extent of the conspiracy: on 7 June, Ha’aretz reported that “senior Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip have asked Israel to allow them to receive large shipments of arms and ammunition from Arab countries, including Egypt.” According to the Israeli newspaper, Fatah asked Israel for “armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing RPG rockets, thousands of hand grenades and millions of rounds of ammunition for small caliber weapons,” all to be used against Hamas.
From the moment of its election victory, Hamas acted pragmatically and with the intent to integrate itself into the existing political structure. It had observed for over a year a unilateral ceasefire with Israel and had halted the suicide attacks on Israeli civilians that had made it notorious. In a leaked confidential memo written in May and published by The Guardian this week senior UN envoy Alvaro de Soto confirmed that it was under pressure from the United States that Abbas refused Hamas’ initial invitation to form a “national unity government.” De Soto details that Abbas advisers actively aided and abetted the Israeli-US-European Union aid cutoff and siege of the Palestinians under occupation, which led to massively increased poverty for millions of people. These advisors engaged with the United States in a “plot” to “bring about the untimely demise of the [Palestinian Authority] government led by Hamas,” de Soto wrote.
Despite a bloody attempted coup against Hamas by the Dahlan-led forces in December and January, Hamas still agreed to join a “National Unity Government” with Fatah brokered by Saudi Arabia at the Mecca summit. Dahlan and Abbas’ advisers were determined to sabotage this, continuing to amass weapons, and refusing to place their militias under the control of a neutral interior minister who eventually resigned in frustration.
A setback for United States and Israel
The core of US strategy in the Southwest and Central Asia, particularly Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon is to establish puppet regimes that will fight America’s enemies on its behalf. This strategy seems to be failing everywhere. The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan. Despite its “surge” the US is no closer to putting down the resistance in Iraq and cannot even trust the Iraqi army it helped set up. The Lebanese army, which the US hopes to bolster as a counterweight to Hizballah, has performed poorly against a few hundred foreign fighters holed up in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp (although it has caused death and devastation to many innocent Palestinian refugees). Now in Gaza, the latest blow.
Israel’s policy is a local version of the US strategy — and it has also been tried and failed. For over two decades Israel relied on a proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, to help it enforce the occupation of southern Lebanon. In 2000, as Israeli forces hastily withdrew, this militia collapsed just as quickly as Dahlan’s forces and many of its members fled to Israel. Hamas is now referring to the rout of Dahlan’s forces as a “second liberation of Gaza.”
A consistent element of Israeli strategy has been to attempt to circumvent Palestinian resistance by trying to create quisling leaderships. Into the 1970s, Israel still saw the PLO as representing true resistance. So it set up the collaborationist “village leagues” in the West Bank as an alternative. In 1976, it allowed municipal elections in the West Bank in an effort to give this alternative leadership some legitimacy. When PLO-affiliated candidates swept the board, Israel began to assassinate the PLO mayors with car bombs or force them into exile. Once some exiled PLO leaders, most notably Yasser Arafat, became willing subcontractors of the occupation (an arrangement formalized by the Oslo Accords), a new resistance force emerged in the form of Hamas. Israeli efforts to back Dahlan and Abbas, Arafat’s successor, as quisling alternatives have now backfired spectacularly.
In the wake of the Fatah collapse in Gaza, Ha’aretz reported that Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert will advise President Bush that Gaza must be isolated from the West Bank. This can be seen as an attempt to shore up Abbas whose survival Israel sees as essential to maintaining the fiction that it does not directly rule millions of disenfranchised Palestinians. A total collapse of the Palestinian Authority would expose Israel’s legal obligation, as the occupying power, to provide for the welfare of the Palestinians it rules.
What now for the Palestinian under occupation?
Abbas has declared a “state of emergency” and dismissed Ismail Haniyeh the Hamas prime minister as well as the “national unity government.” The “state of emergency” is merely rhetorical. Whatever control he had in Gaza is gone and Israel is in complete control of the West Bank anyway.
Haniyeh in a speech this evening carried live on Al-Jazeera rejected Abbas’ “hasty” moves and alleged that they were the result of pressure from abroad. He issued 16 points, among them that the “unity government” represented the will of 96 percent of Palestinians under occupation freely expressed at the ballot box. He reaffirmed his movement’s commitment to democracy and the existing political system and that Hamas would not impose changes on people’s way of life. Haniyeh said the government would continue to function, would restore law and order and reaffirm Hamas’ commitment to national unity and the Mecca agreement. He called on all Hamas members to observe a general amnesty assuring any captured fighters of their safety (this followed media reports of a handful of summary executions of Fatah fighters). He also emphasized that Hamas’ fight was not with Fatah as a whole, but only with those elements who had been actively collaborating — a clear allusion to Dahlan and other Abbas advisors. He portrayed Hamas’ takeover as a last resort in the wake of escalating lawlessness and coup attempts by collaborators, listing many alleged crimes that had finally caused Hamas’ patience to snap. Haniyeh emphasized the unity of Gaza and the West Bank as “inseparable parts of the Palestinian nation,” and he repeated a call for the captors of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston to free him immediately.
The contrast between Abbas’ action and the Hamas response is striking. Abbas, perhaps pushed by the same coterie of advisors, seems to be escalating the confrontation and doing so when there is no reason to believe he can prevail. Hamas, while standing firm and from a position of strength, spoke in a language of conciliation, emphasizing time and again that Hamas has a problem with only a small group within Fatah, not its rank and file. Abbas, Dahlan and their backers must be surveying a sobering scene — they may be tempted to try to take on Hamas in the West Bank, but the scale of their defeat in Gaza would have to give them pause.
Both leaderships are hemmed in. Abbas appears to be entirely dependent on foreign and Israeli support and unable to take decisions independent of a corrupt, self-serving clique. Hamas, whatever intentions it has is likely to find itself under an even tighter siege in Gaza.
Abbas, backed by Israel and the US, has called for a multinational force in Gaza. Hamas has rejected this, saying it would be viewed as an “occupying force.” Indeed, they have reason to be suspicious: for decades Israel and the US blocked calls for an international protection force for Palestinians. The multinational force, Hamas fears, would not be there to protect Palestinians from their Israeli occupiers, but to perform the proxy role of protecting Israel’s interests that Dahlan’s forces are longer able to carry out and to counter the resistance — just as the multinational force was supposed to do in Lebanon after the July 2006 war.
Wise leaders in Israel and the United States would recognize that Hamas is not a passing phenomenon, and that they can never create puppet leaders who will be able to compete against a popular resistance movement. But there are no signs of wisdom: the US has now asked Israel to “loosen its grip” in the West Bank to try to give Abbas a boost. Although the Bush doctrine has suffered a blow, the Palestinian people have not won any great victory. The sordid game at their expense continues.
A former U.N. envoy to the Middle East warned in a confidential report made public Wednesday that the world body has allowed itself to be “pummeled into submission” by American pressure to favor Israel, damaging its role as an impartial mediator.In an internal memo written last month before stepping down, Alvaro de Soto urged the United Nations to withdraw from the international “quartet” negotiating group, describing it as “a sideshow” in the efforts to reconcile Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The U.N.’s Middle East peace process “has become strategically subservient to the U.S. policy in the broader Middle East, including Iraq and Iran,” he wrote. He detailed a “heavy barrage” of pressure from Assistant Secretary of State David Welch and National Security Council official Elliot Abrams to isolate Hamas or face the possibility of the United States withholding its U.N. dues.
I think now it’s crystal clear that the UN cannot be considered an “objective” mediator especially in the Middle East. Whether it’s the international tribunal in Lebanon or the “peace process” in Palestine… all ways to execute US/Israeli plans in the Middle East.
I received the letter below by email as a forward from the Academics for Peace and Justice list. Please consider signing it (by emailing your name and affiliation to account specified) especially if you are an ‘academic’ in the US.
Mr. John Simon, Chair
Board of Trustees
DePaul University
Dear Mr. Simon:
We, the undersigned, deplore the process used by the administration of DePaul University to deny tenure to Professor Norman Finkelstein and Professor Mehren Larudee. We are prepared to take the necessary steps to make sure that DePaul, as an institution, is held accountable for its violations of the principles of academic freedom.
Professor Finkelstein’s scholarship has made him internationally known as an expert in his field. His five books have been published by universally-respected presses and have been translated into eighteen languages. Such an intellectual output, by a scholar applying for tenure at the level of associate professor, is far and beyond even the most stringent requirements of the most elite institutions in the United States. His teaching, as even his detractors acknowledge, has received the highest praise from his students and colleagues. His qualifications for tenure and promotion at an institution such as DePaul should not even be open to question.
The process by which Professor Finkelstein was denied tenure represents a clear violation of the principles of faculty governance and of the most basic principles of academic freedom. Professor Finkelstein’s departmental committee voted 9 to 3 in support of granting him tenure, and a five-member college-level personnel committee then voted unanimously in favor of tenure. These were the key decision-makers, and their preference was clear. It was only at this point that the dean of Professor Finkelstein’s college wrote a memorandum recommending against tenure, on the basis of a consideration that was not even a stated part of the tenure process.
The case of Professor Larudee is equally distressing. Professor Larudee, an assistant professor of international studies, was unanimously approved for tenure by her departmental committee and by the college-level personnel committee, and was even supported by the same college dean who opposed Professor Finkelstein’s tenure. We fear that the only reason why Professor Larudee was subsequently denied tenure, even after receiving overwhelming approval from the relevant faculty committees, was due to her outspoken support of Professor Finkelstein.
“Academic freedom is alive and well at DePaul,” President Dennis Holtschneider declared, as part of the official statement announcing the decision to deny tenure to Professor Finkelstein. But it is not for the DePaul administration to make such a judgment; it is, in fact, the larger academic community, of which we are all members, which must judge the state of academic freedom at DePaul. In our judgment, DePaul is in grave violation of the principles of academic freedom.
Therefore, we, the undersigned, declare our intention to hold the administration of DePaul University accountable for its violations of academic freedom. Accordingly, we hereby pledge:
1. We will refuse to participate in, attend, or support any conferences or other activities sponsored by DePaul University, and will encourage our colleagues to follow suit.
2. We will, to the best of our abilities, prevent our institutions from collaborating with DePaul University on any conferences or other activities, and will urge our institutions to refuse to take part in any joint activities or exchange programs with the university.
3. We will urge our colleagues and students not to apply for any academic programs or job openings at DePaul University.
4. We will urge those professional bodies and associations of which we are members to censure DePaul University, and to apply the appropriate penalties against the institution.
5. We will contact the alumni of DePaul University and urge them to withhold contributions from the university.
It should be noted that none of these actions are aimed at individual faculty members or students at DePaul. Indeed, many members of the faculty and the student body have consistently supported Professors Finkelstein and Larudee. The decision to deny tenure in these cases was the result of a completely undemocratic process that undermined the principles of faculty governance and academic freedom at DePaul, and our actions are an attempt to move the university administration to honor these important principles.
The university administration must begin a process by which the original faculty decisions to grant tenure to Professors Finkelstein and Larudee are honored. This process must also insure that such violations of academic freedom are not repeated. Under these circumstances, we will be happy to once again consider DePaul University as an institution that honors the important principles to which we are all dedicated. Until such a time, however, we urge our colleagues, students, and other members of the intellectual community to cease business as usual with DePaul University.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
[To sign this letter, please send an email with your name and any academic, professional, or other affiliation to depaul.letter@gmail.com]
How much longer before the US closes Gitmo down?
Reporting on Life in Guantanamo (excerpts below):
“For more than four years many of us have been isolated in a small cell, less that 10ft by 6ft, with the intense neon lights on 24 hours a day. Many of us are not allowed to exercise outside these cells for more than one hour, just once a week. We are provided with food and drinks which are not suitable for the iguanas and rats that live beside us on Torture Island.”
“I sometimes ask myself, who are these people who are held in cages not even fit for wild animals? How do these humans live? The Prophet Jonah lived inside a whale and Moses lived inside a coffin, so the Guantanamo cells are only for those who are strong and those who have a will to adopt the path of the prophets. If I stay all my life in these cages, let those who inflict this on me do what they wish, but I feel I am living the life of a King.”
“His number one concern is the other guys in there,” says Zachary Katznelson, one of several lawyers who represent Haj and who last visited him at Guantanamo on 30 April. Katznelson, senior counsel with the London-based group Reprieve, adds: “As much as he misses his family he thinks it’s vitally important that he is there to report all this. He has said he is willing to be the last one if it means the story gets out – if the world gets to know about Guantanamo.”
The prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was established at the beginning of 2002 as a place to keep terror suspects rounded up in President Bush’s war on terror. Deliberately located outside the US proper to avoid both the arm of the civil justice system as well as prying eyes, around 800 prisoners have been taken to the prison over the past five years. Of those, some 340 have been released.
When the first handcuffed, shackled and hooded suspects were taken to the prison, the authorities did their best to portray them as a dangerous and pressing threat to the US. The men were so terrifying, claimed the then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, they “would chew through a hydraulics cable to bring a C-17 [transport plane] down”.
Five years on, only four of those prisoners have been charged and just one – Australian David Hicks – brought to trial. Meanwhile an analysis of the Pentagon’s own documents by New Jersey’s Seton Hall University found that 55 per cent of the prisoners brought to Guantanamo are not alleged to have have committed any hostile acts against the US. Just eight per cent are accused of fighting for a terrorist group while 86 per cent were captured by the Northern Alliance or Pakistani authorities and handed over “at a time when the US offered large bounties for the capture of suspected terrorists”.
The prison camp’s operation has been condemned by the United Nations, the American Bar Association and the Red Cross – the only organisation permitted free access to the prisoners and which broke with its normal protocol of not commenting publicly to warn in 2003 of the declining mental health of many of the inmates. It said the nature of their incarceration and interrogation was “a form of torture”. Three prisoners hanged themselves last year, and last week a Saudi man was found dead, apparently having taken his own life.
This OC Register article does an excellent job at suming up and clarifying the lies and propaganda surrounding the Muslim-Jewish “tensions” at UCI.
Excerpts:
IRVINE – A young man in a turban, his face covered, marches around UC Irvine with signs saying “Death to Infidels. Death to Israel” during a week of campus demonstrations by Muslim students.
Here’s the catch: He’s not Muslim. In fact, he’s not even a student at UCI.
Instead, he’s one of many outsiders who have become embroiled in a campus war of words between a small number of Jewish and Muslim students.
Was he aware that passers-by might actually think he was a terrorist?
“Of course,” said Max Gibson, 27, a self-proclaimed Zionist who lives in San Diego and is affiliated with a college Republican group. “It was to make people think.”
Gibson’s masquerade, authentic enough to spur campus police to disarm him of fake bombs strapped to his body, is an example of how real events at UC Irvine have spun off into their own sometimes fictional existence, spawning street theater and reverberating worldwide on dozens of blogs.
Events at UC Irvine are no different than at many other schools. A recent University of California study found 85 percent of UCI students agreed there was respect for all students, regardless of race or religion – roughly the same percentage as at other UC campuses.
Yet UCI has achieved a blog-inspired reputation for anti-Semitism – a notoriety that many campus observers say is unfair and unwarranted.
“A lot of the blogs distort facts and take things out of context,” said Alex Chazen, president of Hillel: The Jewish Student Union at UC Irvine. “Many of the bloggers aren’t on our campus and don’t even know what’s going on.”
…
UCI Professor Mark LeVine, a Middle East scholar who once wanted to become a rabbi, said he tried to mediate between the two student groups, but gave the task up as hopeless.
“The only thing that would satisfy the critics now would be if they expelled every Muslim student and painted stars of David on all the buildings,” said LeVine, whose criticism of Israeli policies has caused some critics to dub him as a “self-hating Jew.”
Outside groups get involved
Jewish students are also supported and encouraged by outside advocacy groups such as the Zionist Organization of America and Stand With Us, “an international education organization that ensures that Israel’s side of the story is told,” according to its Web site.
On a typical day during the Muslim students’ protest week, paid staff members from several advocacy organizations visit the campus to observe the events.
“It’s not just student groups initiating things, but students responding to outside groups,” Bollens said. “That’s why there’s energy on this conflict. I think, left to their own accord, left to be students in a university interacting in their own classes or public forums without outside groups, they would over time agree to disagree, or be more moderate and civil about things.”
Bollens, whose academic expertise is studying polarized religious groups around the world, said “UCI is not an anti-Semitic place” and added that he thinks community groups should be welcome on campus, along with everyone else.
Sometimes, officials said, the stories of anti-Semitism are simply fiction.
A young man reported to his father in 2004 that he was being harassed and assaulted for being a Jewish UCI student, leading the infuriated dad to e-mail campus authorities and castigate them for doing nothing.
“My son has been assaulted both physically and verbally on campus,” the father wrote in an e-mail, adding that “it appears campus security takes no action.”
On further investigation, concerned UCI officials had to report to the boy’s father that he wasn’t a harassed student, in fact, he wasn’t a UCI student at all. He was not then, nor had he ever been, enrolled at UCI. Campus officials were surprised, however, to learn that the young man has now applied to enroll at the campus for fall 2007.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that Lebanese and Palestinians had pressed a “countdown button” to bring an end to the “Zionist regime.” “By God’s will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future,” he said in a speech.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters, “A statement by a head of state calling for or implying the destruction of a member state of the United Nations is, as a matter of principle, unacceptable” and threatens “international peace and security.”
Just a sec…how does the destruction of the “Zionist regime” equal the “destruction of a member state”?? Am I the only one that see that the destruction of a regime/government is not the same as destruction of a state.
And didn’t the US go into Iraq to destroy the Saddam regime? Oh, that’s right…the US is different.
I believe Carlo Strenger is right on…without acknowleding the tragedy of 1948 Israel cannot expect Palestinians or Arabs to take its peace proposals seriously.
Full article here, excerpts below:
Here, I believe, resides the deepest reason for Israel’s reluctance to actively engage with the Saudi initiative. Israeli public discourse and national consciousness have never come to terms with the idea, accepted by historians of all venues today, that Israel actively drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1947/8 and hence has at least partial responsibility for the Palestinian Nakba.
This has not happened to this very day because this idea is seen as undermining the foundation of the Zionist enterprise and the legitimacy of Israel’s existence. It is as if we were locked into an insoluble dilemma: Either we deny responsibility for the Nakba, or we need to accept that we have no right to be here.
This is the source of the deep fear that prevents Israel from meeting the Arab world face to face and saying “we are here, and we believe that you accept our existence.” Since Israel has not come to terms with its part in the historical responsibility for the Palestinian Nakba, it cannot truly believe that Arabs could accept our presence in the Middle East. We are locked into a vacillation between self-images of either all-good or all-bad, and hence continue the occupation of the territories, with all the horrors it includes, because the idea of Israel being guilty of anything is still equated with the denial of our right to be here.
The only way out of this deadlock is to raise the question of how Israel can live with its responsibility for the Nakba into public discourse. The dilemma of “either we are morally impeccable, or we have no right to be here” needs to be replaced with a narrative that accepts that Israel’s moral, historical and political reality is as complex and multilayered as that of most nations.
In the best of all possible worlds, an Israeli statesman (a rare commodity in an age of mere politicians) would arise and tell the Palestinians: “Israel came into existence in tragic circumstances that inflicted great suffering and injustice on your people. We accept responsibility for our part in this tragedy, even though we cannot fully rectify it. Let us sit together and see how we can end the vicious cycle of violence and suffering and live side by side.”
This is not likely to happen in the immediate future. A Jewish Israeli politician who would say such a thing would become unelectable. Hence it is up to the citizenry to bring this issue into the public consciousness. Otherwise, Israeli policies will continue to be devoid of any creativity and political horizon, and we will miss historic opportunities that may not return.
The author is a professor of psychology at Tel Aviv University.
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