The Public Eye

'We Can't Remake Afghanistan'

2009-04-02T06:49:00.000-07:00

By Russ Hoyle (from The Nation)
April 1, 2009

Russ Hoyle: Andrew Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power, weighs in on how President Obama failed to consider the containment option in Afghanistan.

"Ours is the far stronger hand," Bacevich has written. "The jihadist project is entirely negative. Time is our ally. With time, our adversary will wither and die." In the following e-mail exchange, Bacevich criticizes the new Obama policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, in part, for its failure to consider the alternatives:

Obama's new Afghanistan-Pakistan policy, with its emphasis on military counterinsurgency operations and nation-building, suggests that the president is none the wiser about the containment policy outlined in your book. Do you see any evidence to the contrary?

Candidly, I know of no evidence suggesting that the president is familiar with anything I have written. No one from the administration has been in touch with me about any subject whatsoever. The Obama approach differs from the Bush approach in that Obama defines US objectives somewhat more modestly than Bush did--he'll settle for stability, whereas Bush insisted that we sought to democratize. And Obama understands that relying entirely on hard power won't work--hence, his greater emphasis on economic development. But in Afghanistan, at least, Obama still seems to think that the United States can and must remake the place.

Do you support a strong US-led, regionally based diplomatic initiative and nonmilitary operations designed to strengthen Afghan governance and economic development?

I'm not optimistic about our ability to "strengthen Afghan governance and economic development." Given the current economic crisis, I don't believe we have the money for such an enterprise. When it comes to Afghanistan, I'm sympathetic to economic support and security assistance only in the sense that the Bush approach was even worse. Let me speak plainly: we can't remake Afghanistan and don't need to.

You have been an outspoken critic of the Bush war on terrorism as a "fashionable" idea that has created a "constellation of celebrities" around General Petraeus. I take it you have little confidence in the Pentagon's investment in counterinsurgency doctrine?

The "surge" produced improved security but has not delivered the promised political reconciliation. To the extent that the surge produced positive results, the credit is due in large measure to the Sunnis, who decided for their own reasons to suspend insurgent activity. If you think we need to stay in Afghanistan for the next several years, then separating the bad Taliban from the not-so-bad Taliban is certainly legitimate and also probably imperative. I don't happen to subscribe to the premise, however.

Do you agree with Les Gelb's proposal for a US/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan after three years that emphasizes containing Al Qaeda and Taliban militants with counterinsurgency tactics, economic aid and training Afghan security forces?

I think Gelb has it about right on Afghanistan. I part company with him on Pakistan. If we can't "fix" Afghanistan, then it's absurd to think that we can "fix" Pakistan. He's right. The hawks in Washington tend to overstate the promised benefits of military victory and to overstate the consequences of policy failure.

Pakistan seems a black box as far as US anti-terrorist operations are concerned. Should such raids, either by Predator missiles or commandoes, simply be stopped cold?

If the Predator strikes are killing civilians, they are probably doing more harm than good. If they are killing Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives exclusively, they might be worth it. Press reports say that we have been deeply involved in trying to ensure that Pakistani nuclear weapons are secure and under firm civilian control. That's about as much as we can hope to do.

Pakistan would seem the ground zero of any containment policy, since its porous borders areas offer sanctuary for Al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban militants operating in Afghanistan. How do you contain that?

The most important way to implement a containment policy is to deny jihadists the wherewithal needed to promote their activities. We need to stop shipping billions of dollars to the Arabs. That means implementing a serious energy policy.

You describe containment as an alternative to open-ended global war that can't succeed, since it will exhaust US resources and set off mass uprisings in the Islamic world. Is that the fate that awaits President Obama's recast war in Afghanistan?

I fear that may be the case. Obviously Obama has ratcheted down US objectives in Afghanistan--there's no more talk of converting it into a liberal democracy. Still, the project he has in mind is an enormous one. It will last many years and cost many tens of billions of dollars, not to mention a considerable number of lives. That project is simply unnecessary. There are less expensive and more effective ways to secure our limited interests in Afghanistan.

Does Obama's policy represent the new face of American exceptionalism?

Not a new face; simply the latest version. Certainly it suggests that Obama is no more likely than his predecessor to understand that a belief that we are special or different actually endangers our well-being.

About Russ Hoyle
Russ Hoyle is the author of Going to War (2008, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press), writes on foreign affairs for The Daily Beast, and is a visiting lecturer on the Iraq war at Trinity College.

UK Jewish MP: Israel Acting like Nazis in Gaza

2009-01-29T16:16:00.000-08:00

Obama on Al Arabiyya

2009-01-27T12:35:00.000-08:00

Israeli Army Rabbi: Palestinians are [our] mortal enemies and...cruelty is sometimes a "good attribute"

2009-01-27T12:21:00.000-08:00

The Independent: The Israeli army’s chief rabbinate gave soldiers preparing to enter the Gaza Strip a booklet implying that all Palestinians are their mortal enemies and advising them that cruelty is sometimes a “good attribute”.

The booklet, entitled Go Fight My Fight: A Daily Study Table for the Soldier and Commander in a Time of War, was published especially for Operation Cast Lead, the devastating three-week campaign launched with the stated aim of ending rocket fire against southern Israel. The publication draws on the teachings of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Jewish fundamentalist Ateret Cohanim seminary in Jerusalem.

In one section, Rabbi Aviner compares Palestinians to the Philistines, a people depicted in the Bible as a war-like menace and existential threat to Israel.

In another, the army rabbinate appears to be encouraging soldiers to disregard the international laws of war aimed at protecting civilians, according to Breaking the Silence, the group of Israeli ex-soldiers who disclosed its existence. The booklet cites the renowned medieval Jewish sage Maimonides as saying that “one must not be enticed by the folly of the Gentiles who have mercy for the cruel”.

60 Minutes: Time Running Out for Two-State Solution

2009-01-27T12:13:00.000-08:00

CBS: Getting a peace deal in the Middle East is such a priority to President Obama that his first foreign calls on his first day in office were to Arab and Israeli leaders. And on day two, the president made former Senator George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace. Mr. Obama wants to shore up the ceasefire in Gaza, but a lasting peace really depends on the West Bank where Palestinians had hoped to create their state. The problem is, even before Israel invaded Gaza, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians had concluded that peace between them was no longer possible, that history had passed it by. For peace to have a chance, Israel would have to withdraw from the West Bank, which would then become the Palestinian state.

It’s known as the "two-state" solution. But, while negotiations have been going on for 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved in to occupy the West Bank. Palestinians say they can't have a state with Israeli settlers all over it, which the settlers say is precisely the idea.

Gaza invasion: Powered by the U.S.

2009-01-20T19:42:00.000-08:00

Salon: Israel's current air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip has left about 1,000 Palestinians dead, including 400 women and children. Several thousand people have been wounded and dozens of buildings have been destroyed. An estimated 90,000 Gazans have abandoned their homes. Israel's campaign in Gaza, which began more than two weeks ago, has been denounced by the Red Cross, multiple Arab and European countries, and agencies from the United Nations. Demonstrations in Pakistan and elsewhere have been held to denounce America's support for Israel.

It's well known that the U.S. supplies the Israelis with much of their military hardware. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has provided about $53 billion in military aid to Israel. What's not well known is that since 2004, U.S. taxpayers have paid to supply over 500 million gallons of refined oil products -- worth about $1.1 billion –- to the Israeli military. While a handful of countries get motor fuel from the U.S., they receive only a fraction of the fuel that Israel does -- fuel now being used by Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and tanks to battle Hamas.

According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, between 2004 and 2007 the U.S. Defense Department gave $818 million worth of fuel to the Israeli military. The total amount was 479 million gallons, the equivalent of about 66 gallons per Israeli citizen. In 2008, an additional $280 million in fuel was given to the Israeli military, again at U.S. taxpayers' expense. The U.S. has even paid the cost of shipping the fuel from U.S. refineries to ports in Israel.

In 2008, the fuel shipped to Israel from U.S. refineries accounted for 2 percent of Israel's $13.3 billion defense budget. Publicly available data shows that about 2 percent of the U.S. Defense Department's budget is also spent on oil. A senior analyst at the Pentagon, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, says the Israel Defense Force's fuel use is most likely similar to that of the U.S. Defense Department. In other words, the Israeli military is spending about the same percentage of its defense budget on oil as the U.S. is. Therefore it's possible that the U.S. is providing most, or perhaps even all, of the Israeli military's fuel needs.

What's more, Israel does not need the U.S. handout. Its own recently privatized refineries, located at Haifa and Ashdod, could supply all of the fuel needed by the Israeli military. Those same refineries are now producing and selling jet fuel and other refined products on the open market. But rather than purchase lower-cost jet fuel from its own refineries, the Israeli military is using U.S. taxpayer money to buy and ship large quantities of fuel from U.S. refineries.

The Israeli government obtains the fuel through the Defense Department's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, and pays for the fuel and the shipping with funds granted to it through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), another Defense Department program. (In 2008, Congress earmarked $2.4 billion in FMF money for Israel, and $2.5 billion for 2009.) The dimensions of the FMS fuel program are virtually unknown among America's top experts on Middle East policy. For his part, the Pentagon analyst was surprised to learn that FMS money was even being used to supply fuel to Israel. "That's not the purpose of the program," he says. "FMS was designed to allow U.S. weapons makers to sell their goods to foreign countries. The idea that fuel is being bought under FMS is very, very odd."

The fuel program, in fact, raises a number of pressing questions. The shipments have occurred during times of record-high oil prices, when American consumers have been angered by motor fuel prices that in 2008 exceeded $4 per gallon. Given those high prices, it appears to make little sense for the U.S. government to be promoting policies that reduce the volume of -- and potentially raise the price of -- motor fuel available for sale to U.S. motorists.

The U.S. fuel shipments are part of a sustained policy that has widened the energy gap between Israel and its neighbors. Over the past few years, the Israel Defense Force has cut off fuel supplies and destroyed electricity infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Those embargoes and attacks on power plants have exacerbated a huge gap in per-capita energy consumption between Israelis and Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. And that sharp disparity helps explain why the Palestinians have never been able to build a viable economy.

Edward S. Walker, former president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, says the fuel supply program is emblematic of U.S. military support for Israel. Walker, who has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, explains that the FMF money allows the Israelis to "do with it what they want. They can buy equipment or fuel. It's their choice, not the government's choice. It's the only program where we give someone a blank check and they can use it any way that they choose."

Given the recent spike in oil prices, which helped send the U.S. and the world economy into a tailspin, and Americans still smarting from paying $4 at the pump, says Walker, "Why are we supplying fuel to Israel when we are paying such high prices?"

Since 1948, oil has been a critically important commodity for both the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli economy. And Israeli leaders have long worried about their energy security. In 1957, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion wrote in his diary, "The only sanctions which could defeat or break us are oil sanctions."

In 1967, Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Tiran precipitated the Six Day War. The Straits, writes Israeli historian Michael Oren in his book on the conflict, "Six Days of War," were "a lifeline for the Jewish state, the conduit to its quiet import of Iranian oil." In 1973, the Yom Kippur War (Arabs call it the Ramadan War) led to the Arab Oil Embargo, an event that still reverberates in the U.S., particularly in the fanciful political rhetoric about the desire for "energy independence."

The U.S.-Israel oil relationship goes back to 1975. In September of that year, Henry Kissinger, who was then secretary of state, struck a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that led the Israelis to partially withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula. The agreement required Israel to pull out of the Giddi and Mitla passes and relinquish the Sinai oilfields the Israelis had captured during the 1967 war.

In return, Kissinger agreed that America would provide multibillion-dollar economic and military subsidies to Israel. He also agreed that the U.S. would supply Israel with oil in case of any emergency. That agreement was formalized in 1979 about the time of the Camp David peace talks. It says that the U.S. will "make every effort to help Israel secure the necessary means of transport" for the oil that it purchases. The agreement concludes by saying that the U.S. and Israel will "meet annually, or more frequently at the request of either party, to review Israel's continuing oil requirement."

Since 1979, the agreement has been quietly renewed every five years. (The most recent approval of the document was done by the U.S. State Department in November of 2005.) The U.S. does not provide any other country the same insurance.

Nor does any other country get anything close to the volume of fuel that Israel does under FMS. In 2004, more than 140 countries received FMS aid from the U.S. Of that group, only about 13 countries received fuel of any kind through the FMS program and the biggest recipient, after Israel, was Singapore, which got $7.3 million in fuel. That year, Israel received 17 times more FMS fuel than all of the other countries combined.

Why did the U.S. Defense Department begin providing oil to Israel in 1986? And why does the program persist, particularly given that Israel no longer sees its refineries as strategic assets? The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which manages the FMS and FMF programs, referred questions about the program to the Israeli government. The press office of the Israeli Embassy in Washington did not respond to numerous requests about the program.

While the rationale for the oil transfers remains elusive, the facts behind Israel's refinery privatization are freely available. In 2006, the government sold the Ashdod refinery to Israeli tycoon Zadik Bino for about $500 million. And in early 2007, it sold the larger refinery in Haifa to a group led by Israel Corp., the shipping and chemicals conglomerate, for $1.5 billion.

The sale of the refineries marked a major turning point in Israel's attitude toward oil. In its earliest years as an independent nation, Israel's survival was made possible by using crude from the Soviet Union and Venezuela. From the 1950s to the late 1970s, Iranian crude was the lifeblood of the Zionist state. Later still, the Israelis relied on the Kuwaitis. Today, the Russians are providing much of Israel's crude needs. And the sale of the refineries is indicative of the Israeli government's confidence in its ongoing ability to purchase the oil it needs on the international market.

Nevertheless, the FMS fuel shipments to Israel have continued. The most recent shipments for which records are readily available occurred in July and October 2008.

On July 7, 2008, the spot price for U.S. crude oil hit a near-record of $141. That same day, the San Antonio Business Journal reported that San Antonio-based refiner Valero Energy Corp. had been awarded a contract by the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) worth $46 million to provide fuel to Israel. Valero has won a number of lucrative contracts from the DESC, the Defense Department agency that handles all of the Pentagon's bulk fuel purchases. On Oct. 9, the Journal reported that Valero had been awarded a $235 million contract under FMS. Bill Day, a spokesman for Valero, says that the company "doesn't talk publicly about its contracts."

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that U.S. taxpayers are paying the shipping costs to move the fuel from refineries -- many of them on the Texas Gulf Coast -- to Israeli ports at Haifa or Ashkelon. Shipping costs vary but one specific bid called for shipping costs of $.30 per gallon. Officials with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arm of the Pentagon that manages programs that "strengthen America's alliances and partnerships," has confirmed that the costs to ship the fuel from U.S. refineries to Israel have been paid for with FMF money designated for Israel by Congress.

The huge FMS fuel shipments are puzzling to the Israelis. Amit Mor, CEO of Eco Energy, an Israeli consulting and investment firm, has worked on energy issues in his home country for about two decades. In a recent e-mail, Mor says that "there is a paradox" in the fuel shipments that Israel gets from the U.S. He said that the privately owned Israeli refineries export jet fuel in "FOB prices," while the defense ministry imports jet fuel in "high CIF prices," with the funds of U.S. military assistance.

FOB, short for "free on board," means that customers must take possession of the fuel at the refinery and then pay for all shipping and related costs to get the fuel to its final destination. On the other hand, as Mor explains, the Israeli military is importing fuel from U.S. refineries located 7,000 miles away, while incurring the CIF, short for "cost, insurance and freight," of moving the fuel that distance.

Mor says Israeli refiners have "complained about this issue" but have had no luck with the Israeli government. He goes on to say that "it is the U.S. government that insisted for some reason to continue with this historical, costly and inefficient arrangement."

Energy analysts squabble about a myriad of issues. But if there is one truism that draws near-universal agreement, it's this: As energy consumption increases, so does wealth. And while that truism holds for oil use, it is particularly apt for electricity. As Peter Huber and Mark Mills point out in their 2005 book, "The Bottomless Well," "Economic growth marches hand in hand with increased consumption of electricity -- always, everywhere, without significant exception in the annals of modern industrial history."

That statement underscores the significance of the FMS fuel shipments to Israel, many of which have occurred at or near the time that the Israeli military has attacked the electric power plants of its neighbors.

In late June 2006, Israeli aircraft fired nine missiles at the transformers at the Gaza City Power Plant, the only electric power plant in the Occupied Territories. (One of the original partners in the project was Enron, but that's another story.) The missiles caused damage estimated at $15 million to $20 million and, for a time, made Gaza wholly reliant on electricity flows from Israel. The 140-megawatt power plant, owned by the Palestine Electric Co., was insured by the Overseas Private Investment Corp., an arm of the U.S. government. Thus the U.S. was providing fuel and materiel to the Israeli military, which destroyed the plant, but it was also paying to fix the damage. Call it cradle-to-grave service.

The Israeli attack on the Gaza City Power Plant offers a stark example of how the FMS fuel helps assure that Israel stays energy rich while many of the citizens in neighboring regions live in energy poverty.

Two weeks after the attack on the Gaza City plant in 2006, during Israel's monthlong war against Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, Israeli aircraft attacked the 346-megawatt Jiyyeh power plant, the oldest electric power plant in Lebanon. Those attacks resulted in the largest-ever oil spill in the eastern Mediterranean. About 100,000 barrels of fuel oil that was stored in tanks at the Jiyyeh site flowed into the sea, creating an oil slick that stretched for more than 150 kilometers.

The attacks on the Jiyyeh plant occurred on July 13 and July 15. Those dates are important because they underscore the timing of the U.S. fuel transfers to Israel.

On July 14, 2006, the U.S. military issued two press releases. In one of them, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that it would be providing up to $210 million in JP-8 jet fuel to the Israeli government. The other release, put out at 5 p.m. Eastern time, came from the Defense Logistics Agency, which said that it had awarded a $36.7 million contract to Valero as part of another JP-8 supply deal for Israel.

The July 14 release contains this rather bland description of the fuel deal: "The proposed sale of the JP-8 aviation fuel will enable Israel to maintain the operational capability of its aircraft inventory. The jet fuel will be consumed while the aircraft is in use to keep peace and security in the region. Israel will have no difficulty absorbing this additional fuel into its armed forces." The release goes on to claim that the "proposed sale of this JP-8 aviation fuel will not affect the basic military balance in the region."

While the attacks on the Jiyyeh plant were important, Lebanese citizens could get electricity from other power plants in the country. That was not true in Gaza, a province in which electricity has always been in short supply. According to the CIA Fact Book, the Gaza Strip ranks dead last -- 214th out of 214 countries and territories listed -- in the amount of electricity consumed. According to the Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Agency, in 2004, the average Gazan used about 654 kilowatt-hours of electricity. By contrast, the 7.1 million residents of Israel consume about 6,295 kilowatt-hours of electric power per person per year, nearly 10 times as much as the average Gazan.

Although more recent energy consumption data for Gaza is not available, there's no question that the endemic poverty in the West Bank and particularly in Gaza, is due, largely, to a continuing lack of energy resources. And the Israelis have frequently cut off the flow of fuel and electricity, which has exacerbated the Palestinians' energy poverty.

Over the past few years, the Israelis have cut off the flow of energy to Gaza as retribution for various transgressions. And those cutoffs have forced the Gaza City Power Plant to shut down for lack of the fuel oil it needs to operate. When the power plant is idled, most of the residents of Gaza City are left without power and overall power supplies in the Gaza Strip decline by about 25 percent.

In May 2006, Israel cut off the flow of oil into the Occupied Territories after the Islamic group Hamas won local elections. In January 2008, the Israelis closed the border crossings into Gaza, which resulted in a fuel shortage that closed the Gaza power plant. In April 2008, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency stopped distributing aid in Gaza after it ran out of fuel. The Israelis stopped the fuel flow as retribution for attacks that killed two Israeli civilians and three Israeli soldiers. In November 2008, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency was again forced to suspend work due to lack of fuel. The fuel shortage occurred after Israel closed the border into Gaza in response to rockets and mortar shells that had been fired into Israel from Gaza.

The disparity in energy consumption between the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza and their counterparts in Israel is just one element in the centuries-old story of tragedy and conflict in the region. But with the U.S. squarely on the side of the Israelis in the Gaza campaign, the potential for an angry backlash against the U.S. appears to be growing.

And that anger will likely only increase when Arabs begin to understand that much of the fuel that the U.S. is giving to Israel is being refined from Arab oil. The Valero refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, which has won several of the FMS contracts for Israel, is a big buyer of Mideast crude. During the second quarter of 2006, according to data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the refinery got about 40 percent of its crude oil from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.

In short, U.S. taxpayers are paying for U.S. energy companies to buy Arab crude, ship it across the Atlantic to refineries in the U.S., refine it, and then ship it back across the Atlantic so that the Israel Defense Force can use it in its wars.

While the origination point of the crude may only matter to part of the Arab world, it is becoming apparent that bloodshed in Gaza is further complicating America's efforts to gain credibility as an honest broker in the region. Anti-U.S. sentiment is not in America's long-term interest, says former diplomat Chas Freeman, a man whose résumé in international affairs extends back nearly four decades.

Freeman is a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, as well as a former assistance secretary of defense. He served as Richard Nixon's chief interpreter during Nixon's visit to China in 1972. Now the president of the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank, Freeman says the FMS fuel program for Israel runs counter to long-term goals of resolving the Palestinian conflict and America's stated goal of protecting the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf. The Defense Department has assumed "unilateral responsibility for the protection of the oil trade in the Persian Gulf, and yet it's assuming responsibility for the delivery of aviation fuel for the Israeli military," he says. "That's confused and contradictory." The program, he adds, is "one of many elements of our relationship with Israel that is very hard to explain."

Freeman may be correct, but the House of Representatives has scant doubt about continued U.S. support for Israel. Nor has Congress shown much interest in the fuel shortages among Palestinians. On Jan. 9, the 14th day of the fighting in Gaza, the House passed a resolution sponsored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "recognizing Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza." The vote was 390 to 5.

Two days before the vote, UNICEF estimated that 800,000 Gazans did not have running water and 1 million were living without electricity.

-- By Robert Bryce

Analysis: Joseph Massad: Israel's right to defend itself

2009-01-20T19:38:00.000-08:00

EI: Common Western political wisdom has it that when Western countries support Israeli military action against Arab countries or the Palestinian people, they do so because they support Israel's right to defend itself against its enemies.

This has always been established wisdom in Israel itself, even before the colonial settlement was established, wherein its predatory army is ironically named the Israel Defense Forces, not unlike the South African apartheid army, which was also known as the South African Defense Forces. This defensive nomenclature is hardly exclusive to Israel and South Africa, as many countries rushed after World War II to rename their Ministries of "War" as Ministries of "Defense." Still, Israel's allegedly defensive actions define every single war the colonial settlement has ever engaged in, even and especially when it starts these wars, which it has done in all cases except in 1973.

Thus the war of 1948 which Zionist militias started against the Palestinian people on 30 November 1947, a day after a Western-controlled United Nations General Assembly issued the Partition Plan, is presented as "defensive," as was its expulsion of about 400,000 Palestinians before 15 May 1948, i.e. before the day on which three Arab armies (the Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi armies) invaded the area that became Israel (Lebanon hardly had an army to invade with and hardly managed to retrieve two Lebanese villages that Israel had occupied, and Jordanian forces only entered the areas designated by the UN plan for the Palestinian state, and East Jerusalem which was projected to fall under UN jurisdiction).

Yet until this very day, Israel, its Western and Arab and Palestinian allies, seem to agree with the major Israeli lie that the refugee "problem" resulted from the 1948 war which Israel fought as a "defensive" war and that the responsibility of the refugees lies with the Arab governments who "started" the war. While the remaining 370,000 Palestinians Israel expelled were driven out after 15 May 1948 and before the end of January 1949 (when armistice talks began), they could ostensibly be included in the argument that their expulsion was a result of the war, but it remains unclear why the first 400,000 would be included in that category. The thousands of Palestinians who would be expelled after the armistice agreements were signed, especially those of the city of Majdal, now Ashkelon, whose population was loaded onto trucks and expelled to Gaza, does not even enter these calculations.

The argument in fact must be extended to the post-15 May refugees. After all, it was Zionist expulsions of the Palestinians for over five months prior to the Arab armies' intervention in May 1948 that was used as a casus belli for the Arab armies whose intervention was carried out under the banner of defending Palestine and the Palestinians against Zionist aggression. None of this however seems to matter and Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people and their UN-designated state continues to be presented as part of "Israel's right to defend itself."

Ironically, Israel's unprovoked invasion of Egypt in 1956 and occupation of Sinai also seems to fall under the category of Israel's right to defend itself as far as the Israelis were concerned, although United States President Dwight Eisenhower and the Soviet Union thought otherwise at the time, which forced Israel to withdraw. Israel's massive invasions of three Arab countries in 1967 was/is also presented as another defensive war, wherein if it is ever admitted that Israel is the party that started the war, the admission is quickly followed by the "explanation" (hasbara in Hebrew, which is also the word for "propaganda") that it was a "preemptive" war in which Israel was "defending" itself. This also applies to Israel's 1978 and 1982 and 2006 invasions of Lebanon, its continued occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, its siege of Gaza, and its massacres against the Palestinians there in the last three weeks.

The logic goes as follows: Israel has the right to occupy Palestinian land, lay siege to Palestinian populations in Bantustans surrounded by an apartheid wall, starve the population, cut them off from fuel and electricity, uproot their trees and crops, and launch periodic raids and targeted assassinations against them and their elected leadership, and if this population resists these massive Israeli attacks against their lives and the fabric of their society and Israel responds by slaughtering them en masse, Israel would simply be "defending" itself as it must and should.

Indeed, as The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the best friend of Israel and the Saudi ruling family, has argued recently, in doing so, Israel is engaged in a pedagogical exercise of "educating" the Palestinians. Perhaps many of the Arab businessmen's associations who regularly invite Friedman to speak to their organizations in a number of Arab countries and pay him an astronomical speaking fee can invite him back to educate them on Israel's pedagogical methods and on The New York Times' war propaganda on behalf of Israel.

The major argument here is two-fold, namely that while Israel has the right to defend itself, its victims have no similar right to defend themselves. In fact, the logic is even more sinister than this and can be elucidated as follows: Israel has the right to oppress the Palestinians and does so to defend itself, but were the Palestinians to defend themselves against Israel's oppression, which they do not have a right to do, Israel will then have the right to defend itself against their illegitimate defense of themselves against its legitimate oppression of them, which it carries out anyway in order to defend itself legitimately.

This is why, not only does Israel have the right to arm itself and to be a nuclear power and to have a military edge over the combined militaries of the entire region in which it lives, but it also must ensure that the military power of its neighbors is used to quell the Palestinians and not Israel, indeed to help Israel lay siege to the resisting Palestinians. When and if Palestinians try to arm themselves to defend their lives against Israeli invasions and slaughter, Israel makes every effort to prevent them from doing so and considers this "illegal smuggling."

The recent signing of an agreement between Israel and its US sponsor and the volunteering of European countries (France, Britain, Germany, Italy, and Spain) to police the waters and borders of Gaza with Egypt to prevent the Palestinians from "smuggling" arms to defend themselves is the most recent application of this understanding. Israel's US sponsor and European allies are horrified by the Palestinians' attempts to arm themselves (to which they have no right) in order to defend their very lives against Israel's right to slaughter them in order to defend itself.

Indeed, Israel has included the erstwhile Palestinian leadership for the last 15 years in its efforts to repress all Palestinians who resist its right to defend itself by oppressing them. This is precisely why the Palestinian Authority (PA) was created in the first place. The PA that the Oslo Agreement established on paper in autumn 1993 and came to life in the form of institutions and a collaborating Palestinian elite in 1994 has finally, however, come to an end in the winter of 2009. While the PA tried its best to be a repressive force on behalf of Israel and has killed scores of Palestinians who resisted the occupation and PA collaboration since 1994, its ability to control the surge of Palestinian resistance was checked by its failure to win the last elections and its failure to defeat Hamas militarily. Fifteen years after its establishment, the PA has run its course. In Gaza, Israel destroyed all the bureaucratic and administrative offices of the PA run by Hamas and thus has returned Hamas by default to its erstwhile status as the major Palestinian guerrilla group resisting Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel's criminal siege of Gaza, and Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

In the West Bank, the process of finishing off the PA has been more gradual. While an ambivalent war against the PA started with Israel's reinvasion of West Bank cities and towns (around which it had redeployed earlier) in 2002, a reassessment occurred after Yasser Arafat's death and after his successors promised to collaborate with Israel as much as Arafat used to before the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000. Israel's kidnapping of Hamas officials elected in January 2006 to the Palestinian Legislative Council and its government ministers, followed by the war launched against Hamas officials and rank and file members by the Fatah leadership who lost the elections, and by the illegal coup d'etat staged in collaboration with the US and Israel against Hamas with success in the West Bank and with utter failure in Gaza by Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies, have sealed the fate of the PA. The final coup de grâce came in the last few days when the term of Abbas in office ended on 9 January 2009, his ongoing illegal attempts to extend his term for one more year notwithstanding.

Abbas was the only member of the collaborating group in the West Bank that still had any legitimate and legal status given to him by the elections. Today, as a result, there is no longer a Palestinian Authority as a legal entity or as one that has any popular or juridical legitimacy. The PA was born by Israeli fiat and a collaborating Palestinian elite and has died by Israeli fiat and the actions of the collaborating Palestinian elite. Mahmoud Abbas's absence from the Arab summit in Qatar a few days ago, which convened to support the resisting Palestinians in Gaza, and his characterization of the summit as an "ambush" to divide the Palestinians have exposed him further in the eyes of the Palestinian people as an unrepentant collaborator with the Israeli occupation and with the Arab dictators allied with Israel and the United States. His subsequent attendance of the Sharm al-Sheikh summit with European powers that seek to help Israel decimate the Palestinian people is therefore hardly surprising.

As the PA continues to usurp political power in the West Bank, it remains clear that nothing short of a third Palestinian uprising there will end the illegitimate rule of the PA whose collaborators continue to refuse to pack up and leave. Indeed, the new move by the US and European allies of Israel is to shower money on the PA in the form of reconstruction funds slated for Gaza in the hope of seducing the Israeli-impoverished, -butchered, and -devastated Palestinians in Gaza to stop supporting Hamas and switch allegiance to the illegitimate and collaborationist PA whose European funds will be dangled before them as bait.

If a generation of Palestinian and Arab intellectuals came to believe since the 1970s that armed struggle would not be able to end the Israeli occupation and that negotiations would be the only way to do so, a whole new generation of Palestinian and Arab intellectuals (some of whom are liberal) now understand that negotiations with Israel have only served to intensify the occupation and will only serve to do so in the future. The benefits of 18 years of negotiations with Israel, as is evident for all to see, has been not only more Jewish colonial settlement and more massacres and more confiscation of land, but also the destruction of the Palestinian national movement through imploding it from within. It is true that negotiations have enriched the Palestinian business class in the West Bank and Gaza as well as the comprador intellectuals and the bureaucratic and military class that were inducted in the PA game of non-governmental funding via the so-called peace-process, but these benefits have been delivered to the few by taking away the livelihoods of the many.

What has ended then with Israel's ongoing butchery in Gaza is not only the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority but also negotiations as a viable or a credible path to ending the occupation. This is the situation that the incoming rabidly pro-Israeli American President Obama will be facing soon. The half-white and fully Christian Obama, who, when denying the accusation of being a Muslim assured Americans that not only was he raised by his white Christian mother and her family but also of his belief that the blood of Jesus Christ will "redeem" him, and that he prays to Jesus every night, will continue, along with his pro-Israel operatives, to support Israel's war crimes and to buttress the illegal authority of the Palestinian collaborators in the West Bank.

Israel destroyed the PA in Gaza because it could no longer ensure its collaboration there after Hamas was elected and assumed political power there. After Hamas won the free elections, Israel arrested the majority of Hamas elected officials to ensure that the Fatah leadership continues to collaborate unhindered. The PA survives as an illegal entity in the West Bank today, because Israel still banks on its collaboration, most evident in PA police repression of demonstrations across the West Bank which sought to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Injecting the illegitimate and illegal PA with more funds with which to torture the Palestinian people and stuff the pockets of its collaborators will hardly make it a more attractive choice to the majority of poor Palestinians who have been the ultimate losers of PA rule and the Oslo Accords.

In the meantime, the West and Israel will continue to defend Israel's right to defend itself and to deny the Palestinians the right to defend themselves. While some call this international relations, in reality it is nothing short of inter-racial relations wherein Jews, who since World War II have been inducted into the realm of whiteness, have rights that the Palestinians, like their counterparts elsewhere in the non-European world who are forever cast outside the realm of whiteness, do not. Thomas Friedman is right; Israel has been trying to educate the Palestinians that it will punish all their attempts to check its white colonial power to oppress them and that they must understand that they deserve to be punished and defeated for not being white.

The problem is that the Palestinians, students of a universal humanism in which they consider themselves equal to everyone else, keep failing Israel's racial lessons and tests. What the Palestinians ultimately insist on is that Israel must be taught that it does not have the right to defend its racial supremacy and that the Palestinians have the right to defend their universal humanity against Israel's racist oppression. Will Israel and its allies ever learn that lesson? Israeli history tells us that as students of racial supremacy, Zionists have always failed the test of universal humanism.

Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of The Persistence of the Palestinian Question (Routledge, 2006).

Matthews: Democracy is NOT the path of Moderation in the Middle East

2009-01-16T08:28:00.000-08:00

In criticizing Bush's Farewell Speech, Political Commentator Chris Matthews engages in his own broad over generalizations about the "Arab street" and the value of democracy in the Middle East. In essence, they (Arabs, Persians, etc.) have their values and we have ours and oh, yes, they want to kill us all. Therefore, dictatorships in the Middle East, not democracy (no, not even homegrown democracy), are the answers to our security and foreign policy concerns in the Middle East.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Memo to Mr. Matthews

Where were the 9/11 hijackers from? Saudi Arabia.
Form of government in Saudi Arabia? Repressive Monarchy.

Exactly how did the U.S. arrive at it's current impasse with Iran?
By installing the Shah's dictatorship which in turn led to the Anti-U.S. Iranian Revolution.

U.S. heavy-handed policies in the Middle East are the problem. The idea that dictatorship or democracy, at gunpoint, is the solution is, in reality, a sure-fire formula for further blowback from the region.

Let's hope Mr. Matthews does not have any aspirations to be a foreign policy adviser, much less a U.S. envoy to the Middle East. The U.S. is already in a deep enough hole. Let's stop digging.

Analysis: Israel's Aggression: A Pattern

2009-01-15T16:18:00.000-08:00

Here's an excellent assessment of Israel's aggressive patterns against Palestinians.

HP: As Israel and Palestine suffer a hideous new spasm of terror, misery, and mayhem, it is important to ask how this situation came about. Perhaps an understanding of recent events will afford lessons for the future.

How did the recent ceasefire unravel? The mainstream media in the US and Israel places the blame squarely on Hamas. Indeed, a massive barrage of Palestinian rockets were fired into Israel in November and December, and ending this rocket fire is the stated goal of the current Israeli invasion of Gaza. However, this account leaves out crucial facts.

First, and most importantly, the ceasefire was remarkably effective: after it began in June 2008, the rate of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza dropped to almost zero, and stayed there for four straight months (see Figure 1, from a factsheet produced by the Israeli consulate in NYC). So much for the widespread view, exemplified in yesterday's New York Times editorial that: "There is little chance of restraining Hamas without dealing with its patrons in Syria and Iran." Instead, the data shows clearly that Hamas can indeed control the violence if it so chooses, and sometimes it does, for long periods of time.

Second, and just as important, what happened to end this striking period of peace? On November 4th, Israel killed a Palestinian, an event that was followed by a volley of mortars fired from Gaza. Immediately after that, an Israeli air strike killed six more Palestinians. Then a massive barrage of rockets was unleashed, leading to the end of the ceasefire.

Figure 1. Number of Palestinian rockets fired in each month of 2008 (adapted from The Israeli consulate in NYC [pdf])

: Figure 1

Thus the latest ceasefire ended when Israel first killed Palestinians, and Palestinians then fired rockets into Israel. However, before attempting to glean lessons from this event, we need to know if this case is atypical, or if it reflects a systematic pattern.

We decided to tally the data to find out. We analyzed the entire timeline of killings of Palestinians by Israelis, and killings of Israelis by Palestinians, in the Second Intifada, based on the data from the widely-respected Israeli Human Rights group B'Tselem (including all the data from September 2000 to October 2008).

We defined "conflict pauses" as periods of one or more days when no one is killed on either side, and we asked which side kills first after conflict pauses of different durations. As shown in Figure 2, this analysis shows that it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern -- in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause -- becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days.

Figure 2. For conflict pauses of different durations (i.e., periods of time when no one is killed on either side), we show here the percentage of times from the Second Intifada in which Israelis ended the period of nonviolence by killing one or more Palestinians (black), the percentage of times that Palestinians ended the period of nonviolence by killing Israelis (grey), and the percentage of times that both sides killed on the same day (white). Virtually all periods of nonviolence lasting more than a week were ended when the Israelis killed Palestinians first. We include here the data from all pause durations that actually occurred.

: Figure 2

Thus, a systematic pattern does exist: it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first following a lull. Indeed, it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week.

The lessons from these data are clear:

First, Hamas can indeed control the rockets, when it is in their interest. The data shows that ceasefires can work, reducing the violence to nearly zero for months at a time.

Second, if Israel wants to reduce rocket fire from Gaza, it should cherish and preserve the peace when it starts to break out, not be the first to kill.

Note: For a detailed account of the breakdown of the ceasefire and the precise numbers of rockets fired in November from the point of view of the Israeli military, see http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_e011.htm

Human Rights Watch Report: Israel's Indiscriminate Killing

2009-01-15T14:42:00.000-08:00

Here's a report concerning Israel's indiscriminate killings in Gaza. As expected, you won't find this on the popular media. For the full report, click here.

I. Summary of Report

In the northern Gaza Strip and adjoining areas of Israel, attacks by Palestinian armed groups launching locally made rockets known as Qassams and attacks by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) firing 155mm artillery shells have together killed dozens of civilians, wounded hundreds, and greatly disrupted civilian life. After Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, Palestinian rocket attacks continued sporadically, spiking in late September, late October and again in December, with Israeli artillery fire following suit beginning in late October. Initially civilian casualties on both sides were light, but the casualties rose dramatically starting in April 2006, when Israel sharply increased its artillery attacks on alleged Palestinian rocket launch sites and also fired closer to residential areas.

Both sides have shown disregard for civilian loss of life in violation of international humanitarian law (IHL): Palestinian armed groups have directed their rockets at Israeli towns; Israeli artillery shelling near populated areas has caused considerable civilian casualties for uncertain military gain as well as at least one serious incident of indiscriminate shelling.

There is an opportunity today to put an end to this needless loss of civilian life: in November 2006, after an artillery attack that killed 23 civilians, the IDF placed a moratorium on use of artillery to respond to rocket attacks in Gaza, and a five-month ceasefire on the part of Hamas the same month led to a decrease in Palestinian rocket attacks in 2007, meaning that for a time rocket attacks were largely limited to the Islamic Jihad organization. Hamas ended its ceasefire on April 24, 2007, firing rockets once again into Israeli territory.[1]Israel has not resumed its use of artillery, responding instead with more precise air-fired missiles to hit targets, but it is unclear how firm this change of practice is. The conduct of Palestinian armed groups and the IDF that led to the spike in civilian casualties in mid-2006 is likely to resume unless the parties learn the lessons of 2006 and definitively change military policies and practices in accordance with their independent obligations under international humanitarian law.

This report is based on on-the-ground assessments of Palestinian armed group rocket attacks and IDF artillery attacks, focusing on the period from the beginning of September 2005 through May 2007. It sets forth recommendations aimed at ending practices that have led to unnecessary civilian death and injury. This report does not address other important issues affecting civilians in Gaza, including deteriorating humanitarian conditions, internecine fighting between Palestinian factions, Israel's destruction of Gaza's sole electrical power plant, and IDF and armed group clashes that have claimed civilian casualties separate from the rocket/artillery attacks.

Israeli Artillery Shelling

From September 2005 through May 2007, the same period covered by the rocket attack statistics cited above, the IDF fired 14,617 artillery shells into Gaza. This fire killed at least 59 people, wounded another 270 people, and did significant damage to many civilian structures.[6] Of the 38 Palestinians killed through September 2006, 17 were children under the age of 16, 12 were women, and one was a 60-year-old man; Human Rights Watch, in its field investigations, identified 5 of the remaining 8 men as civilians.[7] A subsequent artillery attack on November 8 killed or mortally wounded 23 and injured at least 40 Palestinians, all civilians. As discussed below, this last incident led to an Israeli moratorium on further use of artillery in Gaza, which continued as this report went to press in mid-June 2007.

Most of the artillery shells that the IDF fired into Gaza in this period landed in open areas, and the great majority did not result in civilian casualties. Many, however, were fired close to civilian areas, and some landed directly on homes and other civilian structures, causing serious harm and loss of life. Human Rights Watch has been unable to find any report or claim that those killed or injured by artillery fire included persons believed to be combatants, and the IDF has not responded to a Human Rights Watch request about whether any Palestinians killed or injured by artillery fire into the Gaza Strip were combatants or believed to be combatants.[8] Israeli artillery strikes in 2006 also left many unexploded shells strewn on the ground that constitute a continuing hazard to lives and livelihoods.

Israeli artillery strikes hitting Beit Hanoun and nearby Beit Lahiya caused considerable civilian casualties and damage to civilian structures. On April 10, 2006, for example, Sofia Gabin told her children to hide in a cement cupboard when she heard explosions nearby. "I was afraid for them. It was the safest place," she said.[9] A shell landed directly on the house, killing her 8-year-old daughter, Hadi, and injuring 10 others. A series of strikes earlier that week leveled several homes belonging to the Abu Shamas family and injured or killed at least three civilians. The frequent shelling has also had a devastating impact on the civilian life of the northern Gaza towns.

Most of the civilian deaths and injuries occurred at a time when Israel claimed that it was targeting nearby rocket-launching activity. While Palestinians often claimed that Israel's shelling had other objectives, we were not in a position to gather sufficient information to assess such claims, and for purposes of this report we accept Israel's stated purpose. Nevertheless, as will be discussed below, all of the Palestinian civilian deaths and the great majority of injuries caused by Israeli artillery fire occurred following Israel's exponential increase of artillery fire and reported authorizing of shelling within a proximity to civilian areas that is smaller than the casualty radius of the artillery. Moreover, Israel did not routinely investigate cases in which civilians died or were injured to learn from past cases of civilian casualties and to ensure that in the future all feasible precautions were taken to avoid them. The combination of increased shelling considerably closer to populated areas and failure to investigate suggest, at the very least, an indifference to the duty to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties and a failure to rigorously balance concrete military advantage against expected civilian harm, as required by the rule of proportionality.

In assessing the legality of the IDF's artillery fire under international law, it is necessary to determine for each attack whether it was targeted at a specific military objective; whether the weapon used could be sufficiently targeted to differentiate between the military objective and civilians; and whether the anticipated civilian casualties were not disproportionate to the expected military gain from the attack. In addition, while Palestinian fighters firing rockets from sites close to Palestinian civilians can itself be a law-of-war violation and does not prohibit the IDF from returning fire, the IDF still must take all feasible steps to minimize civilian loss and refrain from attack if expected civilian casualties will be disproportionate to the concrete military gain.

When investigating incidents, Human Rights Watch found that IDF shelling with 155mm howitzers often caused unnecessary loss of civilian life and property in violation of international humanitarian law. In one serious case, artillery was used indiscriminately, in a manner that could not properly discriminate between civilians and combatants. Other times, the evidence suggested that the attacks were disproportionate, causing expected civilian loss that was excessive compared to any anticipated military gain. The repeated use of such methods of attack, combined with the evident failure of the IDF adequately to investigate harm caused to civilians, demonstrated a failure to take all steps feasible to minimize civilian loss, in violation of IHL.

Two changes in IDF artillery practices in April 2006, roughly corresponding with Hamas's taking over the Palestinian Authority (PA) following its January victory in parliamentary elections, led to a significant jump in civilian casualties. This was evident in that all 59 Palestinian deaths and all but eight of the 270 injuries due to Israeli artillery fire into Gaza occurred after the change in IDF practices. First, the IDF greatly increased the number of artillery shells fired: a total of 446 rounds were fired in March 2006 while 4,522 rounds were fired in April 2006.[10] Between May and November, when the IDF instituted a moratorium, the number of shells fired fluctuated between 113 (October) and 3,709 (July) per month, averaging more than 1,350 shells per month. The second change was an increase in artillery attacks in the immediate vicinity of civilian residences. There is evidence that this was a deliberate policy: an Israeli newspaper reported in April that the IDF had narrowed the "safety zone"-that is, the minimum distance it required between a potential target for its artillery and the nearest homes or populated areas-from 300 meters to 100 meters, a report that the IDF refused to affirm or deny.[11] This new policy undoubtedly added to the number of civilian casualties and damage to civilian property. There was no parallel increase in rocket fire in April 2006.

Israeli authorities responded to Human Rights Watch's concerns about specific incidents involving loss of civilian life and property from artillery shelling by stating: "The IDF retaliated with artillery firetowards open spaces, and no deviation [in the intended trajectory of the shelling] was observed at the time," or "[The IDF] is unfamiliar with any injury or any allegation of injury to Palestinian civilians."[12] These responses suggested that the IDF had not investigated civilian loss of life associated with its attacks in or near heavily populated areas of Gaza. For Israel to ensure that its artillery attacks do not violate the IHL prohibitions against indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, particularly in the face of continuing civilian casualties, it was essential for the IDF to assess accurately civilian harm arising from its use of artillery in order to adopt corrective measures. Human Rights Watch has no evidence that the IDF ever attempted such an assessment, at least not prior to the November 8 incident. During that period, this showed an indifference to the fate of Palestinian civilians, in violation of the IHL requirement that parties take all steps feasible to minimize harm to civilians.

There is little evidence that the IDF artillery attacks reduced the overall incidence of rocket attacks against Israel or significantly damaged the ability of Palestinian groups to launch further attacks, though some IDF sources claimed that rocket fire grew less accurate immediately following artillery strikes on launch areas. Other IDF officials publicly criticized the policy for its lack of effectiveness. The division commander for the Gaza front, Brig. Gen. Moshe Tamir, told Ha'aretz that he did not believe artillery helped to reduce rocket attacks.[13]

The deadly November 8 incident led the IDF to call a halt to artillery fire until "further technical, professional, and operational inquiries are completed." [14] Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly acknowledged and expressed distress at the civilian casualties in that attack, saying that the artillery strike had missed its intended target due to a technical failure. [15] Neither he nor the IDF said, however, whether routinely required precautionary steps had been taken to avoid such misfiring, as explained below (see chapter on Israeli artillery shelling). A report in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz suggested that they had not: the newspaper reported that the shells were fired with range settings from the night before that did not take into account changes in weather, violating a basic precautionary procedure. [16]

In response to continued rocket fire from Gaza, Israel's security cabinet reportedly approved on November 22, 2006, a series of other measures to counter rocket attacks. Ha'aretz reported those measures were to include "attacks on Hamas institutions, and [the security cabinet] called for the IDF to aim for a 'significant halt' to the Qassam rocket fire, to increase 'pinpoint preventions'-a euphemism for targeted killings-and to prepare for a ground operation in Gaza, evacuated by Israel last year." [17] After a December 26 rocket attack injured two Israeli boys, the IDF reportedly issued a directive calling for "pinpoint action" against launches. According to an account in the New York Times, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert directed the IDF "to strike before, while or after rockets are launched"but not "to fire shells into open areas near the border to deter rocket-launching teams from entering them." [18]

Following the IDF moratorium on the use of artillery in Gaza and the reported directive from Prime Minister Olmert, there have been no further reports of civilian casualties as a result of artillery fire. As of this writing (June 2007), this moratorium remained in effect. In late May 2007, an IDF spokesperson said that the IDF had fired artillery shells without explosives into Gaza "for calibration purposes," adding that the army did not intend to use live artillery "at this time."[19] In June, in response to a Human Rights Watch inquiry, the IDF said that "since November 2006 there was no use of artillery, and there has been no change of policy."[20] When clashes resumed in May 2007, Israel relied almost entirely on more precise air-fired missiles to hit targets, including persons allegedly responsible for launching or attempting to launch rockets into Israel. Such more precise weapons are capable of causing avoidable civilian harm, depending on how they are deployed, but Israel's halt in the use of artillery represents a positive step. Any future IDF deployment of artillery must refrain from firing at or near populated areas.

Gaza Children Suffer as Israeli Attacks Continue

2009-01-15T14:40:00.000-08:00

U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site

2009-01-10T15:22:00.000-08:00

NY Times: President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.

The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.

This account of the expanded American covert program and the Bush administration’s efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on Iran emerged in interviews over the past 15 months with current and former American officials, outside experts, international nuclear inspectors and European and Israeli officials. None would speak on the record because of the great secrecy surrounding the intelligence developed on Iran.

Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations.

The interviews also suggest that while Mr. Bush was extensively briefed on options for an overt American attack on Iran’s facilities, he never instructed the Pentagon to move beyond contingency planning, even during the final year of his presidency, contrary to what some critics have suggested.

The interviews also indicate that Mr. Bush was convinced by top administration officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, that any overt attack on Iran would probably prove ineffective, lead to the expulsion of international inspectors and drive Iran’s nuclear effort further out of view. Mr. Bush and his aides also discussed the possibility that an airstrike could ignite a broad Middle East war in which America’s 140,000 troops in Iraq would inevitably become involved.

Instead, Mr. Bush embraced more intensive covert operations actions aimed at Iran, the interviews show, having concluded that the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies were failing to slow the uranium enrichment efforts. Those covert operations, and the question of whether Israel will settle for something less than a conventional attack on Iran, pose immediate and wrenching decisions for Mr. Obama.

The covert American program, started in early 2008, includes renewed American efforts to penetrate Iran’s nuclear supply chain abroad, along with new efforts, some of them experimental, to undermine electrical systems, computer systems and other networks on which Iran relies. It is aimed at delaying the day that Iran can produce the weapons-grade fuel and designs it needs to produce a workable nuclear weapon.

Knowledge of the program has been closely held, yet inside the Bush administration some officials are skeptical about its chances of success, arguing that past efforts to undermine Iran’s nuclear program have been detected by the Iranians and have only delayed, not derailed, their drive to unlock the secrets of uranium enrichment.

Late last year, international inspectors estimated that Iran had 3,800 centrifuges spinning, but American intelligence officials now estimate that the figure is 4,000 to 5,000, enough to produce about one weapon’s worth of uranium every eight months or so.

While declining to be specific, one American official dismissed the latest covert operations against Iran as “science experiments.” One senior intelligence official argued that as Mr. Bush prepared to leave office, the Iranians were already so close to achieving a weapons capacity that they were unlikely to be stopped.

Others disagreed, making the point that the Israelis would not have been dissuaded from conducting an attack if they believed that the American effort was unlikely to prove effective.

Since his election on Nov. 4, Mr. Obama has been extensively briefed on the American actions in Iran, though his transition aides have refused to comment on the issue.

Early in his presidency, Mr. Obama must decide whether the covert actions begun by Mr. Bush are worth the risks of disrupting what he has pledged will be a more active diplomatic effort to engage with Iran.

Either course could carry risks for Mr. Obama. An inherited intelligence or military mission that went wrong could backfire, as happened to President Kennedy with the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba. But a decision to pull back on operations aimed at Iran could leave Mr. Obama vulnerable to charges that he is allowing Iran to speed ahead toward a nuclear capacity, one that could change the contours of power in the Middle East.

Analysis: Naomi Klein and Boycotting Israel: It's Time

2009-01-10T09:40:00.000-08:00

Naomi Klein: It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—BDS for short—was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.… This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.

1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis. The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement." It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures—quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non–Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 percent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.

2. Israel is not South Africa. Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes of South African apartheid in the occupied territories: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid." That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less. This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Coming up with our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom specializing in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."

Ramsey says that his decision wasn't political; he just didn't want to lose customers. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients," he explains, "so it was purely commercially defensive."

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.

Of sowing and harvests: Subcomandante Marcos' speech on Gaza

2009-01-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

Subcomandante Marcos: Two days ago, the same day we discussed violence, the ineffable Condoleezza Rice, a US official, declared that what was happening in Gaza was the Palestinians' fault, due to their violent nature.

The underground rivers that crisscross the world can change their geography, but they sing the same song.

And the one we hear now is one of war and pain.

Not far from here, in a place called Gaza, in Palestine, in the Middle East, right here next to us, the Israeli government's heavily trained and armed military continues its march of death and destruction.

The steps it has taken are those of a classic military war of conquest: first an intense mass bombing in order to destroy "strategic" military points (that's how the military manuals put it) and to "soften" the resistance's reinforcements; next a fierce control over information: everything that is heard and seen "in the outside world," that is, outside the theater of operations, must be selected with military criteria; now intense artillery fire against the enemy infantry to protect the advance of troop to new positions; then there will be a siege to weaken the enemy garrison; then the assault that conquers the position and annihilates the enemy, then the "cleaning out" of the probable "nests of resistance."

The military manual of modern war, with a few variations and additions, is being followed step-by-step by the invading military forces.

We don't know a lot about this, and there are surely specialists in the so-called "conflict in the Middle East," but from this corner we have something to say:

According to the news photos, the "strategic" points destroyed by the Israeli government's air force are houses, shacks, civilian buildings. We haven't seen a single bunker, nor a barracks, nor a military airport, nor cannons, amongst the rubble. So--and please excuse our ignorance--we think that either the planes' guns have bad aim, or in Gaza such "strategic" military points don't exist.

We have never had the honor of visiting Palestine, but we suppose that people, men, women, children, and the elderly--not soldiers--lived in those houses, shacks, and buildings.

We also haven't seen the resistance's reinforcements, just rubble.

We have seen, however, the futile efforts of the information siege, and the world governments trying to decide between ignoring or applauding the invasion, and the UN, which has been useless for quite some time, sending out tepid press releases.

But wait. It just occurred to us that perhaps to the Israeli government those men, women, children, and elderly people are enemy soldiers, and as such, the shacks, houses, and buildings that they inhabited are barracks that need to be destroyed.

So surely the hail of bullets that fell on Gaza this morning were in order to protect the Israeli infantry's advance from those men, women, children, and elderly people.

And the enemy garrison that they want to weaken with the siege that is spread out all over Gaza is the Palestinian population that lives there. And the assault will seek to annihilate that population. And whichever man, woman, child, or elderly person that manages to escape or hide from the predictably bloody assault will later be "hunted" so that the cleansing is complete and the commanders in charge of the operation can report to their superiors: "We've completed the mission."

Again, pardon our ignorance, maybe what we're saying is beside the point. And instead of condemning the ongoing crime, being the indigenous and warriors that we are, we should be discussing and taking a position in the discussion about if it's "zionism" or "antisemitism," or if Hamas' bombs started it.

Maybe our thinking is very simple, and we're lacking the nuances and annotations that are always so necessary in analyses, but to the Zapatistas it looks like there's a professional army murdering a defenseless population.

Who from below and to the left can remain silent?

Is it useful to say something? Do our cries stop even one bomb? Does our word save the life of even one Palestinian?

We think that yes, it is useful. Maybe we don't stop a bomb and our word won't turn into an armored shield so that that 5.56 mm or 9 mm caliber bullet with the letters "IMI" or "Israeli Military Industry" etched into the base of the cartridge won't hit the chest of a girl or boy, but perhaps our word can manage to join forces with others in Mexico and the world and perhaps first it's heard as a murmur, then out loud, and then a scream that they hear in Gaza.

We don't know about you, but we Zapatistas from the EZLN, we know how important it is, in the middle of destruction and death, to hear some words of encouragement.

I don't know how to explain it, but it turns out that yes, words from afar might not stop a bomb, but it's as if a crack were opened in the black room of death and a tiny ray of light slips in.

As for everything else, what will happen will happen. The Israeli government will declare that it dealt a severe blow to terrorism, it will hide the magnitude of the massacre from its people, the large weapons manufacturers will have obtained economic support to face the crisis, and "the global public opinion," that malleable entity that is always in fashion, will turn away.

But that's not all. The Palestinian people will also resist and survive and continue struggling and will continue to have sympathy from below for their cause.

And perhaps a boy or girl from Gaza will survive, too. Perhaps they'll grow, and with them, their nerve, indignation, and rage. Perhaps they'll become soldiers or militiamen for one of the groups that struggle in Palestine. Perhaps they'll find themselves in combat with Israel. Perhaps they'll do it firing a gun. Perhaps sacrificing themselves with a belt of dynamite around their waists.

And then, from up there above, they will write about the Palestinians' violent nature and they'll make declarations condemning that violence and they'll get back to discussing if it's zionism or anti-semitism.

And no one will ask who planted that which is being harvested.

For the men, women, children, and elderly of the Zapatista National Liberation Army,

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, January 4, 2009.

In Spanish: De siembras y cosechas.

Tal vez lo que voy a decir no venga al caso de lo que es el tema central de esta mesa, o tal vez sí.

Hace dos días, el mismo en el que nuestra palabra se refirió a la violencia, la inefable Condoleezza Rice, funcionaria del gobierno norteamericano, declaró que lo que estaba pasando en Gaza era culpa de los palestinos, por su naturaleza violenta.

Los ríos subterráneos que recorren el mundo pueden cambiar de geografía, pero entonan el mismo canto.

Y el que ahora escuchamos es de guerra y de pena.

No muy lejos de aquí, en un lugar llamado Gaza, en Palestina, en Medio Oriente, aquí al lado, un ejército fuertemente armado y entrenado, el del gobierno de Israel, continúa su avance de muerte y destrucción.

Los pasos que ha seguido son, hasta ahora, los de una guerra militar clásica de conquista: primero un bombardeo intenso y masivo para destruir puntos militares ?neurálgicos? (así les dicen los manuales militares) y para ?ablandar? las fortificaciones de resistencia; después el férreo control sobre la información: todo lo que se escuche y vea ?en el mundo exterior?, es decir, externo al teatro de operaciones, debe ser seleccionado con criterios militares; ahora fuego intenso de artillería sobre la infantería enemiga para proteger el avance de las tropas a nuevas posiciones; después será el cerco y sitio para debilitar a la guarnición enemiga; después el asalto que conquiste la posición aniquilando al enemigo, después la ?limpieza? de los probables ?nidos de resistencia?.

El manual militar de guerra moderna, con algunas variaciones y agregados, está siendo seguido paso a paso por las fuerzas militares invasoras.

Nosotros no sabemos mucho de esto y, es seguro, hay especialistas sobre el llamado ?conflicto en Medio Oriente?, pero desde este rincón algo tenemos que decir:

Según las fotos de las agencias noticiosas, los puntos ?neurálgicos? destruidos por la aviación del gobierno de Israel son casas habitación, chozas, edificios civiles. No hemos visto ningún bunker, ni cuartel o aeropuerto militar, o batería de cañones, entre lo destruido. Entonces nosotros, disculpen nuestra ignorancia, pensamos que o los artilleros de los aviones tienen mala puntería o en Gaza no existen tales puntos militares ?neurálgicos?.

No tenemos el honor de conocer Palestina, pero nosotros suponemos que en esas casas, chozas y edificios habitaba gente, hombres, mujeres, niños y ancianos, y no soldados.

Tampoco hemos visto fortificaciones de resistencia, sólo escombros.

Hemos visto, sí, el hasta ahora vano esfuerzo de cerco informativo y a los distintos gobiernos del mundo dudando entre hacerse patos o aplaudir la invasión, y una ONU, ya inútil desde hace tiempo, sacando tibios boletines de prensa.

Pero esperen. Se nos ha ocurrido ahora que tal vez para el gobierno de Israel esos hombres, mujeres, niños y ancianos son soldados enemigos y, como tales, las chozas, casas y edificios donde habitan son cuarteles que hay que destruir.

Entonces seguramente los fuegos de artillería que esta madrugada caían sobre Gaza eran para proteger de esos hombres, mujeres, niños y ancianos el avance de la infantería del ejército de Israel.

Y la guarnición enemiga a la que quieren debilitar con el cerco y sitio que se está tendiendo en torno a Gaza no es otra cosa que la población palestina que ahí vive. Y que el asalto buscará aniquilar a esa población. Y que cualquier hombre, mujer, niño o anciano que logre escapar, escondiéndose, del asalto previsiblemente sangriento, será luego ?cazado? para que la limpieza se complete y el mando militar al mando de la operación pueda reportar a sus superiores ?hemos completado la misión?.

Disculpen de nuevo nuestra ignorancia, tal vez lo que estamos diciendo no venga, en efecto, al caso, o cosa, según. Y que en lugar de estar repudiando y condenando el crimen en curso, como indígenas y como guerreros que somos, deberíamos estar discutiendo y tomando posición en la discusión sobre si ?sionismo? o ?antisemitismo?, o que en el principio fueron las bombas de Hamas.

Tal vez nuestro pensamiento es muy sencillo, y nos faltan los matices y acotaciones tan necesarios siempre en los análisis pero, para nosotras, nosotros, zapatistas, en Gaza hay un ejército profesional asesinando a una población indefensa.

¿Quién que es abajo y a la izquierda puede permanecer callado?

¿Sirve decir algo? ¿Detienen alguna bomba nuestros gritos? Nuestra palabra, ¿salva la vida de algún niño palestino?

Nosotros pensamos que sí sirve, que tal vez no detengamos una bomba ni nuestra palabra se convierta en un escudo blindado que evite que esa bala calibre 5.56 mm o 9 mm, con las letras ?IMI?, ?Industria Militar Israelí? grabadas en la base del cartucho, llegue al pecho de una niña o un niño, porque tal vez nuestra palabra logre unirse a otras en México y el mundo y tal vez primero se convierta en murmullo, luego en voz alta, y después en un grito que escuchen en Gaza.

No sabemos ustedes, pero nosotros y nosotras, zapatistas del EZLN, sabemos lo importante que es, en medio de la destrucción y la muerte, escuchar unas palabras de aliento.

No sé cómo explicarlo, pero resulta que sí, que las palabras desde lejos tal vez no alcanzan a detener una bomba, pero son como si se abriera una grieta en la negra habitación de la muerte y una lucecita se colara.

Por lo demás, pasará lo que de por sí va a pasar. El gobierno de Israel declarará que le propinó un severo golpe al terrorismo, le ocultará a su pueblo la magnitud de la masacre, los grandes productores de armamento habrán obtenido un respiro económico para afrontar la crisis y ?la opinión pública mundial?, ese ente maleable y siempre a modo, volteará a mirar a otro lado.

Pero no sólo. También va a pasar que el pueblo Palestino va a resistir y a sobrevivir y a seguir luchando, y a seguir teniendo la simpatía de abajo por su causa.

Y, tal vez, un niño o una niña de Gaza sobrevivan también. Tal vez crezcan y, con ellos, el coraje, la indignación, la rabia. Tal vez se hagan soldados o milicianos de alguno de los grupos que luchan en Palestina. Tal vez se enfrente combatiendo a Israel. Tal vez lo haga disparando un fusil. Tal vez inmolándose con un cinturón de cartuchos de dinamita alrededor de su cintura.

Y entonces, allá arriba, escribirán sobre la naturaleza violenta de los palestinos y harán declaraciones condenando esa violencia y se volverá a discutir si sionismo o antisemitismo.

Y entonces nadie preguntará quién sembró lo que se cosecha.

Por los hombres, mujeres, niños y ancianos del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
México, 4 de enero del 2009.

Obama camp 'prepared to talk to Hamas'

2009-01-09T07:31:00.000-08:00

Thursday 08 January 2009
by: Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian UK

Incoming administration will abandon Bush's isolation of Islamist group to initiate low-level diplomacy, say transition sources.

Washington - The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon President Bush's doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas - which could be initiated through the US intelligence services - would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency's ostracising of the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp.

There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on in his administration, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive.

A tested course would be to start contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services - similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

Richard Haass, a diplomat under both presidents Bush who was named by a number of news organisations this week as Obama's choice for Middle East envoy, supports low level contacts with Hamas provided there is a ceasefire in place and a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation emerges.

Another potential contender for a foreign policy role in the Obama administration suggested the president-elect would not be bound by the Bush doctrine of isolating Hamas. "This is going to be an administration that is committed to negotiating with critical parties on critical issues," they said.

There are a number of options that would avoid a politically toxic scenario for Obama of seeming to give legitimacy to Hamas.

"Secret envoys, multilateral six-party talk-like approaches. The total isolation of Hamas that we promulgated under Bush is going to end," said Steve Clemons, the director of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation.

"You could do something through the Europeans. You could invent a structure that is multilateral. It is going to be hard for the Neocons to swallow," he said. "I think it is going to happen.

However, one Middle East expert close to the transition team warned: "It is highly unlikely that they will be public about it."

The two weeks since Israel launched its military campaign against Gaza have heightened anticipation about how Obama intends to deal with the Middle East. He adopted a strongly pro-Israel position during the election campaign, as did his erstwhile opponent and choice for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. However, it is widely thought Obama will adopt a more even-handed approach once he is president.

Obama's main priority now, in the remaining days before his inauguration, is to ensure the crisis does not rob him of the chance to set his own foreign policy agenda, rather than merely react to events.

"We will be perceived to be weak and feckless if we are perceived to be on the margins, unable to persuade the Israelis, unable to work with the international community to end this," said Aaron David Miller, a former state department adviser on the Middle East.

"Unless he is prepared to adopt a policy that is tougher, fairer and smarter than both of his predecessors you might as well hang a closed-for-the-season sign on any chance of America playing an effective role in defusing the current crisis or the broader crisis," he said.

Obama has defined himself in part by his willingness to talk to America's enemies. But the president-elect would be wary of being seen to give legitimacy to Hamas as a consequence of the war in Gaza.

Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at the Georgetown school of foreign service, said it was unlikely Obama would move to initiate contacts with Hamas unless the radical faction in Damascus was crippled by the conflict in Gaza. "This would really be dependent on Hamas's military wing having suffered a real, almost decisive, drubbing."

Even with such caveats, there is growing agreement, among Republicans as well as Democrats, on the need to engage Hamas to achieve a sustainable peace in the Middle East - even among Obama's close advisers.

In an article published on Wednesday on the website of Foreign Affairs, but apparently written before the fighting in Gaza, Haass, who is president of the Council on Foreign Relations writes: "If the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continues to hold and a Hamas-PA reconciliation emerges, the Obama administration should deal with the joint Palestinian leadership and authorise low-level contact between US officials and Hamas in Gaza."

The article was written with Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel and an adviser to the incoming secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

"The change of perceptions is underway," said Alistair Crooke, director of the Conflicts Forum who was a former security adviser to the EU's Middle East envoy. "However, it hasn't translated yet into something substantive."

Last month, General Anthony Zinni, who was Bush's envoy to the Middle East, called on Obama to enage Hamas and move quickly to reach a peace deal.

The willingness for conditional engagement with Hamas marks a sharp break with the world view of the Bush administration.

Obama has said repeatedly that restoring America's image in the world would rank among the top priorities of his administration, and there has been widespread praise for his choice of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and Jim Jones, the former Marine Corps commandant, as his national security adviser.

He is expected to demonstrate that commitment to charting a new foreign policy within days when the president-elect is expected to name a roster of envoys who will take charge of key foreign policy areas: Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, India-Pakistan, and North Korea.

Both Obama and Clinton adopted solidly pro-Israel positions during the election campaign. Last May, Obama sacked an adviser, Rob Malley, after it emerged he had met Hamas officials while working for the International Crisis Group.

In June, Obama told the Israeli lobbying group Aipac he supported Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. That runs contrary to longstanding policy that the future of Jerusalem be decided through negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians.

In a visit to Israel one month later, Obama said he identified with efforts to protect Israeli cities from Hamas rockets.

Obama has further frustrated and confused those who had been looking to the incoming administration for a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by his refusal to make any substantive comment on Israel's military campaign on Gaza, nearly two weeks on.

He told a press conference on Wednesday: "We cannot be sending a message to the world that there are two different administrations conducting foreign policy. Until I take office, it would be imprudent of me to start sending out signals that somehow we are running foreign policy when I am not legally authorised to do so."

He added: "This silence is not as a consequence of a lack of concern."

Brzezinski helps Educate Scarborough on Camp David Summit

2009-01-08T14:53:00.000-08:00

Morning Joe's very own Joe Scarborough demonstrates, firsthand, the pernicious effects of a nearly decade-long attempt to portray the Palestinians as the culprits in the breakdown of the Camp David Summit in July of 2000.

The lie has been repeated so often and disseminated so widely by conservative policy makers and pundits that it has become "common knowledge" in the public arena. Fortunately, former National Security Advisor, Zibigniew Brzezinski, helps educate and enlighten Mr. Scarborough.

This is a nice example of what can be done when one has informed policy makers working to resolve complex issues. Peace is possible.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Analysis: Legitimize Hamas, The Only Option

2009-01-04T23:08:00.001-08:00

The death toll in Gaza reached 500 today. Injuries are estimated at 2,500. By all measures, Israeli attacks reflect the very logic they are meant to destroy: terrorism. Contrary to the misguided arguments of U.S. officials like John Bolton, the former U.N. ambassador, the indiscriminate killing of civilians is unjustified. If self-defense involves disregard for the innocent or, as Hamas would argue, the inclusion of all innocents as combatants, then who’s the terrorist? The significance of this question has nothing to do with whether or not Israel has broken its moral code of respecting the innocent. Indeed, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians reveals very little concern for innocent civilian life. Land confiscation, extra-judicial assassinations, home demolitions, the use of human shields during military combat, and the detention of minors without charge or legal representation are just some of the Israeli state’s dealings with the Palestinians. The latest assault in Gaza thus constitutes another chapter in the ongoing story of Israeli colonization and oppression of the Palestinians.

Not all Israelis support colonization. Nor do all supporters of Israel approve of its oppression of the Palestinians. As recent demonstrations in Tel Aviv suggest, some Israelis are staunchly opposed to Israeli terrorism in Gaza. They want an immediate end to the violence and an end to the occupation of Palestinian lands. These Israelis understand that 60 years of statelessness and dispossession constitutes a fundamental injustice that Palestinians will not—indeed, should not—accept. But what of those who support the current invasion? Some who oppose Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians don’t object to its assault on Hamas. Opposing the Israeli occupation and aggression, they nevertheless see the Gaza attacks as the only solution to an irresolvable problem. According to this camp, Hamas rocket-fire reflects the group’s hatred of Israel and unwillingness to compromise. In the face of such an adversary, war is the only answer.

Let’s ignore the fact that some people’s love of Israel is a dogma. Behind this group’s closed eyes and sealed heart is the unshakable belief that Israel can do no wrong. Gaza, in their view, is nothing more than a justified war against a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel. Instead, I want to examine the dilemma faced by those whose love of Israel doesn’t translate into the hatred of Palestinians. Perhaps deceived by their government’s lies or uncertain about the available options, this camp believes that the war is a necessary evil. I think their dilemma is resolvable. To understand why, we need to come to terms with the fact that the choice to attack Hamas at the expense of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Palestinian lives represents an issue of legitimacy: the legitimacy of Hamas vs. the legitimacy of violence. Simply put, Israelis must decide whether to treat Hamas as a legitimate entity or legitimize the use of violence by destroying them.

Thus far, Israel and its supporters have decided on the legitimacy of violence. They believe that the violent assault on Gaza will eradicate Hamas, end rocket-fire into Israel, and teach Palestinians the valuable lesson of Israeli power. In the best of possible worlds, war-supporters believe that the unfortunate slaughter of Palestinian civilians will be ultimately resolved after Hamas is destroyed. Once the terrorists are out of the way, the paradise of peace will emerge from the ashes of Gaza and prove that terrible means justify beautiful ends. If not, at least Palestinians will remember that groups like Hamas will only bring them terrible consequences. Of course, this is far from an ideal world. Legitimizing violence through the destruction of Hamas—and consequently hundreds of civilians—has several consequences that can only further violence and undermine the confidence of the most optimistic war-supporter.

First, there is a basic problem of subjectivity. If both Hamas and Israel argue that their use of violence is justified because they are defending their people, exactly who has the moral ground? Judging from the overwhelming power of the Israeli military, its ceaseless colonization and 40-year occupation, and the significantly higher death-count amongst Palestinians over the last 9 years (well over 5,000 in Palestine, no more than 500 in Israel), one might say Hamas is a good candidate. Another problem for the war supporter is memory. Palestinians have a very good memory; partly because no one has given them a good reason to forget. The likelihood of Palestinians forgetting hundreds of civilian casualties is slim. What post-war paradise will help Palestinians like Samirah Baulusha, who lost five of her daughters to an Israeli air-strike, forget Israel’s violence? More importantly, who can guarantee that Israel’s war won’t encourage other Palestinians to pick up where Hamas left off? Furthermore, Israel’s violence risks reprisals from more than the Palestinians. Just one year ago, Israel fought a lethal war with Hizbillah, Lebanon’s Shiite movement supported by Iran. Given the widespread condemnation by Arabs and Muslim across the world, how can Israel prevent an attack from the outside?

Violence has a funny way of producing exactly what it’s used to tear down. There’s a very good chance that every Palestinian killed will become the fuel of another organization’s fire. Just consider the record. Not a single Hamas, Fatah, or Islamic Jihad assassination has successfully destroyed the movement. Moreover, despite the near annihilation of Jenin’s refugee camp in 2003, suicide bombings and resistance activities continued unabated. How can anyone expect the current round in violence to end future attacks on Israel? Worse still, if it doesn’t, exactly how much violence will be enough?

Besides violence, Israeli supporters have a second option: legitimizing Hamas. Ever since Hamas won the Palestinian elections, Israel, the U.S., E.U. and U.N. have done everything they can to deny the organization political recognition. Granted, from the Israeli perspective, Hamas’s militancy and suicide bombings make it a very unattractive peace partner. But Palestinians don’t have a choice in choosing their Israeli counterparts either. In 2000, for example, Palestinians swallowed the jagged pill of Arial Sharon, an Israeli prime minister responsible for the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, and began peace negotiations under the rubric of the Road Map. More importantly, Hamas’s participation in elections signaled a significant break with the organization’s charter. During the Oslo period, Hamas boycotted elections choosing to run its candidates as independents instead. Following their principle of non-negotiation with the Zionists, they refused to enter the political arena. That changed in 2006. Hamas broke with its own platform in order to enter the political arena as a democratically elected government. Following Hamas’s victory, Israel and its Western cohort abandoned the most promising opportunity to move Hamas from militancy to negotiations by refusing to recognize its government. Instead, Israel imposed a stiff policy of economic sanctions upon the entire people of Gaza for doing nothing more than exercising the democratic right to choose their own government. The U.S. and so-called Quartet followed Israel’s lead extending the legitimacy of Israel’s cruel sanctions to the international arena. Contrary to Israel’s expectations, Hamas remained a popular albeit beleaguered government.

Granting Hamas legitimate status as the Palestinian government has several advantages. First, it can be used as the basis of a cease-fire effective immediately. Given the destruction in Gaza, Hamas is likely to accept the offer. Second, by legitimizing Hamas as a political partner in world politics, there’s a good chance that Palestinians will hold them more accountable for their decisions. As it stands, Palestinians have no incentive to turn away from Hamas for the simple fact that they’ve never been given a chance. Let Hamas see what it stands to gain—and lose—if it fails to be an effective government and abandon its militancy. Palestinians are more likely to reject Hamas’s militancy if they can see the tangible results of negotiations. Lastly, by legitimizing Hamas as the Palestinian government, Israel is more likely to solve the conflict once and for all. Since its inception, Hamas has proven to be more practical than some would like to admit. In this regard, legitimizing Hamas and offering it meaningful opportunities for improving the lives of Palestinians and ending the conflict with Israel is likely to produce a qualitative change in its stance towards Israel. Thus far, Hamas has indicated its willingness to enter negotiations and offer limited recognition in exchange for an end to the occupation. Considering that Israel already has more than 78% of historic Palestine under its control, that’s not an unreasonable request. Indeed, it’s the same terms offered in the Arab Peace Plan of 2000.

In the current crisis, time is a luxury. Palestinians are dying by the hundreds and Israel and its supporters have little time to take a stand. For those who believe in violence, the stakes are high and bloodshed seems the likely consequence. For those who believe in peace, however, there is a painful yet obvious solution to the violence: dialogue. To make peace legitimate, you have to speak to your enemies. Hamas is ready. So should you.

Robert Fisk: The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act

2009-01-04T09:55:00.000-08:00

Robert Fisk for The Independent: There was a day when we worried about the "Arab masses" – the millions of "ordinary" Arabs on the streets of Cairo, Kuwait, Amman, Beirut – and their reaction to the constant bloodbaths in the Middle East. Could Anwar Sadat restrain the anger of his people? And now – after three decades of Hosni Mubarak – can Mubarak (or "La Vache Qui Rit", as he is still called in Cairo) restrain the anger of his people? The answer, of course, is that Egyptians and Kuwaitis and Jordanians will be allowed to shout in the streets of their capitals – but then they will be shut down, with the help of the tens of thousands of secret policemen and government militiamen who serve the princes and kings and elderly rulers of the Arab world.

Egyptians demand that Mubarak open the Rafah crossing-point into Gaza, break off diplomatic relations with Israel, even send weapons to Hamas. And there is a kind of perverse beauty in listening to the response of the Egyptian government: why not complain about the three gates which the Israelis refuse to open? And anyway, the Rafah crossing-point is politically controlled by the four powers that produced the "road map" for peace, including Britain and the US. Why blame Mubarak?

To admit that Egypt can't even open its sovereign border without permission from Washington tells you all you need to know about the powerlessness of the satraps that run the Middle East for us.

Open the Rafah gate – or break off relations with Israel – and Egypt's economic foundations crumble. Any Arab leader who took that kind of step will find that the West's economic and military support is withdrawn. Without subventions, Egypt is bankrupt. Of course, it works both ways. Individual Arab leaders are no longer going to make emotional gestures for anyone. When Sadat flew to Jerusalem – "I am tired of the dwarves," he said of his fellow Arab leaders – he paid the price with his own blood at the Cairo reviewing-stand where one of his own soldiers called him a "Pharaoh" before shooting him dead.

The true disgrace of Egypt, however, is not in its response to the slaughter in Gaza. It is the corruption that has become embedded in an Egyptian society where the idea of service – health, education, genuine security for ordinary people – has simply ceased to exist. It's a land where the first duty of the police is to protect the regime, where protesters are beaten up by the security police, where young women objecting to Mubarak's endless regime – likely to be passed on caliph-like to his son Gamal, whatever we may be told – are sexually molested by plain-clothes agents, where prisoners in the Tora-Tora complex are forced to rape each other by their guards.

There has developed in Egypt a kind of religious facade in which the meaning of Islam has become effaced by its physical representation. Egyptian civil "servants" and government officials are often scrupulous in their religious observances – yet they tolerate and connive in rigged elections, violations of the law and prison torture. A young American doctor described to me recently how in a Cairo hospital busy doctors merely blocked doors with plastic chairs to prevent access to patients. In November, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm reported how doctors abandoned their patients to attend prayers during Ramadan.

And amid all this, Egyptians have to live amid daily slaughter by their own shabby infrastructure. Alaa al-Aswani wrote eloquently in the Cairo paper Al-Dastour that the regime's "martyrs" outnumber all the dead of Egypt's wars against Israel – victims of railway accidents, ferry sinkings, the collapse of city buildings, sickness, cancers and pesticide poisonings – all victims, as Aswani says, "of the corruption and abuse of power". Opening the Rafah border-crossing for wounded Palestinians – the Palestinian medical staff being pushed back into their Gaza prison once the bloodied survivors of air raids have been dumped on Egyptian territory – is not going to change the midden in which Egyptians themselves live.

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah secretary general in Lebanon, felt able to call on Egyptians to "rise in their millions" to open the border with Gaza, but they will not do so. Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the feeble Egyptian Foreign Minister, could only taunt the Hizbollah leaders by accusing them of trying to provoke "an anarchy similar to the one they created in their own country."

But he is well-protected. So is President Mubarak.

Egypt's malaise is in many ways as dark as that of the Palestinians. Its impotence in the face of Gaza's suffering is a symbol of its own political sickness.

Analysis: When Aggressor Plays Aggrieved

2009-01-04T09:48:00.000-08:00

Islamica Magazine: In the first day of the New Year, Israel began its sixth round of aerial strikes against the Hamas government in Gaza. Thus far Israeli attacks have killed 485 Palestinians and injured another 2,285. The hospitals are overwhelmed with trauma cases and running short of staff and supplies. With ruthless precision, Israel has destroyed government infrastructure including the interior ministry, police academy, Islamic University, security prison, and presidential compound. It has also attacked residential areas killing scores of civilians including five of the Balousha family’s nine children. Beyond the casualties and destruction also lies the unquantifiable presence of fear and insecurity plaguing Gaza’s population. As Israeli reporter Amira Hass noted, the persistent sound of human screams, screeching missile-fire, and earth-shaking bombs have driven Palestinians from their homes into UNRWA schools seeking shelter and safety. No one is safe.

Perusing international press reports suggests that Hamas bears sole responsibility for Israel’s aggression. With few exceptions, the dominant story contains a melting-pot of colonial representations about native violence and Jewish victims. Hamas, the terrorist organization determined to eradicate the Jewish state, broke the cease-fire and assaulted its innocent Israeli neighbor. Faced with the irrational violence of its anti-Jewish, Arab-Muslim aggressors, the victimized Jewish state was forced to defend its citizens and existence by annihilating the terrorists. Never mind the fact that what Israel calls Hamas terrorists also happen to be government workers like police officers. Forget that air strikes against Hamas in the most densely populated area of the world exposes 1.5 million Palestinian civilians to the merciless effects of indiscriminate explosions. Also, ignore the inconvenient truth that while the Israeli military possesses 3,501 tanks, 393 combat aircrafts, 500,000 troops and a defense budget of $9.5 billion, Hamas’s measly army consists of zero tanks, zero fighter jets, less than 5,000 soldiers, and a defence budget of $50 million. Instead, remember that Israel is always the victim.

For their part, the Arab states and the Palestinian Authority in particular have done their best to uphold the colonial narrative and the time-tested strategy of divide and conquer. On the first day of Israel’s assault, Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas condemned the Hamas government for instigating the sleeping lion. It was Hamas’s intransigence and disdain for the peace process—not Israel’s routine incursions into the Gaza Strip during the ceasefire or its prison-like closure policies—that motivated Hamas rocket-fire and brought Israel’s wrath upon the people of Gaza. Reasserting his commitment to waging war with his own people even in times of apocalyptic violence, Abbas offered to fill the power vacuum should Hamas fall. Egypt was more forceful in its colonial duties. Sealing off Gaza’s border, the Mubarak government opened fire on Palestinians fleeing the Strip in search of safety and much-needed goods while declaring its solidarity with Palestinians by calling off New Year celebrations. With the exception of the so-called Arab street, where protestors in Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, and other Arab countries expressed their unequivocal condemnation of Israel’s aggression and dismay with government inaction, there has been little meaningful resistance by Arab and Muslim governments to Israel’s siege.

The picture in the West is hardly different. Blaming Hamas for the current destruction, U.S. politicians are fully supportive of Israel’s operations. The violence in Gaza, Bush administration officials have stated, is a reasonable response to Hamas rocket-fire. Despite his love of the law and Israel’s consistent violation of the Geneva Conventions, President-elect Barack Obama has remained conspicuously silent on the attacks using his senior advisor, David Axelrod, to speak instead. According to Axelrod, Obama “understands” Israel’s urge to respond to Hamas’s attacks. Consequently, Obama’s understanding, like Bush, doesn’t seem to extend beyond the colonial borders of the Jewish state. In Europe, neither France nor the U.K. has indicated any sense of repulsion towards the bombardment of Gaza. Like the former colonies, Gaza represents the white man’s burden of taming native violence for the greater good of Western civilization. In this equation, 400 dead Palestinians is a small sacrifice to make for the good of Israeli security and society.

Today, as Israel opens its ground offensive and reoccupation of Gaza, what the Israeli government, Palestinian Authority, U.S. and the E.U. don’t seem to understand is the obvious fact that partition doesn’t work. Indeed the tragedy of Israel’s assault on Gaza isn’t just the human casualties, terrible though they may be. The real tragedy is the uncompromising belief in the idea that division will ensure peace. For the last 80 years, since the pioneers of Zionist colonization set foot on the shores of Palestine during English colonial rule, partition has been the underlying structure of Jewish nationalism. The violence of Europe, it was argued, showed that Jews needed their own home. Fast forward to 1948 and we see that the banished Jews of Europe, much to the disappointment of the Palestinians, received their blessing: Israel. But despite the ideals of Zionist thinking and an international sympathy that ultimately privileged Jewish history over the Palestinian present, can we say that Jews are any safer today? A quick glance at the history of Israel suggests that they are not. From 1948 until today, Israel remains at war. Moreover, not a single effort to legitimize the division between Israelis and Palestinians, including the so-called peace process, has produced even the semblance of peace. Division, violence, and suffering remain the status quo for Palestinians and Israelis.

At some point, after Israel’s misguided fear and appetite for war reside, the siege of Gaza will end. When it does, we will need to revisit the lessons of history and the logic of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Division doesn’t work. The two-state delusion must be abandoned and the irrationality of partition with it. A bi-national, one-state solution and its underlying premise of integration must be declared and defended. Without a divided Israel, Gaza, and West Bank, what reason would Hamas have to exist? Remember that Hamas emerged during the occupation of Gaza. So did the PLO. It was the premise of partition, that is, the colonial logic of segregating people that had no reason to live apart, that rallied the cry of resistance and brought the region to war. Today, we desperately need a more sustained attempt to break with years of division and move towards the goals of integration. As long as Jews struggle to further divide themselves from their Christian and Muslim neighbors, peace cannot exist.

Dr. Michael Vicente-Perez is a writer and academic specializing on Palestinian issues.

Analysis: Obama's Silence on Gaza

2008-12-30T10:07:00.000-08:00

Huffington Post: Barack Obama must be given a lot of credit for his remarkable ascent to power, particularly in terms of the dignified way in which he did it. But there is a dark side to his rise to the Presidency, one progressives and liberals do not like to acknowledge.

Barack Obama had to do two things to persuade the powers that be that he was a viable candidate for President. The first was to assure the financial community that he would commit to a centrist economic platform, and the second was to sell out the Palestinians immediately and jump in bed with AIPAC.

Obama did both, and the consequences will be felt immediately. Economically, Obama has not surrounded himself with the type of people committed to real change. The enormous financial crisis has given him more room to move, but he won't do anything dramatic (like hold Wall St to account, or provide a meaningful bailout to the average American). The results during his Presidency will mean extraordinary pain for the middle classes and poor, while the burden is shifted from those who caused it. It would no doubt be worse under a Republican, but it will not be pleasant.

With the latest Israeli assault on the Gaza strip, Obama's wholesale sellout of the Palestinian people is being felt even more acutely. His unique position to speak up for a bitterly oppressed people has been wasted in the name of political convenience.

Western responses to the massacre has been pathetic to say the least. The U.S, U.K and European Union have done little to stop the Israelis pounding Gaza with it's hi tech weaponry, with the Bush Administration laying the blame squarely on Palestinians. "The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," said Condoleezza Rice. "The cease-fire should be restored immediately." Gordon Brown merely asked the Israelis to 'Show restraint'.

And Obama's response? A half hearted critique of Hamas through former campaign manager David Axelrod on CBS, where Obama's allegiance to Israel was reiterated and belief that Israel has the right to respond how it likes to Palestinian attacks.

One of the writers on my site, Hugo Foster has written a brilliant analysis of the Israeli action in the Gaza strip, explaining why the incursion is basically counterproductive and unnecessarily violent:

Publicly, Israel has stated it wants to create a new security environment, to deliver the 'knockout blow' that will definitively destroy Hamas' rocket-launching capability. To be sure, Hamas' military infrastructure has been truly battered in the past couple of days. Yet toppling Hamas' rule in Gaza is just not feasible. Logistically it would require precisely the sort of costly ground fighting that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have tried to avoid since they withdrew from the territory in 2005. And given the close proximity of military and civilian infrastructure in Gaza, it would inflict a level of human damage (beyond the 56 civilian lives already lost) that would eventually weaken tacit international support for Israel's 'right to self-defence', as happened belatedly in Lebanon two years ago.

The brash move by Israel was clearly taken due to the economic turmoil in the West. While we concern ourselves with job cuts, food shortages and plummeting house prices, Israel has taken brutal measures that even the most hawkish U.S politicians would have tried to avert.

Obama has massive political capital, and could have injected himself into the crisis before it happened. He did so during the beginning of the economic meltdown, and could have lent his credibility to a situation that has spiralled dangerously out of control. Obama has stated that 'There is only one President at a time', abdicating responsibility and essentially passing the buck.

Obama has pointed out the Qassan rockets Hamas has been firing into Israeli towns over recent months, but has failed to mention the illegal sanctions Israel has placed on Gazans, turning the already squalid land into a virtual prison of starvation and targeted assassinations.

The massacre over the past few days will enrage Palestinians further, strengthen Hamas, and solidify hatred towards Israel and the United States in the Arab world. If Obama wants meaningful change in the Middle East, he must start speaking up. For now, his silence is deafening.

Ben Cohen is the Editor of The Daily Banter.com

Analysis: From the Ashes of Gaza

2008-12-30T07:43:00.000-08:00

Tariq Ali: The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely, as Neve Gordon has rightly observed, to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the right and the far right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon in 2006, sit back and watch.

Washington, as is its wont, blames the pro-Hamas Palestinians, with Obama and Bush singing from the same AIPAC hymn sheet. The EU politicians, having observed the build-up, the siege, the collective punishment inflicted on Gaza, the targeting of civilians etc (for all the gory detail, see Harvard scholar Sara Roy's chilling essay in the London Review of Books) were convinced that it was the rocket attacks that had "provoked" Israel but called on both sides to end the violence, with nil effect. The moth-eaten Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt and Nato's favourite Islamists in Ankara failed to register even a symbolic protest by recalling their ambassadors from Israel. China and Russia did not convene a meeting of the UN security council to discuss the crisis.

As result of official apathy, one outcome of this latest attack will be to inflame Muslim communities throughout the world and swell the ranks of those very organisations that the west claims it is combating in the "war against terror".

The bloodshed in Gaza raises broader strategic questions for both sides, issues related to recent history. One fact that needs to be recognised is that there is no Palestinian Authority. There never was one. The Oslo Accords were an unmitigated disaster for the Palestinians, creating a set of disconnected and shrivelled Palestinian ghettoes under the permanent watch of a brutal enforcer. The PLO, once the repository of Palestinian hope, became little more than a supplicant for EU money.

Western enthusiasm for democracy stops when those opposed to its policies are elected to office. The west and Israel tried everything to secure a Fatah victory: Palestinian voters rebuffed the concerted threats and bribes of the "international community" in a campaign that saw Hamas members and other oppositionists routinely detained or assaulted by the IDF, their posters confiscated or destroyed, US and EU funds channelled into the Fatah campaign, and US congressmen announcing that Hamas should not be allowed to run.

Even the timing of the election was set by the determination to rig the outcome. Scheduled for the summer of 2005, it was delayed till January 2006 to give Abbas time to distribute assets in Gaza – in the words of an Egyptian intelligence officer, "the public will then support the Authority against Hamas."

Popular desire for a clean broom after ten years of corruption, bullying and bluster under Fatah proved stronger than all of this. Hamas's electoral triumph was treated as an ominous sign of rising fundamentalism, and a fearsome blow to the prospects of peace with Israel, by rulers and journalists across the Atlantic world. Immediate financial and diplomatic pressures were applied to force Hamas to adopt the same policies as those of the party it had defeated at the polls. Uncompromised by the Palestinian Authority's combination of greed and dependency, the self-enrichment of its servile spokesmen and policemen, and their acquiescence in a "peace process" that has brought only further expropriation and misery to the population under them, Hamas offered the alternative of a simple example. Without any of the resources of its rival, it set up clinics, schools, hospitals, vocational training and welfare programmes for the poor. Its leaders and cadres lived frugally, within reach of ordinary people.

It is this response to everyday needs that has won Hamas the broad base of its support, not daily recitation of verses from the Koran. How far its conduct in the second Intifada has given it an additional degree of credibility is less clear. Its armed attacks on Israel, like those of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or Islamic Jihad, have been retaliations against an occupation far more deadly than any actions it has ever undertaken. Measured on the scale of IDF killings, Palestinian strikes have been few and far between. The asymmetry was starkly exposed during Hamas's unilateral ceasefire, begun in June 2003, and maintained throughout the summer, despite the Israeli campaign of raids and mass arrests that followed, in which some 300 Hamas cadres were seized from the West Bank.

On August 19 2003, a self-proclaimed "Hamas" cell from Hebron, disowned and denounced by the official leadership, blew up a bus in west Jerusalem, upon which Israel promptly assassinated the Hamas ceasefire's negotiator, Ismail Abu Shanab. Hamas, in turn, responded. In return, the Palestinian Authority and Arab states cut funding to its charities and, in September 2003, the EU declared the whole Hamas movement to be a terrorist organization – a longstanding demand of Tel Aviv.

What has actually distinguished Hamas in a hopelessly unequal combat is not dispatch of suicide bombers, to which a range of competing groups resorted, but its superior discipline – demonstrated by its ability to enforce a self-declared ceasefire against Israel over the past year. All civilian deaths are to be condemned, but since Israel is their principal practitioner, Euro-American cant serves only to expose those who utter it. Overwhelmingly, the boot of murder is on the other foot, ruthlessly stamped into Palestine by a modern army equipped with jets, tanks and missiles in the longest-armed oppression of modern history.

"Nobody can reject or condemn the revolt of a people that has been suffering under military occupation for 45 years against occupation force," said General Shlomo Gazit, former chief of Israeli military intelligence, in 1993. The real grievance of the EU and US against Hamas is that it refused to accept the capitulation of the Oslo Accords, and has rejected every subsequent effort, from Taba to Geneva, to pass off their calamities on the Palestinians. The west's priority ever since was to break this resistance. Cutting off funding to the Palestinian Authority is an obvious weapon with which to bludgeon Hamas into submission. Boosting the presidential powers of Abbas – as publicly picked for his post by Washington, as was Karzai in Kabul – at the expense of the legislative council is another.

No serious efforts were made to negotiate with the elected Palestinian leadership. I doubt if Hamas could have been rapidly suborned to western and Israeli interests, but it would not have been unprecedented. Hamas' programmatic heritage remains mortgaged to the most fatal weakness of Palestinian nationalism: the belief that the political choices before it are either rejection of the existence of Israel altogether or acceptance of the dismembered remnants of a fifth of the country. From the fantasy maximalism of the first to the pathetic minimalism of the second, the path is all too short, as the history of Fatah has shown.

The test for Hamas is not whether it can be house-trained to the satisfaction of western opinion, but whether it can break with this crippling tradition. Soon after the Hamas election victory in Gaza, I was asked in public by a Palestinian what I would do in their place. "Dissolve the Palestinian Authority" was my response and end the make-believe. To do so would situate the Palestinian national cause on its proper basis, with the demand that the country and its resources be divided equitably, in proportion to two populations that are equal in size – not 80% to one and 20% to the other, a dispossession of such iniquity that no self-respecting people will ever submit to it in the long run. The only acceptable alternative is a single state for Jews and Palestinians alike, in which the exactions of Zionism are repaired. There is no other way.

And Israeli citizens might ponder the following words from Shakespeare (in The Merchant of Venice), which I have slightly altered:

"I am a Palestinian. Hath not a Palestinian eyes? Hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Jew is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that … the villainy you teach me, I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

Analysis: Richard Falk on Israel's War Crimes

2008-12-29T13:09:00.000-08:00

Memo from The Nation:

The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

Those violations include:

• Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

• Targeting civilians: The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

• Disproportionate military response: The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.

Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel's escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.

Israel has also ignored recent Hamas diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December.

The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

I remind all Member States of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law--regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.

Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University, is the United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied Territories and a member of The Nation editorial board. He is the author of many books, including The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order After Iraq.

Analysis: John Nichols from The Nation

2008-12-29T13:03:00.001-08:00

The Nation: An Israeli air assault on Palestinian targets in Gaza has taken an estimated 300 lives over the course of the past several days, and the death toll is mounting rapidly. Dozens of children have been killed, confirming that there is nothing "surgical" about these strikes.

Most U.S. media coverage portrays a simple struggle between Israelis on the one side and Gaza's Hamas militants on the other. This is the line that is being advanced aggressively by the Bush administration and that has effectively been accepted by President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, which is maintaining its "Bush speaks for the U.S. until January 20" line even as the crisis mounts. Following Bush's lead, Obama has refused to call for a more nuanced and effective U.S. response to an escalation of the Middle East conflict that Palestinian parliamentarian Mustafa Barghouti on Sunday described as the worst since the 1967 war in the region.

Obama and his aides should be openly counseling the Bush administration to use every diplomatic avenue to promote a ceasefire and, above all, to urge against an Israeli invasion and occupation of Gaza.

Unfortunately, the president-elect is doing nothing of the sort. Some may imagine that this disengaged approach confirms Obama as a true "friend of Israel."

But Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of the U.S.-based pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy group J Street, argues that: "While (the recent) air strikes by Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza can be understood and even justified in the wake of recent rocket attacks, we believe that real friends of Israel recognize that escalating the conflict will prove counterproductive, igniting further anger in the region and damaging long-term prospects for peace and stability. Respecting Israel's right to defend itself, we urge leaders there to recognize that there is no military solution to what is fundamentally a political conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples."

That sentiment is echoed in Israeli, where many war-weary citizens are objecting to their government's escalation of a simmering conflict.

While moves to prevent rocket attacks on Israeli targets that have been launched from Gaza enjoy broad popular support in Israel, there is good deal of genuine concern about the prospect that Israeli forces might invade and occupy all or part of Gaza.

A substantial crowd of Israelis – estimated at 2,000 by organizers -- rallied in Tel Aviv Saturday to protest their country's attacks on Gaza and to call for an immediate ceasefire. Chanting "No to War – Yes to Peace," the protesters carried signs urging "Negotiation Instead of Slaughter" and calling on Israeli leaders to "Lift the Siege from Gaza".

"(We) are not destined to be the victim of history," says Israeli parliamentarian Dov Khenin, who has spoken at several anti-war rallies in recent days.

Khenin argues that, "A comprehensive war in Gaza is dangerous and unnecessary and will put the lives of thousands of Gazans and western Negev residents (of Israel) at risk. War is not the solution to (concerns about rocket attacks on Israeli targets by Hamas militants). There is another way: a real truce agreement. Not just a cease-fire, but also ending the Gaza blockade and easing the extreme suffering of a million-and-a-half people."

Unfortunately, the "comprehensive war" that Khenin fears seems increasingly likely. Writer Gideon Levy argues that Israel has already "embarked… on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war."

"Once again, Israel's violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom," Levy wrote in Monday's editions of Israel's oldest daily newspaper, Haaretz.

The same paper carried an editorial calling for "a diplomatic move whose goal is a genuine cessation of fire."

The headline on the Haaretz editorial read: "Defend, Don't Invade."

In the U.S., the group Jewish Voice for Peace called for "an immediate end to attacks on all civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli."

JVP goes on to argue that:

Israel's slow strangulation of Gaza through blockade has caused widespread suffering to the 1.5 million people of Gaza due to lack of food, electricity, water treatment supplies and medical equipment. It is a violation of humanitarian law and has been widely condemned around the world.

In resisting this strangulation, Hamas resumed launching rockets and mortars from Gaza into southern Israel, directly targeting civilians, which is also a war crime. Over the years, these poorly made rockets have been responsible for the deaths of 15 Israelis since 2004.

Every country, Israel included, has the right and obligation to protect its citizens. The recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza shows that diplomatic agreements are the best protection for civilian life.

Moreover, massive Israeli air strikes have proven an indiscriminate and brutal weapon. In just two days, the known death toll is close to 300, and the attacks are continuing. By targeting the infrastructure of a poor and densely populated area, Israel has ensured widespread civilian casualties among this already suffering and vulnerable population.

This massive destruction of Palestinian life will not protect the citizens of Israel. It is illegal and immoral and should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. And it threatens to ignite the West Bank and add flames to the other fires burning in the Middle East and beyond for years to come.

The timing of this attack, during the waning days of a US administration that has undertaken a catastrophic policy toward the Middle East and during the run-up to an Israeli election, suggests an opportunistic agenda for short-term political gain at an immense cost in Palestinian lives. In the long run this policy will benefit no-one except those who always profit from war and exploitation. Only a just and lasting peace, achieved through a negotiated agreement, can provide both Palestinians and Israelis the security they want and deserve.

Americans for Peace Now, which works in solidarity with Israeli supporters of diplomatic responses to the Middle East conflict, on Sunday called upon U.S. officials to "urgently engage with Israel, regional parties, and the international community to bring about an immediate halt to the rapidly escalating hostilities in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel." Said Americans for Peace Now president Debra DeLee, "Any real resolution to this crisis will require Israel and Hamas to engage, directly or indirectly, to achieve a ceasefire and to further engage in a post-ceasefire political process."

"While we hold – as we always have – that Israel has the right and the obligation to protect its citizens from attack and threats," added DeLee, "we know that military power alone will not provide real, long term remedy for the threat that the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip poses to Israel. Israel needs stability on its border with Gaza. Such stability can only be achieved through a political process."

This is just another truth about the Middle East that the Bush administration continues to deny.

The Obama transition team – and the Obama administration that will soon end Bush's reign of error -- should end the state of denial and act as candidate Obama said he would when he declared that, "As President, I will work to help Israel achieve the goal of two states, a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security. And I won't wait until the waning days of my presidency. I will take an active role, and make a personal commitment to do all I can to advance the cause of peace from the start of my Administration…The United States must be a strong and consistent partner in this process - not to force concessions, but to help committed partners avoid stalemate and the kind of vacuums that are filled by violence. That's what I commit to do as President of the United States."

As with the economy, events have forced Obama's hand. The president-elect cannot wait until he swears his oath of office to "take an active role" is advancing the peace process.

Of course, Obama only has the bully pulpit at this point. And he must use it judiciously. But neglecting to engage at this critical stage sends the wrong message about the seriousness with which Obama will pursue that "active role" once he has the power that goes with the pulpit.

At the very least, Obama and his aides should publicly embrace the spot-on message of J Street's Ben-Ami:

The need for diplomatic engagement goes beyond a short-term ceasefire. Eight years of American neglect and ineffective diplomacy have led us directly to a moment when the prospects of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hang in the balance and with them the prospects for Israel's long-term survival as a Jewish, democratic state.

We urge the incoming Obama administration to lead an early and serious effort to achieve a comprehensive diplomatic resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts.

This is a fundamental American interest as we too stand to suffer as the situation spirals, rage in the region is directed at the United States, and our regional allies are further undermined. Our goals must be a Middle East that moves beyond bloody conflicts, an Israel that is secure and accepted in the region, and an America secured by reducing extremism and enhancing stability. None of these goals are achieved by further escalation.

Even in the heat of battle, as friends and supporters of Israel, we need to remember that only diplomacy and negotiations can end the rockets and terror and bring Israel long-term security and peace.

War on Gaza: Update

2008-12-29T08:04:00.000-08:00

Al Jazeera Reports: Israel's military is in an "all-out war" with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Ehud Barak, the defence minister, says.

Palestinian medical sources say at least 330 Gazans have been killed and another 1,450 wounded in three consecutive days of Israeli bombardment in the heavily-populated territory.

"We have nothing against Gaza residents, but we are engaged in an all-out war against Hamas and its proxies," Barak said on Monday.

There were also growing fears that a ground offensive was being planned after Israel declared a "closed military zone" around the Gaza Strip.

Israel says the creation of a buffer zone along the border will help protect it from rocket attacks.

Civilians, including journalists, could be banned from an area between 2km and 4km deep under the policy. On previous occasions, such a move has sometimes been followed by military operations.

"This operation will expand and deepen as much as needed," Barak said. "We went to war to deal a heavy blow to Hamas, to change the situation in the south."

American Discourse on Israel and the Limits of Truth

2008-12-28T23:24:00.000-08:00

Glenn Greenwald from Salon: Opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are so entrenched that any single outbreak of violence is automatically evaluated through a pre-existing lens, shaped by one's typically immovable beliefs about which side bears most of the blame for the conflict generally or "who started it."

Still, any minimally decent human being -- even those who view the world through the most blindingly pro-Israeli lens possible, the ones who justify anything and everything Israel does, and who discuss these events with a bottomless emphasis on the primitive (though dangerous) rockets lobbed by Hamas into Southern Israel but without even mentioning the ongoing four-decades brutal occupation or the recent, grotesquely inhumane blockade of Gaza -- would find the slaughter of scores of innocent Palestinians to be a horrible and deeply lamentable event.

But not The New Republic's Marty Peretz. Here is his uniquely despicable view of the events of the last couple of days:

So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews.

"Do not fuck with the Jews." And what of the several hundred Palestinian dead -- including numerous children -- and many hundreds more seriously wounded?

Israeli intelligence reported 225 people dead, mostly Hamas military leaders with some functionaries, besides, and perhaps 400 wounded. The Palestinians announced 300 dead, probably as a reflex in order to begin their whining about disproportionate Israeli acts of war. And 600 wounded.

Objections to the Israeli attack are just "whining." Those are the words of a psychopath. And what to do now?

Frankly, I am up to my gullet with this reflex criticism of Israel as going beyond proportionality in its responses to war waged against its population with the undisguised intention of putting an end to the political expression of the Jewish nation. . . .
The current warfare will go on a bit longer. If there is a pause and if I were giving advice to the Israelis, this is what I would say to Hamas and to the people of Gaza: "If a rocket or missile is launched against us, if you take captive one of our soldiers (as you have held one for two and a half years), if you raise a new Intifada against us, there will be an immediate response. And it will be very disproportionate. Proportion does not work."

This super-tough-guy warrior -- whose prime accomplishment in life was marrying an heiress and then using her family's money to buy himself The New Republic -- beats his chest and threatens that even a single Palestinian act in response to this bombing campaign will provoke still more massive retaliation in the form of collective punishment (which, not that anyone cares, happens to be a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, as are Hamas' far less harmful rocket attacks on Israeli civilians).

It may be true that, as Eric Alterman put it in his seminal article on Marty Pertez (quoting Ezra Klein), "Peretz is rarely held to account, largely because there's an odd, tacit understanding that he's a cartoonish character and everyone knows it." But how unusual are Peretz's views, revolting as they are, in the American political mainstream? He certainly expresses anti-Arab hatred and bigotry more bluntly than most, but this reflexive support for anything and everything Israel does is anything but unique in our political debates.

Here, as but one illustrative example, is Caroline Kennedy -- who, in order to win her Senate seat, is self-consciously trying to turn herself into a Barack Obama clone -- responding recently to a question about Israel from Politico:

QUESTION 8: Do you think Israel should negotiate with Hamas? Do you agree with Israel's Gaza Strip embargo? Would you support an Israeli airstrike on Iran if they felt Tehran's nuclear program represented a threat to their survival?

ANSWER: "Caroline Kennedy strongly supports a safe and secure Israel. She believe Israel's security decisions should be left to Israel."

What could be more absurd than that? Apparently, not only should we continue to feed Israel billions of dollars a year of American taxpayer money and massive amounts of weapons -- thereby ensuring that the world, quite accurately, perceives their actions as American actions -- but we should then take the position that they are free to do anything they want with it, no matter how extreme or destructive to our interests, and our only view on all of it should be that we blindly support whatever they do. Or, as Clinton aide Ann Lewis put it during the primaries, in response to Obama's observation that he needn't have a "Likud view in order to be pro-Israel":

The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties.

Yesterday, the Bush administration applied this mindset, naturally, by expressing unequivocal support for Israel and heaped all blame on Hamas. And, needless to say, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed the administration's view:

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi issued a statement concerning the Israeli operation in Gaza in which she wrote that "When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally."

According to Pelosi, "Peace between Israelis and Palestinians cannot result from daily barrages of rocket and mortar fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza. Hamas and its supporters must understand that Gaza cannot and will not be allowed to be a sanctuary for attacks on Israel."

Not a word of condemnation of the Israeli blockade -- which has caused extreme suffering and deprivation in Gaza -- or of the massively disproportionate response or the ongoing and ever-expanding Israeli occupation. It is all one-sided support for whatever Israel does from our political class, and one-sided condemnation of Israel's enemies (who are, ipso facto, American enemies) -- all of it, as usual, sharply divergent from the consensus in much of the rest of the world.

It would be nice if U.S. citizens weren't connected to and responsible for every Israeli military action, so that we really could and should take the attitude that what the Israeli Government does -- or what is done to it -- is not our responsibility. That's how it should be.

Instead, since we fund a huge bulk of it and supply the weapons used for much of it and use our veto power at the U.N. to enable all of it, we are connected to it -- intimately -- and bear responsibility for all of Israel's various wars, including the current overwhelming assault on Gaza, as much as Israelis themselves. Blind support for whatever they do -- the consensus view in American political life in both parties -- is therefore a total abdication of our responsibility.

It remains to be seen if Barack Obama intends to deviate even a small amount from what has been decades of excessively loyal U.S. support for Israel -- which, over the last eight years, transformed into truly blind and absolute support for anything they do. It's impossible to know for sure until Obama is inaugurated, but the bipartisan, purely "pro-Israel" statements issued by his allies -- such as Caroline Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi -- don't bode well, nor do the statements which Obama himself made during the campaign, as compiled yesterday by Salon's Mark Schone:

The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if -- I don't even care if I was a politician -- if somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.

Can't the exact same mentality be deployed to justify everything Hamas has done and is doing, to wit: "if a foreign power were brutally occupying my country for four decades -- or blockading my country and denying my children medical needs and nutrition and the ability even to exit -- I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Palestinians to do the same thing"? But the last thing that our political class ever extends is reciprocal, two-sided analysis to this dispute.

The suffocating bipartisan orthodoxies in the U.S. regarding Israel thus make virtually impossible what the new Jewish-American group, J Street -- in condemning the attack (even while calling it "justifiable") because it "will deepen the cycle of violence in the region" -- urges:

"immediate, strong diplomatic intervention by the United States, the Quartet and allies in the region to negotiate a resumption of the ceasefire."

Most of our political elites know enough to avoid the ugly language of Marty Peretz, but the ultimate policy positions aren't much different.

UPDATE: Without necessarily endorsing all of it, I want to recommend very highly this column by Israeli Gideon Levy in Haaretz, entitled "The neighborhood bully strikes again." What's most striking about it is that this scathing criticism of Israel's behavior can -- and does -- appear in one of Israel's leading newspapers, but not a paragraph of it could ever be uttered by any American politician, in either party, of any national prominence.

UPDATE II: Here's Rep. Howard Berman, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and a Democrat, echoing Nancy Pelosi, George Bush and virtually every other key American political official:

Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week. No government in the world would sit by and allow its citizens to be subjected to this kind of indiscriminate bombardment. The loss of innocent life is a terrible tragedy, and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas.

One can travel from the farthest right fringe of the GOP to the heart of the Democratic Party leadership and hear exactly the same thing: Israel is always right. Israel must not be criticized. Israel never bears any blame. Any action taken by Israel is justified. No matter the situation, that just gets repeated over and over like some hypnotic bipartisan mantra. Meanwhile, American citizens overwhelmingly -- 71% -- want their Government to be "even-handed" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet that view is simply ignored, disregarded, not even viable for any American mainstream political leader to express.

Robert Fisk on Gaza

2008-12-28T22:47:00.000-08:00

From the Independent: We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more – providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs – who, as we all know, only understand force.

Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis – just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist "death wagon" will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be "liberated". And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.

The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel's anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas's anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which ... See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and ... Got it? And we demand security for Israel – rightly – but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was "under siege" – as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv.

By last night, the exchange rate stood at 296 Palestinians dead for one dead Israeli. Back in 2006, it was 10 Lebanese dead for one Israeli dead. This weekend was the most inflationary exchange rate in a single day since – the 1973 Middle East War? The 1967 Six Day War? The 1956 Suez War? The 1948 Independence/Nakba War? It's obscene, a gruesome game – which Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, unconsciously admitted when he spoke this weekend to Fox TV. "Our intention is to totally change the rules of the game," Barak said.

Exactly. Only the "rules" of the game don't change. This is a further slippage on the Arab-Israeli exchanges, a percentage slide more awesome than Wall Street's crashing shares, though of not much interest in the US which – let us remember – made the F-18s and the Hellfire missiles which the Bush administration pleads with Israel to use sparingly.

Quite a lot of the dead this weekend appear to have been Hamas members, but what is it supposed to solve? Is Hamas going to say: "Wow, this blitz is awesome – we'd better recognise the state of Israel, fall in line with the Palestinian Authority, lay down our weapons and pray we are taken prisoner and locked up indefinitely and support a new American 'peace process' in the Middle East!" Is that what the Israelis and the Americans and Gordon Brown think Hamas is going to do?

Yes, let's remember Hamas's cynicism, the cynicism of all armed Islamist groups. Their need for Muslim martyrs is as crucial to them as Israel's need to create them. The lesson Israel thinks it is teaching – come to heel or we will crush you – is not the lesson Hamas is learning. Hamas needs violence to emphasise the oppression of the Palestinians – and relies on Israel to provide it. A few rockets into Israel and Israel obliges.

Not a whimper from Tony Blair, the peace envoy to the Middle East who's never been to Gaza in his current incarnation. Not a bloody word.

We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them". Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.

Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated "terrorism". So what was the reaction last night? The Israelis threaten ground attacks. Hamas waits for another battle. Our Western politicians crouch in their funk holes. And somewhere to the east – in a cave? a basement? on a mountainside? – a well-known man in a turban smiles.

Amnesty International Calls for End to Gaza Violence

2008-12-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

Amnesty International calls on Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups to immediately halt the unlawful attacks carried out as part of the escalation of violence which has caused the death of some 280 Palestinians and one Israeli civilian since December 27.

This is the highest level of Palestinian fatalities and casualties in four decades of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Scores of unarmed civilians, as well as police personnel who were not directly participating in the hostilities, are among the Palestinian victims of the Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip.

"Such disproportionate use of force by Israel is unlawful and risks igniting further violence in the whole region,” said Amnesty International. “The escalation of violence comes at a time when the civilian population already faces a daily struggle for survival due to the Israeli blockade which has prevented even food and medicines from entering Gaza.”

"Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, for their part, share responsibility for the escalation. Their continuous rocket attacks on towns and villages in southern Israel are unlawful and can never be justified,” Amnesty International said.

"The international community must intervene without delay to ensure that civilians caught up in the violence are protected and that the blockade on Gaza is lifted."

This latest Israeli onslaught brings the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces this year to some 650, at least a third of whom are unarmed civilians, including 70 children. In the same period, Palestinian armed groups have killed 25 Israelis, 16 of them civilians, including four children. In the past eight years the Israeli-Palestinian violence has cost the lives of some 5,000 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis. Most of the victims on both sides have been unarmed civilians, including some 900 Palestinian and 120 Israeli children.

In recent weeks UN agencies, on whose food handouts 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants depend, have repeatedly complained about the Israeli authorities’ refusal to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

The Israeli blockade meant that the recent five-and-a-half-month ceasefire between Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, Gaza residents experienced little or no improvement to their lives. The ceasefire effectively ended after six Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza force on 4 November and a barrage of Palestinians rockets were launched on nearby towns and villages in the south of Israel.

PA (Abbas) Ready to Take Gaza if Hamas Destroyed

2008-12-28T12:29:00.001-08:00

It appears that Palestinian President, Mahmood Abbas, is prepared to take Gaza if--and this is a very troubling "if"--Hamas falls. This news is troubling because, in light of the Haaretz report in the previous post, it suggests that Abbas may have known of the strikes in advance and/or that he stands to gain if the strikes successfully weaken Hamas.

A nefarious alliance seems to be at play here. Going back to Vanity Fair's coverage of the Hamas/Fatah struggle over Gaza, we find that, long ago, Israel, the US, and the PA were working together to undermine the democratically elected Hamas governmnet through violence. Fast forward and we find that this alliance may still be at play.

First, we have the Haaretz report suggesting that Israel planned the strike months ago. In this case, the assault was strategically planned to mask Israel's goal to destory Hamas by facilitating the breakdown of the cease-fire and using Hamas's rocket attacks as the pretense for the invasion.

Second, we have Abbas's condemnation of Hamas, not Israel, and his expressed readiness to take Gaza--by force if necessary--from Hamas.

Third, we have the US offering support for Israel's attack and, given their past involvement in the Hamas/Fatah war, an opportunity to remake the conditions of the so-called peace process by eradicating Hamas.

Let's recall that Hamas was elected. Let's also recall that the PA has consistently failed the Palestinian people and futher divided the people through its rejection of Hamas's victory.

Here's the report:

Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah said Saturday that they were prepared to assume control over the Gaza Strip if Israel succeeds in overthrowing the Hamas government.

"Yes, we are fully prepared to return to the Gaza Strip," a top PA official told The Jerusalem Post. "We believe the people there are fed up with Hamas and want to see a new government."
Another PA official said Fatah had instructed all its members in the Gaza Strip to be prepared for the possibility of returning to power.

"We have enough men in the Gaza Strip who are ready to fill the vacuum," he said. "But of course all this depends on whether Israel manages to get rid of the Hamas regime."

The two officials voiced hope that the current IDF operation would end Hamas rule in Gaza.

They said that the PA was also prepared to dispatch security forces from the West Bank to replace the Hamas militiamen.

However, they denied Hamas allegations that the PA had urged Israel to launch a massive attack to overthrow the Hamas government.

Also Saturday, Fatah called on its supporters in the Strip to storm Hamas-controlled prisons to release Fatah detainees. The call came as most of Hamas's security installations were demolished by IAF planes.

Fatah representatives in the West Bank said that Hamas was holding more than 250 Fatah men in its various prisons throughout the Gaza Strip. They expressed fear that Hamas would use the detainees as human shields against the Israeli air strikes.

Israeli Press Reports that Israeli Assault on Gaza Planned Months Ago

2008-12-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

Haaretz Reports: Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces "Cast Lead" operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning.

The disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.

Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.

Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip.

This intelligence-gathering effort brought back information about permanent bases, weapon silos, training camps, the homes of senior officials and coordinates for other facilities.

The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops.

On November 19, following dozens of Qassam rockets and mortar rounds which exploded on Israeli soil, the plan was brought for Barak's final approval. Last Thursday, on December 18, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the defense minister met at IDF headquarters in central Tel Aviv to approve the operation.

However, they decided to put the mission on hold to see whether Hamas would hold its fire after the expiration of the ceasefire. They therefore put off bringing the plan for the cabinet's approval, but they did inform Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the developments.

That night, in speaking to the media, sources in the Prime Minister's Bureau said that "if the shooting from Gaza continues, the showdown with Hamas would be inevitable." On the weekend, several ministers in Olmert's cabinet inveighed against him and against Barak for not retaliating for Hamas' Qassam launches.

"This chatter would have made Entebe or the Six Day War impossible," Barak said in responding to the accusations. The cabinet was eventually convened on Wednesday, but the Prime Minister's Bureau misinformed the media in stating the discussion would revolve around global jihad. The ministers learned only that morning that the discussion would actually pertain to the operation in Gaza.

In its summary announcement for the discussion, the Prime Minister's Bureau devoted one line to the situation in Gaza, compared to one whole page that concerned the outlawing of 35 Islamic organizations.

What actually went on at the cabinet meeting was a five-hour discussion about the operation in which ministers were briefed about the various blueprints and plans of action. "It was a very detailed review," one minister said.

The minister added: "Everyone fully understood what sort of period we were heading into and what sort of scenarios this could lead to. No one could say that he or she did not know what they were voting on." The minister also said that the discussion showed that the lessons of the Winograd Committee about the performance of decision-makers during the 2006 Second Lebanon War were "fully internalized."

At the end of the discussion, the ministers unanimously voted in favor of the strike, leaving it for the prime minister, the defense minister and the foreign minister to work out the exact time.

While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the operation, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, that Israel had decided to strike at Hamas.

In parallel, Israel continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip and that Olmert would decide whether to launch the strike following three more deliberations on Sunday - one day after the actual order to launch the operation was issued.

"Hamas evacuated all its headquarter personnel after the cabinet meeting on Wednesday," one defense official said, "but the organization sent its people back in when they heard that everything was put on hold until Sunday."

The final decision was made on Friday morning, when Barak met with Chief of Staff General Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the Shin Bet Security Service Yuval Diskin and the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Amos Yadlin. Barak sat down with Olmert and Livni several hours later for a final meeting, in which the trio gave the air force its orders.

On Friday night and on Saturday morning, opposition leaders and prominent political figures were informed about the impending strike, including Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, Yisrael Beuiteinu's Avigdor Liebermen, Haim Oron from Meretz and President Shimon Peres, along with Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik.

Gaza massacres must spur us to action

2008-12-28T10:11:00.000-08:00

From the Electronic Intifada: "I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels "terrorists" were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.

Shmerling's joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is "self-defense" against "terrorists" and therefore justified. Israeli bombing -- like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan -- is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.

The rationalization for Israel's massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in "retaliation" for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rocket attacks).

But today's horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel's method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.

What the media never question is Israel's idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.

As John Ging, the head of operations of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), told The Electronic Intifada in November: "there was five months of a ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food."

That is an Israeli truce. Any response to Israeli attacks -- whether peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in Bilin and Nilin in the West Bank is met with bullets and bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel's attacks, killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never ceased for one single day during the truce. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has acceded to all of Israel's demands, even assembling "security forces" to fight the resistance on Israel's behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian or her property or livelihood from Israel's relentless violent colonization. It did not save, for instance, the al-Kurd family from seeing their home of 50 years in occupied East Jerusalem demolished on 9 November, so the land it sits on could be taken by settlers.

Once again we are watching massacres in Gaza, as we did last March when 110 Palestinians, including dozens of children, were killed by Israel in just a few days. Once again people everywhere feel rage, anger and despair that this outlaw state carries out such crimes with impunity.

But all over the Arab media and internet today the rage being expressed is not directed solely at Israel. Notably, it is directed more sharply than ever at Arab states. The images that stick are of Israel's foreign minister Tzipi Livni in Cairo on Christmas day. There she sat smiling with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Then there are the pictures of Livni and Egypt's foreign minister smiling and slapping their palms together.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today that last wednesday the Israeli "cabinet authorized the prime minister, the defense minister, and the foreign minister to determine the timing and the method" of Israel's attacks on Gaza. Everywhere people ask, what did Livni tell the Egyptians and more importantly what did they tell her? Did Israel get a green light to turn Gaza's streets red once again? Few are ready to give Egypt the benefit of the doubt after it has helped Israel besiege Gaza by keeping the Rafah border crossing closed for more than a year.

On top of the intense anger and sadness so many people feel at Israel's renewed mass killings in Gaza is a sense of frustration that there seem to be so few ways to channel it into a political response that can change the course of events, end the suffering, and bring justice.

But there are ways, and this is a moment to focus on them. Already I have received notices of demonstrations and solidarity actions being planned in cities all over the world. That is important. But what will happen after the demonstrations disperse and the anger dies down? Will we continue to let Palestinians in Gaza die in silence?

Palestinians everywhere are asking for solidarity, real solidarity, in the form of sustained, determined political action. The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group reaffirmed this today as it "called upon all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately in any possible way to put pressure on their governments to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it."

The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement for Palestine (http://www.bdsmovement.net/) provides the framework for this. Now is the time to channel our raw emotions into a long-term commitment to make sure we do not wake up to "another Gaza" ever again.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

A Reporter's Example of How to Love Israel

2008-12-28T09:47:00.000-08:00

Writing for the Washingtonpost, Michael Abramowitz depicted Israel's attack on Gaza as follows:

Israel's airstrikes on Gaza yesterday, in retaliation for a nonstop barrage of rocket attacks from Hamas fighters, raised the prospect of an escalation of violence that could scuttle any hopes the incoming Obama administration harbored of forging an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

The bold text is the key line. Mr. Abramowitz sees it necessary to explain Israel's airstrikes as "retaliation for a nonstop barrage of rocket attacks" from Hamas. Would he ever describe Hamas's attacks as retaliation for Israels blockade of Gaza? Would he ever describe anything the Palestinians do as a retaliation? The answer is clear: no. Why? Simply put, because US media is generally guided by the maxim that "Israel can do no wrong". Thus killing 280 Palestinians in response to rocket attacks that are responses to Israel's blockade of Gaza, routine attacks in Gaza, and attempt to undo Palestinians' democratic choice is the "right thing". What else can Israel do?

Mr. Abramowitz continues with the following:

Israel has been warning for weeks that it would not tolerate regular rocket attacks launched from Hamas-controlled territory in the Gaza Strip, and it has been laying the groundwork for a new offensive with the collapse this month of a shaky six-month cease-fire. Still, the ferocity and scope of yesterday's Israeli attacks, which killed at least 225, appeared to stun Western governments and analysts. Arab countries condemned Israel, and Saudi Arabia urged the United States to intervene to stop the attacks.

Again, Mr. Abramowitz is clearly sympathetic for Israel. Israel warned Hamas for weeks. It's therefore Hamas's fault: they didn't heed the warning. Apparently it escapes Mr. Abramowitz's attention that Hamas too has been warning Israel that its persistent colonization of the West Bank, blockade of Gaza, military occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people would result in rocket fire.

But Mr. Abramowitz suggests a more disturbing issue. Western governments were "stunned" by the death of 225 Palestinians and 700 injuries. Stunned? Is that all? What if Hamas rocket attacks killed 225 Israelis? It appears Palestinian death only stuns the West. How many deaths will it take to compel them to act? One can only guess that, given the last 60 years of Israeli colonization, it will take a lot more.

US Backs Israeli Atrocities

2008-12-28T09:26:00.000-08:00

Al Jazeera Reports:

Israeli Assault of Gaza Continues: 280 Dead

2008-12-28T09:15:00.000-08:00

The Guardian: Israel's cabinet approved a call-up of reservists today, as its military continued attacking Gaza, destroying the main security headquarters after killing more than 280 Palestinians in a first round of strikes yesterday.

Israeli tanks were seen deploying in southern Israel, close to the Gaza Strip, raising the prospect that the air raids - which brought the biggest loss of life in a single day in Gaza for more than 40 years - might escalate into a major ground offensive.

The latest Israeli attack flattened most of the buildings in the security headquarters, the second time the compound had been attacked in two days. At least four Palestinians were killed.

Palestinian militants continued to fire rockets into southern Israel, with two missiles reaching as far as Ashdod, an Israeli port about 18 miles north of Gaza. One Israeli was killed in a rocket attack on Saturday.

In addition to the 280 dead, at least 600 Palestinians have been injured. Most of the dead appeared to be policemen or security officials affiliated with Hamas, although there were reports of dead civilians. An Israeli air strike yesterday killed seven teenage students at a UN vocational college for Palestinian refugees while they waited for a bus to take them home, said Christopher Gunness, a UN Relief and Works Agency spokesman.

At its regular weekly meeting in Jerusalem, the Israeli cabinet approved a reserve call-up, which may indicate a much larger operation is proposed. The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, reportedly told the meeting that the fighting in Gaza would be "long, painful and difficult".

"Israel will continue until we have a new security environment in the south, when the population there will not longer live in terror and in fear of constant rocket barrages," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the prime minister.

A UN security council statement called for a halt to the violence, as did the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, who said an "urgent ceasefire" was needed to stop the "massive loss of life" in the territory and that he and the prime minister, Gordon Brown, were following the situation with "grave concern".

However, the US squarely placed the blame for the fighting with Hamas, the Islamist movement that won Palestinian elections three years ago and then seized full control of Gaza last year.

A fragile five-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza finally collapsed 10 days ago.

The Independent: A massive wave of Israeli air strikes, launched yesterday against Hamas in Gaza, has killed at least 227 people – the highest death toll in a single day in the territory since the end of the 1967 Six Day War.

Warplanes and combat helicopters launched their ferocious assault on the Islamic faction's security compounds and rocket launching pads in what Israel said was a response to about 470 Qassam missiles and mortars, launched from Hamas-controlled Gaza since a five-month ceasefire began to break down in November.

The sudden and unexpected strikes, the start of an operation which the Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, warned "won't be easy and won't be short", sent thick plumes of black smoke rising above Gaza City and triggered panic in some districts as parents frantically searched for children rushing home from school.

Hospitals rapidly filled up with as many as 700 wounded, and the chief of Hamas's police in Gaza, Tawfiq Jabber, was reported to be among the dead. More than a dozen bodies of uniformed officers from his force lay on the ground at Gaza City's main security compound shortly after the strikes.

Israel Atttacks Gaza Killing More Than 225

2008-12-27T17:11:00.000-08:00

What will an Obama administration do about such attacks? Judging from his website and public statements, one can hardly expect much. In his own words, Israel's security is "sacrosanct". The fundamental question now concerns whether Obama can balance his commitments to Israel with his belief in justice and compassion.

From the Independent:

A massive wave of Israeli air strikes, launched yesterday against Hamas in Gaza, killed at least 205 people, according to Palestinian medical staff – the highest death toll in a single day in the territory since the end of the 1967 Six Day War.

Television pictures showed wounded officers writhing in pain after the strikes hit at least one compound where a passing-out ceremony was being held for recent recruits. Across Gaza the wounded were ferried to local hospitals in cars, vans and ambulances.

The air strikes were part of an operation codenamed "Cast Lead" by the Israel Defence Forces after the cabinet gave outline approval for military retaliation last Wednesday, during a week that saw a total of 283 Qassam and mortar attacks aimed at communities in southern Israel.

Mr Barak, who in past months has resisted calls for a full-scale invasion of Gaza, warned at a news conference yesterday that the operation would be "broadened and deepened as necessary". And in a clear warning to Israeli communities surrounding Gaza, which were placed on high alert against an escalation of rocket attacks, he declared: "It won't be easy and it won't be short. Fortitude will be needed to change the situation in the south."

As the operation continued after dark last night, with strikes on Hamas targets in southern Gaza, Mr Barak said: "The time has come to act. We are not happy, but not deterred. We will not let the terror harm our citizens and soldiers, and we will do everything that is necessary. There is a time for calming and a time for fighting, and now the time for fighting has come."

Israel "had no intention", he added, of allowing rocket attacks to continue. The purpose of the operation was "to deal a harsh blow to Hamas and change the situation from its foundation, to bring about that there will not be fire or other operations from Gaza".

The Defence Minister did not immediately specify whether the operation would include ground operations, though a senior Israeli security official said later that the use of "all tools" in the operation – including ground forces – was possible as it continued.

As Gaza militants launched about 50 retaliatory mortars and rockets, including longer range Grads, at western Negev Israeli communities, a 50-year-old man was killed in the town of Netivot by one rocket, and at least four others were wounded in the attacks. The Israeli death was the first since the end of the ceasefire. Another rocket hit the Israeli town of Kiryat Gat for the first time, and the streets of Sderot, the Israeli border town which has borne the brunt of rocket attacks emptied after the air strikes.

There was no immediate estimate of how many of the Palestinians killed in yesterday's air strikes – which came on the Jewish Sabbath but what is the first day of the normal Palestinian working week in Gaza – were civilians. Later, some of the dead, rolled in blankets, were laid out on the floor of Gaza's main hospital for identification. Earlier in the day Hamas police spokesman Ehad Ghussein said that about 140 Hamas security forces had been killed. A senior Israeli security official said last night that the the operation had used "precision weapons"; only a "minor" number of civilians had been killed, he believed, and the majority of the dead had been Hamas personnel, he added.

Although the ceasefire did not halt the rockets, it had largely held until 4 November, when the attacks from Gaza resumed after a unit of Israeli troops entered southern Gaza, killing several militants, in what it said was an operation to destroy tunnels freshly dug to enable the kidnap of Israeli soldiers.

Hamas had earlier failed to secure the opening of commercial crossings into Gaza – other than for basic humanitarian goods – in return for the ceasefire. The group announced on 18 December that it would not renew the truce after the agreed six months. Its militants then launched last week's repeated barrages of attacks.

There have been constant calls in Israel for tougher action against Hamas in Gaza in retaliation for the rocket attacks, which the military says total 3,000 over the whole year. Israel's outgoing Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, issued a last-ditch appeal on the Arab TV station Al Arabiya on Thursday for a halt to the rocket fire.

One Gazan bystander, Said Masri, 57, sat on the ground near one of the bombarded security compounds yesterday, alternately slapping his face and covering his head with dust from the ruins of the building. He told Associated Press that he had sent his nine-year-old son out to buy cigarettes minutes before the air strike and could not now find him. "May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn," he wailed. One doctor at Gaza City's main Shifa hospital told AP: "We are treating people on the floor, in the corridors. We have no more space. We don't know who is here and what the priority is to treat."

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, who has been in charge only in the West Bank since Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2007, said the President "condemns this aggression" and called for restraint. But Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, speaking on a Gaza radio station, declared: "Hamas will continue the resistance until the last drop of blood." There were protest demonstrations against the air strikes in the West Bank and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria.

A statement from the office of Ehud Olmert said that the operation had been approved by the Prime Minister and by Mr Barak and the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni.

The statement added: "The operation was launched following the violation of the terms of the lull by Hamas and the unceasing attacks by Hamas authorities on Israeli civilians in the south of the country. Israel wishes to make clear that it will continue to act against terrorist operations and missile fire from the Strip which is intended to harm civilians."

The family of the Palestinian journalist Mohammed Dawass was caught up in the bombardment yesterday as Mr Dawass was on his way to take three of his children to school from their seventh-floor apartment. "I got into the lift to get the car ready and it stopped at the sixth floor because of a power cut. I was rescued by the doorman and then rushed to the window to see four or five bombings. We didn't hear the planes come. It was a complete shock."

Mr Dawass, whose block of flats is close to the security compound still known by its former name of the Yasser Arafat Police Academy, then saw his own nine-year old-son Ibrahim running towards the block from the nearby school. "He was crying, frightened, shaking. He says he wants his mother to sleep in his bed tonight," he said.

Kemal Mohammed, 41, a construction worker now unemployed because of the economic embargo on Gaza, said he believed the decision to launch the air strikes had been decided "to destroy Hamas" at last week's meeting between Ms Livni and Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak. He added: "Thank you Livni. Thank you Egypt."

There is an understandable and long-standing convention in newspapers against using pictures of the dead – even if they might help us to understand the brutal realities behind a story. Some of yesterday's images of the deceased were clearly far too graphic, others were less so. We would like your views – should we never publish photographs of the dead, or should we make each judgement on its merits? Let us know at the bottom of the page or email: sundayletters@independent.co.uk

How the world reacted

Gordon Brown "I am deeply concerned by continuing missile strikes from Gaza on Israel and by Israel's response today. I call on Gazan militants to cease all rocket attacks on Israel immediately. I understand the Israeli government's sense of obligation to its population. Israel needs to meet its humanitarian obligations, act in a way to further the long-term vision of a two-state solution, and do everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties."

Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State "The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza. The ceasefire should be restored immediately. The US calls on all concerned to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "[I am] deeply alarmed by today's heavy violence and bloodshed... [I also condemn] the ongoing rocket attacks by Palestinian militants and [I am] deeply distressed that repeated calls on Hamas for these attacks to end have gone unheeded."

Russian Foreign Ministry "Moscow deems it necessary to stop large-scale military action against Gaza, which had already led to big casualties and suffering among the civilian Palestinian population. At the same time we call on the Hamas leadership to stop shelling Israeli territory."

Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa "We are facing a continuing spectacle which has been carefully planned. So we have to expect that there will be many casualties. We face a major humanitarian catastrophe."

Iranian Foreign Ministry "Iran strongly condemns the Zionist regime's wide-ranging attacks against the civilians in Gaza."

President Assad of Syria "Syria is following with great anxiety the barbaric Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people ... a horrific crime and terrorist act."

KEY PLAYERS

The Israeli side

Ehud Olmert

The Israeli Prime Minister is due to step down after an election in February. He appears to be attempting to bequeath his successor a Gaza in which Hamas's grip has been weakened.

Ehud Barak

As Labour Party leader and Defence Minister, he takes cabinet responsibility for the assault on Gaza. Whether this will boost Labour's weak position in the polls before the election remains to be seen.

Tzipi Livni

The Foreign Minister is in Mr Olmert's Kadima Party and wants to succeed him as Prime Minister. She argued that Israel needed to step up operations because of the rocket attacks by Palestinians.

The Hamas side

Ismail Haniyeh

The Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza is thought to be more pragmatic than his colleagues and therefore to be under constant pressure from more militant elements. He supported the ceasefire.

Mahmoud Zahar

Though seen as Hamas leader from 2004, he was named Foreign Minister in the Hamas government elected in 2006, allowing Mr Haniyeh to become Prime Minister instead.

Ahmed Jabaari

Head of Hamas's military wing in northern Gaza, and presumed leader of the Qassam rocket brigades, whose continued ability to fire missiles of increasing range into Israel triggered yesterday's strikes.

US to Fund Afghan Militias

2008-12-23T12:53:00.000-08:00

WS Journal: The Afghan government will formally start a U.S.-funded effort to recruit armed local militias in the battle against the Taliban in remote parts of the country, exporting the tactic to Afghanistan from Iraq.

The first militias will be established in Wardak Province, in eastern Afghanistan, in coming weeks, officials said. If the effort in Wardak is successful, U.S. commanders hope to create similar forces in other parts of Afghanistan in early 2009.

The militia push is part of a growing American effort to bypass the struggling Afghan central government and funnel resources to Afghan villages and provinces. Senior American officials have stepped up their criticism of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in recent weeks, making clear that they believe his government needs to do more to fight corruption and deliver basic services.

In Iraq, the U.S. decision to recruit tens of thousands of Sunni Arab fighters, including many former insurgents, is widely credited with improving the country's security situation.

"Afghanistan historically has been known as a country where local communities took care of themselves," U.S. Ambassador William Wood said in an interview in Kabul. "The way to counter the Taliban today is to make the communities themselves stronger, so they can protect their villages, their fields, their towns and their valleys."

During a weekend visit, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. focus on establishing a strong central government in Afghanistan may have been "overstated." He said the U.S. would now focus more on "enabling the communities, the tribes and their leaders."

"How strong the central government will be in the future, I think, is yet to be determined," he told reporters.

The militia push is controversial. Mr. Karzai vetoed an earlier American proposal to create local forces because he feared they might one day fall under the sway of regional warlords, according to a senior official in the Interior Ministry.

Some U.S. allies also oppose the idea. Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay told the Canadian Press news agency this week that creating local forces could prove "counterproductive" and said the Canadian government was "not on board" with the idea.

Still, many Afghan and U.S. officials believe local forces could help stabilize the country and prevent the Taliban from securing footholds in remote parts of Afghanistan.

"This will be a grass-roots, community-defense layer against the Taliban," Wardak Gov. Mohammed Halim Fidai said in an interview. "We believe that the more people you involve in security, the greater the impact."

In the first phase of the pilot program, villages throughout Wardak will convene "shura" meetings of local tribal, religious and political figures. The community elders will then be responsible for recruiting the local militias and overseeing their conduct.

As in Iraq, the new Afghan militias will be paid by the U.S. A senior American military official in Kabul said the money would likely be first funneled to the individual village shuras, which would in turn be charged with disbursing salaries to their fighters.

The U.S. won't provide weapons or ammunition to the militias, but the local forces will be allowed to keep and use the weapons they already have. "The honest truth is that these guys don't need us to give them guns," the U.S. official said.

Gov. Fidai said that he hopes the local militias will attract some former insurgents, potentially boosting the Afghan government's efforts to win over moderate members of the Taliban.

"Young people who might have joined the Taliban for financial reasons will have another option," he said.

Still, Mr. Wood, the American ambassador, cautioned that the Taliban hadn't yet signaled any willingness to open talks with Mr. Karzai.

Europe May Take Gitmo Prisoners

2008-12-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

WPost: European nations have begun intensive discussions both within and among their governments on whether to resettle detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a significant overture to the incoming Obama administration, according to senior European officials and U.S. diplomats.

The willingness to consider accepting prisoners who cannot be returned to their home countries, because of fears they may be tortured there, represents a major change in attitude on the part of European governments. Repeated requests from the Bush administration that European allies accept some Guantanamo Bay detainees received only refusals.

The Bush administration "produced the problem," Karsten Voigt, coordinator of German-American cooperation at the German Foreign Ministry, said in a telephone interview. "With Obama, the difference is that he tries to solve it."

At least half a dozen countries are considering resettlement, with only Germany and Portugal acknowledging it publicly thus far.

UK Boycotts Israeli Settler Products

2008-12-23T09:45:00.000-08:00

Haaretz: Britain's envoy to the Middle East on Monday said the United Kingdom would continue its fight against West Bank settlements, but would not mount a broader divestment campaign.

"This isn't about boycotting Israel. The settlements are not Israel," said Bill Rammell. He made the comments in Jerusalem after meeting Israeli and Palestinian leaders and touring parts of the West Bank.

While Britain has stepped up inspections of Israeli imports to make sure products from West Bank settlements not enter duty-free, Rammell said pressuring British companies to pull out of the settlements would be a step too far.

In addition to random inspections of Israeli goods by the British tax authority, Britain has taken the lead in trying to get the European Union to set labeling standards to make clear to consumers which products come from Israel and which come from settlements in the West Bank.

Starting in early January, Britain also plans to start warning its citizens about the risks of buying property in settlements, saying they could be affected should a peace agreement be reached.

The initiatives, some of which were outlined by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a Dec. 9 letter to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, are meant to discourage Israel from expanding settlements.

Palestinians say the settlements are a land grab and an obstacle to a peace agreement, and they have urged Britain and other European states to step up pressure on Israel to halt their expansion.

Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called for withdrawing from nearly all West Bank territory in return for peace with the Palestinians, but, under this proposal, major settlement blocs would stay with Israel.

Israeli exports to Britain total nearly $2 billion a year, and British officials said it is not yet clear what percentage of those products come from the settlements.

Under a 2005 agreement, products from Israel enter EU states like Britain duty-free. But Palestinians complain that many of those goods, labeled as made in Israel, actually come from West Bank settlements.

Rammell said the inspections were helping British authorities identify producers from the settlements, who are then denied the benefits.

"One, you would make sure that it wasn't given a tax-exemption. Two, you would tell that to the producer. And three, you would be alerted to that source for the future," he said.

But Rammell made clear Britain has no plans to join a campaign in some European countries to pressure companies to divest from the settlements.

"I'm not sure it's effective. It would be extremely complicated. And I think it's about a proportionate response," he said.

An Israeli Critique of Israel and a New Vision of the Future

2008-12-20T10:46:00.001-08:00

NY Times: There was a time not so long ago when Avraham Burg was viewed by many Israelis as proof that the inherent tensions of Zionism — religious versus secular, insular versus worldly, Jewish state versus state of all its citizens — could be reconciled with grace. Here was a religiously observant Jew with a cosmopolitan outlook, a decorated paratrooper who believed deeply in peace with the Arabs, an eloquent, fast-rising public figure accessible to a broad range of citizens.

Widely known by his nickname, Avrum, Mr. Burg, a happily married father of six and the son of one of Israel’s most admired and longest-serving government ministers, was talked about as a candidate for prime minister. Long before his 50th birthday, he led the World Zionist Organization and served as speaker in Parliament.

But four years ago Mr. Burg not only walked away from politics, but also basically walked away from Zionism. In a book that came out last year and has just been translated and released in the United States, he said that Israel should not be a Jewish state, that its law of return granting citizenship to any Jew should be radically altered, that Israeli Arabs were like German Jews during the Second Reich and that the entire society felt eerily like Germany just before the rise of Hitler.

In other words, rather than reconciling the country’s complex tensions, Mr. Burg ended up imploding from them.

“I realized something about myself and Israel that frightened me,” he said recently, looking back over the past few years. “I realized that Israel had become an efficient kingdom with no prophecy. Where was it going? What is a Jewish democratic state? What does it mean that Jews define themselves by genetics 60 years after genetics were used against them?”

Israel is no stranger to self-examination. Its leaders and thinkers, indeed many of its average citizens, are aware that nearly everything about the place defies normal categorization and is subject to debate. This is a source of both pride and irritation. But many said Mr. Burg, 53, was not just asking delicate questions. He was poisoning the well from which the nation — and he — had long drawn their water.

As Ari Shavit, a writer for the newspaper Haaretz, said to him in an interview when the book was published here: “Your book is anti-Israel in the deepest sense. It is a book from which loathing of Israeliness emanates.”

Mr. Burg rejected that accusation and still does. He wrote from love, he said, and if the issues he raised were troubling, if they caused a stir, that was very much his aim.

There is no doubt that he raises some serious questions: Is Israel too focused on the Holocaust as a touchstone of history? Can it stay both Jewish and democratic over the long term, or is it time to look for another model? What kind of future is there for Israeli Arabs?

Less clear, however, is whether Mr. Burg has provided any serious answers. This is partly because his book and discourse vacillate between two poles: congratulating Jews and the Zionist movement for their success so far, but warning them that they are turning into a kind of self-justifying Sparta, a warlike state on the verge of tragedy.

His central point is summed up in the English title of his book: “The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes” (Palgrave Macmillan). The Nazi slaughter of six million Jews, he says, has become the central theme of Israeli life, dominating it in a way that distorts the country’s outlook. Teenagers are sent on trips to Auschwitz; every enemy of Israel (Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran) is viewed as the reincarnation of Hitler.

MR. BURG has shifted the title of his book over the years. When he was writing it, he called it “Hitler Won.” When he published it in Hebrew he called it “Defeating Hitler.”

Partly, he said in the interview, his thinking is evolving, and partly his American editors made some smart cuts and suggestions. But it also seems clear that he has modified and adjusted his arguments, especially for a foreign audience. The English version does not have some of his more alarming assertions in the Hebrew one — for example, that the Israeli government would probably soon pass the equivalent of the Nuremberg laws, with provisions like a prohibition on marriage between Jews and Arabs.

Asked what precipitated his initial shift from mainstream public figure to more marginal public scourge, Mr. Burg pointed to a process that began in 2001 when he ran for leadership of the Labor Party and lost in a tight race that he says was stolen from him through back-room deals.

It was not so much the loss, he asserted, as the realization that he had poured his heart and soul into trying to win something that he had thought so little about.

“I knew how to get elected, but what was I going to do once I got there?” he recalled thinking. Maybe, he felt, it was lucky that he lost.

He took five weeks off and walked part of the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey by himself. “In five weeks I met 11 people, none of them Jewish,” he said. He realized that life here was too insular for him, that it was time to step outside the provincial concerns of the extended Jewish family.

Mr. Burg, born and raised in one of West Jerusalem’s most admired neighborhoods and a graduate of the Hebrew University, comes from one of the country’s iconic families. His father, Yosef Burg, barely escaped the Nazis when he left Germany in September 1939 and was a government minister for nearly four decades. His mother was a survivor of the Arab massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929.

But Mr. Burg wanted a clean slate. He decided to leave politics and build an international business, stop writing bills and news releases and write books, stop taking short runs and train for marathons. And so he has. He is co-owner of a company that takes over failing businesses and rebuilds them for sale, has published two best-selling books and is a long-distance runner. He travels frequently and added a French passport to his Israeli one, a benefit of his wife’s origin.

The many friends and acquaintances of Mr. Burg — a man of great charm and wit, with a large social appetite — have been left bewildered by it all, saying the soft, flowery answers he has offered to his big, tough questions have left them cold.

Tom Segev, for example, a left-wing historian and Haaretz columnist, said in a review that the book was “one of the most spaced-out and in-your-face books this country has seen in many years.”

What are Mr. Burg’s prescriptions? He wants a new Jewish identity focused not on the particular but on the universal, asserting that “if we do not establish modern Israeli identity on foundations of optimism, faith in humans and full trust in the family of nations, we have no chance of existing.” He wants Israel to dismantle the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and replace it with the headquarters for the International Criminal Court, making it the epicenter of international prevention of genocide.

In truth, he has gained almost no traction here with such recommendations. Yet what is perhaps most interesting of all is that Mr. Burg continues to play a public role in Israel. He is invited to speak to young people, he writes occasional opinion columns, and he is greeted warmly, even embraced, in this city’s cafes. This may be because, despite it all, Avrum Burg is family. And whether he likes it or not, Israelis look out for family.

Britain Ends Iraq Presence

2008-12-18T09:05:00.000-08:00

The Independent: Five years and 10 months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Gordon Brown yesterday announced a date for Britain's final disengagement from the most bitter, controversial military involvement of recent history.

He made the momentous announcement during a brief visit to the country during which the details of the withdrawal of the last remaining 4,100-strong force were settled with the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

[photo: A soldier climbs out of his tank in Basra in 2005. Angry crowds attacked British forces in the city after Iraqi authorities said they had detained two British undercover soldiers for firing on police]

The British military mission will officially cease at the end of May with the troops completing their departure in the next two months. A team of just a few hundred will stay behind to train the Iraqi armed services, without taking any further part in combat duties.

The withdrawal deal, which has been before the Iraqi council of ministers, will shortly be put to the Iraqi parliament where, said officials in Baghdad, it will be formally passed in the next few weeks.

American troops will be moving down from Baghdad to set up headquarters in Basra with a force of around 4,000. As well as monitoring security in the region they will also guard the Iranian border and protect supply lines from Kuwait until the US withdraws its own forces in 2011. There is also apprehension that the forthcoming provincial elections set for the end of January may lead to a renewal of violence among parties with paramilitary links seeking to control the region's lucrative oil wealth. A serious outbreak of bloodletting would severely test Britain's exit strategy.

After his talks in Baghdad, Mr Brown flew to Basra to meet British troops at their one remaining base at the airport. He laid a wreath at a memorial wall for the 178 members of UK forces who had lost their lives in the conflict as Royal Marines buglers played The Last Post. The wall would be taken back to Britain rather than left to an uncertain future in Basra, senior officers said.

Soldiers of 5 Rifles battalion were in Basra to hear Mr Brown declare that the war was finally over.

Russia Asserts Influence in Middle East Arms Trade

2008-12-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

NY Times: Lebanon’s defense minister announced in Moscow on Tuesday that Russia had offered to give the country 10 MIG-29 fighter jets that would significantly upgrade its antiquated air force and serve as a slap to the United States.

The United States is Lebanon’s main military partner, but American plans to help rebuild the country’s army and air force are moving slowly. And Russia, which is increasingly challenging the United States in regions where American influence has been paramount, has made other gestures toward reasserting itself in the Mediterranean.

Lebanon’s military had no official comment on the offer. It is far from clear whether the jets would be delivered. The deal would depend on the Lebanese government’s approval and would have to be discussed with the country’s allies, said a former Lebanese military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic sensitivities.

United States officials seemed somewhat taken aback by the announcement, saying they needed to speak with their military counterparts in Russia and Lebanon before they could confirm that Russia had made a formal offer.

Iraq May Ban Blackwater

2008-12-18T08:59:00.000-08:00

NY Times: The State Department’s inspector general has warned in a new report that Blackwater Worldwide, the security contractor, may not be licensed by the Iraqi government to continue to protect American diplomats in Baghdad next year, forcing the Obama administration to make new security arrangements.

The report says that if State Department contractors lose their immunity from criminal prosecution under Iraqi law, as many officials expect, employees of Blackwater and other contractors may choose to leave Iraq or demand higher pay. Five Blackwater guards were indicted this month in a 2007 shooting in Baghdad that killed at least 17 Iraqis.

Unlike some American contractors in Iraq, Blackwater does not have a license, but it has applied for one. Iraqi authorities have allowed it to operate while officials consider the application.

The inspector general’s findings were first reported Wednesday by The Associated Press, and The New York Times obtained a copy of the report.

The report says the State Department “faces a real possibility” that no license will be granted and that the Iraqi government will ban Blackwater. The American Embassy in Baghdad would then face a major challenge; officials said Blackwater’s services would not be easily replaced.

State Department officials have said they will decide whether to renew Blackwater’s contract in April only after the F.B.I. completes its inquiry into the contractor’s role in the shooting.

The report by Harold W. Geisel, the acting inspector general, finds that changes since the 2007 shooting “have resulted in a more professional security operation and the curtailment of overly aggressive actions” by contractors toward Iraqi civilians.

In response to its findings, Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who will take over the Foreign Relations Committee next month, again urged the State Department to drop Blackwater as an Iraq contractor.

U.S. Expands War on Terror to African Countries

2008-12-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

NY Times: Thousands of miles from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, another side of America’s fight against terrorism is unfolding in this remote corner of West Africa.

American Green Berets are training African armies to guard their borders and patrol vast desolate expanses against infiltration by Al Qaeda’s militants, so the United States does not have to.

A recent exercise by the United States military here was part of a wide-ranging plan, developed after the Sept. 11 attacks, to take counterterrorism training and assistance to places outside the Middle East, like the Philippines and Indonesia. In Africa, a five-year, $500 million partnership between the State and Defense Departments includes Algeria, Chad, Mauritania, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia, and Libya is on the verge of joining.

American efforts to fight terrorism in the region also include nonmilitary programs, like instruction for teachers and job training for young Muslim men who could be singled out by militants’ recruiting campaigns.

One goal of the program is to act quickly in these countries before terrorism becomes as entrenched as it is in Somalia, an East African nation where there is a heightened militant threat. And unlike Somalia, Mali is willing and able to have dozens of American and European military trainers conduct exercises here, and its leaders are plainly worried about militants who have taken refuge in its vast Saharan north.

“Mali does not have the means to control its borders without the cooperation of the United States,” Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a former prime minister, said in an interview.

Mali, a landlocked former French colony that has nearly twice the size of Texas and roughly half the population, has a relatively stable, though still fragile, democracy. But it borders Algeria, whose well-equipped military has chased Qaeda militants into northern Mali, where they have adopted a nomadic lifestyle, making them even more difficult to track.

With only 10,000 people in its military and other security forces, and just two working helicopters and a few airplanes, Mali acknowledges how daunting a task it is to try to drive out the militants.

The biggest potential threat comes from as many as 200 fighters from an offshoot of Al Qaeda called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which uses the northern Malian desert as a staging area and support base, American and Malian officials say.

About three months ago, the Qaeda affiliate threatened to attack American forces that operated north of Timbuktu in Mali’s desert, three Defense Department officials said. One military official said the threat contributed to a decision to shift part of the recent training exercise out of that area.

The government of neighboring Mauritania said 12 of its troops were killed in an attack there by militants in September. By some accounts, the soldiers were beheaded and their bodies were booby-trapped with explosives.

Two Defense Department officials expressed fear that a main leader of the Qaeda affiliate in Mali, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, was under growing pressure to carry out a large-scale attack, possibly in Algeria or Mauritania, to establish his leadership credentials within the organization.

Members of the Qaeda affiliate have not attacked Malian forces, and American and Malian officials privately acknowledge that military officials here have adopted a live-and-let-live approach to the Qaeda threat, focusing instead on rebellious Tuareg tribesmen, who also live in the sparsely populated north.

To finance their operations, the militants exact tolls from smugglers whose routes traverse the Qaeda sanctuary, and collect ransoms in kidnappings. Last month, two Austrians were released after a ransom of more than $2 million was reportedly paid. They had been held in northern Mali after being seized in southern Tunisia in February.

Because of the militants’ activities, American officials eye the largely ungoverned spaces of Mali’s northern desert with concern.

This year, the United States Agency for International Development is spending about $9 million on counterterrorism programs here. Some of the money will expand an existing job training program for women to provide young Malian men in the north with the basic skills to set up businesses like tiny flour mills or cattle enterprises. Some aid will train teachers in Muslim parochial schools in an effort to prevent them from becoming incubators of anti-American vitriol.

The agency is also building 12 FM radio stations in the north to link far-flung villages to an early-warning network that sends bulletins on bandits and other threats. Financing from the Pentagon will produce, in four national languages, radio soap operas promoting peace and tolerance.

“Young men in the north are looking for jobs or something to do with their lives,” said Alexander D. Newton, A.I.D.’s mission director in Mali. “These are the same people who could be susceptible to other messages of economic security.”

Concern about Mali’s vulnerability also brought a dozen Army Green Berets from the 10th Special Forces Group in Germany, as well as several Dutch and German military instructors, to Mali for the two-week training exercise that ended last month, called Operation Flintlock.

Just before noon on a recent sunny, breezy day, Malian troops swept onto a training range here on the savannah north of Bamako, the capital, aboard two CV-22 Ospreys, rotor-blade transport aircraft flown by Air Force Special Operations crews from Hurlburt Field, Fla.

As the dull-gray aircraft landed in a swirling cloud of dust, rotors whomp-whomping, the Malians disgorged single file from the rear ramp in dark-green camouflage uniforms and helmets, M-4 assault rifles at the ready. (The Malians normally use AK-47s, but used American-issue M-4’s for this exercise.)

After a mile-long march through savannah grass, the troops walked down a hill into a small valley. Their target — the mock hideout of the insurgents — was in sight. But what the Malians did not know was that their American instructors were lying in wait, and suddenly attacked the troops with a sharp staccato of small-arms fire (plastic paint bullets), with red flares soaring high overhead.

The make-believe skirmish lasted just a few minutes. The Malians, shouting to each other and firing at their attackers, retreated from the ambush rather than try to fight through it.

“We’re still learning,” said Capt. Yossouf Traore, a 28-year-old commander, speaking in English that he learned in Texas and at Fort Benning, Ga., as a visiting officer. “We’re getting a lot of experience in leadership skills and making decisions on the spot.”

Even more significant, Captain Traore said, was that the exercise gave his troops an unusual opportunity to train with soldiers from neighboring Senegal. Soon after the Ospreys returned to whisk the Malian soldiers from the training range, two planeloads of Senegalese troops arrived to carry out the same maneuvers.

Still, a series of worrisome indicators are giving some Malian government and religious leaders, as well as American officials, pause about the country’s ability to deal with security risks.

Mali is the world’s fifth-poorest country and, according to some statistics from the United Nations and the State Department, is getting poorer. One in five Malian children dies before age 5. The average Malian does not live to celebrate a 50th birthday. The country’s population, now at 12 million, is doubling nearly every 20 years. Literacy rates hover around 30 percent and are much lower in rural areas.

There are also small signs that radical clerics are beginning to make inroads into the tolerant form of Islam practiced here for centuries by Sunni Muslims. The number of Malian women wearing all-enveloping burqas is still small, but the increase in the past few years is noticeable, religious leaders say.

New mosques are springing up, financed by conservative religious organizations in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran, and scholarships offered to young Malian men to study in those countries are on the rise, Malian officials say.

In Imam Mahamadou Diallo’s neighborhood in Bamako, a congested, fume-choked city on the Niger River, a simmering debate is under way. Imam Diallo, 48, said that two new mosques had been built in his area with financing from Wahhabi extremist groups in Saudi Arabia, and that they were drawing away some members of his mosque.

“Many people here are poor and don’t have work,” Imam Diallo said through a translator in Bambara, one of the local languages. “They’re potentially vulnerable to these Wahhabi people coming in with money.”

Just down a bumpy, reddish dirt road, however, the leader of one of these newer mosques, Al Nour, quarreled with Imam Diallo’s characterization. Ali Abdourohmome Cisse, the imam since Al Nour opened in 2002, said he did not know who had financed its construction. He added that no one on his staff, including an Egyptian assistant who helps conduct Friday Prayer in Arabic, advocated any form of extremism.

At El Mouhamadiya, an Islamic school in the neighborhood, more than 700 students, ages 4 to 25, take classes including math, physics and Arabic. “But we don’t train them in terrorism,” said Broulaye Sylla, 25, an administrator. “We don’t talk about jihad.”

Mahmoud Dicko, president of the High Council of Islam in Bamako, acknowledged over soft drinks in his second-story office that the influence of conservative Sunni and even Shiite groups had become more visible, but he said they did not pose a serious threat to Malian society.

“Their influence has limits because of the importance of cultural ties here in Mali,” he said. “We have a tolerant Islam here, a pacifist Islam.”

American and African diplomats here said Mali was one of the few countries in the region that had good relations with most neighbors, making it a likely catalyst for the broader regional security cooperation the United States is trying to foster. American commanders expressed confidence that by training together, the African forces might work together against transnational threats like Al Qaeda. While Mali has no effective helicopter fleet, for instance, it could team up its soldiers with better-equipped neighboring armies, like Algeria’s, to combat a common threat.

“If we don’t help these countries work together, it becomes a much more difficult problem,” said Lt. Col. Jay Connors, the senior American Special Forces officer on the ground here during the exercise.

American and Malian officials acknowledged there were other hurdles to overcome. The Pentagon needs to explain better the role of its new Africa Command, created in October to oversee military activities on the continent, and to dispel fears that the United States is militarizing its foreign policy, Malian officials said.

American officials say their strategy is to contain the Qaeda threat and train the African armies, a process that will take years. The nonmilitary counterterrorism programs are just starting, and it is too early to gauge results.

“This is a long-term effort,” said Colonel Connors, 45, an Africa specialist from Burlington, Vt., who speaks French and Portuguese. “This is crawl, walk, run, and right now, we’re still in the crawl phase.”

Israel, Iran, and the Lobby

2008-12-12T09:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a short debate between Mersheimer and Foxman on the Jim Lehrer Show:

Cholera Is Raging, Despite Denial by Mugabe

2008-12-11T20:58:00.000-08:00

NY Times: Cholera swept through the five youngest children in the Chigudu family with cruel and bewildering haste.

On a recent Saturday, the children had chased one another through streets that flow with raw sewage, and chattered happily as they bedded down for the night. The diarrhea and vomiting began around midnight. Relatives frantically prepared solutions of water, sugar and salt for the youngsters, aged 20 months to 12 years, to drink.

But by morning, they were limp and hollow-eyed. The disease was draining their bodies of fluid.

“Then they started to die,” said their brother Lovegot, 18. “Prisca was first, second Sammy, then Shantel, Clopas and Aisha, the littlest one, last.”

A ferocious cholera epidemic, spread by water contaminated with human excrement, has stricken more than 16,000 people across Zimbabwe since August and killed more than 780. President Robert G. Mugabe said Thursday that the epidemic had ended, but health experts are warning that the number of cases could surpass 60,000, and that half the country’s population of 12 million is at risk.

The outbreak is yet more evidence that Zimbabwe’s most fundamental public services — including water and sanitation, public schools and hospitals — are shutting down, much like the organs of a severely dehydrated cholera victim.

Zimbabwe’s once promising economy, disastrously mismanaged by Mr. Mugabe’s government, has been spiraling downward for almost a decade, but residents here say the free fall has gained frightening velocity in recent weeks. Most of the nation’s schools, which were once the pride of Africa, producing a highly literate population, have virtually ceased to function as teachers, whose salaries no longer even cover the cost of the bus fare to work, quit showing up.

UNICEF: After a widespread breakdown in social services, the Government of Zimbabwe declared a national cholera crisis on Wednesday. The country’s health sector has collapsed and hospitals are closing, creating a ‘twin national disaster’.

Approximately 565 people have died from cholera since August, with almost 12,550 cumulative cases nationwide. The increase of the outbreak is attributed to poor water and sanitation supply, the collapsed health system and limited government capacity to respond to the emergency.

"Mainly, it's the lack of capacity for the municipal services and the water authorities to provide safe water and refuse collection," said UNICEF Zimbabwe Communication Officer Tsitsi Singizi. "At the same time, there's a collapse in the health services, which has made it impossible to treat the high number of infections."

UNICEF is currently the only agency able to deliver supplies and equipment in response to the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, providing an average of 360,000 litres of safe water every day.

Britain to crack down on exports from Israeli settlements; Civil rights group claim Israeli occupation is "reminiscent of apartheid"

2008-12-10T21:25:00.000-08:00

The Independent reports: Britain is taking the lead in pressing the EU to curb imports from Israeli producers in the occupied West Bank as a practical step towards halting the steady increase in the construction of Jewish settlements.

An internal EU note circulated by the UK expresses concern that goods produced from the settlements may be entering Britain after being illegally exempted from tariffs in violation of an Israel-EU trade agreement.

And the note, seen by The Independent, calls for the EU separately to consider afresh much more stringent labelling rules for settlement-produced goods in British stores to prevent them being designated as being from the "West Bank" in a way that could falsely imply that they have a Palestinian origin.

The initiative is the strongest sign yet of deepening official frustration in Whitehall at Israel's persistent flouting of international exhortations to halt the construction of settlements – which are seen by Britain and most other countries as illegal. Moderate Palestinian leaders say continued settlement building is a major problem.

The Government proposes that other member states should follow its own example in conducting a "targeted" examination of goods imported from Israel to establish whether they were in fact produced inside the 1967 "green line". Results from the Customs and Excise Study, to identify "potential settlement goods incorrectly described as being of Israeli origin", have not yet been published.

The note complains that, at last year's international Middle East summit in Annapolis, Israel committed to its Road Map obligations to "freeze all settlement activity". It says that, instead, "there has been an acceleration in settlement construction activity since Annapolis".

It also discloses that importers have been alerted to the need to check packaging to confirm that goods have indeed been produced inside Israel. The moves follow concern from NGOs and others that farmers and manufacturers in settlements may be being exempted from tariffs. EU customs staff are given postcodes meant to determine the origin of goods.

The note says Gordon Brown has proposed a No 10 "round table" with non-government organisations and retailers to discuss calls for consumers to have clearer information on whether goods were settlement-produced. Mike Bailey of Oxfam said yesterday: "It's wrong for goods to be stocked in British shops where consumers do not know the conditions or legality under which they were produced."

Several retailers, including Tesco, Sainsbury, Waitrose and Somerfield, say they import food – such as organic herbs – grown on settlements, but add that, by designating the goods as "West Bank", they are complying with EU requirements to denote the area of origin. Marks & Spencer recently disclosed it had stopped stocking goods made in the West Bank.

The Israeli foreign ministry said it knew of the note and was holding "a dialogue" with the UK about it.

The Independent reports: Israel's leading civil rights organisation yesterday broke a taboo by describing Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank as being “reminiscent of apartheid” in South Africa.

Alleging an intensification of human rights abuses against Palestinians, the respected Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) made the comparison in an annual report that described the existence of separate legal, planning and transportation systems for Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank.

“Israel has built a modern arterial road system in the West Bank intended in fact only for use by Israeli traffic, whereas the Palestinians are forced to travel for the most part on twisting and dangerous roads,” the report said. While Israel facilitates the expansion of Jewish settlements, it restricts the growth of Palestinian towns, the report added. “This state of affairs in which all the services, budgets and the access to natural resources are granted along discriminatory and separatist lines according to ethnic-national criteria is a blatant violation of the principle of equality and is in many ways reminiscent of the Apartheid regime in South Africa.” The report said. Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, responded that “the whole comparison is inaccurate and offensive.”

“In the real world where there are real terrorist threats, the choice is between roadblocks and protracted waiting [for Palestinians] or roads for Palestinians.” he said.

ACRI wrote that while South Africa had been a case of a “racist separation criterion” the one applied in the occupied terirories is “ethnic-national.”

The group decided to drop its previous reluctance to use the South Africa comparison, often invoked by those pressing for an international boycott of Israel, because “things are getting worse rather than better” according to spokeswoman Melanie Takefman.

In particular, Ms. Takefman cited what ACRI views as the Israeli supreme court's endorsement of the idea of separate road systems for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. Last March, the court ignored an ACRI petition that it rule on the legality of the continued barring of Palestinians from Highway 443, an alternate route between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that slices through expropriated Palestinian West Bank land. To justify the expropriations, the state had said during the 1990's the road would be for Palestinian benefit. But the road is now entirely an Israeli commuter route, with Palestinian villagers who formerly used it to access health, education and jobs in Ramallah barred since 2002 when it was closed to them after attacks on Israeli motorists. Instead, authorities are building a separate road for Palestinians. “The judges's turning a blind eye and approving a separate road system was a very depressing and ominous sign,” Ms. Takefman said.

In 2006, former US President Jimmy Carter published Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, in which he argued that apartheid is an appropriate term for Israeli policies devoted to “the acquisition of land” in the West Bank. His application of the term to the West Bank evoked heated responses from supporters of Israel.

Mr. Regev said the best way to address the separate legal systems in the West Bank for settlers and Palestinians would be the creation of a Palestinian state as an outgrowth of current negotiations. “Do people really want us to annex the West Bank so that there will be one legal system?” he asked.

Obama offers Israel a "Nuclear Umbrella"

2008-12-10T21:19:00.000-08:00

Haaretz reports: U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran.

But America's nuclear guarantee to Israel could also be interpreted as a sign the U.S. believes Iran will eventually acquire nuclear arms.

Secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton had raised the idea of a nuclear guarantee to Israel during her campaign for the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency. During a debate with Obama in April, Clinton said that Israel and Arab countries must be given "deterrent backing." She added, "Iran must know that an attack on Israel will draw a massive response."

Clinton also proposed that the American nuclear umbrella be extended to other countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, if they agree to relinquish their own nuclear ambitions.

According to the same source, the nuclear guarantee would be backed by a new and improved Israeli anti-ballistic missile system. The Bush administration took the first step by deploying an early-warning radar system in the Negev, which hones the ability to detect Iranian ballistic missiles.

Obama said this week that he would negotiate with Iran and would offer economic incentives for Tehran to relinquish its nuclear program. He warned that if Iran refused the deal, he would act to intensify sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Granting Israel a nuclear guarantee essentially suggests the U.S. is willing to come to terms with a nuclear Iran. For its part, Israel opposes any such development and similar opposition was voiced by officials in the outgoing Bush administration.

"What is the significance of such guarantee when it comes from those who hesitated to deal with a non-nuclear Iran?" asked a senior Israeli security source. "What kind of credibility would this [guarantee have] when Iran is nuclear-capable?"

The same source noted that the fact that there is talk about the possibility of a nuclear Iran undermines efforts to prevent Tehran from acquiring such arms.

A senior Bush administration source said that the proposal for an American nuclear umbrella for Israel was ridiculous and lacked credibility. "Who will convince the citizen in Kansas that the U.S. needs to get mixed up in a nuclear war because Haifa was bombed? And what is the point of an American response, after Israel's cities are destroyed in an Iranian nuclear strike?"

The current debate is taking place in light of the Military Intelligence assessment that Iran has passed beyond the point of no return, and has mastered the technology of uranium enrichment. The decision to proceed toward the development of nuclear arms is now purely a matter for Iran's leaders to decide. Intelligence assessments, however, suggest that the Iranians are trying to first accumulate larger quantities of fissile material, and this offers a window of opportunity for a last-ditch diplomatic effort to prevent an Iranian bomb.

The Blackwater Case

2008-12-09T09:39:00.000-08:00

This from Inside Story by Al Jazeera English.

Obama on Meet the Press Discusses the Economy, the War on Terror, and Iran

2008-12-07T19:09:00.001-08:00

Five Blackwater Guards Face US Charges for Killing Iraqis

2008-12-06T20:37:00.000-08:00

This case raises the important question concerning the role of "private military contractors" in Iraq. Obama has been conspicuously silent on this issue and I think it's a good opportunity for he and his administration to begin considering it.

Watch Jeremy Scahill's brief introduction on Blackwater in Iraq.

Scahill had this to say about Obama's "Blackwater Problem" in the Huffingtonpost.com:

A senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told me that if elected Obama will not "rule out" using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The adviser also said that Obama does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009, when a new President will be sworn in. Obama's campaign says that instead he will focus on bringing accountability to these forces while increasing funding for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the agency that employs Blackwater and other private security contractors.

Obama's broader Iraq withdrawal plan provides for some US troops to remain in Iraq--how many his advisers won't say. But it's clear that Obama's "follow-on force" will include a robust security force to protect US personnel in Iraq, US trainers (who would also require security) for Iraqi forces and military units to "strike at Al Qaeda"--all very broad swaths of the occupation.

"If Barack Obama comes into office next January and our diplomatic security service is in the state it's in and the situation on the ground in Iraq is in the state it's in, I think we will be forced to rely on a host of security measures," said the senior adviser. "I can't rule out, I won't rule out, private security contractors." He added, "I will rule out private security contractors that are not accountable to US law."

But therein lies a problem. The US Embassy in Iraq is slated to become the largest embassy in world history. If Obama maintains that embassy and its army of diplomats and US personnel going in and out of the Green Zone, which his advisers say he will, a significant armed force will be required for protection. The force that now plays that role is composed almost exclusively of contractors from Blackwater, DynCorp and Triple Canopy. And at present, these contractors are not held accountable under US law. Obama and a host of legal experts, including in the Justice Department, acknowledge that there may be no current US law that could be used to prosecute security contractors for crimes committed in Iraq, such as the killing of seventeen Iraqi civilians last September in Baghdad's Nisour Square.

The irony is that it was Senator Obama who sponsored a bill in February 2007 defining a legal structure to prosecute State Department contractor crimes in US courts. Obama staffers say they will "fight like hell to get it passed." But it may not pass before the next President takes power. Even if it does and Bush signs it, serious questions will remain unresolved about how contractor crimes can be monitored effectively. The senior adviser acknowledged that Obama could find himself in a situation where, as President, he continues using forces he himself has identified as "unaccountable." The Obama campaign, in other words, may have painted itself into a corner.

Report: The Justice Department has obtained indictments against five guards for the security company Blackwater Worldwide for their involvement in a 2007 shooting in Baghdad that killed at least 17 Iraqi civilians and remains a thorn in Iraqi relations with the United States.

The indictments, obtained Thursday, remained sealed. But they could be made public in Washington as soon as Monday, according to people who have been briefed on the case and who spoke on condition of anonymity because the indictments had not been unsealed.

A sixth guard was negotiating a plea, those people said.

Peter A. Carr, a spokesman for the Justice Department, declined to comment on Friday. Anne E. Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Blackwater, also declined to comment.

The six guards have been under investigation since the shootings occurred Sept. 16, 2007, as their convoy traveled through a traffic circle in Nisour Square that was filled with cars, pedestrians and police officers. The guards have told investigators that they fired after coming under attack. Blackwater has maintained that its guards did nothing wrong, and the company itself is not being charged in the case. Investigations by the Pentagon, the F.B.I. and the Iraqi government found no evidence to support the guards' version of events.

Among those named in the indictment, according to the people briefed on the case, are Paul Slough, a 28-year-old who served in the Army Infantry and the Texas National Guard before joining Blackwater in 2006, and Dustin Heard of Tennessee, a former marine who joined Blackwater in 2004.

Those who have been briefed on the case said prosecutors could seek 30-year prison sentences under a Reagan-era antidrug law focusing on the use of machine guns in the commission of violent crimes. Drugs were not involved in the Blackwater case.

Mark Hulkower, Mr. Slough's lawyer, would not confirm whether his client was one of those indicted. But if he is, Mr. Hulkower said, "We will contest the charges in court, and we are confident he will be vindicated."

The Nisour Square shootings have had a profound impact in Iraq, both on the role of contractors in the war zone and on the Baghdad government's relationship with the Bush administration. The episode was the bloodiest in a series of violent events involving Blackwater and other American security contractors that had stoked anger and resentment among Iraqis.

Founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals and heir to a family fortune made in the auto parts industry, Blackwater had developed a reputation among Iraqis and American military personnel for flaunting an aggressive, quick-draw image and for security personnel who took excessively violent actions to protect the people they were paid to guard.

In December 2006, a Blackwater guard who was off duty and reportedly drinking heavily was reported to have shot a bodyguard for an Iraqi vice president in Baghdad. In 2007, the State Department acknowledged that Blackwater had been involved in many more shootings than the two other security contractors in other regions of Iraq.

But the Nisour Square episode prompted so much protest that Iraq's prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, demanded that the Bush administration pull Blackwater out of the country.

In a profile of Mr. Slough, The New York Times reported this year that he had used dry military language to explain to investigators that he fired his weapon only at targets who posed immediate threats to his life and to those of his colleagues.

He described fighting his way out of a terrifying ambush that began when the driver of a white, four-door sedan ignored numerous hand signals and drove directly at the Blackwater motorcade. And he described muzzle flashes from a shack about 160 feet behind the car, a man in a blue button-down shirt and black pants pointing an AK-47, small-arms fire from a red bus stopped in an intersection, and a red car backing up toward his convoy.

"I engaged the individuals," Mr. Slough told investigators, "and stopped the threat."

The F.B.I. concluded that at least 14 of the 17 fatal shootings in Nisour Square were unjustified, saying that Blackwater guards recklessly violated American rules for the use of lethal force. Military investigators went further, saying that all of the deaths were unjustified and potentially criminal. Iraqi authorities characterized the incident as "deliberate murder."

Still, the guards could not be prosecuted under Iraqi law because of an immunity agreement signed by the Coalition Provision Authority, the governing authority installed by American troops after the invasion. And legal experts have long pointed out that the case faces significant legal hurdles in American courts, which have only vague powers to prosecute Americans for crimes committed abroad.

Immunity for security contractors became a central issue this year in the negotiations between Iraq and the United States over an agreement setting out the terms under which American troops could remain in Iraq. Iraqi officials repeatedly demanded an end to legal immunity for American contractors. The Bush administration eventually agreed, and tens of thousands of contractors will be held responsible for their actions under Iraqi law at the start of next year.

President-Elect Barack Obama on Public Works

2008-12-06T12:43:00.000-08:00

Remarks of President-elect Barack Obama
Radio Address on the Economy
Saturday, December 6, 2008

[Text] Yesterday, we received another painful reminder of the serious economic challenge our country is facing when we learned that 533,000 jobs were lost in November alone, the single worst month of job loss in over three decades. That puts the total number of jobs lost in this recession at nearly 2 million.

But this isn’t about numbers. It’s about each of the families those numbers represent. It’s about the rising unease and frustration that so many of you are feeling during this holiday season. Will you be able to put your kids through college? Will you be able to afford health care? Will you be able to retire with dignity and security? Will your job or your husband’s job or your daughter’s or son's job be the next one cut?

These are the questions that keep so many Americans awake at night. But it is not the first time these questions have been asked. We have faced difficult times before, times when our economic destiny seemed to be slipping out of our hands. And at each moment, we have risen to meet the challenge, as one people united by a sense of common purpose. And I know that Americans can rise to the moment once again.

But we need action – and action now. That is why I have asked my economic team to develop an economic recovery plan for both Wall Street and Main Street that will help save or create at least two and a half million jobs, while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil, and saving billions of dollars.

We won’t do it the old Washington way. We won’t just throw money at the problem. We’ll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve -- by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world.

Today, I am announcing a few key parts of my plan. First, we will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won’t just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.

Second, we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule – use it or lose it. If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money.

Third, my economic recovery plan will launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen. We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms. Because to help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.

As we renew our schools and highways, we’ll also renew our information superhighway. It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they’ll get that chance when I’m President – because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.

In addition to connecting our libraries and schools to the internet, we must also ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the internet. That is why the economic recovery plan I’m proposing will help modernize our health care system – and that won’t just save jobs, it will save lives. We will make sure that every doctor’s office and hospital in this country is using cutting edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year.

These are a few parts of the economic recovery plan that I will be rolling out in the coming weeks. When Congress reconvenes in January, I look forward to working with them to pass a plan immediately. We need to act with the urgency this moment demands to save or create at least two and a half million jobs so that the nearly two million Americans who’ve lost them know that they have a future. And that’s exactly what I intend to do as President of the United States.

Israeli Settlers Evicted: Obstacles to Peace, Instruments of Injustice

2008-12-04T21:48:00.001-08:00

What will an Obama administration do about the settler population in the Occupied West Bank? The following reports reveal the importance and urgency of dealing with this problem.

Haaretz: The Israel Defense Forces and police are preparing for a wave of violence by extremist West Bank settlers against Palestinians after Thursday's evacuation of Hebron's so-called House of Contention.

Settler violence erupted Thursday in protest against the eviction. Settlers torched fields, olive groves and yards in a wadi between Hebron and the settlement of Kiryat Arba. They also opened fire on Palestinians, wounding three.

[Images Clockwise: 1) Palestinian children look at a car owned by Palestinians that was set on fire overnight during clashes between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in Hebron, Friday. 2) Laundry burns outside a Palestinian house after a fire was set by Jewish settlers during the evacuation of a disputed house in Hebron, Thursday. 3) Jewish settlers rampaged Thursday on the roofs of Palestinian homes in Hebron, responding in fury to the forced eviction of settlers from a disputed building. 4) Palestinians sweep the front steps of their house after Jewish settlers rampaged following the evacuation of a disputed house in Hebron, Friday. Graffiti reads "Revenge." ]

Settlers hurled stones at Palestinian vehicles on a number of roads in the areas of Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron. In Bitin, north of Ramallah, settlers broke into a home and vandalized Palestinian property, and in several other West Bank villages, anti-Muslim graffiti was sprayed on mosque walls.

In the northern West Bank, security forces closed some 10 junctions and roads around Yizhar, Kedumim, Karnei Shomron, Hawara and Kochav Hashahar. Other intersections were blocked around the central West Bank settlements of Beit El, Shvut Rahel, Ma'aleh Levona and Hashmonaim.

At one junction in the northern West Bank, soldiers opened fire to disperse a rightist demonstration, but no one was injured. Settlers also attacked Palestinians near the village of Burin, and Palestinians said cars were set alight near Tel Rumeida, a village near Hebron.

In the afternoon, around 100 rightist protesters sat in the road on Route 1 at the entrance to Jerusalem, blocking the main road to Tel Aviv.

Police dispersed the protesters and detained 20 of them. Smaller, quieter demonstrations were held next to Yoseftal Junction near Bat Yam, next to Bar-Ilan University and on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv.

Jerusalem Post: "I welcome the evacuation by Israeli security forces of approximately 200 settlers from a house in Hebron yesterday," Robert Serry, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process said.

"I condemn the ensuing violence and attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians and the destruction and desecration of Palestinian property, mosques and graves, as well as settler attacks on Israeli security forces."

"As the occupying power, the government of Israel is under obligation to protect Palestinian civilians, property and holy sites," he continued. "I remain concerned about the potential for a further escalation of a tense situation. I call for an immediate end to settler attacks and restraint and calm from all parties, and urge vigilance from the Israeli authorities to ensure that the events of yesterday are not repeated."

"Actions of extremists continue to pose a threat to the peace process, and further underline the need for action to fulfill Road Map commitments," Serry said. "The United Nations will continue to closely monitor developments." The United Nations Middle East envoy on Friday praised Israeli security forces for evacuating the Beit Hashalom house in Hebron, but condemned the violence which followed, and promised that the UN would "closely monitor" the developments.

NY Times: The four-story building in question was built and owned by a Palestinian who agreed to sell it. He said he had been unaware the buyers were Jews and that he had been tricked, and that he had backed out of the deal. The settlers say that he knew very well what he was doing but that threats against him had made him claim otherwise.

The Israeli government ordered the settlers out. They challenged the order. Three weeks ago, the Supreme Court took the government’s side in a 3-to-0 ruling and gave it 30 days to make good on the order. In the past week or two, settlers had grown more rebellious, throwing rocks at soldiers and defacing Palestinian buildings and graves. It was clearly only a matter of time before the army would step in.

The official who made the call for the evacuation on Thursday was Ehud Barak, the defense minister and head of the Labor Party, who said at a news conference later that “what was tested today was the ability of the state to enforce its laws and its essence upon its citizens.”

Mr. Barak had met with settler leaders on Thursday morning to find a way out of the confrontation. The settlers emerged from the meeting believing there was still negotiation to be done, but Mr. Barak clearly thought otherwise.

BTSelem: On Settler Violence and Israel's Legal Obligations:

A cardinal task of any government is to enforce the law and protect the life, property, and rights of persons under its authority. For Israel, this duty applies not only to Israeli citizens residing within the state or territories under Israeli control, but also to Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories.

When Palestinians attack Israelis, the authorities invoke all means at their disposal – including some that are incompatible with international law and constitute gross violations of human rights – to arrest the suspects and bring them to trial. Defendants convicted by military courts can expect harsh sentences.

In contrast, when Israeli civilians attack Palestinians, the Israeli authorities employ an undeclared policy of leniency and compromise toward the perpetrators.

This policy is reflected in the actions of officials in charge of law enforcement – the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and the Israel Police Force (IPF) – which do not do enough to prevent harm to the life and property of Palestinians, and to stop the violent attacks by settlers while they are taking place.

All law enforcement agencies and judicial authorities demonstrate little interest in uncovering the substantial violence that Israeli civilians commit against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

Many failures of law enforcement against Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories, and the discrimination underlying these failures, greatly undermine the rule of law in Israel, not only in the Occupied Territories, but in the State of Israel as well.

Sexual Violence in Eastern Congo

2008-12-03T17:19:00.000-08:00

NY Times and UNICEF:

BUKAVU, Congo — Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.

Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.”

Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country.

“The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling.”

The days of chaos in Congo were supposed to be over. Last year, this country of 66 million people held a historic election that cost $500 million and was intended to end Congo’s various wars and rebellions and its tradition of epically bad government.

But the elections have not unified the country or significantly strengthened the Congolese government’s hand to deal with renegade forces, many of them from outside the country. The justice system and the military still barely function, and United Nations officials say Congolese government troops are among the worst offenders when it comes to rape. Large swaths of the country, especially in the east, remain authority-free zones where civilians are at the mercy of heavily armed groups who have made warfare a livelihood and survive by raiding villages and abducting women for ransom.

According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way.

United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty.

Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.

“I’m weak, I’m angry, and I don’t know how to restart my life,” she said from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed her.

She is also pregnant.

While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo’s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon.

“It’s gone beyond the conflict,” said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become “almost normal.”

Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized.

At Panzi Hospital, where Dr. Mukwege performs as many as six rape-related surgeries a day, bed after bed is filled with women lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling, with colostomy bags hanging next to them because of all the internal damage.

“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.

In almost all the reported cases, the culprits are described as young men with guns, and in the deceptively beautiful hills here, there is no shortage of them: poorly paid and often mutinous government soldiers; homegrown militias called the Mai-Mai who slick themselves with oil before marching into battle; members of paramilitary groups originally from Uganda and Rwanda who have destabilized this area over the past 10 years in a quest for gold and all the other riches that can be extracted from Congo’s exploited soil.

The attacks go on despite the presence of the largest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 17,000 troops.

Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3.

“Some of these girls whose insides have been destroyed are so young that they don’t understand what happened to them,” Dr. Mukwege said. “They ask me if they will ever be able to have children, and it’s hard to look into their eyes.”

No one — doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers — can explain exactly why this is happening.

“That is the question,” said André Bourque, a Canadian consultant who works with aid groups in eastern Congo. “Sexual violence in Congo reaches a level never reached anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the genocide.”

Impunity may be a contributing factor, Mr. Bourque added, saying that very few of the culprits are punished.

Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. “If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,” said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu.

Instead, she said, the epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide 13 years ago.

Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias.

“These are people who were involved with the genocide and have been psychologically destroyed by it,” he said.

Mr. Bourque called this phenomenon “reversed values” and said it could develop in heavily traumatized areas that had been steeped in conflict for many years, like eastern Congo.

This place, one of the greenest, hilliest and most scenic slices of central Africa, continues to reverberate from the aftershocks of the genocide next door. Take the recent fighting near Bukavu between the Congolese Army and Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general who commands a formidable rebel force. Mr. Nkunda is a Congolese Tutsi who has accused the Congolese Army of supporting Hutu militias, which the army denies. Mr. Nkunda says his rebel force is simply protecting Tutsi civilians from being victimized again.

But his men may be no better.

Willermine Mulihano said she was raped twice — first by Hutu militiamen two years ago and then by Nkunda soldiers in July. Two soldiers held her legs apart, while three others took turns violating her.

“When I think about what happened,” she said, “I feel anxious and brokenhearted.”

She is also lonely. Her husband divorced her after the first rape, saying she was diseased.

In some cases, the attacks are on civilians already caught in the cross-fire between warring groups. In one village near Bukavu where 27 women were raped and 18 civilians killed in May, the attackers left behind a note in broken Swahili telling the villagers that the violence would go on as long as government troops were in the area.

The United Nations peacekeepers here seem to be stepping up efforts to protect women.

Recently, they initiated what they call “night flashes,” in which three truckloads of peacekeepers drive into the bush and keep their headlights on all night as a signal to both civilians and armed groups that the peacekeepers are there. Sometimes, when morning comes, 3,000 villagers are curled up on the ground around them.

But the problem seems bigger than the resources currently devoted to it.

Panzi Hospital has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built specifically for rape victims, the hospital sends women back to their villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space for the never-ending stream of new arrivals.

Dr. Mukwege, 52, said he remembered the days when Bukavu was known for its stunning lake views and nearby national parks, like Kahuzi-Biega.

“There used to be a lot of gorillas in there,” he said. “But now they’ve been replaced by much more savage beasts.”

Zimbabwe's Cholera Outbreak

2008-12-03T17:03:00.000-08:00

Concerning Africa, Barack Obama's website states the following:

"As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Barack Obama has fought to focus America's attention on the challenges facing Africa – stopping the genocide in Darfur, passing legislation to promote stability in the Congo and to bring a war criminal to justice in Liberia, mobilizing international pressure for a just government in Zimbabwe, fighting corruption in Kenya, demanding honesty on HIV/AIDS in South Africa, developing a coherent strategy for stabilizing Somalia, and travelling across the continent raising awareness for these critical issues. He has also increased America's focus on the long term challenges of education, poverty reduction, disease, strengthening democratic institutions and spurring sustainable economic development in Africa."

Here are some of the immediate issues Obama must accept and--we hope--address:

US Gives Mexico War on Drugs Funding

2008-12-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

BBC: A $197m (£133m) aid package to help Mexico fight drugs cartels has been released by the US government.

The move is part of the Merida Initiative, a $400m (£270m) scheme to assist Mexico's efforts to take on the drugs trade. US Ambassador Tony Garza formally unveiled the programme, which includes the donation of helicopters and surveillance aircraft, in Mexico City.

Drug-related violence in 2008 has been blamed for over 4,000 deaths in Mexico. In the last two years, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 40,000 troops, along with federal police, in a crackdown on drug gangs in the country.

The initiative is part of a $1.6bn (£1.1bn) US plan to help train and equip security forces and strengthen justice systems in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

US Report Sounds Alarm on Terror Threat

2008-12-02T06:45:00.000-08:00

WP: The odds that terrorists will soon strike a major city with weapons of mass destruction are now better than even, a bipartisan congressionally mandated task force concludes in a draft study that warns of growing threats from rogue states, nuclear smuggling networks and the spread of atomic know-how in the developing world.

The sobering assessment of such threats, due for release as early as today, singled out Pakistan as a grave concern because of its terrorist networks, history of instability and arsenal of several dozen nuclear warheads. The report urged the incoming Obama administration to take "decisive action" to reduce the likelihood of a devastating attack.

"No mission could be timelier," says the draft report of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which spent six months preparing an assessment for Congress and the new president-elect. It adds: "In our judgment, America's margin of safety is shrinking, not growing."

The report, ordered by Congress last year, concludes that terrorists are more likely to obtain materials for a biological attack than to buy or steal nuclear weapons. But it says the nuclear threat is growing rapidly, in part because of the increasing global supply of nuclear material and technology.

"Without greater urgency and decisive action by the world community, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013," says the draft report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. The Post reported excerpts from an earlier draft in Sunday's editions.

The creation of the commission, chaired by former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), with former congressman James M. Talent (R-Mo.) serving as vice chairman, was one of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which explored the causes of the 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States. The new panel's bipartisan members and staff conducted more than 260 interviews with government officials and experts around the world to assess the problem of weapons of mass destruction as well as offer proposals for reducing the threat.

While the panel found the risk of an attack with such weapons to be increasingly serious, "nuclear terrorism is still a preventable catastrophe," the report says. It calls for aggressive steps to secure unguarded stockpiles of nuclear weapons material such as uranium and plutonium, as well as coordinated international efforts to discover and disrupt smuggling rings that traffic in atomic technology.

It also urges a dramatic overhaul of the international institutions and treaties that have sought to slow the spread of nuclear weapons since the 1950s. The landmark Non-Proliferation Treaty should be dramatically toughened, the report recommends, with the addition of real penalties for violators and a more robust International Atomic Energy Agency to carry out inspections and enforce the rules.

Pew Global Attitudes Report: The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other

2008-11-28T18:35:00.000-08:00

Introduction and Summary

After a year marked by riots over cartoon portrayals of Muhammad, a major terrorist attack in London, and continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most Muslims and Westerners are convinced that relations between them are generally bad these days. Many in the West see Muslims as fanatical, violent, and as lacking tolerance. Meanwhile, Muslims in the Middle East and Asia generally see Westerners as selfish, immoral and greedy - as well as violent and fanatical.

A rare point of agreement between Westerners and Muslims is that both believe that Muslim nations should be more economically prosperous than they are today. But they gauge the problem quite differently. Muslim publics have an aggrieved view of the West - they are much more likely than Americans or Western Europeans to blame Western policies for their own lack of prosperity. For their part, Western publics instead point to government corruption, lack of education and Islamic fundamentalism as the biggest obstacles to Muslim prosperity.

Nothing highlights the divide between Muslims and the West more clearly than their responses to the uproar this past winter over cartoon depictions of Muhammad. Most people in Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia and Turkey blame the controversy on Western nations' disrespect for the Islamic religion. In contrast, majorities of Americans and Western Europeans who have heard of the controversy say Muslims' intolerance to different points of view is more to blame.

The chasm between Muslims and the West is also seen in judgments about how the other civilization treats women. Western publics, by lopsided margins, do not think of Muslims as "respectful of women." But half or more in four of the five Muslim publics surveyed say the same thing about people in the West.

Yet despite the deep attitudinal divide between Western and Muslim publics, the latest Pew Global Attitudes survey also finds that the views of each toward the other are far from uniformly negative. For example, even in the wake of the tumultuous events of the past year, solid majorities in France, Great Britain and the U.S. retain overall favorable opinions of Muslims. However, positive opinions of Muslims have declined sharply in Spain over the past year (from 46% to 29%), and more modestly in Great Britain (from 72% to 63%).

For the most part, Muslim publics feel more embittered toward the West and its people than vice versa. Muslim opinions about the West and its people have worsened over the past year and by overwhelming margins, Muslims blame Westerners for the strained relationship between the two sides. But there are some positive indicators as well, including the fact that in most Muslim countries surveyed there has been a decline in support for terrorism.

The survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project was conducted in 13 countries, including the United States, from March 31-May 14, 2006. It includes special oversamples of Muslim minorities living in Great Britain, France, Germany and Spain. In many ways, the views of Europe's Muslims represent a middle ground between the way Western publics and Muslims in the Middle East and Asia view each other.

While Europe's Muslim minorities are about as likely as Muslims elsewhere to see relations between Westerners and Muslims as generally bad, they more often associate positive attributes to Westerners - including tolerance, generosity, and respect for women. And in a number of respects Muslims in Europe are less inclined to see a clash of civilizations than are some of the general publics surveyed in Europe. Notably, they are less likely than non-Muslims in Europe to believe that there is a conflict between modernity and being a devout Muslim.

Solid majorities of the general publics in Germany and Spain say that there is a natural conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society. But most Muslims in both of those countries disagree. And in France, the scene of recent riots in heavily Muslim areas, large percentages of both the general public and the Muslim minority population feel there is no conflict in being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.

The survey shows both hopeful and troubling signs with respect to Muslim support for terrorism and the viability of democracy in Muslim countries. In Jordan, Pakistan and Indonesia, there have been substantial declines in the percentages saying suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilian targets can be justified to defend Islam against its enemies. The shift has been especially dramatic in Jordan, likely in response to the devastating terrorist attack in Amman last year; 29% of Jordanians view suicide attacks as often or sometimes justified, down from 57% in May 2005.

Confidence in Osama bin Laden also has fallen in most Muslim countries in recent years. This is especially the case in Jordan, where just 24% express at least some confidence in bin Laden now, compared with 60% a year ago. A sizable number of Pakistanis (38%) continue to say they have at least some confidence in the al Qaeda leader to do the right thing regarding world affairs, but significantly fewer do so now than in May 2005 (51%). However, Nigeria's Muslims represent a conspicuous exception to this trend; 61% of Nigeria's Muslims say they have at least some confidence in bin Laden, up from 44% in 2003.

The belief that terrorism is justifiable in the defense of Islam, while less extensive than in previous surveys, still has a sizable number of adherents. Among Nigeria's Muslim population, for instance, nearly half (46%) feel that suicide bombings can be justified often or sometimes in the defense of Islam. Even among Europe's Muslim minorities, roughly one-in-seven in France, Spain, and Great Britain feel that suicide bombings against civilian targets can at least sometimes be justified to defend Islam against its enemies.

Anti-Jewish sentiment remains overwhelming in predominantly Muslim countries. There also is considerable support for the Hamas Party, which recently was victorious in the Palestinian elections. Majorities in most Muslim countries say that the Hamas Party's victory will be helpful to a fair settlement between Israel and the Palestinians - a view that is roundly rejected by Western publics (see "America's Image Slips, But Allies Share U.S. Concerns over Iran, Hamas," June 13, 2006).

In one of the survey's most striking findings, majorities in Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan say that they do not believe groups of Arabs carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The percentage of Turks expressing disbelief that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks has increased from 43% in a 2002 Gallup survey to 59% currently. And this attitude is not limited to Muslims in predominantly Muslim countries - 56% of British Muslims say they do not believe Arabs carried out the terror attacks against the U.S., compared with just 17% who do.

But Muslim opinion on most issues is not monolithic, and there are some apparent anomalies in Muslims' views of the West and its people. While large percentages in nearly every Muslim country attribute several negative traits to Westerners - including violence, immorality and selfishness - solid majorities in Indonesia, Jordan and Nigeria express favorable opinions of Christians.

Moreover, there is enduring belief in democracy among Muslim publics, which contrasts sharply with the skepticism many Westerners express about whether democracy can take root in the Muslim world. Pluralities or majorities in every Muslim country surveyed say that democracy is not just for the West and can work in their countries. But Western publics are divided - majorities in Germany and Spain say democracy is a Western way of doing things that would not work in most Muslim countries. Most of the French and British, and about half of Americans, say democracy can work in Muslim countries.

Overall, the Germans and Spanish express much more negative views of both Muslims and Arabs than do the French, British or Americans. Just 36% in Germany, and 29% in Spain, express favorable opinions of Muslims; comparable numbers in the two countries have positive impressions of Arabs (39% and 33%, respectively). In France, Great Britain and the U.S., solid majorities say they have favorable opinions of Muslims, and about the same numbers have positive views of Arabs.

These differences are reflected as well in opinions about negative traits associated with Muslims. Roughly eight-in-ten Spanish (83%) and Germans (78%) say they associate Muslims with being fanatical. But that view is less prevalent in France (50%), Great Britain (48%) and the U.S. (43%).

In many ways, the views of Europe's Muslims are distinct from those of both Western publics and Muslims in the Middle East and Asia. Most European Muslims express favorable opinions of Christians, and while their views of Jews are less positive than those of Western publics, they are far more positive than those of Muslim publics. And in France, a large majority of Muslims (71%) say they have favorable opinions of Jews.

Moreover, while publics in largely Muslim countries generally view Westerners as violent and immoral, this view is not nearly as prevalent among Muslims in France, Spain and Germany. British Muslims however, are the most critical of the four minority publics studied - and they come closer to views of Muslims around the world in their opinions of Westerners.

Other Major Findings

- Concerns over Islamic extremism are widely shared in Western publics and Muslim publics alike. But an exception is China, where 59% express little or no concern over Islamic extremism.

- Muslims differ over whether there is a struggle in their country between Islamic fundamentalists and groups wanting to modernize society. But solid majorities of those who perceive such a struggle side with the modernizers.

- Fully 41% of the general public in Spain says most or many Muslims in their country support Islamic extremists. But just 12% of Spain's Muslims say most or many of the country's Muslims support extremists like al Qaeda.

- Nearly four-in-ten Germans (37%), and 29% of Americans, say there is a natural conflict between being a devout Christian and living in a modern society.

Interview with Robert Pape: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Bombing

2008-11-27T19:18:00.000-08:00