“Down With Division” Palestine’s Own Spring

By ALAIN GRESH

The images of Palestinians massed at Israel’s borders on 15 May represented a dream for some, and a nightmare for others. On the 63rd anniversary of the declaration of the Jewish state and of the nakba (catastrophe) for the many thousands of Palestinians expelled from their homes, demonstrators from Syria , Lebanon, Jordan and Gaza converged on the promised land. They were only a few thousand but the world wondered what would happen if millions marched peacefully to the borders and walls next time. These refugees – neglected by the PLO since the 1993 Oslo accords despite having inspired the Palestinian awakening of the 1960s – may have decided to take their future into their own hands.

The banners in Ramallah demanded the right of all Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Beirut or Amman to elect a national representative council, and a radical reform of the PLO. This could represent a new stage in the liberation struggle, and Israel’s brutal response on 15 May, killing 14 unarmed Palestinians, shows how worried its leaders are. It is this new aspiration of ordinary Palestinians after the Arab uprisings, overlooked by both Hamas and Fatah, which has pushed the rivals to end their long quarrel and agree an accord, ratified in Cairo on 4 May by representatives of 13 Palestinian factions. It anticipates the formation of a government of technocrats or independents; the liberation of prisoners from both sides held in Gaza and the West Bank; presidential and legislative elections within one year; reform of the PLO; and the merging of the security forces on a strictly professional basis. Priority is given to reconstructing Gaza, which remains under Israeli blockade.

Unsurprisingly, the agreement was quickly rejected by Israel, with its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, telling Fatah to choose between peace and Hamas. He did not mention that for months Israeli officials had justified their reluctance to agree an accord with Mahmoud Abbas (head of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah) on the grounds that he only represented half the Palestinians. Netanyahu even claimed that Hamas was only the local version of al-Qaida. This intransigence was ratified by President Barack Obama in his speech on 19 May, when he said he understood that these were “profound and legitimate questions for Israel: how can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognise your right to exist?” But Obama and Netanyahu are familiar with the wording of the Oslo accords, which they claim to adhere to, that mandate the PLO, not the Palestinian government, to negotiate a final status agreement with Israel. Hamas does not belong to the PLO. The leaders gave no credit to the statements by Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of Hamas, who has repeated his support for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with Jerusalem as its capital, and confirmed that, if it came about, Hamas would renounce violence.

The agreement between Fatah and Hamas surprised all observers of the negotiations between them over the years. It is hard to see to what extent it will be put into effect, as many points remain vague and there is still deep mistrust. But it has come about as the result of powerful factors, relating to the Palestinian scene and developments in the region. The refugees, who had been the most noticeable absentees from the last 20 years of negotiations, have now been invited in.

‘Down with division’

Fatah and Hamas have been confronted by the rise of the protest movement in the West Bank and even Gaza. Unlike other Arab countries, the main slogan was not “Down with the government”, but “Down with division”, shouted by many young people. As Jamil Hilal, a social scientist in Ramallah, said: “We have no government and no state, just an authority, and on top of that, the occupation.” Although Fatah and Hamas responded with repression and pressure, they were forced to take notice of popular demands, since they are in a strategic deadlock.

The peace process, on which Fatah has staked everything since 1993, has been dead for years, but it was only with the fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, the chief promoter of the supposed negotiations, that Abbas agreed to sign its death warrant: the rise in settlement-building removes any significance from dialogue with Israel. (On the day of Obama’s speech, the Israeli government announced the construction of another 1,550 homes in East Jerusalem).

Hamas, which claims to be the Palestinian “resistance”, has maintained a ceasefire with Israel, which it imposes on other Palestinian factions, if necessary by force. In Gaza, it has to deal with Salafist groups (whom some believe are linked to al-Qaida) that blame Hamas for not fighting the “Zionist enemy”, and for not making society more Islamic. The murder in April of Vittorio Arrigoni, a pro-Palestinian Italian activist based in Gaza, by an extremist group, was a warning. The Israeli blockade and daily problems of ordinary Gazans have eroded Hamas’s influence. Neither Fatah nor Hamas have alternative strategies and they are going through a crisis of legitimacy. Their behaviour in Ramallah and Gaza – authoritarian, corrupt, clientelist – is not so different from the behaviour of other Arab leaders, and is provoking the same revolt.

The Arab awakening

The upheaval in the region has also led to compromise. Fatah has lost its chief ally, Mubarak. Demonstrations in Syria, and their violent repression, have weakened a regime that is an essential support of Hamas, and has sheltered its external leaders since their expulsion from Jordan. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of Sunni Islam’s most popular preachers, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (from which Hamas emerged), strongly condemned Bashar al-Assad’s government on 25 March and said the Ba’ath Party could no longer run Syria. Meanwhile, despite pressure from Damascus, Hamas has been careful not to rush to defend the Syrian regime.

Another regional shift troubles Hamas’s leaders. The repression of the democratic uprising in Bahrain and the violence of the anti-Shia campaign by the Gulf states – led by Saudi Arabia – have increased tensions between the Arab world and Iran. Hamas is partly funded by businessmen in the Gulf who are not keen on its association with Iran. Hence its interest in making up with Egypt, a Sunni power; this has been made easier by the political orientation of the Cairo regime after the overthrow of Mubarak.

Without going so far as to break with the US, or question the peace treaty with Israel, Egypt is ending its subservience to Israeli and US interests. Mubarak opposed unity between Fatah and Hamas because he feared the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He considered Gaza a security problem and took part in its blockade, and he led Arab defiance against Iran. While the Muslim Brotherhood prepare to take part in September’s elections, and perhaps even in the next government, these fears are now out of place, since the democratic climate in Egypt allows people to express their solidarity with the Palestinians, as the government is well aware.

Egypt’s foreign minister has said the Rafah border crossing will be opened, and has described the Israeli blockade of Gaza as shameful. The chief of staff, Sami Anan, has given Israel a warning on his Facebook page: “The Israeli government must show restraint when it discusses peace talks. It must refrain from intervening in the internal matters of Palestine”. As the former Egyptian ambassador to Syria, Mahmoud Shukri, said: “Mubarak was always taking sides with the US, but the new way of thinking is entirely different. We would like to make a model of democracy for the region, and we are ensuring that Egypt has its own influence”. The effect of this has been a thaw in relations with Iran, and both Tehran and Damascus have welcomed the Fatah-Hamas accord.

What hope for US intervention?

Obama’s latest speech, two years after he addressed the Muslim world in Cairo, was in response to the new situation in the region, and the failure of his mediation in the Palestinian conflict, confirmed by the resignation of US Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. Obama wanted to show that the US was on “the right side of history” at a time of regional turmoil. He announced that the US wanted to combine its interests and values; for example he denounced the repression by the government in Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based, but stayed silent about Saudi Arabia, which has assisted it.

Introducing him, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that “America’s leadership is more essential than ever”. Robert Dreyfuss of the US weekly The Nation asked whether anyone in the region was still listening to the US. After describing Pakistan and Afghanistan’s defiance of the US, he wrote: “Iran, despite onerous sanctions and repeated threats of US military action, has not only refused to compromise over its nuclear programme, but Tehran is supporting anti-American movements in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and the Gulf states. Iraq, whose very government is the creation of the US invasion in 2003, has all but shut the door on a continued US military presence there, and its leadership touts its new alliance with Iran. Saudi Arabia, where anti-American sentiment has been growing for a decade, is seething over US policy in the region, and Riyadh is reaching out to Beijing, Moscow and other powers, despite its overwhelming dependence on weapons and security assistance from Washington.” Saudi Arabia has also expressed its displeasure at the way Obama dropped Mubarak and criticised the repression in Bahrain.

Netanyahu resisted calls to halt settlement building and rejected any return to the June 1967 borders, or even using those borders as a basis for negotiations, as suggested by Obama. When they met at the White House on 20 May, Netanyahu lectured Obama on history and geopolitics with the arrogance of someone who knows he can’t lose. Despite the media coverage about their differences the Israeli prime minister told his aides: “I went in with certain concerns. I came out encouraged”. Obama hailed their excellent relations, the only inviolable principle in the region, but also the major obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state. Obama announced in September 2010 that it would be created by 2011 (his predecessor, George W Bush, had promised it by 2005, then 2008).

With 17 months to go before the US presidential election, the chances of Obama realising his aim are slim. What is certain is that this September, when the UN Assembly meets to decide whether to recognise a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, the US will oppose it, as they have opposed any pressure on Israel, which has for years violated every UN resolution, including those voted by the US.

But the US runs the risk of being isolated, for the agreement between Hamas and Fatah, the creation of a single Palestinian government and Israel’s intransigence have created a more favourable context for Abbas’s demands. And it seems several European countries have decided to support the resolution. Washington could, once again, impose its veto. But a massive vote in favour by the General Assembly would at least allow the Palestinian state (not just the PLO) to be granted observer status at the UN and join UN organisations such as Unesco and the FAO, and put the issue of the occupation of a state (and not just “territories”) before international opinion and justice. A small step forward, but a step all the same.

Alain Gresh is vice president of Le Monde diplomatique and heads its Middle East/Muslim world department.

Video of lethal Israeli prison raid provokes little concern in Israel

Forward, Nathan Jeffay: “Scant Response to Video of a Violent Israeli Prison Night Search”

See video

Israel Channel 2 aired footage in early April that the government had tried to keep secret of a post-midnight raid by Prison Service guards on sleeping Palestinian inmates at Ketziot Prison. The raid sparked a violent clash in which one prisoner died.

Tel Aviv — In the video, there was screaming, cursing and shooting that left one prisoner dead. But when, in early April, Israelis were given a fly-on-the-wall view of one of the most violent nights in the history of their prison service, other media outlets met it with a collective shrug.

Democracy Now gatekeepers bury dancing Israeli movers and bogus art students

The below article was published on February 9, 2007, but we have just now became aware of it and feel it deserves a larger audience.

We had been acutely aware of the Israeli spying aspects described below and that both the mainstream media and Democracy Now had failed to cover them. It’s interesting to see, as the analysis below reveals, that when Democracy Now finally mentioned these, it did so in a way to minimize the impact and the facts.

On the contrary, the excellent Washington Report on Middle East Affairs had an article about this early on by editor Richard Curtiss. The Washington Report has been published since 1982 and is one of the two best print publications for information on Israel-Palestine in the U.S.. The other is AMEU’s The Link. Yet, Amy Goodman has never had editors from either publication on her program. As a result, many activists around the country don’t even know they exist. She has similarly ignored If Americans Knew, whose founder Alison Weir has been writing and speaking about Israel-Palestine for 11 years. (See related article.)

And when activists, despite Democracy Now’s omission, do learn about the Washington Report, they are sometimes told by similar left gatekeepers that the magazine is “conservative.” In reality, it is non-doctrinaire, its editors and writers are committed humanitarians, and it consistently publishes extremely strong journalism both on Israel-Palestine and on the Israel Lobby. We suspect that is why it is being “disappeared” by the left gatekeepers who so long kept Palestine out of progressive activism that Jeffrey Blankfort exposes so well. For example, he describes: 

If there is one event that exposed their influence over of the movement, it is what occurred in the streets of New York on June 12, 1982, when 800,000 people gathered in front of the United Nations to call for a ban on nuclear weapons. Six days earlier, on June 6th, Israel had launched a devastating invasion of Lebanon. Its goal was to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization, then based in that country. Eighty thousand soldiers, backed by massive bombing from the air and from the sea were creating a level of death and destruction that dwarfed what Iraq would later do in Kuwait. Within a year there would be 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese dead and tens of thousands more wounded.

And what was the response that day in New York? In recognition of the suffering then taking place in his homeland, a Lebanese man was allowed to sit on the stage, but he would not be introduced; not allowed to say a word. Nor was the subject mentioned by any of the speakers. Israel and its lobby couldn’t have asked for anything more.

[The person largely responsible for this was Leslie Cagan, who similarly minimized discussion of Palestine in the post-9/11 antiwar movement. Cagan now, oddly, has a paid position with the US Boat to Gaza.]

Winter Patriot

Israel Police’s Facebook page rife with racist comments, calls for violence

Ha’aretz – The Israeli police’s official Facebook page faces criticism after allowing a stream of offensive and racist comments to be published on its page. The police say they regularly delete inappropriate comments, and have deleted over 1,500 responses during the past three weeks.

Here are some of the comments Haaretz found on the Facebook page: “We’re leading the Arabushes around by the nose;” “With God’s help let this be the first one killed today and not the last;” “They have to be sprayed like cockroaches;” “Every stinking SOB Muslim who dies is a holiday for me.”

These comments and many others were published by registered surfers, who are identified by their name and picture – and were not deleted by the police. A spokesperson for the police says that if they missed the offensive quotes, this was due to human error.

The official Israel Police page is considered a lively Facebook page, with more than 43,000 friends. The police use it for reporting various topics, from traffic jams to security incidents.

However, in many reports concerning security issues, the discussion on the page degenerates into curses, manifestations of racism, incitement to violence and more.

The violent rhetoric of the Israeli surfer may not come as a shock, but what does surprise is the police response: The force is in charge of enforcing the law and protecting the public, but many of the comments continue to adorn the page for a long time.

Mitchell reportedly resigned over Dennis Ross’s “extreme bias” toward Israel, Ross working against US interests

Ma’an – A political adviser to the late president Yasser Arafat issued a statement Tuesday, alleging that US Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell resigned because of the “extreme bias” of his deputy Dennis Ross.

Bassam Abu Shareef said Ross obstructed all US initiatives aiming to achieve progress in the peace process, and blamed the deputy’s bias for Mitchell’s resignation Saturday.

Abu Shareef said senior American officials informed him that Mitchell viewed the appointment of Ross a step to obstruct the peace process. He added that Mitchell believed Ross was working against US interests.

The official paraphrased comments he said were made by Mitchell during a meeting, where he asked: “How can Dennis Ross assist in the peace process when he refuses to meet with the Palestinians, when he despises their leadership and hates their president?”

Abu Shareef also said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “rejects peace,” and would have no part of a Palestinian state with Hamas in its leadership.

“This means they are opening war on Palestinians and their nation,” he added.

Bloomberg declares May Birthright Israel month in N.Y., group plans to reach half of all young Jewish Americans

JTA — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has declared May Birthright Israel month. [No mention was made of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 non-Jewish men, women, and children.]

Bloomberg will issue a formal proclamation at an event Wednesday evening in New York City set to be attended by more than 1,000 alumni of the free Israel trip for Jews aged 18 to 26.

The Taglit-Birthright Israel organization said May will feature events in cities across North America for trip alumni, special Birthright Shabbat celebrations at more than 100 synagogues, visits to communities by Israeli soldiers who participated in Birthright Israel trips and special donor functions.

The organization this month plans to publicize its goal of increasing participation from 30,000 a year to 51,000 a year by 2013, or one of every two young Jewish adults.

In January, the government of Israel announced that it would contribute $100 million to Taglit-Birthright Israel over the next three years. Birthright also plans to increase its fundraising this year by $10 million to $58.6 million, and then add another $20 million next year in order reach its participant goal for 2013.

JTA: Republican Jewish Coalition blasts Ron Paul

JTA: “Republican Jews express concern about Paul candidacy”– The Republican Jewish Coalition blasted U.S. Rep. Ron Paul before he announced his third bid for the presidency.

“As Americans who are committed to a strong and vigorous foreign policy, we are deeply concerned about the prospective presidential campaign of Congressman Ron Paul,” the RJC’s executive director, Matt Brooks, said in a May 12 statement about the Texas lawmaker. “While Rep. Paul plans to run as a Republican, his views and past record place him far outside of the Republican mainstream.”

Paul launched his campaign for the Republican nomination on Friday. Like his son, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Paul has advocated cutting $3 billion in annual defense assistance to Israel, as well as to deny funding to its Arab neighbors.

In 2008, Paul mounted an insurgent campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and built a passionate base of support with his libertarian views and denunciations of American foreign policy. He was not a serious contender, however, in the primaries.

Paul had run as the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 1988.

“His candidacy, as we’ve seen in his past presidential campaigns, will appeal to a very narrow constituency in the U.S. electorate,” Brooks said. [In reality, Paul draws from across the political spectrum.] “Throughout his public service, Paul has espoused a dangerous isolationist vision for the U.S. and our role in the world. He has been a virulent and harsh critic of Israel during his tenure in Congress.”

Foreign correspondents’ pool shrinks, Youtube “reporting” by opposition in Iran easily manipulated

CounterPunch, May 9, 2011, “Patrick Cockburn: Does It Matter? Portrait of the US Press in the Hour of Its Fall”

……. US newspapers and television networks have famously been in a state of deepening crisis in the last few years. But the Arab Awakening has been a watershed in this decline. It was CNN’s reporting of the first Gulf War from Baghdad in 1991 that made it the channel that presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and journalists around the world had to watch. Back in 2003, CNN and the US networks CNN and the US networks still had the most ample coverage of the start of the war in Iraq. But since the start of the Arab Awakening even the White House has reportedly been watching al-Jazeera English to find out what was happening (though the BBC has not been far behind).

It is depressing how swiftly the corps of American foreign correspondents has shrunk over the last five years. Papers like the Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Boston Globe, which once had a full roster of reporters, no longer do so. US television networks that used to rent whole floors of hotels, to the envy of non-American broadcasters, are now down to a single journalist to cover a story. At least one US network did not send a single correspondent to report the uprising in Tunisia in January that began the capsizing of the regional political status quo.

Does it matter? In one sense it obviously does, since there are fewer effective journalists in the business. The drop in their numbers would be more evident if so many Arab countries in turmoil like Syria and Yemen had not banned reporters from obtaining entry visas. The consequences of more limited journalistic resources being deployed is also masked by the use of YouTube, photographs taken on mobile phones, and conversations with eyewitnesses on satellite phones.

This sort of evidence is powerful but easier to manipulate than it looks. Governments that kick out foreign correspondents may breathe a sigh of relief without realizing that they have created a vacuum of information that can easily be filled by their enemies. Thus much of the reporting of demonstrations, arrests, shootings and killings in Syria now comes courtesy of opponents of the regime.

It is difficult to feel much sympathy for governments whose abortive attempts at censorship make them vulnerable to hostile propaganda, but it does make it very difficult to verify what is going on. For instance, at the end of February I was in Tehran where exile websites reported that there were continuing street demonstrations. I could see none of these though there were plenty of black-helmeted riot police. Local Iranian stringers for foreign publications had mostly had their press credentials suspended so they could not write.

“In any case,” one of the stringers complained to me, “the news agenda for Iran is now being set by exiles and, if we report that nothing much is happening, nobody will believe us.” On YouTube I noticed one video of a demonstration in Tehran that had supposedly taken place in February showing all the men in shirts and without jackets, though the temperature in the Iranian capital was only a couple of degrees above freezing. I suspected that the video had been taken at the height of the Iranian protests in the summer of 2009.

This is not to say that flickering films of atrocities by the Syrian security forces are not true, but collection and control of such information by the exiled opposition, makes it impossible to judge the extent of the violence.

It is naïve to be too nostalgic about the passing of the age when the US dominated the foreign news media. What made CNN’s coverage so distinctive in 1991 was that Peter Arnett, their correspondent in Baghdad, was prepared to take a sceptical approach to US government claims about the accuracy of its bombing and the identity of its victims. CNN lost its critical edge over the years, while network correspondents, often privately critical about US government policy, were prevented by their bosses in New York from straying too far from conventional political wisdom

The press has always been more dependent on the powers-that-be than it likes to admit. American journalists outside Washington often express revulsion and contempt at the slavish ways of the Washington press corps. But it is difficult to report any government on a day-to-day basis without its cooperation, cooperation that can be peremptorily withdrawn to bring critics into line. Also, contrary to every film about journalism, people tend not to admit voluntarily to anything that might do themselves damage. Woodward and Bernstein learned about Watergate almost entirely from secondary sources such as judges, prosecutors and government investigative agencies which could force witnesses to come clean by threatening to put them in jail.

The media is often credited or blamed for an independent sceptical spirit which it seldom shows in reality. In wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan effective media criticism has tended to follow rather than precede public opinion. Even then it usually needs important politicians to be standing on the same side of the fence. The Afghan war is unpopular in the US, but there is no effective anti-war movement because the Democrats, once so critical of the Iraq war, are now in the White House and, if Obama goes on being presented with targets as vulnerable as Trump, are likely to stay there. Read Full article

Bin Laden compound contained women, children, chickens, eggs…

AFP: Bin Laden’s Pakistan ‘farm’ had rustic charm”

ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan – Three women, 12 children, cows, rabbits and chickens all hid behind the high wall where Osama bin Laden carved out a family life, set to the gentle rhythm of changing seasonal crops outside his gate.

Mobile phone video footage taken Tuesday by a Pakistani soldier offered a final glimpse into a life of rustic simplicity — a dozen eggs sitting in the kitchen sink, a few dishes on the side, large wooden cupboards open and bare.

Bin Laden’s final home, ransacked by US Navy SEAL commandos in an overnight raid last Sunday in the foothills of Pakistan’s Himalayan mountains, was not the luxury pile US reports first suggested.

Jerusalem Post: NY Hassidic paper ‘deletes’ Clinton from iconic photo

Photo by: REUTERS/Ho New

Jerusalem Post: “NY Hassidic paper ‘deletes’ Clinton from iconic photo”
Brooklyn newspaper altered photograph of Obama and staffers watching raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound* to remove all females.

NEW YORK – The photograph showing President Barack Obama and staffers in the White House Situation Room carefully watching the raid in progress by US forces in Pakistan on the bin Laden compound last Sunday [sic*] has been published far and wide.

One Hassidic paper in Brooklyn, however, has chosen to alter the photo – excising Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and another female staffer from the picture.

[It has since come out that they did not actually watch the raid “in progress'”]

Media scrambles as Bin Laden story crumbles, When was Situation Room photo taken?

New American, Alex Newman, May 6, 2011 – While the establishment media was busy parroting President Obama’s announcement of Osama bin Laden’s supposed assassination, reporting the unsubstantiated claims as if they were unquestionable facts, much of the so-called “alternative” press was far more cautious — and accurate, it turns out. But more importantly, with the new official storyline indicating that bin Laden was in fact unarmed, bigger and much more important questions are beginning to emerge.

In terms of coverage, it turns out that the skeptical approach proved far superior in terms of getting it right. Countless mainstream sources were so confident in Obama’s word that they reported many of the claims as fact without even attributing them to the President.

But the official White House narrative has been changed so many times in recent days that now it’s almost unrecognizable. There wasn‘t even a fire fight; yet this was one of the crucial elements of the original story that justified the assassination of a person the government painted as the most valuable source of information on the planet — the leader of al-Qaeda. And in reporting the statements as fact, the establishment press has officially been left with egg all over its face again.

Senators misled by likely fake bin Laden photos

By: CNN’s Dana Bash and Ted Barrett

May 4th, Washington (CNN) – Several senators said Wednesday they had seen a photograph of Osama bin Laden after he was shot, describing it to reporters and using it to help form their opinion on whether or not President Obama should release pictures of the dead terrorist.

Now, on a day when fake photographs of a dead bin Laden are flying around the internet, those senators say they cannot be sure whether what they saw and talked to reporters about was real.

CIA made video purporting to show Bin Laden swiggng liquor – Washington Post

“…The agency actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys, one of the former CIA officers recalled, chuckling at the memory.

The actors were drawn from “some of us darker-skinned employees,” he said.The agency actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys, one of the former CIA officers recalled, chuckling at the memory. The actors were drawn from “some of us darker-skinned employees,” he said.

CIA unit’s wacky idea: Depict Saddam as gay, By Jeff Stein, Washington Post, May 25, 2010

Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death May 6, 2011

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

By Noam Chomsky

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.”

In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany.

What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

Paradigm Shift: The transformative effect of Egypt may begin to counter Israeli power

CounterPunch, Ramzy Baroud – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the Hamas-Fatah deal in Cairo was both swift and predictable. “The Palestinian Authority must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility for peace with both,” he said, in a televised speech shortly after the Palestinian political rivals reached a reconciliation agreement under Egyptian sponsorship on April 27.

Despite numerous past attempts to undercut Mahmoud Abbas, stall peace talks, and derail Israel’s commitment to previous agreements, Netanyahu and his rightwing government are now arguing that Palestinians are solely responsible for the demise of the illusory ‘peace process’. Israeli bulldozers will continue to carve up the hapless West Bank to make room for more illegal settlements, but this time their excuse may not be ‘natural expansion’. The justification might instead be Israel has no partner. US and other media will merrily repeat the dreadful logic, and Palestinians will, as usual, be chastised.

But frankly, at this juncture of Middle East history, Israel is almost negligible. It no longer has a transformative influence in the region. When the Arab people began revolting, a new dimension to the Arab-Israeli conflict emerged. As the chants in Cairo’s Tahrir Square began to adopt a pan-Arab and pro-Palestinian language, it became obvious that Egypt would soon venture outside the political confines of Washington’s patronizing labels, which divide the Arabs into moderates (good) and radicals (bad).

Cockburn: Obama’s lies on Bin Laden, et al

CounterPunch Diary, Alexander Cockburn: “A Volcano of Lies” –  Barack Obama, who pledged to restore ethical honor to the White House after the Bush years, is now burying himself under an active volcano of lies, mostly but not exclusively concerning the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

There was scarcely a sentence in the President’s Sunday night address, or in the subsequent briefing by John Brennan, his chief counter-terrorism coordinator, that has not been subsequently retracted by CIA director Leon Panetta or the White House press spokesman, Jay Carney, or by various documentary records.

Ray McGovern: Is the killing of Bin Laden part of a new US policy of murder?

Consortium News: “What Has Bin Laden’s Killing Wrought?” – Pakistani police and locals gather outside the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, May 5, 2011. The head of Pakistan’s Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said that he would not tolerate a repeat of the American covert operation that killed Bin Laden. (Photo: Warrick Page / The New York Times)

As America’s morbid celebrations over the killing of Osama bin Laden begin to fade, we are left with a new landscape of risks – and opportunities – created by his slaying at the hands of a U.S. Special Forces team at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The range of those future prospects could be found in Wednesday’s Washington Post. On the hopeful side, a front-page article reported that the Obama administration was following up bin Laden’s death with accelerated peace talks in Afghanistan. On a darker note, a Post editorial hailed bin Laden’s slaying as a model for “targeting” Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and his sons.

So, while there is the possibility that the United States might finally begin to wind down a near-decade-long war in Afghanistan, there is the countervailing prospect of the United States consolidating an official policy of assassination and violence as the way to impose Washington’s will on the Muslim world.

Book Review: Carefully researched “Transparent Cabal” shows that invasion of Iraq was fomented to advance Israeli interests

MIDDLE EAST BOOK REVIEWS

Stephen J. Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, Foreword by Paul Findley, Introduction by Paul Gottfried, Norfolk, Virginia: Enigma Editions, 2008, xvi + 447 pages

By David W. Lutz, The Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Nairobi, Kenya

The thesis of Stephen J. Sniegoski’s carefully-researched and persuasively-argued book is that the primary aim of the calamitous invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not to avenge an assassination plot against the President’s father, to liberate the Iraqi people, to combat terrorist threats to US security, to enhance US global power, to spread democracy, nor to control oil reserves, but rather to improve the strategic position of Israel: “The origins of the American war on Iraq revolve around the United States’ adoption of a war agenda whose basic format was conceived in Israel to advance Israeli interests and was ardently pushed by the influential pro-Israeli American neoconservatives, both inside and outside the Bush administration” (p. 351). Sniegoski’s assertion is not that the “neocons” deliberately promoted Israel’s interest at the expense of the United States, but rather that they “viewed American foreign policy in the Middle East through the lens of Israeli interest, as Israeli interest was perceived by the Likudniks” (p. 5).

Sniegoski explains: “The aim of the neoconservative/Likudnik foreign policy strategy was to weaken and fragment Israel’s Middle East adversaries and concomitantly increase Israel’s relative strength, both externally and internally. A key objective was to eliminate the demographic threat posed by the Palestinians to the Jewish state, which the destabilization of Israel’s external enemies would achieve, since the Palestinian resistance depended upon external support, both moral and material” (p. 5). Although the neocons saw an identity of interests between the United States and Israel, the countries’ respective interests did not in fact coincide. The United States stood to benefit from stability in the Middle East, so that the flow of oil would not be interrupted; Israel would gain relative strength from instability.

The neoconservatives are a group of Americans (some with strong ties to Israel) who became dissatisfied with socialism and moved to the “right”.

Israel’s “lawfare” against the Palestinian people is rooted in a ficticious narrative of having a “right” to exist

Al Jazeera, Joseph Massad – The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, now entering their twentieth year had been hailed from the start as historic, having inaugurated a “peace process” that would resolve what is commonly referred to as the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict”.

For the Palestinians and the international community, represented by the United Nations and the myriad resolutions its Security Council and General Assembly issued since 1948, what was to be negotiated were the colonisation of land, the occupation of territory and population, and the laws that stipulate ethnic and religious discrimination in Israel, which, among other things, bar Palestinian refugees from returning to their land and confiscate their property. In their struggle against these Israeli practises, Palestinian leaders, whether in Israel, the Occupied Territories, or the diaspora, have always invoked these rights based on international law and UN resolutions, which Israel has consistently refused to implement or abide by since 1948. Thus for the Palestinians, armed by the UN and international law, the negotiations were precisely aimed to end colonisation, occupation, and discrimination.

On the other hand, one of the strongest and persistent arguments that the Zionist movement and Israel have deployed since 1948 in defence of the establishment of Israel and its subsequent policies is the invocation of the rights of Israel, which are not based on international law or UN resolutions. This is a crucial distinction to be made between the Palestinian and Israeli claims to possession of “rights.” While the Palestinians invoke rights that are internationally recognised, Israel invokes rights that are solely recognised at the national level by the Israeli state itself. For Zionism, this was a novel mode of argumentation as, in deploying it, Israel invokes not only juridical principles but also moral ones.

Muslim scholars: Bin Laden’s burial at sea violated Islamic tradition, was a strategic mistake bound to stoke rage

Associated Press, HAMZA HENDAWI: “Islamic scholars criticize bin Laden’s sea burial” – Muslim clerics said Monday that Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea was a violation of Islamic tradition that may further provoke militant calls for revenge attacks against American targets.

Although there appears to be some room for debate over the burial — as with many issues within the faith — a wide range of senior Islamic scholars interpreted it as a humiliating disregard for the standard Muslim practice of placing the body in a grave with the head pointed toward the holy city of Mecca.

Sea burials can be allowed, they said, but only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship.

Bin Laden’s burial at sea “runs contrary to the principles of Islamic laws, religious values and humanitarian customs,” said Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand Imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque, Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning.

Bin Laden was never indicted for 9-11; what he represented for Muslims

By John Whitbeck – Below are the final five paragraphs of an otherwise not particularly interesting op-ed in today’s ARAB NEWS (Jeddah). I am circulating them for two reasons:

1. I suspect that they reflect widespread (even if prudently unspoken) feelings in the Arab world and beyond — and help to explain the sobbing and tears at the Grand Mosque in Mecca observed by a former British ambassador and reported in one of my recent messages.

2. The concluding paragraph’s reference to Osama bin Laden as the “so-called architect of 9/11” gives me an opening to comment on an intriguing article published in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune (and presumably in the New York Times as well). The article reports: “Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are expected to file court papers this week that will formally ask a judge to dismiss all charges against Osama bin Laden.” The article goes on to note that the case began “with an indictment on June 10, 1998, and expanded over the years with later versions”, the final version being revised to include “the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in 2000.” As with Sherlock Holmes’ dog that did not bark, the most significant aspect of this article is what it never mentions — that Osama bin Laden was never indicted for involvement in the 9/11 events.

It has been frequently commented upon that the FBI’s “MOST WANTED” charge sheet for Osama bin Laden never included any alleged 9/11 involvement and that, when the FBI Director was queried about this some years ago, he replied, with commendable honesty, that the FBI did not possess any evidence of such involvement which would stand up in a court of law.

As I have noted in another recent message, notwithstanding an early promise by Colin Powell, the Bush-Cheney administration never publicly released any evidence it may have had regarding Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the 9/11 events, and it may reasonably be surmised that none (or none taken seriously by professional prosecutors or investigators) was even provided to the Department of Justice or the FBI, which evidently managed to maintain certain evidentiary standards for issuing indictments or leveling charges with respect to serious criminal charges.

At the risk of being a pedantic lawyer, it therefore appears, as a strictly legal matter, that, if the current American jurisprudence or prevailing legal theory now holds that a person accused (but not yet tried or convicted) of serious crimes may, after his apprehension, be summarily executed, Osama bin Laden was executed for Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Aden, but NOT for 9/11.

To really achieve “closure” and celebrate, the American people will have to await (perhaps for a long time) the trial, conviction and execution of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, billed in recent years as the “mastermind of 9/11”.

Bin Laden’s end: Unanswered questions

By AIJAZ ZAKA SYED | ARAB NEWS

…..Yet you can’t help a twinge of sadness at the tragic end Bin Laden has met — far from the land of his birth that he so loved. He was driven by the belief — hopelessly distorted as it was — that he was fighting to free Muslim lands and for justice for the Palestinians, Afghans and for the oppressed everywhere.

Muslims never identified with OBL or condoned his appalling crimes. They, however, understood what forced a quiet young man to kick his billion-dollar fortune and take up arms. He struck a chord in not just Arabs and Muslims but in the dispossessed everywhere by taking on the big bullies who have killed more innocents and wreaked more destruction on our world than a million Bin Ladens could have managed in their life time.

Besides, the way this whole charade has been played out with President Obama and his aides “coolly” watching the action live in real time as if it was a baseball game, and his body being dumped into the Arabian Sea has only added to their disgust and outrage. Using all that overwhelming force to kill an unarmed, ailing man without a trial. So much for America’s fabled justice system and due process!

Shouldn’t Bin Laden have been put on the trial for the crimes he has been accused of? What was the hurry to bury him at sea? What was it that America was trying to cover up? And how is Obama’s justice different from the “dead-or-alive” cowboy retribution of his predecessor?

But dead or alive, we haven’t heard the last of this yet. Bin Laden may be dead and gone; his cause is not. Others will take his place and may already have. If the world is to prevent the rise of more Bin Ladens, it must take its scalpel to the festering cancer of injustice and oppression in the Holy Land. Now that the so-called architect of 9/11 is gone, the US has no pretext or business to be in Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Bin Laden has taken with him to his watery grave the West’s raison d’être for its imperial project in the Muslim world.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a widely published columnist.

What good is Palestinian unity if Gaza-West Bank travel is still impossible? The caging of gaza began in 1991

Ha’aretz, Amira Hass – Back in February, Egyptian diplomats predicted that Egypt would help bring about an internal Palestinian rapprochement, but what good is reconciliation if Palestinians from Gaza still won’t be able to travel to the West Bank?

Is Palestinian unity the “only option” for Palestinians? Articles for and against

“…the existence of the PA – whether divided or united – perpetuates the myth that Palestinians have some control over and responsibility for their own fate, when in fact, the Israeli hand is heavier now than before the PA was constituted in 1993. – Paul Larudee

“…This unity between Fatah and Hamas is inevitable. The problem for the US Congress and Israel is that they cannot face reality. – James Wall

The half-Jewish Nazi who saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Supreme Court Justice Brandeis assisted

Ha’aretz, Raphael Ahren – Thanks to the late Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, Chabad Lubavitch is a well-known and powerful Hasidic movement, with 4,000 emissaries now stationed around the world [teachings include the belief that non-Jews are a separate, inferior species]. But few people know that the rebbe’s predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, owes his life to a half-Jewish Nazi officer acting under the direct order of the head of the Third Reich’s military intelligence agency.

Major Jewish groups hail killing of bin Laden, announcement of his elimination made on “Holocaust Memorial Day”

Ha’aretz – The Republican Jewish Coalition hailed Monday the death of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan by United States Navy Seals, and stressed that the war against radical Islam must continue.

Video: Leaders of Israel’s founding movement describe their intentions to take over Palestine and expel the inhabitants

Never Before Campaign – If one wants to know why and how the conflict started in Palestine more than 60 years ago, the “confessions” of Israeli and Zionist leaders should make it very clear.

700,000 Palestinians (more than half of the Palestinian population at the time) were expelled in 1948. More than 600 towns and villages were ethnically cleansed. See the map here. Thousands were killed and maimed.

Here is the list of quotes used in the video, their sources and the context:

Analysis of New York Times spin on Fatah-Hamas agreement

By John Whitbeck – I am frequently frustrated by the Western mainstream media practice of almost never mentioning Hamas without immediately adding “sworn to Israel’s destruction” (or a variant) and usually “Iranian-backed” (or a variant) as well. Often, care is also taken to point out that the United States and the European Union consider Hamas “a terrorist organization”.

These helpful background identifiers are clearly intended by journalists (or their editors) to alert readers or viewers that these are “bad guys”, untouchables, people who must richly deserve extra-judicial assassinations past (Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic, Abdulaziz Al-Rantisi and many other) or future (a resumption of assassinations of Hamas leaders having been publicly urged, post-Bin Laden, by MK Shaul Mofaz, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Knesset, who has simultaneously claimed Israeli credit for inspiring America’s own assassination strategy).

I cannot recall ever seeing Hamas helpfully identified in the Western mainstream media as “the party which, in 2006, decisively won the most democratic elections ever held in the Arab world”.

This propagandistic practice is on view again in today’s New York Times news story [by Ethan Bronner, whose son serves in the Israeli army] on the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement (of which an English text is transmitted below) which was signed in Cairo on Tuesday and celebrated with speeches by Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Meshal yesterday. The first mention of the word “Hamas” is immediately followed by “– the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, rejects Israel’s existence and accepts arms and training from Iran –“.

Nevertheless, a few paragraphs later, the Times quotes Khaled Meshal as proclaiming in his speech: “We will have one authority and one decision. We need to achieve the common goal: a Palestinian state with full sovereignty on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.” Obviously, this would leave ample room for Israel on the other side of the 1967 borders.

Does no one at the Times sense a “disconnect” here?

This is not a new position for Hamas. This has been the organization’s position for some years already. It is a position fully consistent with the position of Fatah, with UN Security Council 242 and with the proclaimed positions of virtually every member state of the United Nations except Israel and the United States.

Are Western mainstream media journalists and/or editors really so ignorant and uninformed as not to be aware of this? Or do they simply live and work in fear, believing that their personal and career interests require them, on this and other issues relating to Israel/Palestine, to feed disinformation to their readers and viewers so as to keep them ignorant and uninformed — indeed, brainwashed? [Or is Israel “family” for many of these journalists?]

Information and analysis on Bin Laden missing from mainstream media

(One of the best sources for valuable articles on this and other topics is CounterPunch.)

Gary Leupp
Why I Don’t Feel Much About Osama’s Death

Israel Shamir
US Knew Where Osama Was Since 2005 (posted below)

Shaukat Qadir
The Long Road to Abbotabad: Osama and Al Qaeda

Randall Amster
Obama Bags Osama: Now What?

David Swanson
Killing Osama, Resolving Nothing

Video from BBC documentary: Author says Al-Qaeda myth was manufactured from the BBC documentary, “The Power of Nightmares,” produced by Adam Curtis

Eileen Fleming
Back to bin Laden, Bob Dylan, U2 and THAT DAY we call 9/11

Juan Cole: Bin Laden, the Cold War, Arab Dictators, Palestine… (posted below)

John Whitbeck
Bin Laden assassination: Where is the photographic evidence? (posted below)

Phyllis Bennis
The killing of Bin Laden: Justice or Vengeance? (posted below)

Who is the Real Reactionary? Is Ron Paul more progressive than Obama?

CounterPunch, Charles Davis – Ron Paul is far from perfect, but I’ll say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasn’t protected torturers from prosecution and he hasn’t overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the “crime” of revealing the government’s criminal behavior.

Can the same be said for Barack Obama?

Yet, ask a good movement liberal or progressive about the two and you’ll quickly be informed that yeah, Ron Paul’s good on the war stuff — yawn — but otherwise he’s a no-good right-wing reactionary of the worst order, a guy who’d kick your Aunt Beth off Medicare and force her to turn tricks for blood-pressure meds. By contrast, Obama, war crimes and all, provokes no such visceral distaste. He’s more cosmopolitan, after all; less Texas-y. He’s a Democrat. And gosh, even if he’s made a few mistakes, he means well.

Sure he’s a murderer, in other words, but at least he’s not a Republican!

Put another, even less charitable way: Democratic partisans – liberals – are willing to trade the lives of a couple thousand poor Pakistani tribesman in exchange for a few liberal catnip-filled speeches and NPR tote bags for the underprivileged. The number of party-line progressives who would vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama wouldn’t be enough to fill Conference Room B at the local Sheraton, with even harshest left-leaning critics of the president, like Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, saying they’d prefer the mass-murdering sociopath to that kooky Constitution fetishist.

Egypt begins to support Palestinians, Israel worried – headed toward crisis

CounterPunch, Jonathan Cook: “A new mood in Cairo: Egypt and Israel headed for crisis” – Israeli officials have expressed alarm at a succession of moves by the interim Egyptian government that they fear signal an impending crisis in relations with Cairo.

The story behind the story: Leaked documents show media and government cover up on Bin Laden

CounterPunch, Israel Shamier: “Cross and Double Cross With Gitmo Files: US Knew Where Osama Was Since 2005” – The unredacted Guantanamo files show clearly that the trail to Abbottabad was known to the US intelligence services at least since 2005, when al-Libi, another Abbottabad dweller, was captured.

Timing is everything. The US President announced the killing of Osama bin Laden just as Wikileaks completed its publication of the Guantanamo files. Was it coincidence? If not, what was the connection?

An answer to this question is directly connected with the cross and double cross accusations exchanged in the murky world where the intelligence services meet mainstream media.

Video from BBC documentary: Author says Al-Qaeda myth was manufactured

From the BBC documentary, “The Power of Nightmares,” produced by Adam Curtis:

AIPAC, a not-so-benign night flower: Spying connections, PACS, Harman, Pelosi, Hoyer…

Middle East Monitor, Janet McMahon – One could be forgiven for thinking that the last three letters of AIPAC stand for “political action committee.” But since the American Israel Public Affairs Committee does not itself make campaign contributions to political candidates, technically it is not a PAC. Curiously, however, the 30-odd “unaffiliated” pro-Israel PACs, most with deceptively innocuous names, all seem to give to the same candidates-almost as if there were a guiding intelligence behind their contributions. In the eyes of the Federal Election Commission, AIPAC is a “membership organization” rather than a political committee. This means that, unlike actual PACs, AIPAC is not required to file public reports on its income and expenditures.

Not for nothing, however, did Fortune magazine once name it the second most powerful lobby in Washington. So it’s easy to understand why, like a night flower that blooms in the dark and dies with the light of day, this particular organization which advances the interests of a foreign government has fought long and hard to ensure that its funding sources and expenditures are not exposed to public scrutiny.

Despite its best efforts, however, unwanted light does occasionally shine on AIPAC’s activities. Most dramatically, perhaps, two of its top operatives, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were indicted on espionage charges in 2005. Four years later federal prosecutors dropped the charges when it became clear that Judge T.S. Ellis’ numerous rulings in favor of the defendants would require the release of sensitive government documents. Rosen then sued his former employer for defamation, claiming that AIPAC routinely dealt in classified information and that he was in no way a rogue employee, as AIPAC had claimed.

A related case of unwanted publicity involved former Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), who was overheard on a 2006 NSA wiretap talking to someone described by CQ’s Jeff Stein as a “suspected Israeli agent”-thought to be Haim Saban, a major AIPAC contributor. “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel,” Saban described himself to The New York Times.

Petraeus at CIA: values his deep relationship with pro-Israel neocons

CounterPunch, Ray Mcgovern: “Can He Tell the Truth?” Petraeus at CIA – ……Petraeus also deeply values his relationship with prominent neoconservatives who have received extraordinary access to war zones – personally arranged by the general – in exchange for their service to him as his cheering section in influential Washington opinion circles.

A couple of e-mails that Gen. Petraeus inadvertently sent to an unintended recipient confirmed his cozy relationship with hard-line neocon Max Boot, as Petraeus begged Boot to head off any suggestion that Petraeus was less than 100 percent supportive of Israel.

Finkelstein omissions: 95% of Jewish Americans feel pride in Israel, 75% approved Cast Lead, only 13% recognize that Israel occupies Palestinian land

“Not Far Enough: Fact-Checking Finkelstein” –I’ve been reading This Time We Went Too Far: Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion by Norman G. Finkelstein (OR Books, 2010). Even though Finkelstein is “functionally a Zionist of the Left-liberal persuasion” there is no denying his passionate and often principled argumentation in support of positions that are generally helpful to those unemcumbered by Finkelstein’s tribal loyalties.

The “Gaza Invasion” of Finkelstein’s subtitle was the 22-day Hanukkah Massacre in the winter of 2008-2009 wherein forces of the Jewish state killed 1,417 Palestinians and wounded 5,303 in Gaza. I can’t say I made a thorough examination of Finkelstein’s book but I did flag two pages in chapter six, “Ever Fewer Hosannas,” in the hardcover edition for follow-up.

At the top of page 110 there appears the last sentence of a lengthy quote from “Poll: Attachment of U.S. Jews To Israel Falls in Past 2 Years” by Steven M. Cohen in the Jewish Daily Forward (March 04, 2005). It says: “Just 57% affirmed that ‘caring about Israel is a very important part of my being Jewish,’ compared with 73% in a similar survey in 1989.” In chapter six Finkelstein is making the case that American Jewish support for Israel is declining.

Finkelstein, apparently, didn’t go far enough in reading the article. When read in its entirety a more complex picture of the attitudes of Americans Jews towards Israel emerges. For example, there’s the finding that 95% of Americans Jews feel some degree of pride in Israel with fully two-thirds saying they “always” or “often” “feel proud of Israel”; only 5% said “never”. Then, too, “Only 13% said they are ‘sometimes uncomfortable identifying as a supporter of Israel,’ with an additional 14% ‘not sure’ “; 73% disagreed with the statement.

Concerning the attitudes of American Jews regarding Palestinians, Cohen writes:

When offered sharply critical characterizations of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, more respondents disagreed than agreed. However, substantial numbers were unsure. Thus, by 60% to 11% the sample rejected the assertion that “Israel persecutes a minority population,” with 29% not sure. Similarly, by a 65% to 13% margin, they rejected the notion that “Israel occupies lands that belong to another people,” with 22% not sure.

To restate that, only 11% of Americans Jews recognize that Palestinians are oppressed by Israel and only 13% admit that Israel occupies Palestinian territory. Curiously, only 17% of American Jews answered “Yes” when asked, “Are you a Zionist?”

Regarding a poll more closely related to the subject of his book, Finkelstein spins the results of J Street’s March 2009 “National Survey of American Jews”. On pages 118-119, Finkelstein writes, “a poll of American Jews found that 47% strongly approved of the Israeli assault, but—in a sharp break with the usual wall-to-wall solidarity—53 per cent were either ambivalent (44 per cent ‘somewhat’ approved or ‘somewhat’ disapproved) or strongly disapproved (9 per cent).”

Now, before I tell you what Finkelstein didn’t tell his readers about that poll, I want to emphasize two points: First, these are American, not Israeli, Jews. Second, the poll was conducted from February 28, 2009 through March 9, 2009. The Hanukkah Massacre ended on January 18, 2009.

So, these American Jews were expressing their attitudes more than a month after the fog of war and Israeli gov’t. propaganda had begun to clear. The one-sidedness of the ‘conflict’ was well-known by then, graphic images of Palestinian suffering had circulated widely, and respected international human rights groups had already begun to weigh-in against Israel.

What did American Jews tell J Street pollsters? Fully 75% said they “strongly approved” or “somewhat approved” “of the recent military action that Israel took in Gaza”; a plurality (47%) of American Jews “strongly approved”. This despite the fact that 59% “felt that the military action had no impact on Israel’s security (41 percent) or made Israel less secure (18 percent)”. This is not quite the picture Finkelstein paints.

Juan Cole: Bin Laden, the Cold War, Arab Dictators, Palestine…

Informed Comment, Juan Cole: “Bin Laden and the end of Al-Qaeda – …..The US story that the Pakistanis were not given prior notice of the operation is contradicted by the Pakistani news channel Geo, which says that Pakistani troops and plainsclothesmen helped cordon off the compound in Abbotabad. CNN is pointing out that US helicopters could not have flown so far into Pakistan from Afghanistan without tripping Pakistani radar. My guess is that the US agreed to shield the government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asaf Ali Zardari from al-Qaeda reprisals by putting out the story that the operation against Bin Laden was solely a US one. And it may be that suspect elements of the Pakistani elite, such as the Inter-Services Intelligence, were kept out the the loop because it was feared they might have ties to Bin Laden and might tip him off.

Usama Bin Laden was a violent product of the Cold War and the Age of Dictators in the Greater Middle East.

Bin Laden assassination: Where is the photographic evidence?

John Whitbeck – Further to my message of last night (below), I have just seen on BBC World News a video clip from remarks delivered last night by President Obama before a White House dinner for members of Congress in which he triggered a bipartisan standing ovation by referring to an “operation that resulted in the capture and death of Osama bin Laden”.

The president appeared, as usual, to be choosing his words with care as he confirmed, even more explicitly than in his speech the prior night, that Bin Laden was captured before being killed.

One must give the president credit for honesty, particularly since, if the “War on Terror” were a real war, summary executions of captured persons are indisputable war crimes.

Assuming (as I am inclined to do, particularly in light of the president’s apparent honesty on the delicate matter referred to above) that the president has been told that Osama bin Laden was among those killed in one of the bloodstained bedrooms in Abbottabad and that it is unlikely that the uniformed military would dare to lie to him in this regard, I remain astonished that no supporting evidence has yet been made public. It is inconceivable that no pictures of his body were taken before it was consigned to the seas. Failure to provide any evidence on this most fundamental aspect of that commando attack cannot logically be explained if Bin Laden was truly among the dead.

Of course, it is possible that only “conspiracy theorists” do not believe without question everything that the U.S. Government says and are troubled by issues like evidence or the lack thereof. After all, when the U.S. Government issued its remarkably rapid explanation of the 9/11 events, Secretary of State Colin Powell promised that the evidence on which this explanation was based would be released shortly. Perhaps because the explanation was almost universally accepted without question, the promised evidence was never released. Its release may simply have been deemed unnecessary in these circumstances. In any event, the “9/11 Commission” accepted the explanation as “given” in its terms of reference and dealt with other issues.

This is one of the reasons why many people (myself included) have been eager to see a real trial of one of the alleged “9/11 conspirators” (not simply a guilty plea by someone whose mind has been reduced to mush by water-boarding or other “enhanced interrogation techniques”) at which the “official conspiracy theory” was required to be laid out and proved by clear and convincing evidence. It would be a great comfort to the American people — and particularly to those whose attention to the evidence and analyses developed and published in recent years has left them doubtful and deeply troubled — to know that their government has been honest with them about the “day that changed the world” — or at least changed America’s relationship with the world.

Just possibly, this may also be why we have not yet seen such a trial and are unlikely to do so — and one of the reasons why Osama bin Laden was, by the president’s own admission, summarily executed after being captured.

TO: Distinguished Recipients
FM: John Whitbeck

In the article transmitted below, Phyllis Bennis is right to italicize “After” in President Obama’s statement “After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden”, but the conclusion which I immediately drew from the choice of that word is that Obama, as a highly intelligent lawyer who chooses his words carefully, could (and would) have said “during a firefight” if, indeed, the reported single bullet to the head had been inflicted during a firefight. By choosing the word “after”, Obama was admitting (at least prior to any subsequent reconsideration of the implications) that Bin Laden was captured (presumably well within the capabilities of 40 super-trained special operations forces, of whom he assured the American people none were harmed during the operation, attacking someone in his bedroom at night) and, subsequently, summarily executed. (In its most recent reporting, AL-JAZEERA ENGLISH has used the phrase “captured and killed”.)

Most Americans clearly no longer have any problem with their government’s extra-judicially assassinating or summarily executing “bad guys”, but the current official story, if true, does represent a further, probably inevitable distancing of the United States government from respect for the “rule of law” which it continues to preach to others. (In light of all the problems experienced with bringing lesser lights in Al-Qaeda to trial — or even to a military commission — it is inconceivable that the U.S. Government would have wished to capture Bin Laden, keep him alive and face the nightmare of custody and a potential trial.)

Perhaps the U.S. government will in the coming days present some actual evidence that Osama Bin Laden was killed last night in Abbottabad, but it is noteworthy that NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER has been produced so far and that the government seemed in an ungodly hurry to toss the best possible evidence (the alleged body) over the edge of one of its aircraft carriers and into the irretrievable deep.

When the Bolivian military killed Che Guevara, they invited journalists to view and photograph the body so as to leave doubt that Che was indeed dead. If the Americans actually had Bin Laden’s body in their custody, one would have thought that they would have had every conceivable incentive to do something similar before disposing of it.

In any event, I will try to be more optimistic than Phyllis regarding the potential impact of the announcement of Bin Laden’s death on America’s ongoing post-9/11 wars in the Muslim world. Last night’s dancing in the streets of American cities and celebratory chants of “USA! USA!” raise the hope that the belief that Bin Laden is dead and that “We got him!” may finally constitute a cathartic moment, satiating the lust for vengeance against Muslims generally among a clearly traumatized people and making them less willing to countenance spending further hundreds of billions of dollars killing yet more Muslims to no good purpose (indeed, counterproductively) with no end in sight.

Whatever happened (or did not happen) last night, that would be an excellent result for the world.

[Bennis article]

*
John V. Whitbeck is an American international lawyer now living in France. A graduate of Harvard College and its Law School. Since 1988 his articles on behalf of Middle East peace have been published more than 450 times in more than 70 Arab, Israeli, and international newspapers, magazines, journals and books. He is on the Board of Directors of the Council for the National Interest.

The killing of Bin Laden: Justice or Vengeance?

IPS, Phyllis Bennis – In the midst of the Arab Spring, which directly rejects al-Qaeda-style small-group violence in favor of mass-based, society-wide mobilization and non-violent protest to challenge dictatorship and corruption, does the killing of Osama bin Laden represent ultimate justice, or even an end to the “unfinished business” of 9/11?

[See related story: Where is the photographic evidence?]

[Amman, Jordan] — U.S. agents killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, apparently without cooperation from the government in Islamabad. The al-Qaeda leader was responsible for great suffering; I do not mourn his death. But every action has causes and consequences, and in the current moment all are dangerous. It’s unlikely that bin Laden’s killing will have much impact on the already weakened capacity of al-Qaeda, which is widely believed to be made up of only a couple hundred fighters between Afghanistan and Pakistan — though its effect on other terrorist forces is uncertain. Pakistan itself may pay a particularly high price.

As President Barack Obama described it, “After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden.” Assuming that was indeed the case, this raid reflects the brutal reality of the deadly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that preceded it and that continue today, 10 years later — it wasn’t about bringing anyone to justice, it was about vengeance.

Progressives and Conservatives: More in common than the media makes us think

CounterPunch, Sam Husseini, “Time to Break Out:How Obama and Trump Imprison Voters” – …..This is particularly tragic because most Principled Progressives and Conscientious Conservatives agree on so much, though it might not seem that way because establishment politicians (and corporate media) dwell on the differences between each other, which are frequently trivial. Consider:

• Foreign policy: Cutting the military budget, ending the U.S.’s wars, dismantling the network of military bases around the globe, stopping support for tyrannical governments like Saudi Arabia, ending support of Israel’s aggressions and occupations.

• Economy: Stopping the Wall Street bailouts, ending the Federal Reserve, curtailing runaway corporate power and corporate welfare, ending trade deals like NAFTA that obliterate jobs in the U.S. while impoverishing many in other countries, challenging the IMF and WTO.

• Freedom Agenda: Ending the so-called “Patriot” Act, stopping government use of secret “evidence” to prosecute individuals, insisting on accountability for torture and illegal detentions and renditions, stopping government spying on citizens, ending the drug war and the mass imprisonment that causes, and challenging the media establishment while enhancing solutions like local low power radio and net neutrality.

Oh yeah, and supporting WikiLeaks and whilstleblowers like Bradley Manning.

But Big Media keep telling progressives they’re supposed to hate “The Tea Party” — as if there were no difference between Sarah Palin and Ron Paul. And the establishment and corporate media have kept conservatives from seeing the insights of authentic progressives, people like Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and Mike Gravel — demonizing or marginalizing them in a plethora of ways.

Will Goldstone’s retraction provoke another Cast Lead?

Goldstone gave pro-Israel spin from the start – covered up the fact that the Israeli attack was an act of aggression

Le Monde Diplomatique, Jonathan Cook – Richard Goldstone, the international jurist whose now-notorious report on Gaza tarred the Israeli army with war crimes, backtracked unexpectedly and very publicly on 2 April in the pages of the Washington Post.

For 18 months Goldstone had suffered a campaign of character assassination by Israel and its supporters as they sought to discredit his United Nations investigation into Israel’s attack on Gaza in winter 2008-09. Goldstone, a South Africa judge who made his name undermining the legal foundations of apartheid rule and later prosecuting war criminals from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, was quickly cast as the self-hating Jew who had helped to author an anti-Semitic report. His professions of “love for Israel”, made as he defended his role, served only to further incense critics.

New York Daily News, under Mortimer Zuckerman, prints lies about upcoming flotilla to Gaza

Wide Asleep in America, Nima Shirazi: “Publishing Propaganda, Ignoring Facts: The NY Daily News puts the Lies in Editorialize”

The following piece was co-written by myself and the outstanding journalist/blogger Alex Kane and was originally published as: “Zuckerman rag prints bald-faced lies on upcoming flotilla to Gaza.”I have added some more of my own observations on the New York Daily News editorial below.

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It comes as no surprise that a newspaper owned by Mort Zuckerman, an ardent Zionist, would be anti-Palestinian and that it would strongly oppose efforts to break the Israeli naval blockade by sending a flotilla of ships to Gaza. But a recent editorial printed by the Zuckerman-owned New York Daily News is a particularly egregious example of U.S. media’s aversion to the facts on Israel/Palestine. The bald-faced lies–which follow recent Israeli pronouncements about the “terrorists” organizing the upcoming international flotilla to break the Israeli blockade–printed would be laughable only if it wasn’t going to be read by thousands of people.

Assassination of Bin Laden raises questions about CIA, 9-11, and Israel

Extra-judicial execution of Bin Laden raises significant questions

This Can’t Be Happening, Dave Lindorff: “What were They Thinking? Suspicions will Inevitably Grow about the Extermination of Osama bin Laden”:  – According to the brief announcement made by President Barack Obama last night, the operation in Pakistan by US Navy SEAL special forces was a well-planned hit job.

“They took care to avoid civilian casualties,” the president said of the top-secret night-time raid by helicopter on a highly secure compound near a military base in Abbottadad, a city only about an hour’s drive drive from, Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital city. He added, “After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”

Not for long though. After “double-tapping” bin Laden–that is a military term for the illegal process of executing a wounded person–or insuring that a person is truly dead–that involves firing not one but two bullets into the head–his body was taken out of Pakistan by the departing SEAL raiding party, and reportedly buried (dumped) at sea.

Israel, ADL pressure Facebook to remove page calling for Arab Spring for Palestine to begin May 13th

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat, THIRD PALESTINIAN INTIFADA: All Arabs to March on Israel on May 15th – All of the popular uprisings that swept through the Arab world have been preplanned and officially launched on facebook pages weeks in advance.

Pro-Israel lobbying. An Israeli Cabinet minister, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and a massive American-Zionist campaign have succeeded in pressuring Facebook into removing the“third Intifada” page, which clearly calls for an all-Arab uprising against Israel.

Egyptians reject Israeli-Egyptian natural gas deal and blockade on Gaza

Salem-News, Dr. Ashraf Ezzat – …The list of charges against Mubarak’s regime is a long one that included harming national interests, profiteering, selling government assets and public enterprises, squandering and wasting public money and shooting peaceful protesters. But the deal of exporting Egypt natural gas to Israel that Mubarak himself endorsed back in 2005 stands at the top of the list.

The end of a deal.

According to the crooked deal, Egypt is to sell its natural gas with a fixed price of $1.25 per million British thermal units (Btu) – while Global gas prices in the meantime jumped to $4 per million Btu- for 15 years.

Economists estimated that Egypt wasted at least $714 million in potential revenue from the deal to date, while independent analysts opposed to the deal put the number of losses much higher, up to $8 million per day.

Declaring an Independent Bantustan, by Haidar Eid

Al-Shabaka – The “induced euphoria” that characterizes discussions within the mainstream media around the upcoming declaration of an independent Palestinian state in September, ignores the stark realities on the ground and the warnings of critical commentators. Depicting such a declaration as a “breakthrough,” and a “challenge” to the defunct “peace process” and the right-wing government of Israel, serves to obscure Israel’s continued denial of Palestinian rights while reinforcing the international community’s implicit endorsement of an apartheid state in the Middle East.

Gilad Atzmon: What Are They Afraid of? Commentary about British “anti-Zionists” effort to restrict of debate

Gilad Aatzmon – …For some peculiar reason, both Zionists and UK Jewish so-called ‘anti Zionists’, insist that discussing ‘Jewishness’ is a taboo which should never be explored, certainly not in public, and definitely never outside of the ghetto.

But isn’t it all just more than a little suspicious? After all, please consider that the Jewish ‘anti Zionists’ operate politically under a Jewish banner; they also clearly carry their Jewish identity with pride; and, like the ‘Jews only state’, they also run a ‘Jews only club’ — yet they want to try to stop us from questioning what this club actually stands for. They want to take it further and even try to stop us from discussing and grasping what the Jewishness of Israel is all about.

Video: Sheikh Jarrah – Ground Zero for Peace in Israel/ Palestine

By Harvey Stein, September, 2010 – Some say evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem are killing chances for peace, others dream of a unified Jewish Jerusalem at all costs.

Interview with UCLA Professor Saree Makdisi about Palestinian Unity Deal

What’s in it for us, Mr. Obama? Billions more for Israel while Congress cuts Americans

Council for the National Interest, Philip Giraldi

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served 18 years overseas and is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

Apologists for Israel sometimes argue that critics of that nation hold the government in Tel Aviv up to an impossibly high standard, that many condemn Israelis for doing things that other countries in the world also do routinely. That argument has a certain persuasiveness in that Bahrain’s Sunni rulers treat the country’s Shi’a majority just as badly as Israeli Jews treat Palestinian Arabs, but it misses the point. How Israel treats its own minority citizens, Gazans, and residents of the West Bank, and its neighbors might be significant from a humanitarian point of view, but it is not a vital interest of the United States.

That Washington has become a victim of the internal politics of the Middle East is largely due to manipulation by Israel and its lobby, which has turned all Americans into enablers of Israeli policies, no matter how short-sighted or ill-conceived. It is the US national interest that has been sacrificed in the process. That is the point.

For those who would argue that such a view of the US interest versus that of Israel is simplistic, I would point out three developments over the past several weeks that together make the case that Israel has extraordinary ability to manipulate Washington. First would be the budget debate, in which Republicans united to call for deep cuts in the proposed federal budget before settling for less than one tenth of one percent. Senator Rand Paul had courageously raised the possibility of ending all foreign aid, including to Israel, but generally speaking any reduction in assistance at the current $3 billion plus level was off the table. Several congressmen, including Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor explicitly stated their opposition to any reduction in aid to Israel. But the real surprise came in the final spending bill. Israel not only was not cut in its assistance level, it received $205 million in additional funding for its Iron Dome defensive missile development, which competes with US defense firm Raytheon’s Patriot system.

In Light Of Palestinian Unity Deal, U.S. Threatens To Cut Aid To P.A.

The United States and Israel have launched a large-scale international campaign meant to block the Palestinian declaration of an independent state.

IMEMC, Saed Bannoura – The United States issued a statement on Wednesday denouncing the provisional unity deal signed between the rival Fateh movement of President Mahmoud Abbas, and the Hamas movement. The U.S. said that such a deal could lead Washington to cut U.S.. aid to the Palestinian Authority (P.A.).

According to “Your Jewish News”, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, U.S. House Affairs Chairwoman, issued a statement denouncing the unity deal, and stating that under existing U.S. laws, the P.A. cannot receive fund from the U.S.

Ros-Lehtinen further stated that Abbas’s reach to Hamas, and his efforts for reconciliation “with a group considered by the U.S.. as a terrorist organization, will oblige Washington to end its aid”.