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The Hidden Black Iraq

2009-02-03T00:49:00.003-05:00

The Hidden Black Iraq
By William Jelani Cobb
December 14, 2003.

Basra's more than the center of Iraq's oil industry; it's the center of a centuries-old history of African influence.

Left: A Black Iraqi Face who has seen many seasons as well as many political developments in the country during her lifetime.

Enter the words "black," "city" and "fuel" into the search engine of the American psyche and you'll conjure up the image of a Chevron station in Detroit. But add a historical element into the equation and you come up with Basra, Iraq.

In the three-card hustle of American foreign policy, the port-city of Basra is the elusive Queen. (The other two bluff cards say "Saddam Hussein" and "War on Terrorism.") Recently, Iraq's delegation to OPEC gleefully reported that 2.1 million barrels of crude oil were flowing from the Basra wells daily. The city's contemporary significance centers around its oil production; historically, though, the city was a commercial and governmental center that rivaled Baghdad for wealth and influence. It is also home to the little-discussed populations of black Iraqis.

Thirty years of black and Diaspora studies have shed light on the scale, intensity and impact of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade -- the 400-year traffic of Africans between the continent, Europe and the colonies of the alleged new world. Less attention has been paid, though, to the millennium-long slave trade that scattered African slaves throughout present-day Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan and India. Emerging European capitalism and the labor requirements of cash crops like sugar, cotton and tobacco drove the Trans-Atlantic trade; the Trans-Saharan trade, which flourished from the eighth century AD through the 1840s, brought African labor to the hazardous enterprises of pearl diving, date farming and the raw, brutal work of clearing Iraqi salt marshes. African boys were commonly castrated to serve as eunuch guards of royal harems. Unlike those who were enslaved in the West, however, blacks enslaved in the Arabic-speaking world also served as guards, sailors and high-ranking soldiers. In the 19th century, Basra was one of the most profitable slave ports in the region, commonly offering slave traders as much as 50% returns upon their "investments."

There has been a black presence in Basra -- present-day Southern Iraq -- as early as the 7th century, when Abu Bakra, an Ethiopian soldier who had been manumitted by the prophet Muhammad himself, settled in the city. His descendants became prominent members of Basran society. A century later, the writer Jahiz of Basra wrote an impassioned defense of black Africans -- referred to in Arabic as the Zanj -- against accusations of inferiority which had begun to take root even then.

The Zanj, who were primarily persons of East African descent, were to have a significant impact upon Iraqi history. They had been traded from ports along the African coast (Zanzibar, which is derived from the term "Zanj," was a major slave exporting center during the era) to clear salt marshes. Laboring in miserable, humid conditions, the Zanj workers dug up layers of topsoil and dragged away tons of earth to plant labor-intensive crops like sugarcane on the less saline soil below. Fed scant portions of flour, semolina and dates, they were constantly in conflict with the Iraqi slave system. Between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Zanj staged three rebellions, the largest of which occurred between 868 and 883 AD.

Led by an Iraqi poet named Ali Ibn Muhammad, the Zanj uprising of 868 galvanized thousands of black slaves who laid siege to and eventually overran the city of Basra. In short order, black soldiers in the army of the ruling Abbasid emperors based in Baghdad began to desert and swelled the ranks of the rebellion. Similar to later rebellions that created liberated "maroon" communities throughout the new world, the 15-year conflict, known as "The Revolt of the Zanj," led to the establishment of an independent Zanj capital city, minting of currency and the decade-long control of Basra -- one of the most important trade ports in the Abbasid empire. At their zenith, the Zanj armies marched upon Baghdad and got within 70 miles of the city.

The Zanj uprising was crushed in 883 by the Abbasids, but doing so required vast amounts of the empire's extensive resources. African slavery in Iraq continued to exist throughout both the Ottoman and British empires which incorporated the region into their holdings. In the mid-19th century, decades after the Trans-Atlantic trade had been (technically) outlawed, the Arab trade persisted. As historian Joseph Harris writes in his African Presence in Asia:

From Kuwait, slave parties were dispatched in small groups on land and sea to Zubair and Basra, where brokers sold slaves in their homes. The surplus was marched along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to Baghdad.

British officials during the era noted how widespread slave ownership was among the Iraqi families.

The descendants of the Zanj exist in the region today in (often self-contained) communities with names like "Zanjiabad, Iran" that hint at the history of the peoples living there. The status of these black Iraqis is little discussed -- though Iranians have written of persistent racism and stereotypes directed at the Zanj in their country. One can only wonder, though, what the addition of hundreds of oilmen will do for a black minority community living in Basra -- because word-association for the terms "oil" "money" and "slavery" yields the following results: Texas; see also: Presidential Politics.

William Jelani Cobb is a professor of history at Spelman College and editor of The Harold Cruse Reader.

"Black In Iraq"

2009-02-02T23:59:00.004-05:00

"BLACK IN IRAQ"
By Mumia Abu-Jamal

Left: Salah al-Rekhayis calls himself the "Iraqi Obama" and hopes to channel President Barack Obama's good luck by becoming the first black Iraqi to win an election.

Several days ago I read an interesting article in the paper on the tiny Black community in Basra, Iraq. The piece was basically a foreign take on the impacts of the Obama election, for Black Iraqis hoped this would signal better conditions for them in the land of their ancestors.

Black people are hardly new to Iraq.

Their present population stems from slave importations from over a thousand years ago, when the city of Basra, in Iraq's southern sliver, was the seat of Mesopotamia. Africans were kidnapped into bondage, and forced to work (I kid you not) in the region's salt mines.

In the early third of the seventh century (ca. 820 C. E.), Blacks staged a powerful rebellion, which forced the government to flee. This revolution, called "The Revolt of the Zenj" by Arab historians, lasted for over 20 years. This revolution was betrayed, and the rebels were slain and some put back into bondage.

The name "Revolt of the Zenj" is so named because Blacks from the southeast coast of Africa, called "Zenjabar" by the Arabs (later Zanzibar, and today a part of Tanzania) were captured by the millions and sold into slavery throughout the Arab world.

The hundreds of thousands of Black Iraqis today are among their descendants. As such, they live lives of discrimination, poor education, under-and-unemployment and poverty.

One Basra father explained his decision to remove his daughter from school because she was teased with the term abd (Arabic for slave) by her classmates.

The father said, "it is my wish that she will read and write, but I cannot let her have these...problems."

The Black Iraqi population numbers in the thousands, not the millions. But even after a millennia and a half in Iraq, they still sing ancient songs of a distant African memory.

Left: Front cover of the book "Race for Justice: Mumia Abu-Jamal's Fight Against the Death Penalty" by Leonard Weinglass (Author) A tale of an American political prisoner

[Source: Madhani, AAmer, "Obama's Rise Inspires Arab Iraqis in Politics", USA Today, Jan. 19, 2009, 9A.; Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (N.Y. ; Faber and Faber, 1991) ]

[col. writ. 1/25/09] (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Hued World bodies: ICC, IJC, UN etc.

2009-01-29T09:24:00.005-05:00

The problem with the ICC as well as those plaguing the United Nations and other such bodies involves an East West divide rather than a religious rift.

First tier nations are "immune" in these bodies or the perception is their crimes are exculpated by their power, influence and financial input into these edifices. When was the last time a first tier nation was dragged into a hall of international justice?

We continually see hued faces (like President Bashir) on our screens or newspapers. This is the central theme of opposition to the reign of these defunct and ostensibly biased global bodies in the hearts, minds and souls of the majority of the world.

A Million or so is annihilated in Iraq and the halls of the high court have a disquieting and eerie hush enveloping the entire institution. Palestinians are quartered in concentration camps for forty years and not one war crimes' charge comes to fruition. Many millions are slaughtered in Africa's mineral belt, yet the underlying Western corporate suppling of these conflicts go 'officially' unnoticed by these supposed benevolent bodies.

Until the geopolitical games that verily destroy the lives of peoples living in Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Congo etc become more than mere investment opportunities there will not be any sympathy, assent or support for world bodies that sanction and clarify these hued peoples as mere sources of resources and other such assets. Who then every so often present one of these same peoples as a token of world criminality to be paraded in front of the globe as a sign of order and world justice. Hogwash.

Brothers, to the Israeli Brothels

2009-01-27T16:08:00.005-05:00

Right: Palestinian Flag holstered despite occupation, the spirit of freedom will never die.

Let's take an underground view at the events surrounding Egypt as far as Palestine specifically and the region in general. These points are listed besides Egypt's maneuvers and machinations to retain its most favored Arab nation status with the EU & US and continue receiving billions of dollars of aid as well as immunity from overt Israeli aggression on its soil--less surreal, subtle and secret Israeli encroachment on its sovereignty.

Foremost, Egypt founds its wavering Gaza stand partially on the pillar that espouses Israel will not be allowed to relinquish its legal responsibility as the occupying power over Gaza and dump it wholesale onto the Egyptian polity. Note that the Jews constantly put forward the contention Arabs in general and Egypt in particular shirk their responsibility to Palestinians insisting Arabs and Egypt should do more to alleviate the suffering -- the siege that Israel has imposed causing great suffering, but that's what a siege is supposed to do -- even to a point of offering Palestinians citizenship therefore, freeing them from the ravages of refugee status and their savage existence in these camps for over 60 years.

However, this explanation falls on death ears in light of Egypt's refusal to open the crossing to offer the people of Gaza a means to escape the slaughter visited upon them by the Israeli death machine. All of Gaza were hemmed in with no where to run, hide or escape as the incessant Israeli bombing continued apace unencumbered.

Another unspoken expression Egypt passively insinuates and urges to exculpate itself from charges of collusion with Israel and the west proposes that it is not helping Israel oppress the Palestinians when one considers the tunnel network on the Rafah border, which have gone unassailed by Egyptian forces when preclusions were within its power to effectuate. Why haven't the Egyptians shut down the tunnels on its side of the border when it obviously can? Good question and the better answer is obviously clear--Egypt is the victim here so to speak. The Egyptians have not totally abdicated their implicit mandate to succor Gaza. Egyptian officials have been wise to leave symbolic mechanisms for all to see in its proclamations as the defender of the Arab world. Note that official closure of Rafah is necessary as a diversionary and legal edifice against charges about the tunnels by Israel and her stooges around the world.

Moreover, the strong rebuke by some Arab sectors against supposed Egyptian resignation over Gaza serve to support the dynamic of negative-action chosen by Egypt to give a sense that it is indeed helping Gaza. Unless one believes Arabs are uninformed then there is no other purpose for these condemnations of Egypt except to offer it political camouflage and support for continued clandestine aid to Gaza--these were psychological incursions into the fray of bolstering Gaza's resistance. So Egypt would have us believe. Not really, I'm not buying it Mubarak you smell of sulfur to borrow a term from President Chavez.

Truth of the matter is there was more outrage on the part of Latin American governments than in the Arab world. Venezuela and Bolivia were early in their condemnation of the Israeli massacre and took steps to expel Jewish emissaries from their countries as "personae non gratae." While Mauritania and tiny Qatar did cut ties with Israel however, Jordan a neighbor of the Palestinians who conveniently retrieved its diplomatic corps from Israel has already returned them to the brothels of Israel.

Therefore, it is imperative to understand the relationships that nurtured such muted responses from Arab governments in the face of so much Israeli horrors visited upon the civilians of Gaza. Breaking or blocking the sources of this relationship would seem key in any correct address of this outrage.

Left: Gamal Abdel Nasser became President and declared the full independence of Egypt from the United Kingdom on June 18, 1956. His nationalization of the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956, would visit an invasion by Israel, France and Great Britain. Egypt holds the preeminent seat of Islamic teaching and learning in the world.

After the promulgation of UNSC resolution 1860, which ultimately envisioned a sort of tunnel vision and arms sanctions order against Hamas with Egypt as the nexus. Here again, Egypt was presented as the controlling factor: Having then refused international troops on its soil and refusing US & other European nations passage rights into its territorial waters to carry out munitions search and destroy missions. These Egyptian steps have left Israel with very few viable steps to augment its squeeze on Hamas leaving it to the futility of causing sonic booms over Gaza in anger. But, why does Israel and the so-called "international community" confirm so much seeming power to Egypt when the real power rests with Israel?

These may be the imminent manifestations of these Egyptian [mis]steps. Still, when one looks deeply and radically underground we continue to find Israel with complete control of Gaza's land, sea and air. While Egypt will continue to keep Rafah closed this is but a minor factor in the Israel equation of nullifying the Palestinians through mass social asphyxiation. Even if Rafah were to be opened either with a unity Palestinian force on the Gaza side or wholly Fatah administered -- since Egypt has insisted it will only open the border if Fatah returns -- Egypt would continue to limit the flow of goods in lieu of its fear of Israel dumping Gaza--Egyptian governance. There will be little change in alleviating the dire conditions of Gaza residents and providing them with the necessary products of daily life as far as the Rafah crossing is concerned will remain inadequate.

Egypt has bought into pressuring Hamas at the expense of the ordinary people of Gaza -- in effect mirroring the collective punishment policies of Israel on the people of Gaza by supposed fellow Muslims just next door.

The geopolitical milieu within which Egypt operates necessitates clever and unconventional means however, ruse and obfuscation by the Mubarak regime should not be allowed to leave a perception of feel good measures that only serve to further isolate Gaza.

That Egypt is cowering to internal pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood and cowing to antecedent fears from Hamas' stout ideology and religiosity on its border is undeniable. That Egypt is a stooge of western imperialism is without doubt. However, through the ages Palestinian will of resistance has rested on their own deep seated sense of self--none but themselves can free Palestine, in that spirit the struggle continues.

Egypt is certainly attempting to maintain a political duality involving a slither of light toward the Palestinians by allowing the tunnel network and supplementary "smuggling" trade to continue. Note that the majority of the tunnel traffic consists of ordinary goods for everyday life not arms. The other personality of Egypt seeks to project a stable and reliable western and Israeli ally, which serves them to maintain national power and international aid by offering these foreign usurpers with the power and light of the sun by sniveling at their feet at the expense of Palestinian people and their patriots.

The point here should not be to condemn Egypt as a single entity in this sordid affair on Gaza and Palestine in general. Rather we should highlight how a plethora of Arab states cling to a geopolitical western machine that serves to stymie the voice, will and life of Muslim populations. These police states are trained, armed and financially supported by the west to maintain this vile court. Egypt must be seen in the context of this regional and global endeavor by Israel and the West. From Pakistan to Iran Muslim states are targeted for either covert sabotage or overt destruction so that Israel will remain the preeminent power in the Middle East and to maintain free reign along with the West throughout the world and of course, in outer space too.

President Obama: hinging changes

2009-01-23T12:25:00.007-05:00

President Bush's administration was full of wonderful intellectuals & prolific writers who came to government with acclaimed treatises. This accomplished litany of think tank leaders brought these writings with them to office; thereby availing heretofore unavailable intricacies of policy into the public record. (For example PNAC and its predecessor "Securing The new Realm," which featured contributors who would construct the pillars of Bush's policies)

President George W. Bush and Company neither strayed away from American values and practices, nor did they develop drastically novel standards opposed to the mainstay of American international governance. (With few deviations promulgated nationally e.g., the Patriot Act and data mining to name a couple)

The problems, which ostensibly tainted the image of the United States exemplified in torture, extraordinary rendition, preemptive wars and arrests, secret prisons, etc., arose out of the pronounced status of this paradigm -- that was spelled out to the nation and the world attempting to clarify a strategy to implement what the Bush Administration labeled a "war against terror." Arguably, the crux of the core of the Bush shift, which ventured from tradition involved the unilateral nature of its maneuvers and the clear "baldness" it featured--even if multi-lateralism was cosmetic in the past. Public relations is a vital component of managing an empire and the Bush administration failed miserably on that facet.

One can have successful preemptive wars without unilateralism but it is difficult to fight multi pronged wars without the support of influential allies. Not only does exclusivity entails the empire to bear the full brunt of economic and military outlays the nature of the lone warrior in a global village precludes sharing of vital intelligence and forging concerted effort, which are required in a fight against multi national third generational warfare. Moreover, lacking a genuine public relations depressed the will of the nation to continue support the war effort--naked patriotism and jingoism soon fade away to the rigors of everyday life even in the face of clever propaganda.

Where Bush's policies have drained the public coffers of the empire Obama's new frontier will seek the inclusion of influential and wealthy allies to take part in these costs as partners--whilch will mount a more effective front to fight insurgency.

Whether nationalist and legitimate insurgencies will be pooled into this set of adversaries is yet to be clarified by the Obama administration. To be sure, there must be a clearer definition of terrorist organizations even though, it is the specter of super powers to stymie all opposition and maintain the status quo. However, unless a trasparent demarcation is drawn between global terrorist groups with few practical or national aspirations and those that are legitimately agitating for their liberation, these groups will form linkages in order to stay the onslaught against them--often making alliances with organizations that have little in common with them excepting that the US is after them too.

Be as it may, these time tested methods are necessary tools of empire and power; Can it truly be said the US never tortured before Mr. Bush and wont again after his departure? I think not and the record incontrovertibly shows that the entire project of "atonement" undertaken by the initiatives of the Obama administration is in essence a "feel good" enterprise to reinvigorate US citizens and recapture the popularity and "myth" of its higher principles and reassert founding pledges of the US Constitution. The US is back in the business of maintaining and projecting a vigorous public relations and diplomatic corps component in securing its national interests.

I love America and admittedly have benefited from its power and the projection of its forces around the globe. These have kept me relatively safe and moderately financially secure in a world mired with oscillating dangers of myriad competition--therefore, I accept this implicit responsibility / loyalty (an existential dualism). Even so, having been born in the Caribbean island nation of X and migrating to the US at the age of ten, I know first hand the macabre side of wielding super power. Our nation has seen five empires across two centuries, including the United States, wreak havoc against our poor, humble yet proud people, among countless others across the continents.

Nevertheless, President Obama should be commended for taking the underbelly of our great country out of the limelight of world opinion and restoring it to its rightful sector of secrecy and its antecedent plausible deniability apparatus.

Myth of Israel's Strategic Genius

2009-01-21T02:41:00.004-05:00

(AFP/Getty Images)

The myth of Israel's strategic genius
By Stephen Walt

Many supporters of Israel will not criticize its behavior, even when it is engaged in brutal and misguided operations like the recent onslaught on Gaza. In addition to their understandable reluctance to say anything that might aid Israel's enemies, this tendency is based in part on the belief that Israel's political and military leaders are exceptionally smart and thoughtful strategists who understand their threat environment and have a history of success against their adversaries. If so, then it makes little sense for outsiders to second-guess them.

This image of Israeli strategic genius has been nurtured by Israelis over the years and seems to be an article of faith among neoconservatives and other hardline supporters of Israel in the United States. It also fits nicely with the wrongheaded but still popular image of Israel as the perennial David facing a looming Arab Goliath; in this view, only brilliant strategic thinkers could have consistently overcome the supposedly formidable Arab forces arrayed against them.

The idea that Israelis possess some unique strategic acumen undoubtedly reflects a number of past military exploits, including the decisive victories in the 1948 War of Independence, the rapid conquest of the Sinai in 1956, the daredevil capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960, the stunning Israeli triumph at the beginning of the 1967 Six Day War, and the intrepid hostage rescue at Entebbe in 1976.

These tactical achievements are part of a larger picture, however, and that picture is not a pretty one. Israel has also lost several wars in the past -- none of them decisively, of course -- and its ability to use force to achieve larger strategic objectives has declined significantly over time. This is why Israelis frequently speak of the need to restore their "deterrent"; they are aware that occasional tactical successes have not led to long-term improvements in their overall security situation. The assault on Gaza is merely the latest illustration of this worrisome tendency.

What does the record show?

Back in 1956, Israel, along with Britain and France, came up with a harebrained scheme to seize the Suez Canal and topple Nasser's regime in Egypt. (This was after an Israeli raid on an Egyptian army camp in Gaza helped convince Nasser to obtain arms from the Soviet Union). Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion initially hoped that Israel would be allowed to conquer and absorb the West Bank, parts of the Sinai, and portions of Lebanon, but Britain and France quickly scotched that idea. The subsequent attack was a military success but a strategic failure: the invaders were forced to disgorge the lands they seized while Nasser's prestige soared at home and across the Arab world, fueling radicalism and intensifying anti-Israel sentiments throughout the region. The episode led Ben-Gurion to conclude that Israel should forego additional attempts to expand its borders -- which is why he opposed taking the West Bank in 1967 -- but his successors did not follow his wise advice.

Ten years later, Israel's aggressive policies toward Syria and Jordan helped precipitate the crisis that led to the Six Day War. The governments of Egypt, Syria, the USSR and the United States also bear considerable blame for that war, though it was Israel's leaders who chose to start it, even though they recognized that their Arab foes knew they were no match for the IDF and did not intend to attack Israel. More importantly, after seizing the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza Strip during the war, Israeli leaders decided to start building settlements and eventually incorporate them into a "greater Israel." Thus, 1967 marks the beginning of Israel's settlements project, a decision that even someone as sympathetic to Israel as Leon Wieseltier has described as "a moral and strategic blunder of historic proportions." Remarkably, this momentous decision was never openly debated within the Israeli body politic.

With Israeli forces occupying the Sinai peninsula, Egypt launched the so-called War of Attrition in October 1968 in an attempt to get it back. The result was a draw on the battlefield and the two sides eventually reached a ceasefire agreement in August 1970. The war was a strategic setback for Israel, however, because Egypt and its Soviet patron used the ceasefire to complete a missile shield along the Suez Canal that could protect Egyptian troops if they attacked across the Canal to regain the Sinai. American and Israeli leaders did not recognize this important shift in the balance of power between Israel and Egypt and remained convinced that Egypt had no military options. As a result, they ignored Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's peace overtures and left him little choice but to use force to try to dislodge Israel from the Sinai. Israel then failed to detect Egypt and Syria's mobilization in early October 1973 and fell victim to one of the most successful surprise attacks in military history. The IDF eventually rallied and triumphed, but the costs were high in a war that might easily have been avoided.

Israel's next major misstep was the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The invasion was the brainchild of hawkish Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who had concocted a grandiose scheme to destroy the PLO and gain a free hand to incorporate the West Bank in "Greater Israel" and turn Jordan into "the" Palestinian state. It was a colossal strategic blunder: the PLO leadership escaped destruction and Israel’s bombardment of Beirut and its complicity in the massacres at Sabra and Shatila were widely and rightly condemned. And after initially being greeted as liberators by the Shiite population of southern Lebanon, Israel's prolonged and heavy-handed occupation helped create Hezbollah, which soon became a formidable adversary as well as an avenue for Iranian influence on Israel's northern border. Israel was unable to defeat Hezbollah and eventually withdrew its troops from Lebanon in 2000, having in effect been driven out by Hezbollah's increasingly effective resistance. Invading Lebanon not only failed to solve Israel’s problem with the Palestinians, it created a new enemy that still bedevils Israel today.

In the late 1980s, Israel helped nurture Hamas -- yes, the same organization that the IDF is bent on destroying today -- as part of its long-standing effort to undermine Yasser Arafat and Fatah and keep the Palestinians divided. This decision backfired too, because Arafat eventually recognized Israel and agreed to negotiate a two-state solution, while Hamas emerged as a new and dangerous adversary that has refused to recognize Israel's existence and to live in peace with the Jewish state.

The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 offered an unprecedented chance to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all, but Israel's leaders failed to seize the moment. Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Benjamin Netanyahu all refused to endorse the idea of a Palestinian state -- even Rabin never spoke publicly about allowing the Palestinians to have a state of their own -- and Ehud Barak's belated offer of statehood at the 2000 Camp David summit did not go far enough. As Barak's own foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, later admitted, "if I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well." Meanwhile, the number of settlers in the West Bank doubled during the Oslo period (1993-2001), and the Israelis built some 250 miles of connector roads in the West Bank. Palestinian leaders and U.S. officials made their own contributions to Oslo's failure, but Israel had clearly squandered what was probably the best opportunity it will ever have to negotiate a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Barak also derailed a peace treaty with Syria in early 2000 that appeared to be a done deal, at least to President Bill Clinton, who had helped fashion it. But when public opinion polls suggested that the Israeli public might not support the deal, the Israeli Prime Minister got cold feet and the talks collapsed.

More recently, U.S. and Israeli miscalculations have gone hand-in-hand. In the wake of September 11, neoconservatives in the United States, who had been pushing for war against Iraq since early 1998, helped convince President Bush to attack Iraq as part of a larger strategy of "regional transformation." Israeli officials were initially opposed to this scheme because they wanted Washington to go after Iran instead, but once they understood that Iran and Syria were next on the administration's hit list they backed the plan enthusiastically. Indeed, prominent Israelis like Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, and then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres helped sell the war in the United States, while Prime Minister Sharon and his chief aides put pressure on Washington to make sure that Bush didn’t lose his nerve and leave Saddam standing. The result? A costly quagmire for the United States and a dramatic improvement in Iran's strategic position. Needless to say, these developments were hardly in Israel's strategic interest.

The next failed effort was then-Prime Minister Sharon's decision to unilaterally withdraw all of Israel’s settlers from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. Although Israel and its supporters in the West portrayed this move as a gesture towards peace, "unilateralism" was in fact part of a larger effort to derail the so-called Road Map, freeze the peace process, and consolidate Israeli control over the West Bank, thereby putting off the prospect of a Palestinian state "indefinitely." The withdrawal was completed successfully, but Sharon's attempt to impose peace terms on the Palestinians failed completely. Fenced in by the Israelis, the Palestinians in Gaza began firing rockets and mortars at nearby Israeli towns and then Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006. This event reflected its growing popularity in the face of Fatah’s corruption and Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank, but Jerusalem and Washington refused to accept the election results and decided instead to try to topple Hamas. This was yet another error: Hamas eventually ousted Fatah from Gaza and its popularity has continued to increase.

The Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 revealed the deficiencies of Israel's strategic thinking with particular clarity. A cross-border raid by Hezbollah provoked an Israeli offensive intended to destroy Hezbollah's large missile inventory and compel the Lebanese government to crack down on Hezbollah itself. However worthy these goals might have been, Israel's strategy was doomed to fail. Air strikes could not eliminate Hezbollah's large and well-hidden arsenal and bombing civilian areas in Lebanon merely generated more anger at Israel and raised Hezbollah's standing among the Lebanese population and in the Arab and Islamic world as well. Nor could a belated ground attack fix the problem, as the IDF could hardly accomplish in a few weeks what it had failed to do between 1982 and 2000. Plus, the Israeli offensive was poorly planned and poorly executed. It was equally foolish to think that Lebanon’s fragile central government could rein in Hezbollah; if that were possible, the governing authorities in Beirut would have done so long before. It is no surprise that the Winograd Commission (an official panel of inquiry established to examine Israel’s handling of the war) harshly criticized Israel's leaders for their various strategic errors.

Finally, a similar strategic myopia is apparent in the assault on Gaza. Israeli leaders initially said that their goal was to inflict enough damage on Hamas so it could no longer threaten Israel with rocket attacks. But they now concede that Hamas will neither be destroyed nor disarmed by their attacks, and instead say that more extensive monitoring will prevent rocket parts and other weapons from being smuggled into Gaza. This is a vain hope, however. As I write this, Hamas has not accepted a ceasefire and is still firing rockets; even if it does accept a ceasefire soon, rocket and mortar fire are bound to resume at some point in the future. On top of that, Israel's international image has taken a drubbing, Hamas is probably more popular, and moderate leaders like Mahmoud Abbas have been badly discredited. A two-state solution -- which is essential if Israel wishes to remain Jewish and democratic and to avoid becoming an apartheid state -- is farther away than ever. The IDF performed better in Gaza than it did in Lebanon, largely because Hamas is a less formidable foe than Hezbollah. But this does not matter: the war against Hamas is still a strategic failure. And to have inflicted such carnage on the Palestinians for no lasting strategic gain is especially reprehensible.

In virtually all of these episodes -- and especially those after 1982 -- Israel's superior military power was used in ways that did not improve its long-term strategic position. Given this dismal record, therefore, there is no reason to think that Israel possesses uniquely gifted strategists or a national security establishment that consistently makes smart and far-sighted choices. Indeed, what is perhaps most remarkable about Israel is how often the architects of these disasters -- Barak, Olmert, Sharon, and maybe Netanyahu -- are not banished from leadership roles but instead are given another opportunity to repeat their mistakes. Where is the accountability in the Israeli political system?

No country is immune from folly, of course, and Israel's adversaries have committed plenty of reprehensible acts and made plenty of mistakes themselves. Egypt's Nasser played with fire in 1967 and got badly burnt; King Hussein's decision to enter the Six Day War was a catastrophic blunder that cost Jordan the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Palestinian leaders badly miscalculated and committed unjustifiable and brutal acts on numerous occasions. Americans made grave mistakes in Vietnam and more recently in Iraq, the French blundered in Indochina and Algeria, the British failed at Suez and Gallipoli, and the Soviets lost badly in Afghanistan. Israel is no different than most powerful states in this regard: sometimes it does things that are admirable and wise, and at other times it pursues policies that are foolish and cruel.

The moral of this story is that there is no reason to think that Israel always has well-conceived strategies for dealing with the problems that it faces. In fact, Israel's strategic judgment seems to have declined steadily since the 1970s -- beginning with the 1982 invasion of Lebanon -- perhaps because unconditional U.S. support has helped insulate Israel from some of the costs of its actions and made it easier for Israel to indulge strategic illusions and ideological pipe-dreams. Given this reality, there is no reason for Israel's friends -- both Jewish and gentile -- to remain silent when it decides to pursue a foolish policy. And given that our "special relationship" with Israel means that the United States is invariably associated with Jerusalem's actions, Americans should not hesitate to raise their voices to criticize Israel when it is acting in ways that are not in the U.S. national interest.

Those who refuse to criticize Israel even when it acts foolishly surely think they are helping the Jewish state. They are wrong. In fact, they are false friends, because their silence, or worse, their cheerleading, merely encourages Israel to continue potentially disastrous courses of action. Israel could use some honest advice these days, and it would make eminently good sense if its closest ally were able to provide it. Ideally, this advice would come from the president, the secretary of state, and prominent members of Congress -- speaking as openly as some politicians in other democracies do. But that's unlikely to happen, because Israel's supporters make it almost impossible for Washington to do anything but reflexively back Israel's actions, whether they make sense or not. And they often do not these days.

Stephen M. Walt co-authored The Jewish Lobby with John Mearshemeir

"Peace Offensive:" Behind bloodbath in Gaza

2009-01-20T15:21:00.001-05:00

Foiling Another Palestinian "Peace Offensive": Behind the bloodbath in Gaza
By Norman G. Finklestein

Early speculation on the motive behind Israel’s slaughter in Gaza that began on 27 December 2008 and continued till 18 January 2009 centered on the upcoming elections in Israel. The jockeying for votes was no doubt a factor in this Sparta-like society consumed by "revenge and the thirst for blood,"[1] where killing Arabs is a sure crowd-pleaser. (Polls during the war showed that 80-90 percent of Israeli Jews supported it.)[2] But as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy pointed out on Democracy Now!, "Israel went through a very similar war…two-and-a-half years ago [in Lebanon], when there were no elections."[3] When crucial state interests are at stake, Israeli ruling elites seldom launch major operations for narrowly electoral gains. It is true that Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s decision to bomb the Iraqi OSIRAK reactor in 1981 was an electoral ploy, but the strategic stakes in the strike on Iraq were puny; contrary to widespread belief, Saddam Hussein had not embarked on a nuclear weapons program prior to the bombing.[4] The fundamental motives behind the latest Israeli attack on Gaza lie elsewhere: (1) in the need to restore Israel’s "deterrence capacity," and (2) in the threat posed by a new Palestinian "peace offensive."

Israel’s "larger concern" in the current offensive, New York Times Middle East correspondent Ethan Bronner reported, quoting Israeli sources, was to "re-establish Israeli deterrence," because "its enemies are less afraid of it than they once were, or should be."[5] Preserving its deterrence capacity has always loomed large in Israeli strategic doctrine. Indeed, it was the main impetus behind Israel’s first-strike against Egypt in June 1967 that resulted in Israel’s occupation of Gaza (and the West Bank). To justify the onslaught on Gaza, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote that "[m]any Israelis feel that the walls…are closing in…much as they felt in early June 1967."[6] Ordinary Israelis no doubt felt threatened in June 1967, but -- as Morris surely knows -- the Israeli leadership experienced no such trepidation. After Israel threatened and laid plans to attack Syria, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the Straits of Tiran closed to Israeli shipping, but Israel made almost no use of the Straits (apart from the passage of oil, of which Israel then had ample stocks) and, anyhow, Nasser did not in practice enforce the blockade, vessels passing freely through the Straits within days of his announcement. In addition, multiple U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that the Egyptians did not intend to attack Israel and that, in the improbable case that they did, alone or in concert with other Arab countries, Israel would -- in President Lyndon Johnson’s words -- "whip the hell out of them." The head of the Mossad told senior American officials on 1 June 1967 that "there were no differences between the U.S. and the Israelis on the military intelligence picture or its interpretation."[7] The predicament for Israel was rather the growing perception in the Arab world, spurred by Nasser’s radical nationalism and climaxing in his defiant gestures in May 1967, that it would no longer have to follow Israeli orders. Thus, Divisional Commander Ariel Sharon admonished those in the Israeli cabinet hesitant to launch a first-strike that Israel was losing its "deterrence capability…our main weapon -- the fear of us."[8] Israel unleashed the June 1967 war "to restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence" (Israeli strategic analyst Zeev Maoz).[9]

The expulsion of the Israeli occupying army by Hezbollah in May 2000 posed a major new challenge to Israel’s deterrence capacity. The fact that Israel suffered a humiliating defeat, one celebrated throughout the Arab world, made another war well-nigh inevitable. Israel almost immediately began planning for the next round, and in summer 2006 found a pretext when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers (several others were killed in the firefight) and demanded in exchange the release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel. Although Israel unleashed the fury of its air force and geared up for a ground invasion, it suffered yet another ignominious defeat. A respected American military analyst despite being partial to Israel nonetheless concluded, "the IAF, the arm of the Israel military that had once destroyed whole air forces in a few days, not only proved unable to stop Hezbollah rocket strikes but even to do enough damage to prevent Hezbollah’s rapid recovery"; that "once ground forces did cross into Lebanon…, they failed to overtake Hezbollah strongholds, even those close to the border"; that "in terms of Israel’s objectives, the kidnapped Israeli soldiers were neither rescued nor released; Hezbollah’s rocket fire was never suppressed, not even its long-range fire…; and Israeli ground forces were badly shaken and bogged down by a well-equipped and capable foe"; and that "more troops and a massive ground invasion would indeed have produced a different outcome, but the notion that somehow that effort would have resulted in a more decisive victory over Hezbollah…has no basis in historical example or logic." The juxtaposition of several figures further highlights the magnitude of the setback: Israel deployed 30,000 troops as against 2,000 regular Hezbollah fighters and 4,000 irregular Hezbollah and non-Hezbollah fighters; Israel delivered and fired 162,000 weapons whereas Hezbollah fired 5,000 weapons (4,000 rockets and projectiles at Israel and 1,000 antitank missiles inside Lebanon).[10] Moreover, "the vast majority of the fighters who defended villages such as Ayta ash Shab, Bint Jbeil, and Maroun al-Ras were not, in fact, regular Hezbollah fighters and in some cases were not even members of Hezbollah," and "many of Hezbollah’s best and most skilled fighters never saw action, lying in wait along the Litani River with the expectation that the IDF assault would be much deeper and arrive much faster than it did."[11] Yet another indication of Israel’s reversal of fortune was that, unlike any of its previous armed conflicts, in the final stages of the 2006 war it fought not in defiance of a U.N. ceasefire resolution but in the hope of a U.N. resolution to rescue it.

After the 2006 Lebanon war Israel was itching to take on Hezbollah again, but did not yet have a military option against it. In mid-2008 Israel desperately sought to conscript the U.S. for an attack on Iran, which would also decapitate Hezbollah, and thereby humble the main challengers to its regional hegemony. Israel and its quasi-official emissaries such as Benny Morris threatened that if the U.S. did not go along "then non-conventional weaponry will have to be used," and "many innocent Iranians will die." To Israel’s chagrin and humiliation, the attack never materialized and Iran has gone its merry way, while the credibility of Israel’s capacity to terrorize slipped another notch. It was high time to find a defenseless target to annihilate. Enter Gaza, Israel’s favorite shooting gallery. Even there the feebly armed Islamic movement Hamas had defiantly resisted Israeli diktat, in June 2008 even compelling Israel to agree to a ceasefire.

During the 2006 Lebanon war Israel flattened the southern suburb of Beirut known as the Dahiya, where Hezbollah commanded much popular support. In the war’s aftermath Israeli military officers began referring to the "Dahiya strategy": "We shall pulverize the 160 Shiite villages [in Lebanon] that have turned into Shiite army bases," the IDF Northern Command Chief explained, "and we shall not show mercy when it comes to hitting the national infrastructure of a state that, in practice, is controlled by Hezbollah." In the event of hostilities, a reserve Colonel at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies chimed in, Israel needs "to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate….Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes." The new strategy was to be used against all of Israel’s regional adversaries who had waxed defiant -- "the Palestinians in Gaza are all Khaled Mashaal, the Lebanese are all Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all Ahmadinejad" -- but Gaza was the prime target for this blitzkrieg-cum-bloodbath strategy. "Too bad it did not take hold immediately after the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza and the first rocket barrages," a respected Israeli columnist lamented. "Had we immediately adopted the Dahiya strategy, we would have likely spared ourselves much trouble." After a Palestinian rocket attack, Israel’s Interior Minister urged in late September 2008, "the IDF should…decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it."[13] And, insofar as the Dahiya strategy could not be inflicted just yet on Lebanon and Iran, it was predictably pre-tested in Gaza.

The operative plan for the Gaza bloodbath can be gleaned from authoritative statements after the war got underway: "What we have to do is act systematically with the aim of punishing all the organizations that are firing the rockets and mortars, as well as the civilians who are enabling them to fire and hide" (reserve Major-General); "After this operation there will not be one Hamas building left standing in Gaza" (Deputy IDF Chief of Staff); "Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target" (IDF Spokesperson’s Office).[14] Whereas Israel killed a mere 55 Lebanese during the first two days of the 2006 war, the Israeli media exulted at Israel’s "shock and awe" (Maariv)[15] as it killed more than 300 Palestinians in the first two days of the attack on Gaza. Several days into the slaughter an informed Israeli strategic analyst observed, "The IDF, which planned to attack buildings and sites populated by hundreds of people, did not warn them in advance to leave, but intended to kill a great many of them, and succeeded."[16] Morris could barely contain his pride at "Israel’s highly efficient air assault on Hamas."[17] The Israeli columnist B. Michael was less impressed by the dispatch of helicopter gunships and jet planes "over a giant prison and firing at its people"[18] -- for example, "70…traffic cops at their graduation ceremony, young men in desperate search of a livelihood who thought they’d found it in the police and instead found death from the skies."[19]

As Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, and U.N. sanctuaries, as it slaughtered and incinerated Gaza’s defenseless civilian population (one-third of the 1,200 reported casualties were children), Israeli commentators gloated that "Gaza is to Lebanon as the second sitting for an exam is to the first -- a second chance to get it right," and that this time around Israel had "hurled [Gaza] back," not 20 years as it promised to do in Lebanon, but "into the 1940s. Electricity is available only for a few hours a day"; that "Israel regained its deterrence capabilities" because "the war in Gaza has compensated for the shortcomings of the [2006] Second Lebanon War"; and that "There is no doubt that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is upset these days….There will no longer be anyone in the Arab world who can claim that Israel is weak."[20]

New York Times foreign affairs expert Thomas Friedman joined in the chorus of hallelujahs.[21] Israel in fact won the 2006 Lebanon war, according to Friedman, because it had inflicted "substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large," thereby administering an "education" to Hezbollah: fearing the Lebanese people’s wrath, Hezbollah would "think three times next time" before defying Israel. He expressed hope that Israel was likewise "trying to ‘educate’ Hamas by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population." To justify the targeting of Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure Friedman asserted that Israel had no other option because "Hezbollah created a very ‘flat’ military network…deeply embedded in the local towns and villages," and that because "Hezbollah nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians…to restrain Hezbollah in the future."

Leaving aside Friedman’s hollow coinages -- what does "flat" mean? -- and leaving aside that he alleged that the killing of civilians was unavoidable but also recommends targeting civilians as a "deterrence" strategy: is it even true that Hezbollah was "embedded in," "nested among," and "intertwined" with the Lebanese civilian population? Here’s what Human Rights Watch concluded after an exhaustive investigation: "we found strong evidence that Hezbollah stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets from pre-prepared positions outside villages." And again, "in all but a few of the cases of civilian deaths we investigated, Hezbollah fighters had not mixed with the civilian population or taken other actions to contribute to the targeting of a particular home or vehicle by Israeli forces." Indeed, "Israel’s own firing patterns in Lebanon support the conclusion that Hezbollah fired large numbers of its rockets from tobacco fields, banana, olive and citrus groves, and more remote, unpopulated valleys."[22]

A U.S. Army War College study based largely on interviews with Israeli participants in the Lebanon war similarly found that "the key battlefields in the land campaign south of the Litani River were mostly devoid of civilians, and IDF participants consistently report little or no meaningful intermingling of Hezbollah fighters and noncombatants. Nor is there any systematic reporting of Hezbollah using civilians in the combat zone as shields." On a related note, the authors report that "the great majority of Hezbollah’s fighters wore uniforms. In fact, their equipment and clothing were remarkably similar to many state militaries’ -- desert or green fatigues, helmets, web vests, body armor, dog tags, and rank insignia."[23]

Friedman further asserted that, "rather than confronting Israel’s Army head-on," Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s civilian population to provoke Israeli retaliatory strikes, inevitably killing Lebanese civilians and "inflaming the Arab-Muslim street." Yet, numerous studies have shown,[24] and Israeli officials themselves conceded[25] that, during its guerrilla war against the Israeli occupying army, Hezbollah only targeted Israeli civilians after Israel targeted Lebanese civilians. In conformity with past practice Hezbollah started firing rockets toward Israeli civilian concentrations during the 2006 war only after Israel inflicted heavy casualties on Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah avowed that it would target Israeli civilians "as long as the enemy undertakes its aggression without limits or red lines."[26]

If Israel targeted the Lebanese civilian population and infrastructure during the 2006 war, it was not because it had no choice, and not because Hezbollah had provoked it, but because terrorizing the civilian population was a relatively cost-free method of "education," much to be preferred over fighting a real foe and suffering heavy casualties, although Hezbollah’s unexpectedly fierce resistance prevented Israel from achieving a victory on the battlefield. In the case of Gaza it was able both to "educate" the population and achieve a military victory because -- in the words of Gideon Levy -- the "fighting in Gaza" was

"war deluxe." Compared with previous wars, it is child’s play -- pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight.[27] The justification put forth by Friedman in the pages of the Times for targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure amounted to apologetics for state terrorism.[28] It might be recalled that although Hitler had stripped Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher of all his political power by 1940, and his newspaper Der St_rmer had a circulation of only some 15,000 during the war, the International Tribunal at Nuremberg nonetheless sentenced him to death for his murderous incitement.

Beyond restoring its deterrence capacity, Israel’s main goal in the Gaza slaughter was to fend off the latest threat posed by Palestinian moderation. For the past three decades the international community has consistently supported a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict that calls for two states based on a full Israeli withdrawal to its June 1967 border, and a "just resolution" of the refugee question based on the right of return and compensation. The vote on the annual U.N. General Assembly resolution, "Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine," supporting these terms for resolving the conflict in 2008 was 164 in favor, 7 against (Israel, United States, Australia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau), and 3 abstentions. At the regional level the Arab League in March 2002 unanimously put forth a peace initiative on this basis, which it has subsequently reaffirmed. In recent times Hamas has repeatedly signaled its own acceptance of such a settlement. For example, in March 2008 Khalid Mishal, head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, stated in an interview:

There is an opportunity to deal with this conflict in a manner different than Israel and, behind it, the U.S. is dealing with it today. There is an opportunity to achieve a Palestinian national consensus on a political program based on the 1967 borders, and this is an exceptional circumstance, in which most Palestinian forces, including Hamas, accept a state on the 1967 borders….There is also an Arab consensus on this demand, and this is a historic situation. But no one is taking advantage of this opportunity. No one is moving to cooperate with this opportunity. Even this minimum that has been accepted by the Palestinians and the Arabs has been rejected by Israel and by the U.S.[29]

Israel is fully cognizant that the Hamas Charter is not an insurmountable obstacle to a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. "[T]he Hamas leadership has recognized that its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future," a former Mossad head recently observed. "[T]hey are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967….They know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their cooperation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: They will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals."[30]

In addition, Hamas was "careful to maintain the ceasefire" it entered into with Israel in June 2008, according to an official Israeli publication, despite Israel’s reneging on the crucial component of the truce that it ease the economic siege of Gaza. "The lull was sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire, carried out by rogue terrorist organizations," the source continues. "At the same time, the [Hamas] movement tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement on the other terrorist organizations and to prevent them from violating it."[31] Moreover, Hamas was "interested in renewing the relative calm with Israel" (Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin).[32] The Islamic movement could thus be trusted to stand by its word, making it a credible negotiating partner, while its apparent ability to extract concessions from Israel, unlike the hapless Palestinian Authority doing Israel’s bidding but getting no returns, enhanced Hamas’s stature among Palestinians. For Israel these developments constituted a veritable disaster. It could no longer justify shunning Hamas, and it would be only a matter of time before international pressure in particular from the Europeans would be exerted on it to negotiate. The prospect of an incoming U.S. administration negotiating with Iran and Hamas, and moving closer to the international consensus for settling the Israel-Palestine conflict, which some U.S. policymakers now advocate,[33] would have further highlighted Israel’s intransigence. In an alternative scenario, speculated on by Nasrallah, the incoming American administration plans to convene an international peace conference of "Americans, Israelis, Europeans and so-called Arab moderates" to impose a settlement. The one obstacle is "Palestinian resistance and the Hamas government in Gaza," and "getting rid of this stumbling block is…the true goal of the war."[34] In either case, Israel needed to provoke Hamas into breaking the truce, and then radicalize or destroy it, thereby eliminating it as a legitimate negotiating partner. It is not the first time Israel confronted such a diabolical threat -- an Arab League peace initiative, Palestinian support for a two-state settlement and a Palestinian ceasefire -- and not the first time it embarked on provocation and war to overcome it.

In the mid-1970s the PLO mainstream began supporting a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. In addition, the PLO, headquartered in Lebanon, was strictly adhering to a truce with Israel that had been negotiated in July 1981.[35] In August 1981 Saudi Arabia unveiled, and the Arab League subsequently approved, a peace plan based on the two-state settlement.[36] Israel reacted in September 1981 by stepping up preparations to destroy the PLO.[37] In his analysis of the buildup to the 1982 Lebanon war, Israeli strategic analyst Avner Yaniv reported that Yasser Arafat was contemplating a historic compromise with the "Zionist state," whereas "all Israeli cabinets since 1967" as well as "leading mainstream doves" opposed a Palestinian state. Fearing diplomatic pressures, Israel maneuvered to sabotage the two-state settlement. It conducted punitive military raids "deliberately out of proportion" against "Palestinian and Lebanese civilians" in order to weaken "PLO moderates," strengthen the hand of Arafat’s "radical rivals," and guarantee the PLO’s "inflexibility." However, Israel eventually had to choose between a pair of stark options: "a political move leading to a historic compromise with the PLO, or preemptive military action against it." To fend off Arafat’s "peace offensive" -- Yaniv’s telling phrase -- Israel embarked on military action in June 1982. The Israeli invasion "had been preceded by more than a year of effective ceasefire with the PLO," but after murderous Israeli provocations, the last of which left as many as 200 civilians dead (including 60 occupants of a Palestinian children’s hospital), the PLO finally retaliated, causing a single Israeli casualty.[38] Although Israel used the PLO’s resumption of attacks as the pretext for its invasion, Yaniv concluded that the "raison d’être of the entire operation" was "destroying the PLO as a political force capable of claiming a Palestinian state on the West Bank."[39] It deserves passing notice that in his new history of the "peace process," Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, provides this capsule summary of the sequence of events just narrated: "In 1982, Arafat’s terrorist activities eventually provoked the Israeli government of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon into a full-scale invasion of Lebanon."[40]

Fast forward to 2008. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated in early December 2008 that although Israel wanted to create a temporary period of calm with Hamas, an extended truce "harms the Israeli strategic goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement."[41] Translation: a protracted ceasefire that enhanced Hamas’s credibility would have undermined Israel’s strategic goal of retaining control of the West Bank. As far back as March 2007 Israel had decided on attacking Hamas, and only negotiated the June truce because "the Israeli army needed time to prepare."[42] Once all the pieces were in place, Israel only lacked a pretext. On 4 November, while the American media were riveted on election day, Israel broke the ceasefire by killing seven Palestinian militants, on the flimsy excuse that Hamas was digging a tunnel to abduct Israeli soldiers, and knowing full well that its operation would provoke Hamas into hitting back. "Last week’s ‘ticking tunnel,’ dug ostensibly to facilitate the abduction of Israeli soldiers," Haaretz reported in mid-November

was not a clear and present danger: Its existence was always known and its use could have been prevented on the Israeli side, or at least the soldiers stationed beside it removed from harm’s way. It is impossible to claim that those who decided to blow up the tunnel were simply being thoughtless. The military establishment was aware of the immediate implications of the measure, as well as of the fact that the policy of "controlled entry" into a narrow area of the Strip leads to the same place: an end to the lull. That is policy -- not a tactical decision by a commander on the ground.[43]

After Hamas predictably resumed its rocket attacks "[i]n retaliation" (Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center),[44] Israel could embark on yet another murderous invasion in order to foil yet another Palestinian peace offensive.

1. Gideon Levy, "The Time of the Righteous," Haaretz (9 January 2009).

2. Ethan Bronner, "In Israel, A Consensus That Gaza War Is a Just One," New York Times (13 January 2009).

3. 29 December 2008; www.democracynow.org/2008/12/29/israeli_attacks_kill_over_310_in.

4. Richard Wilson, "Incomplete or Inaccurate Information Can Lead to Tragically Incorrect Decisions to Preempt: The example of OSIRAK," paper presented at Erice, Sicily (18 May 2007; updated 9 February 2008; www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1589).

5. Ethan Bronner, "Israel Reminds Foes That It Has Teeth," New York Times (29 December 2008).

6. Benny Morris, "Why Israel Feels Threatened," New York Times (30 December 2008).

7. "Memorandum for the Record" (1 June 1967), Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967 (Washington, DC: 2004).

8. Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the war, and the year that transformed the Middle East (New York: 2007), p. 293, my emphasis.

9. Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A critical analysis of Israel's security and foreign policy (Ann Arbor: 2006), p. 89.

10. William Arkin, Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: 2007), pp. xxi, xxv-xxvi, 25, 54, 64, 135, 147-48.

11. Andrew Exum, Hizballah at War: A military assessment (Washington Institute for Near East Policy: December 2006), pp. 9, 11-12.

12. Benny Morris, "A Second Holocaust? The Threat to Israel" (2 May 2008; www.mideastfreedomforum.org/de/node/66).

13. Yaron London, "The Dahiya Strategy" (6 October 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3605863,00.html); Gabriel Siboni, "Disproportionate Force: Israel's concept of response in light of the Second Lebanon War," Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), 2 October 2008. Attila Somfalvi, "Sheetrit: We should level Gaza neighborhoods" (2 October 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3504922,00.html).

14. "Israeli General Says Hamas Must Not Be the Only Target in Gaza," IDF Radio, Tel Aviv, in Hebrew 0600 gmt (26 December 2008), BBC Monitoring Middle East; Tova Dadon, "Deputy Chief of Staff: Worst still ahead" (29 December 2008; http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-36466558,00.html); www.btselem.org/English/Gaza_Strip/20081231_Gaza_Letter_to_Mazuz.asp.

15. Seumas Milne, "Israel's Onslaught on Gaza is a Crime That Cannot Succeed," Guardian (30 December 2008).

16. Reuven Pedatzur, "The Mistakes of Cast Lead," Haaretz(8 January 2009).

17. Morris, "Why Israel Feels Threatened."

18. B. Michael, "Déjà Vu in Gaza" (29 December 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3646558,00.html).

19. Gideon Levy, "Twilight Zone/Trumpeting for War," Haaretz (2 January 2009).

20. Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, "Israel and Hamas Are Both Paying a Steep Price in Gaza," Haaretz (10 January 2009); Ari Shavit, "Analysis: Israel's victories in Gaza make up for its failures in Lebanon," Haaretz (12 January 2009); Guy Bechor, "A Dangerous Victory" (12 January 2009; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3654505,00.html).

21. Thomas L. Friedman, "Israel's Goals in Gaza?," New York Times (14 January 2009).

22. Human Rights Watch, Why They Died: Civilian casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 war (New York: 2007), pp. 5, 14, 40-41, 45-46, 48, 51, 53.

23. Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for army and defense policy (Carlisle, PA: 2008), pp. 43-44, 45.

24. Human Rights Watch, Civilian Pawns: Laws of war violations and the use of weapons on the Israel-Lebanon border (New York: 1996); Maoz, Defending the Holy Land, pp. 213-14, 224-25, 252; Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A short history (Princeton: 2007), pp. 77, 86.

25. Judith Palmer Harik, Hezbollah: The changing face of terrorism (London: 2004), pp. 167-68.

26. Human Rights Watch, Civilians Under Attack: Hezbollah's rocket assault on Israel in the 2006 war (New York: 2007), p. 100. HRW asserts that Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli civilians were not retaliatory but provides no supporting evidence.

27. Gideon Levy, "The IDF Has No Mercy for the Children in Gaza Nursery Schools," Haaretz (15 January 2009).

28. Glenn Greenwald, "Tom Friedman Offers a Perfect Definition of ‘Terrorism'" (14 January 2009; www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/14/friedman/).

29. Mouin Rabbani, "A Hamas Perspective on the Movement's Evolving Role: An interview with Khalid Mishal, Part II," Journal of Palestine Studies (Summer 2008).

30. "What Hamas Wants," Mideast Mirror (22 December 2008).

31. Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement (December 2008), pp. 2, 6, 7.

32. "Hamas Wants Better Terms for Truce," Jerusalem Post (21 December 2008). Diskin told the Israeli cabinet that Hamas would renew the truce if Israel lifted the siege of Gaza, stopped military attacks and extended the truce to the West Bank.

33. Richard N. Haass and Martin Indyk, "Beyond Iraq: A new U.S. strategy for the Middle East," and Walter Russell Mead, "Change They Can Believe In: To make Israel safe, give Palestinians their due," in Foreign Affairs, January-February 2009.

34. Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's Speech Delivered at the Central Ashura Council, 31 December 2008.

35. Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: the United States, Israel and the Palestinians (Boston: 1983), chaps. 3, 5.

36. Yehuda Lukacs (ed), The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a documentary record, 1967-1990 (Cambridge: 1992), pp. 477-79.

37. Yehoshaphat Harkabi, Israel's Fateful Hour (New York: 1988), p. 101.

38. Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The abduction of Lebanon (New York: 1990), pp. 197, 232.

39. Avner Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security: Politics, strategy and the Israeli experience in Lebanon (Oxford: 1987), pp. 20-23, 50-54, 67-70, 87-89, 100-1, 105-6, 113, 143.

40. Martin Indyk, Innocent Abroad: An intimate account of American peace diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: 2009), p. 75.

41. Saed Bannoura, "Livni Calls for a Large Scale Military Offensive in Gaza," IMEMC & Agencies (10 December 2008; www.imemc.org/article/57960).

42. Uri Blau, "IDF Sources: Conditions not yet optimal for Gaza exit," Haaretz (8 January 2009); Barak Ravid, "Disinformation, Secrecy, and Lies: How the Gaza offensive came about," Haaretz (28 December 2008).

43. Zvi Bar'el, "Crushing the Tahadiyeh," Haaretz (16 November 2008). Cf. Uri Avnery, "The Calculations behind Israel's Slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza" (2 January 2009; www.redress.cc/palestine/uavnery20080102).

44. The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement, p. 3.

israel's Diminishing Returns As Hamas Profits

2009-01-16T23:34:00.004-05:00

Israel's assault on Gaza is radicalizing mainstream Muslim opinion. And regardless how this war ends, Hamas will likely emerge a more powerful force than before.

Israel's Diminishing Returns As Hamas Profits
By Fawaz A. Gerges

I have just returned from the Middle East and witnessed how Israel's assault on Gaza is radicalizing mainstream Muslim opinion. Shown endlessly on Arab and Muslim television stations, the massive killing of civilians is fueling rage against Israel and its superpower patron, the United States, among mainstream and moderate voices who previously believed in co-existence with the Jewish state. Now, they are questioning their basic assumptions and raising doubts about Israel's future integration into the region.

Many professionals, both Christian and Muslim Arabs, previously critical of Hamas, are bitter about what they call Israel's "barbaric conduct" against Palestinian noncombatants, particularly women and children. No one I have encountered believes Israel's narrative that this is a war against Hamas, not the Palestinian people. A near consensus exists among Arabs and Muslims that Israel is battering the Palestinian population in an effort to force it to revolt against Hamas, just as it tried to force the Lebanese people to revolt against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. But Hezbollah weathered that Israeli storm, acquired a sturdier immune system and became the most powerful institution in Lebanon. In so doing it shattered Israeli deterrence, delivered a blow to US Mideast policy and expanded the influence of Iran, Hezbollah's main supporter in the region.

In my recent travels I was struck by the widespread popular support for Hamas--from college students and street vendors to workers and intellectuals. Very few ventured criticism of Hamas, and many said they felt awed by the fierce resistance put forward by its fighters. Israel's onslaught on Gaza has effectively silenced critics of Hamas and politically legitimized the militant resistance movement in the eyes of many previously skeptical Palestinians and Muslims. Regardless of how this war ends, Hamas will likely emerge as a more powerful political force than before and will likely top Fatah, the ruling apparatus of President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority.

"No one dares any longer to question Hamas's right to represent the Palestinian people," said a 30-year-old leftist Palestinian, a graduate of the American University in Beirut. Why so, I asked. "The Islamist resistance has earned a place at the table with blood," he told me.

What Israeli officials and their American allies do not appreciate is that Hamas is not merely an armed militia but a social movement with a large popular base that is deeply entrenched in society. It cannot be wiped out without massacring half a million Palestinians. If Israel succeeds in killing Hamas's senior leaders, a new generation, more radical than the present, will swiftly replace them. Hamas is a fact of life. It is not going away, and it will not raise the white flag regardless of how many casualties it suffers.

More than the war against Hezbollah, Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza has already undermined the legitimacy and authority of pro-Western regimes like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the eyes of many of their citizens. They stand accused of collusion with the enemy against fellow believers. Egypt, which shares a border crossing with Gaza, has suffered the brunt of Muslim anger worldwide. Protesters have targeted Egyptian embassies in several countries and called on President Hosni Mubarak to open up his frontier with Gaza and relieve the suffering of besieged and bombed Palestinians.

Many Egyptians I talked to are outraged by Mubarak's stance. They say that the country, the biggest in the Arab world, is in turmoil, and that people are boiling within: the Gaza conflict has exposed a widening gap between Egypt's rulers and citizens and--combined with the country's deepening socioeconomic conditions--could have serious repercussions on stability. Although Egypt faces no imminent danger of a social revolution, the military remains an enigma, and we do not know how junior and senior officers feel about the government's unpopular role toward the bloodshed in Palestine.

Suffice it to say that the so-called moderate Arab states are on the defensive, and that the resistance front led by Iran and Syria is the main beneficiary. Once again, Israel and the Bush administration have handed the Iranian leadership a sweet victory.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has sought to harness anger in the region by urging Muslims to launch a jihad against Israel and condemning pro-Western Arab leaders as collaborators with the Jewish state. In a new audiotape designed to capitalize on the Gaza offensive, bin Laden vowed that his organization would open "new fronts" against the United States and its partners beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.

He knows that the Palestine predicament resonates more widely and powerfully with Arabs and Muslims than the conflicts in the other two countries.

Israeli leaders still adhere to the discredited idea that there is a military solution to the country's security dilemma. Although the Jewish state possesses military superiority over all its Arab neighbors, it has neither broken the political will of its adversaries nor achieved long-term peace and stability. In fact, Israel's brutal and disproportionate use of force in Lebanon in 2006 and now in Gaza shows clearly the failure of its deterrence and the damage to its moral standing in the world. Killing large numbers of Palestinians and Arabs will not bring Israel security and will only deepen hatred of Israel among Arabs, even Christian Arabs, and Muslims throughout the world. If not stopped, the assault on Gaza may foil the best political intentions for a two-state solution.

President-elect Barack Obama appreciates that time is of essence. After initially being quiet about Israel's assault, he vowed to press immediately for peace in the Middle East and pursue a policy of engagement with Iran. He said he was building a diplomatic team so that "on day one, we have the best possible people who are going to be immediately engaged in the Middle East peace process as a whole." The team would "be engaging with all of the actors there" so that "both Israelis and Palestinians can meet their aspirations," Obama said. That would mean not only an end to Hamas rocket fire and security for Israel, but political engagement with Hamas and an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and a viable, fully independent state for the Palestinians with its capital in East Jerusalem.

Fawaz A. Gerges is a professor of Middle Eastern studies and international affairs at Sarah Lawrence College. His most recent books are Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy and The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global.

Iran letter to Saudi Arabia

2009-01-16T02:07:00.008-05:00

Ahmadinejad weighs in on Arab Conplicity with Israel

The following is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, urging him to take a clear stance on the unfolding crisis in Gaza:

In the Name of God the Compassionate and the Merciful

To the King of Saudi Arabia Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud

"Peace be unto you and so may the mercy of Allah and His blessings"

As you well know, in the past 19 days, the innocent and defenseless people of Gaza have been victimized by the savage and horrific attacks of uncivilized Zionists. While under full aerial, ground, and naval blockade they have had to endure the heaviest bombardments and are going through the most difficult of times.

RIght: Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad, his blog is here.

Left: Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud: 'If the option of peace fails as a result of Israeli arrogance, then the only option remaining will be war.' Spoken toward the end of Israel's war on Lebanon. During that war too, Saudi Arabia spearheaded the Arab cohorts of the Israeli regime's incursion and bombardment of Lebanon. (Andy Wong/Associated Press)

Women, children, the elderly and ordinary civilians are being slaughtered in their homeland. The scenes of cruelty and violence that are being played out in Gaza tear every free man's heart apart, and set it afire.

Aggressive powers that claim to be the upholders of democracy and human rights, have armed Zionist assassins to the teeth and have established this forged regime for the sole purpose of committing crimes, abuse, and occupation; not only do they support its actions but also use their power over international organizations to buy this regime time to carry out such massacres.

Their actions are not far from expectation but it is unfortunate to see a number of Islamic and Arabic governments in the region condone this unprecedented genocide with their silence and smiles of satisfaction.

These governments are waiting to see the heroic resistance of a defenseless nation, God forbid, fall to the savagery and repression of the occupiers.

It is common knowledge that no future awaits the Zionist regime; its actions today show its despair, as it clings to its existence in the region.

As all free men and nations have raised their voices in protest of the Zionist regime and the atrocities it is committing in Gaza, it is expected of you as the Saudi Arabian King and the Custodian of the Two Holy Places, i.e Makkah and Medina, to break your silence on the catastrophic events and the massacre taking place in Gaza and take a clear stance on the murder of your children, who are dear to the Islamic Ummah.

I trust that your stance will shatter the remaining hopes of the corrupt powers of the world to sow discord in the world of Islam.

I pray to God for the victory of free nations and the brave resistance in Gaza, and I look to Him for the annihilation of oppressors such as the Zionist regime.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Outrage, Gaza Massacres & Statehood

2009-01-15T22:18:00.005-05:00

Left: On September 10, 2008, President of Bolivia, Evo Morales moved to expel the United States ambassador, Philip Goldberg, on the basis that he is persona non grata in Bolivia and was fomenting dissent among Bolivian citizens. President Morales asked the Bolivian foreign minister to send a note to the American legate asking that he leave the country.

Bolivia Breaks Ties With Israel Claiming Gaza Genocide

Bolivian President, Evo Morales, announced Wednesday, January 14, 2009. he was breaking relations with Israel over its invasion of the Gaza Strip and said he will ask the International Criminal Court to bring genocide charges against top Israeli officials.

President Evo Morales' ally Hugo Chavez of Venezuela broke ties with Israel last week.

President Morales told the country's diplomatic corps that the Israeli attack "seriously threatened world peace" and he called for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Cabinet to face criminal charges.

Bolivia's President Morales chided the United Nations' "Insecurity Council" for its "lukewarm" response to the crisis and said the U.N. General Assembly should condemn the invasion.

He also said Israeli President Shimon Peres should be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize for failing to stop the invasion.

Israel launched the onslaught in Gaza on Dec. 27, seeking to force the ruling Hamas militant group to stop rocket attacks on southern Israel. The offensive has killed more than 940 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, according to Palestinian officials.

Morales and Chavez have worked to cultivate ties to Iran, which supports Hamas. Morales met Tuesday with visiting Iranian officials, who gave him a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thanking Morales for his previously voicing supporting for the Palestinians.

This report glosses over the fact that the US supports Israel financially, militarily and diplomatically while whatever support Hamas gains from Iran remains clandestine. When Hamas won elections in the occupied territories in 2006 Israel with her ally the US and the influential governments in the West boycotted the democratically government. They then proceeded to freeze all aide and eventually all financial transactions to the battered Palestinian municipal government. Palestinian political configurations cannot be called governments because Israel controls the borders, air space and coastal waters; moreover, Israle controls all economic activity of these enclaves. Israel with the consent and complicity with these power wielding white governments proceeded to put Gaza under a strict siege regime.

When this tactic failed to subdue Gaza due to hard currency transfers from benefactors in the Arab world and elsewhere into Gaza and a steady influx of arms and goods through tunnels between Egypt and Gaza the Israel decided to go in with guns blazing to unseat Hamas.

Barack Obama will be inaugurated in just five days time. Hamas must hold on and continue to approve parcels of truce and cease-fire agreements until then so that the US government will be forced to put the issue in the diplomatic center stage. This would avail the greatest opportunity to extract beneficial terms for the Palestinian people. Israel has done so much damage already, killed so many innocents even attacked world bodies and NGOs in its maniacal attacks that any extension of the atrocities will yield diminishing returns to Israel.

Just as the Holocaust was the catalyst for the establishment of the state of Israel so will Gaza become the international political and social force to see through a Palestinian state. The hundreds of people would not have died in vain if this indeed comes about.

Left: President Hugo Chavez addressing the UN General Assembly on Friday, September 16, 2005: But it is also urgent a new international political order. Let us not permit that a few countries try to reinterpret the principles of International Law in order to impose new doctrines such as "pre-emptive warfare." Oh do they threaten us with that pre-emptive war! And what about the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine? We need to ask ourselves. Who is going to protect us? How are they going to protect us?

The Tunnel Vision Of UNSC Resolution 1860

2009-01-09T02:03:00.010-05:00

Left: Avi Pilchick (seated, foreground in white shirt) observes military operations' bombardment in the Gaza Strip along with other Israeli civilians from a hilltop in Sderot, Israel as they sip on Pepsi. (Photo: Shashank Bengali / MCT)

Avi Pilchick (seated, foreground in white shirt) observes military operations in the Gaza Strip along with other Israeli civilians from a hilltop in Sderot, Israel. |

Security Council Calls For Immediate, Durable Fully Respected Ceasefire In Gaza
Leading To Full Withdrawal Of Israeli Forces
Resolution 1860 (2009)
Adopted by 14 in Favor, Abstention (US);
Also Calls for Unimpeded Humanitarian Assistance,
Welcomes Egyptian Initiative

"The Security Council,

“Recalling all of its relevant resolutions, including resolutions 242 (1967), 338 (1973), 1397 (2002), 1515 (2003) and 1850 (2008),

“Stressing that the Gaza Strip constitutes an integral part of the territory occupied in 1967 and will be a part of the Palestinian state,

“Emphasizing the importance of the safety and well-being of all civilians,

“Expressing grave concern at the escalation of violence and the deterioration of the situation, in particular the resulting heavy civilian casualties since the refusal to extend the period of calm; and emphasizing that the Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations must be protected,

“Expressing grave concern also at the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza,

“Emphasizing the need to ensure sustained and regular flow of goods and people through the Gaza crossings,

“Recognizing the vital role played by UNRWA in providing humanitarian and economic assistance within Gaza,

“Recalling that a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be achieved by peaceful means,

“Reaffirming the right of all States in the region to live in peace within secure and internationally recognized borders,

“1. Stresses the urgency of and calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza;

“2. Calls for the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment;

“3. Welcomes the initiatives aimed at creating and opening humanitarian corridors and other mechanisms for the sustained delivery of humanitarian aid;

“4. Calls on Member States to support international efforts to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza, including through urgently needed additional contributions to UNRWA and through the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee;

“5. Condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism;

“6. Calls upon Member States to intensify efforts to provide arrangements and guarantees in Gaza in order to sustain a durable ceasefire and calm, including to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition and to ensure the sustained re‑opening of the crossing points on the basis of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access between the Palestinian Authority and Israel; and in this regard, welcomes the Egyptian initiative, and other regional and international efforts that are under way;

“7. Encourages tangible steps towards intra-Palestinian reconciliation including in support of mediation efforts of Egypt and the League of Arab States as expressed in the 26 November 2008 resolution, and consistent with Security Council resolution 1850 (2008) and other relevant resolutions;

“8. Calls for renewed and urgent efforts by the parties and the international community to achieve a comprehensive peace based on the vision of a region where two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace with secure and recognised borders, as envisaged in Security Council resolution 1850 (2008), and recalls also the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative;

“9. Welcomes the Quartet’s consideration, in consultation with the parties, of an international meeting in Moscow in 2009;

“10. Decides to remain seized of the matter.”

Gravely concerned by the deepening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and the resulting heavy civilian casualties “since the refusal to extend the period of calm” between Israel and Hamas, the Security Council this evening stressed the urgency of and called for an “immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza”.

Adopting resolution 1860 (2009) by a vote of 14 in favor with the United States abstaining, the Council also expressed its grave concern at the escalation of violence and emphasized that Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations must be protected in the densely packed territory that has been the theatre of a deadly 13-day conflict between Israel Defense Forces and armed Hamas militants.

The measure, which recalls that “a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be achieved by peaceful means,” capped days of intense ministerial-level negotiations at United Nations Headquarters after Arab leaders and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas flew to New York for urgent meetings with United Nations Secretary‑General Ban Ki‑moon and Security Council diplomats to craft a binding resolution to end the fighting, which began on 27 December, when Israel launched a major offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas rocket attacks.

Immediately following the vote, Secretary‑General Ban said, after two weeks of escalating violence and suffering in Gaza and southern Israel, he was heartened and relieved at the adoption of a resolution to end the tragic situation. The Council’s action signalled the will of the international community and must be fully respected by the parties. He stressed, however, that more would be needed, and a political way forward was required to deliver long-term security and peace. “My visit to the region next week will focus on helping to ensure that the ceasefire is implemented, that urgent humanitarian assistance reaches those in need and encouraging the diplomatic efforts currently under way,” he added.

The resolution sets out urgent tasks for the international community and calls on United Nations Member States to intensify their efforts to provide arrangements and guarantees in Gaza to sustain a durable ceasefire and calm, including to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition, and to ensure the sustained reopening of crossing points on the basis of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Calling for the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance within Gaza, including food, fuel and medical treatment, the resolution recognizes the role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in providing such assistance, and emphasizes the need to ensure “sustained and regular flow of goods and people through Gaza crossings”.

The resolution welcomes the regional and international efforts under way to end the crisis, including the Egyptian initiative crafted by President Hosni Mubarak and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy, which, among other things, calls for a temporary ceasefire followed by talks on how to control the border crossings, as well as how to achieve reconciliation among Palestinian factions.

Explaining the United States decision to abstain, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that, while her Government had agreed with the goals and objectives of the resolution: “The United States thought it important to see the outcomes of the Egyptian mediation efforts in order to see what this resolution might have been supporting.” Still, she said, the United States believed that, by adopting the resolution, the Council had provided a road map for a sustainable, durable peace in Gaza.

Riyad Al-Maliki, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Palestinian Authority, said that adoption of the resolution had been delayed several days, despite the deepening humanitarian crisis and heavy loss of lives of Palestinian civilians. Some 700 Palestinians had been killed and close to 3,000 had been wounded. Nevertheless, Israel must now end its war against the Palestinian people and withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip. It must also lift the closure of borders and ensure humanitarian access to the people in need. “The violence must cease so that […] we can rebuild what the brutal Israeli war machine had destroyed in Gaza,” he declared.

Left: A tower of white smoke rose from Gaza framed with black sooth after another Israeli bombardment. A half-dozen Israelis, perched on a dusty hilltop, gazed at the scene like cheering armchair military strategists. "They are doing good," Pilchick, 20, said of Israeli forces battling Palestinian militants in Gaza, "but they can do more."

Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev told the Council that Israel had withdrawn from Gaza in 2005 hoping it would never have to return. However, after eight years of continuous rocket attacks by the Hamas terrorist organization, Hamas’ refusal to extend the period of calm, and its smuggling of weapons during that period, Israel had been left with no choice but to act in self-defence. “Responsibility for the current hostilities lies squarely with Hamas,” she said, adding that the international community must focus its attention on the cessation of Hamas’ terrorist activities, including the total cessation of rocket fire and smuggling, in order to be durable and to allow the possibility of lasting peace.

David Miliband, Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, whose country sponsored the text, told the Council that statistics did not do justice to the situation in Gaza, “but the word ‘crisis’, which is sometimes overused, is wholly appropriate.” His Government had been calling for an immediate ceasefire from the very beginning of the conflict and tonight, at last, the United Nations was speaking clearly with one voice. The job now was to turn the words of the resolution into a reality, he said.

The Tunnel Vision Of UNSC 1860 - Arms Control and lasting Peace

Left: Israel has destroyed some tunnels, such as this in Gaza

The US abstention to UNSC 1860 is a signal to Israel to continue its invasion of Gaza, while diplomatic efforts continue to extract the most favorable terms for "the Jewish state." The key component would be establishing border controls to halt arms smuggling by Hamas, as demanded by Israel. But as is widely known, arms are smuggled into Gaza through tunnels. How would these transient mechanisms be patrolled by an envisioned enforcement force is unclear and has not been outlined in current documentation. Even if these tunnels were destroyed as called for, how would subsequent tunnels or acquisitions through other means including smuggling by sea and through the Rafah itself be prevented?

A Hamas representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, said that the group was considering the proposal, along with other ideas presented by Turkey and by Arab states.

"We are still studying the Egyptian proposal and I haven't said that we have rejected it. But we don't discuss the presence of monitors or international troops or forces to protect the occupation," he told Al-Arabiya television.

In a potential warning sign, Hamdan complained that "the initiatives mostly favor Israel."

Another proposal forwarded by Libya was rejected because it did not contain a key provision, which call for monitors to destroy tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle arms from Egypt.

It should be noted that Egypt has been reluctant to take on responsibility for border security and prevention of arms smuggling because it cautions that the nation may be held responsible for breaches of the control regime. Egypt has been maligned by many for not opening the Rafah crossing including General Secretary of Hizballah, Hassan Nasrallah and yours truly. However, upon further inquiry I've discovered that Egypt did as much as it could in negative action to allow Gaza to obtain goods. It would have taken only a small military operation for Egypt's forces to discover and destroy the tunnels or take other legal measures to halt the trade. They did not assail the market allowing it to flourish.

It would seem that Israel's borders are increasingly being guarded by international forces such as the UNFIL force in southern Lebanon. Israel will want such a force on the Gaza-Egypt border as consideration for accepting a truce. This force must be more robust in terms of its duties and mandate than UNIFIL, which remains an observer force with minimal engagment power. Turkey has been asked to put together an international force for Gaza,

Hamas' main goals are the cessation of the siege and blockade, resumption of free travel and trade for its people. If these aims can be met in a comprehensive truce plan Hamas would have fared well even with the devastating losses Gaza suffered in the two week onslaught by Israeli military forces. Hamas could then find resourceful means to import or manufacture weaponry to maintain a certain level of deterrence to Israeli aggression.

US army engineers have been assisting Egyptian troops in detecting the existing tunnels in the Rafah area. It is apparent that logistics derived from these operations along with IDF surveillance data are being used by the Israeli air force to destroy some of these tunnels.

"There has been a concerted effort for some time by the Egyptians to go after some of these tunnels -- detect them, block them, eliminate them -- and I think the Army Corps of Engineers has provided some technical advice on how to do so," said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.

The Army Corps of Engineers role was providing "strictly technical advice," he said.

Israel launched air raids Wednesday, January 7, 2009, on the Palestinian side of Rafah, targeting at least 25 houses alleged to contain some of the 1,500 tunnels under the border that serve as the supply lifeline for Hamas. Israel will want enough time during its war on Gaza to dominate the border region and establish some sort of buffer dead zone. Otherwise any patrol apparatus erected by proposed forces will be cicumvented and ultimately become futile. Israel often expresses this type of futility by making sonic booms with its jet fighters over Lebanon territory.

The AFP news agency quoted witnesses as saying that dozens of Israeli tanks had entered southern Gaza and were heading towards Rafah presumably to carry out the tunnel vision.

One of the ideas being discussed by the Israelis, Egyptians and Americans is to have a US presence on the Egyptian side of the border which would assist the Egyptians in uncovering the openings of the tunnels on their side of the frontier. The US muscle would come with electronic equipment to detect the tunnels and then blow them up in controlled explosions.

The Americans would also actively help the Egyptians in blocking the smuggling chain, which starts in Sudan, passes through Egypt and the Sinai desert and ends up in Gaza, senior Israeli security officials said. The Israeli have been pummeling the Rafah tunnels, which is the final destination of this international trade with bunker busting one-ton and two-ton bombs provided to it the US government.

Israeli fighters jets have bombed the tunnels again and again. By day 13 of the offensive war, the Israeli military said at least 150 tunnels have been destroyed. Many, if not hundreds, however remain intact: According to Israeli estimates the number of tunnels before the offensive stood at 200 - 300. According to Rafah residents and Hamas there were as many as 700 - 1,500. Since the Israeli imposed blockade some two years ago, almost everything that cannot be produced in Gaza come through this lifeline network of tunnels. Hundreds of families have been made homeless in Rafah in the Israeli plight to eradicate the tunnels.

On Thursday, January 9, 2009, thousands of Palestinians fled their homes in the southern Gaza Strip as Israeli forces bombarded Rafah after dropping leaflets to warn local residents about an impending blitz. Witnesses said that homes, suspected as smuggling tunnels and a mosque were hit in the area along the Egyptian border. The leaflets warned that that the Israeli military "will bomb the area due to its use by terrorists to tunnel and stock up" on weapons.

Nevertheless, unless the blockade is lifted the trade will start again. The tunnels have been destroyed before. The obliteration of the tunnels will disrupt the flow of trade between Egypt and Gaza however, it may not stop it. Israel had a similarly constrictive end game dream in its war on Lebanon in 2006. UNSC 1701 did not prohibit the Lebanese resistance from replenishing its stockpile of weaponry--it did not work. Therefore, it is doubtful that the Israelis will succeed in this fervent destructive adventure, blitzII or Cast Lead, unto Gaza--to censure its people from obtaining the objects necessary for their survival and resisting the brutal occupation. The wide ranging purveyance of death and destruction on Gaza and the far seeing aims of the Israeli government could may be compromised by this uncertain tunnel vision.

Gaza Auction - Open Bids

2009-01-07T12:59:00.009-05:00

Latest Gaza Casualty bid figures: 706 people dead
Side note: 3,125 wounded

Do I hear 707?

You're in your seat. You have your remote control gripped tightly in case the action dullens. The news auctioneer clears her throat and gavels the figures slamming facts of death, baby blatter and brain matter on the podium lens. The Gaza Massacre auction is ongoing.

There are demographic wars being waged in both, Israel and throughout the world's news media. It features passionate battles portrayed in sometimes-foreign languages, Some targeted audiences have hundreds of channels to choose from. Nevertheless, the cream will always rise to the top, by G-d blood is thicker than water.

Warning? Make sure you are already a fan, much of the images are graphic and depict scenes of extreme violence, which may not be suitable for young viewers. This is the tacit contract, assuaging your consent once the digital tuner hones in the high definition signal. Do understand these important market oriented stratagems. Before you're subjected to the sanitizing terms let us give special thanks to our corporate sponsors. We will be right back in a moment to foment the entertainment, turn up the volume and get your snack and soda pop.

Enjoying the modern Roman Coliseum as the Palestinians soon to be called Gazans are fed into the jaws of the F-16s, tanks, warships, helicopter gunships, artillery batteries and other such modern carnivore lions. Your living room is definitely a safe haven to take in a bid or two as to the eventual winning death toll. These terrorists hide in civilian population centers sinner, but the IDF provide high resolution video of precise kills. As usual, caveat emptor. preemptor wars do not come with warranties or guarantees. This is an "as is" transmission transaction for your consideration. Therefore, the responsibility is yours and yours alone to determine the condition of such pieces of flesh and pools of blood before you decide to bid on their time.

All absentee bidder interests executed without specificity collectively upon the lot of deaths even though you may simply be responding in interaction with an online or print medium. This utterly anonymous dynamic makes evident the inalienable democratic principle of the market place. The life bids and the hammer price as opposed to the minimum value of the people's collateral damage in Gaza as they pay the reserved price in their Palestinian reservations. The IDF does not intend to inadvertently influence the final solution bid, Foreign Minister Tzipora Malka Livni clarifies in worldwide news briefs. Yet, the occupation remains the original selling price. The number-crunching facts of the fast talkers of the Israeli pity Holocaust government sell death and destruction and invite you to browse liberally the dead bodies, but remember, there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Fast Talking Auctioneer champion of heavy machinery

LIVE FROM GAZA

Live from Gaza feed BABY
There is a race war that goes on
But it is all about the pace save face
We are having to trace in that place in disgrace
Want a taste just in case?
Have you ever been drunk on blood in high def death?

We're going to interview into view all the combattants
It's going to be a great blow show
Your heart is already beating pounding sweating
Full access here this is absolutely out of control
Look cooked limbs look yeah direct hit
Bomb droppings and sonic booms tanks on the horizon looms

Come see mayhem here, hello mayhem
Apples apples get your beer here, extra extra
See hear read all about it
The sounds and images in sales pitch
Used to be people - vending corpses from home to home
The angry Arab streets those people shout our death
Singing in the rubble of one ton bombs all out of breath
Now, all over the radio, internet, television
Print or fancy little devices that fit neatly in your pocket

Oh ey oh, wanna buy a little fly-by, oy vey
Okay, gimme a bid, gimme a bid, I don't care. ONE
And a half, two-fifty thousand to 10 billion a year, Alright!
Let's start out with 187? What do think we can do?
Okay, 500, 5-and-a-half, whaddya say?
I thought you had your hand raised terrorist sympathizer

600-and-a-half, let's go for 700 700 right over here. 750?
800 you have 800 what? You have eight in Cairo
Oh, eight on the border that means 800 right? even in Arabic
Alright, I thought you ate people in their sleep I dunno.
Alright 800, let's hear it for 850, anybody?
A thousand from a rich Sheik in Riyadh
Can Amman top that? Where's your pride? Your faith?

A thousand from the keepers of the two temples
So everybody jump. Okay, alright 1000, one-one-fifty?
Is that right? You're in charge lemme hear an 1200
Let's go for 1200. C'mon lemme hear it for 1200 send a drone in
Yes, yes yes we're getting it--We've got 1200?
Good, good, good! Wait till we come to the cleanse bottom line

Anyways, we've got 1200? Need, 1250! What do you want?
We wanna go "TWO!!" double the Lebanon trouble bubble
Anywhere you want bring it on kosher style baby
1300, 1300 let's hear it for 1500. Silent bid Abu dhabi right on
Over there 1550? 1600? Why not go 1700 I dunno? USA made it
We got 1800? We're down to 1850, is that right?

1950 Yeah, boy ... wait till we get to the choice bodies
Alright 2000 remember if it's a head it's dead as smoke clears
Beneath the ground worth much more, wait a minute, 2009!
I ask, nay demand if there's anymore... 2500 over there square
Anymore bid? bed bled? Cast Lead? Okay, 2797 ... going once?
Notice we're stalling? Humanitarian corridor, UN envoys
2797 going twice...
Do I pay for coffins? Nah all included, as is baby! Alright!
2797 going three times
Three times, once...
No hands, no bidding? You're kidding those damn protesters
Okay, 2797 ... SOLD!!!

It's going to be more spectacular when we hit Iran Pakistan
There you have it, I hope you will enjoy and ask for more
Thanks again to all who made this wonderfully possible
Auctioneering profiteering liable probable parable limbo
It continues to be one fine batch of raw entertainment
May They rest in peace in pieces.

Do chics love this or what? Young little dudes want to be just like them--live GI-Joe military action figure!

On the first day, December 27, 2008, beginning 11:30 AM, local time, Israel auctioned off:

Ibrahim Al-Jamaj
Ibrahim Al-Jamaj
Isma'il Al-Husari
Isma'il Salem
Isma'il Ghneim
Eyman Natour
Eyhab Ash-Shaer
Ibrahim Mahfoudh
Abu Ali Ar-Rahhal
Ahmad Al-Halabi
Ahmad Al-Kurd
Ahmad Al-Lahham
Ahmad Al-Hums
Ahmad At-Talouli
Ahmad Zu'rub
Ahmad Abu Jazar
Ahmad Radwan
Ahmad 'Udah
Ahmad Abu Mousa
Ahmad Tbeil
Adham Al-Areini
Osama Abu Ar-Rus
Osama Abu Ar-Reish
Osama Darweish
Ashraf Ash-Sharabasi
Ashraf Abu Suhweil
Amjad Abu Jazar
Ameen Az-Zarbatli
Anas Hamad
Anwar Al-Bardini
Anwar Al-Kurd
Ayman Abu Ammouna
Ayman An-Nahhal
Ibrahim Abu Ar-Rus
Basil Dababish
Bassam Makkawi
Bilal Omar
Bahaa Abu Zuhri
Tamir Qreinawi
Tamir Abu Afsha
Tawfiq Al-Fallit
Tawfiq Jabir
Thaer Madi
Jabir Jarbu'
Hatim Abu Sha'ira
Hamid Yasin
Husam Ayyash
Hasan Baraka
Hasan Abid Rabbo
Hasan Al-Majayda
Hussein Al-A'raj
Hussein Dawood
Hussein 'Uroq
Hakam Abu Mansi
Hamada Abu Duqqa
Hamada Safi
Hamdan Abu Nu'eira
Haydar Hassuna
Khalid Zu'rub
Khalid Abu Hasna
Khalid An-Nashasi
Khalid Shaheen Raed Dughmush
Rami Ash-Sheikh
Raafat Shamiyya
Riziq Salman
Rif'at Sa'da
Rafiq Na'im
Ramzi Al-Haddad
Ziyad Abu 'Ubada
Sarah Al-Hawajiri
Salim Abu Shamla
Salim Qreinawi
Sa'id Hamada
Salim Al-Gharir
Suheil Tambura
Shadi Sbakhi
Shahada Quffa
Shahada Abd ar-Rahman
Sabir Al-Mabhouh
Suhayb Abu 'Iffat
Suhayb Abd al-'aal
Tal'at Salman
Tal'at Basal
'Aasim Ash-Shaer
'Aasim Abu Kamil
Abid Ad-Dahshan
Abd ar-Raziq Shahtu
Abd as-Sami' An-Nashar
Abdul-Fattah Abu 'Uteiwi
Abdul-Fattah Fadil
Abdullah Juneid
Abdullah Al-Ghafari
Abdullah Rantisi
Abdullah Wahbi
Arafat Farajallah
Azmi Abu Dalal
Isam Al-Ghirbawi
'Alaa Al-Qatrawi
'Alaa Al-Kahlout
'Alaa 'Uqeilan
'Alaa Nasr Ar-Ra'i
Ali Awad
Imab Abu Al-Hajj
Omar Darawsha
Omran Ar-ran
Anan Ghaliya
Gharib Al-Assar
Fayiz Riyad Al-Madhoun
Fayiz Ayada Al-Madhoun
Fayiz Abu Al-Qumsan
Camellia Al-Bardini
Ma'moun Sleim
Mazin 'Ulayyan
Muhammad Al-Ghimri
Muhammad Al-Halabi
Muhammad Asaliyya
Muhammad Az-Zatma
Muhammad Az-ahra
Muhammad Gaza
Muhammad An-Nuri
Muhammad Abu Sabra
Muhammad Abu 'Amir
Muhammad Abu Libda Muhammad Hboush
Muhammad Al-Mabhouh
Muhammad Sha'ban
Muhammad Abu 'Abdo
Muhammad Salih
Muhammad Tabasha
Muhammad Al-Habeil
Muhammad Abdullah Aziz
Muhammad Abdul-Wahhab Aziz
Muhammad Awad
Muhammad Abd An-Nabi
Muhammad Salih
Muhammad An-Najari
Muhammad Hamad
Muhammad Barakat
Muhammad Muhanna
Mahmoud Al-Khalidi
Mahmoud Abu Harbeid
Mahmoud Abu Matar
Mahmoud Abu Tabour
Mahmoud Abu Nahla
Mustafa Al-Khateib
Mustafa As-Sabbak
Mu'ein Hamada
Mu'ein Al-Hasan
Mumtaz An- Najjar
Mansour Al-Gharra
Nasser Al-Gharra
Nahidh Abu Namous
Nabil Al-Breim
Nathir Al-Louqa
Ni'ma Al-Maghari
Na'im Kheit
Na'im Al-Kafarna
Na'im Al-Anzi
Nimir Amoum
Hisham Rantisi
Hisham Al-Masdar
Hisham Abu 'Uda
Hisham 'Uweida
Humam An-Najjar
Hanaa Al-Mabhouh
Haytham Hamdan
Haytham Ash-Sher
Wadei' Al-Muzayyin
Wasim Azaza
Walid Abu Hein
Walid Jabir Abu Hein
Yasser Ash-Shaer
Yasser Al-Lahham
Yahya Al-Hayik
Yahya Sheikha
Yahya Mahmoud Sheikha
Yousif Thabit
Yousif Al-Jallad
Yousif Sha'ban
Yousif Diab
Yousif Al-Anani
Yousif An-Najjar
Younis Ad-Deiri

HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY IN TAXES AND PURCHASES?

Hamas Fights On Despite Odds

2009-01-06T17:37:00.005-05:00

Left: An Israeli tank advances along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip. (Photo: PressTV / Rabbani)

"Sa qui mouri, z' affait a yo" translates to: Who ever dies, it's their affair--Battle cry of the only slave population to have freed itself and establish a sovereign state throughout recorded history. This unprecedented development occurred in what was then known as Hispaniola, a Spanish and French colony in the Caribbean. The island was known as Saint-Domingue in its French configuration and Santo-Domningo in the Spanish locale. It is now referred to as Haiti and the Dominican Republic respectively.

Footage of attacks on Israeli troops in Gaza - 06 Jan 09

In Other Resistance Developments in Gaza

A Palestinian fighter has blown up an Israeli army tank, killing himself in the incident, a spokesman for the Hamas military wing. Al-Qassam Brigades. says.

"The Israeli tank blew up in an Estishhadi Operation (one that seeks martyrdom)," said Abu Obaida, a Hamas military wing spokesman, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

According to Abu Ubayda, a spokesman of Hamas, the movement's fighters managed to lure a group of Israeli soldiers into a building in the town of Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. While those soldiers clashed with the first group of fighters, another man climbed into an Israeli tank and blew up the tank, including himself.

The Israeli military did not confirm this account. However, the Israeli military censorship office did say that "Paratrooper forces operating in northern Gaza identified a martyr bomber approaching them in order to detonate himself against the soldiers. The troops fired at the man, causing his suicide belt to detonate. One soldier was lightly wounded in the incident."

Hamas Al-Aqsa TV station reported Tuesday, January 6, 2009, that seven Israeli tanks were also hit by Hamas resistance fighters.

Ubu Ubayda claimed that hundreds of Hamas fighters who are ready to martyr themselves will be waiting for Israeli soldiers. He highlighted that fierce clashes erupted in elevated areas near Gaza City that Israeli forces had captured, such as Ar-Rayis hill, Al-Kashif hill and Al-Atatra. Fierce clashes continued also in open area west of Beit Lahiya, he added.

The spokesperson also referred to dozens of dead among Israeli soldiers, asserting that Palestinian resistance used heavy explosive devices weighing 60 kilograms. Hamas has maneuvered its defense by featuring RP-Gs, Anti-tank missiles and IEDs attacks to assail the invading Israeli forces.

The Gaza Strip has come under massive Israeli bombardment since December 27, 2008, when the Jewish state launched a military campaign to put an end to the Hamas movement pretexted on rocket attacks against southern Israel.

The Hamas movement, the democratically-elected government of the strip, demands a cessation of Israeli attacks and the opening of the Gaza border -- which has been closed due to the 18-month Israeli siege of the 1.5 million densely populated territory.

According to medical personnel in Gaza, at least 670 Palestinians have been killed including 205 children and 98 women as well as 3,040 others wounded in the 11-day Israeli offensive, known as operation "Cast Lead."

In a related development, Israeli media said yesterday their soldiers shot a Palestinian fighter carrying explosive belt, and as he exploded, an Israeli soldier was hurt.

Brutality Will Never Break Will To Be Free

2009-01-05T22:51:00.005-05:00

As Israeli Operation "Cast Lead" enters its eleventh day, Hamas leader Khalid Mish'al writes January 6, 2009:

This brutality will never break our will to be free

For 18 months my people in Gaza have been under siege, incarcerated inside the world's biggest prison, sealed off from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even medication for our sick. After the slow death policy came the bombardment. In this most densely populated of places, nothing has been spared Israel's warplanes, from government buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and markets. More than 540 have been killed and thousands permanently maimed. A third are women and children. Whole families have been massacred, some while they slept.

This river of blood is being shed under lies and false pretexts. For six months we in Hamas observed the ceasefire. Israel broke it repeatedly from the start. Israel was required to open crossings to Gaza, and extend the truce to the West Bank. It proceeded to tighten its deadly siege of Gaza, repeatedly cutting electricity and water supplies. The collective punishment did not halt, but accelerated - as did the assassinations and killings. Thirty Gazans were killed by Israeli fire and hundreds of patients died as a direct effect of the siege during the so-called ceasefire. Israel enjoyed a period of calm. Our people did not.

When this broken truce neared its end, we expressed our readiness for a new comprehensive truce in return for lifting the blockade and opening all Gaza border crossings, including Rafah. Our calls fell on deaf ears. Yet still we would be willing to begin a new truce on these terms following the complete withdrawal of the invading forces from Gaza.

No rockets have ever been fired from the West Bank. But 50 died and hundreds more were injured there last year at Israel's hands, while its expansionism proceeded relentlessly. We are meant to be content with shrinking scraps of territory, a handful of cantons at Israel's mercy, enclosed by it from all sides.The truth is Israel seeks a one-sided ceasefire, observed by my people alone, in return for siege, starvation, bombardment, assassinations, incursions and colonial settlement. What Israel wants is a gratuitous ceasefire.

Left: Hamas leader Khalid Mesha'al speaks during a news conference before his departure at Esenboga Airport in Ankara. Turkey, February 17, 2006. after meeting Turkey's foreign minister and other members of the ruling AK Party, during a surprise visit to Ankara. This rapprochement was their first to a non-Arab capital since winning the January 25, 2006, Palestinian election. Mr. Mesha'al is currently in exile in Damascus, Syria. (Photo: REUTERS/str)

The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd. They absolve the aggressor and occupier - armed with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction - of responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied. Our modest, home-made rockets are our cry of protest to the world. Israel and its American and European sponsors want us to be killed in silence. But die in silence we will not.

What is being visited on Gaza today was visited on Yasser Arafat before. When he refused to bow to Israel's dictates, he was imprisoned in his Ramallah headquarters, surrounded by tanks for two years. When this failed to break his resolve, he was murdered by poisoning.

Gaza enters 2009 just as it did 2008: under Israeli fire. Between January and February of last year 140 Gazans died in air strikes. And just before it embarked on its failed military assault on Lebanon in July 2006, Israel rained thousands of shells on Gaza, killing 240. From Deir Yassin in 1948 to Gaza today, the list of Israel's crimes is long. The justifications change, but the reality is the same: colonial occupation, oppression, and never-ending injustice. If this is the "free world" whose "values" Israel is defending, as its foreign minister Tzipi Livni alleges, then we want nothing to do with it.

Israel's leaders remain in the grip of confusion, unable to set clear goals for the attacks - from ousting the legitimately elected Hamas government and destroying its infrastructure, to stopping the rockets. As they fail to break Gaza's resistance the benchmark has been lowered. Now they speak of weakening Hamas and limiting the resistance. But they will achieve neither. Gaza's people are more united than ever, determined not to be terrorised into submission. Our fighters, armed with the justice of their cause, have already caused many casualties among the occupation army and will fight on to defend their land and people. Nothing can defeat our will to be free.

Once again, Washington and Europe have opted to aid and abet the jailer, occupier and aggressor, and to condemn its victims. We hoped Barack Obama would break with George Bush's disastrous legacy but his start is not encouraging. While he swiftly moved to denounce the Mumbai attacks, he remains tongue-tied after 10 days of slaughter in Gaza. But my people are not alone. Millions of freedom-loving men and women stand by its struggle for justice and liberation - witness daily protests against Israeli aggression, not only in the Arab and Islamic region, but worldwide.

Israel will no doubt wreak untold destruction, death and suffering in Gaza. But it will meet the same fate in Gaza as it did in Lebanon. We will not be broken by siege and bombardment, and will never surrender to occupation.

Khalid Mish'al is the head of the Hamas Political Bureau

So, The Zionists Have Invaded Gaza

2009-01-03T18:55:00.008-05:00

Left: The incursion began under cover of darkness near Beit Lahiya near Gaza's northern border. As Israel used a multi pronged invasion involving its myriad military branches including its secret service attempting to depose Hamas. (Photo: EPA)

Heavy fighting has been reported between Palestinian fighters and invading Israeli ground forces in the Gaza Strip on Saturday night. The Israelis entered the strip from five separate entry points backed by helicopters, artillery barrages and tank fire and are moving to encircle Hamas and other resistance fighters in the interior. Meanwhile, Israel continued to bombard Gaza from the sea and from the air every 15 minutes.

The Hamas-affiliated television station based in Gaza, al-Aqsa, claim that five Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting, but an Israeli military spokesman said he had no information about casualties on either side. The IDF has claimed 13 Gaza defenders killed but this Israeli report has been denied by Hamas. Hamas asserted that the Israelis are killing civilians and not their fighters. The IDF with their censors have erected a formidable regime of a news black out, despite a Supreme ruling, which aimed to allow at least 10 international reporters into the Gaza Strip. Mum is the word I suppose.

Appearing on Al-Jazeera just after midnight on Saturday, Mousa Mohammad Abu Marzook claimed that “there are casualties, but they are of the people of the Gaza Strip, not us.”

I am appalled at this Zionist aggression--sheer wanton murder against the people of Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem. But I was not surprised, this is the way psychos operate--it is the only course left to them as they are the lowest forms of propagandists and usurpers. They have become a psychotic bunch since World War II. Europe and the UN (read anti-semites and guilt ridden white folk who saw the partition as a good riddance and a result of pressure from influential Jewish interests in the USA, have metamorphosed these victims of Europe into a giant World War II memorial planted out of view in Palestine -- that is all this enclave of rage has become and no more.

Instead fo asking the Arabs to understand their historical plight and the hatred meted out against them because of their scholarship, steadfastness and business acumen, and share a future with them, the people who call themselves Jews rather chose to antagonize their neighbors instead ethnically cleansing them out of their homes. Of course there were retaliatory attacks as there are now, but these Europeans always had a monopoly on the tools of violence and were better trained as veterans of WWII era resistance movements and proper standing armies.

The Holocaust people shut down East Jerusalem and the parts of the West Bank they had not stolen yet in preparation for this dirty deed. I knew this incursion was imminent and the invasion would forward to assail Gaza. What else could be done to teach these poor people who is really boss? This it seems was the only avenue left to this eternal people forever facing annihilation from peasants with fire crackers as their tools of oppression. It was evident that a concerted terror campaign from the air, sea and artillery batteries just was not scaring the people of Gaza enough to impress on them to rise up and butcher Hamas--incidentally, who have run hospitals, schools, charities, orphanages and other social projects for two decades in the impoverished locale--have no fear, the mightily righteous IDF to the rescue--the world's most moral army.

The same strategy was attempted in the war on Lebanon in 2006. Remember Eli Yishai extolling then, that if Israel bombed enough civilians and their necessary infrastructure, they would say to themselves "the Jews are crazy" therefore, mitigate their resistance in kind (rabid Zionists).

"If Hizballah fires Katyushas, we have to deliver a severe blow to Lebanon's infrastructure, black out Beirut, cut off electricity, turn off the water, destroy bridges, halt industry and flatten entire villages. If there is horrible damage in Lebanon, they will say, 'The Jews are crazy.'"

"If Lebanese citizens pay the price, they will rise up against Hizballah. I have proposed that we damage infrastructure and flatten villages because Hizballah personnel must know they are not immune. That policy would have assured that Lebanese citizens would not permit Hizballah to live next to them," skillfully proclaimed Mr. Yishai.

Egypt should be held responsible for a material portion of this Jewish onslaught on Gaza. The dictators of Cairo, afraid of their own people, having had to suppress their expression of outrage against the 'entity's' attacks on Gaza in demonstrations with tear gas, beatings and mass jailing, was complicit with the vile plans of the Holocaustic government. However, the ultimate enablers of the decision to pummel Gaza rest in the US.

Left: IDF forces encroach poised to unleash their machines of death on the people of Gaza. (photo: Ma'an images)

Although, Hamas would have been in a much better position to defend itself, if Egypt had not stood guard at the Rafah crossing serving as "that shitty little country's" hired security agents, whereby preventing a normal and free flow of goods into Gaza.

Moreover, the Egyptians have lent political and moral succor to the Zany Zionists -- a crime deserving justice -- all traitors must ultimately pay a tax on treason. Jordan too, has been in the Camp of these murderers from Europe who are squatting in the Levant, while taking part in pretentious theater in their parliament by burning flags bearing the David Maugen insignia.

Saudi Arabia for its part, has made public ameliorative statements showing concern for Gaza to give a certain perception that they are "true Muslims" and do defend the Ummah in Gaza. However, this is mere subterfuge, as the "princes" of Saud have remained deep in the Zionist corner, laughing and dancing with them, while children. women and menfolk in Gaza are executed heartlessly.

Iran must win out in the outcome of this Jewish blitzkrieg to represent the only viable representative of the aspirations and rights of the oppressed Muslim people (special mention to Pakistan and may G-d keep them safe from harm in the new Hindu-Christian-Jewish alliance set against them). As the lazy opulent and unprincipled so-called leaders of the Arab countries become more exposed for their servitude and collusion with the Jews and their allies in the west. For its part, Iran has stood side-by-side with the resistance movement of the people of Gaza, as well as Lebanon who are seeking justice, besides meeting the wrath of the Zionists and their cronies through sanctions, threats and censure.

Notice that Iran doesn't allow the false Mossad initiated dichotomy of Shi'i and Sunni animosity to hue its duty as a Muslim nation. Let us not forget that it was Mossad false flag operations in Iraq -- a la death squads in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, in which the Zionist were intimately attached -- that served as a catalyst nursing the rampant levels of intra Muslim violence in Iraq. The Zionists create the terror to subsequently, emerge as peace makers and leaders bearing their military, legal and economic armies to present calm and defeat the terror they created in the first instance. Has anything significant changed in these past 100 years of Jew encroachment unto the lands of the pious Muslim people?

Jews in the homeland of the Palestinian people, I bid you the peace that only justice and restitution can avail and pray you will be watched over by G-d, just as all Palestinian souls are to be secured by our Creator. However, until such time you become wise enough to seek out these holy principles of love, liberty and justice, woe be unto you and may you never find a day of solace and security. Your weaponry will remain your friends, while the sea of humanity will continue to shun you as the political pariah you represent.

I also believe as a result of my deep faith that G-d will guard the weapons of Hamas so that they may defend Gaza with honor, faith and duty.

To Kill Sky, Sea, Land At Will
If You Will, Fill, Feel Power, Skill

This is the night when Birds of death descended
The Sea howled at us and spit salt in our eyes
Sand grains rebel cursing ancestors blinding babies
Cries of anguish languish strained on foreign altars
These not birds of hope nor bring life into scope
Birds of prey serpent usurpers demand to them we pray

This is the night when the sky shouted at us
Deeply we breath and use saliva sweat to mimic rain
This is how we cope and make our own great hope
Young, old and bold defy ailments seasons without reason
It is blue a boy shrieks no mistake it is gold some say
Fate by faith feigned slaughter sadistic reign

Fraud of a sea that continues to cheat augmenting its claim
Plausible deniability not money making murder scheme
Induced by fear consent to force death to belief
The olive trees rank and file bear witness to our seed
And softly slain the altered state of the police state
Yes terrorist leaves flowers of hate a beauty of existence

Sacrament sands ring echo another funeral procession
The death of an idea birth of a land without a people
Commune Communion Kibutzim you are just a crazy Muslim
Permit me to be clear, terrorist, teach children to hate and die
Your sacred emblems with pomp and precise angles
All partake in this deliberate elaborate swindle

Our sky, our sea, even our land, our history
In you that belonged to us even the graves you crave
our selves, future for fodder what about our fathers?
Which you opt to murder along with mind, land-mine
For your holy consecrated massacre to take hold incline
Enshrined as thine immortal, blood daughters of Palestine

Some day must come none can dim not even Gods of death
You will not kill all anymore some bemoan to kill themselves
Cause dearth of death for you and us insistence of resistance

Why do you die on TV, Gaza?

2009-01-03T13:12:00.007-05:00

Left: So far, seventy children have been killed in the first week of various fatalistic air strikes on the defenseless population of Gaza. (Photo: AFP)

Why Do You Die On TV?
By Daphna Baram

Silly children why do you die?
Why do you die on TV?
We took out our settlers, put a wall around you, locked you in, and still you are ungrateful. Cant you understand our need to bomb you?

Why do you die on TV?
The world is all against us, it always will be, why cant you help us a little, why do you die on TV?

Your suffering masks our historical rights, your ghetto makes ours forgotten. You are the new martyrs, and whats left for us? How dare you die in anonymous mass? We'll send all our air force to punish you now, how dare you die on TV.

Left: Smoke billows in the air over Gaza as F-16s, warships, tanks, artillery batteries and hellicopter gun ships maim their dead in Gaza, in the Gaza dead end--prison. (Photo: AFP)

The public is calling for crushing you down, elections are due, it is a war of survival. It's our homes we defend, it's our natural right, it's the chair in the government for which we will fight, if you do not understand, we shall show you our might, why do you die on TV?

You have to appreciate, time is now scarce, soon enough the tide is to turn. If you will in your cruelty make us march in, and our soldiers, our children, will start dying in your narrow allies, our people will turn on us as swiftly as sin. The gung ho cries would stop, a new circle will begin: what are we doing there? Who sent us in? What is this folly? Why cant we just win?

Left: 5 children dead in one-felt-strike swoop unto Gaza when Israel bombed a Mosque, a holy house of worship. (Photo: Eman Mohammed / Demotix)

This is why, silly children, we do not mean to kill you, but we need you do die fast. We need you gone as long as our permission lasts. We need your parents to learn to not mess with us. Cant you do us this favor, for the sake of peace and trust? But please do not die on TV.

We tried it in Jordan, we tried it in Lebanon and when it failed we tried again. No one could blame us for lack of persistence; if our method is broken why fix it? It is your responsibility to make it work at last. It is your responsibility to make us right.

And you have no-one but yourselves to blame if you keep defying us, you have no-one but yourself to blame for turning our claim for victimhood into a farce. It is your fault that we expose our children to your pathetic rockets; it is your fault that not enough of them die to make us look good on TV.

We want to stop, we really do, but you are binding our hands. Why do you enrage us so, why do you die; why do you die on TV?

Seven Days of Israel's War on Gaza

Daphna Baram is an Israeli writer and poet based in London.

Blowback: Hamas Was a Creation of Mossad

2009-01-02T22:02:00.011-05:00

Hamas is a Creation of Mossad
by Hassane Zerouky

Global Outlook, No 2, Summer 2002
www.globalresearch.ca 23 March 2004

Thanks to the Mossad, Israel's "Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks", the Hamas was allowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Arafat's Fatah Movement for National Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression and intimidation

Let us not forget that it was Israel, which in fact created Hamas. According to Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)."

Left: Ahmad Yassin 1987-2004

Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Islamic movement in Palestine, returning from Cairo in the seventies, established an Islamic charity association. Prime Minister Golda Meir, saw this as an opportunity to counterbalance the rise of Arafat’s Fatah movement. .According to the Israeli weekly Koteret Rashit (October 1987), "The Islamic associations as well as the university had been supported and encouraged by the Israeli military authority" in charge of the (civilian) administration of the West Bank and Gaza. "They [the Islamic associations and the university] were authorized to receive money payments from abroad."

The association set up orphanages and health clinics, as well as a network of schools, workshops which created employment for women as well as a system of financial aid to the poor. And in 1978, they created an "Islamic University" in Gaza. "The military authority was convinced that these activities would weaken both the PLO and the leftist organizations in Gaza." At the end of 1992, there were six hundred mosques in Gaza. Thanks to Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, (Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks), the Islamists were allowed to reinforce their presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, the members of Fatah (Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine) and the Palestinian secular Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression.

In 1984, Ahmed Yassin was arrested and condemned to twelve years in prison, after the discovery of a hidden arms cache. But one year later, he was set free and resumed his activities. And when the Intifada (‘uprising’) began, in October 1987, which took the Islamists by surprise, Sheik Yassin responded by creating the Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement): "God is our beginning, the prophet our model, the Koran our constitution," proclaims article 7 of the charter of the organization.

Ahmed Yassin was in prison when, the Oslo accords (Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government) were signed in September 1993. The Hamas had rejected Oslo outright. But at that time, 70% of Palestinians had condemned the attacks on Israeli civilians. Yassin did everything in his power to undermine the Oslo accords. Even prior to Prime Minister Rabin’s death, he had the support of the Israeli government. The latter was very reluctant to implement the peace agreement.

The Hamas then launched a carefully timed campaign of attacks against civilians, one day before the meeting between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, regarding the formal recognition of Israel by the National Palestinian Council. These events were largely instrumental in the formation of a Right wing Israeli government following the May 1996 elections.

Quite unexpectedly, Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered Sheik Ahmed Yassin to be released from prison ("on humanitarian grounds") where he was serving a life sentence. Meanwhile, Netanyahu, together with President Bill Clinton, was putting pressure on Arafat to control the Hamas. In fact, Netanyahu knew that he could rely, once more, on the Islamists to sabotage the Oslo accords. Worse still: after having expelled Yassin to Jordan, Prime Minister Netanyahu allowed him to return to Gaza, where he was welcomed triumphantly as a hero in October 1997.

Arafat was helpless in the face of these events. Moreover, because he had supported Saddam Hussein during the1991 Gulf war, (while the Hamas had cautiously abstained from taking sides), the Gulf states decided to cut off their financing of the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, between February and April 1998, Sheik Ahmad Yassin was able to raise several hundred million dollars, from those same countries. The budget of Hamas was said to be greater than that of the Palestinian Authority. These new sources of funding enabled the Islamists to effectively pursue their various charitable activities. It is estimated that one Palestinian out of three is the recipient of financial aid from Hamas. And in this regard, Israel has done nothing to curb the inflow of money into the occupied territories.

The Hamas had built its strength through its various acts of sabotage of the peace process, in a way which was compatible with the interests of the Israeli government. In turn, the latter sought in a number of ways, to prevent the application of the Oslo accords. In other words, Hamas was fulfilling the functions for which it was originally created: to prevent the creation of a Palestinian State. And in this regard, Hamas and Ariel Sharon, see eye to eye; they are exactly on the same wave length.

© Copyright H ZEROUKY 2004. This article originally appeared in French in L’Humanité. Translation by Global Outlook, 2002.

Is history poised to repeat itself, as an election looms in Israel and the right wing Likud, under the leadership of Binyamin Netanyahu, is again prominently situated to re-enter history--as a potential potent savior of Israeli security? Is Hamas once more playing a pivotal role in tragic strategic maneuvers that have more to do with Israel than Gaza and Palestine? Or, is this episode merely a continuation--a new chapter in the book of espionage, sabotage and subterfuge, which has been the main theme in the narrative of this occupation for the past 61 years?

Certainly, a viable impetus for the Gaza massacre also, points towards geopolitical calculations on Iran. Since, Hamas' sponsorship have since moved from Tel Aviv and is now placed in Tehran--their motivations pass the test of collusion with the Zionists. Hamas may have been nurtured in its infancy by the Israelis for their own objectives--continuing the status of limbo on final borders that would avail further encroachment on Palestinian lands--however, their paths have ultimately, strayed in contravening directions. The US also sought to add succor to religious groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan during this same period in order to undermine the secular goverment of Afghanistan and their patrons in the Soviet Union. In fact, which Israel was also an important participant, who worked with the Pakistani secret services (ISI), to funnel arms and funds to the Mujahideen. Hamas and the Mujahideen in the sub-continent are classic examples of blowback.

The Israelis are certainly, looking to some sort of supportive action from Hizballah in the North and / or even Syrian action to ease the pressure on Hamas by opening a second front when the ground offensive ensues as a casus belli for their long felt aspirations to attack Iran. Hassan Nasrallah mentions this point in his latest public speech in Lebanon during demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Sa'ad Hariri, the son of the slain Lebanese Prime Minister, [who was seen by his opponents as too close to Israel and their allies in the west and the Arab world] and successful business leader, also pointed out the nature of this trap today during a news conference in France.

It will not be too surprising if some Israeli or Jewish targets outside Israel proper [some hotel, embassy, synagogue, etc.,] are hit by what will be described as terrorists, which then will be attributed to Iranian backing of some sort, to then serve as a pretext to attack Iran. One must remember that it was such an attack on an Israeli diplomat in Europe that led to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. These attacks of course would have to take place in the near future. Sometime before the inauguration of Barack Obama and a few week there after in order to extract the full bang for the buck of the slaughter in Gaza.

The ferocity of the Gaza blitz is fizzing out fast as Israel runs out of palpable targets, known as a target bank--those buildings that propaganda can gloss over as military targets, such as homes of leaders, universities, hospitals, mosques, dairies, printing facilities, factories, police stations, parliamentary offices, power and sewage plants, etc. After all, Gaza is a poor place, eighty percent of which consist of refugee camps, they do not have an elaborate municipal infrastructure to keep bombing for weeks.

Moreover, the IDF is reluctant to execute a ground invasion; even if they indeed enter Gaza, it will be a hit and run affair, lasting a few weeks--such a commando attempt occurred Tuesday night according to Hamas as reported by the BBC world service. The Israelis do not want to remain in Gaza and maintain troops there that would become susceptible to sniper and other guerrilla actions. The Israeli public will want a quick hit and kill result otherwise the Kadima are doomed in the coming elections. The polls are already favoring LIkud during these savage attacks. The Israeli public always goes for the real hawks whilst the so-called doves usually start the wars to give the impression that they too, can kill Palestinians with efficiency.

Be as it may, the Israeli elections are set for February 10, 2009, and the public must be wooed into either Kadima or Likud camps some measurable time prior to that date. Therefore, favorable results in Gaza, those that extremely compromise Hamas and its capabilities to fire rockets and remain defiant will be politically necessary in a month, to reap the full benefit of the maniacal bombardment and an invasion if Israel uses ground forces. But until such time, Israel is shelling the Gaza Strip with artillery batteries, tank shells, from ships at sea and from the air, in order to soften the theater and face less resistance when they finally enter the strip. They have been using thermo bunker busting one ton bombs in an attempt to destroy the tunnel system and underground network of Hamas in Gaza.

Hamas is reported to have constructed underground military facilities, which the Israelis refer to as the "underground city" a strategy first utilized by the Vietnamese that was successfully borrowed by Hizballah in the 2006 war on Lebanon. Nevertheless, these reports emanate from Israeli sources and may be part of war propaganda and may not exist. Israel is therefore, destroying as much as it can now so it can get out as fast as possible; just in time for the last few weeks of a robust and healthy democratic campaign--in the only true democracy in the Middle East. Never mind that Hamas was also democratically elected in an election monitored and managed by the West--to be subsequently, shunned and stunned -- embargoed, listed as a terrorist organization, blockaded, financially censured and finally bombed to smithereens during this past week -- all because Israel and the rich imperial nations did not like the voice of the occupied people of Palestine -- no choice.

Wherefore, whether secular, religious or otherwise, any form of political agitation taken by the occupied people of Palestine, nonviolent or military, in order to exact justice in lieu of their rightful claims to land and sovereignty, will always meet the full brunt of the fury of these descendants of the Holocaust and their backers in the west. The abused child becomes the abuser -- it is psychotic.

Millions Dead in Congo

2009-01-02T02:23:00.004-05:00

UPSURGE IN VIOLENCE

The IRC is scaling up emergency humanitarian response in the North Kivu province of eastern Congo after recent violence displaced an estimated 250,000 people.
NEW Aid worker diaries and photos

Video: One family's story

COUNTING DEATHS TO SAVE LIVES

A January 2008 IRC survey found that 5,400,000 people have died from war-related causes in Congo since 1998 – the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WW II. The vast majority died from non-violent causes such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition—easily preventable and treatable conditions when people have access to health care and nutritious food.
At a Glance | Press Release | Full Report [PDF]

5,400,000

Congo’s loss is equivalent to the entire population of Denmark or the state of Colorado perishing within a decade. Marcus Bleasdale tells the story of the conflict and its aftermath in photographs. [quicktime video 23mb]

IRC's Dr. Rick Brennan on the Congo Crisis

In this video, director of IRC health programs, Dr. Rick Brennan, describes how survey teams traveled across Congo – by motorbike, canoe, 4-wheel-drive, and on foot -- visiting 14,000 homes to gather data.

Saddened by Killing of Staff Member in Congo

04 Dec 2008 | News | D.R. Congo

IRC Trains Health Workers Caring for Survivors of Sexual Violence

21 Nov 2008 | News | D.R. Congo

Congo Crisis: More Help is Needed for Women and Girls in North Kivu as Sexual Violence Escalates

24 Jan 2008 | Video | D.R. Congo

Researching Deaths to Save Lives: IRC's Dr. Rick Brennan on the Congo Crisis

14 Dec 2007 | Photo Essay | D.R. Congo

Responding to an Outbreak of Deadly Ebola in Congo

Crisis in Congo

Democratic Republic of Congo

Golden Cuban Anniversary

2009-01-02T00:33:00.006-05:00

Left: Map of Cuba

Cuba celebrates revolution's 50th anniversary

Fifty years after triumphant armed revolutionaries descended from the eastern mountains, Cuba celebrated the revolution's anniversary Thursday with festivities. Fidel Castro and revolutionaries enbarked on a mission to overthrow the Batista dictatorship. In 1956 they loaded 38-feet long motor yacht Granma full of guerrillas and weapons and sailed to Cuba, landing near Cabo Cruz on December 2.

The group of visionaries made their base in the mountains of Sierra Maestra, attacking garrisons and recruiting peasants to the revolutionary army. In the areas controlled by the guerrillas, they started land reform and socializing processes. Land reform became a primary slogan -- the banner and material spearhead of the movement, which ultimately encouraged peasants to participate in the armed struggle and reject the Batista regime. Revolutionary forces invaded central Cuba in late 1958. They were able to conquer the island as Batista and his officials fled and take power in January 1959.

The nation has recently suffered a trio of devastating hurricanes, which preyed upon the economy with a total loss of $10 billion, a sullen situation exacerbated by the current global financial crisis. The nation is also somber under the weight of enduring the public absence of an ailing Fidel Castro, who did not attend the celebrations. However, the people of Cuba celebrated cheerfully the golden anniversary of the worker's revolution.

The celebrations, including dances and concerts across the island, belied the start of a year infused with possibilities for increased cash and visitors, and other changes that might expand the Cuban economy. Many Cubans hold hopes for improved relations with the new United States adninistration following Barack Obaama's declarations he would talk directly with Raul Castro and lift severe restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island.

Left: The Cuban flag is composed of five horizontal stripes, three blue ones and two white ones and a red triangle in which features a single white five-pointed star. The three colors (red, sky-bleu and white) and the three points of the triangle represent the Republican ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, which were proclaimed during the French Revolution and are known as the Republican Tri-Color. The three blue stripes are said to represent Science, Virtue, and Beauty. The two white ones to represent Justice and Purity. The red color of the triangle represents the blood of the Patriots. The lone white star within the equilateral red triangle represents the unity of the Cuban people and the Independent Cuban Nation upon the blood spilled by the revolutionary heroes. The width is twice the height.

President Raul Castro, who succeeded his older brother in February, spoke from the same balcony where Fidel declared victory over dictator Fulgencio Batista's government on Jan. 1, 1959.

Fidel Castro's health remains guarded and has been out of sight after undergoing major intestinal surgery almost 2 1/2 years ago. But the 82-year-old continues to write occasional essays that suggest he still contributes to government affairs.

Shortly before midnight Wednesday, a brief statement by Castro was read on state television, congratulating "our heroic people" on the eve of the anniversary.

Left: Che Guevara and Fidel Castro two of the most influential figures in the Cuban revolution.

The 77-year-old Raul Castro is the current president in the Cuban government, but has yet to introduce any major policy initiatives, which stray too far from the initiatives of Fidel's governance. Although some expect there may be some transcendent change, evident in recent speeches and actions that have liberalized society. Most notably, Raul has spearheaded the release of most of the country's political prisoners.

Officials initially planned a more grandiose anniversary celebration but scaled back after three hurricanes this year caused $10 billion in damages and wiped out nearly a third of Cuba's crops. Raul Castro last week called for more cost-cutting measures as the island posted an annual economic growth of 4.3 percent for the year, barely half the original government forecast.

Over a half-century, the triumphant revolution erased illiteracy, crafted a universal health care system, and built thousands of new schools. But after Fidel Castro embraced socialist policies in 1961, labor unions lost the right to strike, and opponents of the new government were jailed as US efforts to destabilize the island intensified.

The Havana-based non-governmental Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation last counted 219 political prisoners on the island, down from as many as 15,000 in 1964.

Cuba's revolution was nevertheless long admired throughout the Third World as Castro stood up defiantly to the Yankee imperialists, and infant mortality rates began rivaling those of developing countries. Cuba was able to send doctors and engineers throughout the third world, in order to help emerging states.

The revolutionary movement remains relevant as several regional governments embrace milder versions of the socialist principles long promoted by the island's government. Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador are especially strong leftist allies. The hopeful moment we have been witnessing in Latin America in recent years has something to do with the Cuban revolution's existence. Cuba served as a beacon for liberation to an entire generation.

Across the decades, Cuba's socialist system has hung on, even after its best ally, the Soviet Union collapsed while China and Vietnam embraced hybrid free markets while still maintaining their political systems. The US has used various forms of sabotage, including biological warfare, assassination attemps and nurturing a fifth column against the Cuban revolution nevertheless, Cuba survived all these difficult challenges.

When President George W. Bush leaves office later this month, the revolution will have outlasted 10 American presidents who maintained strict U.S. sanctions aimed at overthrowing the Cuban leadership.

A new enlightened dialogue with Cuba could signal an impetus toward easing the siege conditions in Cuba. If the United States forego its hard line stand of idealistic based opposition against Cuba the many guises and hindrances used to obscure normal relations between the two nations. The blockade may wither away to dawn a new era in the Caribbean that may improve US credibility in the Latin American sphere. It is time overdue for a major change in U.S. policies toward the island and that rapprochement could help forge an opening on the island and outward.

The Real Hamas

2009-01-01T21:18:00.006-05:00

Gaza is a secular society where people listen to pop music, watch TV and many women walk the streets unveiled

We must adjust our distorted image of Hamas
By William Sieghart

Last week I was in Gaza. While I was there I met a group of 20 or so police officers who were undergoing a course in conflict management. They were eager to know whether foreigners felt safer since Hamas had taken over the Government? Indeed we did, we told them. Without doubt the past 18 months had seen a comparative calm on the streets of Gaza; no gunmen on the streets, no more kidnappings. They smiled with great pride and waved us goodbye.

Less than a week later all of these men were dead, killed by an Israeli rocket at a graduation ceremony. Were they “dangerous Hamas militant gunmen”? No, they were unarmed police officers, public servants killed not in a “militant training camp” but in the same police station in the middle of Gaza City that had been used by the British, the Israelis and Fatah during their periods of rule there.

This distinction is crucial because while the horrific scenes in Gaza and Israel play themselves out on our television screens, a war of words is being fought that is clouding our understanding of the realities on the ground.

Who or what is Hamas, the movement that Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, would like to wipe out as though it were a virus? Why did it win the Palestinian elections and why does it allow rockets to be fired into Israel? The story of Hamas over the past three years reveals how the Israeli, US and UK governments' misunderstanding of this Islamist movement has led us to the brutal and desperate situation that we are in now.

The story begins nearly three years ago when Change and Reform - Hamas's political party - unexpectedly won the first free and fair elections in the Arab world, on a platform of ending endemic corruption and improving the almost non-existent public services in Gaza and the West Bank. Against a divided opposition this ostensibly religious party impressed the predominantly secular community to win with 42 per cent of the vote.

Left: Hamas is an Arabic acronym of Harkat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya, meaning zeal or bravery, and was formed in 1987.

Palestinians did not vote for Hamas because it was dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel or because it had been responsible for waves of suicide bombings that had killed Israeli citizens. They voted for Hamas because they thought that Fatah, the party of the rejected Government, had failed them. Despite renouncing violence and recognising the state of Israel Fatah had not achieved a Palestinian state. It is crucial to know this to understand the supposed rejectionist position of Hamas. It won't recognise Israel or renounce the right to resist until it is sure of the world's commitment to a just solution to the Palestinian issue.

In the five years that I have been visiting Gaza and the West Bank, I have met hundreds of Hamas politicians and supporters. None of them has professed the goal of Islamising Palestinian society, Taleban-style. Hamas relies on secular voters too much to do that. People still listen to pop music, watch television and women still choose whether to wear the veil or not.

The political leadership of Hamas is probably the most highly qualified in the world. Boasting more than 500 PhDs in its ranks, the majority are middle-class professionals - doctors, dentists, scientists and engineers. Most of its leadership have been educated in our universities and harbour no ideological hatred towards the West. It is a grievance-based movement, dedicated to addressing the injustice done to its people. It has consistently offered a ten-year ceasefire to give breathing space to resolve a conflict that has continued for more than 60 years.

The Bush-Blair response to the Hamas victory in 2006 is the key to today's horror. Instead of accepting the democratically elected Government, they funded an attempt to remove it by force; training and arming groups of Fatah fighters to unseat Hamas militarily and impose a new, unelected government on the Palestinians. Further, 45 Hamas MPs are still being held in Israeli jails.

Six months ago the Israeli Government agreed to an Egyptian- brokered ceasefire with Hamas. In return for a ceasefire, Israel agreed to open the crossing points and allow a free flow of essential supplies in and out of Gaza. The rocket barrages ended but the crossings never fully opened, and the people of Gaza began to starve. This crippling embargo was no reward for peace.

When Westerners ask what is in the mind of Hamas leaders when they order or allow rockets to be fired at Israel they fail to understand the Palestinian position. Two months ago the Israeli Defence Forces broke the ceasefire by entering Gaza and beginning the cycle of killing again. In the Palestinian narrative each round of rocket attacks is a response to Israeli attacks. In the Israeli narrative it is the other way round.

But what does it mean when Mr Barak talks of destroying Hamas? Does it mean killing the 42 per cent of Palestinians who voted for it? Does it mean reoccupying the Gaza strip that Israel withdrew from so painfully three years ago? Or does it mean permanently separating the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, politically and geographically? And for those whose mantra is Israeli security, what sort of threat do the three quarters of a million young people growing up in Gaza with an implacable hatred of those who starve and bomb them pose?

It is said that this conflict is impossible to solve. In fact, it is very simple. The top 1,000 people who run Israel - the politicians, generals and security staff - and the top Palestinian Islamists have never met. Genuine peace will require that these two groups sit down together without preconditions. But the events of the past few days seem to have made this more unlikely than ever. That is the challenge for the new administration in Washington and for its European allies.

William Sieghart is chairman of Forward Thinking, an independent conflict resolution agency

Sixth Day of Gaza Massacre

2009-01-01T16:50:00.007-05:00

Left: These are the homemade rockets that Israel has used as its casus belli to bombard Gaza for a week straight. Although, in recent times the Gaza strip has seen a relative upgrade of its supply of projectiles. Yet, by the standards of US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Hamas' missiles would be considered firearms. (Ma'anImages / Wissam Nassar)

“Between slavery and death, we do not have any choice. We fear nothing.”

Israel continues to bomb the Gaza Strip for a sixth straight day as the New Year dawned. Gaza's bloody new year was seen with hundreds of its people murdered and many hundreds more injured. In its latest attacks Israeli air force sorties have left at least 21 Palestinians dead, including 11 children and nine women. Medical sources in Gaza reported the death toll had been lifted to 419 and the number of injured to about 2,100 by the end of Thursday, January 1, 2009, roughly 250 of them critically.

Meanwhile, Israel announced that it would permit some 400 foreigners living in the Gaza Strip to exit the war zone on Friday.

Left: An Israeli army soldier prays next to a tank near the northern Israeli-Gaza Strip border.

As for the other 1.5 million Palestinians living in the besieged coastal strip, no evidence indicated that the onslaught would end anytime soon and residents are preparing for a ground invasion over the weekend, which seems eminent.

Israel is marshaling this massacre with the most modern military machines donated to it by the US, including all kinds of ground, air and naval weaponry to pound the overcrowded enclave of 1.5 million defenseless Palestinians.

Hundreds of tons have been dropped on Gaza, its children, iwomen, elderly and men. It is a war that is targeting everything on the ground, including mosques, universities, hospitals and apartment buildings. Even private homes and fishing boats on the coast have been pummeled by Israeli ordinance. Nothing is sacred or immune as Israel tries to drive home the lesson that it is in control and all must heed its power. A material point of these attacks on Gaza is to rehabilitate the "deterrent factor" of Israeli military power, which was exposed as limited during the 2006 Lebanon war.

This war does not target just Hamas and the government as Israel's propaganda machine has been purveying throughout the world's media outlets. It is targeting Palestinians, their livelihood and their cause. Even though, the Palestinians in Gaza are facing wanton killing, shelling, assassinations and destruction at the hands of a formidable, calculating and cruel occupation armed forces, their resolve and steadfastness in the face of these enormous odds remain unshaken. Evidently, the ability of a sieged people to sacrifice knows no bounds. The will of the Palestinian people and the rightful claims to their land and liberty will never be allowed to be blown away. This Zionist storm too, will pass.

Left: Israeli troops take position near the northern Israeli-Gaza Strip border.

Israel has poised on its crossings with Gaza with an estimated 6,500 troops amassed with assorted tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored bulldozers as well as, supporting artillery and helicopter units. Another 2,500 more soldiers approved by the Israeli Knesset on Wednesday, December 31, 2008, were called up to the "border." The IDF has recommended a major ground invasion of the Gaza Strip as the relentless week-long bombardment has yet to yield an Hamas' surrender or, suffocate their incessant will to resist the occupation -- within resistance groups' capabilities -- however infinitesimal these means may prove. The Israeli view is that in the least, an invasion will avail beneficial cease fire terms and at most, see the overthrow of Hamas and the installment of people who obey directives from Tel Aviv.

Gaza Massacre in Pictures: Warning Graphic

2008-12-31T18:57:00.001-05:00

In Pictures: Massacre of Gazan Children

December 30, 2008

PNN -Israeli forces killed two girls in an air attack on Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip early Tuesday. Local sources report that a missile destroyed a house belonging to Talal Hamdan in Beit Hanoun today, killing his two daughters of 12 and 4 years old. A son is reported seriously injured. Yesterday Israeli forces killed four sisters and a four year old boy. Over 40 children have been killed since Saturday.

The bodies of two girls, aged four and 11, who were killed in an Israeli air strike in Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip Strip December 30, 2008.

Palestinians carry the body of 4-year-old Lama Hamdan during her funeral in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip December 30, 2008.

Palestinians bury the body of 4-year-old Lama Hamdan at Beit Hanoun cemetery in the northern Gaza Strip December 30, 2008.

Palestinians mourn beside the bodies of three children in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip December 29, 2008.

Three Palestinian children from the Balosha family, of five who were all killed in the same Israeli missile strike, are seen in the morgue before their burial at Kamal Edwan hopsital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008

Palestinian children from the Balosha family, who were all killed in the same Israeli missile strike, are seen in the morgue before their burial at Kamal Edwan hopsital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008.

Palestinian women mourn over the bodies of three Palestinian children from the Balosha family, of five who were all killed in the same Israeli missile strike, in the morgue before their burial at Kamal Edwan hopsital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008.

A Palestinian man buries the body of 4-year-old Dena Balosha at Beit Lahiya cemetery in the northern Gaza Strip December 29, 2008.

A Palestinian man carries the body of his 4-year-old daughter Dena Balosha during the funeral for her and her four sisters in Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip December 29, 2008.

A Palestinian mourner shouts as he lifts the body of a child from the Balosha family, of which three children and two teenagers, were killed in an Israeli missile strike,durng their funeral in the Jebaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008.

A Palestinian man buries the body of 5-year-old Sodqi al-Absi in Rafah cemetery in the southern Gaza Strip December 29, 2008.

A Palestinian mourner carries the body of 4-year-old Dena Balosha, foreground, one of five members of the same family including three children and two teenagers who were killed in an Israeli missile strike, during their funeral in the Jebaliya refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008

The father of Palestinian Dena Balosha, 4, left, one of five members of the same family including three children and two teenagers who were killed in an Israeli missile strike, carries her body during their funeral in the Jebaliya refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008.

bedroom of 5 killed girls

Samera Baalusha (34) carries her surving child Mohamad (15 months) while she waits to see the body of her daughter Jawaher Baalusha (aged 4) during the funeral held for her and four of her sisters who were killed in an Israeli missile strike, on December 29, 2008 in the Jebaliya refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip

In the northern Gaza town of Jabalya, hundreds took to the streets to attend a funeral procession for five girls of the same family who were killed in one Israeli strike.

In this image taken from APTN video, Palestinian men carry two injured children into hospital after Israeli aircraft struck Hamas security compounds across Gaza in Gaza City on Saturday Dec. 27, 2008.

A wounded Palestinian boy is carried by his father following an Israel air strike in Gaza December 28, 2008.

A Palestinian boy is carried to al-Shifa hospital following an Israel air strike in Gaza December 28, 2008

A Palestinian security force officer carries a wounded girl into the emergency room at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008.

A Palestinian girl wounded in an Israeli missile strike is carried into the emergency area at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008.

A Palestinian man carries his wounded child to the treatment room of Kamal Edwan hospital following an Israeli missile strike in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008.

A wounded Palestinian boy is carried by his father at a hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli air strike

Children Wounded - Image by Watan News Agency

Shifa hospital ICU: a six year old down’s syndrom with brain trauma recording of Doc Jazz playing a (new!) song emanating from the grief not only over the war crimes committed by the thugs of the state of Israel against defenseless Palestinian children - but over the criminal silence with which this Holocaust is condoned ... Break the Silence!

Bullies Of The Gaza Skies

2008-12-31T16:57:00.007-05:00

The IAF, bullies of the clear blue skies
By Gideon Levy

Our finest young men are attacking Gaza now. Good boys from good homes are doing bad things. Most of them are eloquent, impressive, self-confident, often even highly principled in their own eyes, and on Black Saturday dozens of them set out to bomb some of the targets in our "target bank" for the Gaza Strip.

They set out to bomb the graduation ceremony for young police officers who had found that rare Gaza commodity, a job, massacring them by the dozen. They bombed a mosque, killing five sisters of the Balousha family, the youngest of whom was 4. They bombed a police station, hitting a doctor nearby; she lies in a vegetative state in Shifa Hospital, which is bursting with wounded and dead. They bombed a university that we in Israel call the Palestinian Rafael, the equivalent of Israel's weapons developer, and destroyed student dormitories. They dropped hundreds of bombs out of blue skies free of all resistance.

In four days they killed 375 people. They did not, and could not, distinguish between a Hamas official and his children, between a traffic cop and a Qassam launch operator, between a weapons cache and a health clinic, between the first and second floors of a densely populated apartment building with dozens of children inside. According to reports, about half of the people killed were innocent civilians. We're not complaining about the pilots' accuracy, it cannot be otherwise when the weapon is a plane and the objective is a tiny, crowded strip of land. Our excellent pilots are effectively bullies now. As in training flights, they bomb undisturbed, facing neither an air force nor defense system.

It is hard to judge what they are thinking, how they feel. It's unlikely to be relevant, anyway. They are measured by their actions. In any event, from an altitude of thousands of feet the picture looks as sterile as a Rorschach inkblot. Lock onto the target, press the button and then a black column of smoke. Another "successful hit." None see the effects on the ground of their actions. Their heads must surely be filled with Gaza horror stories - they themselves have never been there - as if there aren't a million and a half people living there who only want to live with a minimum of honor, some of them young like themselves, with dreams of studying, working, raising a family but who have no chance to fulfill their dreams with or without the bombing.

Do the pilots think about them, the children of refugees whose parents and grandparents have already been driven from their lives? Do they think about the thousands of people they have left permanently disabled in a place without a single hospital worthy of the name and no rehabilitation centers at all? Do they think about the burning hatred they are planting not only in Gaza but in other corners of the world amid the horrific images on television?

It was not the pilots who decided to go to war, but they are the subcontractors. The real accounting must be with the decision makers, but the pilots are their partners. When they return home they will be welcomed with all the respect and honor we reserve for them. It appears that not only will no one try to provoke moral questioning among them, but that they are considered the real heroes of this cursed war. The Israel Defense Forces spokesman is already going over the top with praise in his daily briefings for the "wonderful work" they are doing. He too, of course, completely ignores the images from Gaza. After all, these are not sadistic Border Police officers beating up Arabs in the alleys of Nablus and the center of Hebron, or cruel undercover soldiers who shoot their targets point-blank in cold blood. These, as we have said, are our finest young men.

Left: All civilians living in Gaza are collectively guilty wrote Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu. Rabbi Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate carpet bombing and killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings.

The letter, published in Olam Katan [Small World], a weekly pamphlet to be distributed in synagogues nationwide this Friday, cited the biblical story of the Shechem massacre (Genesis 34) and Maimonides' commentary (Laws of Kings 9, 14) on the story as proof texts for his legal decision.

Maybe if they were to confront the results of their "wonderful work" even once they would regret their decisions, they would reconsider the effects of their actions. If they were to go just once to Jerusalem's Alyn Hospital Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Center, where for nearly three years Marya Aman, 7, has been hospitalized - she is a quadriplegic who runs her wheelchair, and her life, with her chin - they would be shocked. This adorable little girl was hit by a missile in Gaza that killed almost her entire family, the handiwork of our pilots.

But all of this is well hidden from the pilots' eyes. They are only doing their job, as the saying goes, only following orders like bombing machines. In the past few days they have excelled at this, and the results are there for the entire world to see. Gaza is licking its wounds, just like Lebanon before it, and almost no one pauses for a moment to ask whether all this is necessary, or unavoidable, or whether it contributes to Israel's security and moral image. Is it really the case that our pilots return safely to base, or are they in fact returning to them as callous, cruel and blind people?

Ethnic Cleansing Arabs Made Israel

2008-12-31T14:25:00.004-05:00

Left: Yasser Arafat, Leader of the PLO, Hero to many, foe to Israel for decades, Nobel Laureate 1994, pictured in 1974. I have come, "bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun". He asked the United Nations, "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."

"Those who call us terrorists wish to prevent world public opinion from discovering the truth about us and from seeing the justice on our faces. They seek to bide and hide the terrorism and tyranny of their acts, and our own posture of self-defence." Speech to United Nations, New York, November 13, 1974. (1929-2004)

Why Bombing Ashekelon Is The Most Tragic Irony
By Robert Fisk

How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.

That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.

Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres said back in the 1990s that they wished Gaza would just go away, drop into the sea, and you can see why. The existence of Gaza is a permanent reminder of those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes to Israel, who fled or were driven out through fear or Israeli ethnic cleansing 60 years ago, when tidal waves of refugees had washed over Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and when a bunch of Arabs kicked out of their property didn't worry the world.

Well, the world should worry now. Crammed into the most overpopulated few square miles in the whole world are a dispossessed people who have been living in refuse and sewage and, for the past six months, in hunger and darkness, and who have been sanctioned by us, the West. Gaza was always an insurrectionary place. It took two years for Ariel Sharon's bloody "pacification", starting in 1971, to be completed, and Gaza is not going to be tamed now.

Left: Dr. Edward Said. "No. Victims do not ask their executioner: "Am I you? Had my sword been bigger than my rose, would you have asked if I would have acted like you?" (1935-2003)

Alas for the Palestinians, their most powerful political voice – I'm talking about the late Edward Said, not the late Yassir Arafat (and how the Israelis must miss him now) – is silent and their predicament largely unexplained by their deplorable, foolish spokesmen. "It's the most terrifying place I've ever been in," Said once said of Gaza. "It's a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa."

Of course, it was left to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to admit that "sometimes also civilians pay the price," an argument she would not make, of course, if the fatality statistics were reversed. Indeed, it was instructive yesterday to hear a member of the American Enterprise Institute – faithfully parroting Israel's arguments – defending the outrageous Palestinian death toll by saying that it was "pointless to play the numbers game". Yet if more than 300 Israelis had been killed – against two dead Palestinians – be sure that the "numbers game" and the disproportionate violence would be all too relevant. The simple fact is that Palestinian deaths matter far less than Israeli deaths. True, we know that 180 of the dead were Hamas members. But what of the rest? If the UN's conservative figure of 57 civilian fatalities is correct, the death toll is still a disgrace.

To find both the US and Britain failing to condemn the Israeli onslaught while blaming Hamas is not surprising. US Middle East policy and Israeli policy are now indistinguishable and Gordon Brown is following the same dog-like devotion to the Bush administration as his predecessor.

As usual, the Arab satraps – largely paid and armed by the West – are silent, preposterously calling for an Arab summit on the crisis which will (if it even takes place), appoint an "action committee" to draw up a report which will never be written. For that is the way with the Arab world and its corrupt rulers. As for Hamas, they will, of course, enjoy the discomfiture of the Arab potentates while cynically waiting for Israel to talk to them. Which they will. Indeed, within a few months, we'll be hearing that Israel and Hamas have been having "secret talks" – just as we once did about Israel and the PLO. But by then, the dead will be long buried and we will be facing the next crisis since the last crisis.

Bangladesh Ends Military Rule

2008-12-31T07:09:00.005-05:00

Awami League wins 231 of 297 seats in Bangladesh Elections.

Bangladesh’s former premier Sheikh Hasina Wajed won the country’s first election since 2001 in a landslide on Tuesday, December 30, 2008, crushing her rival to retake power in the south Asian nation.

The election commission said Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party had won 231 of the 297 seats in parliament counted so far, giving her an overwhelming win in Monday’s vote with just a few results still to be tallied.

“She has a clear majority to govern without any other party,” commission spokesman S. M. Asaduzzaman told AFP.

Her rival Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which won the last election in 2001 by a huge margin, garnered only 27 seats in the ballot, which ended two years of rule by an army-backed caretaker government. The BNP was allied with the religious party, Amaat-I-Islami. Meanwhile, the majority of youth and average Bangladeshi sought and responded to a mordernization message presented by Awami. The party had forwarded a plan for internet access and measures to lower food prices as part of its platform.

“There have been a lot of irregularities,” BNP spokesman Rizvi Ahmed said.

“Our supporters have been kept from voting, and our polling agents and officials have been barred from performing their duties.” Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, known as the battling begums, ruled alternately from 1991 until the interim government was installed, and their bitter personal rivalry has been blamed for paralyzing political life in the country.

The caretaker regime made efforts to shake up the system, and went so far as to jail both women for corruption, but agreed to release them to contest the election.

Although polling was peaceful, there were concerns that the restoration of democracy could see the country slip back into the negative, confrontational politics of the past.

Left: The Awami League victory sparked scenes of jubilation among the people on the streets of Bangladesh.

Newspapers hailed Sheikh Hasina’s performance, with the English-language Daily Star describing the win as “stunning” proof that the country was “hungry for change.” An UN-funded digital electoral roll, which eliminated 12.7 million fake names, appeared to have put a lid on the widespread vote rigging seen in previous polls, observers said.

Manzoor Hasan, director of BRAC University’s Institute of Governance Studies in Dhaka, said the next 48 hours would determine whether or not the BNP accepted the result.

He also warned that with such a big majority, Sheikh Hasina carried an enormous responsibility.

“This is the danger of an absolute majority with any government. The possibility that it will steamroll the opposition and do whatever the government wants to do,” he said.

The election attracted a record voter turnout of 85 per cent, with the figure reaching 90 per cent in rural areas, the Election Commission said.

A team of south Asian poll monitors concluded that voting had been “free, fair and transparent,” while EU observers also said procedures had been correctly followed.

“All Bangladeshis can take great pride in the success of these elections,” the US State Department said in a statement.

Left: Sheikh Hasina has always managed to garner support of the working classes of Bangladesh.

“The high voter turnout underscores the people’s desire to see democracy restored as well to have a voice in their future,” it said.

The Jamaat-i-Islami party, the BNP’s key partner, was way down on the 17 seats it garnered in 2001, winning just two this time.

The army-backed government took power in January 2007 following months of political unrest in which at least 35 people were killed.

Some 50,000 troops had been on alert nationwide during Monday’s voting, while 600,000 policemen were deployed to crack down on fraud or disruption at the 35,000 polling booths.

There were also 200,000 observers monitoring the poll, including 2,500 from abroad.

The Awami League, formed in 1948, traditionally had socialist economic policies but Sheikh Hasina, 61, has moved it towards the capitalist model.

Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led Bangladesh in its liberation struggle against Pakistan in 1971 and was assassinated in a 1975 military coup.

She was targeted by extremist elements in 2004, narrowly escaping a gun attack at a rally that killed 20 supporters and left her with damaged hearing.

Election Commissioner Shakhawat Hossain told AFP that although no date had been set, the new government was likely to be sworn in early next month.

“The maximum timeframe is one month but the signal that we are getting from the outgoing government is that power will be transferred by January 7,” he said.

Sheikh Hasina has since offered cabinet posts to the BNP in return for calm and cooperation.

Left: Ms Zia has rejected the poll results

Clashes erupt after Khaleda rejects poll results

Former Bangladeshi prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia, defeated by a landslide in Monday’s parliamentary election, claimed on Tuesday there had been widespread vote rigging.

Also on Tuesday, clashes between workers of the two leading political parties began, with at least one man being killed, according to a television channel.

“We have confirmed reports of rigging and other irregularities in many polling stations across the country,” Ms Zia told reporters, giving her first reaction to the election.

“So we reject the election outcome,” she said. “We are collecting details of more irregularities and will give to the media and appropriate authorities over next few days,” she told reporters at her Dhaka party office.

One man was killed and about 150 people were injured in clashes between rival political activists, a private television station reported.

“One man died in northern Pabna area, where around 50 others were injured in the clashes,” Diganta Tva said, quoting police and witnesses.

Around 100 more people were hurt in post-election violence across the country, it said.

Gaza Death Toll Rise to 380, 1,725 Wounded, Hundreds Critically

2008-12-30T16:27:00.005-05:00

Israeli Warplanes Target Rafah Tunnels; Fatalities Rise To 368 Gazans, 1,700 Wounded, Hundreds Critically

Left: A Palestinian woman carries a child on the rubble of a damaged house near the destroyed Hamas government buildings following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, December 30, 2008. Early Tuesday, Israeli aircraft dropped at least 16 bombs on five Hamas government buildings in a Gaza City complex, destroying them, setting fires and sending rubble flying for hundreds of yards, witnesses said. Rescue workers said 40 people were injured. MaanImages/Hatem Omar

Gaza - Ma'an - Israeli F16 warplanes fired heavy missiles at the tunnels on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip Tuesday night.

According to Israeli TV, 12 heavy missiles landed inside the tunnels. This is the second Israeli attack on the Rafah border and the tunnels beneath the area in as many days.

The shelling came hours after the Egyptians announced closure of the crossing following Israeli threats to shell the area. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in a speech Tuesday afternoon that his country would not open the Rafah crossing unless it is controlled by the PA and European monitors.

There are no reports of deaths from the latest tunnel attack.

The death toll since the Israeli attacks began Saturday has reached 380 with more than 1,725 injured, hundreds seriously so.

5:00pm A lathe workshop belonging to the Ashour family in the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, and a dairy belonging to the Dalloul family in the Sabra neighborhood, also in Gaza City were destroyed by Israeli missile fire. No casualties have been reported.

2:00pm Israeli warplanes bombarded Khan Younis in the southern Strip

1:00pm Israeli helicopters targeted a site used by Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades in Beit Lahiya and another site in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. No casualties were reported in either raid.

11:45am An Israeli missile made a direct hit on three siblings killing two girls, 4 and 11-year old sisters. The three were throwing garbage into a nearby dumpster. The youngest died instantly and the eldest died en route to the hospital. The lack of ambulances in the area meant her parents had to load the girl's body onto a donkey-cart to try and get her to a doctor.

The family lives on As-Sekka Street in Beit Hanoun, and the area was hit as Israeli warplanes targeted a nearby farming cooperative affiliated to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), according to two international eyewitnesses.

The third casualty was a passerby, killed by flying debris as Israeli warplanes dropped missiles on a de facto government police station in Al-Qarara east of Khan Younis.

Early in the morning on Israel's fourth day of attack residents could hear heavy shelling and airstrikes against the northern and central regions of the Gaza Strip.

Overnight Monday

Israeli warplanes, drones and apache helicopters hit 56 targets overnight on Monday including training sites and homes affiliated with the Al-Qassam Brigades, as well as de facto government ambulance services and medical crews.

A home next to the Caliph's Mosque in the northern Gaza Strip was demolished along with an Al-Shamal Governorate building in the Ash-Sheikh Zayid area. The car of a Gazan civilian received a direct hit on Aj-Jala Street, and several already damaged buildings in the area were further bombarded.

Airstrikes in the north also targeted government ministry buildings in Tel Al-Hawa. The buildings were bombed several times through the night and were completely demolished.

In the southern Gaza Strip a de facto government building was demolished when Israel launched two missiles at the structures. This is the second time Israel has targeted the buildings, the first was on Saturday in the first wave of massive strikes.

West of Gaza City Israeli forces targeted the Bader area, which is affiliated to the Al-Qassam Brigades. Also demolished in the strike was the Omar Bin Al-Khattab mosque in the central city. It is the sixth mosque to be targeted since Saturday.

Always calculating, forever scheming, the Zionist plan becomes more apparent as they continue to devastate all avenues availed to Gaza for its sustenance except those at the disposal of the Jews. Maybe the Zionists will ask the Palestinians to trade food for land in the end.

Gaza Outrage from Venezuela

2008-12-30T03:42:00.004-05:00

Venezuela Condemns “Criminal” Israeli Attack

Carora, December 29, 2008 — Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry condemned the Israeli bombing of Gaza in a statement released Saturday, expressing its “profound indignation” over the “criminal attack,” and urged the Israeli government to adhere to the United Nations Charter.

The Venezuelan government affirmed its “solidarity with the Palestinian people,” and called for “the governments of the world who desire peace and justice to raise their voices against this aggression.”

A number of world leaders and governments have since criticized the Israeli attacks, including the European Union, Russia, China, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

“The only accomplice to this attack has been the government of the United States,” Venezuela’s statement continued, calling the US support for Israel latest military action the “icing on the cake of the outgoing criminal [Bush] administration,” whose rule has been “filled with violence and characterized worldwide by its continued disrespect of human rights.”

United States officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, blamed the violence exclusively on the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

The Israeli bombing has caused the death of over 320 Palestinians, including over 51 civilians according to a “conservative and rising” estimate by a United Nations aid agency, while attacks launched on Israel from Gaza killed one Israeli civilian.

Protests in Caracas against Gaza “genocide”

Dozens of protesters rallied outside the Israeli embassy on Sunday, in opposition to what one speaker referred to as “genocide” by the Israeli “occupation forces.”

The protests will continue Monday morning in front of the embassy, according to a rally organizer, Hindu Anderi, in statements broadcast on regional news network Telesur.

Anderi, a Palestinian human rights activist, thanked the Venezuelan government for its position on the conflict, but demanded concrete action, saying “solidarity needs to mean taking measures that will affect Israel economically and politically, because otherwise the condition of the Palestinian people will not change.”

State Terrorism - Zionism

2008-12-29T16:47:00.005-05:00

The patience of all decent men must surely be exhausted.

The slaughter of innocents in Gaza, with more than 300 reported killed in raids on “Hamas terror operatives” (as the Israeli military put it), amounted to “a mass execution,” its policy of targeted assassination strategy on steroids.

Can there now be any doubt who the real terrorists are?

The killing spree could not have happened without the tacit approval and active complicity of America, Britain, the EU and the Arab puppet regimes in the region. The political and economic machine that direct the pro-Israel western alliance were partying, gorging themselves on Christmas lair and Hanukkah fare or binge-shopping while this massacre of hungry women and children and their despairing menfolk in Gaza was being executed. A sinister plan hatched more than six months ago in the guise of peace and truce.

According to the US definition of terrorism Israel is squarely in the frame. Under Section 3 of Executive Order 13224 "Blocking Property and prohibiting Transactions with Persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support Terrorism," the term “terrorism” means an activity that…

(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and

(ii) appears to be intended

To intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
To influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
To affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.

The order and its definition of terrorism, signed 23 September 2001 by George W Bush, is used to outlaw and crush any organization, individual or country the US doesn’t like. The Israeli regime’s "amoral thugs," as a British MP branded them, have plainly been terrorizing the Palestinians for the last 60 years -- if not 100 years.

The long drawn-out siege and blockade of Gaza, and the numerous military assaults on its people and their legitimate government, are only the latest crimes in a catalogue of torment and terror. They are clearly attempts to "intimidate and coerce," while the mass destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, the withholding of humanitarian aid, the assassinations, the abductions, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes, and the many violent and dangerous acts including indiscriminate bombing and shelling (and the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon and advanced US Bunker Busting Bombs that kill everything in the vicinity--known to be overpopulated and are not genuine military targets), ensure Israel’s ugly head is a perfect fit for America’s terrorist hat.

If the rabid Zionists in Tel Aviv think they will scare Gazans with this once tried, twice failed, scheme of committing atrocities, which they advanced on Lebanon 2006, hoping that the people will say "these Jews are crazy" and rise up and butcher their leadership, they are again mistakenly believing their own vapid propaganda. Unless these European Jews are willing to up the ante on the Nazis they will never defeat the Palestinians -- though not for a lack of trying.

Israel has instead chosen a more palatable form of genocide, one that is stealthy yet efficient, which can be propped with proper public relations coups. No these are not Nazis per se, rather the Jews of Israel opt for slow and deliberate decades-long asphyxiation of Palestinian institutions: Involving both active and passive methods of ethnic cleansing, such as a deterioration of their social fabric, decimation of their economy, erosion of access to natural resources, diversion of their land and prevention of the maintenance of their everyday welfare concerns -- although tactical and strategic assassinations of vast numbers of civilians remain an integral component of this final solution.

The long view of the plan envisions a celebratory Zionist moment when a majority of Palestinians will be fed up and emigrate. Meanwhile those remaining will be sufficiently weakened to a point of acquiescence -- a necessity of this sufficiency has therefore, hued and driven Zionist policy for the past one hundred years in Palestine.

Terrorism: A weapon of the weak or powerful?

2008-12-29T16:06:00.004-05:00

As so often, the term 'terrorism' has proved a rhetorical smokescreen under cover of which the strong crush the weak

Gaza: the logic of colonial power
By Nir Rosen

I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime.

Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.

The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.

I have often been asked by policy analysts, policy-makers and those stuck with implementing those policies for my advice on what I think America should do to promote peace or win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It too often feels futile, because such a revolution in American policy would be required that only a true revolution in the American government could bring about the needed changes. An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves.

Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.

Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds.

Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.

Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.

Not long ago, 19-year-old Qassem al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem drove his car into a group of soldiers at an intersection. "The terrorist", as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called him, was shot and killed. In two separate incidents last July, Palestinians from Jerusalem also used vehicles to attack Israelis. The attackers were not part of an organisation. Although those Palestinian men were also killed, senior Israeli officials called for their homes to be demolished. In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid n his face. "The terrorist was arrested by security forces," the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist?

In September, Bush spoke at the United Nations. No cause could justify the deliberate taking of human life, he said. Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some "collateral" civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to "shock and awe", as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism.

Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits.

It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.

I could argue that all Americans are benefiting from their country's exploits without having to pay the price, and that, in today's world, the imperial machine is not merely the military but a military-civilian network. And I could also say that Americans elected the Bush administration twice and elected representatives who did nothing to stop the war, and the American people themselves did nothing. From the perspective of an American, or an Israeli, or other powerful aggressors, if you are strong, everything you do is justifiable, and nothing the weak do is legitimate. It's merely a question of what side you choose: the side of the strong or the side of the weak.

Israel and its allies in the west and in Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have managed to corrupt the PLO leadership, to suborn them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people, creating a first – a liberation movement that collaborated with the occupier. Israeli elections are coming up and, as usual, these elections are accompanied by war to bolster the candidates. You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands. An Israeli general has threatened to set Gaza back decades, just as they threatened to set Lebanon back decades in 2006. As if strangling Gaza and denying its people fuel, power or food had not set it back decades already.

The democratically elected Hamas government was targeted for destruction from the day it won the elections in 2006. The world told the Palestinians that they cannot have democracy, as if the goal was to radicalise them further and as if that would not have a consequence. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas's military forces. This is not true. It is targeting Palestinian police forces and killing them, including some such as the chief of police, Tawfiq Jaber, who was actually a former Fatah official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza. What will happen to a society with no security forces? What do the Israelis expect to happen when forces more radical than Hamas gain power?

A Zionist Israel is not a viable long-term project and Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two state solution impossible. There can be only one state in historic Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with two options. Will they peacefully transition towards an equal society, where Palestinians are given the same rights, à la post-apartheid South Africa? Or will they continue to view democracy as a threat? If so, one of the peoples will be forced to leave. Colonialism has only worked when most of the natives have been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually, the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and seek one state for both people. Does the world want to further radicalise them?

Do not be deceived: the persistence of the Palestine problem is the main motive for every anti-American militant in the Arab world and beyond. But now the Bush administration has added Iraq and Afghanistan as additional grievances. America has lost its influence on the Arab masses, even if it can still apply pressure on Arab regimes. But reformists and elites in the Arab world want nothing to do with America.

A failed American administration departs, the promise of a Palestinian state a lie, as more Palestinians are murdered. A new president comes to power, but the people of the Middle East have too much bitter experience of US administrations to have any hope for change. President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden and incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton have not demonstrated that their view of the Middle East is at all different from previous administrations. As the world prepares to celebrate a new year, how long before it is once again made to feel the pain of those whose oppression it either ignores or supports?

3 Days Of Death - Most Civilians & Non-Combattants Gazans

2008-12-29T00:09:00.007-05:00

Live from Palestine, Gaza Strip, December 28, 2008.

Left: The scene of an Israeli missile strike in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, 28 December 2008. (Hatem Omar/Ma'an Images)

The Longest Night In My Life
By Safa Joudeh

Here's an update on what's happening here from where I am, the second night of Israeli air (land and sea) raids on Gaza.

It's 1:30am but it feels like the sun should be up already. For the past few hours there's been simultaneous, heavy aerial bombardment of Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip. It feels like the longest night of my life. In my area it started with the bombing of workshops (usually located in the ground floor of private/family residential buildings), garages and warehouses in one of the most highly condensed areas in Gaza City, "Askoola."

About an hour ago they bombed the Islamic University, destroying the laboratory building. As I mentioned in an earlier account, my home is close to the university. We heard the first explosion, the windows shook, the walls shook and my heart felt like it would literally jump out of my mouth. My parents, siblings and cousins, who have been staying with us since their home was damaged the first day of the air raids, had been trying to get some sleep. We all rushed to the side of the house that was farthest from the bombing. Hala, my 11-year-old sister stood motionless and had to be dragged to the other room. I still have marks on my shoulder from when Aya, my 13-year-old cousin held on to me during the next four explosions, each one as violent and heart-stopping as the next. Looking out of the window moments later the night sky had turned to a dirty navy-gray from the smoke.

Israeli warships rocketed Gaza's only sea port only moments ago; 15 missiles exploded, destroying boats and parts of the ports. These are just initial reports over the radio. We don't know what the extent of the damage is. We do know that the fishing industry that thousands of families depend on either directly or indirectly didn't pose a threat on Israeli security. The radio reporter started counting the explosions; I think he lost count after six. At this moment we heard three more blasts. "I'm mostly scared of the whoosh," I told my sister, referring to the sound a missile makes before it hits. Those moments of wondering where it's going to fall are agonizing. Once the whooshes and hits were over the radio reporter announced that the fish market (vacant, of course) had been bombed.

We just heard that four sisters from the Balousha family were killed in an attack that targeted the mosque by their home in the northern Gaza Strip.

You know what bothers me more than the bangs and the blasts, the smoke, the ambulance sirens and the whooshes? The constant, ominous, maddening droning sound of the Apache helicopters overhead that has been buzzing in my head day and night. It's like I'm hearing things, which I'm not, but I am.

Safa Joudeh is an master's candidate in public policy at Stony Brook University in the US. She returned to Gaza in September 2007 where she currently works as a freelance journalist.

Left: A Palestinian family rushes from the scene of an Israeli missile strike on a building in the Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, 28 December 2008. (Hatem Omar/Ma'an Image)

Most Gaza casualties were non-combatants, civilians unattached to Israel's casus belli.

Air strikes have continued through the night, targeting houses and other civilian premises, including water-wells, workshops, mosques and communications facilities. In addition, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), targeted prisons, including Gaza's main prison facility of al-Saraya at noon today. Initial reports indicate that many policemen and prisoners were killed and injured in this attack.

Morevoer, dozens of homes were destroyed, along with tens of UNRWA and government schools including the Islamic University of Gaza and clinics. Local government offices and private vehicles were also destroyed. Al Mezan's initial monitoring indicates that at least 400 people have been killed in the IOF's strikes in the last 48 hours. Of those, the vast majority are non-combatants and civilians.

At least 1,000 people were also injured, including scores of children whose wounds were reportedly critical. Al Mezan believes that the number of casualties is expected to increase as many victims have been buried by their families without being registered at hospitals. Furthermore, a high number of people lie at hospitals between death and life. Moreover, dozens of people who were lightly wounded and therefore not admitted to hospitals were not counted. As the air strikes continue, more people fall victim to them. This makes this operation one of Israel's bloodiest, most criminal military actions in Gaza in the past forty years.

Inside Gaza

2008-12-27T22:37:00.006-05:00

Inside Gaza: 'The hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside'

By Sami Abdel-Shafi in Gaza city
Sunday, 28 December 2008

I am safe, and yet I feel like a walking dead person. Everything around me shows it. It is hard to write something of any coherence while exposed to cold winter air and to the smell that lingers after the detonation of Israeli bombs. They must have been massive. During the bombing I opened all the windows around my apartment to avoid them imploding as a result of the vacuum shocks sweeping through Gaza City after each enormous bang. While the bombing continued, I jumped down two flights of stairs to my father's house, to make sure he was OK. Should I open up all his windows too? That would expose the old man to the risk of illness. We have no medical care or medication. However, the risk from shattering glass was greater, so I opened them all.

Left: An injured Palestinian is helped from the rubble following an Israeli missile strike in Rafah

Mobile phones did not work, because of electricity outages and the flood of attempted calls. I flipped the electricity generator on so that we could watch the news. We wanted to understand what was going on in our own neighbourhood. However, this was impossible. Israeli surveillance drones flew overhead, scrambling the reception. All I could do was step outside, where I found crowds of frantic people, lines of rising smoke and the smell of charred buildings and bodies that lay around targeted sites nearby. Somebody said the bombs had been launched in parallel raids over the entire Gaza Strip. What was the target here? Perhaps a police station about 200 metres away. Other bombs annihilated blocks less than a kilometre away, where one of the main police training centres stood. When the strikes began, a graduation ceremony for more than 100 recruits in a civil law enforcement programme was under way. These were the young men trained to organise traffic, instil civil safety and maintain law and order. Many of them were killed, it is said, in addition to the Gaza Strip's police chief.

News came by word of mouth. There had been more than 150 deaths and more than 200 people were injured or missing under rubble after the first two hours of bombing. Israel had said it would continue the offensive and deepen it if necessary. Likewise, it was said that Hamas had launched more rockets at southern Israeli towns, causing one death and four injuries. Gaza had never seen anything like the numbers of dead bodies lying on its streets. Hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside.

Bombs targeting a Hamas security force building badly damaged an adjacent school, and several children were injured. We heard of many other targets around the Gaza Strip. It reminds me of the "shock and awe" campaign the Allies launched over Baghdad in 2003. But shock and awe did not bring stability or peace.

These bombs were launched by Israel, as we had known they would be. The world watched the situation simmer then boil over, but did nothing. There are some who believe that hell is divided into different classes. The ordinary people of Gaza have long been caught in the tormenting underworld. Now, if the world does not heed what has happened here, our situation will worsen. We will be trapped in the first class of hell.

Israel Massacres Gaza

2008-12-27T20:21:00.010-05:00

Settler Jews from Europe launch missile attacks on Gaza (Al-Jazeera)

Gaza Mosque hit by Israeli air forces, they try to spin it, as usual.

Left: Smoke and fire are seen after the Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip.

Israel said it had bombed a mosque in Gaza City on Saturday because it was used for "terrorist activities."

Palestinian medical workers said two Palestinians were killed in the attack, one of a series of Israeli air strikes on Gaza that killed 227 Palestinians in a 12-hour period.

An Israeli military spokesman said Israel had sought to avoid attacking religious institutions but "anyone responsible for attacks (on Israel) will not find refuge in any facility."

The spokesman said the mosque was situated in the city's Rimal district. He said Hamas rockets had struck Israeli houses of worship, and that one fired on Saturday had damaged a synagogue.

Left: Bodies of Hamas policemen lie on the ground of their destroyed police compound following an Israeli air strike in Gaza December 27, 2008. Israeli air strikes in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday killed at least 195 Palestinians, health officials in Gaza said. (Reuters/Zoher Dolah [GAZA])

On December 27th and 28th Israeli air strikes targeted police stations and other infrastructure in Gaza killing at least 300 people and injuring a thousand, with 200 critically wounded. As the strikes continue the death toll is expected to increase.

Egypt has offered to open the Rafah crossing at its border with Gaza on a limited basis to receive wounded Palestinians. The Egyptian government's cooperation with Israel's blockade of Gaza has been very unpopular among Egyptians and Hamas has suggested that ending such cooperation could be a main focus of its response. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said on Saturday:

Left: A Palestinian bombing victim carries a wounded child after Israeli missile strikes in Gaza City.

"The simplest response to the massacre today is to reopen Rafah crossing once and for all. I tell our Arab brothers that the simplest response to the massacre is to end the siege." Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal called on Saturday for Palestinians to wage a new intifada against Israel, including a return to suicide missions.

Protests against the Israeli bombing and invasion are taking place all through the Middle-East and Palestine. In occupied Palestine hundreds of Arabs and Jews took to the streets of Tel-Aviv to protest the massacre in Gaza yelling “no one can tell us that this massacre is suppose to protect us.” The apartheid Israeli police were extremely violent and six people were detained.

Ali Abunimah on The Electronic Intifada writes: 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.

Left: Palestinians carry a body from the rubble following the missile strikes.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers however at least a third of the victims were civilians. 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.

Scores dead in Israeli raid on Gaza | Gaza massacres must spur us to action

Egypt to recall its ambassador to Tel Aviv, after what Egyptian officials described as "murder," reported the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. However, this subterfuge by the Egyptian is merely a ploy to deflect their complicity with the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Egypt is against Hamas as they are seen by the government as allies of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization outlawed in Egypt.

In the photograph above, Egyptian riot police stand guard as protestors shout slogans during a demonstration in front of the journalists' syndicate in Cairo against the Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip. Egypt condemned as "murder" Israel's air raids on Gaza that killed at least 300 Palestinians, offering to open its Rafah border crossing with the territory to allow the wounded through for treatment. Apparently, Egypt is mounting a public relations campaign to bolster its image in the Arab world with these latent Gaza loving maneuvers. Hamas has since rejected the offer from Egypt.

Pakistan redeploys 20.000 troops to Indian border

2008-12-26T12:39:00.013-05:00

Left: Indian Border Security Force soldiers keep vigil at the western sector of India-Pakistan international border at Ranjitpura village, Rajasthan state, India, 25 Dec 2008. (Photo: AP)

Witnesses say hundreds of troops are moving eastward from Pakistan's northwestern border with Afghanistan, where soldiers have been fighting al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

Pakistani officials said that the troops deploying to the Indian border were being diverted away from tribal areas near Afghanistan. The move is likely to frustrate the United States which has been pushing Pakistan to step up its fight against al-Qaida and Taliban militants near the Afghan border. The Pakistani army and air force have both, been put on high alert.

Two intelligence officials said the army's 14th Division was being redeployed to the towns of Kasur and Sialkot, close to the Indian border. They said some 20,000 troops were on the move. Earlier, a security official said that all troop leave had been canceled.

In the wake of the Mumbai attacks, the Indian government has sought to sustain a regime of diplomatic pressure over Pakistan by tapping the United Nations and influential powers in the West and continue to reiterate to Pakistan that “all options will be kept open.” India was able to secure a UN Security Council adjustment to resolution 1822, (June 2008) which called for adding four Pakistani citizens (Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Haji Muhammad Ashraf, Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq and Zaki Ur-Rehman Lakvi) and three organizaitons (Al Akhtar Trust International, Al-Rasheed Trust and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) on its list of those censured for terrorist activity.

The Indian Foreign Ministry has also advised a travel warning of Pakistan to its citizens, which was linked to the reported arrests of three Indian citizens by Pakistani security officials in connection with bombings in Lahore and Multan -- news that has been greeted with skepticism by the Indian press.

"Indian citizens are therefore advised that it would be unsafe for them to travel [to] or be in Pakistan," said a spokesman for the foreign ministry in New Delhi.

The tensions with India were further stoked by Pakistan's former President and Army Chief of Staff, Pervez Musharraf. Speaking at a wedding reception, he said: "As long as the army is here, India dare not even look at Pakistan with a dirty eye. We have the capability to defend ourselves."

Left: More than 170 people died in the three days of attacks in Mumbai between November 26 and November 29, 2008. (Photo: AFP)

On December 10, 2008, the UN Security Council Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee approved the addition of four alleged high-level members of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba -- a group which Pakistan outlawed in 2002 under US pressure, a year after Washington and London listed it a terrorist group. It is since believed to have emerged under another name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

In April 2006, the U.S. Department of State listed Jamaat-ud-Dawa as terrorist organizations for being an "alias" of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba -- to its Consolidated List of individuals and entities subject to the assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo set out in paragraph 1 of UN Security Council resolution 1822 (2008) adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations. An update of those consolidated on the List is accessible on the Committee’s website at the following url.

Even though, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba has been banned by Pakistan, the group also plays humanitarian and political roles within the country, That branch of the group, called Jamat-ud-Dawa, is involved with helping to run schools and hospitals. As a result, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jamat-ud-Dawa enjoy popular support among the Pakistani public, who see them as social groups.

However, a spokesman for a Jamat-ud Dawa denied any linkages to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and said that the organization condemned the Mumbai attack.

"We condemn the killings of civilians. We condemn such killings in a terrorist activity, and at the same time we condemn it happening in the shape of state terrorism, as we see in Srinagar, Kashmir," Abdullah Muntazir said.

Left: Indian authorities say up to 43,000 people have died recently in violence against Muslims in Indian held Kashmir, but human rights groups and non-governmental organizations put the death toll at twice that estimation.

Mr Muntazir was referring to reports of Indian army atrocities and right wing Hindu extremism against Muslims in Indian administered Kashmir, known as Jammu and Kashmir, which has been central to the 61-year edifice of enmity between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan is also sovereign over a portion of Kasmir. The majority of the population on all sides of the international line in Kashmir are Muslims. China was granted a piece of the province by Pakistan. The areas of Raskam, and Shaksgam valley of Baltistan region were ceded to the People's Republic of China in 1963 with the proviso that the settlement was subject to the final solution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.

During partition of British India, all the provinces which were Muslim majority were supposed to have gone to Pakistan. Subsequent UN Security Council resolutions call for a referendum among the people to decide the fate of Kashmir however, the pre-conditions for the plebiscite have never been met nor has a vote been administered.

During the course of its engagement with the Kashmir Conflict, spanning 23 years (1948-1971), the United Nations Security Council passed 23 resolutions, which were aimed at mediation and resolution of the conflict. Following the 3rd Pakistan-India war of 1971 the UN involvement completely ended with the signing of the Simla Agreement in 1972, an Indo-Pak peace agreement, which laid emphasis on adopting a bilateral framework to solve the Kashmir imbroglio and kept the UN out of the picture afterwards. India and Pakistan also fought wars during 1947-8 and in 1965.

Since the UN resolutions were enacted under Article 35, Chapter VI, of the UN charter, which meant both parties had to consent to any proposals and enactments under Chapter VII that are compulsory, India chose to reject the major breakthroughs in the impasse. Instead the Hindu state claimed that Kashmir was an integral part of its nation and refused to remove its military presence in the area or comply with many of the resolutions.

The ostensibly, charged Indian rhetoric has been interpreted by Pakistan as a signal that India may launch a pre-emptive strike veiled as a retaliatory incursion against certain sectors who have been deemed suspects in Pakistani Kashmir and elsewhere inside Pakistani territory. Over the course of past month the Pakistan military has been preparing to defend the integrity and security of the nation. The Pakistani Air Force has flown fighter aircrafts in exercises in a show of their preparedness to both, India and internal constituents.

India on its part has marshaled high level security meetings involving Manmohan Sing, the prime minister and the defense minister meeting with the three armed services chiefs, the Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor is reported to have visited Siachen and other parts of Jammu and Kashmir on the international line with Pakistan -- Line of Control (LoC).

Left: On May 28, 1998, Pakistan announced that it had conducted five (simultaneous) nuclear weapons tests, in response to the same number of nuclear tests by India. Although, India set off its first nuclear device in 1974. India has never signed the Non Proliferation Treaty and only went public with its nuclear armaments program earlier in May of 1999, by setting off the five underground nuclear explosions.

On Dec 22, 2008, senior Indian government officials assessed that overblown Pakistani fears and propaganda as well as, media speculation have led to assumptions by Pakistan's defense apparatus that India was about to launch a surprise military strike. Nevertheless, these armed maneuvers, parliamentary initiatives and attenuated bellicose rhetoric on both sides are indicative of a marked and dangerous escalation of the military ante.

The anticipation of the Barack Obama administration inauguration on January 20, 2009, may herald a change toward an ameliorative agenda in the bilateral relations between India and Pakistan. Nevertheless, the reality of the dependence of the US military on Pakistani contribution toward the safety of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan as well as the security of supply lines may temper any major policy change, that would compromise the long-standing relationship.

Left: The US drone air strikes are extremely controversial and undermine the authority of the Pakistani state. The US has also approved special forces raids inside Pakistan territory, Both types of assaults will undoubtedly, be increased as the scheduled 30,000 US troop increase takes hold in Afghanistan and ultimately kill more Pakistani civilians -- as "collateral damage."

For some time now, patience with Islamabad has been waning in western capitals including Washington. American and NATO troop casualties in Afghanistan continue to rise, leading the U.S. to complain that recently launched Pakistani offensives in some of the semi-autonomous tribal areas along the Afghan border were not enough. Islamabad has conversely complained that US air strikes and raids inside its territory compromise efforts on the war against extremism.

North West Frontier Province governor, Owais Ghani, said that he would be "deeply concerned" about any increase in unilateral US airstrikes in tribal areas.

"This has a great backlash in the public sentiment, public opinion," he said. "It seriously undermines the much needed backing of the population. Therefore it is very, very undesirable, and if it continues I think the pressure is already building up. If that goes beyond a certain point and people react, no government, political or military, will be able to continue. So I think that it's very important they understand the implications."

Left: Pakistani protesters burn an Indian flag during a rally in Karachi, Pakistan on Friday, December 26, 2008.

The current row between the nuclear neighbors threatens to revive the intense periods of hostility, which propelled them into three wars since the partition and their independence from British colonial India in 1947. The British dominion in the subcontinent would over time become liberated as the independent nations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Syed Saleem shahzad, of Asia Times wrote at the wake of the Mumbai attacks on December 2, 2008, "there is now the possibility that Pakistan will undergo another about-turn and rethink its support of the 'war in terror.' It could now back off from its restive tribal areas, leaving the Taliban a free hand to consolidate their Afghan insurgency."

Rohan Gunaratna, an analyst at global terrorism opined on December 3, 2008, the terrible attack has major implications for global security and for the new Obama Administration. If India threatens Pakistan, Islamabad will withdraw its 100,000 troops on Pakistan’s troubled border with Afghanistan, where al-Qaida and other resistance groups are based. Such a troop redeployment will dramatically increase the threat to Afghanistan [Read: Nato and US occupying forces] and to global security. The "insurgents" will benefit from such a relocation of the Pakistani army from tribal Pakistan to the Indian border. One could question if the "militants" had conceived this attack with such intentions to ease the pressure on al-Qaida, Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and its associated groups.

Ahmed Rhashid writing as a guest columnist for BBCNEWS wrote on December 10, 2008 -- but had made similar remarks as early as November 27, 2008, on NPR -- pointed out the group that attacked Mumbai may well include some Pakistanis, but it is more likely to be an international insurgent force put together by Wahhabi Salafists, including al-Qaida and the Pakistani as well as Afghani Taliban, who are besieged by the Pakistan army on one side and a rain of missiles being launched by US forces in Afghanistan against their hideouts on the other.

The militants, Taliban and al-Qaida are possibly looking for some relief and a diversion.

What better way to do so than by provoking the two old enemies - India and Pakistan - with a spectacular attack that diverts attention away from the tribal areas?

Such a move would force Pakistani troops back to the Indian border while simultaneously pre-occupying US and NATO countries in hectic diplomacy to prevent the region exploding.

Left: The Mumbai attacks -- which lasted three days claimed more than just 170 lives, while injuring over three hundred, but also derailed a burgeoning "detente" between Pakistan and India -- took place just three days after Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari proposed a "no first nuclear strike" policy with India. It is however daunting in this renewed atmosphere of animosity that both countries have developed long-range missiles capable of striking the other's cities and killing millions.

A diversion such as this would preserve extremist sanctuaries along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and would provide militants with a much needed respite - especially considering that in the next few months President-elect Barak Obama is due to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan, backed by more Nato troops.

If Lashkar-e-Tayyiba is indeed responsible for the attacks -- as Indian authorities claim and Pakistan denies while continuing its demands for proof. India has yet to provide such evidence nor has it shared its intelligence on the Mumbai attacks with Interpol even after repeated request from the international intelligence agency -- it will be the second time that the group has single-handedly put the two countries on a war footing. In 2002 each of the nuclear powers mobilized nearly one million men for approximately a year after Lashkar-e-Tayyiba attacked the Indian parliament.

It is abundantly clear, now as then, that fretful perceptions among Pakistan's national security elite and the majority of its citizenry that the country is surrounded by enemies with various geopolitical motivations who are determined to dismember and balkanize it, especially as missile strikes and cross-border raids into areas long claimed by Afghanistan intensify such discernment.

Left: Namira Salim, the first Pakistani to reach the South Pole, hoists the Pakistani flag at the geographic South Pole. (2008) From aspiring to reach the outer limits of space, inspiring to teach the inner reaches of the human heart and resisting to breach the ends of tyranny on the earth in lieu of liberty, Pakistanis remain in the front lines.

Until that sense of siege is gone, it will be difficult to have a fully fledged partnership neither on the Indian front nor, with elements in the west seeking to export specific political and economic models to South Asia. Pakistan cannot allow itself to become yet, another Muslim state victim, which must be divided, diversified and dwindled as a product of calculated aims of various hegemonic actors, contenders and pretenders.

Over the centuries, many powers have attempted to subdue such pious people of the subcontinent as time has passed so have their tragic sojourn into the lands of these noble yet humble people come to pass.

US Bases & 25 year Insurgency Contingency

2008-12-25T22:58:00.003-05:00

US to fight insurgency across Muslim world for 25 years

"The United States is committed to fighting insurgency in the Muslim world for 25 years, says a report released by the US Joint Forces Command.

Besides this general commitment to fighting insurgency, the United States is building permanent military structures in Afghanistan to indicate its plans for a long-term stay in the war-ravaged country."

Earlier this week, the US Corps of Engineers sought bids for some of these projects. One such project in Kandahar could cost as much as $500 million while three separate projects for housing facilities for the US troops will cost at least $100 million each.

Last week, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who retains his office in the next administration, assured the Afghan government that the United States was making a “sustained commitment” to that country. “You will see a continuing American commitment to defeating the enemies of the Afghan people during the administration of the president-elect” as well, he added.

On Saturday, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that by next summer, up to 30,000 US troops would join the 31,000 already in Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, the official Voice of America radio quoted Mr Gates as saying that the United States was preparing to fight “irregular wars” across the Muslim world for years to come.

The VOA report was based on a study by the US Joint Forces Command saying that the United States was prepared to confront insurgencies and small-scale threats for the next 25 years.

Rear Admiral John Richardson said the study attempting to project global threats over the next 25 years pointed mainly in one direction.

“We see that the future will contain irregular types of threats,” he said. “And we need to be able to respond to those threats and be as superior in the irregular warfare area as we are in the conventional warfare area.”

The VOA report said that Mr Gates firmly supported a deeper US commitment to counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Read More ...

WAR ON TERROR, THE BOARDGAME: It's got suicide bombers, political kidnaps and intercontinental war. It's got filthy propaganda, rampant paranoia and secret treaties and the Axis of Evil is a spinner in the middle of the board.

You can fight terrorism, you can fund terrorism, you can even be the terrorists. The only thing that matters is global domination - err, liberation. Read more about the game.

War on Terror in the IT Crowd (again)

Just a quickie - we're a bit late on this but the final episode of the 3rd season of the excellent IT Crowd is on this Friday C4 at 9.50pm (UK viewers). We're very proud and humbled to have War on Terror forming part of the office set dressing once again.

Gallery of EVIL

Now you lot have got the game in your filthy hands, it's time to start sending us crazy photographs of people doing odd things in the EVIL Balaclavas. That's right, the EVIL Gallery is here!

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Outrage over Alternative Christmas Message

2008-12-25T16:29:00.008-05:00

Translation transcript of the Alternative Christmas Message, delivered by the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his native language Farsi.

"In the Name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Upon the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, Son of Mary, the Word of God, the Messenger of mercy, I would like to congratulate the followers of Abrahamic faiths, especially the followers of Jesus Christ, and the people of Britain.

The Almighty created the universe for human beings and human beings for Himself.

He created every human being with the ability to reach the heights of perfection. He called on man to make every effort to live a good life in this world and to work to achieve his everlasting life.

On this difficult and challenging journey of man from dust to the divine, He did not leave humanity to its own devices. He chose from those He created the most excellent as His Prophets to guide humanity.

All Prophets called for the worship of God, for love and brotherhood, for the establishment of justice and for love in human society. Jesus, the Son of Mary, is the standard-bearer of justice, of love for our fellow human beings, of the fight against tyranny, discrimination and injustice.

All the problems that have bedevilled humanity throughout the ages came about because humanity followed an evil path and disregarded the message of the Prophets.

Now as human society faces a myriad of problems and a succession of complex crises, the root causes can be found in humanity's rejection of that message, in particular the indifference of some governments and powers towards the teachings of the divine Prophets, especially those of Jesus Christ.

The crises in society, the family, morality, politics, security and the economy which have made life hard for humanity and continue to put great pressure on all nations have come about because the Prophets have been forgotten, the Almighty has been forgotten and some leaders are estranged from God.

If Christ were on earth today, undoubtedly He would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers.

If Christ were on earth today, undoubtedly He would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over.

If Christ were on earth today, undoubtedly He would fight against the tyrannical policies of prevailing global economic and political systems, as He did in His lifetime. The solution to today's problems is a return to the call of the divine Prophets. The solution to these crises is to follow the Prophets - they were sent by the Almighty for the good of humanity.

Today, the general will of nations is calling for fundamental change. This is now taking place. Demands for change, demands for transformation, demands for a return to human values are fast becoming the foremost demands of the nations of the world. The response to these demands must be real and true. The prerequisite to this change is a change in goals, intentions and directions. If tyrannical goals are repackaged in an attractive and deceptive package and imposed on nations again, the people, awakened, will stand up against them.

Fortunately, today, as crises and despair multiply, a wave of hope is gathering momentum. Hope for a brighter future and hope for the establishment of justice, hope for real peace, hope for finding virtuous and pious rulers who love the people and want to serve them – and this is what the Almighty has promised.

We believe, Jesus Christ will return, together with one of the children of the revered Messenger of Islam and will lead the world to love, brotherhood and justice. The responsibility of all followers of Christ and Abrahamic faiths is to prepare the way for the fulfilment of this divine promise and the arrival of that joyful, shining and wonderful age. I hope that the collective will of nations will unite in the not too distant future and with the grace of the Almighty Lord, that shining age will come to rule the earth.

Once again, I congratulate one and all on the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. I pray for the New Year to be a year of happiness, prosperity, peace and brotherhood for humanity. I wish you every success and happiness."

Left: British Viewers watch the Alternative Christmas Message by Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad on UK Channel 4 News.

Each Christmas Day, Queen Elizabeth II broadcasts a seasonal message to the nation. Since 1993, the UK's Channel 4 has broadcast an 'alternative message' presented by a range of figures, including an injured veteran from the war in Afghanistan, Jesse Jackson, Brigitte Bardot and a 9/11 survivor.

A myriad of critics, featuring gay rights, human rights and Zionist groups, came out to criticize Ahmadinejad's Christmas message on British Television.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stoked criticism on Thursday by delivering a Christmas message on British television, saying if Jesus were alive he would oppose "bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers." an apparent reference to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Israel's occupation of Palestine for the past sixty years.

Israel's ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, called it a "national embarrassment."

"That Channel 4 should give an unchallenged platform to the president of a regime, which denies the Holocaust, advocates the destruction of the sovereign state of Israel, funds and encourages terrorism, executes children and hangs gay people is a disgrace. Outrage doesn't begin to explain it," said the ambassador.

Henry Grunwald, President, Board of Deputies of British Jews opined: "To invite him to deliver a Christmas message, even a so-called alternative one, fills me with disgust. Whatever he may say in his 'message', his words on other occasions and his actions towards minority groups in Iran should have disqualified him from filling this television spot."

"This is the equivalent of giving Robert Mugabe a prime-time television slot to promote his propaganda." asserted Peter Tatchell, a human rights activist.

Left: The Queen highlighted the impact of the credit crunch in her traditional Christmas message this year.

These Campaign groups attacked the broadcaster's decision to air the speech, as 'dangerous' and motivated by ratings.

Britain's Foreign Office condemned the speech, "President Ahmadinejad has during his time in office made a series of appalling anti-Semitic statements," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said. She continued, "the British media are rightly free to make their own editorial choices, but this invitation will cause offense and bemusement not just at home but amongst friendly countries abroad."

The move was criticised by some Jewish groups who labeled it a scandal and a national embarrassment. Stephen Smith, director of the Holocaust Center, said the message should be treated with caution.

"I think this benign message is deceptive. People need to be alert to the fact that this is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Many of his political and historical views are very dangerous and do not uphold the views in his message."

Speaking in Farsi, Ahmadinejad centered his Christmas message around a theme, which highlighted the scourge of oppression supported and implemented by governments. "If Christ were on Earth today, undoubtedly he would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over," he proclaimed.

He ended by saying: "I pray for the New Year to be a year of happiness, prosperity, peace and brotherhood for humanity. I wish you every success and happiness."

Explaining the decision to invite Ahmadinejad to speak, Channel Four's head of news and current affairs Dorothy Byrne said: "As the leader of one of the most powerful states in the Middle East, President Ahmadinejad's views are enormously influential.

Left: Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad, center, is hellped by his bodyguards in the midts of a religious ceremony marking the death of the Shiite Saint Jaafar Sadeq in Tehran, Iran. (Hasan Sarbakhshian/AP)

"As we approach a critical time in international relations, we are offering our viewers an insight into an alternative world view."

Britain and Israel as well as the most powerful nations in the West in have had rocky relations with Iran for years, particularly over Iran's civilian nuclear program, which is a right availed to it as a signatory of the Non Proliferation Nuclear Treaty. Israel holds certain unfounded fears that the Iranian civilian nuclear industry could be altered for military purposes if so chosen, The West has acted upon those fears over the burgeoning nuclear energy advances in Iran and have instituted a harsh regime of sanctions against it through United Nations resolutions and initiatives on their own behalf based on the assumption that Iran could or may use the technology at some point to make arms. US intelligence agencies and the IAEA, the nuclear watchdog agency have both reported that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons.

There has been calls by Israel to bomb these civilian facilities in Iran as was done by the Jewish state in Iraq and recently in Syria as well as, against Lybia by the United States.

But these alarmists would have us believe in Devils and bogey men who must haunt our every waking hour and return at night to assail our dreams:

Ahmadi Nejad is a man who hates Jews, persecutes Christians in his own land and who denies the greatest crime against humanity ever happened has seven uninterrupted and unchallenged minutes on prime-time British network TV on Christmas Day to himself. Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad -- then put them in charge of Channel 4. No doubt if Hitler was still around they'd have him broadcast a Happy Hanukah message.

Iraqi Hero Thrown into the spotlight

2008-12-23T20:41:00.008-05:00

Left: Photograph of Iraqi Journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi. There is no disputing the fact that Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi, in hurling his shoes at President Bush, has struck a nerve in Iraqi society and in the Arab world in general. (Photo: Al-Iraq News)

The shoes we longed for
By Sami Ramadani

Muntazer al-Zaidi, the young journalist who took on Bush has become a unifying Iraqi symbol, a national hero.

Left: Sami Ramadani

Within a few unlikely seconds, a pair of size 10 shoes have become the most destructive weapon the people of Iraq have managed to throw at the occupying powers, after nearly six years of occupation and formidable resistance. One Iraqi writer called the shoes, hurled by a journalist at George Bush, "Iraq's weapon of comprehensive destruction".

While the uprisings of Falluja, Najaf, Basra and Baghdad against the occupation will always remain as landmarks of a people resisting occupation, these incredible seconds have united Iraqis in the most dramatic fashion.

Contrary to most media coverage, the 28-year-old TV reporter Muntadhar al-Zaidi made history not by merely throwing a pair of shoes, the highest expression of insult in Iraqi culture, at the US president, but by what he said while doing so and as he was smothered by US and Iraqi security men. He groaned as they dragged him out of the press conference. They succeeded in silencing him - and according to his brother he was beaten in custody - but he had already said enough to shake the occupation and Nouri al-Maliki's Green Zone regime to their foundations.

Strip the words away, and his and the Iraqi people's cry of deep pain, anger and defiance would amount to no more than a shoe-throwing insult. But the words were heard. "This is the farewell kiss, you dog," he shouted as he threw the first shoe. The crucial line followed the second shoe: "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq." Once those words were heard, the impact of a pair of shoes became electrifying. A young journalist has put aside the demands of his profession, preferring to act as the loudest cry of his long-suffering people. If one considers the torture and killings in Iraqi and US jails that Muntadhar often mentioned in his reports for al-Baghdadia satellite TV station, he was certainly aware he risked being badly hurt.

As the Iraqi and Arab satellite stations switched from the live press conference to reporting reaction to the event, the stunned presenters and reporters were swept away by popular expressions of joy in the streets, from Baghdad to Gaza to Casablanca. TV stations and media websites were inundated with messages of adulation. The instant reply to any criticism of "insulting a guest" was: "Bush is a mass murderer and a war criminal who sneaked into Baghdad. He killed a million Iraqis. He burned the country down."

Expressions of support and demands for Muntadhar's immediate release have spread from Najaf and Falluja to Baghdad, and from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south. An impressive show of anti-occupation unity is developing fast, after being weakened by the sectarian forces that the occupation itself has strengthened and nourished, as Muntadhar himself used to stress.

No one asked after Muntadhar's religion or sect, but they all loved his message. Indeed, I have yet to come across an Iraqi media outlet or website that pronounced on his religion, sect or ethnicity. The first I heard of his "sect" was through US and British media.

The reality is that Muntadhar is a secular socialist whose hero happens to be Che Guevara. He became a prominent leftwing student leader immediately after the occupation, while at Baghdad University's media college. He reported for al-Baghdadia on the poor and downtrodden victims of the US war. He was first on the scene in Sadr City and wherever people suffered violence or severe deprivation. He not only followed US Apache helicopters' trails of death and destruction, but he was also among the first to report every "sectarian" atrocity and the bombing of popular market places. He let the victims talk first.

It was effective journalism, reporting that the victims of violence themselves accused the US-led occupation of being behind all the carnage. He was a voice that could not be silenced, despite being kidnapped by a gang and arrested by US and regime forces.

His passion for the war's victims and his staunchly anti-occupation message endeared him to al-Baghdadia viewers. And after sending Bush out of Iraq in ignominy he has become a formidable national hero. The orphan who was brought up by his aunt, and whose name means the longed or awaited for, has become a powerful unifying symbol of defiance, and is being adopted by countless Iraqis as "our dearest son".

• Sami Ramadani, a political exile from Saddam's regime, is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University sami.ramadani@londonmet.ac.uk

Likud or Kadima to "Topple Hamas"

2008-12-22T08:09:00.004-05:00

Israeli leaders 'to topple Hamas.' Was there ever a doubt based on the sixty year occupation experience of the Palestinian people under the yoke of the ever expanding Israeli state?

Left: Iraeli Foreign Minister and top of Kadima's list, Tzipi Livni with outgoing Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, who is ridden with corruption scandals. Tzipi Livni (left) and Ehud Olmert at the cabinet meeting. (21 December 2008), Minister Livni said Israel must react when it is fired upon, but does not mention the underlying Israeli sources of the attacks -- the refusal of Israel to relinquish Palestinian lands and allow a Palestinian state. (Photo: AP)

The two leading candidates to become Israel's next prime minister after the February 10, 2009, elections, Binyamin Netanyahu, Likud, and Tzipora Malka Livin, Kadima, have vowed if elected to topple the Palestinian Hamas government, in Gaza. The threats by Foreign Minister Livni and Likud party leader Netanyahu came after outgoing PM Ehud Olmert warned against making bold statements.

This hawkish invocation by the politicians may be contextualized in election dynamics nevertheless, the stance represents fundamental national policy of both Israeli parties. Therefore, this view is attached to core beliefs and are not merely, maneuvers for political capital. Livni has recently opined that if elected she would call on Israeli Palestinians to reassess their national aspirations and urge that these would be better served elsewhere--once she has established a Palestinian state. While Netanyahu, who was once Prime Minister and is now leader of Likud since Ariel Sharon left the party to form Kadima, has long held radical nationalist views that call for retaining all the lands of the Palestinians.

A six-month Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas, which runs Gaza, came to an end on Friday. On Sunday rockets fired by revolutionaries in Gaza hit a house in the town of Sderot. No-one was injured in the attack, though a worker at a nearby farming community was hurt when another device landed in a field. The Israeli military has said militants fired some 30 rockets and mortar bombs into Israel on Saturday. A Palestinian resistance fighter was killed in an Israeli air strike. It is not clear, which event preceded the other.

At the Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday, the head of the country's domestic security agency, Shin Bet, said that Hamas had increased the range of its rockets during the ceasefire and could now hit several southern Israeli cities.

Yuval Diskin said the rockets could now reach Kiryat Gat, Ashdod and even Beersheba, about 40km (25 miles) from Gaza. He also told ministers that while Hamas had renewed its attacks, it was "interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms."

Although, these crude projectiles, whose technology date back to the second world war era, are dangerous, but they are very ineffective militarily and rarely cause harm to Israeli civilians. While Israel's precision laser guided missiles have killed hundreds of Palestinians over the years. The onus of the cycle of disproportionate violence ultimately, rests with Israel. She can stop the low-level warfare by simply disavowing its dreams of a greater Israel, returning the seized land to its rightful owners and facilitating an independent state of Palestinians to flourish without being assailed.

Left: Although, Islamic Jihad, has sporadically, fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip in what it says are retaliatory strikes for IDF incursions upon its members. Hamas for the most part, had maintained the integrity of the truce with Israel.

"It wants us to lift the siege of Gaza, stop attacks, and extend the truce to include the West Bank," Mr Diskin added.

Hamas blamed Israel for the end of the ceasefire on Friday, saying it had not respected its terms, including the lifting of the blockade.

Israeli officials insist that there was no commitment to ease the siege, under which they have allowed in little more than basic humanitarian aid and at other times nothing.

Prime Minister Olmert said during the cabinet meeting that the government had agreed to the ceasefire with Hamas last June with little doubt or hesitation.

"Israel has always hoped for and wanted quiet for the residents of the South and that they should enjoy genuine calm and be free of the threat of unceasing Qassam and mortar attacks that have disrupted life in the South for a very long period," he said.

It is interesting to note that Minister Olmert on the eve of his expulsion from office has seen fit to call for giving up East Jerusalem and almost all of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians as well as returning the Golan Heights to Syria. Apparently, there is a certain liberation that comes from having a political career in tatters over allegations of having pocketed envelopes of cash and other corrupt actions.

Mr Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak also warned the cabinet and opposition parties against making "bold statements" about plans for a major military operation in Gaza.

"A government doesn't rush to battle, but doesn't avoid it either," Mr Olmert said. "Israel will know how to give the proper response at the right time in the right way, responsibly."

Shortly afterwards, however, Ms Livni told a meeting of her Kadima party that she would topple Hamas if she became prime minister after the general election on 10 February.

Left: IDF soldier fires missile

"The state of Israel, and a government under me, will make it a strategic objective to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza," she said. "The means for doing this should be military, economic and diplomatic."

"Israel must react when it is fired upon, must re-establish its force of dissuasion and stop the rockets," she added. "This is what has to be done and this is what I will do."

Mr Netanyahu, whose right-wing Likud party is currently ahead in the polls, meanwhile called for a more "active policy of attack," accusing the current government of being too "passive."

"In the long-term, the toppling of the Hamas regime is inevitable," he said while visiting Sderot, Israel, on Sunday.

In actuality, there appears no aperture in policy towards Hamas. These calls for a new forceful front against Hamas would merely mirror the policies of Israeli governments in the past decades. Although, Israeli secret services did court, fund and enable Hamas in its formative stages in a bid to counteract Yasser Arafat's Palestinian National Authority (FATAH).

Left: Binyamin Netanyahu, tops the list of the Israeli Likud Party. Bibi says: "Right now we have to go from passive response to active assault." Netanyahu in Sderot (21 December 2008). (AP photo)

He said residents of southern Israeli towns close to the Gaza Strip were "paying a hefty price for the mistakes made by Livni and her ministers" since the Israeli withdrawal from the territory in 2005.

Yet, it was in the wake of the policies of a Netanyahu government, which Hamas saw its rise to power. Moreover, Netanyahu was a high ranking member of the LIkud party with both, Sharon and Livni among others in current Kadima-led government. Member of Knesset Binyamin Netanyahu can hardly claim to hold no responsibility for the current state of chaos that grips the region. Where were his bold visions of peace and security when his administration was at the helm?

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, having escaped assassination attempts by Israel, who is also former Palestinian Prime Minister, dismissed the Israeli threats. Hamas was created on December 15, 1987. The Israeli support for Hamas coincided with the height of the joint Israeli-US-Pakistani Mujahideen effort against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Apparently, Israel sought to implement the policy of nurturing religious parties to dilute secular sectors in the occupied territories. However, blowback and fate would betray those aims of engineering Palestinian politics as Hamas has developed to become the most ardent and organized Palestinian opponent to the occupation.

Right: Ismail Haniyeh called for a truce with Israel at the Islamic University in Gaza City. Prime Minister from March 29, 2006 to June 14, 2007, when Israel complemented with pressure from the "international community" boycotted and eventually, dissolved the Palestinian government, arresting a majority of sitting members who remain in jail subsequently, installing Abu Mazen as head of the Palestinian Authority. (Photo: hatem Moussa/AP)

"Nothing can finish off our people," he said. "It is not our people who are escalating the situation; it is the Israeli occupation, which should have stuck to the conditions of the truce."

As the countdown to February's election unfolds the candidates are eager to court an electorate fearful of the future. Ostensibly, most Israelis want peace however, their governments continue to implement military policy, which keeps the population captive mired in a perpetual mindset of fear-mongering.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that a "major escalation of violence would have grave consequences for the protection of civilians in Israel and Gaza, the welfare of the Gazan civilian population, and the sustainability of political efforts."

Israel launched a diplomatic public relations (PR), campaign Sunday, aimed largely at member states of the United Nations Security Council and influential European countries, in order to pave the way for an IDF operation in Gaza.

Left: IDF soldiers attack Hamas' Headquarters.

Readers ought to consider that the IDF have been operating in Gaza, unto Gaza and around Gaza, but what do facts about a continued assault on the people of the Gaza strip matter? The PR campaign has more to do with framing any escalation by Israel as novel and unprecedented actions that are compelled by new conditions by involving "terrorist" attacks emanating from Gaza.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed Israel's embassies and consulates abroad to begin diplomatic and public relations work in their respective countries. The diplomats are to inform the host countries that Hamas is the one that violated the "lull" and is responsible for the situation in Gaza.

The so-called 'lull' was a six-month truce negotiated with Hamas, which Egypt brokered however, it has been degraded to a "lull" precisely, because the Israelis had little intention of honoring the agreement. In fact, while the world was fixed on the election results in the United States that saw the historic win of Barack Obama, Israel took opportunity of the news 'lull' to unleash its special forces to enter and attack Gaza thereby, breaking the truce. Israel would continue the onslaught for several days thereafter being fully aware that the world's attention would be focused on reaction to the Obama election. Wherefore, Israel calculated she would meet little scrutiny in the world press for its strategic belligerence agaisnt Gaza.

Left: Palestinian Hamas security men stand to attention however, they are bare handed in military hardware compared to Israel's modern armed forces.(AFP)

Israel has marshaled its disinformation machine throughout the world to paint the Palestinians it has under a crippling multi-dimensional siege as terrorists who are not amenable to legal conventions or treaties. Israel has instituted a comprehensive prevention of goods from entering Gaza including medical supplies, fuel, food and banking activity.

While Gaza shares a border with Egypt, which could alleviate the dire situation however, the Rafah crossing has also been closed. Egypt has conditioned a partial opening of the border-crossing, limited to citizens and personal belongings, on the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas. Hamas has offered to release the prisoner if Israel releases Hamas' Members of Parliament it abducted in military sweeps and other such prisoners of a political nature that are in Israeli prisons, most of whom without charge. Negotiations are on-going between Hamas and the Israelis on a prisoner exchange. There are currently some eleven thousand Palestinians prisoners of varying ages detained by Israel. Egypt has also pointed out that by liberally opening the border, Israel would be exculpated from its legal responsibilities.

Livni instructed Israel's United Nations team to file a formal complaint with the Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, and the Security Council regarding the rocket fire against it from Gaza. In the complaint, Israel warns that it "will not remain passive" if the rocket fire continues and that it "will do everything" to protect its citizens.

Livni also intends to make phone calls to top diplomats worldwide, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary-General Ban and the foreign ministers of Russia, France, Germany and Britain.

The United Nations (UN), suddenly becomes a rehabilitated and reliable institution and has reformed itself into an impartial world body when it serves the purposes of Israel. The UN is good when some 77% of the land of Palestine is given to Israel. The UN is also good when its troops protect the border of Israel with Egypt. But, the UN is bad when it passes resolutions that demand Israel adhere to international law and refrain from annexing land, destroying the homes of Palestinians or building Walls and settlements. Otherwise, the UN remains an enclave of "racism and bias" toward Jews in general and Israel in particular according to the Israelis. Moreover, Israel routinely, demeans and disregards resolution after resolution passed by the United Nations. Why is it that the United Nations is now being tapped by Israel in order to further its aims of painting a false picture of the true nature of carnage it has caused in the Gaza Strip?

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that he has instructed the IDF to prepare for an operation in Gaza. "The place, time and method of operation will be left to the professionals," he said. "The Chief of Staff and Defense Minister know what to do, as least as well as some of the hotheads," he said.

Left: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak sucking on icecream.

Be as it may, when Ehud Barak came to head the Israeli government overseeing the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon in 2000. Palestinians though, found neither solace, nor redress in his administration. In fact, a second Intifada took place under his stewardship of the government. The expectations of Palestine that there would be a fair and just peace, given their bitter experiences with Mr. Biyamin Netanyahu, in prime minister Barak, were utterly, betrayed.

Any new expectations rested in Ehud Barak are unwarranted in light of his past government policies, Ehud Barak's current statements of a measured and tempered response should be taken in context with his previous behavior and weighed by the paucity of ameliorative agreements availed to the Palestinian people. Any such beneficent hopes in the intent of Mr. Barak would simply be caricatures of wishful thinking and exhibitions of imaginary assurances.

Mr. Barak's comments while seemingly equidistant should be judged as expedient political speech at the apex of an election cycle. To be certain, Palestinians and other objective observers should tread very carefully in dealing with and considering Mr. Barak and his high-sounding professions. Lest we forget the brutal Israeli military action and repression of unarmed Palestinian protesters during the Second Intifada under Barak's administration. This is a dangerous man, these are determined people who will stop at nothing to get their Eretz Israel.

Tuareg Unrests in Mali and Niger - Age-old Contentions Rear Head

2008-12-20T17:17:00.007-05:00

Left: Among other grievances, Tuareg rebels are demanding greater autonomy

Tuareg Rebels Raid Mali Barracks

Tuareg rebels have attacked a military base in northern Mali, killing at least 14 people and taking several hostages.

Military sources said at least 20 vehicles carrying rebels arrived at the base 400km (250 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako shortly before dawn.

The attack is the first major clash since the rebels, who are demanding greater autonomy, signed a peace deal with the government in July.

Left: Armed Tuareg insurgents

Last week, Mali's president reiterated his call for further peace talks.

Amadou Toumani Toure called on the rebels to lay down their arms, saying that "those who want war can go elsewhere".

But the BBC's West Africa correspondent Will Ross says the attack shows that yet another attempt to make peace in northern Mali has failed.

A military source described the scene at the base as "carnage".

"There are 14 soldiers killed including the chief of the post, 15 others injured, and it appears that hostages were taken," he said. The source said they believed rebel chief Ibrahim Ag Bahanga was behind the attack.
Mr Bahanga had not signed up to the peace deal and decided to fight on, says our correspondent.

A source close to Mr Bahanga said the rebels had "gained the upper hand in the attack" and claimed to have killed "more than 20" soldiers.

"We regret that, but it was them or us. We have wounded on our side," the unnamed source told AFP.

The Tuareg are an historically nomadic people living in the Sahara and Sahel regions of North Africa. Tuareg militants in Mali and Niger have been engaged in sporadic armed struggles for several decades. The Malian military has accused them of involvement in drug-smuggling.

Tuareg unrest

More than 44 soldiers have been killed in Niger since the formation in February of a new rebel group, the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ).

Initially confined to Niger, recent tensions are now spilling into neighbouring Mali, where scores of government troops have been abducted in the country's remote north. While rebels in both countries claim not to seek political dominance, and talk of widespread rebellion is still dismissed by analysts, the rising tide of insurgency is a sure and growing obstacle to the stability of the Sahel.

A Tuareg splinter group in Mali announced it had formed an alliance with Tuareg rebels in neighbouring Niger, who have begun a military offensive since last year against the Niger government.

The governments of Mali and Niger have said they will work together against the rebels who have demanded better development and a share of Niger's mineral wealth.

Who are the Tuareg?

The Tuareg are a nomadic people descended from the Berbers of North Africa. For hundreds of years, they have operated caravans across the Sahara desert, trading in dates, perfume, spices and slaves.

Left: Map area of major Tuareg presence

Summer temperatures in the Sahara reach 50C and winter brings "Harmattan" dust storms which can block out the sun for days. At the end of French colonial rule in West Africa, the Tuareg found themselves straddled between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso to the south; Algeria and Libya to the north.

They share their own language - Tamasheq - and have been largely Muslim since the 16th Century. They are known as the "Blue men of the desert" because of their trademark indigo gowns and turbans, which also cover their mouths. Drinking tea is considered an important social ritual with cups drunk in threes; sweet and often flavoured with mint.

What are the Tuaregs' grievances?

While it is hard to assess the level of support for the methods of militant groups among all ethnic Tuareg, the nature of their grievances is broadly the same.

Their forefathers largely subdued by French colonial rule, today's Tuareg in Mali and Niger complain of poor representation in governments and militaries dominated by the darker-skinned peoples of the southern Sahel. The result, they say, has been marginalization and a continued failure to tackle Tuareg poverty. A similar political and historic dynamic exist in Darfur specifically and Sudan in general. Whereas, the political elite in the Sudan remains the descendents of those who traded in African slaves, the reverse, more or less, exists in Niger and Mali. Slavery continues to exist in these countries.

A booming uranium industry in Niger is also the source of controversy. Mining, the Tuareg say, has damaged valuable pastoral lands; while revenues have failed to benefit local communities. In addition to demands for more development the rebels have also called for a fairer share of the mining revenue. While in Sudan, the symbolic resource of a long-felt historical and political contention between African and Arabsized peoples is mainly oil. Although, other natural resources, including water and mineral extractions play a role in the divide.

What have the rebels done?

Treaties signed in Mali and Niger during the mid-1990s ended a period of open Tuareg revolt and brought a decade of relative calm to the region.

Left: Camel racing is a popular Tuareg past-time

But in February this year, Tuareg in Niger, apparently frustrated by continuing inequalities, took up arms and formed the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ).

A series of attacks by the group on government facilities in the Sahara has since claimed the lives of dozens of soldiers. Neighbouring Mali has also seen a rise in Tuareg rebel activity where large numbers have been taken prisoner this year.

A colonel in the Malian army is, in addition, known to have defected to join the rebels.

What are the Mali and Niger governments doing?

On the diplomatic side, there have been fresh attempts at reconciliation. The Malian government held talks in Algiers earlier this year with Tuareg opposition group, the Democratic Alliance (DA).

The Niger government has, for its part, called on President Muammar Gaddafi of Libya to mediate in its dealings with the MNJ.

Meanwhile, the security ministers of Mali and Niger held talks in August to co-ordinate efforts on the ground. They have agreed to joint patrols along their common border and to allow both countries' forces to pursue rebels into each others' territory.

President Mamadou Tandja of Niger has also called this week for greater international support in resolving the problem. It remains to be seen, however, what this will mean.

Left: Typical Tuareg peoples

What has the impact been on the civilian populations?

While life is said to continue as normal in the capitals of Bamako and Niamey, aid agencies suggest the disruption of Saharan supply routes by recent events is being increasingly felt by people in rural areas. This comes alongside dislocation from recent floods which have affected some 14,000 in Niger alone. Concern has also been raised about the continued diverting of funds away from existing problems such as housing and the fight against malaria.

Afghan NATO Role in Human Toll

2008-12-19T09:28:00.010-05:00

Left: British soldiers in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan. A British soldier was killed in fighting in troubled southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the sixth fatality among British forces in the past week, the defence ministry said in a statement.
(AFP/John D McHugh)

A British soldier was killed in fighting in occupied southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the sixth fatality among British forces in the past week, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The soldier from 1st Battalion The Rifles was killed by enemy fire in an area north west of Lashkar Gah in southern Helmand province while fighting in the district of Nad-e-Ali, the ministry in London said.

He was treated at the scene before being taken to the military hospital at Camp Bastion by helicopter, but later died of his wounds.

His death follows that of a soldier from 29 Commando Royal Artillery in Helmand on Monday, and those of four marines in the province on Friday.

Left: While State funerals and designations of heroism, which feature awarding medals instill and confirm the culture of war nevertheless, families are destroyed as a matter of course.

It brings to 134 the total number of British service personnel killed in Afghanistan since 2001, when US-led forces ousted the Taliban in the wake of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

"The death of this soldier has left everyone in Task Force Helmand deeply saddened," army spokeswoman Commander Paula Rowe said.

"Whilst words cannot ease their devastating loss, our heartfelt condolences go to his family, friends and colleagues at this time."

Britain has around 8,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). They are largely based in Helmand, where they are battling Taliban insurgents.

Left: Another life lost in the on-going occupation of Afghanistan, Stuart Nash, whose job in the British forces was a rifleman in the 1st Battalion.

A British Army soldier killed in Afghanistan has been named as Rifleman Stuart Nash.

Rifleman Nash, from the 1st Battalion The Rifles, died after he was hit by enemy fire while covering comrades from a rooftop in southern Helmand on Thursday.

An Australian national, he was born in Sydney and only joined the regiment in March this year.

His parents, Bill and Amanda Nash, said: "We are shattered, of course, by the news but Stuart was doing what he most wanted to do in life, having harboured a wish for a military career since joining the cadets at the age of 13.

"He went to the UK to join up to get a better opportunity to do real soldiering, which he has done, if only briefly.

"He was a willing volunteer. Our soldiers have chosen their profession and we are, and will remain, proud of their willingness to make these sacrifices for the security of all of us who remain at home."

Rifleman Nash is the 134th British serviceman to die in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001.

Earlier, the bodies of five soldiers also killed fighting the Taliban were repatriated at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire.

Up to 1,000 people watched a cortege of hearses make its way through the high street of nearby Wootton Bassett and pause at the local war memorial for a minute's silence.

Sergeant John Manuel, 38, from Gateshead, Corporal Marc Birch, 26, from Kingsthorpe, Northamptonshire, and 27-year-old Marine Damian Davies, from Telford - all Royal Marines - were killed by a 13-year-old suicide bomber in Helmand Province on Friday.

Earlier that day, Lance Corporal Steven Fellows, 28, of 45 Commando died from injuries suffered when an explosion hit his vehicle while on patrol in Sangin.

The fifth man, Lieutenant Aaron Lewis, 26, of 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery was fatally wounded on Monday when the gun position he was commanding in the Gereshk area of Helmand Province came under attack.

Crowds of Royal British Legion members, shopkeepers, ex-servicemen and their families have gathered spontaneously along the route ever since the first bodies began coming home last year.

Left: Mourners carry the coffin of a civilian victim of the war in Kandahar, Afghanistan. (Allauddin Khan/AP)

On the other side of the human cost ledger, Human Rights Watch has detailed the expanding civilian casualties of the occupation of Afghanistan. The continued bombings have at times decimated entire Afghan families. The report analyzes the use of airstrikes by US and NATO forces and resulting civilian casualties, particularly when used to make up for the lack of ground troops and during emergency situations. Human Rights Watch found few civilian deaths resulted from planned airstrikes, while almost all deaths occurred in unplanned airstrikes.

United Nations Humanitarian affairs figures reveal a 62% rise in Afghan civilian deaths for the year 2008. The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan has risen by almost two-thirds in the first half of the year compared with 2007.

The figures, which reveal that almost 700 civilians have died, show that the instability and violence afflicting the country are taking an increasing toll on ordinary Afghans. The projected deaths for the entire year may amount to nearly 1500 civilians especially, in light of the intensification of fighting on both sides of the occupation.

Somali Woes: The Perils of Intervention

2008-12-18T20:39:00.007-05:00

Left: The Cover of German author Michael Schiffmann’s book "Race Against Death: Mumia Abu-Jamal: a Black Revolutionary in White America" featuring a picture of the political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Somali Woes: The Perils of Intervention
By Mumia Abu-Jamal

On the coastal outcrops of East Africa, in an area known as 'the horn,' Somalia sits like a sentinel jutting into both the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

Although Somalians have recently been in the Western press because of a half-dozen sensational cases of piracy, the nation has a long and distinct history, centuries before the era of European colonialism.

As long ago as the 1400's, Somalis fought border wars with their western neighbor, Ethiopia. But like many African nations, interference by the West has meant disaster for the people.

Somalia was colonized by the French, the Italians and later, the British, who split the country into separate territories. But throughout the colonization era, they kept their language (Somali), their culture, their history and sense of Somali nationhood.

In 2006, as part of the U.S. misguided 'War on Terror', the U.S. supported an Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somali, that transformed a bad situation into a worse one. The occupation stirred up Somali nationalism, which strengthened hard-core Islamist forces, which have spearheaded Somali resistance against the Ethiopians.

Now comes word that the Ethiopians are rushing for the exits. By January, 2009, they should be gone.

In the aftermath of this bloody unpopular occupation has grown a deeply radicalized and militarized generation of youth that has no lived memory of schools, of peace, or of communal well-being; only war and strife.

When the U.S. supports proxy wars against nations it doesn't like, it rarely reaps anything better than bitterness.

For the U.S., as one of the world's richest countries, can often afford such expenses, but it doesn't know the time or form of repayment.

Seven years ago, the U.S. experienced one form of repayment when an offshoot of the mujahadin army which forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan, growing stronger in men, money and material by the day.

If Sept. 11th has taught us anything, it should be that wars abroad can become strikes at home.

We've not heard the last of Somalia.

[column written 12/11/08, (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal]

No Peace to Keep in Somalia

2008-12-18T19:42:00.004-05:00

US Somalia Peacekeeping Idea Bombs at UN

"No Peace to Keep," Warns Ban

Left: Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon

Fresh off their successful effort to get the United Nations to authorize ground raids by foreign militaries to combat piracy in Somalia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed a much more difficult proposition, calling for a UN “peacekeeping” force to be sent to Somalia quickly.

French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert called the proposal “not feasible” and “not desirable,” as the deteriorating situation in Somalia made a deployment dangerous. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added that “if there is no peace to keep, peacekeeping operations are not supposed to be there.”

Ban also pointed out that he has spent the past four months fruitlessly looking for a nation to lead such a mission, and only “one or two” nations even expressed willingness to commit troops. The US has offered funding for the mission, but they appear unwilling to supply troops either.

In addition to authorizing ground troops to attack pirates in Somalia, the US State Department says they believe the resolution will also authorize nations to launch air strikes into Somali territory.

Left: US Blackhawk helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia. What began as a precision raid ended in near-disaster. The US sought to back particular warlords against others.

Have not so-called peace keeping missions and other such democracy exporting endeavors n Iraq and Afghanistan taught the United States to go light in the plight to be the world's policeman? Lest we forget the Clinton administration's debacle in Mogadishu.

The US withdrew from Somalia in March 1994, followed by full UN withdrawal in 1995 at a total cost of 147 fatalities. Have we not been there done that?

G-Man, gee man

2008-12-17T00:24:00.002-05:00

Who's watching the bad guys who watch the people the so-called good guys tell us are alleged bad guys and need to be watched? Is it a wash?

President George W. Bush Shoed Out In Iraq

2008-12-16T11:28:00.011-05:00

Left: In this image from APTN video, US President George W. Bush, left, ducks as a man throws a shoe at him, during a news conference with Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2008, in Baghdad, Iraq. On an Iraq trip shrouded in secrecy and marred by dissent, President George W. Bush on Sunday hailed progress in the war that defines his presidency and got a size-10 reminder of his unpopularity when a man hurled two shoes at him during a news conference. (AP Photo)

An Iraqi Official stated that the Shoe-thrower is in Iraqi military custody

BAGHDAD (AP) — An Iraqi government official says the journalist who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush has been handed over to the Iraqi military command in Baghdad.

The official says Muntadhar al-Zeidi has been turned over to the prime minister's security guards to face further investigation by the military agency in charge of enforcing law in Baghdad. The official spoke on condition of anonymity Tuesday because he was not authorized to talk to the news media.

Left: A shoe is raised during a protest against the US President's visit in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday. Dec. 15, 2008. Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad on Sunday, while yelling in Arabic.(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Thousands took to the streets in Iraq on Monday to protest after Al-Zeidi was taken into custody for throwing his shoes at the president during a Sunday news conference. He could face charges of insulting a foreign leader and the Iraqi prime minister, who was standing next to Bush.

Zaidi jumped up as Bush was holding a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Sunday, shouted "It is the farewell kiss, you dog" and threw two shoes at the U.S. leader.

Both missed after Bush ducked but Zaidi was dragged struggling and screaming from the room by security guards and could be heard shouting outside while the news conference continued after momentary mayhem.

Muntazer al-Zaidi a hero across the Arab world

Left: Security forces pounce on an Iraqi journalist who caused a furore when he hurled his shoes at visiting US President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad. Iraq faced mounting calls on Monday to release the journalist who hurled his shoes at Bush, an action branded shameful by the government but hailed by many in the Arab world as an ideal parting gift to the unpopular US president. (AFP/Saul Loeb)

Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi threw two shoes at Bush and called him a "dog" and said "this is for the widows and children of Iraq" during a Baghdad news conference on Sunday, an act that has won him instant fame across the world and wide support in the Middle East.

Durgham Zaidi said his brother Muntazer has a broken arm and ribs after being struck by Iraqi security agents.

"He has got a broken arm and ribs, and cuts to his eye and arm," said Durgham.

Durgham said he had been told that his brother was being held by Iraqi forces in the heavily fortified Green Zone compound in central Baghdad where the U.S. embassy and most government offices are housed.

Meanwhile, although the Iraqi government branded the act as shameful and Washington said Zaidi did not represent the majority of Iraqi people, the Arab world hailed the incident as an ideal parting gift to an unpopular U.S. president.

"Throwing the shoes at Bush was the best goodbye kiss ever... it expresses how Iraqis and other Arabs hate Bush," wrote Musa Barhoumeh, editor of Jordan's independent Al-Gahd newspaper.

Thousands of Iraqis joined demonstrations to protest at Bush's farewell visit to Iraq and demanded Baghdad immediately release Zaidi.

A Baghdad shopkeeper Hamza Mahdi, 30 said: "I don't like Bush, but I don't agree with this action -- it's not civilized," he said. "Journalists should use pen and paper to make their point and not their shoes."

One of his customers, Um Seif, 45, disagreed. "Me, I support him. Everyone should support him," she said. "Don't you remember what the Americans did to us? Have you already forgotten?"

Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement called him a hero and a Sunni Muslim body labeled him an "icon of the resistance against the occupation."

And in Libya, a charity headed by Muammar Gaddafi's daughter Aisha announced it would award Zaidi an "order of courage" for his actions. In Lebanon, the Shiite militant group Hezbollah said he should be regarded as a hero.

Dream come true

Left: Muntazer al-Zaidi has wanted to hit Bush with a shoe for a long time (meo.com)

Zaidi, 29, had long dreamt of a dramatic gesture to symbolize his opposition to the war that brought death and destruction to his country.

Although both shoes missed their target, Zaidi captured the world's attention with an act colleagues said he had plotted for months because he "detested America" and the man who ordered the war on his country.

His brother Durgham said Zaidi had been detained for a day by U.S. forces at the beginning of the year and that he had been kidnapped in the heart of Baghdad in November 2007 and held for a week by unknown captors.

The Baghdad-born Zaidi lives alone in a furnished two-room apartment in the capital on Rashid Road, the city's historic centre.

An AFP journalist who visited the building on Monday said his home contained books on politics and religion in Arabic and English, as well as a photograph of revolutionary icon Ernesto 'Che' Guevara.

"He devoted most of his time to Al-Baghdadia, the Egypt-based news channel, which he joined at its launch in September 2005," Zaidi's 32-year-old brother Durgham told AFP.

"He's a rather nervous type, and above all hates violence and the bombing," he added.

"Like everyone in our family he hates the occupation and considers Bush to have destroyed Iraq and killed its people. His actions restore Iraqi dignity."

Zaidi's aunt Umm Zaman, who lives in the same building, described her nephew's deed as the realization of a long-held wish.

"For a long time he has wanted to hit Bush with a shoe, and at last his dream has come true," she said.

In the defense of Zaidi

Left: Khalil al-Dulaimi, was Saddam Hussein's chief attorney. (Muhammad Hamed/Reuters)

His employer, independent Al-Baghdadiya television demanded his immediate release, "in accordance with the democratic era and the freedom of expression that Iraqis were promised by U.S authorities."

Saddam Hussein's former lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said on Monday that he was forming a team to defend the Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at US President George W. Bush during his farewell visit to Baghdad.

"So far around 200 Iraqi and other lawyers, including Americans, have expressed willingness to defend the journalist for free," the Amman-based Khalil al-Dulaimi told AFP.

"I took the decision on Sunday night to defend the man after the incident. I am currently contacting Arab bar associations to form a defence committee."