On the arrest of Greek diplomat in Sheikh Jarrah

Via: The Palestine Telegraph.

The Palestinians will not be left alone

We condemn the unacceptable and provocative stance of the Israeli police that has arrested a Greek woman, working in the Greek consulate in East Jerusalem, for daring to question (protest) the confiscation of the passports of the international activists that were in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah on a an informative tour of the area. The neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah is one of the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem that are attacked daily by police and settlers, with their only aim being to drive the Palestinians out of their homes. The illegal house demolitions, the violent evictions of families-who have been living in their houses for decades-and the illegal construction of settlements in place of those houses are an everyday phenomenon in the area. Creating a de facto demographic composition of East Jerusalem population is their plan.

Goldstone vs US House of Representatives. By Paul Woodward

Via: War in Context.

“We were disturbed by the lethality and toxicity of weapons used in Gaza, some of which have been in Western arsenals since the Cold War, such as white phosphorous, which incinerated 14 people, including several children in one attack; flechettes, small darts that are designed to tumble upon entering human flesh in order to cause maximum damage, strictly in breach of the Geneva Convention; and highly carcinogenic tungsten shrapnel and dime munitions, which contain tungsten in powder form. There is also a whole cocktail of other problematic munitions suspected to have been used.

“There are a number of other post-conflict issues in Gaza that need to be addressed. The land is dying. There are toxic deposits from all the munitions that have been dropped. There are serious issues with water—its depletion and its contamination. There is a high instance of nitrates in the soil that is especially dangerous to children. If these issues are not addressed, Gaza may not even be habitable by World Health Organization norms.” — Colonel Desmond Travers, one of the four members of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, interviewed by Ken Silverstein.

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When the House of Representatives is about to pass a non-binding resolution condemning the Goldstone report [PDF] on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and Josh Block (spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) says: “AIPAC, in concert with every mainstream pro-Israel organization in the United States, supports this important resolution,” it’s fair to conclude that AIPAC doesn’t simply support the resolution; it almost certainly had a major role in drafting the resolution.

Rabid opposition to the Goldstone report reached a hyperbolic peak this week when the Simon Wiesenthal Center referred to this serious legal finding as “the ‘Magna Carta’ of international terrorists”.

Why the hysteria?

How Detroit, the Motor City, turned into a ghost town. By Paul Harris

Via: The Guardian.

Wall Street is celebrating a recovery in the US economy, but the future looks increasingly bleak in America’s industrial heartland

Try telling Brother Jerry Smith that the recession in America has ended. As scores of people queued up last week at the soup kitchen which the Capuchin friar helps run in Detroit, the celebrations on Wall Street in New York seemed from another world.

The hungry and needy come from miles around to get a free healthy meal. Though the East Detroit neighbourhood the soup kitchen serves has had it tough for decades, the recession has seen almost any hope for anyone getting a job evaporate. Neither is there any sign that jobs might come back soon.

“Some in the past have had jobs here, but now there is nothing available to people. Nothing at all,” Brother Jerry said as he sat behind a desk with a computer but dressed in the simple brown friar’s robes of his order.

Outside his office the hungry, the homeless and the poor crowded around tables. Many were by themselves, but some were families with young children. None had jobs. Indeed, the soup kitchen itself is now starting to dip into its savings to cope with a drying up of desperately needed donations. This is an area where times are so tough that the soup kitchen is a major employer for the neighbourhood, keeping its own staff out of poverty. But now Brother Jerry fears he may also have to start laying people off.

Officially, America is on the up. The economy grew by 3.5% in the past quarter. On Wall Street, stocks are rising again. The banks – rescued wholesale by taxpayers’ money last year – are posting billions of dollars of profits. Thousands of bankers and financiers are wetting their lips at the prospect of enormous bonuses, often matching or exceeding those of pre-crash times. The financial sector is lobbying successfully to fight government attempts to regulate it. The wealthy are beginning to snap up property again, pushing prices up. In New York’s fashionable West Village a senior banker recently splurged $10m on a single apartment, sending shivers of delight through the city’s property brokers.

How the ‘Most Moral Army in the World’ Wages War on Students. By Stuart Littlewood

Via: The Palestine Chronicle.

If there’s one thing the Israelis are good at it’s making war on women and children.

They killed 952 Palestinian children in their homeland between 2000 and the start of the Gaza blitzkrieg in December 2008 (according to B’Tselem statistics). They murdered at least 350 more during their Cast Lead onslaught and have kept Gaza under daily attack ever since. So the brave Israelis must have eliminated nearly 1400 youngsters by now. Would anyone care to guess how many they left bleeding, maimed and crippled?

The “most moral army in the world” also loves waging war against Palestinian university students. Not long ago I wrote about Merna, an honors student in her final year majoring in English. Israeli soldiers frequently rampaged through her Bethlehem refugee camp in the middle of the night, ransacking homes and arbitrarily arresting residents. They took away her family one by one. First her 14-year-old cousin and best friend was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while she sat outside her family home during a curfew.

Next the Israelis arrested her eldest brother, a 22 year-old artist, and imprisoned him for 4 years. Then they came back for Merna’s 18-year-old brother. Not content with that the military came again, this time to take her youngest brother – the ‘baby’ of the family – just 16. These were the circumstances under which Merna had to study.

Israeli military law treats Palestinians as adults as soon as they reach 16, a flagrant violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Israeli youngsters, of course, are regarded as children until 18. Palestinians are dealt with by Israeli military courts, even when it’s a civil matter. These courts ignore international laws and conventions, so there’s no legal protection for individuals under Israeli military occupation.

Honduras: Solution or Stall? By Greg Grandin

Via: The Nation.

The Honduran crisis may soon be over. Maybe. The leader of the coup government, Roberto Micheletti, agreed to a nine-point plan to end the country’s political impasse, brokered by Thomas Shannon, the former US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and Barack Obama’s yet-to-be-confirmed ambassador to Brazil. The deal would return Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected president deposed in a military coup four months ago, to office; in exchange, the international community will end Honduras’ diplomatic isolation and recognize upcoming presidential elections, scheduled for November 29.

Hardliners in the coup government, however, see a loophole in the accords, which gives the Honduran National Congress the power to approve or reject Zelaya’s return. And no sooner was the ink dry on the accord when a top Micheletti advisor, Marcia Facusse de Villeda, told Bloomberg News that “Zelaya won’t be restored.” In a barefaced admission that the coup government was trying to buy time, Facusse said that “just by signing this agreement we already have the recognition of the international community for the elections.” Another Micheletti aide, Arturo Corrales, said that since the congress is not in session, no vote on the agreement could be scheduled until “after the elections.”

But such a calculated reading of the agreement will not play well with most countries, including the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the European Union, which have repeatedly called for restoration of Zelaya. Brazil–whose Tegucigalpa embassy has given Zelaya shelter since his dramatic surprise return to Honduras over a month ago–applauded Shannon’s deal, yet made it clear Zelaya had to be reinstated. And in Honduras, the National Party, whose candidate is expected to win next month’s vote, wants this crisis to be over. Its members in Congress may join with Liberal Party deputies loyal to Zelaya to approve the deal.

Water authority warns of groundwater depletion in Gaza

Via: Palestine Information Center.

The Palestinian water authority has warned Saturday of the depletion of underground water supplies in the Gaza Strip within the next 10 years, calling for taking serious action to save these supplies.

In a report, the water authority said that Gaza suffers from an annual water deficit up to 70,000,000 cubic meters as a result of the natural increase in Gaza population who live on the coastal aquifer to meet their needs of water.

It pointed out that the overlap between the Mediterranean Sea and the aquifer caused a high rate of salts in water in addition to high concentration of nitrates due to the leakage of sewage and irrigation water into it.

The water authority affirmed that 90 to 95 percent of groundwater used for domestic purposes is not fit for human consumption and do not conform with the standards set by the WHO for the quality and quantity of drinking water, the thing which poses a serious threat to human health in Gaza.

The authority added that the average per capita water consumption in Gaza is about 80 liters a day which is equivalent to half of the per capita water consumption recommended by the WHO.

Regarding the West Bank, the water authority explained that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) do not allow the Palestinians to have access to more than 20 percent of groundwater in the three basins that exist in the West Bank.

It said that the bulk of the Palestinian share in the West Bank are obtained from the eastern basin, which contains a high proportion of salt, pointing out that the average per capita consumption of this water does not exceed 60 liters per day and declines in some areas to 20 to 30 liters per day.

Ethically Cleansed – The case of Nick Griffin and the BBC-Guest Post By Sarah Gillespie

Via: Gilad Atzmon.
‘Nick Griffin is right to say London is not his city. London is a welcoming, tolerant, cosmopolitan capital’ Boris Johnson, Conservative Mayor for London

‘I would ask you to again, unless you’re going to condemn the former chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks for writing a book: ‘Will our Grandchildren be Jewish’, then don’t call me a racist, or some kind of wicked bigot’. Nick Griffin interviewed Independent 4th July 2009

All week the British media have been deliberating over whether or not the BBC should have hosted Nick Griffin.  In actual fact we need Nick Griffin to save us from looking in the mirror. It is us the collective, that is complicit in genocidal crimes and institutional intolerance. We the British electorate, are implicated in the death of millions of brown-skinned foreigners in remote lands. As long as we endorse killing in the name of democracy and universalism, as long we cite ‘women’s rights’ as a reason to drop bombs on Afghani women, then we are the ultimate pathological bigots.

With so much blood on our hands we had to make Nick Griffin the Nazi de Jour. Watching him booed and pilloried on Question Time last week was like a disturbing combination of the Opera Winfrey Show and the Adolf Eichmann Trial. The BNP have been around for over 60 years in various guises. They have been consistently ostracized by mainstream media and politicians. Yet Griffin’s debut on Question Time transformed a conventional news program into a pantomime courtroom watched by 8 million viewers. Liberals on the Left and Right were united in a unanimous outpouring of BNP-bashing. As the media frenzy unfolded it became clear that there was something to be gained from despising the ‘repugnant, slimy’ (Daily Mail) Nazi.

The Zionist Operation Was a Success, the Jewish Patients Died. By Lenni Brenner

Via: Dissident voice.

Educated folks are fond of the cynical saying that ‘the only thing we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.’ Unfortunately some of the worst offenders are professional historians and film documentarians, who cook up singular interpretations of events and serve them up again and again to their followers. Two such mock scholars are Edwin Black, author of The Transfer Agreement, which deals with the 1933 Ha’avara (Hebrew for transfer) Nazi-Zionist trade agreement, and Gaylen Ross, director of Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With The Nazis.” As republished books don’t get reviews, Black had to announce, in the 9/23/09 Jerusalem Post, that he put out a new edition, while Ross is more fortunate, with the 10/24 New York Times giving her new documentary a favorable review. Now, Black hopes, a new generation of gullible Zionists will rush out and buy it, unaware of the across- the-political-spectrum critical disdain for his 1983 original, while Ross relies on the ignorance of present reviewers as to how serious critics dealt with previous attempts to defend Rezso Kasztner’s collaboration with Adolf Eichmann.

THE TRANSFER AGREEMENT

Black’s father was a pre-WW II member of the Betar Zionist-Revisionist youth movement in Poland, when Menachem Begin was its Warsaw leader, and in 1983 Black was himself a member of the American branch of Herut, then the party of Prime Ministers Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, now subsumed in Bibi Netanyahu’s Revisionist Likud. Nevertheless, his 1983 edition Zionist critics were either extremely wary of the book, or intensely hostile.

When he first heard of the Ha’avara pact with the archenemy of his people, it was a nightmare: “The possibility of a Zionist-Nazi arrangement for the sake of Israel was inconceivable.”

He was correct to be shocked.

Count Me Out. By Uri Avnery

Via: Gush Shalom.

A YEAR before the Oslo agreement, I had a meeting with Yasser Arafat in Tunis. He was full of curiosity about Yitzhak Rabin, who had just been elected Prime Minister.

I described him as well as I could and ended with the words: “He is as honest as a politician can be.”

Arafat broke into laughter, and all the others present, among them Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Abed-Rabbo, joined in.

FOR THE sake of proper disclosure: I always liked Rabin as a human being. I especially liked some traits of his.

First of all: his honesty. This is such a rare quality among politicians that it stood out like an oasis in the desert. His mouth and his heart were one, as far as is possible in political life. He did not lie when he could possibly avoid it.

He was a decent human being. Witness the “dollar affair”: when his term as Israeli ambassador in Washington DC came to an end, his wife Leah left behind a bank account, contrary to Israeli law at the time. When it was discovered, he protected his wife by assuming personal responsibility. At the time, unlike today, “assuming responsibility” was not an empty phrase. He left the Prime Minister’s office.

I liked even his most evident personality trait – his introversion. He was withdrawn, with few human contacts. Not a fellow-well-met back slapper, not one for lavishing compliments, indeed an anti-politician.

On Nuke Disarmament, It’s Still “You First”. By Haider Rizvi

Via: IPS News.

Is the ongoing controversy over Iran’s nuclear programme helping to advance the United Nations’ agenda on nuclear disarmament? To a number of diplomats and experts who have participated in past U.N. discussions on the spread of nuclear weapons, the answer is, yes – although not necessarily for the expected reasons.

“Iran is challenging the double standards,” David Kreiger, executive director of the U.S.-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF), told IPS. “How can you set one standard that challenges Iran’s uranium processing and another standard that is completely silent about Israel’s nuclear arsenal?”

Israel is believed to have more than 300 nuclear warheads, although its arsenal remains clandestine.

The Barack Obama administration in the U.S. is currently involved in multilateral efforts to address the issue of Iranian pursuit of uranium enrichment, but remains silent about calls to set up a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, Kreiger noted.

He believes this issue is not going to be resolved so long as the nuclear powers, particularly those from the Western hemisphere, remain non-committal toward nuclear disarmament.

Iran’s leadership has repeatedly denied that it is pursuing a weapons programme, and argues that pursuing a peaceful nuclear programme for energy production is its inalienable right and that in doing so it is not violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Kipling Haunts Obama’s Afghan War. By Ray McGovern

Via: AntiWar.com.

The White Man’s Burden, a phrase immortalized by English poet Rudyard Kipling as an excuse for European-American imperialism, was front and center Thursday morning at a RAND-sponsored discussion of Afghanistan in the Russell Senate Office Building.

The agenda was top-heavy with RAND speakers, and the thinking was decidedly “inside the box” — so much so, that I found myself repeating a verse from Kipling, who recognized the dangers of imperialism, to remind me of the real world:

It is not wise for the Christian white
To hustle the Asian brown;
For the Christian riles
And the Asian smiles
And weareth the Christian down.

At the end of the fight
Lies a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased;

And the epitaph drear,
A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East.

With a few notable exceptions, the RAND event offered conventional wisdom to a fare-thee-well. There was a certain poetic justice that President Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has chaired RAND’s Middle East Advisory Board, was chosen to keynote the proceedings.

As national security adviser under President Carter, Brzezinski thought it a good idea to mousetrap the Soviets into their own Vietnam debacle by baiting them into invading Afghanistan in 1979, the war that was the precursor to the great-power quagmire in Afghanistan now, three decades later.

On Thursday, Brzezinski disclosed that he had advised the Bush/Cheney administration to invade Afghanistan in 2001, but insisted that he told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the U.S. military should not stay “as an alien force” once American objectives were achieved.

“Humanity Targeted in Gaza”. By Yousef Munayyer

Via: Palestine Center.

There was a time, not so long ago in fact, when opposing armies would line up across from each other with nothing but green fields between them and take turns exchanging fire. While these tactics were very efficient at killing soldiers on both sides, civilians were rarely ever hurt.

Somewhere along the line this all changed. Whether it was because of industrialization, urbanization or adaptations in military strategy, one stark and indisputable fact remains: at the beginning of the twentieth century the ratio of civilian to military deaths in wars was one to eight and by the end of it inverted to eight to one.

Certainly, there were turning points that made us cringe at the destructive power of humanity. Dresden, Nagasaki, Auschwitz and others led us to the conclusion that in today’s wars civilians needed more protection from the world’s most destructive powers–states. The laws of war, specifically those designed to protect civilians, were codified as urban settings increasingly became the locales of industrialized destruction.