THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

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Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Looters target Iraq antiquities

Video: Looters target Iraq antiquities


AlJazeera.net


6iraqiartifactsx-topper-medium.jpg
July 6, 2010




Iraq's antiquities are facing an old enemy.

A new wave of looting has hit museums and archaeological sites across southern Iraq.

Officials say the treasures have been left completely unprotected and exposed to increasingly organised gangs.

That's despite a national and international clamour to protect Iraq's history.

From Baghdad Al Jazeera's Omar Al Saleh reports.

Behind the phosphorus clouds



Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within war crimes 
We now know the US also used thermobaric weapons in its assault on Falluja, where up to 50,000 civilians remained 
George Monbiot Tuesday November 22, 2005 The Guardian  
The media couldn't have made a bigger pig's ear of the white phosphorus story. So, before moving on to the new revelations from Falluja, I would like to try to clear up the old ones. There is no hard evidence that white phosphorus was used against civilians. The claim was made in a documentary broadcast on the Italian network RAI, called Falluja: the Hidden Massacre. It claimed that the corpses in the pictures it ran "showed strange injuries, some burnt to the bone, others with skin hanging from their flesh ... The faces have literally melted away, just like other parts of the body.[......]
 It is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal 
  There is hard evidence that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon against combatants in Falluja. As this column revealed last Tuesday, US infantry officers confessed that they had used it to flush out insurgents. A Pentagon spokesman told the BBC that white phosphorus "was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants". He claimed "it is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal." This denial has been accepted by most of the mainstream media. UN conventions, the Times said, "ban its use on civilian but not military targets". But the word "civilian" does not occur in the chemical weapons convention. The use of the toxic properties of a chemical as a weapon is illegal, whoever the target is.
The Pentagon argues that white phosphorus burns people, rather than poisoning them, and is covered only by the protocol on incendiary weapons, which the US has not signed. But white phosphorus is both incendiary and toxic. The gas it produces attacks the mucous membranes, the eyes and the lungs. As Peter Kaiser of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told the BBC last week:
"If ... the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because ... any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."
US knows its use is illegal The US army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book, published by the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence:
"It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."
Pentagon is no doubt white phosphorus is illegal chemical weapon Last night the blogger Gabriele Zamparini found a declassified document from the US department of defence, dated April 1991, and titled "Possible use of phosphorus chemical". "During the brutal crackdown that followed the Kurdish uprising," it alleges:
"Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorus (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil ... and Dohuk provinces, Iraq. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships ... These reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly ... hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas."
The Pentagon is in no doubt, in other words, that white phosphorus is an illegal chemical weapon.

The insurgents [Resistance forces], of course, would be just as dead today if they were killed by other means. So does it matter if chemical weapons were mixed with other munitions? It does. Anyone who has seen those photos of the lines of blind veterans at the remembrance services for the first world war will surely understand the point of international law, and the dangers of undermining it. War crime within a war crime within a war crime But we shouldn't forget that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime. Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Falluja were illegal acts of aggression. Before attacking the city, the marines stopped men "of fighting age" from leaving. Many women and children stayed: the Guardian's correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left. The marines treated Falluja as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used "hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population". The heroics [of marines] will be subject of many articles and books... I have been reading accounts of the assault published in the Marine Corps Gazette. The soldiers appear to have believed everything the US government told them. One article claims that "the absence of civilians meant the marines could employ blast weapons prior to entering houses that had become pillboxes, not homes". Another said that "there were less than 500 civilians remaining in the city". It continued:
"The heroics [of the marines] will be the subject of many articles and books ... The real key to this tactical victory rested in the spirit of the warriors who courageously fought the battle. They deserve all of the credit for liberating Falluja."

Buried in this hogwash 
But buried in this hogwash is a grave revelation. An assault weapon the marines were using had been armed with warheads containing "about 35% thermobaric novel explosive (NE) and 65% standard high explosive". They deployed it "to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms". It was used repeatedly: "The expenditure of explosives clearing houses was enormous." The marines can scarcely deny that they know what these weapons do. An article published in the Gazette in 2000 details the effects of their use by the Russians in Grozny. 
 
Thermobaric, or "fuel-air" weapons!
Thermobaric, or "fuel-air" weapons, it says, form a cloud of volatile gases or finely powdered explosives.
"This cloud is then ignited and the subsequent fireball sears the surrounding area while consuming the oxygen in this area. The lack of oxygen creates an enormous overpressure ... Personnel under the cloud are literally crushed to death. Outside the cloud area, the blast wave travels at some 3,000 metres per second ... As a result, a fuel-air explosive can have the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon without residual radiation ... 
Those personnel caught directly under the aerosol cloud will die from the flame or overpressure. Create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal haemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets For those on the periphery of the strike, the injuries can be severe. Burns, broken bones, contusions from flying debris and blindness may result. Further, the crushing injuries from the overpressure can create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal haemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets."

It is hard to see how you could use these weapons in Falluja without killing civilians. This looks to me like a convincing explanation of the damage done to Falluja, a city in which between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians might have been taking refuge. It could also explain the civilian casualties shown in the film. So the question has now widened: Is there any crime the coalition forces have not committed in Iraq?

White phosphorus: weapon on the edge

White phosphorus: weapon on the edge
Analysis
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website 

US marine with mortar bombs in 2005 operation
US mortar bombs can be both explosive and phosphorus

The Pentagon's admission - despite earlier denials - that US troops used white phosphorus as a weapon in Falluja last year is more than a public relations issue - it has opened up a debate about the use of this weapon in modern warfare.

The admission contradicted a statement this week from the new and clearly under-briefed US ambassador in London Robert Holmes Tuttle that US forces "do not use napalm or white phosphorus as weapons".
The official line to that point had been that WP, or Willie Pete to use its old name from Vietnam, was used only to illuminate the battlefield and to provide smoke for camouflage.
'Shake 'n Bake'

This line however crumbled when bloggers (whose influence must not be under-estimated these days) ferreted out an article published by the US Army's Field Artillery Magazine in its issue of March/April this year.
The article, written by a captain, a first lieutenant and a sergeant, was a review of the attack on Falluja in November 2004 and in particular of the use of indirect fire, mainly mortars.
It makes quite clear that WP was used as a weapon not just as illumination or camouflage.
It's [WP] not forbidden if it is used within the context of a military application which does not require or does not intend to use the toxic properties
Peter Kaiser

"WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes where we could not get effects on them with HE [High Explosive]. We fired "shake and bake" missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out," the article said.
In another passage the authors noted that they could have used other smoke munitions and "saved our WP for lethal missions".


A word about the term "shake and bake." Anyone with a family to feed in the US knows what this term, properly "Shake 'n Bake, means. Made by Kraft, it is a seasoning which is put into a plastic bag with chicken and shaken before before baking. Its use gives the article the smack of reality. It's the kind of thing US soldiers would say.
Vietnam precedent
This tactic of forcing opponents out of cover is not new and should not really have come as a surprise. An article looking back at the Vietnam war published in 1996 by a US armoured unit (1st Battalion, 69th Armor) referred to "Willie Pete" weapons and their use in getting North Vietnamese troops to leave their positions:
"Our normal procedure was to fire these things at a hillside as soon as possible in order to get them out of the fighting compartment."
One wonders of course if, in Falluja, WP was used more directly to kill insurgents and not just to flush them out. In battle, soldiers take short cuts and this seems an obvious one.

Embed report
Evidence that this happened in Falluja comes from an article by a reporter, Darrin Mortenson of the North County Times in California, who was embedded with US marines there.

He wrote about a mortar unit receiving coordinates of a target and opening fire:
"The boom kicked the dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call 'shake 'n bake' into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week."

The tactic therefore seems to have been not to flush them out first but to bombard them simultaneously with the two types of weapons.

Chemical Weapons Convention
The debate about WP centres partly though not wholly on whether it is really a chemical weapon. Such weapons are outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to which the United States is a party.
The CWC is monitored by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague. Its spokesman Peter Kaiser was asked if WP was banned by the CWC and he had this to say:
White phosphorous being used over Falluja
White phosphorous being used over Falluja

"No it's not forbidden by the CWC if it is used within the context of a military application which does not require or does not intend to use the toxic properties of white phosphorus. White phosphorus is normally used to produce smoke, to camouflage movement.
"If that is the purpose for which the white phosphorus is used, then that is considered under the Convention legitimate use.
"If on the other hand the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because the way the Convention is structured or the way it is in fact applied, any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."
WP - the arguments

So WP itself is not a chemical weapon and therefore not illegal. However, used in a certain way, it might become one. Not that "a certain way" can easily be defined, if at all.

The US can say therefore that this is not a chemical weapon and further, it argues that it is not the toxic properties but the heat from WP which causes the damage. And, this argument goes, since incendiary weapons are not covered by the CWC, therefore the use of WP against combatants is not prohibited.
Critics claim that the US used chemical weapons in Falluja, on the grounds that it is the toxic properties which cause the harm. The UK's Guardian newspaper for example said: "The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and then lied about it."
There is an intense debate on the blog sites about this issue. "It's not a chemical weapon" says Liberal Against Terror. "CONFIRMED: WP is a CW if used to cause harm through toxic properties," says Daily Kos.
Update 22 November: I have received an e-mail from a reader who points me to a reported US army document from 1991 which refers to WP as a chemical weapon. The document reports the possible use of WP by Iraq against the Kurds who rose up after the Gulf War. It says: "Iraq has possibly employed phosphorous chemical weapons against the Kurdish population."
The reader said this was proof that the US viewed WP as a CW.
I have also been contacted by Gabriele Zamparini of the Cat's Dream blog who appears to have published this document first. He makes the same point that the US Defense Department itself called WP a "chemical weapon." I offer these comments as part of the debate.
Tactical use of WP

The other argument is about the use of WP as a weapon.
The initial denials from the Pentagon suggest a certain hesitation, embarrassment even, about such a tactic. Some decisions must have been taken in the past to limit its use in certain battlefield scenarios (urban warfare for example). It is not used against civilians.
However the United States has not signed up to a convention covering incendiary weapons which seeks to restrict their use.
This convention has the cumbersome title "Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons." Agreed in 1980, its Protocol III covers "Prohibitions or Restrictions on use of Incendiary Weapons."
This prohibits WP or other incendiaries (like flamethrowers) against civilians or civilian objects and its use by air strikes against military targets located in a concentration of civilians. It also limits WP use by other means (such as mortars or direct fire from tanks) against military targets in a civilian area. Such targets have to be separated from civilian concentrations and "all feasible precautions" taken to avoid civilian casualties.
Notwithstanding the US position on the Convention, the use of WP against insurgents within Falluja does at least bring the issue into discussion, though one should note that the soldiers who wrote the Field Artillery article do say that their unit "encountered few civilians in its attack south".

What is White Phosphorous?

SEE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus

White phosphorus

Report on long-term effects of Israeli white phosphorus
EXCLUSIVE PICTURES

Middle East Monitor

MEMO, July 6, 2010

In a recent report into the white phosphorous used by Israel in its 2008-9 assault on the Gaza Strip, Italian experts have warned of the adverse long term effects of the three thousand five hundred shells that were dropped indiscriminately. In particular, the report addresses the impact of this weapon, the use of which against civilians is prohibited under international law.

The immediate effects of white phosphorous on human beings are well documented. When white phosphorous explodes it burns at high temperatures until deprived of oxygen and when it lands on skin it will eat through muscle and into the bone. According to Amnesty International, during the war on Gaza, white phosphorous was the cause of horrific burns and suffocation which left dozens dead and wounded.

However, the effects of white phosphorous have been found to extend to agricultural land and produce. In regions in the East of the Gaza Strip, such as the vicinity of Mount Rais, trees growing in land hit by phosphorous shells have become noticeably yellow in color. Gaza's ministry of agriculture confirmed that after the end of the military operation, it endeavored to prevent farmers growing crops or grazing animals on agricultural that had been shelled. Similarly, it warned against using water from shelled wells. These actions emphasize the belief that Israel used shells containing toxic, carcinogenic and radioactive material which directly affect the environment and render areas hit by such shells, dangerous to human health and to animals.

Many agricultural areas used for cultivating herbs and plants that were hit by Israeli weapons are now barren, or the trees have dried up a lot. On land that was hit by more than one shell, the situation is worse. However, a few months after the war, other effects of these banned weapons started to become evident. New plants and emerging plant shoots began showing genetic mutations such as physical distortions and yellowing. Many farmers also complain of the stunted growth of their agricultural crops, tress erosion and falling branches. Produce has become small and the yield from harvests is low while the situation continues to worsen.

According to Dr. Birch Manduca, a specialist in genetics at the University of Genoa and a researcher on the Italian team that produced the report, an analysis of soil samples from 2005 and samples taken after the war show marked differences, and the significant increase in the concentration of heavy metals has been attributed to the effects of Israeli missiles. The team also analysed samples taken from four craters left by bomb shells; two from the Israeli attack on Beit Hanoun and the Jabaliya refugee camp in July 2006, and two from apple orchards hit in the recent war. Results from analyses show differences in each case, indicating, according to Manduca, that different missiles caused each crater. Thus, different types of missiles appear to have different effects on soil. An interaction between toxins from missiles such as the Alvesforp, with white phosphorous is thought to be the cause of the current catastrophe for Gaza's agricultural sector.

The team also found concentrations of the highly toxic metal Molybdenum at 25 to 3000 times normal levels. Molybdenum is rarely found in soil, it is lethal to sperm and adversely affects both fertility and unborn babies.

Based on the results found by Menduca and his team, great concern has been voiced over the enormous quantities of pollution in Gaza caused by Israeli missiles which impact on the medium and long term health of the population. The fact that weapons like white phosphorous shells were indiscriminately exploded in the air, including in densely populated residential areas, means that their poisons are widespread and may yet manifest unknown effects on Gaza's general population.























Settlements Cover 42 Percent Of West Bank!

Settlements Cover 42 Percent Of West Bank

MATTI FRIEDMAN

July 6, 2010

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military indicted a soldier Tuesday on a charge of manslaughter during last year's war in the Gaza Strip – the most serious criminal charge to come out of an internal investigation into the devastating offensive in the Hamas-ruled territory.

The soldier was among three troops, including a field commander, to face new disciplinary action stemming from their conduct during the offensive, which has drawn international condemnation for its civilian death toll. An Israeli human rights group praised the announcement, but said the disciplinary measures announced by the army so far were insufficient.

The steps against the soldiers were linked to four specific incidents during the offensive, which Israel launched to halt years of rocket fire from Gaza.

Around 1,400 Gazans, many of them civilians, were killed in three weeks of fierce urban fighting and aerial bombardments. Thirteen Israelis were killed. A report commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians, a charge Israel rejects.

In a statement Tuesday, the military said its chief prosecutor would indict an infantry sergeant for manslaughter in connection with an incident in which two Palestinian women – a mother and daughter – were killed while reportedly holding white flags.

The military said there were discrepancies between the troops' accounts of the incident and the details reported widely by human rights groups, The troops reported shooting one man at the site, not two women, and on a different date. Also, it was unclear exactly whom the soldier was charged with killing. Asked for clarification, the military did not offer further details.

The military said this was the first manslaughter indictment from the Gaza war.

The incident was mentioned in U.N. report, which accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes.

In addition, the military said a battalion commander was disciplined for allowing his troops to use a Palestinian civilian as a human shield. Soldiers sent the man toward a house where militants were holed up to persuade them to come out, a violation of army regulations, the announcement said.

In a third incident, the military said it disciplined an officer who ordered an airstrike near a mosque, an attack that the U.N. report said killed at least 15 civilians and wounded 40.

The military said the strike targeted a Palestinian militant outside the mosque and that the harm to those inside the building was unintentional, so it did not violate international law. But the military also said the officer was negligent and "failed to exercise appropriate judgment," and he would be barred from serving in "similar positions of command" in the future.

In the fourth incident, the military prosecutor ordered a new investigation into the deaths of two dozen members of a family who were ordered by troops into a building that was shelled later in the fighting.

Israel says Hamas bears overall responsibility for the casualties because it fired rockets and fought from heavily populated towns and cities. An internal military investigation last year largely cleared the army of any systematic wrongdoing, while promising to prosecute individual cases of misconduct.

One soldier has been convicted of stealing and using a Palestinian's credit card, while two others are being prosecuted for using a Palestinian boy as a human shield.

An army spokesperson said these indictments are part of an ongoing investigation of nearly 50 claims.

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, praised the military for making progress in its investigations but said they were insufficient.

"The main questions about the Gaza war concern policy, and a military investigation can't handle this," she said. "There must be an external investigation that will deal with the whole chain of command and chiefly with the people at the top who approved the directives."

Also Tuesday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Washington for talks with President Barack Obama, B'Tselem released a report showing that much of the West Bank, where Palestinians want to establish a state, is under the control of Israeli settlements.

Although the actual buildings of the settlements cover just 1 percent of the West Bank's land area, they have jurisdiction over more than 42 percent, the B'Tselem report said. Much of that land was seized from Palestinian landowners in defiance of an Israeli Supreme Court ban, the group said.

The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as part of a future state.

Dani Dayan, chairman of a settler umbrella group, disputed the report, saying settlements control just 9.2 percent of the West Bank, and charged that the report was aimed to sabotage the Netanyahu-Obama meeting.

Israeli government officials would not comment.

Obama backs Israel on nuclear conference

Obama backs Israel on nuclear conference

AFP

July 6, 2010

US President Barack Obama warned Tuesday that attempts to single out Israel over its undeclared nuclear program could scupper a Middle East regional nuclear conference planned for 2012.

Obama delivered the warning in a statement about his talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he gave Israel a veiled, but public assurance over its strategic nuclear ambiguity.

"The President emphasized that the conference will only take place if all countries feel confident that they can attend, and that any efforts to single out Israel will make the prospects of convening such a conference unlikely," the statement said.

Obama also agreed to work with Israel to oppose any efforts to single out the Jewish state at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference in September.

After a decade of deadlock, the Non-Proliferation Treaty's 189 nations proposed new steps in May towards nuclear disarmament and making the Middle East free of atomic weapons.

Diplomats at an NPT review conference approved by consensus a 28-page final document that for the first time laid out action plans on disarmament, non-proliferation and promoting peaceful atomic energy.

The wording on the Middle East called for holding a conference in 2012 "to be attended by all states of the Middle East, leading to the establishment¨ of such a nuclear-weapon-free zone.

The NPT review conference called on Israel to join the treaty, which would oblige the Jewish state to do away with its nuclear weapons.

After his Oval Office talks, Obama told reporters that he had "reiterated" to Netanyahu that there was "no change in US policy" on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.

"We strongly believe that, given its size, its history, the region that it's in, and the threats that are leveled against us -- against it, that Israel has unique security requirements.

"It's got to be able to respond to threats or any combination of threats in the region. And that's why we remain unwavering in our commitment to Israel's security.

"And the United States will never ask Israel to take any steps that would undermine their security interests."

Netanyahu thanked Obama for "reaffirming to me in private and now in public as you did the longstanding US commitments to Israel on matters of vital strategic importance."

Israel, which opposes creating a nuclear free zone until Middle East peace has been achieved, has never acknowledged that it has nuclear weapons.

It is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with around 200 warheads, but has maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its capabilities since the mid-1960s.

Anti-Israel ‘Lawfare’ in Europe

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Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)

Anti-Israel ‘Lawfare’ in Europe

Created 2010-07-06 21:49
Pro-Palestinian activists are launching a new round of anti-Israel lawsuits in European courts. The lawsuits, which exploit the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, are being used to harass current and former Israeli political and military leaders, with the twin aims of tying Israel’s hands against Palestinian terror and delegitimizing the Jewish state.
On June 23, two Belgian lawyers representing Palestinians filed suit in Belgium against 14 Israeli officials on charges of war crimes committed during the Gaza War, a three-week armed conflict that took place in the Gaza Strip during the winter of 2008–2009. Those charged include Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni for her role as foreign minister during the war, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, and other Israeli military and intelligence officials.
The 70-page lawsuit is based on a report by Judge Richard Goldstone, which claims that an Israeli attack on a mosque near the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip killed 16 civilians, including women and children. The plaintiffs, who include one Palestinian-Belgian national and 13 Gaza Strip residents, were either wounded or lost relatives in the attack.
The Goldstone Report claims that Israel committed war crimes during the offensive, also codenamed Operation Cast Lead. The 575-page report calls for prosecuting Israeli officials in international courts should Israel refuse to conduct a credible investigation into its army’s conduct during the war.
Georges-Henri Beauthier and Alexis Deswaef, the two lawyers representing the Palestinian plaintiffs, say Belgium’s attorney general will evaluate the case “by the end of August” to determine whether it provides just cause to open formal proceedings against the Israeli officials for “committing crimes against humanity.”
On June 13, pro-Palestinian activists in France said they would file a lawsuit against Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak both in France and at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The International Civil Campaign for the Protection of the Palestinian People (CCIPPP) and Palestinian Charity and Aid (CBSP) are suing over the Israeli army’s May 31 raid on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla in which nine activists were killed. The groups say Barak should be held personally responsible for the deaths.
The lawsuit, which has been joined by three members of the French parliament, forced Barak to cancel a visit to Paris, during which he was scheduled to open the Israeli pavilion at the Eurosatory defence industry trade show on June 14-18. Pro-Palestinian activists had called for French police to arrest Barak at the airport upon his arrival in the country. The Israeli Defense Ministry said Barak decided to remain in Israel “until the team of experts investigates the raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla.”
The new lawsuits are the latest salvo in a long-running propaganda war against Israel that is being waged in European courts under the guise of universal jurisdiction.
In December 2009, a British court issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni for her role in Operation Cast Lead. Livni, who had been due to address a meeting in London, ended up cancelling her attendance. The court issued the warrant at the request of lawyers representing Palestinian victims of the Gaza War. The 1988 Criminal Justice Act gives courts in England and Wales universal jurisdiction in war crimes cases.
In October 2009, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon cancelled a planned trip to Britain for fear of being arrested there. Ya’alon had been invited to London to attend a fund-raising dinner. As chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2002-2005, Ya’alon is one of several current and former senior officers being pursued by pro-Palestinian groups for so-called war crimes.
In September 2009, a British court was asked to issue an arrest warrant for Ehud Barak, who was attending a meeting at the Labour party conference in Brighton. He escaped arrest after the Foreign Office told the court that he was a serving minister who would be meeting his British counterparts. The City of Westminster magistrates’ court ruled that as a minister, Barak enjoyed immunity under the 1978 State Immunity Act.
In September 2005, retired Israeli Major General Doron Almog arrived in London on an El Al flight, only to learn that a British judge had issued a warrant for his arrest for allegedly violating the 1949 Geneva Convention in Gaza. Almog stayed on the plane and was allowed to return to Israel.
In February 2004, a London court rejected an application for an arrest warrant to be issued against Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. District Judge Christopher Pratt argued that as a government minister, Mofaz qualified for immunity. Pro-Palestinian lawyers had asked Pratt to issue an arrest warrant for Mofaz for allegedly committing “grave breaches” of the Geneva Convention in dealing with the Palestinian uprising.
In January 2010, a group of Israeli military officers called off an official visit to Britain over fears they could be arrested on war crimes charges. The delegation had been invited to visit by the British Army.
The arrest warrants have provoked a furious reaction in Israel, and British officials have now vowed to change the law on universal jurisdiction to make it harder to arrest foreign officials. In May 2010, Britain’s new coalition government said it would seek to prohibit private groups from seeking to prosecute crimes committed abroad. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said: “We cannot have a position where Israeli politicians feel they cannot visit this country. The situation is unsatisfactory [and] indefensible. It is absolutely my intention to act speedily.”
Spain is also pushing back against mounting abuses of universal jurisdiction. In May 2009, the Spanish parliament approved a measure to limit the power of judges to prosecute people for crimes committed abroad under the concept of universal jurisdiction. The parliament acted on fears that activist judges were abusing the Spanish justice system for politically motivated prosecutions.
Spanish judges have gained a reputation for activism in recent years by using the principle of universal jurisdiction to pursue cases against suspected overseas human rights violators, most famously the former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Until recently, judges at the Spanish National Court (Audiencia Nacional) were pursuing more than a dozen international investigations into suspected cases of torture, genocide, and crimes against humanity in places as far-flung as Tibet and Rwanda. But many of these cases have little or no connection with Spain and critics say the judges are interpreting the concept of universal jurisdiction too loosely.
Calls to reign in the judges increased when Spanish magistrates announced probes involving Israel and the United States. In January 2009, for example, Spanish National Court Judge Fernando Andreu said he would investigate seven current or former Israeli officials suspected of “crimes against humanity” in a 2002 air attack in Gaza that killed Salah Shehadah, a top Hamas militant. The Andreu case involved former Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, former Air Force Commander Dan Halutz, former head of the National Security Council Giora Eiland, and four other senior officials. Had Andreu decided to issue an international arrest warrant for any of the seven Israelis, they could have been detained upon arrival in any EU member state.
Most of the universal jurisdiction lawsuits that have been presented in Spanish courts have been the handiwork of one Gonzalo Boyé, a Marxist-Leninist “human rights lawyer” who earned his law degree through correspondence courses while in a Spanish prison. He was serving a 10-year sentence for collaborating with the Basque terrorist group ETA, and for his participation in the kidnapping of Emiliano Revilla, a well-known Spanish businessman. Boyé is now the Spanish representative of a group calling itself the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
The problem of frivolous lawsuits and freewheeling judges came to a head after Andreu rejected requests by Spanish prosecutors to suspend his inquiry on the grounds that Israel was already investigating the attack. Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido has warned of the risks of turning the Spanish justice system into a “plaything” for politically motivated prosecutions.
So far none of the lawsuits filed against Israel in European courts have reached the stage of a trial where Israeli leaders have appeared before a foreign judge. But even short of actual prosecutions, pro-Palestinian activists have scored huge propaganda victories by charging Israeli officials with war crimes. This alone makes the pursuit of frivolous universal jurisdiction lawsuits a winning proposition for many activist groups.
For now, Israel’s best option for avoiding a messy and precedent-setting trial will be to exert diplomatic pressure on European authorities to persuade them that they have a vested interest in protecting their justice systems from malicious abuse. That strategy, which appears to be working in Britain and Spain, should now be applied in Belgium and France.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group

Rise of the Religious Left


The New York Times



  • July 2, 2010

    Rise of the Religious Left

    Which political party’s members are most likely to believe that Jesus will definitely return to earth before midcentury? The Republicans, right? Wrong. The Democrats.
    This was revealed by a report issued last week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
    On the surface it may seem surprising, but, in fact, it’s quite logical. Blacks and Hispanics, two highly religious groups, are a growing part of the Democratic Party. A June 2009 Gallup report found that blacks and Hispanics constituted 30 percent of the party. Recent polling by Pew puts the number at 37 percent.
    According to a Gallup report issued last Friday, church attendance among blacks is exactly the same as among conservatives and among Republicans. Hispanics closely follow. Furthermore, a February Gallup report found that blacks and Hispanics, respectively, were the most likely to say that religion was an important part of their daily lives. In fact, on the Jesus question, nonwhite Democrats were roughly twice as likely as white Democrats to believe that He would return to earth by 2050.
    Add to this the fact that, according to the 2009 Gallup report, 20 percent of the Democratic Party is composed of highly religious whites who attend church once a week or more, and you quickly stop second-guessing the Second Coming numbers.
    Welcome to the Religious Left, which will continue to grow as the percentage of minorities in the country and in the party grows.
    People often ask whether the Republican Party will have to move to the left to remain viable. However, the question rarely asked is whether the growing religiosity on the left will push the Democrats toward the right.
    At the moment, that answer is both yes and no. On the one hand, unlike John Kerry before him, Barack Obama made a strong play for the religious vote on his march to the White House. It worked so well that it’s likely to continue, if not intensify, among Democratic candidates. On the other hand, the religious left is not the religious right. The left isn’t as organized or assertive. For the most part, it seems to have made its peace with the mishmash of morality under the Democratic umbrella, rallying instead around some core Democratic tenets: protection of, and equality for, the disenfranchised and providing greater opportunity and assistance for the poor.
    The unanswerable questions are whether these highly religious, socially conservative Democrats will remain loyal to a liberal agenda as they become the majority of the party and their financial and social standing improves. Or whether Republicans will finally make headway in recruiting them. The future only knows.
    Then again, the world as we know it may not have much of a future if, as these Democrats believe, a deity will soon descend from the sky

    Mr. Netanyahu at the White House



    The New York Times

    July 6, 2010

    Mr. Netanyahu at the White House

    President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel satisfied their short-term political goals with an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday. It is less clear that they achieved much of substance.
    Both were desperate to show their voters that their frigid relationship has warmed. So they posed — smiling — for an official photo, spoke with reporters and shared lunch. There was plenty of upbeat rhetoric. The two leaders expressed hope that direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — following the current “proximity talks” conducted by George Mitchell, the American envoy — would begin before Israel’s limited moratorium on settlement construction is due to expire in September.
    We would like to have confidence in Mr. Netanyahu’s declaration that he is “committed to that peace” with Palestinians and President Obama’s assertion that the Israeli leader is “willing to take risks for peace.” Mr. Netanyahu didn’t offer any specifics about what he will do to help move peace negotiations forward.
    Unlike Mr. Obama, the Israeli prime minister did not publicly mention a two-state solution. Mr. Netanyahu committed to that goal in June 2009 — but only under pressure from Washington. Each time he neglects to repeat it, he feeds doubts about his government’s sincerity.
    President Obama has made a serious effort when it comes to Israel’s main security concern, Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Obama rightly recognizes the threat to Israel and this country. He and his aides pushed the United Nations Security Council to pass a fourth round of sanctions and have worked with the Europeans and others, pressing them to adopt even tougher punishments on Iran. More pressure is needed, but the president’s commitment appears solid.
    Mr. Obama is going to have to keep working hard to persuade Mr. Netanyahu that a peace deal with the Palestinians is also essential for Israel’s long-term security, the health of its democracy and its international standing — and not just something he has to try to mollify Washington.
    Mr. Netanyahu promised after Tuesday’s meeting to take unspecified “concrete” steps in the coming weeks to move the peace process along in a “robust way.” He could start by committing to extend the moratorium on settlement construction past the Sept. 26 deadline and by outlining his plan for reaching a two-state solution.
    The United States has an unshakeable bond with Israel. Still Israelis must worry about the battering their country’s reputation has taken — and the bolstering Hamas’s extremist government has gotten — since Israeli commandos killed nine activists on an aid ship trying to break the Gaza blockade.
    Mr. Netanyahu took an important step when his government lifted restrictions on most imports into Gaza, except military-related items. It must go further and allow exports from the territory, as well as greater freedom of movement for people living there.
    President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his government also must do their part, doing more to discourage incitement against Israel — and seriously preparing to make the hard choices that peace will inevitably require.
    We know that it will not be easy, but Mr. Abbas needs to drop his insistence that he will begin direct talks only after Israel agrees to a complete freeze on settlement construction.
    That is what the White House had promised him originally — and it would have been better for all. But more stalemate only feeds extremism. The only way to test Mr. Netanyahu is to get back to the table.
    Arab states must do a lot more to support the Palestinians — with aid and political support for the tough compromises ahead. They also need to demonstrate to Israel their willingness to improve relations as negotiations move forward.
    At their press conference, Mr. Netanyahu invited the American president to visit Israel, and Mr. Obama said: “I’m ready.” He should go and explain to Israelis directly why it is in the clear interest of both Israel and the United States to move ahead with a peace deal

    A New Generation, an Elusive American Dream



    The New York Times

    July 6, 2010

    A New Generation, an Elusive American Dream

    GRAFTON, Mass. — After breakfast, his parents left for their jobs, and Scott Nicholson, alone in the house in this comfortable suburb west of Boston, went to his laptop in the living room. He had placed it on a small table that his mother had used for a vase of flowers until her unemployed son found himself reluctantly stuck at home.
    The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.
    Over the last five months, only one job materialized. After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job.
    Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder.
    “The conversation I’m going to have with my parents now that I’ve turned down this job is more of a concern to me than turning down the job,” he said.
    He was braced for the conversation with his father in particular. While Scott Nicholson viewed the Hanover job as likely to stunt his career, David Nicholson, 57, accustomed to better times and easier mobility, viewed it as an opportunity. Once in the door, the father has insisted to his son, opportunities will present themselves — as they did in the father’s rise over 35 years to general manager of a manufacturing company.
    “You maneuvered and you did not worry what the maneuvering would lead to,” the father said. “You knew it would lead to something good.”
    Complicating the generational divide, Scott’s grandfather, William S. Nicholson, a World War II veteran and a retired stock broker, has watched what he described as America’s once mighty economic engine losing its pre-eminence in a global economy. The grandfather has encouraged his unemployed grandson to go abroad — to “Go West,” so to speak.
    “I view what is happening to Scott with dismay,” said the grandfather, who has concluded, in part from reading The Economist, that Europe has surpassed America in offering opportunity for an ambitious young man. “We hate to think that Scott will have to leave,” the grandfather said, “but he will.”
    The grandfather’s injunction startled the grandson. But as the weeks pass, Scott Nicholson, handsome as a Marine officer in a recruiting poster, has gradually realized that his career will not roll out in the Greater Boston area — or anywhere in America — with the easy inevitability that his father and grandfather recall, and that Scott thought would be his lot, too, when he finished college in 2008.
    “I don’t think I fully understood the severity of the situation I had graduated into,” he said, speaking in effect for an age group — the so-called millennials, 18 to 29 — whose unemployment rate of nearly 14 percent approaches the levels of that group in the Great Depression. And then he veered into the optimism that, polls show, is persistently, perhaps perversely, characteristic of millennials today. “I am absolutely certain that my job hunt will eventually pay off,” he said.
    For young adults, the prospects in the workplace, even for the college-educated,[ΕΙΝΑΙ  ΑΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΟΙ,  ΘΕΩΡΟΥΝ ΤΟ "ΛΥΚΕΙΟ" ΚΑΛΗ ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΣΙ!] have rarely been so bleak. Apart from the 14 percent who are unemployed and seeking work, as Scott Nicholson is, 23 percent are not even seeking a job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total, 37 percent, is the highest in more than three decades and a rate reminiscent of the 1930s.
    The college-educated among these young adults are better off. But nearly 17 percent are either unemployed or not seeking work, a record level (although some are in graduate school). The unemployment rate for college-educated young adults, 5.5 percent, is nearly double what it was on the eve of the Great Recession, in 2007, and the highest level — by almost two percentage points — since the bureau started to keep records in 1994 for those with at least four years of college.
    Yet surveys show that the majority of the nation’s millennials remain confident, as Scott Nicholson is, that they will have satisfactory careers. They have a lot going for them.
    “They are better educated [ΘΕΩΡΟΥΝ ΤΟ "ΛΥΚΕΙΟ" ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΣΙ!!!] than previous generations and they were raised by baby boomers who lavished a lot of attention on their children,” said Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center’s director. That helps to explain their persistent optimism, even as they struggle to succeed.
    So far, Scott Nicholson is a stranger to the triumphal stories that his father and grandfather tell of their working lives. They said it was connections more than perseverance that got them started — the father in 1976 when a friend who had just opened a factory hired him, and the grandfather in 1946 through an Army buddy whose father-in-law owned a brokerage firm in nearby Worcester and needed another stock broker.
    From these accidental starts, careers unfolded and lasted. David Nicholson, now the general manager of a company that makes tools, is still in manufacturing. William Nicholson spent the next 48 years, until his retirement, as a stock broker. “Scott has got to find somebody who knows someone,” the grandfather said, “someone who can get him to the head of the line.”
    While Scott has tried to make that happen, he has come under pressure from his parents to compromise: to take, if not the Hanover job, then one like it. “I am beginning to realize that refusal is going to have repercussions,” he said. “My parents are subtly pointing out that beyond room and board, they are also paying other expenses for me, like my cellphone charges and the premiums on a life insurance policy.”
    Scott Nicholson also has connections, of course, but no one in his network of family and friends has been able to steer him into marketing or finance or management training or any career-oriented opening at a big corporation, his goal. The jobs are simply not there.
    The Millennials’ Inheritance
    The Great Depression damaged the self-confidence of the young, and that is beginning to happen now, according to pollsters, sociologists and economists. Young men in particular lost a sense of direction, Glen H. Elder Jr., a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, found in his study, “Children of the Great Depression.” In some cases they were forced into work they did not want — the issue for Scott Nicholson.
    Military service in World War II, along with the G.I. Bill and a booming economy, restored well-being; by the 1970s, when Mr. Elder did his retrospective study, the hardships of the Depression were more a memory than an open sore. “They came out of the war with purpose in their lives, and by age 40 most of them were doing well,” he said, speaking of his study in a recent interview.[Ο ΝΙΚΗΤΗΣ ΤΟΥ ΠΟΛΕΜΟΥ ΕΞΗΣΦΑΛΙΣΕ ΤΙΣ ΠΛΟΥΤΟΠΑΡΑΓΩΓΙΚΕΣ ΠΗΓΕΣ ΠΟΥ ΚΑΤΕΚΤΗΣΕ!--ΕΥΚΟΛΟΣ ΠΛΟΥΤΙΣΜΟΣ!!]
    The outlook this time is not so clear. Starved for jobs at adequate pay, the millennials tend to seek refuge in college [ΣΥΝΗΘΙΖΝ ΝΑΝΑΙ ΤΕΛΕΙΩΣ ΑΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΟΙ!!] and in the military[ΤΟ ΤΕΛΕΥΤΑΙΟ ΟΠΛΟ ΤΩΝ ΥΠΟ  ΚΑΤΑΡΡΕΥΣΙΝ ΑΛΛΟΤΕ ΕΞΟΥΣΙΑΣΤΙΚΩΝ ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΩΝ, ΠΡΟΣ ΚΑΤΑΚΤΗΣΙΝ ΝΕΟΥ  ΠΛΟΥΤΟΥ!!--ΕΙΝΑΙ ΚΟΜΒΙΚΟ ΤΟ ΑΦΓΑΝΙΣΤΑΝ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΕΚΜΕΤΑΛΛΕΥΣΙ ΤΗΣ ΚΕΝΤΡΙΚΗΣ ΑΣΙΑΣ!!!] and to put off marriage and child-bearing. Those who are working often stay with the jobs they have rather than jump to better paying but less secure ones, as young people seeking advancement normally do. And they are increasingly willing to forgo raises, or to settle for small ones.
    “They are definitely more risk-averse,” said Lisa B. Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management, “and more likely to fall behind.”
    In a recent study, she found that those who graduated from college during the severe early ’80s recession earned up to 30 percent less in their first three years than new graduates who landed their first jobs in a strong economy. Even 15 years later, their annual pay was 8 to 10 percent less.
    Many hard-pressed millennials are falling back on their parents, as Scott Nicholson has. While he has no college debt (his grandparents paid all his tuition and board) many others do, and that helps force them back home.
    In 2008, the first year of the recession, the percentage of the population living in households in which at least two generations were present rose nearly a percentage point, to 16 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. The high point, 24.7 percent, came in 1940, as the Depression ended, and the low point, 12 percent, in 1980.
    Striving for Independence
    “Going it alone,” “earning enough to be self-supporting” — these are awkward concepts for Scott Nicholson and his friends. Of the 20 college classmates with whom he keeps up, 12 are working, but only half are in jobs they “really like.” Three are entering law school this fall after frustrating experiences in the work force, “and five are looking for work just as I am,” he said.
    Like most of his classmates, Scott tries to get by on a shoestring and manages to earn enough in odd jobs to pay some expenses.
    The jobs are catch as catch can. He and a friend recently put up a white wooden fence for a neighbor, embedding the posts in cement, a day’s work that brought Scott $125. He mows lawns and gardens for half a dozen clients in Grafton, some of them family friends. And he is an active volunteer firefighter.
    “As frustrated as I get now, and I never intended to live at home, I’m in a good situation in a lot of ways,” Scott said. “I have very little overhead and no debt, and it is because I have no debt that I have any sort of flexibility to look for work. Otherwise, I would have to have a job, some kind of full-time job.”
    That millennials as a group are optimistic is partly because many are, as Mr. Kohut put it, the children of doting baby boomers — among them David Nicholson and his wife, Susan, 56, an executive at a company that owns movie theaters.
    The Nicholsons, whose combined annual income is north of $175,000, have lavished attention on their three sons. Currently that attention is directed mainly at sustaining the self-confidence of their middle son.
    “No one on either side of the family has ever gone through this,” Mrs. Nicholson said, “and I guess I’m impatient. I know he is educated and has a great work ethic and wants to start contributing, and I don’t know what to do.”
    Her oldest, David Jr., 26, did land a good job. Graduating from Middlebury College in 2006, he joined a Boston insurance company, specializing in reinsurance, nearly three years ago, before the recession.
    “I’m fortunate to be at a company where there is some security,” he said, adding that he supports Scott in his determination to hold out for the right job. “Once you start working, you get caught up in the work and you have bills to pay, and you lose sight of what you really want,” the brother said.
    He is earning $75,000 — a sum beyond Scott’s reach today, but not his expectations. “I worked hard through high school to get myself into the college I did,” Scott said, “and then I worked hard through college to graduate with the grades and degree that I did to position myself for a solid job.” (He majored in political science and minored in history.)
    It was in pursuit of a solid job that Scott applied to Hanover International’s management training program. Turned down for that, he was called back to interview for the lesser position in the claims department.
    “I’m sitting with the manager, and he asked me how I had gotten interested in insurance. I mentioned Dave’s job in reinsurance, and the manager’s response was, ‘Oh, that is about 15 steps above the position you are interviewing for,’ ” Scott said, his eyes widening and his voice emotional.
    Scott acknowledges that he is competitive with his brothers, particularly David, more than they are with him. The youngest, Bradley, 22, has a year to go at the University of Vermont. His parents and grandparents pay his way, just as they did for his brothers in their college years.
    In the Old Days
    Going to college wasn’t an issue for grandfather Nicholson, or so he says. With World War II approaching, he entered the Army not long after finishing high school and, in the fighting in Italy, a battlefield commission raised him overnight from enlisted man to first lieutenant. That was “the equivalent of a college education,” as he now puts it, in an age when college on a stockbroker’s résumé “counted for something, but not a lot.”[ΕΥΚΟΛΑ ΧΡΗΜΑΤΑ, ΑΠΟ ΑΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΟΥΣ!!!]
    He spent most of his career in a rising market, putting customers into stocks that paid good dividends, and growing wealthy on real estate investments made years ago, when Grafton was still semi-rural. The brokerage firm that employed him changed hands more than once, but he continued to work out of the same office in Worcester.
    When his son David graduated from Babson College in 1976, manufacturing in America was in an early phase of its long decline, and Worcester was still a center for the production of sandpaper, emery stones and other abrasives.
    He joined one of those companies — owned by the family of his friend — and he has stayed in manufacturing, particularly at companies that make hand tools. Early on, he and his wife bought the home in which they raised their sons, a white colonial dating from the early 1800s, like many houses on North Street, where the grandparents also live, a few doors away.
    David Nicholson’s longest stretch was at the Stanley Works, and when he left, seeking promotion, a friend at the Endeavor Tool Company hired him as that company’s general manager, his present job.
    In better times, Scott’s father might have given his son work at Endeavor, but the father is laying off workers, and a job in manufacturing, in Scott’s eyes, would be a defeat.
    “If you talk to 20 people,” Scott said, “you’ll find only one in manufacturing and everyone else in finance or something else.”[ΑΝΤΙΛΑΜΒΑΝΟΜΕΘΑ ΤΙ ΛΕΓΕΙ?? ΣΤΗΝ ΑΜΕΡΙΚΗ ΥΠΟΧΩΡΟΥΝ ΠΛΕΟΝ ΑΙ ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΙΚΑΙ ΕΡΓΑΣΙΑΙ (ΘΕΩΡΟΥΝΤΑΙ ΚΑΙ ΚΑΚΟ)--ΔΙΔΟΝΤΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΓΓΕΛΙΑΙ ΣΤΗΝ ΚΙΝΑ-- ΚΑΙ ΥΠΑΡΧΟΥΝ ΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΣΙΤΙΚΑΙ!!!]
    The Plan
    Scott Nicholson almost sidestepped the recession. His plan was to become a Marine Corps second lieutenant. He had spent the summer after his freshman year in “platoon leader” training. Last fall he passed the physical for officer training, and was told to report on Jan. 16.
    If all had gone well, he would have emerged in 10 weeks as a second lieutenant, committed to a four-year enlistment. “I could have made a career out of the Marines,” Scott said, “and if I had come out in four years, I would have been incredibly prepared for the workplace.”
    It was not to be. In early January, a Marine Corps doctor noticed that he had suffered from childhood asthma. He was washed out. “They finally told me I could reapply if I wanted to,” Scott said. “But the sheen was gone.”
    So he struggles to get a foothold in the civilian work force. His brother in Boston lost his roommate, and early last month Scott moved into the empty bedroom, with his parents paying Scott’s share of the $2,000-a-month rent until the lease expires on Aug. 31.
    And if Scott does not have a job by then? “I’ll do something temporary; I won’t go back home,” Scott said. “I’ll be a bartender or get work through a temp agency. I hope I don’t find myself in that position.

    Day 77: The Latest on the Oil Spill

    July 6, 2010

    Day 77: The Latest on the Oil Spill

    Capture and Containment Efforts Continue
    BP reported Tuesday that its capture systems at the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico collected or burned off 24,980 barrels of oil on Monday. Mark Proegler, a BP spokesman, said preparations continued for hooking a third vessel, the Helix Producer, up to the systems, which would increase the capture capacity from 28,000 barrels a day to 53,000 barrels. Skimming operations across the gulf have scooped up about 23.5 million gallons of oiled water so far.
    Oil Spotted in Lake Pontchartrain
    Oil sheen and tar balls from the spill have been spotted in Lake Pontchartrain, which forms the northern boundary of New Orleans and was rescued in the 1990s from rampant pollution, according to the unified command for the spill. Response crews placed a combined 600 feet of hard and soft boom in the Rigolets strait to prevent more oil from getting through to the lake. Nineteen manual skimming vessels and four decontamination vessels based out of Orleans and St. Tammany Parishes were dispatched to the oiled areas.
    An interactive map tracking the spill and where it has made landfall, live video of the leak, a guide to online spill resources and additional updates: nytimes.com/national.

    U.S. tax breaks help Jewish settlers

    U.S. tax breaks help Jewish settlers

    (Reuters) - The United States says Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank threaten any peace between Israel and the Palestinians -- yet it also encourages Americans to help support settlers by offering tax breaks on donations.

    Tuesday, July 6, 2010

    U.S. tax breaks aid illegal, violent outposts in West Bank - NY Times report could embarrass Obama in meeting with Netanyahu; some tax-deductible donations fund school that believes it is permissible to kill non-Jewish babies

    Ha'aretz - U.S. Treasury tax breaks have helped West Bank settlers to receive $200 million in tax-free funding from American donors, according to a report published in the United States on Tuesday  

    [See New York Times story below, which also includes information on tax-deducted donations to violent Israeli groups.]

    Differences in U.S. and Israeli law means it is easier to fund illegal outposts through donations from New York than from Jerusalem, according to an investigation by the New York Times [whose bureau chief and a co-author of the report, has a son in the Israeli military].

    An examination of public records in the United States and Israel pinpointed at least 40 American groups that have raised over $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the past decade. [The tax breaks were pushed through by the Israel lobby in the US, which controls most American policies regarding Israel.]

    The findings could embarrass U.S. President Barack Obama, an outspoken opponent of Israel's settlement policies who is expected to use a Tuesday meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to push for a continued freeze on Jewish building in the West Bank.


    According to the Times report, lenient American tax regulations allow funds to flow to settlement outposts that are illegal under Israel law – as opposed to larger settlement blocks that receive money from the Israeli government.

    The result is that it is easier to fund outposts from the United States than from Israel, which over a decade ago outlawed tax breaks for contributions to groups devoted exclusively to settlement-building in the West Bank.

    U.S. tax law applies to all nonprofit groups and there are Palestinian organizations that also benefit from U.S. donations, as does the Free Gaza movement, whose controversial aid flotilla was stormed by Israeli commandos a month ago. Nine activists were killed in the raid.

    But the flow of cash to settler groups is particularly awkward for the Obama administration as it mediates renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Washington has refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid on settlements and some U.S. officials fear the consequences of being seen to fund them indirectly.

    "It’s a problem,” one unnamed senior State Department official was quoted as saying, adding, “It’s unhelpful to the efforts that we’re trying to make.” 

    Daniel Kurtzer, the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005, said the issue was an unspoken source of embarrassment for American diplomats.

    “It drove us crazy,” Kurtzer told the Times. But “it was a thing you didn’t talk about in polite company.”

    He added that while the private donations could not sustain the settler enterprise on their own, “a couple of hundred million dollars makes a huge difference,” and if carefully focused, “creates a new reality on the ground.”

    Israeli military commanders are also angry that U.S. funds are going to extremists groups whose leaders have urged resistance to any attempt to evict them.

    “I am not happy about it,” a senior military commander in the West Bank.
    #

    New York Times - Jim rujtenberg, Mike McIntire, and Ethan Bronner [whose son is in the Israeli military] - Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank 
     
    Twice a year, American evangelicals show up at a winery in this Jewish settlement in the hills of ancient Samaria to play a direct role in biblical prophecy, picking grapes and pruning vines.

    Believing that Christian help for Jewish winemakers here in the occupied West Bank foretells Christ’s second coming, they are recruited by a Tennessee-based charity called HaYovel that invites volunteers “to labor side by side with the people of Israel” and “to share with them a passion for the soon coming jubilee in Yeshua, messiah.”

    But during their visit in February the volunteers found themselves in the middle of the fight for land that defines daily life here. When the evangelicals headed into the vineyards, they were pelted with rocks by Palestinians who say the settlers have planted creeping grape vines on their land to claim it as their own. Two volunteers were hurt. In the ensuing scuffle, a settler guard shot a 17-year-old Palestinian shepherd in the leg.

    “These people are filled with ideas that this is the Promised Land and their duty is to help the Jews,” said Izdat Said Qadoos of the neighboring Palestinian village. “It is not the Promised Land. It is our land.”

    HaYovel is one of many groups in the United States using tax-exempt donations to help Jews establish permanence in the Israeli-occupied territories — effectively obstructing the creation of a Palestinian state, widely seen as a necessary condition for Middle East peace.

    The result is a surprising juxtaposition: As the American government seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the American Treasury helps sustain the settlements through tax breaks on donations to support them.

    A New York Times examination of public records in the United States and Israel identified at least 40 American groups that have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the last decade. The money goes mostly to schools, synagogues, recreation centers and the like, legitimate expenditures under the tax law. But it has also paid for more legally questionable commodities: housing as well as guard dogs, bulletproof vests, rifle scopes and vehicles to secure outposts deep in occupied areas.

    In some ways, American tax law is more lenient than Israel’s. The outposts receiving tax-deductible donations — distinct from established settlements financed by Israel’s government — are illegal under Israeli law. And a decade ago, Israel ended tax breaks for contributions to groups devoted exclusively to settlement-building in the West Bank. [The New York Times fails to report that the Israeli government provides a multitude of financial benefits to settlers.]

    Now controversy over the settlements is sharpening, and the issue is sure to be high on the agenda when President Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, meet in Washington on Tuesday.

    While a succession of American administrations have opposed the settlements here, Mr. Obama has particularly focused on them as obstacles to peace. A two-state solution in the Middle East, he says, is vital to defusing Muslim anger at the West. Under American pressure, Mr. Netanyahu has temporarily frozen new construction to get peace talks going. The freeze and negotiations, in turn, have injected new urgency into the settlers’ cause — and into fund-raising for it.

    The use of charities to promote a foreign policy goal is neither new nor unique — Americans also take tax breaks in giving to pro-Palestinian groups [Because of Israeli policies, Palestinians are currently  suffering enormous financial and humanitarian distress]]. But the donations to the settler movement stand out because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements [theoretically; in reality, there is no oversight on how US tax money is used]. Tax breaks for the donations remain largely unchallenged, and unexamined by the American government. The Internal Revenue Service declined to discuss donations for West Bank settlements. State Department officials would comment only generally, and on condition of anonymity.

    “It’s a problem,” a senior State Department official said, adding, “It’s unhelpful to the efforts that we’re trying to make.”

    Daniel C. Kurtzer, the United States ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005, called the issue politically delicate. “It drove us crazy,” he said. But “it was a thing you didn’t talk about in polite company.”

    He added that while the private donations could not sustain the settler enterprise on their own, “a couple of hundred million dollars makes a huge difference,” and if carefully focused, “creates a new reality on the ground.”

    Most contributions go to large, established settlements close to the boundary with Israel that would very likely be annexed in any peace deal, in exchange for land elsewhere [here the NY Times inserts its editorializing into a news article]  . So those donations produce less concern than money for struggling outposts and isolated settlements inhabited by militant settlers. Even small donations add to their permanence.

    For example, when Israeli authorities suspended plans for permanent homes in Maskiot, a tiny settlement near Jordan, in 2007, two American nonprofits — the One Israel Fund and Christian Friends of Israeli Communities —raised tens of thousands of dollars to help erect temporary structures, keeping the community going until officials lifted the building ban.

    Israeli security officials express frustration over donations to the illegal or more defiant communities.
    “I am not happy about it,” a senior military commander in the West Bank responded when asked about contributions to a radical religious academy whose director has urged soldiers to defy orders to evict settlers. He spoke under normal Israeli military rules of anonymity.

    Palestinian officials expressed outrage at the tax breaks.

    “Settlements violate international law, and the United States is supposed to be sponsoring a two-state solution, yet it gives deductions for donation to the settlements?” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. The settlements are a sensitive issue among American Jews themselves. Some major Jewish philanthropies, like the Jewish Federations of North America, generally do not support building activities in the West Bank.

    The donors to settlement charities represent a broad mix of Americans — from wealthy people like the hospital magnate Dr. Irving I. Moskowitz and the family behind Haagen-Dazs ice cream to bidders at kosher pizza auctions in Brooklyn and evangelicals at a recent Bible meeting in a Long Island basement. But they are unified in their belief that returning the West Bank — site of the ancient Jewish kingdoms — to full Jewish control is critical to Israeli security and fulfillment of biblical prophecies.
    As Kimberly Troup, director of the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities’ American office, said, while her charity’s work is humanitarian, “the more that we build, the more that we support and encourage their right to live in the land, the harder it’s going to be for disengagement, for withdrawal.”

    Sorting Out the Facts
     
    Today half a million Israeli Jews live in lands captured during the June 1967 Middle East war. Yet there is a strong international consensus that a Palestinian state should arise in the West Bank and Gaza, where all told some four million Palestinians live. [The New York Times, as always, fails to inform readers that its acquisition of the West Bank and Gaza and its settlement policies are all illegal under international law.]

    Ultimately, any agreement will be a compromise, a sorting out of the facts on the ground.
    Most Jewish residents of the West Bank live in what amount to suburbs, with neat homes, high rises and highways to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Politically and ideologically, they are indistinguishable from Israel proper. Most will doubtless stay in any peace deal, while those who must move will most likely do so peacefully.

    But in the geographically isolated settlements and dozens of illegal outposts, there are settlers who may well violently resist being moved. The prospect of an internal and deeply painful Israeli confrontation looms.

    And the resisters will very likely be aided by tax-deductible donations from Americans who believe that far from quelling Muslim anger, as Mr. Obama argues, handing over the West Bank will only encourage militant Islamists bent on destroying Israel.

    “We need to influence our congressmen to stop Obama from putting pressure on Israel to self-destruct,” Helen Freedman, a New Yorker who runs a charity called Americans for a Safe Israel, told supporters touring the West Bank this spring.

    Israel, too, used to offer its residents tax breaks for donations to settlement building, starting in 1984 under a Likud government. But those donations were ended by the Labor Party, first in 1995 and then, after reversal, again in 2000. The finance minister in both cases, Avraham Shohat, said that while he only vaguely recalled the decision-making process, as a matter of principle he believed in deductions for gifts to education and welfare for the poor, not to settlement building per se.

    In theory, the same is true for the United States, where the tax code encourages citizens to support nonprofit groups that may diverge from official policy, as long as their missions are educational, religious or charitable.

    The challenge is defining those terms and enforcing them.

    There are more than a million registered charities, and many submit sparse or misleading mission summaries in tax filings. Religious groups have no obligation to divulge their finances, meaning settlements may be receiving sums that cannot be traced.

    The Times’s review of pro-settler groups suggests that most generally live within the rules of the American tax code. Some, though, risk violating them by using the money for political campaigning and residential property purchases, by failing to file tax returns, by setting up boards of trustees in name only and by improperly funneling donations directly to foreign organizations.

    One group that at least skates close to the line is Friends of Zo Artzeinu/Manhigut Yehudit, based in Cedarhurst, N.Y., and co-founded by Shmuel Sackett, a former executive director of the banned Israeli political party Kahane Chai. Records from the group say a portion of the $5.2 million it has collected over the last few years has gone to the Israeli “community facilities” of Manhigut Yehudit, a hard-right faction of Mr. Netanyahu’s governing Likud Party, which Mr. Sackett helps run with the politician Moshe Feiglin. 

    American tax rules prohibit the use of charitable funds for political purposes at home or abroad. Neither man would answer questions about the nature of the “community facilities.” In an e-mail message, Mr. Sackett said the American charity was not devoted to political activity, but to humanitarian projects and “educating the public about the need for authentic Jewish leadership in Israel.”

    Of course, groups in the pro-settler camp are not the only ones benefiting from tax breaks. For example, the Free Gaza Movement, which organized the flotilla seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, says on its Web site that supporters can make tax-deductible donations to it through the American Educational Trust, publisher of an Arab-oriented journal. Israeli civil and human rights groups like Peace Now, which are often accused of having a blatant political agenda, also benefit from tax-deductible donations.

    Some pro-settler charities have obscured their true intentions.

    Take the Capital Athletic Foundation, run by the disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In its I.R.S. filings, the foundation noted donations totaling more than $140,000 to Kollel Ohel Tiferet, a religious study group in Israel, for “educational and athletic” purposes. In reality, a study group member was using the money to finance a paramilitary operation in the Beitar Illit settlement, according to documents in a Senate investigation of Mr. Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to defrauding clients and bribing public officials.

    Mr. Abramoff, documents show, had directed the settler, Shmuel Ben Zvi, an old high school friend, to use the study group as cover after his accountant complained that money for sniper equipment and a jeep “don’t look good” in terms of complying with the foundation’s tax-exempt status.
    While the donations by Mr. Abramoff’s charity were elaborately disguised — the group shipped a camouflage sniper suit in a box labeled “Grandmother Tree Costume for the play Pocahontas” — other groups are more open. Amitz Rescue & Security, which has raised money through two Brooklyn nonprofits, trains and equips guard units for settlements. Its Web site encourages donors to “send a tax-deductible check” for night-vision binoculars, bulletproof vehicles and guard dogs.

    Other groups urge donors to give to one of several nonprofits that serve as clearinghouses for donations to a wide array of groups in Israel and the West Bank, which, if not done properly, can skirt the intent of American tax rules.

    Americans cannot claim deductions for direct donations to foreign charities; tax laws allow deductions for domestic giving on the theory that charities ultimately ease pressure on government spending for social programs. 

    But the I.R.S. does allow deductions for donations to American nonprofits that support charitable projects abroad, provided the nonprofit is not simply a funnel to another group overseas, according to Bruce R. Hopkins, a lawyer and the author of several books on nonprofit law. Donors can indicate how they would like their money to be used, but the nonprofit must exercise “some measure of independence to deliberate on grant-making,” he said.

    A prominent clearinghouse is the Central Fund of Israel, operated from the Marcus Brothers Textiles offices in the Manhattan garment district. Dozens of West Bank groups seem to view the fund as little more than a vehicle for channeling donations back to themselves, instructing their supporters that if they want a tax break, they must direct their contributions there first. The fund’s president, Hadassah Marcus, acknowledged that it received many checks from donors “who want them to go to different programs in Israel,” but, she said, the fund retains ultimate discretion over the money. It also makes its own grants to needy Jewish families and monitors them, she said, adding that the fund, which collected $13 million in 2008, was audited and complies with I.R.S. rules.

    “We’re not a funnel. We’re trying to build a land,” she said, adding, “All we’re doing is going back to our home.”

    Support From a Preacher
     
    Late one afternoon in March, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. landed in Israel and headed to his Jerusalem hotel to prepare for a weeklong effort to rekindle Middle East peace talks.

    Across town, many of the leading Israeli officials on Mr. Biden’s schedule, among them Prime Minister Netanyahu, were in a convention hall listening to the Rev. John Hagee, an influential American preacher whose charities have donated millions to projects in Israel and the territories. Support for the settlements has become a cause of some leading conservative Republicans, like Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin.

    “Israel exists because of a covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 3,500 years ago — and that covenant still stands,” Mr. Hagee thundered. “World leaders do not have the authority to tell Israel and the Jewish people what they can and cannot do in the city of Jerusalem.”

    The next day, Israeli-American relations plunged after Israel announced plans for 1,600 new apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their future capital.
    Israeli officials said Mr. Hagee’s words of encouragement had no effect on government decision making. And the preacher’s aides said he was not trying to influence the peace talks, just defending Israel’s right to make decisions without foreign pressure.

    Still, his presence underscored the role of settlement supporters abroad.

    Nowhere is that effort more visible, and contentious, than in East Jerusalem, which the Netanyahu government says must remain under Israeli sovereignty in any peace deal.

    The government supports privately financed archaeological projects that focus on Jewish roots in Arab areas of Jerusalem. The Obama administration and the United Nations have recently criticized a plan to raze 22 Palestinian homes to make room for a history park in a neighborhood where a nonprofit group called El’Ad finances digs and buys up Arab-owned properties.

    To raise money, groups like El’Ad seek to bring alive a narrative of Jewish nationalism in living rooms and banquet halls across America.

    In May, a crowd of mostly Jewish professionals — who paid $300 a plate to benefit the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim — gathered in a catering hall high above Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens to dine and hear John R. Bolton, United Nations ambassador under President George W. Bush, warn of the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran. 

    A few days earlier, the group’s executive vice president, Susan Hikind, had gone on a Jewish radio program in New York to proclaim her group’s resistance to American policy in the Middle East. The Obama administration, she said, did not want donors to attend the banquet because it believed Jerusalem should “be part of some future capital of a Palestinian state.”

    “And who’s standing in the way of that?” Ms. Hikind said. “People who support Ateret Cohanim’s work in Jerusalem to ensure that Jerusalem remains united.”

    The Jerusalem Reclamation Project of Ateret Cohanim works to transfer ownership of Arab homes to Jewish families in East Jerusalem. Such efforts have generated much controversy; Islamic judicial panels have threatened death to Palestinians who sell property in the occupied territories to Jews, and sales are often conducted using shell companies and intermediaries.

    “Land reclamation is actually sort of a bad name — redeeming is probably a better word,” said D. Bernard Hoenig, a New York lawyer on the board of American Friends of Ateret Cohanim. “The fact of the matter is, there are Arabs who want to sell their homes, and they have offered our organization the opportunity to buy them.”

    Mr. Hoenig said that Ateret Cohanim bought a couple of buildings years ago, but that mostly it helps arrange purchases by other Jewish investors. That is not mentioned, however, on its American affiliate’s tax returns. Rather, they describe its primary charitable purpose as financing “higher educational institutions in Israel,” as well as children’s camps, help for needy families and security for Jews living in East Jerusalem.

    Indeed, it does all those things. It houses yeshiva students and teachers in properties it helps acquire and places kindergartens and study institutes into other buildings, all of which helps its activities qualify as educational or religious for tax purposes.

    The American affiliate provides roughly 60 percent of Ateret Cohanim’s funding, according to representatives of the group. But Mr. Hoenig said none of the American money went toward the land deals, since they would not qualify for tax-deductible donations.

    Still, acquiring property has been an integral part of Ateret Cohanim’s fund-raising appeals. 

    Archived pages from a Web site registered to the American affiliate — taken down in the last year or so — described in detail how Ateret Cohanim “quietly and discreetly” arranged the acquisition of buildings in Palestinian areas. And it sought donations for “the expected left-wing Arab legal battle,” building costs and “other expenses (organizational, planning, Arab middlemen, etc.)”

    An Unyielding Stance
     
    Deep inside the West Bank, in the northern region called Samaria, or Shomron, lie 30 or so settlements and unauthorized outposts, most considered sure candidates for evacuation in any deal for a Palestinian state. In terms of donations, they do not raise anywhere near the sums produced for Jerusalem or close-in settlements. But in many ways they worry security officials and the Palestinians the most, because they are so unyielding.

    Out here, the communities have a rougher feel. Some have only a few paved roads, and mobile homes for houses. Residents — men with skullcaps and sidelocks, women with head coverings, and families with many children — often speak in apocalyptic terms about the need for Jews to stay on the land. It may take generations, they say, but God’s promise will be fulfilled.

    In November, after the Netanyahu government announced the settlement freeze, Shomron leaders invited reporters to watch them shred the orders.

    David Ha’Ivri, the public liaison for the local government, the Shomron Regional Council, has positioned himself as a fierce yet amiable advocate. As a leader of an American-based nonprofit, he also brings a militant legacy to the charitable enterprise.

    Mr. Ha’Ivri, formerly David Axelrod, was born in Far Rockaway, Queens, and was a student of the virulently anti-Arab [and anti-Christian] Rabbi Meir David Kahane and a top lieutenant and brother-in-law to the rabbi’s son, Binyamin Kahane. Both Kahanes, who were assassinated 10 years apart, ran organizations banned in Israel for instigating, if not participating in, attacks against Arabs. The United States Treasury Department later added both groups, Kach and Kahane Chai, to its terrorism watch list. 

    As recently as four years ago, Mr. Ha’Ivri was involved in running The Way of the Torah, a Kahanist newsletter designated as a terrorist organization in the United States. He has had several run-ins with the authorities in Israel over the last two decades, including an arrest for celebrating the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in a television interview and a six-month jail term in connection with the desecration of a mosque.

    Treasury officials said a group’s presence on the terror list does not necessarily extend to its former leaders, and indeed Mr. Ha’Ivri is not on it.

    Mr. Ha’Ivri said he no longer engaged in such activism, adding that, at 43, he had mellowed, even if his core convictions had not. “I’m a little older now, a little more mature,” he said.

    A Sunday in late May found him in New York, on a stage in Central Park, speaking at the annual Salute to Israel celebration. “We will not ever, ever give up our land,” Mr. Ha’Ivri said.

    He posed for pictures with the Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, and distributed fliers about the “501 c3 I.R.S. tax deductible status” of his charity, Shuva Israel, which has raised more than $2.6 million since 2004 for the Shomron communities.

    Although I.R.S. rules require that American charities exhibit “full control of the donated funds and discretion as to their use,” Shuva Israel appears to be dominated by Israeli settlers. 

    Mr. Ha’Ivri, who lives in the settlement of Kfar Tapuach, was listed as the group’s executive director in its most recent tax filing; Gershon Mesika, the Shomron council’s leader, is the board’s chairman; and Shuva Israel’s accountant is based in the settlement of Tekoa. Its American presence is through a post office box in Austin, Tex., where, according to its tax filings, it has two volunteers who double as board members.

    “I’ve never been to the board,” said one of them, Jeff Luftig.

    When asked about his dual status as leader of the charity and an official with the council it supports, Mr. Ha’Ivri said he was no longer executive director, though he could not recall who was. He said he was confident the charity was following the law, adding that the money it raises goes strictly toward improving the lives of settlers.

    Exacting a Price
     
    If Mr. Ha’Ivri has changed tactics, a new generation has picked up his aggressive approach. These activists also receive American support.

    Their campaign has been named “Price Tag”: For every move by Israeli authorities to curtail settlement construction, the price will be an attack on an Arab mosque, vineyard or olive grove.
    The results were on display during a recent tour through the Arab village of Hawara, where the wall of a mosque had been desecrated with graffiti of a Jewish star and the first letters of the Prophet Muhammad’s name in Hebrew. In the nearby Palestinian village of Mikhmas, the deputy mayor, Mohamed Damim, said settlers had come in the dark of night and uprooted or cut down hundreds of olive and fig trees. 

    “The army has done nothing to protect us,” he said. Though the attacks are small by nature, Israeli commanders fear they threaten to scuttle the uneasy peace they and their Palestinian Authority partners have forged in the West Bank.

    “It can bring the entire West Bank to light up again in terror and violence,” a senior commander said in an interview.

    Israeli law enforcement officials say that in investigating settler violence in the north, they often turn to people connected to the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement. After the arson of a mosque in Yasuf in December, authorities arrested the yeshiva’s head rabbi, Yitzhak Shapira, and several students but released them for lack of evidence. Rabbi Shapira denied involvement. He is known in Israel for his strong views. He was co-author of a book released last year that offered religious justification for killing non-Jews who pose a threat to Jews or, in the case of young children [and babies], could in the future.

    A plaque inside the recently built yeshiva thanks Dr. Moskowitz, the hospitals entrepreneur, and his wife, Cherna, for their “continuous and generous support.” Another recognizes Benjamin Landa of Brooklyn, a nursing home operator who gave through his foundation, Ohel Harav Yehoshua Boruch. Mr. Landa said he donated to the yeshiva after its old building was destroyed in an Arab ransacking.

    None of the American donations have been linked to the campaign of attacks.

    The Israeli military has activated outstanding permit violations that have set the stage for the yeshiva’s threatened demolition. And officials have barred some of the yeshiva’s students from the West Bank for months on end.

    Od Yosef Chai’s director, Itamar Posen, said in an interview that the military was unfairly singling out the yeshiva because “the things that we publish are things that are against their ideas, and they are frightened.” Mr. Ha’Ivri and Mr. Mesika have charged the military with jeopardizing the men’s livelihoods without due process.

    A settler legal defense fund, Honenu, with its own American charitable arm, has sought to provide a safety net.

    An online appeal for tax-deductible donations to be sent to Honenu’s Queens-based post office read, “If the 3 men can have their families supported it will cause others at the Hilltops to brave military and government threats against them.”

    Reached last month, one of the men, Akiva HaCohen, declined to say how much support he had received from American donors; Honenu officials in Israel declined to comment as well.

    There is no way to tell from Honenu’s American tax returns; none was available through Guidestar, a service that tracks tax filings by nonprofits. Groups that raise less than $25,000 a year are not required to file. But a review of tax returns filed by other charities showed that one American family foundation gave it $33,000 in a single year, enough to have required filing.


    Asked whether it had ever filed a tax return, Aaron Heimowitz, a financial planner in Queens who collects Honenu’s donations there, responded, “I’m not in a position to answer that.”

    Opaque Finances
     
    Religious charities are still more opaque; the tax code does not require them to disclose their finances publicly.

    Mr. Hagee is one of the few Christian Zionists who advertises his philanthropy in Israel and its territories, at least $58 million as of last year, distributed through a multimedia empire that spins out a stream of books, DVDs and CDs about Israel’s role in biblical prophecy.

    [Hagee reportedly was helped to prominence by Israel, which is reported to have bought him a jet plane.]

    Mr. Hagee’s aides say he makes a large majority of his donations within Israel’s 1967 boundaries and seeks to avoid disputed areas. Yet a sports complex in the large settlement of Ariel — whose future is in dispute — bears his name. And a few years ago, according to officials at the yeshiva at Har Bracha, Mr. Hagee donated $250,000 to expand a dormitory.

    The yeshiva is the main growth engine of the settlement, attracting students who put down roots. (Some are soldiers, and the head rabbi there has called upon them to refuse orders to evict settlers.) After the yeshiva was started in 1992, “the place just took off,” growing to more than 200 families from 3, said the yeshiva’s spokesman, Yonaton Behar. “The goal,” he added, “is to grow to the point where there is no question of uprooting Har Bracha.”

    Various strains of American pro-settlement activity come together in Har Bracha. The Moskowitz family helped pay for the yeshiva’s main building. Nearby, a winery was built with volunteer help from HaYovel ministries, which brings large groups of volunteers to prune and harvest. Mr. Ha’Ivri’s charity promotes the program.


    The winery’s owner, Nir Lavi, says his land is state-sanctioned. But officials in the neighboring Palestinian village of Iraq Burin say part of the vineyard was planted on ground taken from their residents in a parcel-by-parcel land grab.

    Such disputes are typical for the area, as are the opposing accounts of what happened that February day when HaYovel’s leader, Tommy Waller, and his volunteers say they came under attack and the shepherd was shot.

    “They came up screaming, slinging their rock-slings like David going after a giant,” Mr. Waller said. A Har Bracha security guard came to the rescue by shooting in the air, not aiming for the attackers, he added.

    But, in an interview, the shepherd, Amid Qadoos, said settlers started the scuffle by throwing rocks at him as he was grazing his sheep on village land a few yards from the vineyard, telling him, “You are not allowed here.” He and his friends then threw rocks in retaliation, he said, prompting the security guard to shoot him in the back of his leg. His father, Aref Qadoos, added, “They want us to go so they can confiscate the land, through planting.”

    Though two volunteers were hurt, Mr. Waller said neither he nor his group would be deterred. “People are drawn to our work who believe the Bible is true and desire to participate in the promises of God,” he said. “We believe the restoration of Israel, including Samaria and Judea, is part of that promise.”
    In the last year, he said, he brought 130 volunteers here. This coming year, he said, he expects as many as 400.