ROBERT FISK-The provocateurs know politics and religion don't mix

ROBERT FISK

Thursday 13 September 2012

The provocateurs know politics and religion don't mix

It only takes a couple of loonies a few seconds to kick off a miniature war in the Muslim world

So another internet clever-clogs sets the Middle East on fire: Prophet cartoons, then Koranic book-burning, now a video of robed "terrorists" and a fake desert. The Western-Christian perpetrators then go into hiding (an essential requisite for publicity) while the innocent are asphyxiated, beheaded and otherwise done to death – outrageous Muslim revenge thus "proving" the racist claims of the trash peddlers that Islam is a violent religion.
The provocateurs, of course, know that politics and religion don’t mix in the Middle East. They are the same. Christopher Stevens, his diplomat colleagues in Benghazi, priests in Turkey and Africa, UN personnel in Afghanistan; they have all paid the price for those ‘Christian priests’, ‘cartoonists’, ‘film-makers’ and ‘authors’ – the inverted commas are necessary to mark a thin line between illusionists and the real thing – who knowingly choose to provoke 1.6 billion Muslims.

When a Danish cartoon in a hitherto unknown newspaper drew a picture of the Prophet Mohamed with a bomb in his turban, the Danish embassy in Beirut went up in flames. When a Texas pastor decided to ‘sentence the Koran to death’, the knives came out in Afghanistan – we are leaving aside the little matter of the ‘accidental’ burning of Koranic pages by US personnel in Bagram. And now a deliberately abusive film provokes the murder of one of the State Department’s fairest diplomats.

In many ways, it’s familiar territory. In fifteenth century Spain, Christian cartoonists drew illustrations of the Prophet committing unspeakable acts. And – just so we don’t think we have clean claws today – when a Paris cinema showed a film in which Christ made love to a woman, the picture-house was burned-down, one cinema-goer was killed, and the killer turned out to be a Christian.

With the help of our wonderful new technology, however, it only needs a couple of loonies to kick off a miniature war in the Muslim world within seconds. I doubt if poor Christopher Stevens – a man who really understood the Arabs as many of his colleagues do not – had ever heard of the ‘film’ that unleashed the storming of the US consulate in Benghazi and his own death. It’s one thing to witlessly claim that the US would go on a “crusade” against al-Qaeda – thank you, George W. Bush – but another to insult, quite deliberately, an entire people. Racism of this kind stirs many a crazed heart.

And has Al-Qaeda – defeated by the Arab revolutionaries who demanded dignity rather than a Bin Laden Caliphate across the Middle East – now decided to cash in on populist grievances to advance their Islamist cause? Libya’s largely impotent government blames the Americans themselves for Stevens’ killing – since the consulate should have been evacuated – and suggests that a Gaddafi clique was behind the attack. This is ridiculous. If the armed militia in Benghazi, calling itself the ‘Islamic Law Supporters’, are more than telephone-gunmen, then al-Qaida involvement has to be suspected.

Ironically, there is room for a serious discussion among Muslims about, for example, a re-interpretation of the Koran; but Western provocation – and western, alas, it is – closes down such a narrative. Meanwhile, we beat our chests in favour of a ‘free press’. A New Zealand editor once proudly told me how his own newspaper had re-published the cartoon of the Prophet with a bomb-filled turban. But when I asked him if he planned to publish a cartoon of a Rabbi with a bomb on his head next time Israel invaded Lebanon, he hastily agreed with me that this would be anti-Semitic.

There’s the rub, of course. Some things are off limits, and rightly so. Others have no limits at all. Several radio presenters asked me yesterday if the unrest in Cairo and Benghazi may have been timed to “coincide with 9/11”.  It simply never occurred to them to ask if the video-clip provocateurs had chosen their date-for-release to coincide with 9/11. 

Saturday 1 September 2012

Robert Fisk: Another week in the violent, murderous and divided world of Syria

Christians and Armenians among latest to die

A week is a long time in violence. It seems only yesterday – five days ago, in fact – that armed men shot Sheikh Abu Haitham al-Bortawi outside the el-Noor mosque in the Rukenadin suburb of Damascus. Went to the scene. Middle class area. Tree shaded, clean street. Ten in the morning. Turns out he was the cleric who knelt right next to Bashar al-Assad for the Eid prayers at the end of Ramadan. A dagger to the heart of the body politick.
I meet an old friend the next day at a café in Mezzeh, and he's crying. His dentist lived in Zabadani, in the hills near the Lebanese border, in Free Syria Army country. His son was warned the family home was unsafe because of incoming fire. From the army? No one's sure. But a shell hit the house and the dentist has just arrived at the French Hospital. Dead, his grieving family still at the morgue.

Then there's the two Christian guys outside town. One runs a DVD store, the other a pharmacy. Murdered. Next day, their funeral cortege is car-bombed. Twelve dead, at least 40 wounded. Turns out they had brothers in the Syrian army, apparently conscripts. Hardly a sin. But the opposition says the two men were "connected to the military".

A Syrian journalist calls me. Six Armenians have been "slaughtered with knives" in their homes. I race to the Armenian church and there is brown-robed Bishop Armesh Nalbandian next to the ancient chapel of Saint Sarkis – he has around 6,500 parishioners in Damascus – and only a few metres from the memorial to the 1915 Armenian genocide. Many of those one and a half million victims of Ottoman Turkish slaughter were put to death in the deserts north of Damascus, now the scene of another Calvary.

But the "six-dead" story is untrue, Armesh says. Good news. But no. Three Damascus Armenians have just been murdered, apparently shot. Thirty-nine-year-old Bedros Matosian died along with his younger brother Kevork and the son of one of them – the bishop isn't sure which – called Levon, who was only 22. Armed men. No identity. But the Matosians had Alawite and Sunni neighbours who were also massacred, because, so the local story goes, they refused to join the Free Syria Army.

The story depends on where you go in this divided capital. Yesterday, I take another prowl, through the Damascus suburbs; Malayha, Harasta, Zamalka, Bab Shawkeh. Thirty government checkpoints, maybe 40, but in Harasta, the Syrian Arab Republic has no sway. There are dozens of painted green, white and black FSA flags on the walls. "The free people of Harasta are denied their liberty," a slogan informs us. "Assad should go." There's a mosque so packed that the crowds have spilled on to the boiling roadway; a guy in a pick-up tells us it's safe to head for the motorway. An opposition man. A Syrian soldier in sunglasses waves us back to the autostrade of the Syrian Arab Republic.

We drive through the Assad Suburb, government housing, though some home-owners have rented to people from Zabadani – maybe a little security problem? – and just past the Tishreen military hospital (former student, one Bashar al-Assad), there's an explosion and a car with headlights zipping the street dust under its shrieking tyres and a pulverised dead dog lying inside a garage.

Up to the Kassioun mountain overlooking Damascus for lunch at Al Montagna – the only guests, save for three tired Syrian officers – and we look across at the Omayad mosque and there's a roar from the government guns on the other side of the jebel and a rumble of sound relayed mountain-to-mountain on the other side of the city. Fifteen seconds later, there's a pop far away on the edge of the Palestinian camp at Yarmouk and a smudge of grey smoke. Then another report and another rumble and another pop a bit to the right, four miles away through the heat haze. Palestinians. I close my notebook for the week.

Welcome to the American Gulag: Using Involuntary Commitment Laws to Silence Dissenters

Welcome to the American Gulag: Using Involuntary Commitment Laws to Silence Dissenters

By John W. Whitehead

September 15, 2012


What happened to 26-year-old decorated Marine Brandon Raub—who was targeted because of his Facebook posts, interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called "conspiratorial" views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys—has happened many times throughout history in totalitarian regimes.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum observes in Gulag: A History: "The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can 'pay their debt to society,’ make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself. The rulers of ancient Rome and Greece sent their dissidents off to distant colonies. Socrates chose death over the torment of exile from Athens. The poet Ovid was exiled to a fetid port on the Black Sea."
The advent of psychiatry eliminated the need to exile political prisoners, allowing governments instead to declare such dissidents mentally ill and unfit for society. For example, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally through the use of electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures. Insisting that "ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure," the psychiatric community actually went so far as to provide the government with a diagnosis suitable for locking up such freedom-oriented activists.
In addition to declaring political dissidents mentally unsound, Russian officials also made use of an administrative process for dealing with individuals who were considered a bad influence on others or troublemakers. Author George Kennan describes a process in which:

The obnoxious person may not be guilty of any crime . . . but if, in the opinion of the local authorities, his presence in a particular place is "prejudicial to public order" or "incompatible with public tranquility," he may be arrested without warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then be removed by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there be put under police surveillance for a period of from one to ten years. Administrative exile–which required no trial and no sentencing procedure–was an ideal punishment not only for troublemakers as such, but also for political opponents of the regime.

Sound familiar? This age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in psychiatric wards for extended periods of time is a common practice in present-day China. What is particularly unnerving, however, is that this practice of making individuals disappear is happening with increasing frequency in America. Indeed, Raub’s case exposes the seedy underbelly of a governmental system that is targeting Americans—especially military veterans—for expressing their discontent over America’s rapid transition to a police state.
It’s no coincidence that within days of Raub being seized at his Virginia home on August 16, 2012, and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences. These incidents are merely the realization of various U.S. government initiatives dating back to 2009, including one dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle which calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be "disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war."
That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the means by which to immobilize (and disarm) these veterans is diabolically brilliant. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these service men are being declared mentally ill, locked away against their will, and stripped of their constitutional rights.
Coupled with the Department of Homeland Security’s report on "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups "that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely," these tactics bode ill for anyone seen as opposing the government. Although these initiatives caused an initial uproar when announced in 2009, they were quickly subsumed by the ever-shifting cacophony of the news media and its ten-day cycles. Yet while the American public may have forgotten about the government’s plans to identify and disable anyone deemed a potential "threat," the government has put its plan into action.
Thus, what began as a blueprint under the Bush administration is being used as an operation manual under the Obama administration to exile those who are challenging the government’s authority. An important point to consider, however, is that the government is not merely targeting individuals who are voicing their discontent so much as it is locking up individuals trained in military warfare who are voicing feelings of discontent.
Under the guise of mental health treatment and with the complicity of government psychiatrists and law enforcement officials, these veterans are increasingly being portrayed as ticking time bombs in need of intervention. Just earlier this year, for instance, the Justice Department launched a pilot program aimed at training SWAT teams to deal with confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.
One tactic being used to deal with so-called "mentally ill suspects who also happen to be trained in modern warfare" is through the use of civil commitment laws, found in all states and employed throughout American history to not only silence but cause dissidents to disappear. For example, in 2006, NSA officials attempted to label former employee Russ Tice, who was willing to testify in Congress about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, as "mentally unbalanced" based upon two psychiatric evaluations ordered by his superiors. In 2009, NYPD Officer Adrian Schoolcraft had his home raided, and he was handcuffed to a gurney and taken into emergency custody for an alleged psychiatric episode. It was later discovered by way of an internal investigation that his superiors were retaliating against him for reporting police misconduct. Schoolcraft spent six days in the mental facility, and as a further indignity, was presented with a bill for $7,185 upon his release.
Most recently, of course, Virginia’s civil commitment law was used to justify arresting and detaining Marine Brandon Raub in a psychiatric ward. On Thursday, August 16, 2012, a swarm of local police, Secret Service and FBI agents arrived at Raub’s home, asking to speak with him about posts he had made on his Facebook page made up of song lyrics, political opinions and dialogue used in a political thriller virtual card game. Among the posts cited as troublesome were lyrics to a song by the rap group Swollen Members and Raub’s views, shared increasingly by a number of Americans, that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job.
After a brief conversation and without providing any explanation, levying any charges against Raub or reading him his rights, law enforcement officials then handcuffed Raub and transported him first to the police headquarters, then to a medical center, where he was held against his will due to alleged concerns that his Facebook posts were "terrorist in nature." Outraged onlookers filmed the arrest and posted the footage to YouTube, where it quickly went viral, which may have helped prevent Raub from being successfully "disappeared" by the government.
In a hearing on August 20, government officials pointed to Raub’s Facebook posts as the sole reason for their concern and for his continued incarceration. Ignoring Raub’s explanations about the fact that the Facebook posts were being read out of context, Raub was sentenced to up to 30 days’ further confinement in a psychiatric ward. While in the psych ward, Raub reported being interrogated by medical staff about his views about the government and threatened by a doctor with brainwashing.
On August 23, Circuit Court Judge Allan Sharrett declared the government’s case to be lacking in factual allegations and ordered Raub immediately released. However, for the tens of thousands of individuals detained—wrongfully or otherwise—under civil commitment laws every year, regaining their freedom is nearly impossible, predicated as it is on a bureaucratic legal and judicial system.
The problem, of course, is that the diagnosis of mental illness, while a legitimate concern for some Americans, has over time become a convenient means by which to penalize certain "unacceptable" social behaviors. Most recently, we have witnessed the pathologizing of individuals who resist authority as suffering from oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), defined as "a pattern of disobedient, hostile, and defiant behavior toward authority figures."
Under such a definition, every activist of note throughout our history—from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr.—could be classified as suffering from an ODD mental disorder. Yet psychologist Bruce Levine, who has studied the issue of dissent and mental illness, suggests that the problem may have less to do with any true illness on the part of the anti-authoritarians than it does with those in field of psychology and psychiatry who are pre-disposed to labeling anti-authoritarians as mentally ill. Says Levine, "In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not."
Of course, this is all part of a larger trend in American governance whereby dissent is criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced or declared unfit for society.  Governmental authorities at all levels have made it abundantly clear that they want no one questioning their authority. And for those who do take to the streets to express their opinions and beliefs, rows of riot police, clad in jackboots, military vests, and helmets, holding batons, stun guns, assault rifles, and sometimes even grenade launchers, are there to keep them in line.


Source 

Iraq snapshot - September 17, 2012

Iraq snapshot - September 17, 2012

The Common Ills

September 17, 2012

Monday, September 17, 2012.  Chaos and violence continue,  Archbishop Desmond Tutu raises his voice to help a family, Angelina Jolie visits Iraq, 8 of 9 commissioners for Iraq's electoral commission are named, more residents move from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty, Tareq al-Hashemi talks about his trial and conviction, Soledad O'Brien embarasses herself and CNN,  and more.

 

Starting wih war resistance.  Kimberly Rivera and her family (husband and two kids) went to Canada in early 2007 with only what they could carry on their small family car.  She was on leave from Iraq and horrified by what she saw while serving.  Already a believer in Jesus Christ when she deployed, the horror deepened her spirituality and her conviction to do the Lord's work as she understood it.

What happened to her is no uncommon.  Agustin Aguayo also was a practicing Christian when he deployed to Iraq.  Seeing war up close deepened his own faith and religious beliefs.  That is why he stopped carrying a loaded gun while deployed in Iraq and why he found he could no longer participate in the Iraq War.

Faith. like any relationship, is not static nor is it taught to be.  Regardless of the religion, there is the belief that, for example, in times of crisis, the power of religion can carry you through the experience when you could not make it through on your own.  (Hence the modern day parable of the two sets of footsteps in the sand that becomes one as your higher power carries you in the darkest of times.)  Faith is not stagnant which is why religious scholars spend so much time pursuing knowledge, why followers do not attend one service their entire life but continue to attend to deepen their understanding and beliefs.

Kim and Agustin's experiences are in keeping with their religions which do allow for faith to grow and deepen.  The US military has refused to recognize that and has found itself in the questionable (legally questionable) position of interpreting faith and judging faith.  The US military will not allow an Agustin Aguayo or Kim Rivera to become a conscientious objector, they will argue that they were practicing a religion when they went to Iraq and that if they had objections they should have been lodged prior to deployment.  (Lodging the objection prior to deployment, to be clear, does not mean someone will get C.O. status.)  They will refuse to recognize that faith and spirituality are not fixed and that they can grow and deepen over time and due to experience.

 

She is now threatened with expulsion.  The Canadian government wants her out of the country by September 20th.  August 31st, Kim took part in a press conference with War Resisters Support Campaign's Michelle Robidoux.

 

 

Kim Rivera: If you want to know my biggest fear is being separated from my children and having to -- having to sit in a prison for politically being against the war in Iraq which I had experience in.  Without that experience, I know that I would not have come to the decision I had made to leave and also be here in Canada for people to know that experience which I had spoken many of.  So the only thing that I guess I can really ask is that all of my legal applications that I applied be considered and my agency application also get a decision.   That's pretty much all I have.

 

Many Canadians support her and organizations as well including  the United Steelworkers of Canada which issued a statement calling for the government of Canada to let Kim and her family stay  and  Canada's National Union of Public and General Employees which also issued a statement.  NowArchbishop Desmond Tutu has added his voice to the cause with a column for the Globe and Mail:

 

But those who were called to fight this war believed what their leaders had told them. The reason we know this is because U.S. soldiers such as Kimberly Rivera, through her own experience in Iraq, came to the conclusion that the invasion had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, the presence of U.S. forces only created immense misery for civilians and soldiers alike.

Those leaders to whom soldiers such as Kimberly Rivera looked for answers failed a supreme moral test. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003, millions have been displaced and nearly 4,500 American soldiers have been killed.

There are many people who, while they may have believed the original justification for the war, came to a different conclusion as the reality of the war became more evident. Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself came to the conclusion that the Iraq war was "absolutely an error."

It is large-hearted and courageous people who are not diminished by saying: "I made a mistake." Not least among these are Ms. Rivera and the other American war resisters who determined they could not in good conscience continue to be part of the Iraq war.

 

 

Hopefully other voices will join Archbishop Tutu in calling for the Canadian government to allow Kim and her family to stay.

 

 

Someone needs to call out Soledad O'Brien.   Newsbusters is a right-wing media critique site.  They sent something to the public e-mail account. It's their report on CNN's Soledad O'Brien 'fact checking' US House Rep Peter King (link has text and transcript).  It wasn't journalism.  Excerpt.

 

 

Soledad O'Brien: So let's talk about that last line. "What we saw this week is in may ways a logical result of all of that."  Are you saying that the president is responsible and his policies responsible for the death of the American ambassador to Libya?

 

US House Rep Peter King: I'm saying the president's policies have sent a confused message.  For instance, take Egypt.  Here is a country getting $1.6 billion in aid annually from the United States.  Yet President Morsi for the first day, the entire day of our embassy being under attack, did virtually nothing to protect us and was actually putting out statements in Arabic where he was sympathizing with the demonstrators and those attacking the American embassy.  What it's done is it's created a climate, it's created an attitude in the Middle East where our allies don't trust us, where those who are undecided are starting to hedge their bets and turn against us.  For instance in Iraq, the president talks about how he pulled our troops out of Iraq.  The fact is he was given a glide path in Iraq.  He pulled the troops out without getting a Status Of Forces Agreement, without leaving any American troops behind and now Iran is emerging as a major power in that region whereas if we had our troops there it would not happen.

 

Soledad O'Brien:  But you-you've been talking about an apology tour.  As you know that matches the framing of other people.  Donald Rumsfeld says he's made a practice of trying to apologize for America, he's talking about the president.  Mitt Romney has said "I will not and never apologize for America.  I don't apologize for America." Tim Palwenty back in February was saying, "Mr. President, stop apologizing for -- "  Where do you see an apology?  You called it an apology tour.  You said the apologies.  What apologies are you specifically talking about?

 

US House Rep Peter King: I would say when he was in Cairo in 2009, when he was basically apologizing for American policies, saying American policies sometimes have gone too far --

 

Soledad O'Brien: Never once in that speeh, as you know, which I have the speech right here.  That was -- he never once used the word apology.  He never once said I'm sorry.

 

US House Rep Peter King: Didn't have to.  The logical  -- any logical reading of the speech or the speech he gave in France where he basically said that the United States can be too aggressive --

 

Soledad cuts him off again.  What she needs to do is cut off that  hair. (When you have circles and bags under the eyes, do not wear your hair long unless you're pulling it back.  The goal with bags and circles is never to create more shadows on the face.  What an idiot.)

 

This is not complicated.  Soledad, using faux-gressiver terms like "framework" (the journalist term is "narrative"), may indicate some cabal but Donald Rumsfeld and King honestly believe what they're saying.  I would assume the same for Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty as well but with Rumsfeld and King there is a long body of the critique.  It predates Barack Obama and if Soledad thinks she's up to a 'fact check,' she needs to educate herself on this.

 

To move to a different topic but to explain the larger point,  then-President Ronald Reagan supported SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative).  I didn't.  I thought it was a lunatic idea, I thought it militarized space, etc.  Ronald Reagan had one opinion, I had another.  By Soledad's 'understaning,' she can fact check that and determine one of us to be right.  She is an uneducated lunatic.  Ronald Reagan believed he was right about SDI, I believe I am right.  Those are opinions.  They don't go to fact check. 

 

I bring up SDI specifically because Soledad wants to treat King's statements as something she's never before encountered.  (Maybe she hasn't.  She's not that smart.)  But his statements are at the heart of modern day conservatism and Barack's approach is in stark contrast to Reagan (Reagan remains the hero of most modern day conservatives).  You can read the SDI speech and you can see a lot of what's being discussed by King and others in that speech.  Here's an excerpt:

 

President Ronald Reagan:  The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise: The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor. We maintain our strength in order to deter and defend against aggression - to preserve freedom and peace.

Since the dawn of the atomic age, we have sought to reduce the risk of war by maintaining a strong deterrent and by seeking genuine arms control. Deterrence means simply this: Making sure any adversary who thinks about attacking the United States or our allies or our vital interests concludes that the risks to him outweigh any potential gains. Once he understands that, he won't attack. We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression.

 

 

I disagree with those opinions (including the claim that the US doesn't start fights).  And I can argue with someone who holds those opinions.  But I recognize those to be opinions.  Not facts.  It's an ideology.  If this is so far above Soledad's head, CNN needs to send her to a college where she can hopefully learn.  And I'll go further, if EJ Dionne, an opinion columnist, wanted to call the conservative opinion "wrong," that's fine.  He's an opinion columnist.  Soledad is supposed to be objective.  That makes her performance today even more embarrassing. 

 

Sunday, Ava and I wrote "TV: Media Fail" and it was about the media's refusal to play fair.  Jim did a quick piece that bookends that with "Romney and Obama last week" and, though we answered his questions in that, Ava and I were both confused why he wanted that.  He's getting at the points above.  It is not fair for Soledad to pretend to be 'objective' and then treat a conservative ideology to a 'fact check.'  It's about the same as putting religious beliefs to a 'fact check.'  Beliefs and opinions can differ and, in fact, in a democracy are supposed to.  You may not like the conclusions someone forms based on the facts, but they are allowed to reach their own conclusions.

 

Karl Rove wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal, published in April of 2009, about what he termed Barack's "apology tour."  He wasn't the only one using that term at that time.  Click here for a video about the "apology tour" that was posted to YouTube April 32, 2009.  For Soledad to be ignorant of all of this is an insult to the viewers.  Her segment was an insult.  If she wants to debate ideology, fine, let her take a stand -- and state whether it's her own or that she's playing devil's advocate -- and have that discussion.  But don't pretend that she's dealing with facts.  And don't pretend that we (on the left) win when some journalist plays America dumb by acting as if ideology and belief can be put to a fact check.  CNN should be ashamed of themselves. 

 

These are serious issues and if Soledad O'Brien's not up for them, she needs to be pulled.   If it's still not clear, let's look at King's remarks on Iraq.

 

US House Rep Peter King: For instance in Iraq, the president talks about how he pulled our troops out of Iraq. The fact is he was given a glide path in Iraq. He pulled the troops out without getting a Status Of Forces Agreement, without leaving any American troops behind and now Iran is emerging as a major power in that region whereas if we had our troops there it would not happen.

 

Barack pulled US troops from Iraq?  That's a fact.  Removed them without a SOFA?  Fact.  King takes those facts, places them in his conservative framework and comes up with opinions ("glide path" and the US left in a position of weakness).  So-called objective journalists need to learn to do their job.  Media Matters, as this item demonstrates, does a better job of grasping the points about ideology and opinion, that Soledad O'Brien refuses to -- and Media Matters doesn't claim to be objective or impartial -- it is a left-wing organization.

 

 

The third week of this month has begun and, through Saturday, Iraq Body Counts counts 183 people dead so far this month as a result of violence.  And the violence continues today with a high-profile Baghdad bombing.  KUNA explains, "The blast is considered of some significance for it targeted the heavily-guarded location [Green Zone], where senior officials reside.  The zone also includes a number of government, diplomatic and security offices and departments."  Xinhua reports that 7 people are dead and twenty-four injured from the "suicide car bomb attack near an entrance of Baghdad Green Zone."  Al-Shorfa notes that the death toll has risen to 8.   AP reports the "bomber slammed a car packed with explosives into one of the [Green Zone] gates."  AFP adds, "The attacker drove up to the entrance situated at the July 14 bridge, which is manned by Iraqi soldiers and lies across the Tigris River from the Green Zone, before detonating an explosives-rigged vehicle, an interior ministry official said."  Kareem Raheem (Reuters) quotes an unnamed police officer stating, "Cars were lining up waiting to be searched at the checkpoint that leads to the Green Zone and suddenly a speeding car exploded nearby.  Some people died inside cars and I saw two soldiers lying on the ground.  We immediately closed the area." Adrian Blomfield (Telegraph of London) observes, "The bombing was reminiscent of the violence that regularly targeted the Green Zone when it served as the American administrative headquarters in the years following the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003." In addition, Alsumaria reports a mortar attack on a Mosul police station has left one police officer and two civilians injured. 

 

 

Meanwhile RTT News reports, "Deadly clashes between Turkish security forces and activists of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have left 42 people dead during the weekend, Turkish media reported citing officials. "  The PKK is a Kurdish group which fights for Kurdish independence.   Aaron Hess (International Socialist Review) described the PKK in 2008, "The PKK emerged in 1984 as a major force in response to Turkey's oppression of its Kurdish population. Since the late 1970s, Turkey has waged a relentless war of attrition that has killed tens of thousands of Kurds and driven millions from their homes. The Kurds are the world's largest stateless population -- whose main population concentration straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria -- and have been the victims of imperialist wars and manipulation since the colonial period. While Turkey has granted limited rights to the Kurds in recent years in order to accommodate the European Union, which it seeks to join, even these are now at risk."  Suzan Fraser (AP) reports that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan today echoed his "call on the rebel group to lay down arms.  Erdogan said military offensives against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, would end only after the rebels lay down arms."  In response, Reuters notes, "Turkey's main Kurdish party said on Monday that Turkey must agree a mutual ceasefire with Kurdish separatists to have any hope of ending their conflict, rather than making one-sided demands that they disarm."

 

Yesterday, the US State Dept issued the following statement:

Today, the seventh convoy of approximately 680 Camp Ashraf residents arrived safely at Camp Hurriya. This convoy represents the last major relocation of residents from former Camp Ashraf to Camp Hurriya and marks a significant milestone in efforts to achieve a sustainable humanitarian solution to this issue. Over the coming weeks, the small group temporarily remaining at former Camp Ashraf will address residual issues and then also move to Camp Hurriya.

The United States appreciates the efforts of the Government of Iraq to accommodate both security and humanitarian concerns throughout this process, including the peaceful and orderly closure of former Camp Ashraf and relocation of its residents to Camp Hurriya. We count on Iraq's continued adherence to the December 25, 2011 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United Nations that provides a path for the safe relocation of former Ashraf residents out of Iraq. We welcome the cooperation by the former Ashraf residents in this relocation and look forward to their continued participation in the process set forth in the MOU. Additionally, we are grateful for the work of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, whose personnel have achieved much under challenging circumstances.

The United States will continue to support those efforts and, working with the United Nations and our partners in the international community, turn our attention to supporting the permanent relocation of the residents from Iraq.

 

 

Approximately 3,400 people were at Camp Ashraf when the US invaded Iraq in 2003.  They were Iranian dissidents who were given asylum by Saddam Hussein decades ago.  The US government authorized the US military to negotiate with the residents.  The US military was able to get the residents to agree to disarm and they became protected persons under Geneva and under international law.

Despite that legal status and the the legal obligation on the part of the US government to protect the residents, since Barack Obama has been sworn in as US president, Nouri has ordered not one but two attacks on Camp Ashraf resulting in multiple deaths.  Let's recap.  July 28, 2009 Nouri launched an attack (while then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on the ground in Iraq). In a report released this summer entitled "Iraqi government must respect and protect rights of Camp Ashraf residents," Amnesty International described this assault, "Barely a month later, on 28-29 July 2009, Iraqi security forces stormed into the camp; at least nine residents were killed and many more were injured. Thirty-six residents who were detained were allegedly tortured and beaten. They were eventually released on 7 October 2009; by then they were in poor health after going on hunger strike." April 8, 2011, Nouri again ordered an assault on Camp Ashraf (then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was again on the ground in Iraq when the assault took place). Amnesty International described the assault this way, "Earlier this year, on 8 April, Iraqi troops took up positions within the camp using excessive, including lethal, force against residents who tried to resist them. Troops used live ammunition and by the end of the operation some 36 residents, including eight women, were dead and more than 300 others had been wounded. Following international and other protests, the Iraqi government announced that it had appointed a committee to investigate the attack and the killings; however, as on other occasions when the government has announced investigations into allegations of serious human rights violations by its forces, the authorities have yet to disclose the outcome, prompting questions whether any investigation was, in fact, carried out."Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observes that "since 2004, the United States has considered the residents of Camp Ashraf 'noncombatants' and 'protected persons' under the Geneva Conventions."

 

Of yesterday's relocations, Martin Kobler, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative to Iraq, declared yesterday, 'This is an important step as we near the end of the relocation process.  I would like to thank the residents for their cooperation.  I would also like to thank the Government of Iraq for ensuring this last major relocation and paving the way for the peaceful closure of Camp Ashraf under the terms of the memorandum of understanding."  Press TV (link is text and video) notes that 168 residents remain at Camp Ashraf.  Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reminds, "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is under a court order to decide by October 1 whether to remove MEK from the terror list. The secretay has said several times that her decision would be guided, in part, by whether the group moves peacefully from Camp Ashraf."

 

 

Now for this:

 

The arrest warrant was issued on Dec. 19, just after I arrived in Erbil. I was very surprised. I was shocked that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had issued such a warrant. He needs to consult with the president, if there is any proof. I have legal immunity granted by the constitution, yet they ignored this legal provision. They went so far as toissue a death sentence. The surprising part about this incident is its timing. This verdict came on September 9. They dismissed the previous judge and appointed a new one. This was the first trial conducted by the newly appointed judge. Here we are talking about a judge who is not familiar with details of the case. They reached a verdict within less than 24 hours. There was not even time for defense.

 

That's Tareq al-Hashemi speaking.  Please note, we've gotten the chronology right.   From the April 30th snapshot:


The political crisis was already well in effect when December 2011 rolled around.  The press rarely gets that fact correct.  When December 2011 rolls around you see Iraqiya announce a  boycott of the council and the Parliament, that's in the December 16th snapshot and again in aDecember 17th entry .  Tareq al-Hashemi is a member of Iraqiya but he's not in the news at that point.  Later, we'll learn that Nouri -- just returned from DC where he met with Barack Obama -- has ordered tanks to surround the homes of high ranking members of Iraqiya. December 18th is when al-Hashemi and Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq are pulled from a Baghdad flight to the KRG but then allowed to reboard the plane. December 19th is when the arrest warrant is issued for Tareq al-Hashemi by Nouri al-Maliki who claims the vice president is a 'terrorist.' .

 

 

Tareq al-Hashemi knows the chronology because it's his life.  We know it because we followed it.  Why is it that employees of Reuters, AP and the rest -- people paid to do a job -- don't get it right?  Why is that they are allowed repeatedly to rewrite history and FALSELY claim that Tareq left Baghdad after a warrant was issued? 

 

Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi has been targeted by Nouri.  He speaks about that and more to Faith Altyli (Al-Monitor).  Excerpt:

 

The problem with Iraq is Maliki's style of governing. I don't agree with him on economic concerns or on political processes. The administrative council, president and vice president work as a team. However, we could not work together, as Maliki had different desires. He believes in tyranny, not in democracy. I tried to convince him many times ... to be more just and stand against discrimination. Since 2006, Iraq has steered away from democracy and is turning into an autocracy. I was against this happening. 

Iraq had a great opportunity. We had the chance to hold the presidency of the Arab League for a year. However, when the summit ended, Maliki went against the will of the participants and supported Assad. 

 

 

As the political crisis continues, Raman Brosk (AKnews) reports, "The Kurdish Blocs Coalition (KBC) is hoping that President of Iraq Jalal Talabani will put an end to months of disputes between Baghdad and Erbil upon his return from Germany where he is receiving treatmeant after his health deteriorated."  He fled to Germany after he betrayed the other blocs working on the no-confidence vote.  From his 'sick bed' in Germany (he had knee surgery), he threatened to resign as president.  But a lot of people are pinning their hopes on him.  Dar Addustour notes that ahead of Talabani's return, KRG President Massoud Barzani has departed for a tour of Europe where he'll meet with various leaders.

Alsumaria notes the incoming  8 Independent High Electoral Commission members include: Mohsen Jabbari Mohsen, Wael Mohamed Abd Ali, Moqdad Hassan Saleh, Safaa Ibrahim Jassim al-Hassan, Aboert Bunnell al-Alalah, Khan Kamal Ali.  All Iraq News adds that Kolshan al-Kamal was nominated but the vote on al-Kamal has been postponed due to objections from the Christian MPs.  The Commission is supposed to have 9 members and, at present, the hope is that the ninth member will be voted on shortly.  AFP explains,

"The new commission may have to contend with political pressure in addition to the challenges of organising elections, including local polls that are to be held next March.

Faraj al-Haidari, the outgoing head of IHEC, said in late August that he and two other members were found guilty of graft and handed suspended one-year prison sentences."

 

Mohammad Sabah (Al Mada) also reports on Parliament, specifically the body's Integrity Commission which has called for all Iraqi ministers and deputy ministers, deputies and advisers who hold dual nationality to drop the non-Iraqi nationality.   Why is this a concern?

In a government of refugees, you have many people with other nationalities.  And when people leave with government money -- as 7 officials in Nouri's last government did -- it can be very difficult to have them extradicted from another country if they hold citizenship in that country.

 

Over the weekend, Iraq had a high profile visitor.   Saturday, Al Madareported that UN Special Envoy on Refugee Issues and Academy Award winning  Angelina Jolie visited Iraq today as part of the UN efforts for Syrian refugees.  The American actress will visit Dohuk Province and met with refugees at the camp there.  Dohuk and Anbar Province house approximatley 21,000 Syrian refugees.  Angelina met with Iraq's Minister of Foreign Affairs Hoshyar Zebari. Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) adds, "Jolie and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari discussed the situation of Syrian refugees in Iraq while meeting at his office in Baghdad, the foreign ministry said in a statement. They also talked about the efforts made by the Iraqi government to meet the daily needs of refugees, the statement said."  

 

BBC offers a streaming video report of her trip.  The Age carries a Reuters video report on the trip.  Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) offers a photo essay of the visit.

 

RTT News notes this is Jolie's fourth trip to Iraq and "Jolie spent Sunday meeting with Syrian refugees in the Domiz camp in northern Iraq. She also met officials of the Kurdistan regional government, including the Prime Minister, the Interior Minister and the Governor of Dohuk. Many of the officials she met were former refugees."  The Voice of Russia notes that in addition to visiting Iraq, she also toured "refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey."  Sowetan's report includes:

 

"What they described on the ground, hearing it from them is so horrific," she said, adding that the children's stories were especially moving, including some who said they had witnessed people being pulled apart "like chickens."
"When you meet so many innocent people and civilians, the people of Syria are asking who is on their side. 'Who is going to help us as the months go on?" she added.

 

Approximately two-thirds of the Syrian refugees in Iraq who are registered with the United Nations are in the KRG.  Despite this fact, All Iraq Newsreports that the KRG has received zero in financial support for the refugees from the Iraqi central government out of Baghdad.    AFP quotes her stating at the Dohuk refugee camp Domiz, "I know how gracious the Kurdish government and the Kurdish region people have been to the Syrian refugees."  AFP also quotes her stating at Dohuk, "I have been to the four borders of Syria, and this is the first camp I have been to where they are already preparing for winterisation, and also where there are ID cards, giving freedom of movment, which is an extraordinary thing."   AKI quotes her stating, "At this juncture, it is critical that Iraq receives urgent international support and continues to welcome refugees across its borders."   The KRG issued the following on her visit:

 

Erbil, Kurdistan Region - Iraq (KRG.org) – Angelina Jolie, the Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, travelled to the Kurdistan Region today to visit refugees in camps along the Syrian border and to discuss with Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani the help provided by the Kurdistan Regional Government. 

Ms Jolie this morning met some of the 21,000 Syrian refugees that have taken shelter in camps in Duhok province before travelling to Erbil to meet Prime Minister Barzani who welcomed Ms Jolie to Kurdistan and thanked her for drawing attention to the plight of the refugees. 

Citing the $10million allocated by the KRG to provide for the needs of the refugees, the Prime Minister said, "We have not received any support from Baghdad, but of course this has not caused us to delay our aid. Instead of waiting for the support of the Federal Government, we have provided immediate assistance to those who have sought shelter with us." 

Ms Jolie thanked the Prime Minster and the KRG for the help they are providing and expressed her hope that the international community will begin partnering with the Region in these efforts.

The Prime Minister detailed the aid being provided to the refugees, explaining that the KRG is providing food, shelter, healthcare, and emergency aid, as well as developing an educational programme that will soon be implemented to allow the children to keep up with their studies. They also discussed the situation in the other camps that Ms Jolie had visited in her role as UN ambassador. 

Ms Jolie arrived in Kurdistan today after meeting with Iraqi returnees from Syria and senior government officials in Baghdad on Saturday. Her visit is part of a larger regional tour of camps in Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon for Syrians who have been displaced by the violence in the country.

In April 2012, Ms Jolie was appointed Special Envoy of the UNHCR, before which she served for several years as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR. The famous Hollywood actress has been a very strong public advocate for human rights.

 

 

 

Alsumaria notes her previous visits to Iraq as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador and that she's alos visited refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanaon and Turkey to bring a spotlight to the refugee issue and, with regards to Syrian refugees only, Kitabat notes she has visited camps in Lebanon and Jordan. AFP reports she travels next to Erbil and will visit Dohuk's refugee camp.

Iraqi Jews reject ‘cynical manipulation’ of their history by Israel, Zionists,

Iraqi Jews reject ‘cynical manipulation’ of their history by Israel, Zionists, writer Almog Behar tells EI

Ali Abunimah

Yacoub Youssef, an Iraqi Jew, holds his prayer book in his house in Baghdad’s Tanaouine neighborhood, 19 April 2003. (Awad Awad / AFP/Newscom)  September 17, 2012 "It is far from the first instance of tampering with, exploiting, and deleting our history, but it is the straw that broke the camel’s back, and so … we formed the Committee of Baghdadi Jews in Ramat-Gan." This is how writer, poet and activist Almog Behar described a decision by a group of Jews from Arab and Kurdish backgrounds to speak out forcefully against renewed Israeli government propaganda efforts to counter Palestinian refugee rights by using the claims of Jews who left Arab countries for Israel in the 1950s. Israeli diplomats, Haaretz reported last week, "have been instructed to raise the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries at every relevant forum. This is part of a new international campaign to create parity between the plight of Jewish and Palestinian refugees, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon announced on Monday." "The way the Israeli establishment uses our history from the 1950s, is not in order to give us our rights back, but in order to get rid of the rights of the Palestinians, and avoiding a peace agreement with them," Behar wrote to The Electronic Intifada. The idea is that Palestinian refugee and property rights are negated by equivalent claims from Jews from Arab countries, thus absolving Israel of having to make any restitution to Palestinians. Jews who left Iraq and some other Arab countries in the 1950s for Israel were deprived of their property and citizenship. The Israeli government does "not represent us" But in an extraordinary statement posted on Facebook last week, the newly-formed Committee of Baghdadi Jews in Ramat-Gan, of which Behar is a founding member, hit back: We are seeking to demand compensation for our lost property and assets from the Iraqi government - NOT from the Palestinian Authority - and we will not agree with the option that compensation for our property be offset by compensation for the lost property of others (meaning, Palestinian refugees) or that said compensation be transferred to bodies that do not represent us (meaning, the Israeli government). The statement went on to demand an investigation of Israel’s complicity in the departure of Iraqi Jews from their homeland including in terrorist acts against Jews: We demand the establishment of an investigative committee to examine: 1) If and by what means negotiations were carried out in 1950 between Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri as-Said, and if Ben-Gurion informed as-Said that he is authorized to take possession of the property and assets of Iraqi Jewry if he agreed to send them to Israel; 2) who ordered the bombing of the Masouda Shem-Tov synagogue in Baghdad, and if the Israeli Mossad and/or its operatives were involved. If it is determined that Ben-Gurion did, in fact, carry out negotiations over the fate of Iraqi Jewish property and assets in 1950, and directed the Mossad to bomb the community’s synagogue in order to hasten our flight from Iraq, we will file a suit in an international court demanding half of the sum total of compensation for our refugee status from the Iraqi government and half from the Israeli government. Zionist role in flight of Jews from Iraq The role of Israel and Zionist undercover agents in helping precipitate the departure of Jews from Iraq has long been suspected. Naiem Giladi, an Iraqi Jew who joined the Zionist underground as a young man in Iraq and later came to regret his role in fostering the departure of some 125,000 Jews from Iraq, wrote that, "Zionist propagandists still maintain that the bombs in Iraq were set off by anti-Jewish Iraqis who wanted Jews out of their country." But "the terrible truth," Giladi said, "is that the grenades that killed and maimed Iraqi Jews and damaged their property were thrown by Zionist Jews." Giladi, who was born Naeim Khalaschi, gave his account in an article published by Americans for Middle East Understanding in 1998 which summarizes his book, Ben Gurion’s Scandals: How the Haganah and the Mossad eliminated Jews. After being sentenced to death in Iraq for his Zionist activities, Giladi fled to Israel. Because his native language was Arabic, Giladi was assigned to assist the Israeli military occupation authorities expel Palestinians from their homes in al-Majdal ("Ashkelon") by pressuring them to sign documents stating they were leaving to Gaza willingly: I was there and heard their grief. "Our hearts are in pain when we look at the orange trees that we planted with our own hands. Please let us go, let us give water to those trees. God will not be pleased with us if we leave His trees untended." I asked the Military Governor to give them relief, but he said, "No, we want them to leave." I could no longer be part of this oppression and I left. Those Palestinians who didn’t sign up for transfers were taken by force—just put in trucks and dumped in Gaza. Giladi, who died in 2010, served in the Israeli army from 1967-70, but then became active in the anti-Zionist Black Panther movement of Mizrahi Jews, and eventually abandoned Israeli citizenship and moved to the United States. He gave this hour-long interview in 1994. Naeim Giladi - 11-07-94 Original air date Jews of Arab and Kurdish origin reclaim their history I asked Behar by email to provide more background on the formation of the Committee of Baghdadi Jews in Ramat-Gan. Behar said he shared my questions with members of the committee and compiled and translated their answers. Can you tell me more about the Ramat Gan Committee of Baghdadi Jews? When was it founded? Who does it involve? The committee was founded because of the Deputy Foreign Minster’s refugee campaign, but it will deal with other issues. We decided to establish the Committee of Baghdadi Jews in Ramat-Gan following the attempt by the Deputy Foreign Minister and the Government of Israel to take advantage of our history in their cynical political manipulation. It is far from the first instance of tampering with, exploiting, and deleting our history, but it is the straw that broke the camel’s back, and so yesterday morning we formed the Committee of Baghdadi Jews in Ramat-Gan. The committee includes young and old, men and women, from Baghdad (and from Mosul and Basra), as well as some who were born in this country, in the first, second, and third generations, and those with mixed Kurdish and Moroccan ancestry. We began the committee in order to reclaim our history and our culture (and of course our property), and to prevent others, including Zionist movements and the State of Israel, from possessing it for themselves. So, we wrote our statement on September 14th in response to the government, and we will continue to be vigilant on a daily basis in the act of claiming our history. We believe that as a multigenerational Iraqi-Jewish community, we can write the story of our past, present, and future in Iraq and in Israel. How widespread are the sentiments which the statement expresses? We believe that those sentiments are very widespread among Iraqi Jews – of course more among the older generation, that is less affected by Israeli propaganda, and remembers more the Iraqi past – and knows that our property in Iraq is something between us and Iraq, and not between us and the Palestinians, and remembers also that most of Palestinian property from 1948 was taken by the Ashkenazim and the state, and not by Jews of the Arab world. We believe that there should be a direct dialoge between Jews of the Arab world and the Arab states, and we hope that after a peace agreement the question of our property will be solved. But the way the Israeli establishment uses our history from the 1950s, is not in order to give us our rights back, but in order to get rid of the rights of the Palestinians, and avoiding a peace agreement with them. We do not want to be used, nor our history and personal stories to be used. We hope that the Arab world will understand that a dialouge with us, even before a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, is important to it too. We are a part of Arab memory and history and culture, and it is wrong of the Arab world to forget our part in it, exactly as it was wrong of Israel to ask us to erase our Arabness or forget our past and language. Were you aware of the account of Naeim Giladi? We didn’t know Naeim Giladi’s work, but of course what happened in Iraq in the 1950s is an open wound for us, and we wish an investigation about the connections between Nuri as-Said and Ben-Gurion. You can find out more about the Committee of Baghdadi Jews in Ramat-Gan on its Facebook page. Source

Palestine today-A recipe for explosion

A recipe for explosion

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti

September 17, 2012

While the political horizons have collapsed on them, Palestinians now face the deepest economic crisis in recent memory. A backlash is inevitable!

Current developments in Palestine drive home the following points:

- The Oslo Accords and associated annexes, inclusive of the Paris Protocol on Economic Relations, have reached their inevitable dead end.

- The theory, espoused by Western nations, that the promotion of Palestinian economic development and institution building under the ongoing Israeli occupation is the only avenue to the establishment of an independent state has similarly collapsed.

- The negotiations that went by the name of the "peace process" and the belief that the US would assert meaningful pressure on Israel in this context were pure illusions. Any residual faith in this process has evaporated and the process is long past is sell-by date.

The gruelling economic crisis that grips Palestine today has exposed the magnitude of the fiction of the possibility of Palestinian economic development under an occupation that has developed into the worst model of systematised racial discrimination and apartheid in history. It is no longer possible to escape the essential problem, which is the need to confront the Israeli drive of settlement expansion and subjugation which is destroying all possibility of territorial contiguity and, hence, the prospect of building a viable independent state, and which is simultaneously destroying the foundations of Palestinian economic development and survival.

Economic dependency in the occupied territories is not limited to reliance on assistance from donor countries. In fact, it is rooted in the inability of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to take any decisions independently from the restrictions imposed by the Oslo Accords and the Paris Protocol. Those who remained silent in the past over these iniquitous terms are paying the price for their silence today. Because Israel controls most of the taxes that are levied on Palestinians, it has the power to use the remittance of these revenues to the PA as a means of political extortion.

The supposedly brilliant idea of promoting a consumer economy under the occupation as an alternative to the development of a free economy as part of the national liberation struggle appears ludicrous today when we consider that Israel fully controls more than 80 per cent of the West Bank and prohibits any independent economic activity on 62 per cent of this territory. Consider, too, that the entrenchment of the divides between Jerusalem and the West Bank and between the West Bank and Gaza has prevented the rise of a unified Palestinian market; that Israel controls 90 per cent of the water resources in the West Bank and forces the Palestinians to pay double the rates that Israelis pay for water and electricity; that the unified customs and tax system compels Palestinians to pay Israeli prices for goods and products in spite of the fact that the per capital income of Israelis is 25 times greater than that of Palestinians. For Palestinians in Gaza, the situation is grimmer yet after six years of a brutal economic siege with its enormous economic and human toll.

To compound the injustice, Israel utilises the land and water it confiscates in order to build profit-making Israeli enterprises and it uses the billions of dollars these generate in order to build and expand Israeli settlements and to sap what remains of the limited natural resources of the occupied territories. Five years after the adoption of the "economic development under occupation" theory, Palestine has the fifth highest unemployment rate in the world. Unemployment among educated youth in the West Bank and Gaza has reached 80 per cent. It is little wonder why this segment of the population makes up the largest proportion of participants in the current protest movement in the West Bank against the rising costs of living, poverty and unemployment.

Due to pressures from Israel and some donor countries, the Palestinian Authority has to allocate 30 per cent of its already meagre budget to its security agencies. As a consequence, allocations for education, health, social affairs and agriculture have declined. Agriculture now receives 0.8 per cent of the PA budget, in spite of the fact that Palestine is an agrarian country and the resistance against the occupation needs a strong agricultural sector.

What the foregoing tells us is that Palestine needs a radically different economic approach, one that strengthens the people’s ability to remain steadfast in their resistance against the apartheid system. Such an approach is a world away from the one that shackles the Palestinians in debt and keeps them prey to the forces of a neoliberal/consumerist economy that traps them in the daily scramble to make ends meet. Dov Weisglass, former senior advisor to Ariel Sharon, summed up the situation elegantly. He said that the Oslo Accords were the best stroke of genius Israel had ever had because they perpetuate the occupation while minimising its costs, which were shifted onto the shoulders of the Palestinian people and donor nations. It made the occupation profitable.

The Palestinians must have set a world record not only as the people that has lived the longest under a foreign occupation but as the only people that were forced to foot the bill of the occupation as well.

These days, some donor nations also want to shed their share of the burden of the costs of occupation onto the Palestinian people. This helps explain the PA government’s misguided decisions to raise taxes, to increase value added tax, and to refrain from intervening to stem the mad spiral in the prices of fuel and foodstuffs.

The Palestinians have watched their political horizons close in on them against the backdrop of a debilitating and seemingly intractable internal rift. Add to this rampant unemployment, galloping inflation, mounting poverty and the increasing strains of living from one day to the next. Is this not a recipe for explosion?

This article was originally published on Al-Ahram. 

Jerusalem-When a Courtyard Becomes a Border

When a Courtyard Becomes a Border

By Pierre Klochendler

The settlers’ part of the divided home as seen from Filistin Hamdallah’s side. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS. September 17, 2012 RAS EL-AMOUD, Occupied East Jerusalem, Sep 17 2012 (IPS) - Filistin Hamdallah looks disoriented, walking without purpose amidst the furniture strewn in the courtyard, as if she was moving home. Only the fresh laundry hanging on wires indicates that the Palestinian family is here to stay, to stay in conditions with Jewish neighbours that show just how difficult the divisions in Jerusalem can be. Two weeks ago, escorted by Israeli policemen, settlers moved in. "The District Court ruled that Jews are entitled to move us out of parts of our home," the mother of five recalls. "This house never belonged to them," retorts Yishai Fleisher, a Jewish neighbour from Ma’aleh Ha-Zeitim, an adjacent fortified compound almost protruding over the house. "They stole it and we’re pushing them out. We’re the rights holders of this piece of property," he claims. When Jews and Arabs fought the first round of their long conflict over the city’s sovereignty during Israel’s war of independence (1948), East Jerusalem (including the Old City) was conquered by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Jewish residents of East Jerusalem were forced to evacuate their homes, and moved to the western side of town then controlled by the nascent state. The land on which the contentious house stands was subsequently registered in the Jordanian Land Registry Bureau. In 1952, the Hamdallahs were granted squatters’ rights by the Jordanian authorities. In June 1967, as Israel captured the eastern part of the city, Israeli law, jurisdiction and administration were one-sidedly extended to the Palestinian neighbourhoods. Yet, the international community has never condoned the Jewish State’s de facto annexation of East Jerusalem. Since then, within the historical centre of the holy city and in surrounding Palestinian neighbourhoods, a low-intensity battle by means of Israeli laws has been waged by Jewish right-wing groups – over land and real estate abandoned by Jews in 1948. In 1990, Irving Moskowitz, a U.S. Jewish tycoon bought the property – according to Israeli law, legally – from Jewish studies institutions. These religious organisations had themselves purchased the land on which the contentious house now stands during the Ottoman rule, long before Israel’s inception. In 1967, they filed a claim. As a result, the Israeli District Court declared the Jordanian land registration null and void. In 1992, Moskowitz’s emissaries filed a petition in order to evict the Hamdallahs. In 2005, the Court ruled that the Palestinian family could stay in parts of the house built before 1990. Meanwhile, the Hamdallahs argued that they maintained the right to stay in the whole premises. After years of judicial wrangling, the court order was upheld, and earlier this month, the Hamdallahs were finally required to vacate a 15 square-metre storage annex and a two-room cottage which go with the property. The divided structure must now be shared with Jewish joint-tenants associated with a settler group supported by Moskowitz. "I’m angry and I’m afraid. I’m afraid that they’ll take the whole house. We don’t have a second home. I’m afraid for the kids. Where shall they go?" Filistin Hamdallah mutters anxiously. Her sister-in-law, husband and child have already left the two-room cottage in which they used to live, and have moved to another neighbourhood. "They do what they want," chimes in Filistin’s husband, Khaled Hamdallah, a truck driver, showing a dirt path leading to the off-limit bungalow. "The kids are forbidden to walk there." A security guard is posted in the courtyard 24/7. The remaining 12 members of the extended Palestinian family are now prohibited to trespass on the territory now marked by a puny fence – laid by the settlers who haven’t yet occupied their share of the house – that now draws some nondescript borderline beyond the pale shadow of a couple of frail trees. But good fences don’t necessarily make good neighbours. Here, Palestinians residents and settlers alike share the feeling of being surrounded and besieged by each other. "We don’t talk to the settlers," confides Khaled Hamdallah. "It’s forbidden to get close to them. If anything happens, they call the police." "We live with defences against those people who’d undermine our rights," maintains Fleisher. "That’s how we live in East Jerusalem. You’ve got to carve out your niche. If you’re a sissy around here, you get squashed like a bug." The one-floor structure is flanked on three sides by Ma’aleh Ha-Zeitim. Since 2003, some 90 Jewish families have moved into the residential settlement built by Moskowitz. The recent intrusion is part of a grander scheme – to expand Ma’aleh Ha-Zeitim, already the largest settlement within Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem. "Our motive is clear," explains Fleisher from his balcony. "We want to settle the Land of Israel; to take back Jerusalem; to assert Jewish sovereignty here; to liberate it from people who’ve taken it illegally. We aren’t going anywhere. We have staying power." His is a balcony with a view – not only on Jerusalem’s disputed Jewish and Muslim holy sites; not only on the antique Jewish cemetery that lies on the slopes of the biblical Mount of Olives. Three floors below, a Palestinian social club affiliated to the nationalist Fatah party is a hive of activity. "Sadly, some of the ideas that are inculcated to the youth there are ideas that I think aren’t good for their future," says Fleisher. "No Palestinian deserves pieces of sovereignty over any of this land. This isn’t Palestinian sovereign land; this is ancestral Jewish land," Fleisher raps out. "We fought wars to prove our determination; we fought off enemies. We’ll continue to fight – in the courts," he adds. "But we’re not here to evict everybody," he cautions. Not everybody. Still, other Palestinian neighbourhoods which, before Israel came into existence, were also inhabited by Jews, have become prey to similar endeavours, thus jeopardising the prospect – however slim – of a two-state solution in Jerusalem in the future. "East Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state – what a suicidal idea!" exclaims Fleisher. (This is the first of a two-part report on the battle being waged by Israeli settlers over land and real estate within Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.) Source