The Democrats Don't Care

Screw the Palestinians, Full Steam Ahead

By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON

At a panel on the defense and foreign policy impact of the midterm election, sponsored two days after the election by Congressional Quarterly, Steven Simon, late of the Clinton administration and still a member of the Democratic, pro-Zionist mainstream at the Council on Foreign Relations, pronounced on prospects for Palestinian-Israeli peace and essentially declared it not worth anyone's effort. Using words, a tone, and a body language that clearly betrayed his own disinterest, he said that Hamas is "there" (exaggerated shrug), that the Israeli government is in turmoil after its Lebanon "contretemps" (dismissive wave of the hand), that both sides are incapable of significant movement, and that therefore there is no incentive for anyone, Democrat or Republican, to intervene (casual frown indicating an unfortunate reality about which serious people need not concern themselves). There is simply no prospect for more unilateral Israeli withdrawals and therefore for any progress toward peace, Simon said in conclusion -- signaling not only a total lack of concern but an utter ignorance of just what it is that might bring progress, as if Israeli unilateralism were truly the ticket to peace.

Thus spake the Democratic oracle. Not that anyone who knows the Palestinian-Israeli situation from other than the selective focus of the Zionist perspective had any expectations in the first place. No one ever thought the new Democratic Congress would hop to and put pressure on Israel to make peace. Just remember John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, to say nothing of Bill Clinton, when any question of the Democrats' stance arises. And don't forget Nancy Pelosi, who rushed to condemn Jimmy Carter for using the word "apartheid" in the title of his new book and for whom, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency profile, support for Israel is personal and "heartfelt." One Jewish activist and long-time friend described her as "incredibly loyal" (interesting term) and as feeling Jewish and Israeli issues "in her soul."

But Simon's brief disquisition on the futility of even making an effort was particularly striking for its profound dismissiveness and its profound blindness to what is and has been going on on the ground. Simon's "contretemps" in Lebanon was no mere embarrassing misstep but a murderous rampage that killed 1,300 innocent Lebanese and dropped over a million cluster bomblets in villages across the south, left to be discovered by returning residents. But the Democrats don't care, and Steven Simon considers this hardly worth a second thought. Israel gets itself in trouble, showing its true brutal nature in the process, and this gives Simon and the Democrats a handy excuse to avoid doing anything.

Eighteen Palestinian innocents in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip were murdered while sleeping in their beds a day before Simon spoke, killed by Israeli shellfire, round after round fired at a residential housing complex -- 16 members of one extended family and two others who came to help them after the first round exploded. The Democrats don't care. Steven Simon considers this not worth a mention.

In the six days preceding this incident, Israel assaulted Beit Hanoun the way it assaulted Jenin and Nablus and other West Bank cities in 2002 -- a murderous assault reminiscent of Nazi sieges or of the Russian siege of Chechnya, in which in these six days 57 Palestinians were killed, to one Israeli soldier. The dead include Palestinian fighters and a large number of civilians, including children and including two women shot down in the street while attempting to lift the Israeli siege of a mosque. The mosque was leveled. The Democrats don't care. Steven Simon considers this not worth a mention.

In the four months preceding this six-day siege, the Israelis killed 247 Palestinians in a prolonged attack on Gaza. Of the dead, two-thirds are civilians, 20 percent children. Of nearly 1,000 injured, one-third are children. The Democrats don't care. Steven Simon considers this not worth a mention.

Israel is planning a larger siege of Gaza, concentrating not just on Beit Hanoun in the north but on Rafah in the south, ostensibly to unearth arms-smuggling tunnels. This has been going on for years; Rafah has been the scene of Israel's murderous pummeling periodically since the intifada began -- in 2003 when Rachel Corrie was killed trying to protect the home of an innocent family from demolition, in 2004 when hundreds of homes were demolished in multiple sieges and a peaceful protest demonstration was strafed from the air. But the Democrats don't care. Steven Simon considers this not worth a mention.

Gaza, of course, is not the only Palestinian territory being raped and pillaged. Its 1.4 million residents are the most distraught -- living imprisoned in a territory with the highest population density in the world, walled in with no exit except as Israel sporadically allows, being deliberately starved by the official policy of Israel, which dictates to the U.S., which dictates to Europe, vulnerable to constant Israeli assault. But the West Bank's 2.5 million Palestinians are not much better off. They continue to be killed by Israelis and squeezed by Israel's separation wall, by settlement expansion, by movement restrictions, by theft of agricultural land, by diminishing economic opportunity, and by massive Israeli-fostered unemployment. Their death toll is only minimally less than Gaza's.

This obscenity of oppression and murder does not faze the Democrats or any of Israel's Zionist supporters in the U.S. Whatever Israel wants is all right with the Democrats. The 110th Congress will screw the Palestinians just the way the Republican 109th did.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. They spent October 2006 in Palestine and on a speaking tour of Ireland sponsored by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

South Africa seen as model for Palestine

By Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American, and the author of
"One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse"

The Chicago Tribune
November 12, 2006

As I watched the images last week of destruction from the
Gaza Strip, where an Israeli shelling attack had killed an
entire family, as a Palestinian I could understand the
feelings of one survivor who said, "I cannot see a day
when we will live in peace with them." But I also know
there is no other choice.

When Israel was established, its founders said it would be
an exemplary, moral state. For many Jews, it seemed like a
miraculous redemption after so much suffering and loss in
the Nazi Holocaust.

Palestinians experienced a different reality. Israel
became a "Jewish state" in a country that had always been
multicultural and multireligious. The expulsion and
exclusion of Palestinians from their own homeland has led
Israelis and Palestinians into an endless nightmare of
mutual non-recognition and bloodshed.

For decades, the conventional wisdom has been that this
conflict can only be resolved by partitioning the country
into two states. Yet despite enormous political and
diplomatic efforts to achieve this, the two peoples remain
thoroughly if unhappily intertwined. Israel's project of
establishing settler-colonies inside the territories where
Palestinians wanted to create a state has rendered
separation impossible.

At the same time, Israel finds itself in a conundrum. For
the first time since the state was founded, Israeli Jews
no longer form an absolute majority in the territory they
control. Today there are roughly 5 million Jews and 5
million Palestinians living in the same land. The trends
are incontestable. Within a few years, Palestinians will
form the clear majority.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recognized in 2003 what
this would mean: "We are approaching the point where more
and more Palestinians will say, `There is no place for two
states,'" in this country, and "`All we want is the right
to vote.' The day they get it, we will lose everything."
Warning that Israel could not remain both a Jewish state
and a democracy if it held on to all of the occupied
Palestinian territories, Olmert added, "I shudder to think
that liberal Jewish organizations that shouldered the
burden of struggle against apartheid, will lead the
struggle against us."

Some Israeli extremists, like the new Deputy Prime
Minister Avigdor Lieberman, believe this "demographic
problem" can be solved by expelling non-Jews. Israel's
chosen solution, which it calls "unilateral separation,"
walls Palestinians into impoverished ghettos Palestinians
compare to the townships and Bantustans set up for blacks
by the apartheid government of South Africa. The result of
this approach, as we see in Gaza, is more hopelessness,
resistance and defiance, and sure disaster for both
peoples.

The two-state solution remains attractive and comforting
in its apparent simplicity and finality. But in reality,
it has proved unattainable because neither Palestinians
nor Israelis are willing to give up enough of the country
that they love. Faced with this impasse, a small but
growing group of Israelis and Palestinians are tentatively
exploring an old idea long dormant: Why not have a single
state in which both peoples enjoy equal rights and
protections and religious freedom? Many people dismiss
this as utopian dreaming.

Allister Sparks, the legendary editor of the
anti-apartheid Rand Daily Mail newspaper, observed that
the conflict in South Africa most resembled those in
Northern Ireland and Palestine-Israel, because each
involved "two ethno-nationalisms" in a seemingly
irreconcilable rivalry for the "same piece of territory."
If the prospect of "one secular country shared by all"
seems "unthinkable" in Palestine-Israel today, then it is
possible to appreciate how unlikely such a solution once
seemed in South Africa. But "that is what we did," Sparks
says, "without any foreign negotiator [and] no handshakes
on the White House lawn."

To be sure, Palestinians and Israelis would not simply be
able to take the new South Africa as a blueprint. They
would have to work out their own distinct constitution,
including mechanisms for ethnic communities to have
autonomy in matters that concern them, and to guarantee
that no one group can dominate another. There would be
hard work to heal the terrible wounds of the past. Such a
solution offers the chance that Palestine-Israel could
become for the first time ever the truly safe home where
Israelis and Palestinians can accept each other. It may be
an arduous path, but in the current impasse we cannot
afford to ignore any ray of light.

Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune

A country lost in its own region

By Antony Loewenstein

The Age
10 November 2006


On October 30, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told
the Knesset's
Security and Foreign Affairs Committee that the
Israeli military had killed
300 "terrorists" in the Gaza Strip in the past three
months.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation
B'Tselem, the Israel
Defence Force has killed 294 Palestinians in Gaza
since the abduction of
Corporal Gilad Shalit on June 27, but more than half
of those killed - 155
people, including 61 children - had no involvement in
hostilities. The group
sent a letter to Olmert, demanding to know whether
Israel considered "all
those who were killed to be terrorists who deserved to
die". The Prime
Minister's statement contained "within it a twisted
logic whereby the fact
that someone was killed by a military proves that he
or she is a terrorist".

The latest Israeli massacre in Gaza - the killing of
19 Palestinian
civilians while they slept in their beds in Beit Hanun
- occurred precisely
because the IDF regularly fires shells into heavily
populated areas. Under
international humanitarian law, a state is prohibited
from such activity if
the attack is likely to cause undue harm to civilians
and will not gain any
military advantage. Israel claims that its actions,
while regrettable, were
designed to eliminate Qassam rockets being fired into
Israel from Gaza. The
result is the exact opposite, with Hamas already
calling for revenge and an
ever-growing and justified militancy against Israel's
continuing occupation
of Gaza and the West Bank.

It didn't need to be this way. After Israel's
military, political and
bureaucratic loss during the recent Lebanon war,
calmer heads would have
welcomed a more measured path. Alas, Israel refuses to
negotiate with Syria
- despite Bashir Assad's recent conciliatory
statements - and continues to
build more illegal settlements on occupied West Bank
territory.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz's Arab affairs
commentator, Danny Rubinstein,
commented during a speech in Tel Aviv that Israel's
"real aim (in Gaza) is
the collective punishment of the Palestinian
population. The military
operation is designed to prevent the Palestinians
rejoicing (when prisoners
are released in exchange for Gilad Shalit). This is a
political,
media-driven operation which lacks any military
justification." US-made
weapons are killing hundreds of innocent civilians and
the world remains
silent.

But this may all be about to change. The elevation of
far-right and openly
racist Avigdor Lieberman to the position of deputy
leader and a new
portfolio, the Strategic Affairs Ministry, gives the
world a unique
opportunity to hear the ambitions of an extremist in
the heart of "the
Middle East's only democracy".

Lieberman has called for Arab MPs who had contact with
Hamas to be executed.
Last week he demanded the separation between Arabs and
Jews, and the
establishment of a purely Jewish nation. On one
occasion he even demanded
that Egypt's Aswan Dam be bombed. Despite the
elevation of this
fundamentalist Zionist, Diaspora Jewry has remained
mute, lest they be
accused of disloyalty to their beloved homeland. What
will it take for the
Jewish establishment to openly and unequivocally
condemn the utterances of
Lieberman, who, according to Haaretz, is "liable to
bring disaster down upon
the entire region"?

The international community's hypocrisy is worth
noting. When the
Palestinians democratically elected Hamas this year,
much of the world
boycotted them. Yet when the world accepts Lieberman's
appointment without
comment, the double standard is galling. So who is
really serious about
peace?

Israel is a nation in serious decline. Its President
may face indictment on
charges of rape, the "peace movement" is virtually
non-existent, corruption
is rampant (a 2005 World Bank report found that the
Jewish state's economic
corruption was one of the worst in the developed
world) and the military
establishment is addicted to military solutions that
have failed.

It is time for some uncomfortable truths to be stated.
Israel's long-term
future lies not with a superpower thousands of
kilometres away, but in the
Arab world. Washington's standing in the region has
never been worse, and
just last week Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah,
said that America's
plans in the Middle East faced "failure, frustration
and a state of
collapse". He predicted the US would be forced to
leave the region in the
future.

As a strong supporter of both the Israelis and
Palestinians, I believe that
only international pressure on Israel can bring a
nation addicted to
violence to heel and leadership on both sides mature
enough to negotiate
with honesty.

B'Tselem: The Killing of Civilians in Beit Hanun is a War Crime

B'Tselem: The Killing of Civilians in Beit Hanun is a War
Crime

B'Tselem
8 November 2006


Israeli artillery shells struck a residential neighborhood
in Beit Hanun, Gaza Strip, early Wednesday morning,
killing 18 civilians, including 7 minors, and wounding
some 40 others. The Israeli military contended that the
artillery fire was aimed at the place from which Qassam
rockets were fired at Ashkelon yesterday, an area about
half a kilometer from where the shells actually landed.
The IDF said that human or technical error caused the
shells to strike the houses. The Minister of Defense has
ordered an investigation into the incident.

Even according to the military, the shelling was not
defensive; it was not aimed at Palestinian fire or Qassam
rocket-fire that was in progress. The artillery was aimed
at what the IDF refers to as a "launching space," i.e., an
area from which the army believes that Qassams had
previously been fired.

Shells fired from cannons several kilometers away are
known and expected to occasionally miss their target by a
few hundred meters. For this reason, it is especially
likely that such weapons will harm civilians when they are
fired towards or near densely-populated residential areas.
Several such cases have occurred over the past year, and
it was to be expected that they could recur.

Moreover, in April 2006, it was reported that the IDF
reduced - from 300 meters to 100 meters - the "safety
range" between populated areas in the Gaza Strip and the
areas targeted for artillery fire. Six human rights
organization, B'Tselem among them, warned about the great
risk inherent in the decision, contending it would lead to
the injury of innocent civilians. The organizations
petitioned the High Court of Justice to order the IDF to
cancel the decision. The High Court has not yet ruled in
the matter.

It is still unclear if the deaths this morning resulted
from the inherent inaccuracy of artillery or from
technical or human error. However, massive shelling
towards a densely-populated area carries a high risk of
civilian casualties. Therefore, as discussed below, such
shelling should be avoided, unless there is no alternative
in defending against attack.

The principle of discrimination, one of the pillars of
international humanitarian law, requires that all parties
to a conflict attack only legitimate military objects.
According to the principle of proportionality, it is
forbidden to launch an attack, even if aimed at a
legitimate military object, if the attack is expected to
cause injury to civilians that would be excessive in
relation to the concrete and direct military advantage
anticipated. These two principles lead to the prohibition
on using a means of warfare which, under the
circumstances, is likely to cause disproportionate injury
to civilians. Launching of such attacks is deemed a grave
breach of international humanitarian law and a war crime.

The circumstances involved in the killing of the
Palestinians in Beit Hanun, including the fact that the
attack was not a defensive action, raise a grave concern
that the shelling constitutes a war crime. The Israeli
military's contention that they did not mean to harm
civilians is meaningless, and cannot justify an action
that amounts to a war crime. An investigation conducted by
military officials subject to the same chain of command
responsible for the action cannot serve as a substitute
for a criminal investigation. B'Tselem today wrote to the
Israeli Judge Advocate General, demanding that he
immediately order a Military Police investigation into the
incident, with the objective of prosecuting those
responsible for the killings in Beit Hanun.

Gaza Watch: 19

8 November 2006

To H.E. Ms Micheline Calmy-Rey
Federal Councillor
Federal Department of Foreign Affairs
Bern, Switzerland

Via email: generalsekretaer at eda.admin.ch

Dear Minister Calmy-Rey,

This morning, Israeli occupation forces shelled a civilian
area near Beit Hanoun in the north of the Gaza Strip,
killing nineteen people, of whom at least eight are
children, and four women. Eleven of the dead are from a
single family. Over forty people were wounded.

This morning's massacre brings to at least 73 the number
of Palestinians killed since November 1 including at least
16 children and six women, and to over 300 the number
injured. Two of the dead were Red Crescent medics tending
to the injured.

I am not an ambassador, a minister, or an elected
official. I have no standing to appeal to your conscience
except as a human being. I do so now with all the will I
can muster to urge your government immediately to
reconvene the Conference of the High Contracting Parties
of the Fourth Geneva Convention urgently to consider
measures to enforce this Convention and end the grave and
mounting breaches being perpetrated by Israel, the
Occupying Power, in the Gaza Strip.

Since June 26, Israeli occupation forces have killed over
360 Palestinians in Gaza, over half of whom are
non-combatant civilians. There is clear and mounting
evidence that the Israeli political and military leaders
act knowingly, wilfully and indiscriminately when they
carry out these killings. Indeed they boast that they make
no distinction between civilians and combatants.

According to B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights
organization, Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert told the
Israeli parliament on October 30 that in the previous
three months, the Israeli military has killed 300
"terrorists" in the Gaza Strip. According to B'Tselem's
investigation, Israeli occupation forces did indeed kill
294 Palestinians in Gaza between June 26 and October 27.
However, over half of those killed -- 155 people,
including 61 children -- did not participate in the
fighting when they were killed.

On November 5 the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS)
stated, "Israeli occupying forces have deliberately
attacked and targeted unarmed civilians as well as PRCS
ambulances and medical teams. On November 3, 2006, Israeli
forces targeted and killed two members of PRCS medical
teams, while they were attempting to evacuate a victim
killed by Israeli fire in Beit Lahia area."

PRCS reported that "Beit Hanoun Hospital continues to be
under siege by Israeli tanks and armored vehicles, which
prevent medical teams and victims from reaching the
hospital," and it called "upon the states parties to the
Geneva Conventions, the UN Secretary General, the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and
international organizations of human rights" to act.

It was heartening when Switzerland previously convened the
Conference of the High Contracting Parties several years
ago, though disappointing that it was adjourned without
substantial action. I respectfully remind you that the
Conference declaration issued by the Swiss Federal
Government on 5 December 2001 stated:

"The participating High Contracting Parties call upon the
Occupying Power to immediately refrain from committing
grave breaches involving any of the acts mentioned in art.
147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, such as wilful
killing, torture, unlawful deportation, wilful depriving
of the rights of fair and regular trial, extensive
destruction and appropriation of property not justified by
military necessity and carried out unlawfully and
wantonly. The participating High Contracting Parties
recall that according to art. 148 no High Contracting
Party shall be allowed to absolve itself of any liability
incurred by itself in respect to grave breaches."

The statement adds that the participating High Contracting
Parties "welcome and encourage the initiatives by States
Parties, both individually and collectively, according to
art. 1 of the Convention and aimed at ensuring the respect
of the Convention, and they underline the need for the
Parties, to follow up on the implementation of the present
Declaration."

Unfortunately no follow up action has been taken by any
states parties to the Convention. If under the present
circumstances no country moves to fulfill its obligations
under this Convention, it is the clearest evidence
possible that the regime of international law, so
painstakingly built, and which I learned about with awe
when I visited the Red Cross Museum in Geneva, is impotent
and worthless to those who are most in need of its
protection.

I urge you to act forthwith, with the force of the law,
with the moral authority that you enjoy, and with the
courage it will take knowing that you would be doing so
even as all the others who have the power and
responsibility to act choose silence and complicity.

With highest regards,
Ali Abunimah

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and
author of "One Country - A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse" (Metropolitan Books, 2006)

Beit Hanoun the testimony of a young Palestinian:

"They shoot at anything that moves"


by Silvia Cattori
3 November 2006


"Beit Hanoun, with 30,000 inhabitants, has been the
target of daily
aggressions and air strikes since June 25. It is now
besieged by Israeli
troops. We have seen the tanks advance and take up
their positions. We are
now encircled by about 70 tanks and at least 450
soldiers who announce that
the city is a "closed military zone". That means that
no one can leave. No
one can flee. It is an offensive based on those
carried out in the West Bank
in 2002.

We have no water, no electricity. We hide in the
remote corners of our
houses. Ambulances are not authorized to enter into
this occupied and closed
zone. The soldiers have circled the houses they want
to invade. They
occupied the houses and they shut up the families in
one room. Now they are
using them as forts. They use explosives to pierce
holes in the walls, they
blow off doors, and the people are terrified. They
shoot anyone that moves.

Yesterday they fired on people that were seeking
shelter, who were not
armed, who were not in fighting positions. They shot
them in the back, and
when one was wounded and wanted to flee, they killed
him. Those who wanted
to collect his body were targets as well. In numerous
cases, ambulances
couldn't go to the aid of the wounded. Children who
slip out from their
parent's watch or that look out the windows are killed
by Israeli soldiers
positioned on the roofs and balconies of the houses
they occupy.

They have the green light from Bush to kill us, and
those politicians that
affirm that Israel "has the right to defend itself".
They use arms that
transform the dead and wounded into something
monstrous. The wounds provoked
by the missiles launched from the drones are very
impressive. They are like
razor cuts; the legs, the feet, the hands all cleanly
cut. They are as
horrifying as wounds from an M-16. The soldiers have
orders to shoot at the
upper body. They aim at the chest, near the heart, the
head.

The victims are mostly civilians, killed or wounded in
the throat, the neck,
the chest, the head, even though they were in their
houses. They shoot at
people running in fear, who are trying to save
themselves. We have lost any
notion of time; we have no idea how long we have been
caught in this war. We
feel lost. There are planes that bomb us, drones ready
to fire their
missiles over our heads. They control the entire zone.
With the droning of
the drones, we always have the feeling of having a bee
buzzing in our ears.
It is really disturbing.

There is no one to defend us. We don't have an army.
We have only our
parents to defend us, knowing that they are going to
their deaths and that
they cannot defend us. This new aggression is horrible
especially for the
children who are very numerous here. They are forced
to stay couped up
inside, they are terrorized, and they cry when there
are bombings. At any
moment we can learn there are people killed, there are
people wounded who
are bathed in their own blood, that people don't know
how to stop the
haemorrhaging, and that the ambulances can't give them
any aid without being
hampered.

The Israelis say that are waging this offensive to
prevent the entry of arms
from Egypt. That is false. Nothing can enter. In Gaza,
there are only rifles
that can do nothing against the Apache helicopters and
the Merkawa tanks of
the Israeli army. The only arms of war in Gaza are
those delivered by Israel
and the United States to Dahlan, who is Abu Mazen's
man, the most feared man
in Gaza. He is at the head of the forces that have,
for months now, created
the troubles to topple the Hamas government.

Yesterday, through their loud speakers the soldiers
summoned all the young
men fifteen years and older leave their houses. Then,
sector by sector, they
searched the houses and brought them out, handcuffed,
and took them to a
place where they certainly forced them to strip, as
they did in Betlaya in
June. They leave the men in their underwear. For an
Oriential, it is the
worst of humiliations. They might as well kill us.

We think that after Beit Hanoun they will attack
Betlaya, and then Jabaliya
and do what they have done here: search house by
house. Beit Hanoun, like
Rafah, are very vulnerable zones because they are
geographically separated
from other inhabited areas. They are therefore easy to
isolate from the rest
of Gaza.

This morning, the women went out to come to the aid of
their sons or
husbands threatened by the armored cars that encircled
the Mosque. The women
defied the Apaches and the armored vehicles. For us,
it was a tremendous
moment. We felt like we were wrapped up in a veil of
humanity. It was very
moving to see these women ready to die to save their
sons and husbands. They
continued on without hesitation, and the soldiers, who
hadn't expected this,
were disoriented. Because of this effect of surprise,
they succeeded, saving
the lives of these fighters. They demonstrated that
people with empty hands
could defeat the largest army in the world. We took it
as a message to the
men of the Arab countries who remain silent. These
women said, by their
gesture, "There, in the face of your cowardice,
Palestinian women by
themselves are in the process of fighting for the
release of their men who
are besieged by the enemies of the Arabs, Israel."
"[End of report.]

They are making war on civilians and the world doesn't
know

This young Palestinian who recounted the above in a
low voice breaks our
heart. He could render no greater homage to these
heroic women. I think that
everyone who saw the images of these women was shaken.
The women threw
themselves down the long avenue, uncovered, empty
handed, defying the
helicopters and the armored vehicles, in order to
protect their men. The
soldiers fired on them, but the women continued and
arrived at their goal.
The soldiers who were firing from the armored vehicles
on these harmless
women are monsters.

"Israel has the right to defend itself" responded the
former ambassador Elie
Barnavi to a journalist from France Culture this
morning when asked about
the meaning of the Israeli offensive in the north of
Gaza. The right to
defend themselves against what? There is no
Palestinian army facing them.
There is only a people being massacred day after day
by the best equipped
army in the world. And the Palestinians don't have the
right to defend
themselves.

It is to the Palestinian people, the victims of the
massacres, that we
should be asking what it means to live under the
Israeli military offensive,
and not to ambassadors of the Jewish State of Israel,
ambassadors who will
never tell you, when it comes to Arab lives, of the
suffering and anxiety of
children thrown into the dreadful chaos, of the women
who have no idea how
to protect them, of the elderly who impotently submit,
of babies wailing, of
pregnant women who fear for their unborn children, of
the wounded, the dead,
the mothers who cry for their men, who feel humiliated
that they cannot
defend their children, the doctors who can no longer
support the rivers of
blood and the wounded added to the wounded in their
poorly equipped
hospitals.

These "terrorists", these "activists" that Israel is
fighting, these are
Palestinians, the authentic residents of the nation
that Israel wiped off
the map. These are women of all ages who brave the
tanks to protect their
sons. These are children who die in their beds or
playing by the front door.
These are fathers, brothers, cousins, and spouses
summarily executed because
Israel has put them on their "wanted" lists. These are
desperate young
people who, to defend their dignity, have only rifles
and rudimentary
rockets, and who know full well that they are going to
their deaths when
they put their nose outside. Like the child Bara'
Riyad Fayyad, 4 years old,
killed on Thursday in front of the door of her house.
These are normal
people who voted democratically against the corrupt
authorities of Fatah.

"Where are our Arab brothers?", cries a Palestinian in
front of a camera.

Yes, where is the world? The "international community"
says nothing say
shocked people who watch all of this with horror and
don't understand the
silence. But the "international community", so often
invoked, is only an
empty word. The UN, ever since the fall of the USSR,
is nothing but an
instrument in the hands of the US superpower.

In fact, the "international community" is us, all of
us. It is the
associations that are unfortunately more attached to
protecting the Jewish
State of Israel than defending the right of existence
of the Palestinians
and their right to return to their rightful home. It
is the political
parties of every tendency, too preoccupied by their
electoral success. It is
our elected officials who don't dare criticize Israel
out of fear of being
accused of anti-Semitism. It is the journalists who
misinform public opinion
and cover up the crimes of state.

Israeli troops open fire on women outside mosque

The Guardian
3 November 2006

A Palestinian woman was killed and another 10 were
reported wounded when Israeli forces today opened fire on
a group preparing to act as a human shield for militants
in a Gaza mosque. Dozens of women were gathering outside
the mosque in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza Strip after an
appeal on a local radio station. At least a dozen gunmen
had taken refuge in the building after the Israeli army
launched its largest Gaza offensive in months in an
attempt to stop militants launching rocket attacks on
nearby Jewish settlements over the border.

Television pictures showed at least 50 women making their
way along a pavement when shots could be heard ringing
out. They started to flee in terror and at least two women
were left lying on the ground.

Witnesses said one woman, aged about 40, was killed, and
10 others were wounded. The Israeli army said troops
spotted two militants hiding in the crowd of women and
opened fire.

Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers surrounded
the building when militants took refuge there after two
days of fighting, the Israeli military and Palestinian
security officials said. A large group of women protesters
went on to gather outside the mosque. An unidentified
number of militants escaped while the demonstration was
going on, but some remained inside, the Israeli army and
Hamas said.

A 22-year-old Palestinian man was also killed in the
northern town, which troops seized on Wednesday. More than
20 Palestinians, most of them militants, have been killed
since the offensive began.

Overnight, the two sides exchanged fire. Troops also threw
stun and smoke grenades into the mosque to pressure the
gunmen to surrender. Witnesses said an Israeli army
bulldozer knocked down an outer wall of the mosque. It was
not clear if there were any casualties inside.

Residents said Beit Hanoun, a town of 30,000 people, was
effectively under full Israeli control, with a curfew
imposed.

The army said it targeted Beit Hanoun because it was a
major staging ground for rocket attacks. But Israeli
officials have said the takeover of Beit Hanoun was
expected to last only a few days and did not signal the
start of a wider-scale military offensive in Gaza.

Militants, however, continued to fire rockets at Israeli
border communities, including two that landed on Friday.
Two Israelis were slightly wounded and a house was damaged
in the latest attacks.

In a separate operation last night, an Israeli air strike
on a car in Gaza City killed three Hamas fighters,
including a local militant commander, witnesses said. An
Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed the strike.

Breaking The Silence: An Israeli Soldier Speaks Out

Standing at 6’1, strong build, a full beard, and long dark hair that defines his Middle Eastern features; Yehuda Shaul seems like an un-assuming young man.

Wearing dark cargo pants, and a long-sleeved blue shirt, he paces back and forth taking in the whole room. It’s hard to notice at first but his blue velvet Kipa (skull cap) rests easily on his head.

His voice is mellow and calm. He has a disarming smile that lights up his entire face when he’s happy and talking about the things he loves (one of which is football.) But behind the smiles and the passion for the World’s most popular sport, we see a young man who has seen and done things no young person should ever have to endure

A soldier is born

He was born in Jerusalem. The son of an American born father and Canadian born mother, who immigrated to Israel in 1973, the year of the Yom Kippur War. The twenty-four year old, much like every other male in Israel was drafted into the army at the age of 18. Everyone is obligated by law to serve in the military; men serve for three years and women for two.

Shaul wanted to serve in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) not because he was required, but rather that he wanted to: “I went because, too me it was obvious since I was five or six that I was going to be a soldier. That when my time comes at the age of 18, I will join the army and be as I can be. The only question was will I join the regular army or be an elite commander in the army.” He says.

During a very powerful and emotional ceremony at The Western Wall, Shaul swore an loyalty oath with his fellow soldiers, promising to protect Israel.

But towards the end of his time in the army Shaul remembers something that began tom change his view about the IDF and Israel’s defense against terrorism:

“Somewhere towards three months at the end of my time in the army, I began to think about my life as a civilian. Trying for the first time after two yeas and ten months of living military life…trying for the first time to ask myself who is Yehuda? Who am I what do I want to become? And for me that moment was a very terrifying moment. It was a moment to stop thinking about being as a professional combat soldier and start thinking like a civilian. Stop thinking from inside and start observing from outside what’s going on.

“It’s a very terrifying moment because, in one second the military terminology and the way of thinking doesn’t apply to you anymore and in one second you lose the justification for 95 percent of actions you took part in the past two years and ten months.

“And when I felt that, when I felt that something mad was going on around me. I felt I can’t continue my life without doing something. I didn’t really know what it meant; what I was going to do, but I started talking to some of my comrades and I discovered that we all felt the same. We all felt that something wrong was going on around us.

We started talking about what we’ve done and that’s how Breaking the Silence got started.”

Speaking Out

Breaking the Silence (BTS) is a group of discharged soldiers who are veterans of the 2nd Intifada, which began in September 2000. The group has taken upon itself to reveal to the Israeli public the daily routine of life in the territories, a routine that gets no coverage in the media.

For Shaul and his comrades it was obvious that they were going to do something, and it was obvious that it was going to be about Hebron. Hebron is a Palestinian city in The West Bank located to the South of Jerusalem. It is considered a holy city to Jews, Muslims and Christians. This is where Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, and Jacob are buried in what is referred to by the Jews as The Tomb of The Patriarchs, and by the Muslims as al-Haram Ibrahimiyah. Furthermore, Abraham is an important individual in all three religions.

Out of the three years that he served in the occupied territories, 14 months were spent in Hebron. In March of 2004 Shaul was discharged. In June 2004 he and some comrades started BTS with a photo exhibition about Hebron.

The name BTS was aptly titled. Because what is going in the occupied territories is one of the biggest taboos in Israel: “It’s like the thing you never talk about” says Shaul, “it’s the dirt from the back yard that you do everything to keep in the backyard. The last thing you want is that this dirt will come to the front.”

The title of the exhibit was ‘Bringing Hebron to Tel Aviv.’ Shaul explains that if anything symbolizes Israel, it’s Tel Aviv. In Israel Tel Aviv is often called “The Bubble.” It is a place where people would rather sit down in coffee shops and not see anything more than a few feet around them.

When the exhibition opened, it was a huge success. Over 7000 visitors attended the exhibition. Shaul and his fellow soldiers were shocked at the success. For several days all the Israeli media spoke about the soldier testimonies from Hebron.

The act of the exhibit was a very personal one. None of them really sure why they were doing it at the time, only that they felt they had to. But something remarkable happened during the exhibition. Out of the 7000 that came to see the works, some had also been recently discharged from different units from the occupied territories. While Shaul and his comrades stood by different works, the soldiers that came to see the works walked up to many of them and said; “this picture you have on the wall, I have the same from Nablus.”

As Shaul heard from these soldiers who served in various parts of The West Bank and Gaza that the story of his battalion was not unique, but rather the story of all his generation; It was then that those who had put on the exhibit had to continue they’re work. They began to videotape and audiotape the testimonies of soldiers who served in the occupied territories. As of now BTS has interviewed over 400 people who served as conscript soldiers.

The goal of BTS was not just to show shocking pictures. Not to tell horror stories about life in The West Bank or Gaza. The goal of BS was to help people understand the mindset of occupation, to understand the mindset of an occupier.

Games Children Play

One thing that Shaul comments on is that when one is in the occupied territories, things might seem exciting at first but over time the soldiers tend to get bored, they become numb to the situation around them; “Eight hours on eight hours off, you start to get bored so you begin to make things a game” he says, “You start to aim your rifle at kids and see them through the scope of your rifle and take a picture. Then you aim at your friends and take a picture. The rifle is no longer a killing machine, the rifle becomes a part of your game, the way to pass on time.”

Often, these games would extend to the Palestinians who would have to go through checkpoints:

“We use to say that there are two kinds of blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinians. The first kind is called wanted terrorists. These are the people that you get the ID numbers from the Secret Service, address, you come in the middle of the night into the house, catch the guy, bring him back to the barracks, blindfolded until he is taken away.

“But the other kind, what we call in Hebrew “Dry outs” or more professionally detainees; these are the Palestinians who broke curfew…during 2002 through 2003 there were more than 500 days of curfew in Hebron. And we would lift it every few days so people could get food for maybe two or three hours, but if someone were to leave after these hours to get food for his family, then he would be detained for five, six, or seven hours. You must educate them.

“Or if you ask the Palestinians to stand in one nice line and one guy at the end starts to scream that could be seven hours, ten hours.

“If you call on a Palestinian to show his ID and he smiles too much, then that could be two hours or it could be eight hours. It just depends on which side of the bed you woke up on that morning.”

Over time Shaul explains that the Palestinians stop being people and become objects. This feeling was not limited to detainees. In the occupied territories, property suffered a harsh toll.

The Wrecking Crew

In the beginning of the 2nd Intifada when the IDF would occupy a Palestinian home, commanders would given explicit instructions. The only things allowed to be used from private property were things for military purposes.

If they would occupy the house for more than a few days they might throw out the family, or remand them to the 1st floor or a basement. If a chair or a table was needed to build a post soldier was allowed to use them. “Believe it or not the first houses we entered, before we left, we washed the floors.” Shaul recalls. “This is what we called an enlightened occupation.”

Over time as the units would get more and more comfortable in the houses, and over a period of time the soldiers would become bored and they would start to break things.

Once, when his battalion was doing an operation in then city of Ramallah, Shaul remembers that an important World Cup match was playing; “We looked around and found a house, entered it, kicked the family out, watched the game, and when it was over we left and went back to our mission.”

During Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 in the town of Jenin Israeli bulldozers, made by Caterpillar, rumbled through the narrow streets taking the walls of houses and shops along the way.

“After a week the soldiers in Jenin ran out of water” Shaul tells, “So the commander gets on the radio and tells his men to go to a shop to get more water, we need water, this is a military need. Right? So the soldiers go to the store in an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) and get water. Well, a week with out water is also a week without cigarettes, so they take cigarettes, and a week without cigarettes is probably a week without chocolate, so they take the chocolate as well.”

The Blender

Yehuda Shaul’s professional infantry training was as a grenade machinegun operator. During the 2nd Intifada in Hebron his first assignment was to stand post at a school over looking a Palestinian neighborhood called abu Seniehi.

Every night at approximately 6pm, Palestinian militants would shoot at the settlements in Hebron, and the IDF would return the fire.

Shaul’s platoon sergeant informed him that every night they would hear gunfire and that he had to react and return the fire. It is important to note that a grenade machinegun is not an accurate weapon and that the targets that are firing from within a heavily urban area are all most impossible to spot.

When Shaul realized what he was going to have to do he became very nervous. He worried for hours about what would happen when 6pm rolled around. “At 6pm the shooting starts and you get your orders over the radio. You approach the machinegun. You still know that something is wrong, that something is not right. You don’t believe that your going to shoot the neighborhood…for what are we here?

“So you pull the trigger you spray the area you pray that the less amount has been fired and then there is four or five seconds of tense quiet. You pray you haven’t hit innocent people. But the next day you’re less tense, the third day, and then after a week it becomes the most exciting moment of the day.

“After awhile you see that the Palestinians are not getting the message. They are continuing to shoot. So, maybe we shoot at 5:30pm to deter them. Then over a little bit more time we go out on patrols and we see a car and we decided to explode it to send out a message. Now when I talk about this I am talking about how the mission starts and where it goes. How it just becomes a part of you. The blending.”

Where do we go from here?

BTS has two levels of silence. The first level is the silence of the combat soldier that doesn’t understand what’s going on. The second level of silence is that which is conveyed to the Israeli public of what is really happening in the occupied territories. What is happening to their sons and daughters, husbands and wives.

Yehuda Shaul stares on intensely and leans forward as he says: “No one wants to hear what’s really going on in the occupied territories. No one wants the dirt from the backyard to get to the front. It’s time to put the dirt so that everyone can see and that we can all begin to address it”

Another sign things are not right in Israel/Palestine

American evangelical group arrives in Ashdod on solidarity
mission

Associated Press
26 October 2006


After a stormy 35-day journey at sea, a group of American
evangelicals traveling on a creaky World War II-era cargo
ship landed in Ashdod on a solidarity mission only to run
aground in red tape, with long delays in unloading their
cargo of clothes, toys and medical supplies.

Still, the 42-member crew was unfazed Thursday, keeping a
positive, enthusiastic attitude in a colorful
demonstration of the growing alliance between
fundamentalist Christians and the Jewish state.

"The Bible says, 'Who blesses Israel will be blessed,"'
said Don Tipton, the group's leader. "We believe that."

The "Spirit of Grace" steamed into the Israeli port of
Ashdod in early October from Louisiana, flying an American
flag and a huge banner reading "Jehovah" in Hebrew
letters. Three weeks later, the low, gray-painted ship is
still docked, its 900-ton load of goods bound for local
charities stuck on board as the gears of Israeli
bureaucracy slowly turn.

The band of evangelical Christians on the "Spirit of
Grace" are bearing the delay the same way they sailed
their weather-beaten cargo ship through three fierce
storms in the Atlantic Ocean on the voyage over: with a
cheerful faith that their mission is God's will.

"It's taken a bit longer than we expected, but it's given
us more time to tour the country, and we're having a great
time," said Sandra Tipton, Don's wife.

Julio Lieberman, the group's Israeli shipping agent, said
the delay was due to paperwork that the government
requires for charitable donations from abroad. "It's taken
far too long, but it should be sorted out in a few days,"
he said.

Yigal Ben-Zikry, a spokesman for the Ashdod port, said
workers could unload the ship "in half a day" as soon as
government approval comes through.

The "Spirit of Grace" - formerly the U.S.S. Pembina, a
62-year-old Navy ship that saw action in World War II - is
operated by Friend Ships, a foundation run by the Tiptons,
born-again Christians originally from Beverly Hills. The
group owns four other ships, as well as landing craft and
a helicopter, all based in Lake Charles, Louisiana, at a
facility that the group has dubbed Port Mercy.

Like the "Spirit of Grace," the vessels are staffed
entirely by volunteers and used to deliver supplies
donated by Christians to disaster-struck countries around
the world.

But the mission to Israel is different.

"This is not aid, it's an expression of friendship and
love," Don Tipton said. The members of his crew, he said,
like many other evangelical Christians, see supporting
Israel as a divine commandment. They were further spurred
on by the recent war in Lebanon, he said.

"After the war, we saw that Lebanon was getting lots of
aid and friendship, and I thought, hey, they're not the
ones who just got mugged," Tipton said. He had
preparations for this journey, which had been planned
before fighting broke out, sped up.

The voyage of the "Spirit of Grace" reflects the growing
alliance between American evangelicals and Israel, a
relationship which has seen evangelical Christians become
more vocal politically and more generous financially in
their support of the Jewish state.

Despite some hesitancy In Israel about the evangelicals'
political agenda for Israel, which opposes any territorial
compromise, and about their religious beliefs - some see
the ingathering of the Jews to Israel as a necessary
prelude to a cataclysm in which anyone who isn't Christian
will die - the friendly feeling has generally become
mutual.

Today, one of Israel's biggest and most accepted charities
is an evangelical-funded group, the Chicago-based
International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which
distributes $30 million a year to different projects in
Israel.

"We love and admire Israel - we tell our congressmen and
senators this, and we stand behind Bush," said Tipton, 62.
"We won't let anything happen to Israel."

Tipton's crew is a diverse group. Its oldest member is the
chief engineer, Wally Barber of Seattle, 83. Its youngest
is Ruth Larson, four months old, who came along with her
parents.

Serving on the ship is "a calling," Lloyd Williams, a
white-bearded veteran sailor from Durban, South Africa,
said over the noise of the engine room. Williams wore a
Star of David on a pendant around his neck.

Merrie Uddin, originally from Detroit, was working in a
Louisiana casino until a hurricane destroyed it last year.
"It was a blessing," Uddin says, because the loss of her
job led her to sign up with the "Spirit of Grace." Kristin
Boettcher of Des Moines was in college when, she said,
"The Lord got ahold of my life," and she found her way to
the ship. Jim Fotia, a Californian with long hair and a
beard, said he joined the trip because he "felt the call"
to come to Israel. "I'm amazed at how much it's like
southern California," Fotia said.

Despite the bureaucratic foul-ups that have kept their
charitable cargo stuck on board, the Christian sailors
said they've been warmly received at this busy port, where
their vintage vessel, its earnest crew and its
blue-and-white "Jehovah" banner stand out among huge
international cargo ships, grimy tankers and Israeli naval
craft. Workers have invited them for dinner in the port's
cafeteria, and the port has waived some of its usual
tariffs, Donald Tipton said.

"We had to be nice to these people," port spokesman Yigal
Ben-Zikry said, "they're more Zionist than any Israelis I
know."

Speaking Truth to Power: An interview with Ray McGovern Pt. 2

On Saturday October 21st, 2006 I spoke with Ray McGovern. McGovern worked as an analyst for the CIA for 27 years and co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

In part two of our interview, McGovern discusses the Israeli war against Lebanon and it’s implications for Iran, VIPS, and concrete ways to combat the Bush administration’s policies in the Middle East.


CB: In your opinion, did the U.S. see the Israeli war in Lebanon as a pretext to support a war with Iran?

RM: Well it’s a very good question. It’s rather bizarre that the President of the United States would receive a visit from Israeli Prime Minister Olmert a month before the Israelis decided to attack Lebanon’s infrastructure on the pretext that two of their soldiers had been captured.

What was the motivation behind this bizarre approval, not only approval but the egging on of the Israelis to do this; and then refuse to call for a ceasefire as so many Lebanese, as well as Israelis were being killed?

Well, it’s part and parcel of this perceived identification of interests between Israel and the United States. These men, and they’re all men, Condoleezza Rice is just and executive secretary; they have great difficulty in what they perceive to be the strategic interests of Israel on one hand, and the strategic interests of the United States on the other.

This is a classic example of what President George Washington warned about as he left office: he said that the main thing to be aware of is when you call it “dangling alliances” when a perceived interest of one party become unthinkingly identified with perceived interests of the ally; and how deleterious that can be. This is on par with another warning by a President, who just happened to be a General, General Eisenhower, talking about the military Industrial Complex.

In any case, we have a very unhealthy relationship with Israel where people running our policy consider Israel’s interests to be on par with ours.

Now, I care greatly about what happens to the Israeli people, I also care what happens to the Palestinian people; but my problem with all of this, besides the moral imperative not to condone people unnecessarily, is that Israel, in my view, is in a more dangerous situation right now than it has been since 1948.

Why do I say that?

I say; why don’t you just look at Lebanon. Over the last year, the Lebanese government was taking a form, which suggested very strongly that they were going to form a multi-confessional state, Jews, Arabs, Christians living together which Lebanon use to be able to do.

And it was coming together.

Now look at it!

The aftermath of the Israeli bombing of it’s infrastructure (Lebanon’s) and the inability, on the part of the Israelis, to destroy Hizbollah, there’s virtually no chance, in my view, that a peaceful neighborly neighbor such was envisioned before the attack, a multi-confessional state…that’s not going to be possible.

Now they’re going to have an Islamist state. That’s just, over the long run, going to pose all kinds of problems of safety and security to the Israeli people.

And look at Iraq.

Now it has always been my contention that part of the rational for attacking Iraq, after the need for oil and after the imperial design of creating permanent military bases in that country, which we’re still working on, after those two major considerations, mostly behind a perceived need to make that area safer for the state of Israel.

Now, I think most Americans have forgotten, that before we invaded Iraq, there was no Iraqi sponsorship of terrorism, there were no terrorists in Iraq! But all the propaganda that the president said that; “we have to catapult the propaganda.”

So all the propaganda coming out of the White House, I dare say maybe ten percent of the American people realize that Saddam Hussein was not sponsoring any kind of terrorist activities. He had given some sort of house arrests privilege to Abu Nidal and a couple of aging terrorists who were allowed to die in Baghdad. But the whole extent for his support for terrorism came, and I don’t condone this for one minute, for support of families of suicide terrorists in Palestine. He was offering a certain amount to those families. But that was the whole extent of sponsorship for terrorist activities.

So, there were no terrorists in Iraq, and there were no suicide bombers. There were no, before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, suicide bombings.

Now look at Iraq!

Iraq is teeming with terrorists, even some al Qaeda terrorists. These are people who wish Israel ill. These are people pretty close to the Israeli border now and Israel is in much more danger now than before.

So what I’m suggesting here is that this is a very myopic approach not only on the part of the U.S., but also on the part of the Israeli leaders. And if they think they can, by violence, preserve their country by threatening a country like Iran by saying; ‘Look, you may be five or ten years away from developing a nuclear weapon, but you might be able to get the knowledge to construct one; we’re not going to let you do that. We’re going to bomb you, bomb you back to the Stone Age.’ Which I’m sure is what our leaders are thinking, but in much more diplomatic language from the State department.

I care about the Israelis. I care about they’re short sided approach to this problem. Coming out of the Judaic Christian Tradition, and like George Bush I read the Bible, but I came up with very different conclusions.

The Hebrew Scriptures speak very eloquently too me of the need not to cause unnecessary violence. Not to take up the sword, and indeed when the Jews of the Old Testament violated that law, that’s when they ran into trouble.

CB: Could you talk about the organization you co-founded Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity?

RM: Many of us retired in the 90s and took up other pursuits. But we all followed the news and we saw the strange incidence of our President saying things that were not true. For example, that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), when he knew that these had been destroyed in 1991.

And so we started comparing notes by email, and writing the occasional Op Eds. And when it became clear that this corruption of the intelligence process was going to be used to start an unnecessary war, it was then that we decided that we needed to form a movement, which we truly hoped would become more than the sum of it’s parts; where we could speak corporately on these issues.

It began with former members of the CIA, but very quickly grew, and now we have members from all 16 intelligence agencies, and we are up to 57 members.

Or first substantive output was the memo written on the same day that Colin Powell spoke in the UN. We set ourselves the task of doing a same day critique, just as we would in the old days by Castro, Gorbachov or Brezhnev. We knew that this was going to be an important event, we’ll write it up and report by email and AP (Associated Press) said they would put it out on they’re wire at 5pm.

So, I was given primary drafting responsibilities and I got a draft to my colleagues around 3pm, and AP said we missed the deadline by fifteen minutes but they put it out anyway at 5:15pm.

And what did we say?

First off, Mr. President, we give Colin Powell and ‘A’ for performance, but in regards to the content, the evidence had been hyped. Then we said; Mr. President you need to realize, if you don’t already, that your senior officials, especially your Vice President, is leaning really hard on CIA analysts to cook up evidence to things that don’t exist, like WMD. And finally our last sentence read thusly:

“No one has a corner on the truth; nor do we harbor illusions that our analysis is irrefutable or undeniable. But after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond violations of Resolution 1441, and beyond the circle of those advisors clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

We take no joy at all to write about that. In fact, the former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix was crying from the rooftops that there were no WMD!

And so we found it to be our duty to analyze speeches like this.

So, the President was told by us, and others, and he was aware that the evidence had been cooked. The most flagrant was this idea that Iraq had uranium from Niger. It couldn’t happen, and on the face of it everybody found out that it was forgery. Before the war people found out but after Congress had been misled on the basis of this report that Iraq was working on nuclear weapons.

Don’t take my word for that Henry Waxman and other Congressmen went to the President saying; ‘look, on the basis of the report that your people, Colin Powell and others are now saying is a forgery! Tell me how that can happen?’ And he never got an adequate answer.

So in short, we felt it out duty to speak out.

CB: Finally Ray McGovern, what are concrete steps that people can take to try and combat the overreaching hand of the Bush administration in the Middle East?

RM: They can hold they’re representatives and senators accountable.

I was in Missouri this month. So I brushed up on my Mark Twain; “There is no criminal class in America as such, except for Congress.”

Now, I use to think that was funny. It’s no longer funny.

This Congress has voted for laws that re clearly unconstitutional, not to mention against international law. They have given this President the right to eavesdrop, arrest, and even torture people. These congressmen need to be held accountable for what they did. They allowed themselves to be scared, just like they did four years ago.

Scared by whom?

Scared by Karl Rove. It was Rove four years ago who insisted that all these stories be brought to the American people, to the Congress, but the stories were based on cooked reports.

Why?

Because he wanted to force he Democrats to face up to the unsavory place of voting against a war that was authorized against a brutal dictator who threatened us with WMD and was partly responsible for 9/11. A choice between voting for that war and voting against it. A lot of the Democrats even caved.

Why?

Well because they remember when fellow Democrats tried to vote against the Gulf War in 1990. They really took it on the chin; some people saw that as a glorious war.

So, fours years ago it happened, and now it’s happening again.

Who wants to appear soft on terrorists?

Who wants to be the subject of TV ads starting next week saying, ‘Rep. Jane Doe, voted against giving the President the tools he needs to fight terrorism!’

Well, that’s silly, but a lot of people get taken in by that. And that’s why they forced this vote, before the election, and anybody who voted against that bill (The Military Commission Act) will be subjected to criticism.

John Bayner from the mid-west, he’s the Republican leader of the House. He said two weeks ago, ‘you know the democrats care more about protecting terrorists than protecting Americans!’

You know, I’m old enough to remember Joe McCarthy, and Joe McCarthy wasn’t that dumb.

Speaking Truth To Power: An Interview with Ray McGovern Pt. 1

You may not know the name of the bearded, soft-spoken man right off the bat. You might look upon him as a kindly husband, father, or grandfather. True enough, you may not recognize him, but you might have heard, or even seen what he did on a normal day in the Southeastern part of the United States during a question and answer period with one of the most powerful men in the World.

On May 4th, 2006 in Atlanta, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had just concluded a speech, a brief question and answer session followed. A mild-mannered gentleman walked up to the microphone and asked Rumsfeld, in a respectful, but strong voice; “Why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary and that has caused these kinds of casualties? Why?”

All major broadcasts, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and CNN showed the confrontation of Rumsfeld, bumbling over the questions presented by Ray McGovern; an ex-CIA analyst with 27 years of experience with the agency under his belt.

I received the opportunity to speak with McGovern, the co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) via phone as he drove to a speech he was giving in Washington D.C.

This is part one of a two-part interview that I conducted. In this section Mr. McGovern talks of that fateful day when he questioned Rumsfeld and about President Bush signing into law The Military Commission Act.


Christopher Brown: Could you speak about the moment, on national television, when you confronted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on his claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; what motivated you to decide to challenge him on that day?

Ray McGovern: I was giving a talk that evening in Atlanta and I heard from a friend in Atlanta that he was giving an early afternoon talk and you can come and listen to what he says. And I thought that was good idea. So, I looked up the website of this Southern Center for Public Affairs, and it was very fancy website, very lovely, but no mention that Donald Rumsfeld was coming and I thought that was rather odd.

So I called some friends in Atlanta and said; “what’s really going on here?” and they said they’d look into it, and a very enterprising woman from The World Can’t Wait got in touch with me and said; “we can figure out how to get you a ticket if you really want one but it’s going to cost you forty bucks.” Well, forty bucks to go and listen to Donald Rumsfeld was little bit of a challenge for me, but I figured in Washington they’d never let me near him. So, I used the website, got myself a ticket, and appeared there about an hour before, and low and behold there were two microphones in the aisles towards the center. I saw that there were likely to be questions and answers, so I sat two feet from the microphone on the left.

I didn’t know exactly what I would do because I was preparing my own speech for that evening, and I came across a report from the previous day, an interview given by a colleague of mine called Paul Pillar who recently retired from the agency after having been the senior substantive policy analyst for Iraq and the whole Middle East. He’d given an interview to the Spanish newspaper El Paiz the day before and he let himself say, the most unconscionable vetting of the evidence, in his view, was the calculated manipulation of evidence to indicate that al Qaeda had something to do with 9/11, or in the short hand that Sadaam Hussein had something to do with 9/11; that al Qaeda was very close to Iraq.

Now, Don Rumsfeld had said, in Atlanta in September 2003 that the evidence for that was bulletproof, his word; bulletproof. And that was very strange too me because, I knew, at that time, that all my former colleagues from the Central Intelligence Agency were saying there was no evidence. It was completely contrived of people conjuring up this image. Which after all is the most unconscionable playing on the very real trauma of all us Americans who saw what happened on 9/11. Playing on that trauma and dishonestly associating a country and a leader, namely Iraq and Sadaam Hussein who, as best intelligence, and there was plenty of it, proved had nothing to do with it. Nevertheless, 69% of the American people believe that Sadaam Hussein had something to do with 9/11, and 85% of the military believe that. So, this is a consequential misleading of the American public.

In any case, here was Donald Rumsfeld saying in the same town, Atlanta, that the evidence of a tie between al Qaeda and Iraq was bulletproof. So I said; you know maybe I’ll ask him about that. Why was he saying it’s bulletproof at a time when the agency is saying its not, there’s no evidence at all. And when General Scowcroft, Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Advisor (NSA) for the first President Bush was saying: “the evidence of such is scarce”?

So there was a really flagrant playing with the truth here, and I thought I’d ask him to explain why he was saying ‘bulletproof,’ Scowcroft was saying ‘scarce’, and the CIA was saying ‘no evidence at all.’ And so that’s how I lead off I said; “Mr. Rumsfeld, my colleague Paul Pillar said that there was a very deliberate modification to the evidence to show that this tie didn’t exist and you said that tie was bulletproof can you explain that?”

And the chair of the very establishment center where we were had interrupted me and I could see that I was going to be cut off, and so I spoke over him and got my main sentence in which was simply to say: “Why did you lie to mislead the American people into a war that was unnecessary and that had already had so many casualties?”

That’s why I said that upfront, I had intended to say that more indirectly later. Well, Rumsfeld changed the subject from bulletproof evidence, and talked about: “apparently there were no weapons of mass destruction.”

At which point, I couldn’t resist interrupting him saying; “You said you knew where they were.”

“No no I didn’t!” said Rumsfeld; “I said there was some suspect sites.”

And I said no you said; “We know where they are in the area around Tikrit, Baghdad, and North, South, East, and West of there. Those were your words!”

Well at that point, a very burly young man with a black hat on, comes down the aisle and ducks in behind me, so that he cannot be seen by the camera, puts his left elbow in my solarplexs and starts moving me very aggressively away from the microphone. At which point Rumsfeld realizes this is on live TV and he makes a calculated decision that to have me carried out after asking him two questions to which he had responded disingenuously, that would probably be a worse PR disaster than if he continued the debate. And I could almost see him thinking; “Hey I’m a champion person debater, let me at this little kid!”

So he says to the goon who’s got his elbow in my solarplexs, “No no no, let him stay a second!” So the goon doesn’t go away but comes on my side and then he is visible to the camera, and he lurks there for the entire next two minutes, and Rumsfeld changed the subject and says; “Well, you can’t say that we deliberately lied.” And of curse he blamed it all on Colin Powell and the head of the CIA saying; “I don’t have anything to do with intelligence.” Which is not true because he controls 80% of the intelligence budget, the defense and intelligence agency reports to him. I guess no one in Atlanta knew how stupid that was but it was caught later on TV.

And then he says; “You know, look these people in uniform” Rumsfeld always arranges to have people in uniform in the first row, so that they can be used. He refers to them and one of them stands up and he says; “These people believe that there were weapons of mass destruction there. You think they put on these protective suits, which are very uncomfortable, do you think they put those on because they like the fashion?” And the whole audience laughed. And I said; “Mr. Rumsfeld that’s a non-sequitor. It doesn’t matter what the troops were told it matters what you believe.” And at that moment the head of the Center interrupts us and says; “Well that’s enough for this debate lets go on to the next question. In fairness to the next question.”

And I simply went back to the seat where I was sitting and became the skunk at the picnic and could not make eye contact with any, not one, member of the audience as we filed out. It was a very interesting experience. It reminded me being at similar rallies in the Soviet Union when I served there.

CB: President Bush signed into law, The Military Commission Act, what does this mean for an enemy combatant's rights in a court of law; what are the broader affects of such a law for the American judicial system?

RM: Ordinary people like you and I, we have no rights anymore to speak of. After you and I are finished with this interview, Donald Rumsfeld, who were just talking about, can send the same folks who almost threw me out of that hall, this time he can send them, quite legally, to arrest us, put us in Guantanamo or some other black hole, without telling our wives, children, parents, and keep us there forever without any appeal on our part in Federal court.

In 1215, the year the Magna Carta was signed, which wrested from the English king, the right for people who were arrested to have some sort of redress in court. After 791 years of Habeas Corpus which not only the English common law tradition served, but other countries as well.

And the amazing thing is this, as usual, passed in the middle of the night, it’s was doctored in the middle of the night by the conference committee. And in some earlier text they had aliens or foreign enemy combatants, and somehow or other, it must have been a typo, they left out foreign, they left out alien. And so this deprivation of habeas corpus right can apply to you and can apply too me.

Not only that, the President is free to do, what he was legally bound not to do before this act. Now what do I mean by that? Well, two things; The President signed an executive order on the 7th of February, 2002 which authorizes the army and the CIA to disregard the Geneva Conventions, namely Common Article 3 and also the War Crimes Act, U.S. criminal law, U.S. code 2441 1996. Why do I say 1996 so slowly? Simply to recall this passed by the Newt Gingrich dominated Republican majority Congress in 1996.

That law made the Geneva Convention, Common Article 3 inexplicably entwined with the U.S. common law. In other words, you violate Geneva you no longer have an international law problem it’s a domestic criminal law problem.

So anyhow, the president authorized that. Now, people will be reading this and say: “Oh now, show us where he authorized that McGovern!”

Well, if you have a computer go to your URL line and type in George W. Bush hyphen February 7th 2002, type in executive order hyphen interrogation or al Qaeda, Taliban and you’ll see the memo it’s right there you can download it in PDF form you can see the President’s signature just behind it. It says; that we don’t have to observe the Geneva protections for the Taliban and al Qaeda; and not only that: “We will treat them humanely as appropriate and as consistent with military necessity.” That is a direct quote.

That is the loophole through which Don Rumsfeld and George Tenet, the head of the CIA, drove the Mack truck officially sanctioning torture. It was legal then in their view. The Supreme Court as we know, about three months ago, ruled that it was not legal. That it was not only illegal under international law, but that it violated the War Crimes Act of 1996 and that’s why they insisted that it be stopped.

When the Supreme Court said that this was unconstitutional and unlawful, then the interrogators began to think twice about subjecting themselves to the vulnerability of prosecution under these laws. So here’s the President of the United States on the 6th of September getting up at a press conference, bragging about how successful extraordinary measures enhanced interrogation techniques, he didn’t say torture, but everybody knows what he’s talking about, how successful they have been. He’s bragging about this and says we need to change the law because CIA interrogators were just doing a full and professional job don’t want to subject themselves to liability for prosecution under the War Crimes Act.

And then he said, I could see it in his face, “Sotto Niche” neither do I.

And neither does Donald Rumsfeld, and neither does Alberto Gonzales, neither does Dick Cheney wants to subject themselves under prosecution of the War Crimes Act of 1996. Why? Because they are all liable folks, they are all liable. Until this past Tuesday, when the Congress, to my amazement acted just like the German Parliament when Hitler engaged the enabling acts in March of 1933.

They caved in, some said; well its unconstitutional anyway so we’ll just go with the flow here. In a fear of being soft against terrorism the Congress, both Senate and House, approved this law and made it retroactive!

Is this a great country or what? The President cannot be held liable for the torture that he authorized beginning with that memo on February 7th 2002.

Let me mention the other aspect. Clearly there is the wiretapping on Americans. Now, this needs to be mentioned because in similar fashion this new law, euphemistically called, The Military Commission Act, but really should be called the Enabling Act, because it is an exact duplicate act passed by the German Parliament in March of 1933 to give Hitler dictatorial powers. This law also absolves the president retroactively.

I’ve asked lawyers if Congress can pass a law saying that violation of an old law can be forgiven? And, unfortunately, the lawyers said yes. So this is a great country.

What this new law does, this Military Commission Act as it is so called, it says even though the Federal judge in Detroit has ruled that your wiretapping of Americans is both unlawful because of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), which outlaws eavesdropping on Americans without a court order, even though it’s unlawful, and unconstitutional, because there is a Fourth Amendment that protects us from unlawful search and seizures, or is at least suppose to, or at least did protect us until last Tuesday, Judge Taylor in Detroit said; Eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant is illegal and its unconstitutional.

This new law supercedes the old FISA, and supercedes, I guess, the Fourth Amendment, because what this Congress has done is the President is free to order that at will. So, we have a President who now, as of last Tuesday, can order eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant which was usually required under the old law. And the President can, at will, by defining his own terms, torture.

So it’s all these things; habeas corpus is one thing, torture is another, what has been, up until now, illegal wiretapping is a third. And let me just add a couple of things to the illegal wiretapping.

This is demonstrably an impeachable offense. Why do I say that? I say that because Richard Nixon when he was about to be fully impeached, the House Judiciary Committee which has purvey over the initial stages voted an article of impeachment against Richard Nixon for eavesdropping on Americans illegally. So the President has already admitted to having authorized this illegal eavesdropping on Americans more than 30 times.

There’s another aspect of this eavesdropping, which is pretty sinister. I go around the country speaking about these things and I ask people; “Does it not bother you than your telephone calls are monitored, email and so forth?” And I have to say, to my great distress, that 80% of the people say, no.

So I ask them another question; “Does it bother you that Senator Arlen Specter’s can be eavesdropped on, can be monitored? And they say; “Why do you ask me about Sen. Arlen Specter? Who’s he?” And I tell them he’s head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has purview over these things (Purview over U.S. laws.) He was incensed, and learned last December that the President had deliberately violated the FISA law. And he promised to hold committee hearings to look into this. He talked about this being clearly extra-legal. By August, surprisingly, Arlen Specter Senator from Pennsylvania now Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, changed his tune 180 degrees. Not only that but he drafted legislation, which now has been passed, that allows the President to eavesdrop on us at will without any court warrant.

Now what accounts for this 180-degree turn of view? Well let me offer a hypothetical. I stress this is a hypothetical; two FBI agents visited Sen. Specter two moths ago. They sat down with him and said:

“Now Senator. Specter we’ve just been in Cleveland. We spent the weekend there interviewing Mary Crawford. What a wonderful woman she is. We just had a wonderful interview with her and of course we knew that your travel records show that you go to Cleveland every weekend. And we just had a really informative session with her. And we don’t think that anybody else needs to know about this and so we have some draft legislation that the President would like you to sign. It’s a little intrusive on civil liberties but it’s going to protect us against terrorists. And if you sponsor this, nobody has to know about Mary Crawford.”

Now I know a lot of your readers will say; “Oh McGovern has gone off the deep end!” This kind of activity is precisely why the FISA act was drafted and passed in 1978. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI and other organs of our government were not only eavesdropping on Representatives and Senators but on Presidents of The United States. And that’s why that law was primarily was passed. And I will add that the law was made flexible enough so that this very convenient tool whereby you can get information that nobody know you are getting can be used to prevent foreign espionage. And so that law was written with the flexibility to eavesdrop on any foreign intelligence asset without consulting the court for three whole days. And then if the President wanted to continue this kind of wiretapping, all he needed to do was go to the judge to get approval.

Was that a big hurdle? Well, out of the first five thousand FISA court warrants that were applied for 4,995 were approved. So it really was a formality. So what is the implication? The implication is that the President of the United Sates has decided that after 9/11, some people suggested even earlier, that he couldn’t be bothered by observing this law. And he commissioned the development of a program run by the NSA that is so intrusive, so all encompassing, that not even the immediate aftermath of 9/11 did he feel confident that he could go to the Congress and say; Look we need to change the law here. I need more flexibility.

Now when Attorney General Gonzales was asked about this back in January of this year, when Sen. Specter held his first hearings, he let the cat out of the bag. Actually, Gonzales let the cat out of the bag at a press conference on the 19th of December just before he got to the Specter hearings. What he told the press was this; the question asked by an enterprising journalist was; “Attorney General we’d like to know why you did and end run around the FISA. If you thought it was too stringent and didn’t give you enough flexibility to do what you need, why did you not go to Congress and do this the right way?”

And you know what Gonzales said? This was completely missed by the mainstream press. This is what he said; well we went to Congress and they told us that this was very unlikely, neigh impossible that legislation like this would be approved by Congress. And so, we took the attitude that we didn’t need the bill.

Now, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to deduce that if Gonzales was told by the Congress, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, that they would never approve of this program, they went blindly ahead and approved it any way, even though, as I said, a judge declared it unconstitutional and illegal.

So now is this a great country or what? It is completely legal under the enabling acts, the so-called Military Commission Act signed by the President last Tuesday.



In part two of my interview with Ray McGovern, he talks about the Israel/Lebanon war and its possible implications for war with Iran; co-founding Veteran intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); and concrete steps to stop the overreaching hand of the Bush administration.

All Power To The People: the 40th Anniversary of The Black Panther Party

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black community.
2. We want full employment for our people.
3. We want and end to the robbery by the capitalist of our Black community.
4. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present day society.
6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.
8. We want freedom for all Black men held in Federal, State, County and City prisons and jails.
9. We want all Black people when brought to trail to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-Supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the Black colony in which only Black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of Black people as to their national destiny.

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

They came from as close as downtown Oakland California and as far away as Tanzania, located in Southern Africa.

They are mothers, fathers, and grandparents; artists, IT professionals, singers, songwriters; some walked erect, others moved about with the aid of canes, and a few in wheelchairs; they were doctors, lawyers, teachers, and activists, but above all else they were revolutionaries; they were Panthers; Black Panthers.

From Thursday, October 12th through Sunday October 15th, hundreds of comrades from the Black Panther Party (BPP) descended on Oakland California to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the founding of the organization.

Founded in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, The (BPP) was dedicated to bringing about real change and self-determination to Black communities around the country. “I remember having the opportunity to spend hours with Bobby, and his brother John Seale, and ‘Big Man’ (Earl ‘Big Man’ Howard), and just brainstorming, and pick their minds on things that could be done. And I remember the concept of him (Bobby Seale) talking about feeding children.” recalls James Mott, who was active with the Party in the Sacramento chapter.

Thus out of those brainstorming sessions that took place came the first free breakfast program for children founded in Oakland in May of 1968: “It was in that point in time that Jessie Unruh, who was the State’s Attorney General came out and made the blatant statement that the BPP is feeding more children in this country than the United States government.” said Mott.

The BPP instituted a number of survival programs designed to meet the needs of the community. The survival programs served as an organizing tool to expose the inequities and contradictions of the United States. Some of the programs were:

1. Inter-communal News Service (The BPP paper).
2. Free breakfast for schoolchildren.
3. Petition Campaign – Referendum for Community Control of police.
4. Free clothing program.
5. Free housing cooperative program.
6. Free shoe program.

In all there were 16 programs that the BPP instituted in the community.

Several speakers at the reunion spoke of the various roles that people took on in the organization. Although, two men founded it, the BPP had a strong group of women that were involved and led in a variety of ways. One such woman was Charlotte O’Neal.

Charlotte O’Neal and her husband Pete O’Neal were involved with the Kansas City chapter of the BPP. At the age of 19, Charlotte was pregnant and had been transformed by the BPP. Now living in exile in Tanzania and regal in her African headdress and gown, O’Neal, spoke of the need to get the youth of today more active in what is going on around them; “It’s like they almost have on blinders. Well it’s up to us, all us old Panthers, to tear those blinders off!”

Another strong woman was Kathleen Cleaver. Along with her husband the legendary Eldridge Cleaver, they promoted the BPP struggle with other international freedom movements all over the World.

But as the BPP grew, so did the watchful eye of the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO Program (Counter Intelligence Program). Hoover considered the BPP to be the greatest threat to the American way of life; “He meant white America!” intones a man named Ali Bey who was involved in the New York BPP chapter.

Hoover, arrested, harassed, infiltrated, and sowed seeds of distrust and disunity amongst the various chapters. Many BPP members found themselves in jail, fled the country or dead. The names of Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and ‘Lil’ Bobby Hutton stand out in the memories of those in the BPP. By the early 80s, the BPP as an active force had all but ceased.

However, the vision and dedication of those that came and still more who attended the celebration was a testament to just how far and wide the reach of the BPP has been. Many came from as close as Oakland and as far away as France. There were young and old, Black and White, those who knew the history and still others who were beginning to learn it.

One speaker commented that: “As long as one person remembers the BPP, the struggle will go on.”

James Mott summed it up thusly: “one of the greatest stories ever told talked about a man who fed thousands; I remember us having breakfast programs that fed thousands. Talked about a man who healed the sick; we had health clinics that healed the sick. Clothing people, housing people; encouraging people; so that is why I want to say that I know that we were on the right path and I know that we still are on the right path today.”

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!





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One Country: An Interview with Ali Abunimah

According to Agence France Presse, on October 12th 2006, five Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip as ground troops mounted a fresh incursion as part of an ongoing four-month offensive (Agence France Presse 12 October 2006).

Since June 28, Israel has waged a prolonged offensive in Gaza with the stated goals of retrieving a soldier captured by militants and stopping rocket attacks on its territory.

A UN special envoy for human rights, John Dugard, has accused Israel of unleashing “collective punishment” in the territory, declaring last month that some 260 Palestinians had been killed and 800 injured in the operation.

As the crisis in The West Bank and Gaza Strip continues, Ali Abunimah has steadfastly monitored and reported on the deteriorating conditions in Palestine. Abunimah is a writer and commentator on Middle East and Arab American affairs.

Co-founder of the website Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), his articles have also appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Financial Times, and Ha’aaretz, among others. He is a frequent guest on local, national, and international radio and television, including public radio and television, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, The BBC and many others.

Abunimah travels often to the Middle East and is a full-time researcher in social policy at the University of Chicago. I spoke with Abunimah on the telephone as he toured the United States promoting his book; “ONE COUNTRY.”


Christopher Brown: Ali Abunimah, could you talk about the current situation in Gaza?

Ali Abunimah: Well the situation in Gaza is very similar to what it has been for many years and worsening consistently; there’s a million-and-a-half people in Gaza; a permanent Israeli siege by land, sea and air under frequent bombardment; since early summer, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by the Israelis; several thousand injured, most of them civilians; the vast majority of people in Gaza now have difficulty feeding their families due to the Israeli siege which prevents food and other basic essentials from coming in.

In June, Israel bombed the only power plant in Gaza; so much of Gaza is without electricity on a consistent basis and is expected to remain so for the foreseeable future since no serious rebuilding is being done. So it’s a very severe situation where daily life is characterized by poverty, a struggle to survive and random violence, which claims many innocent lives.

CB: The message delivered to Condoleezza Rice this past week by Israeli officials is that; the humanitarian and economic disaster befalling Gaza has a single, reversible cause; the capture of Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in late June. Is the capture of Shalit where this narrative began?

AA: Let’s assume that what the Israelis are saying is true and that they are imposing this siege because of the capture of the Israeli soldier. If that is true then they are admitting to the most serious war crimes that can be committed under international law because the Geneva Convention makes it very clear that it is a serious crime to punish a civilian population for political reasons. Here Israel says they are punishing the civilian population in order to secure the release of a prisoner of war.

This is one of the most serious crimes against the laws of war, and against the Geneva Convention terrorizing, starving, bombing a civilian population in order to achieve a military or political objective. I think that, if nothing else should alert people to the true nature of this regime.

CB: On Monday the San Francisco Chronicle stated that Hamas, if elections were held today, would only garner 21.9% of the vote. Secretary of State Rice said that she is in a “very concerned” state, for the Palestinians. She went on to state that: “The Palestinians need a government that can provide for their needs and meet the conditions of the Quartet,” she also added that she wanted to strengthen the “moderates” like Abbas. What is meant by these pronouncements?

AA: Well, if Condoleezza Rice was concerned about the Palestinian people, she wouldn’t be an active participant in starving them to death. And she would speak against Israel using American weapons to attack and besiege and harm civilians. She doesn’t care about the Palestinian people and she never has.

What she means by strengthening moderates is strengthening U.S clients and quisling. I use very strong language advisedly. But her notion of Palestinian moderates, is a client regime, like the one in Iraq, totally dependent on U.S. and Israeli power and good will, like the government in Lebanon, one which is there to do the bidding of the United States and Israel from inside.

So, The United States is actively arming private militias of Mahmoud Abbas and other Fatah leaders who were defeated in the elections last January. The U.S. has been giving them millions of dollars, weapons training, and fermenting Palestinian civil strife and civil war. This is the U.S. anti-democratic policy, because what happened in the occupied territories is, Hamas won a democratic election fair and square. And since then, the United States, Israel and a small minority of Palestinians colluding with them have been trying to overthrow the results of the democratic election. This is what we are seeing in Palestine and this is United States policy.

CB: For 34 days the Israeli military bombarded Lebanon from the air, land and sea. Towards the end of the war, Israel flooded the southern landscape with cluster bombs. It is estimated that it will take at least a year to remove all cluster bombs that are currently injuring 13 people per day, many of whom are children. An unnamed officer in the Israeli military said that the use of the cluster bombs was “madness.”

As a result of cluster bombs being used, the accusations of white phosphorus, and the intentional bombing of hospitals and schools, will there be any chance for a complete and comprehensive investigation into war crimes?

AA: Well you know, Israel commits crimes on a daily basis and has been doing so for many decades. Many of these crimes have been documented by The United Nations. In the past, the UN Security Council would even condemn them.

Human rights groups have documented crimes in the recent Lebanon war and in Gaza. But never has Israel been held accountable. We’ve been hearing now for years about a UN investigation about the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Has there ever been an investigation into Israel’s actions?

People say it’s controversial; the Israelis claim that Hizbollah was firing from civilian areas, which justified, in Israel’s view, the carpet-bombing of entire neighborhoods in Beirut. But nobody saw any evidence of that. None of the international groups that look into it found any evidence of that. Israel didn’t present any evidence. But let’s say there’s a controversy about it; why can’t we have a UN investigation? Why are Israel’s crimes always off limits?

And what’s worse is the active collusion. Because, Israel couldn’t do this, as a small country, it couldn’t do this without the active collusion of Western regimes; and it’s not just The United States, it’s also The European Union, which is bankrolling Israel, providing weapons, and refusing to stand up.

The whole World is in an outcry over what’s happening in Sudan; the whole World is talking about holding North Korea accountable; Israel has nuclear weapons; Israel tested a nuclear weapon in 1979; Israel continues to export weapons all over the World; Israel is continuing to carry out serious war crimes in The Middle East and never have we heard any accountability for it. What is it about Israel that makes it exempt from any of the standards that are suppose to apply to the rest of us?

CB: Because of their financial and military support they gave to Hizbollah, might the United States use the Lebanon war as a pretext to strike at Syria or Iran?

AA: Well there were reports about that. It was clear the U.S. supported the Israeli war in Lebanon on the basis that this was suppose to be…basically the U.S. was using Israel to destroy Hizbollah because in the view of the U.S. administration, any local resistance to U.S. and Israeli hegemony is not permissible.

Hizbollah was seen as a growing challenge to the U.S. and Israeli influence in The Middle East region. Hizbollah had effectively defeated Israel militarily, and also as an obstacle to U.S. control of Lebanon and Syria. And also its support from Iran was seen as a challenge to the U.S.

The U.S. was happy to see Israel teaching Hizbollah a lesson; of course the result was different. There was also a report by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, which cited credible sources that the U.S. administration explicitly saw this as a trial run for what they might try on Iran in a much larger scale; and of course if that was the case it was a miserable failure. But we also know that this is an administration that has never been deterred or discouraged by its own failures.

CB: Could you talk about Israel denying Palestinians from the Diaspora the opportunity to see their families in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the increase of denying internationals that come to work alongside Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers?

AA: It’s always been Israeli policy to keep Palestinians out and force them out. Obviously Israel was founded on the majority of the Palestinian people, and since then Palestinian refugees have never been allowed to return, and many others have been expelled.

But in recent years, and in particular since the Oslo Accords were signed, Israel will not allow Palestinians with Western passports to enter Palestine. Now mind you, they were only able to enter by virtue of their Western passports, despite the fact that they are Palestinian. So if you’re Palestinian Canadian you’re allowed to enter; if your a Palestinian Brittan or American you’re allowed to enter, because Israel has agreements with those countries allowing their citizens to come.

So it was by virtue of their alignment for having the citizenship of powerful countries. And Israel didn’t dare single out the Palestinian citizens of those countries. Now, I think, the fact that Israel is doing it openly; it’s openly discriminating against Americans and expelling those that are Palestinians; discriminating among those that are Canadian Palestinian, shows the brazenness of Israel.

Israel knows that it can do anything and get away with it with total impunity; and that’s not just of course another violation against the Palestinians, it’s also a devaluation of U.S. citizenship. Because, it should be our government’s responsibility to make sure that other states do not discriminate against American citizens based on race or ethnicity. Can you imagine if a country set up a law that would allow American tourists in but not Black Americans?

But this is the kind of policy Israel has where it is testing American citizens based on they’re race, religion and ethnicity and singling out those it doesn’t like for expulsion. And so it’s another of these very racist policies that is happening because our government allows it and encourages it.

CB: Could you speak about the rise of Christian Zionists and the new lobby: Christians United For Israel (CUFI), and the general inability of Congress to confront Israel about its treatment of the Palestinians?

AA: It’s a very perplexing question. Why it is in the World’s, supposed, greatest democracy; with 535 elected members of Congress; you cannot find any? There are a few exceptions, but 99% don’t dare criticize Israel; 99% don’t dare disagree over the President with Israel.

I think it’s a perplexing question. Its one more Americans should ask. I think that, obviously, the influence of pro-Israel groups is immense and what your seeing with the creation of the lobby you mentioned is an alliance between some very anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish Evangelical groups that believe that by supporting Israel they believe that they will hasten Armageddon, in which the vast majority of Jews will be incinerated.

And pro-Israel Jewish groups making a very unprincipled alliance for political gain. And, I think, that Americans need to ask what has happened to they’re country that these are the sorts of political alliances that are being made instead of alliances that can bring decent health care and dignifying lives to tens of million of Americans that are being denied it. That’s the one issue you can’t get the majority in Congress for decent health care for all Americans, but 99% will disagree on uncritical support for Israel. It’s pretty astonishing.

CB: Finally, where, in your opinion, is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict headed?

AA: Well you’ve saved the best question for last, and that is why I am promoting the book; “ONE COUNTRY”

I think we’re heading in one of two directions; one is a complete disaster, greater levels of bloodshed and suffering than anything we’ve ever seen and bringing about more misery; or we have to start talking about a radically different approach in which we stop trying to partition a country that defies partition. And start looking at solutions in which Israelis and Palestinians have to deal with the fact that they are all there to stay; they need to live together; they live in one country; it has to be a country that provides a dignified existence to all of them; equal rights for all of them, and yet allows different communities to have a community life and cultural self-determination.

And that is something that is not on anyone’s agenda now and, I think, it’s the one way we have to push this, or the results will be catastrophic for everyone.