The Corner Report

P U L S E

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."

By M. Shahid Alam

“The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the foremost minds of the ruled class, the more stable and dangerous becomes its rule.” Karl Marx

A few days back, I received a ‘Dear friends’ email from Mr. Najam Sethi, ex editor-in-chief of Daily Times, Pakistan, announcing that he, together with several of his colleagues, had resigned from their positions in the newspaper.

In his email, Mr. Sethi thanked his ‘friends’ for their “support and encouragement…in making Daily Times a ‘new voice for a new Pakistan.’” Wistfully, he added, “I hope it will be able to live up to your expectations and mine in time to come.”

I am not sure why Mr. Sethi had chosen me for this dubious honor. Certainly, I did not deserve it. I could not count myself among his ‘friends’ who had given “support and encouragement” to the mission that DT had chosen for itself in Pakistan’s media and politics.

Contrary to its slogan, it was never DT’s mission to be a ‘new voice for a new Pakistan.’ The DT had dredged its voice from the colonial past; it had only altered its pitch and delivery to serve the new US-Zionist overlords. Many of the writers for DT aspire to the office of the native informers of the colonial era. They are heirs to the brown Sahibs, home-grown Orientalists, who see their own world (if it is theirs in any meaningful sense) through the lens created for them by their spiritual mentors, the Western Orientalists.

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By Hussein Assi

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah announced on Monday the Resistance party's new political document that was approved during the party's General Conference that lasted for months.

Sayyed Nasrallah held a press conference through a giant screen at al-Jinan hall on the airport road to declare the new political document. The press conference was attended by prominent Lebanese, Arab and international journalists as well as some Hezbollah leaders and various political figures.

His eminence started the conference by noting that Hezbollah new political document aims to define the political vision of the party and includes its visions, stances, and aspirations. "This political document also comes as a result of the responsibility of sacrifice that we have experienced," his eminence added.

"At an exceptional time filled with transformations, it is no longer possible to address these changes without noting the special position our resistance has reached. We will address these transformations through two paths: the first is the Resistance one that resorts to the military and political victories as well as the expansion of the Resistance while the second focuses on the path of the US-Israeli mastery and hegemony which is witnessing military defeats that showed a failure in administering the developments."

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New York Times

Urs Flueeler/Associated Press In the village of Amsteg, Switzerland, a poster promoting the ban on minarets became the site of competing messages on Monday.

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

When Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a ban on construction of minarets in a referendum on Sunday, they surprised some pollsters and disappointed many European leaders, including those of their own government, who opposed the ban and now must find a way to implement it.

A day after nearly 58 percent of Swiss voters supported the ban, Europe found itself thrust into another round of soul-searching precipitated by yet another clash over integrating — or not integrating — a swelling Muslim population.

In France, where similar debates have focused not on architecture but on how some Muslim women dress, Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister, was quick to condemn the results of the Swiss referendum.

“I am a bit shocked by this decision,” Mr. Kouchner said on a French radio program on Monday. “It is an expression of intolerance, and I detest intolerance. I hope the Swiss will reverse this decision quickly.”

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The ruling party candidate in Honduras's presidential election has conceded defeat after preliminary results showed him trailing with only 38 per cent of the vote.

Porfirio Lobo, the opposition candidate, who preliminary figures showed had more than 56 per cent support, claimed victory soon afterwards.

"The people will never be defeated, they will always go forward. Today they demonstrated to the world another test of their abilities and determination," Lobo told a cheering crowd at his acceptance speech.

About 300 of Lobo's supporters danced in a victory celebration at a hotel in Tegucigalpa, the capital, on Monday, some waving the flag of his National Party.

The election could calm a five-month political crisis in Honduras that began when the army overthrew Manuel Zelaya, the country's leftist president, and threw him out of the country.

But the votes legitimacy has already been challenged by Zelaya and his supporters.

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Whoever wins the ballot is expected to face an uphill battle for international legitimacy [Reuters]

Early unofficial results from the much-disputed presidential election in Honduras have put conservative opposition candidate Porfirio Lobo in the lead over his liberal rival, Elvin Santos.

No official results had been released by late on Sunday, but exit polls put Lobo, candidate for the opposition National Party, in a clear lead with about 55 per cent of the vote.

Santos, his closest challenger, trailed with about 33 per cent.

Sunday's vote was held five months after a military coup ousted the country's leftist president, Manuel Zelaya, plunging the country into political gridlock.

The interim government, installed after the coup, has said the poll will end the bitter stand-off over the country's leadership.

=> Read more!

Brave "purity of arms" Zionist soldier defends "the Jewish state" against little girl "terrorists"

.. The real terror is that disseminated by the occupiers.

By Jim Miles

The task of saving and reviving humanity oft times appears overwhelming when studied from a fully global perspective: occupations, wars, and terror abounds; starvation, disease, poverty, homelessness, accompany the wars and are also an integral part of global economic structures; of which, the current debt crises robs the working class of their wealth while the elites roll in the beneficence of corporate/government welfare. To top all that off is the rush towards global environmental changes, changes that are occurring at ever faster - and faster than predicted - rates, while governments put forth only mild platitudes acknowledging that there is a problem of some kind, placing weak futuristic recommendations out to try and placate the scientists and concerned public. It is enough to render reviewing books a seemingly worthless task when nothing changes and the inertia of the U.S. and western corporate/government/military liaisons continues to steer the ship of state, apparently without working radar or rudder, on its destructive course through this complex web of problems.

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Any political decision must include Fateh and Hamas, refugees and exiles.

By Ghada Karmi

Palestinian history is at one of its most serious and important junctures. The peace negotiations that commenced with the Oslo accords in 1993 are at an end. Even hardened devotees of the peace process with Israel have now given up and are adopting positions that threaten to disrupt the cozy status quo of the "peace process". The Palestinian president's announcement that he will not seek re-election, and the recent demand for UN recognition of a Palestine state on the 1967 territories are examples of this trend. It has become impossible for even the most pliant Palestinian leadership to ignore Israel's strategy of "talking and taking", its relentless colonization of the occupied territories, which doubled after the Oslo agreement and is ever more blatant and aggressive. The Palestinian maneuver, taking advantage of an assumed US frustration with Israeli intransigence on settlement building, is clearly designed to challenge the international community out of its inertia.

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There is a danger that Australia could become a safe haven for Israeli war criminals.

By Sonja Karkar

The news that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in Australia and was welcomed by the honourable members of our parliament came as somewhat of a shock. It is one thing to have allowed a man on corruption charges as well as facing war crimes indictments into Australia at all; it is another thing that he was listed as a distinguished guest in Hansard - the official record of parliamentary proceedings - and received a resounding “hear, hear” from our elected representatives.

This is, after all, the man who approved the genocidal attack on the 1.5 million imprisoned and defenceless Palestinians in Gaza less than a year ago. This is the same attack that was the subject of numerous enquiries, not least the UN fact-finding mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone, which found that “the operations were carefully planned...and designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population...[and] that the serious violations of International Humanitarian Law recounted in this report fall within the subject-matter jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).” With further investigations, these violations may well amount to “war crimes and “crimes against humanity”.

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From Fred M:
Some reality for all the kids in the back seat yammering "Are we there
yet?" Recall that some psychologists have for years been saying that
our social intelligence has been mostly frozen somewhere between the
ages of ten and fourteen ....

Washington Post

By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, November 29, 2009

Dec. 1, 2009:
My fellow Americans,

This is not the speech you expected to hear. But my wordsmiths are tied
in knots writing an acceptance speech for the only Nobel Peace Prize
ever awarded for making speeches. So I am going to tell you how I really
feel about Afghanistan. Which is: steamed.

I want to accomplish three goals tonight without naming them.

=> Read more!

Photo M. Omer
By Mohammed Omer

Although ignored by much of the Western media, a battle which echoes the biblical story of David and Goliath is taking place in The Hague. In the modern-day version, young David is personified by a soft-spoken 15-year-old girl named Amira Alqerem. Goliath takes the form of the world’s fourth most powerful, nuclear-armed military state: Israel. At stake is victims’ rights the world over and the international commitment to “never again.” It is this commitment—as well as to international law, as laid down in the Fourth Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—that Amira is asking the International Criminal Court (ICC) to recognize and uphold.

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Al Ahram
An Israel-Hamas prisoner swap deal appears close to fruition, though no indication has been given yet as to who and how many it includes, writes Khaled Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

As of Wednesday, 25 November, German and Egyptian mediators were trying hectically to finalise a prisoner swap deal between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement, Hamas. The deal would see the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip more than three years ago, in exchange for the release from Israeli detention camps of hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners.

Indirect negotiations aimed at reaching an accord that failed repeatedly due to Israeli intransigence and Hamas's insistence that Israel free all prisoners included in the original list Hamas presented to Israel more than two years ago. Israel has been worried that the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners would significantly enhance Hamas's public standing at the expense of Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, and also erode Israel's power of deterrence.

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Haaretz

By Gideon Levy

The old tractor sputtered up the hill, its engine seemingly about to expire, but its big wheels bumping across the rocky terrain. We stood in the back, swaying wildly, holding on for dear life. On the hilltop loomed the big antenna of the settlement of Yitzhar, whose houses lay on the other side of the hill. The very knowledge of their presence inspired dread. It was a glorious sunny day, the spectacular valley sprawling below. The houses of the Palestinian village of Burin lie in this valley, which lies between two hills: on one stands Yitzhar; on the other, Har Bracha, outside Nablus.

Burin is caught between a rock and hard place, between Har Bracha and Yitzhar. We have visited Burin often, most recently after settlers burned down some of its homes. Settlers once stole a horse from a villager, torched fields, demolished a home in the village and uprooted olive trees. We have frequently documented the uprooting of olive trees: Less than a month ago, in this space, we told the story of the beautiful vineyard belonging to the agriculture teacher Mohammed Abu Awad from the village of Mureir, whose 300 trees were felled by intruders - probably from the illegal outpost of Adei Ad - using buzz saws.

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Member of Netanyahu's party: Obama regime is 'worst ever' for Israel; Vice PM cancels lecture after rightist protest.

By Chaim Levinson, Haaretz

Rank-and-file Likudniks and Lawmakers in the ruling Likud party lambasted the Obama administration at a gathering on Saturday, in response to Israel's decision to temporarily freeze construction in West Bank settlements.

MK Dani Danon organized the meeting after Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat (Likud) launched a verbal attack over the matter on U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, which she branded "terrible."

=> Read more!

By Haaretz Service

Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov (Yisrael Beitenu) said Saturday that despite the cabinet's decision to temporarily freeze settlement construction, his ministry would continue to develop tourist sites in the West Bank.

Speaking at an event in Holon, Misezhnikov said that the Tourism Ministry was focused on three central sites: The Herodium in Gush Etzion, Qasr al Yahud in Ma'ale Adumim and the stalactite cave in Ariel.

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No matter how they're packaged, "peace" initiatives will do little until Israel's oppression of Palestinians ends. (Rami Swidan/MaanImages)

The Electronic Intifada

By Hasan Abu Nimah

As a child in early-1940s Palestine, I grew up in a small village of 1,500 individuals with its roots in biblical times. I would like to tell you an anecdote from my childhood that I recalled as I was reading the news the other day.

Life was simple, tranquil and often hard but despite the lack of modern amenities or even what was then available in the city, it was happy. There was no electricity or running water. We used kerosene lamps that gave poor lighting and kerosene stoves for cooking. The best stoves for indoor cooking were of the Swedish-made Primus or Radius brands. Weather-permitting, we cooked outdoors, often using a pottery pot, placed on three stones with a wood-fire underneath.

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The PA leadership in Ramallah is leading the Palestinian movement of independence to a dead end with its proposed unilateral call for Palestinian statehood. (Thaer Ganaim/MaanImages)
The Electronic Intifada, 19 November 2009

By Virginia Tilley,

From a rumor, to a rising murmur, the proposal floated by the Palestinian Authority's (PA) Ramallah leadership to declare Palestinian statehood unilaterally has suddenly hit center stage. The European Union, the United States and others have rejected it as "premature," but endorsements are coming from all directions: journalists, academics, nongovernmental organization activists, Israeli right-wing leaders (more on that later). The catalyst appears to be a final expression of disgust and simple exhaustion with the fraudulent "peace process" and the argument goes something like this: if we can't get a state through negotiations, we will simply declare statehood and let Israel deal with the consequences.

But it's no exaggeration to propose that this idea, although well-meant by some, raises the clearest danger to the Palestinian national movement in its entire history, threatening to wall Palestinian aspirations into a political cul-de-sac from which it may never emerge. The irony is indeed that, through this maneuver, the PA is seizing -- even declaring as a right -- precisely the same dead-end formula that the African National Congress (ANC) fought so bitterly for decades because the ANC leadership rightly saw it as disastrous. That formula can be summed up in one word: Bantustan.

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Theodore Herzl: Founder of Zionism

By Alan Hart

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu described his offer to temporarily restrict construction of all-new Jewish settlements on the West Bank excluding Arab East Jerusalem as a “far-reaching and painful step”, which was part of a policy he hoped would give a new impetus to peace talks.

Netanyahu is not stupid. He knows that some of us know he is not remotely interested in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept. So what then is his real game plan of the moment? Simple. He is seeking to make peace with the Obama administration. And its response suggests that with the help of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress he’s got that matter firmly under control.

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Construction of Har Homa, an illegal Israeli settlement in Bethlehem [MaanImages]

BETHLEHEM --Though Israel's army was ordered to issue a temporary freeze order on West Bank settlement construction on Thursday, reports from the Israeli press revealed permits were granted for 28 new public buildings.

The freeze orders applying to West Bank settlements, likely less strict than those applying to Palestinians living in areas marked "B" and "C" under the Oslo Accords, do not include the construction of public buildings like schools and synagogues. Palestinians in areas under full or partial Israeli military control must apply for permits to build homes and garages, dig wells and extend homes.

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By Franklin Lamb – Beirut

"It is the right of the Lebanese people, Army and the (Hezbollah led-) resistance to liberate the Shebaa Farms, the Kfar Shuba Hills and the northern part of the village of Ghajar as well as to defend Lebanon and its territorial waters in the face of any enemy by all available and legal means."

So reads the Policy Declaration of the new Government of the Republic of Lebanon, issued on 11/26/09, four days after the celebration of Lebanon’s 66 years of independence from the French colonial power, achieved in 1943.

Legally, constitutionally, and politically, Lebanon’s new National Unity Government policy legitimizes, embraces, and incorporates by reference, according to some Pentagon and State Department analysts, the National Lebanese Resistance.

For the US-Israel axis, the 52 words signal that Hezbollah- which since 2006 has enjoyed majority popular support- and the State of Lebanon are inseparable and indivisible with respect to defending this country from foreign interference and occupation. It affixes the Governmental imprimatur for liberating Lebanese lands still occupied by Israeli forces.

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Tom Perriello is latest manifestation of a politician abandoning core beliefs.

By Adam Shapiro

One year ago, I watched election results coming in for Virginia's Fifth Congressional District, where my friend and colleague Tom Perriello was challenging incumbent Virgil Goode, Jr. CNN kept flipping the winner because the vote was close. Finally, Tom emerged with a 727-vote victory. I was elated, because I knew Tom and knew his deeply rooted principles. And daring to accept that there might be something to this overall atmosphere of change and hope espoused by the President-elect, I felt encouraged by the seemingly new direction and new leaders the country was embracing.

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For 30 years, Stewart defended America's poor, underprivileged, and unwanted.

By Stephen Lendman

On November 20, New York Times writer Colin Moynihan broke the news headlining:

"Radical Lawyer Convicted of Aiding Terrorist Is Jailed," then saying:

"Defiant to the end as she embraced supporters outside the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, Lynne F. Stewart, the radical lawyer known for defending unpopular clients, surrendered on Thursday to begin serving her 28-month sentence for assisting terrorism."

Fact check:

Stewart did what all attorneys should, but few, in fact, do - observe the American Bar Association's Model Rules saying all lawyers are obligated to:

"devote professional time and resources and use civic influence to ensure equal access to our system of justice for all those who because of economic or social barriers cannot afford or secure adequate legal counsel."

Also to practice law ethically, morally and responsibly to assure everyone is afforded due process and judicial fairness in American courts. Sadly and disturbingly, Stewart was denied what she did for others heroically, unselfishly, and proudly. More on that below.

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'The truth is, the Indians never had any real title to the soil.' - Roosevelt

By Ramzy Baroud

This week Americans will observe 'Thanksgiving' commemorating a romanticized era in their nations record, celebrating the supposed solidarity and brotherhood enjoyed by the first settlers and the indigenous people of what is now called the United States. However, this fantastic tale of friendship contradicts the candid remarks of many notable personalities in US history.

Few can be as blunt regarding the legacy of the United States toward the native people of this land as the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. In his narrative, "The Winning of the West," Roosevelt spoke about the "spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world's wasted spaces." He wrote: "The European settlers moved into an uninhabited waste...the land is really owned by no one.... The settler ousts no one from the land. The truth is, the Indians never had any real title to the soil."

In an interview with the British Sunday Times, on June 15, 1969, former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir made similar claims, stating, "There was no such thing as Palestinians. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist."

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Meyer said it was impossible to see how weapons inspectors could conclude their work in time [EPA]

The military timetable for war in Iraq did not allow UN weapons inspectors the time to conclude their work, a former British ambassador to the US has told a public inquiry.

Christopher Meyer told a hearing in London on Thursday that because contingency military plans had been decided before inspectors went in, "we found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun".

"When you looked at the timetable for the inspections, it was impossible to see how [Hans] Blix could bring the process to a conclusion, for better or for worse, by March," when the US invasion began.

=> Read more!

Hamas announced Wednesday that it was postponing continued negotiations on the release of captured Israeli occupation soldier Gilad Shalit until after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which ends on Monday. The Hamas announcement was issued in Damascus following meetings between Khaled Mashaal, the organization's politburo Chief there, and a delegation of senior Hamas representatives from Gaza.

The statement is not a negative answer to the compromise deal proposed by the German mediator, but it does dash Israeli hopes for reaching a quick agreement by the end of this week.

Senior Hamas officials told the Al-Arabiya TV network Wednesday that the talks between Hamas and Israel hit a snag over some of the Palestinian detainees the Islamic resistance group wants freed in return for Shalit, including Marwan Barghouti and Ahmed Sa'adat. Israel is also objecting to freeing Israeli Arab detainees, said the Hamas officials.

A senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, Khalil Al-Haya, accused Israel of holding up negotiations. "The government of the Zionist entity has not met the demands of the organizations holding Shalit," he said. He did not say that the deal had been torpedoed or had failed, though he did say Israel was responsible for the delay in reaching a deal.

The American station Fox News reported that Hamas is also demanding that Israel commit to not harming the freed detainees in the future.

The Israeli security cabinet met Wednesday in occupied Jerusalem, but discussed the freezing of construction in the settlements. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked ministers to keep completely silent in the media on the Shalit deal.

The deal will have a number of components in addition to the prisoner release. Hamas is expecting the economic blockade on Gaza to be eased and a partial opening of the crossings into Israel and Egypt.

At the same time the United States is pressuring Netanyahu to make a number of significant good will acts on the behalf of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose regime is expected to suffer as the prisoner release is being attributed to Hamas. The freeze on construction in West Bank settlements is considered one of these acts.

In an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Barghouti said he hopes to be freed as part of the Shalit deal, and intends to run for president in Palestinian elections. He said maybe now Israel will understand that it cannot ignore Hamas' demands. He added that the most important issue at hand is peace between Fatah and Hamas.

Hamas has long stated that Barghouti is among the detainees it wants released by Israel. Seen as a potential successor to Abbas, Barghouti was sentenced in 2004 to five life terms. "We are confident that Marwan will be part of the deal," said Khader Shkirat, one of his lawyers, who said he had visited Barghouti yesterday. Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom said on Monday that Barghouti would not be swapped.

Among the other prisoners Israel refuses to release, reported the Egyptian newspaper Al-Hayat, are Ibrahim Hamed, the former commander of Hamas' military wing and the mastermind behind the 2002 bombing at Moment cafe in occupied Jerusalem; Abdullah Barghouti, a relative of Marwan Barghouti, and another mastermind of the Moment attack as well as attacks at Sbarro pizza parlor in occupied Jerusalem and on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv. Other reports say Israel also refused to release Abbas Al-Sayyed, who planned the Passover Seder night bombing of the Park Hotel in Netanya in 2002.

http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=112902&language=en

"[Schneiderhan] showed his sense of humanity and proved he did not want to kill Afghan civilians" -- Assadullah Omar Khil, Afghan tribal elder

In the days after the Afghan strike Germany
denied there had been any civilian victims [EPA]

General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Germany's highest-ranking officer, has resigned after accusations that the army withheld information about an air raid in Afghanistan in which several civilians died.

Speaking in parliament on Thursday, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany's defence minister, said Schneiderhan had submitted his resignation.

As inspector general, Schneiderhan holds the top military post in the German armed forces.

Peter Wichert, a senior defence ministry official, also resigned over the incident.

Schneiderhan "released himself from his duties at his own request," zu Guttenberg told parliament. "State secretary Wichert is also taking responsibility."

=> Read more!

The 10-month suspension will not halt building in East Jerusalem or construction already approved [AFP]

A Palestinian official has described Israel's proposed 10-month suspension of settlement construction in the occupied West Bank as mere "propaganda".

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator, said on Thursday that the move does not indicate any progress that would justify the resumption of peace talks.

He said that the temporary settlement suspension offer by Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, was aimed more towards appeasing the Americans than trying to reconcile with the Palestinians.

"At the end of the day Netanyahu needs to make peace with us, the Palestinians, he doesn't need to make peace with Americans,'' Erekat told Israel's Army Radio.

"If that is what he wants, that is his business. The last I know, Washington is 6,000 miles from Jerusalem, while Jericho is 67."

=> Read more!

www.counterpunch.org

By RANNIE AMIRI

The release of the captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, appears imminent. The recent flurry of activity in Cairo of high-profile Israeli and Hamas officials along with their Egyptian and German intermediaries point to a deal taking place in upcoming days, nicely timed to Eid Al-Adha celebrations marking the end of Hajj. Although details remain murky, in exchange for Shalit, approximately 500 Palestinian prisoners would be immediately released and possibly another 500 at a later date.

The most prominent Palestinian rumored to be set free is Marwan Barghouti, the widely popular militant-turned-politician thought to be a potential successor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (he is presently serving five life sentences for alleged involvement in the killing of five Israelis in 2002). If a prisoner exchange does take place that includes Barghouti, it would not only boost Hamas’ standing among Palestinians, but certainly upstage Abbas’ rival Fatah faction since Barghouti is also a member (and despite his incarceration, was elected to the Fatah Central Committee this summer).

=> Read more!

www.counterpunch.org

By RANNIE AMIRI

The release of the captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, appears imminent. The recent flurry of activity in Cairo of high-profile Israeli and Hamas officials along with their Egyptian and German intermediaries point to a deal taking place in upcoming days, nicely timed to Eid Al-Adha celebrations marking the end of Hajj. Although details remain murky, in exchange for Shalit, approximately 500 Palestinian prisoners would be immediately released and possibly another 500 at a later date.

The most prominent Palestinian rumored to be set free is Marwan Barghouti, the widely popular militant-turned-politician thought to be a potential successor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (he is presently serving five life sentences for alleged involvement in the killing of five Israelis in 2002). If a prisoner exchange does take place that includes Barghouti, it would not only boost Hamas’ standing among Palestinians, but certainly upstage Abbas’ rival Fatah faction since Barghouti is also a member (and despite his incarceration, was elected to the Fatah Central Committee this summer).

=> Read more!

The Nation

Taliban fighters in an undisclosed location in Afghanistan. Reuters Photos

On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban's rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime's ambassador in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat's right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

But Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1997.

Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal's cousin President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who in a separate case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn. The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals' private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan. One of Watan's enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.

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By Khalid Amayreh

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is a manifestly fascist-minded demagogue who thinks that everything Jewish must override everything non-Jewish, regardless of all considerations.

He is also a first-class liar who believes that lying to the world, including Jews, is the first line of defense against growing opposition to genocidal Israeli criminality.

Indeed, like Nazi Germany, which waged war on Europe and killed or caused the death of millions in the name of self-defense, Israel is doing the same thing by threatening and attacking its neighbors, especially the helpless Palestinians who have been trying for decades to rid themselves of the Nazi-like Israeli occupation of their country.

There is no doubt that Netanyahu is a true pathological liar. Falsifying reality is simply an inherent and conspicuous character of the notorious bigot.

Netanyahu claimed this week that nuclear-armed Israel is the world’s most threatened county.

He was quoted by the Ha’aretz newspaper as saying that “ Israel is facing enemies who don’t conceal their intentions, who first attack us physically and then attack our right to self-defense.”

But Is Israel really a threatened country?

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The 10-month freeze will not halt building in East Jerusalem or that has already been approved [AFP]

Israel's prime minister has announced a 10-month halt to the construction of new settlement houses in the occupied West Bank.

Binyamin Netanyahu told a news conference on Wednesday that he declared the limited freeze "out of broad national interests with the aim of encouraging negotiations with our Palestinian neighbours".

"When the period of freeze ends my government will return to the previous policy of building in Judea and Samaria," Netanyahu said, using the Jewish name for the occupied West Bank.

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The leaders who led Britain into war will not befound 'guilty', commentators say [GETTY/GALLO]

By Jacqueline Head

Britain's most wide-ranging inquiry into the Iraq war is under way - but in a country where two previous inquiries were branded little more than "establishment whitewash" - is it likely the latest examination will satisfy the public?

The opening of the official inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war began with a promise on Tuesday.

John Chilcot, the former civil servant heading the investigation, pledged that his committee would be "thorough, impartial, objective and fair" in its examination of the six-year conflict.

Along with four other panel members, he has been tasked with examining the reasons Britain entered the war, the equipment and training of forces in Iraq, and the foreign policy and military lessons that can be used by future governments.

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The Nation

By Jeremy Scahill

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

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By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Republican members of Congress and what masquerades as a “conservative” media are outraged that the Obama administration intends to try in federal court Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, and four alleged co-conspirators.

The Republican and right-wing rant that a trial is too good for these people proves what I have written for a number of years: Republicans and many Americans who think of themselves as conservatives have no regard for the US Constitution or for civil liberties.

They have no appreciation for the point made by Thomas Paine in his Dissertations on First Principles of Government (1790):

“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

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TULKAREM -- Zionist Israeli settler-colonists from the illegal colony of Yitzhar injured a Palestinian man travelling in a public bus on a main road near the settlement on Tuesday, the victim of the attack reported.

The service taxi, carrying seven passengers in total, was assailed by a barrage of stones launched by Israeli settlers in the northern West Bank. The car was travelling from Ramallah to Tulkarem at the time.

The injured man, Muhammad Al-Sheikh, was taken by Red Crescent ambulance to the Thabet Thabet Hospital in Tulkarem from the scene. He was treated for moderate chest wounds, medics said.

Hamas officials speak at a ceremony honoring Roudah Habib,
released in exchange for a video tape of Shalit
[MaanImages]

FAZA -- Israel has exaggerated the progress of recent prisoner swap talks and manipulated the hopes and expectations of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Hamas leaders proclaimed late Tuesday.

The proclamation followed days of reports from Palestinian and Israeli media heralding the immanent release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in 2006. Talks have been proceeding with German mediation following the release of a video tape showing the Israeli soldier in good health.

"If a deal is not struck in the next 48 hours," Hamas sources said, it will be proof of Israeli reticence over the terms of the swap deal, and a refusal to show seriousness in the talks. One leader called recent media coverage "propaganda only."

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Peshawar has borne the brunt of recent Taliban attacks in retaliation for a military offensive [AFP]

A new report has accused the US private security firm formerly known as Blackwater of operating a covert assassination and kidnapping programme against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda members in northwest Pakistan.

In an article published on Monday, The Nation magazine alleged that the firm, now known as Xe, is also involved in running a US military drone bombing campaign out of Pakistan.

Jeremy Scahill, the investigative journalist who broke the story, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that the programme was so secretive that senior officials in the administration of Barack Obama, the US president, were likely unaware of it.

"What I learned is that for years there has been a covert operation of the US military inside Pakistan's borders ... and that Blackwater operatives are at the centre of not only the drone bombing campaign but also planning snatch-and-grab operations of high value targets."

=> Read more!

Electronic Intifada

Salam Fayyad (MaanImages)

24 November 2009

By Ben White

Thirty years ago, Israel minister Ariel Sharon told Knesset members that while they "shouted" about the settlements, "we lay another foot of pipe, another mile of road and build another house." Successive Israeli governments have agreed with the country's founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion's own view that the "precondition for discussion with the Arabs" is to "establish a great Jewish fact in this country." Now, however, the talk is of Palestinian "unilateralism." This began with the appointed Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announcing his two-year plan for statehood in August, but has reached a crescendo in the last few weeks. Fayyad's plan is still on the table, and although he has stressed that the emphasis is on institution-building, some reports have linked the initiative to a unilateral declaration of independence.

Fayyad himself has distanced his own plan from the "threat" that has made the most headlines, following statements by senior members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the PA.

It is this alleged proposal for the Palestinian leadership to declare a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that is causing a stir. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has pointed out that what is being put forward is not simply a unilateral declaration of statehood, but rather an idea of going to the UN Security Council for recognition of a state in the occupied territories.

=> Read more!

There is nothing wrong with an inclusive Jewish nation that wants to live at peace with others. But what made Jewish Zionism dangerous was its hatefulness towards the Palestinian-Arabs, including denying their rights and sabotaging the existence of an autonomous Palestinian homeland, says Dallas Darling.

In her book, A Century of Dishonor, when Helen Hunt Jackson wrote, “It makes little difference. . . where one opens the record of the history of the Indians; every page and every year has its dark stain,”(1) little did she know “Indians” could one day apply to Palestinians. Over the years, Israel’s boycott and siege of Gaza; the repeated human rights violations against thousands of Palestinian women and children in Israeli prisons; the building of a fortified wall in the West Bank; the expansion of Jewish settlements into East Jerusalem; the deportation of Palestinian activists; Israel’s punitive military expeditions into occupied territory-with the use of illegal weaponry; the US Government’s scorn of the Goldstone Report-which was approved by the United Nations Human Rights Council and documents crimes against humanity during Israel’s invasion of Gaza; and the total disregard of a free and independent Palestinian State; all speak of a century of dishonor.

=> Read more!

The National
Nov. 23, 9009

By Jonathan Cook

NAZARETH, Israel // South Africa deported an Israeli airline official last week following allegations that Israel’s secret police, the Shin Bet, had infiltrated Johannesburg international airport in an effort to gather information on South African citizens, particularly black and Muslim travellers.

The move by the South African government followed an investigation by local TV showing an undercover reporter being illegally interrogated by an official with El Al, Israel’s national carrier, in a public area of Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport.

The programme also featured testimony from Jonathan Garb, a former El Al guard, who claimed that the airline company had been a front for the Shin Bet in South Africa for many years.

=> Read more!

Brazil president declares support for Tehran's quest for "peaceful nuclear energy".

Brazil's president has offered his backing for Tehran's controversial nuclear programme.

Speaking at a joint news conference in the capital Brasilia on Monday after holding talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his visiting Iranian counterpart, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva said Brazil backed Iran's quest for "peaceful nuclear energy in full respect of international accords".

"It's important that someone sits down with Iran, talks with Iran and tries to establish some balance so that the Middle East can return to a certain sense of normalcy" -- Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazilian president

=> Read more!

IDF tactics are being considered by NATO officials for the war in Afghanistan

By Gilad Atzmon

'Israel is the light onto the nations' says the Torah. Indeed it is, and not just because the Torah says so. Israel is ahead of everyone else in many fronts. Take for instance, terrorizing civilian populations and practicing some of the most devastating murderous tactics upon elders, women and young.

The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday that the Chairman of NATO's Military Committee, Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, visited Israel earlier this week to study "IDF tactics and methods that the military alliance can utilise for its war in Afghanistan." A senior Israeli defence official added "The one thing on NATO's mind today is how to win in Afghanistan...Di Paola was very impressed by the IDF, which is a major source of information due to our operational experience."

=> Read more!

"These documents show that planning [for the invasion of Iraq] began as far back as 2002" -- Alex Salmond,Scottish Nationalist leader

Blair told the British parliament in 2002 that there were no plans for war

Leaked British government documents have called into question former premier Tony Blair's public statements on the buildup to the Iraq war.

The UK's Sunday Telegraph newspaper published details of private statements made by senior British military figures that show plans for the US-led 2003 invasion were being made more than a year earlier than Blair said.

General Graeme Lamb, then head of Britain's special forces, was quoted as saying he had been "working the war up since early 2002," according to the newspaper.

The paper also claims to have documents that show plans were so badly drafted they left troops poorly equipped and ill-prepared for the conflict.

The documents themselves - transcripts of interviews from an internal defence ministry review of the conflict - disclose that some planning for the Iraq war had begun in February 2002.

=> Read more!

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16177
Global Research

By Mike Whitney

Things could get ugly fast. With the Democrats backing-off on a second round of stimulus, the Fed signaling an end to quantitative easing, and Obama moaning about rising deficits; there's a good chance that the stumbling recovery could turn into another sharp plunge. Bank lending is shrinking, consumers spending is off, housing prices are falling, unemployment is soaring and the wholesale credit markets are in a shambles. This isn't the time to slash government support in the name of "fiscal responsibility". Obama needs to ignore the gloomsters and alarmists and pay attention to the Nobel laureates like Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. They're the guys who know how to steer the ship to safe water.

=> Read more!

Israel ordered the construction halted saying some of the land on which the stadium was being built had been designated for its use.

Work on a football stadium being built in the West Bank, and financed by the international football federation FIFA, has been stopped.

Israel ordered the construction be halted saying some of the land on which the stadium was being built had been designated for its use.

The Israeli government says the almost-completed stadium may have to be demolished, as the correct permission had not been issued for its construction. This is despite a formal approval of the constuction of the stadium, issued by the Israeli military in 1981.

=> Read more!

Al Ahram

Clockwise from top left: pro-veil demonstrations in France; "Stop-the-minaret" campaign logo in Switzerland; The Economist cover story on "Eurabia"; a symbolic illustration depicting veiled women on the French flag; a BBC map showing the number of Muslim populations in Europe, hijab -martyr Marwa El-Sherbini; a mosque in Switzerland

Is Europe in the grip of a new wave of Islamophobia? Gihan Shahine investigates

It was not something she did or said. Rather, it was just the way she looked and her manner of dress that cost her her life. Veiled Egyptian pharmacist Marwa El-Sherbini was innocently playing with her three-year-old son in a park in Dresden in Germany when a Russian-German man suddenly called her "a terrorist" among other things.

El-Sherbini called the police and took the matter to court, where she ended up being fatally stabbed by the same man as she prepared to give evidence. El-Sherbini's husband was also stabbed as he tried to protect her, and he was then shot and critically wounded by a police officer who reportedly mistook him for the attacker.

=> Read more!

Al Ahram

Clockwise from top left: pro-veil demonstrations in France; "Stop-the-minaret" campaign logo in Switzerland; The Economist cover story on "Eurabia"; a symbolic illustration depicting veiled women on the French flag; a BBC map showing the number of Muslim populations in Europe, hijab -martyr Marwa El-Sherbini; a mosque in Switzerland

Is Europe in the grip of a new wave of Islamophobia? Gihan Shahine investigates

It was not something she did or said. Rather, it was just the way she looked and her manner of dress that cost her her life. Veiled Egyptian pharmacist Marwa El-Sherbini was innocently playing with her three-year-old son in a park in Dresden in Germany when a Russian-German man suddenly called her "a terrorist" among other things.

El-Sherbini called the police and took the matter to court, where she ended up being fatally stabbed by the same man as she prepared to give evidence. El-Sherbini's husband was also stabbed as he tried to protect her, and he was then shot and critically wounded by a police officer who reportedly mistook him for the attacker.

=> Read more!

Al Ahram

Contemporary Israeli cinema gives some hope that Israeli society will soon confront, or is confronting, the violence Zionism has done not only to others but also to Israelis, writes Hamid Dabashi*

The consecutive appearance of three major Israeli war films, Joseph Cedar's Beaufort (2007), Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (2008), and now Samuel Maoz's Lebanon (2009) warrants a moment of pause to wonder what is happening in the visual registers and cinematic subconscious of the Jewish state.

Israeli cinema has always been inundated with war films. Israelis are warlike people. Their state is founded on war, has survived on war, fed on war, thrived on war, and lived for war. The Israelis have been in more wars over the past 60 years of their collective identity than just about anyone anywhere else on the planet. Not a single generation of Israelis has known anything except through the traumatic experiences of a major war. Some even say, and rightly so, that Israel is a military garrison with a thin veneer of a political apparatus built around it. It is quite natural that Israelis also make war films that entertain their belligerent fancies, assuage their militant preoccupations, confirm their paramount paranoia, demonise their enemies, celebrate their myth of origin, and at the same time mourn their perished sons and daughters, all wasted on a misbegotten ideology.

=> Read more!

Al Ahram

Contemporary Israeli cinema gives some hope that Israeli society will soon confront, or is confronting, the violence Zionism has done not only to others but also to Israelis, writes Hamid Dabashi*

The consecutive appearance of three major Israeli war films, Joseph Cedar's Beaufort (2007), Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (2008), and now Samuel Maoz's Lebanon (2009) warrants a moment of pause to wonder what is happening in the visual registers and cinematic subconscious of the Jewish state.

Israeli cinema has always been inundated with war films. Israelis are warlike people. Their state is founded on war, has survived on war, fed on war, thrived on war, and lived for war. The Israelis have been in more wars over the past 60 years of their collective identity than just about anyone anywhere else on the planet. Not a single generation of Israelis has known anything except through the traumatic experiences of a major war. Some even say, and rightly so, that Israel is a military garrison with a thin veneer of a political apparatus built around it. It is quite natural that Israelis also make war films that entertain their belligerent fancies, assuage their militant preoccupations, confirm their paramount paranoia, demonise their enemies, celebrate their myth of origin, and at the same time mourn their perished sons and daughters, all wasted on a misbegotten ideology.

=> Read more!

Continuing in disarray, the Palestinian arena appears locked between warring factions, delayed elections and a moribund peace process with Israel, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

Having discovered -- rather belatedly -- the futility of open- ended peace talks with Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership is contemplating taking a number of unspecified measures to "safeguard vital Palestinian national interests". These measures could include dismantling the PA, a unilateral declaration of statehood, and halting security coordination with Israel.

Last week, the Independent Elections Committee announced that elections in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem couldn't be held on 24 January, the date designated by PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The committee, headed by two university professors, justified its recommendations by citing the "exceptional circumstances" in the Gaza Strip and also Israel's refusal to allow elections to take place in East Jerusalem.

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GAZA CITY — Water in the Gaza Strip is so salty that it is unfit for human consumption, a Palestinian official in charge of water supplies inside the besieged coastal territory said on Saturday.

"The water is no longer fit for human consumption, with analysis and international studies showing that just 10 percent of water in the Gaza Strip is usable... threatening the lives of Palestinians," Munzir Shiblak warned.

He called in a statement for "the necessary measures to be taken to end the problem of salinity in Gaza water supplies, a problem that is getting worse."

Shiblak called the water situation "critical."

=> Read more!

Hamas had called for halting rocket attacks in Israel to allow Gazans to rebuild [REUTERS]

At least seven Palestinians have been injured in a round of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian witnesses said.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that the first strike hit a metal workshop in the al-Tufah district of Gaza city early on Sunday, while the second struck a workshop in al-Burij in central Gaza.

The Israeli army confirmed the strikes and said it was targeting two factories used to make weapons, as well as a smuggling tunnel under the border with Egypt.

Dozens of tunnels are said to criss-cross between southern Gaza and Egypt's Sinai desert, providing a lifeline to Gaza residents who are starved of basic supplies due to Israel's blockade of the territory.

Sources say there are more than 6,000 Palestinians employed in the clandestine industry.

=> Read more!

RAMALLAH/NABLUS -- Israeli forces detained six Palestinians from Nablus and Salfit overnight including the commander and four officers of the Palestinian Authority Intelligence Services.

High-level negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli officials have been ongoing since dawn in an effort to have the men released, with American officials entering the debate shortly after 11am local time, expressing "concern" over the Israeli actions, reportedly approved by Israeli government officials before the raids took place, Palestinian security sources said.

=> Read more!

Hopes of Obama's 'change' are continuously raised but have yet to be fulfilled.

By George S. Hishmeh – Washington

There is growing frustration, inside and outside the United States, with the otherwise attractive Obama administration primarily because of its failure to bring about any measurable change in U.S. policy especially in the Middle East. Hopes are continuously raised but have yet to be fulfilled.

The spirited American leader has moved crowds with his ideas, here and abroad as illustrated during his current East Asia tour but none of these ideas have materialized. This has led some to look for alternative courses, skirting an American involvement, as hard as this may seem to be.

‘While much attention has been paid to the feud between the (rightist) Fox News Channel and the White House, The New York Times observed last Monday,’ the Obama administration is now facing criticism of a different sort from ... progressive hosts on MSNBC (a popular TV channel) who are using their nightly news-and-views-cast to measure what (Rachel Maddow, a liberal host) calls ‘the distance between Obama’s rhetoric and his actions.’

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There are many sides to globalization.

By Ramzy Baroud

A Muslim family sits across of me in café, in a largely Muslim Asia country. An older woman shyly hunches over and desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the giant plasma screen TV, blazing loud music on the popular music video channel, MTV. The scantily dressed presenter introduces her ‘top song’ for the week. Beyonce, dressed in so very little, annoyingly reiterates that she is “a single lady.” The old woman’s son is mesmerized by what he sees. He pays no attention to his mother, young wife or even his own son who wreaks havoc in the coffee shop. The man’s T-Shirt reads: “what the fxxx are you looking at?”

Respecting the message on his T-Shirt, I try to keep to myself, but find it increasingly difficult. The wife is completely covered, all but her face. The contradictions are ample, overwhelming even.

The attire of the family, the attitude of the ladies and even the man with the provocative T-Shirt are all signs of the cultural schizophrenia that permeates many societies in the so-called Third World. It’s a side effect of globalization that few wish to talk about.

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Hizballah finally feels confident enough to take a much-needed breather.

By Nicholas Noe

Four and a half years after Syrian troops were unexpectedly cajoled out of Lebanon, and more than three years after the end of a (nearly) "open" war with Israel, the Shi'ite movement Hizballah appears not only militarily stronger, as many of its enemies attest, but also politically and ideologically more secure, confident and, to a certain degree, coherent.

Indeed, as far as Hizballah is concerned, the March 14 movement that helped kick the Syrians out and that managed to maintain a narrow parliamentary majority in last summer's election (reportedly with the help of more than $750 million in Saudi financing) has effectively ceased to exist. There is, quite simply, no domestic power right now that can substantially challenge or even "contain" Hizballah's independent arsenal--all the more so since there is also no credible external power to provide the kind of support that would be vital in such an effort.

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Kahane, a US rabbi who emigrated to Israel, advocated the expulsion of all Arabs.

By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth

A plan by right-wing legislators in Israel to commemorate the anniversary this month of the death of Meir Kahane, whose banned anti-Arab movement is classified as a terrorist organisation, risks further damaging the prospects for talks between Israel and the Palestinians, US officials have warned.

A move to stage the commemoration in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, is being led by Michael Ben-Ari, who was elected this year and is the first self-declared former member of Kahane's party, Kach, to become a legislator since the movement was banned 15 years ago.

The US Embassy, in Tel Aviv, has sent a series of e-mails to Reuven Rivlin, the parliamentary speaker, asking that he intervene to block the event.

According to US officials, pressure is being exerted on behalf of George Mitchell, the US president Barack Obama's envoy to the region, who is concerned that it will add to his troubles as Israeli and Palestinian leaders clash over a possible move by the Palestinians to issue a unilateral declaration of statehood.

=> Read more!

from: Circus Isreal
http://circusisrael.blogspot.com/2009/11/now-everybody-poops-in-hebrew-japanese.html

Japanese author Taro Gomi’s beloved children’s book, Everyone Poops, will soon be available in Hebrew. The book candidly and delightfully presents defecation as a natural bodily function performed by virtually every sentient life form on our shared planet. In Everyone Poops, eliminating waste is unselfconscious, essential and nothing to be ashamed of. From North America to the Pacific Rim, Gomi’s charming illustrations and simple text have enabled parents and children alike to comfortably explore life’s elemental processes. The Hebrew translation of Everyone Poops was prepared under the auspices of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. According to AISS spokesperson and noted PTSD sufferer Natan Sharansky, a “handful of revisions” were made to Gomi’s work, to remove the “new anti-semitism” implicit in its contents. Circus Israel obtained an early review copy from Sharansky by nodding gravely at everything he said. The full text of the book appears below.

Everyone poops.
Jews poop.
Their poop is Chosen.

Israeli Jews poop best of all.
Their poop nourishes the desert and makes it bloom.
Their poop has natural growth
and its own special wall
to keep other poop away.

Hebrews pooped in Jerusalem thousands of years ago,
so nobody else should poop in Jerusalem today.
Armenians should send their poop to Armenia.
Catholics should poop in the Vatican.
Muslims over 50 can poop in a tiny part of old Jerusalem,
then disappear forever.

Arabs poop.
On other people’s land.
Israel makes them stop and wait
all day long
just to check their poop.
Sometimes Palestinians won’t poop at all,
so the world will feel sorry for them.
In Gaza, the IDF pooped on their floors
for security reasons.
In Hebron, the settlers dump poop on their homes
for security reasons.
Sometimes the Palestinians get so mad
their poop explodes.
That poop comes from Iran.

Richard Goldstone talked poop about Israel.
His report is perverted bullpoop.
Israel’s military poop is the most moral military poop in the world.
Here’s a syllogism about Richard Goldstone and poop:
Richard Goldstone poops.
Anti-semites poop.
Ergo, Richard Goldstone is an anti-semite.

Europeans poop.
It’s all they do.
Americans poop.
They show it to everybody,
with a big proud smile.
The Hindus in India poop
and they set it on fire.
Canadians just hold their poop inside.

Everyone eats.
So everyone poops.
The Europeans and the Americans
and the Indians and the Canadians
all like the flavor
of Israel’s poop.

Karzai is due to be sworn in for his second term despite questions over the poll [Reuters]

Afghan authorities have locked down the capital, Kabul, as the city prepares for Hamid Karzai to be sworn in for a second five-year term as president.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Kabul early on Thursday, said the city's residents were accustomed to heavy security on a daily basis, but unprecedented measures had been rolled out for the inauguration amid fears of a Taliban attack.

The government declared Thursday a national holiday and urged residents to stay at home to minimise traffic on the streets during the ceremony at the presidential palace.

=> Read more!

Gaza children study amidst the ruins of Operation Cast Lead.

By Professor Haidar Eid - Gaza Strip

Dear Mr. President,

You will probably not read this letter due to your busy schedule and the huge number of messages you receive from Presidents, Kings, Princes, Sheiks, and Prime Ministers. Who is a Palestinian academic from Gaza, after all, to have the guts and write an open letter to the President of the United States of America?

What has triggered this letter is a picture of your Excellency sitting with the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. That, of course, happened before 2004, i.e, before you underwent a process of metamorphosis which I personally think is unprecedented in history. Seeing you with Edward Said, I must say, surprised me. Said, a true public intellectual must have said something to you about the suffering of the Palestinian people. In the picture, you and your wife seem to be listening attentively, and admiringly, to him. But the point remains; did you really understand his eloquent, passionate defence of the rights of the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine? Judging from your recent policy shifts, I very much doubt it. It is precisely the incongruity between the photograph and these policy shifts that has prompted this letter.

=> Read more!

Pappe abandoned his academic career in Israel and relocated to the UK.

By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth

Right-wing groups in Israel want to create a climate of fear among left-wing scholars at Israeli universities by emulating the 'witch-hunt' tactics of the US academic monitoring group Campus Watch, Israeli professors warn.

The watchdog groups IsraCampus and Israel Academia Monitor are believed to be stepping up their campaigns after the recent publication in a US newspaper of an Israeli professor’s call to boycott Israel.

Both groups have been alerting the universities’ external donors, mostly US Jews, to what they describe as “subversive” professors as a way to bring pressure to bear on university administrations to sanction faculty staff who are critical of Israeli policies.

“I have no hesitation in calling this a McCarthyite campaign,” said David Newman, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University, in Israel’s southern city of Beersheva. “What they are doing is very dangerous.”

=> Read more!

. . . it would be no bad thing if all our Westminster politicians had the Second Principle of Public Life tattooed on their forehead – Integrity: Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organizations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties. (Note to tattooist: Apply back-to-front so that they can read it every morning when they look in the mirror.)

Political commentator Peter Oborne. (Photo: Channel 4)

By Stuart Littlewood - London

Last night Channel 4's ‘Dispatches’ program set out to investigate the pro-Israel lobby in Britain, and to boldly go where no TV team had gone before.

On the Dispatches website we were told that the lobby "aims to shape the debate about Britain's relationship with Israel and future foreign policies relating to it".

So the program would be looking at "who they are, how they are funded, how they work and what influence they have, from the key groups to the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying".

Political commentator Peter Oborne would explain how accountable, transparent and open to scrutiny the lobby was, particularly regarding its funding and financial support to MPs.

So it was with mounting excitement that countless thousands of citizens here in an increasingly Zionist-ruled Britain awaited the screening of this daring program. Some of the reader comments on the Dispatches website showed the expectant mood ...

=> Read more!

AL-KHALIL, (PIC)-- The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) detained a Palestinian women on Tuesday night in downtown Al-Khalil after she refused to strip for search.

Local and press sources said that the IOF troops ordered Om Wisam Duvesh to take off her clothes for search and when she refused, even when the soldiers tried to force her to do that, she was arrested.

Duvesh, in her forties, was beaten by the soldiers and taken to a police station in Kiryat Arba settlement east of the city.

Meanwhile, IOF soldiers beat up a 10-year-old child in Deir Al-Ghussun village, Tulkarem district, and detained him for 11 hours on the pretext that he participated in an anti-wall march.

Local sources said that Hussam Mihana, 10, returned to his family home with bruises all over his body, and told his parents that two soldiers severely beat him up.

http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en

GAZA - The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) refused to allow the travel of Palestinian journalist Talal Abu Rahma outside of the Gaza Strip via the Erez crossing to receive an international award that he won recently.

Abu Rahma said on Tuesday that the British embassy in Tel Aviv also refused to grant him an entry visa despite a request from the CNN .

The journalist won the Martin Adler Prize, which is awarded on an annual basis at The British Film Institute for journalists covering wars. He was supposed to travel to London on 19/11 to receive the award.

http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en

Israeli construction in Gilo, an ever-expanding illegal settler-colony built on stolen Palestinian land. The hill on which this illegal settlement is built was a green orchard before the Zionist invaders torn up the fruit trees, flattened the top of the hill and built their illegal settlement here, with their sewerage drainage running down the hill toward Palestinian communities.

BETHLEHEM – US President Barack Obama criticized on Wednesday Israel’s plans to expand settlements on occupied Palestinian land in a rare personal pronouncement on the subject.

"I think that additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel's security, I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbors," Obama told Fox News, according to Reuters.

"I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous."

Israel has rejected US and international critique of its plans to build 900 new houses in the settlement of Gilo, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, abutting Bethlehem.

Earlier, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, "strongly objects" to America's hesitancy over the construction of settlements in the occupied half of the city, he said Tuesday.

=> Read more!

Palestinians sit on the ruins of a demolished house

JERUSLAM – Israeli bulldozers demolished a two-family Palestinian home in the town of Al-Isawiya in occupied East Jerusalem on Wednesday, the second home demolition in two days.

Residents of the town said Israeli forces entered the village with three bulldozers on the premise of carrying out demolition orders, and noted Israeli police and border guards blocked off the main entrances of the community.

In response, Palestinians threw up make-shift barricades using rocks and dumpsters in an attempt to halt the bulldozers' progress toward the targeted building, a 240-square-meter structure owned by Abdul-Halim Dari, and Ibrahim Dari.

The Israeli vehicles forced their way through the road-blocks and razed the building, witnesses said.

While in the town, Israeli municipal authorities handed over demolition orders to 14 families bringing the overall number of homes facing demolition in the community to 70.

=> Read more!

Construction at the Gilo settlement is expected to add about 900 housing units [EPA] Gilo is an illegal settlement built on stolen Palestinian land near Bethlehem. The Zionist government constructed and Apartheid road known as "the tunnel road" from Jerusalem to Bethlehem that only illegal Jewish settlers are allowed to use.

Israel has given the go ahead for the construction of 900 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem, rebuffing a reported US request that it block construction at the Gilo settlement, officials have said.

Israeli officials had earlier on Tuesday declined to comment on a report in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that said George Mitchell , the US envoy to the Middle East, had asked an aide to Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to halt the process.

=> Read more!

"The US and Israel have avoided the Security Council for more than 16 years. To go back to it today would be a major shift" -- Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has warned the Palestinian leadership against any attempts to unilaterally declare statehood for the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

West Bank-based Palestinian officials said on Sunday that they were preparing to ask the United Nations Security Council to declare their backing for the Palestinian quest for an independent state.

In a radio address on Sunday evening, Netanyahu said: "There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

"Any unilateral action would only unravel the framework of agreements between us and can only lead to one-sided steps on the part of Israel."

Netanyahu did not specify what "steps" Israel could take, but Israeli legal experts have said that if the Palestinians were to move forward on their own then Israel could cancel interim peace accords.

"Israel could say there has been such a gross and major violation that the agreement itself is no longer in force," Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to Israel's foreign ministry, told The Associated Press news agency.

=> Read more!

Al Ahram

Despite Israel and America's best efforts, the Goldstone Report refuses to go away, writes Graham Usher at the United Nations

Last week the UN General Assembly endorsed the Goldstone Report, so named after its principle author the retired and respected South African Judge Richard Goldstone. It calls on Israel and the Palestinian Authority to conduct within three months "credible, independent investigations" into the report's charges of war crimes committed by their forces during the Gaza war or face the threat of prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, the world's permanent war crimes tribunal.

The three-week war in Gaza killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, says Amnesty International. Of the Palestinian fatalities, 300 were children.

Of the Israeli, ten were soldiers. So far one Israeli soldier has been charged with one criminal act carried out during the war: the theft of a credit card.

General Assembly resolutions are non- binding. Not only the United States but Britain, France, China and Russia have all signalled they would oppose the resolution at the Security Council, the only UN institution with the power to refer it to the ICC. The likelihood -- in other words -- of an Israeli officer or Palestinian fighter being hauled off to The Hague anytime soon is "remote", said a UN European diplomat.

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Al Ahram

Palestinians mostly want Mahmoud Abbas to follow through on his "threat" to step down from office, Saleh Al-Naami finds out, though he is unlikely to

Aides to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas went on the Arab media circuit to reverse the general impression that the president's announcement of his "inclination" to resign was merely a manoeuvre mainly aimed at pressuring the US administration to force Israel to freeze settlements. They also denied that it was a means of repairing Abbas's damaged image after he moved to postpone discussion on the Goldstone Report that accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity during its latest assault on Gaza. Some also accused Abbas of making the announcement to ensure he remains in power as long as possible -- especially that Fatah organised several public demonstrations in support of his continuing as president. Many observers in the Gaza Strip and West Bank compared these actions with those of some Arab leaders who want to claim the support of the masses.

Suspicions surrounding Abbas's true intentions affected the debate that followed the announcement. Excluding Fatah spokespeople, political and intellectual observers in the West Bank called on Abbas to concede that his political goals have failed because he insisted that negotiating with Israel was the only solution. Others used the announcement as an opportunity to remind Abbas that when the Oslo Accords were signed, the number of settlers in the West Bank alone was 109,000. Today, 16 years after Oslo, the number of settlers stands at more than 300,000.

Many Palestinians believe that under US President Barack Obama's administration, as expressed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who stated that a freeze on settlements is not a prerequisite for negotiations, Israel will continue using negotiations as an umbrella to carry on its settlement policy and Judaicisation plans until there is no more land left to discuss.

Scepticism about Abbas's intentions is further compounded because while he quietly criticises Israel's actions he vociferously condemns Hamas. In meetings and media appearances Abbas continued his severe attacks on Hamas, which many observers interpreted as a clear indicator that his resignation announcement will not bring Palestinian national reconciliation closer. At the same time, Abbas has shown unprecedented irritability towards any propinquity between Hamas and Arab parties. It was reported that in closed meetings Abbas imparted that he is angry with the Arab League's secretary- general for refusing to cut contacts with Hamas.

Khaled Meshaal, the chief of Hamas's politburo, urged that Abbas "stop conceding to Israel", and called on him to be honest with the Palestinian people and admit the failure of the negotiations option. "Agreeing to a middle ground with Israel which began in Oslo in 1993 has neither stopped Israeli settlement expansion, nor brought the Palestinians any closer to creating an independent state on land occupied since 1967," Meshaal asserted. "Any leader who is determined about Jerusalem, the right of return, the land, and dismantling settlements must know that the road to these goals is not through negotiations and relying on the Americans, but through jihad, resistance and national unity."

Mohamed El-Hindi, member of the political bureau of the Islamic Jihad, was even more critical of Abbas. "He who admits the failure of his political programme should step down from power instead of making empty threats," he retorted. "The Palestinian cause receded only when the Palestine Liberation Organisation [PLO] launched negotiations with Israel, and Abbas is the most supportive of these talks. He must leave his post after this failure." He added that it is incorrect to focus on the personal aspect of Abbas's announcement because it distorts the truth about his unsuccessful political agenda. "If Abbas was upset by Israel's insistence on settlements, why is he targeting resistance movements in the West Bank and continuing to coordinate with the Israeli army?" questioned El-Hindi.

Many spokespeople of Palestinian factions say that no one actually expects Abbas to call for a return to armed resistance against Israel. At the same time, they cannot understand how Abbas expresses disappointment in Israel's actions but helps the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu by hunting down Palestinian resistance fighters in the West Bank while arresting their associates. They assert that the arrests are unrelated to internal divisions. Faction representatives believe that the obvious response to the actions of Israel and the US is for the Ramallah government to end security coordination with occupation forces and support the Palestinian people on their land rather than abandon this responsibility.

This is also the thinking of Fatah leader Hatem Abdel-Qader, who was previously in charge of the Jerusalem portfolio in Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's cabinet but resigned in protest against the compliance of Fayyad's government regarding Israel's crimes in Jerusalem.

Palestinian writer and political analyst Zakaria Mohamed asserted that Abbas's resignation speech was not intended for the Palestinian people, but primarily for the US administration, and for Israel. According to Mohamed, Abbas received a slap on the face from Washington after his announcement when Clinton declared that "the US administration will deal with Abbas in any position he holds." This implied that the US administration would not attempt to appease Abbas in any way.

Mohamed further ridiculed the demonstrations in support of the Palestinian president, saying that they would have been palatable if Abbas's speech was directed to the Palestinian people instead of the Americans. "Abbas is in serious trouble," explained Mohamed. "If he rescinds his abdication he will return a much weaker leader; if he does step down, he will have failed to provide us with a smooth and organised transfer of power." Alternatively, Abbas should have called on the Palestinian people to seek other options since the road of negotiations is blocked, suggested Mohamed. "Abbas's problem is that he cannot accept the fact that he led us down a dead end, which was clearly marked as such at the outset," he asserted. "It was clear since at least 2000, namely after the Camp David II talks, that this road will go nowhere. And it became blatantly obvious to everyone by 2002, when West Bank cities were invaded and [late Palestinian President Yasser] Arafat was placed under siege."

Palestinians generally agree that to be able to respond to US-Israeli actions requires an end to internal divisions. They also agree that it is ironic that one of the obstacles preventing national reconciliation is Abbas's insistence that any Palestinian government must adhere to the conditions of the Quartet, namely the recognition of Israel, renouncing resistance as a form of terrorism, and accepting previously signed agreements with Israel. A pressing question in the Palestinian territories right now is whether Abbas's anger against Israel and the US is authentic -- especially that he continues to promote the Quartet conditions. The consensus is that upholding Quartet provisions rewards Israel.

Even if Abbas was sincere about not contesting the next elections, this does not mean he will step down from office because he has come to realise that it is impossible to hold elections according to the decree he issued earlier. Hence, he will remain de facto president of the Palestinian Authority until elections take place after national reconciliation is achieved. This, however, appears an elusive goal in itself.

Abbas claims not to desire power, but his actions are to the contrary and imply he is willing to go far to hold on to his position. Anyone who followed Fatah's Sixth Congress already knows that Abbas is not serious about stepping down from office, especially that during the gathering he attempted to impose himself as the sole leader of the movement. He also violated the PLO Charter by holding a Palestinian National Council meeting to fill the remaining seats of the PLO without meeting the necessary quorum

Al Ahram

Whatever lies ahead after Abbas's notification of not seeking the Palestinian presidency again, the status quo ante is over for good, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

The recent decision by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas not to seek a second term in office has already thrown into question the continued survival of the Oslo peace process as well as the future of the PA itself.

Most Palestinians have interpreted Abbas's decision as a frank -- though belated -- admission of the failure of the peace process with Israel.

In his speech on Thursday, 5 November, Abbas didn't mourn that process much. But he did suggest that it was pointless to walk any further along the current path given Israel's adamant refusal to stop settlement expansion and the Obama administration's refusal to force Israel to give up the spoils of the 1967 war.

Abbas did ask the Palestinian people to continue to believe in the eventuality of peace. However, he also gave the impression that true and just peace with Israel was a distant dream if not unrealistic.

It is still uncertain if Abbas will reconsider his decision under the influence of incessant calls to that effect by his supporters, especially within the Fatah organisation.

However, most Palestinian pundits seem to unanimously agree that the Palestinian leader won't do so unless he receives real "concessions" from Israel with regards to the settlements issue. Otherwise, Abbas would lose face and give Israel and the US an additional reason not to take him seriously the next time he triggers a crisis over the peace process.

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(Image: Lance Page, Truthout; Adapted: an agent / flickr)

By Ira Chernus

Nobody seems to know just what Barack Obama said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the two met recently at the White House. In fact, when it comes to Middle East policy, nobody seems to know much of anything about what goes on inside the White House. I've heard more than one Washington insider say that this administration is totally tight-lipped on the subject.

From the outside, it looks like Obama and his advisers are drifting without a rudder, unable to guide themselves, much less the Israelis and Palestinians, toward the peace the president says he's committed to. Pundits chalk it up to the administration's ineptitude or the power of the Israeli lobby or the chaotic state of Palestinian politics, or all of the above.

Perhaps, though, none of these factors ultimately make much difference. Perhaps it matters not a whit what the US or the Palestinians do, because the Israeli government and the bulk of Jewish Israeli voters are just too sick to move toward a just peace. At least that's one man's opinion.

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By Haaretz Staff

Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of launching an "organized campaign" of lies and misinformation against it in the wake of the organization's support of the Goldstone report, British newspaper the Guardian reported Friday.

The Goldstone report claims Israel and Hamas both committed war crimes during the winter conflict in Gaza, but levels harsher criticism toward Israel.

"I really hesitate to use words like conspiracy, but there is a feeling that there is an organized campaign, and we're seeing from different places what would appear to be coordinated attacks ... from some of the language and arguments used it would seem as if there has been discussion," Iain Levine, Human Rights Watch's program director, told the Guardian. "We are having to spend a lot of time repudiating the lies, the falsehoods, the misinformation."

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By Gideon Levy

President Shimon Peres considers Richard Goldstone a "small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence." Same to you, we used to say when we were kids. Indeed, it's amazing to see how aptly these harsh remarks describe Peres himself, a small man, devoid of any sense of justice.

A president who tongue-lashes an internationally acclaimed jurist, a senior representative of the United Nations, mainly attests to his own character. The attacks on Goldstone have devolved; they have become personal and unbridled. When they are uttered by the president, in a meeting with his esteemed Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva no less, it shows we have completely lost our way. Peres fulminated in the name of us all. This is not only a matter of personal etiquette, at which Peres normally excels. This is about the image of a country whose number-one citizen speaks so rudely against a global emissary. That is Peres' "PR mission" that everyone here is cheering.

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ANALYSIS / Next round of Gaza hostilities will be more intense
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

The Israeli reactions to the conclusions reached by the Goldstone Commission about Operation Cast Lead are characterized by large doses of affront and anger. But the issue of the next war is no less important. Justice Richard Goldstone, who conducted his investigation on the basis of a clearly ideological approach, effectively operated as an "unknowing agent" of Tehran. The practical significance of his report is that Israel is liable to wage its next war, against a more serious threat than the one posed by Hamas, with its arms and legs shackled.

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi this week told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Hezbollah is in possession of missiles with a range of 300-325 kilometers. He then reiterated the IDF's rejection of the accusations concerning its behavior in the Gaza operation. "I am not the commander of an army of murderers, looters and rapists," Ashkenazi asserted. The two statements are connected.

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By RANNIE AMIRI

After five long years, and at great expense to a state hoped-to-be-called Palestine, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has finally realized that subservience to the United States and Israel pays little in dividends. Indeed, what he has done to the cause of Palestine, the unity of its people, and the advancement of their rights has been nothing short of unmitigated disaster.

Last week, Abbas said he would not seek re-election in polls scheduled for January 2010. His resignation however, was quickly rejected by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and as of today, no one has announced their intent to run in his place.

In truth, many consider the move a tactic to exert additional pressure on the Obama administration, especially after Abbas’ demand for an Israeli settlement freeze prior to talks went largely ignored.

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Steve Bell

By Robin Yassin-Kassab

The hope invested by many in Barack Obama has dissolved. Dare I sing ‘I told you so’? I do. The audacious hope of Obamamania was always faith-based, founded on the believer’s premise that the handsome candidate didn’t mean what he actually said, that we should read his words esoterically, as code for profound radicalism. Now reality bites, and we discover that his promises to AIPAC and the military were solid and literal.

It’s certainly something that a black man has become president of a country built by African slaves, although we must place this in the context of the fierce racist backlash since his election (would those guardians of the constitution raving about the tree of liberty being watered by the blood of tyrants be quite so eager to wear their guns on their sleeves if the president were white and not a jumped-up negro? I doubt it). But that’s the achievement of Obama’s skin colour, not his policy; in fact it’s the achievement of the people who voted for him. Another achievement is that – in the company of war criminals such as Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Henry Kissinger – Obama has already won the Nobel peace prize. Hooray!

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(General Stanley) McChrystal seems to have inverted the old Clausewitzian maxim: he genuinely believes that politics is a continuation of war by other means.

By TARIQ ALI

It’s been a bad autumn for Nato in Afghanistan, with twin disasters on the political and military fronts.

First, Kai Eide, the UN headman in Kabul, a well-meaning, but not very bright Norwegian, fell out with his deputy, Peter Galbraith, who as the de facto representative of the US State Department had decreed that President Karzai’s election was rigged and went public about it. His superior continued to defend Hamid Karzai’s legitimacy. Astonishingly, the UN then fired Galbraith. This caused Hillary Clinton to move into top gear and the UN-supported electoral watchdog now ruled that the elections had indeed been fraudulent and ordered a run-off. Karzai refused to replace the electoral officials who had done such a good job for him the first time and his opponent withdrew. Karzai got the job.

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By NADIA HIJAB

"Islam is a religion that lives by the sword and it should die by the sword." The person making this declaration was not some wild-eyed neocon or Christian fundamentalist, but an old friend of mine, a thoughtful, widely-read American who tapped not just the mainstream media but also progressive publications and blogs.

I can't remember what provoked this outburst. It was at a dinner in 2004 or so, and we were discussing United States policy in the Middle East. But I do remember responding, "But that means people like me. There are so many different faces of Islam. Do you really want to put them all to the sword?"

In the wake of the Ft. Hood massacre, that conversation loomed large in my mind. If a progressive friend could come up with a gut reaction like that in the heat of discussion, what hope is there to communicate to the broader population of Americans? In their emotional response to the unforgivable act at Ft. Hood, how many Americans would care that there are as many facets of Islam as there are Muslims, from austere fundamentalists to fun-loving families to serious secularists -- with every shade in between.

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By Mohamad Shmaysani

A wave of stormy questions has been on the rise within Israeli security and military apparatuses after Yedioth Aharonoth unveiled a document demonstrating the level of Hezbollah’s knowledge of Israeli activities, deployments and tactics in northern occupied Palestine.

The widely read Israeli paper revealed that Hezbollah knows just about every detail concerning Israel’s military, particularly the 91st brigade in the north.

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Sarkozy, right, has helped to resume good relations between France and Syria [Reuters]

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has said he is not willing to hold face-to-face talks with the Israeli leader, after a meeting in France aimed at restarting the Middle East peace process.

His comments come after meeting Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, who conveyed a willingness by Israel's prime minister to begin peace talks with the Syrians.

"Today, Syria wants peace. There is a mediator, Turkey... What we lack is an Israeli partner who is ready to go forward and ready to come to a result" -- Bashar al-Assad, Syrian president

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By Alex Lantier
13 November 2009

Yesterday the New York Times reported the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv’s revelations that Peter Galbraith, a former US diplomat and advisor to the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from Iraqi oil revenues.

Galbraith’s profits would result from his cashing in on his links to the Kurdish regional leadership, and his role in drafting Iraq’s Constitution, shortly after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. In 2004, Galbraith helped the Kurds arrange deals with Norwegian oil firm DNO and prepare for negotiations on the Iraqi Constitution, including controversial provisions on how to divide Iraq’s oil revenues. During the 2005 negotiations, the Times noted, Galbraith worked to ensure the draft included “clauses that he maintains will give the Kurds virtually complete control over all new oil finds on their territory.”

Galbraith stood to benefit enormously from these clauses, Dagens Naeringsliv revealed last month. On June 30, 2004—the day after the successful conclusion of the Kurd-DNO negotiations—the Kurdish regional leadership had given Galbraith a major stake in undiscovered oil fields on its territory. Oil analysts quoted by the Times estimate his five-percent stake in the newly-discovered Tawke oilfield alone would be worth at least $115 million.

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GAZA - Israeli forces killed a young Palestinian man and injured three others in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday.

Among the injured were two brothers, according to medics, who said the shooting occurred in the Johr Ad-Dik area and that another Palestinian was hospitalized.

There were conflicting reports on what led to the incident. Palestinian witnesses said the group was on a hunting trip near the border east of Al-Bureij refugee camp when Israeli forces opened fire. Local medics said the fire was directed at the youths.

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An Israeli soldier stops Palestinians at an internal West Bank
checkpoint north of Jenin [MaanImages - Archive]

BETHLEHEM - Vehicles will soon be permitted to traverse Israel's northernmost military checkpoint separating the Jenin area from Palestinian communities in Nazareth and the agricultural zone to the north, an Israeli government news release said Wednesday.

The change in status of the military checkpoint, according to the release, was due to an upgrade in the military facility funded by USAID.

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By Jeff Gates

When waging war “by way of deception,” the motto of the Israeli Mossad, well-timed crises play a critical agenda-setting role by displacing facts with what a target population can be deceived to believe. Thus the force-multiplier effect when staged crises are reinforced with pre-staged intelligence. In combination, the two often prove persuasive.

That duplicity was on display when U.S. lawmakers were induced to invade Iraq in response to the mass murder of 9-11. That crisis alone, however, was insufficient. Military mobilization required a “consensus” belief in Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons, Iraqi meetings in Prague, and so forth. Though all were false, those “facts” proved sufficient to induce an invasion of Iraq.

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By George S. Hishmeh – Washington DC

Like most of his predecessors, Barack Obama has failed to come up with a logical approach to resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, now in its 62nd year. Many optimists on both sides of the great divide had believed that he would this month take his first, tough step towards bringing the two sides to agree on the outlines of a settlement.

The American president had an opportunity to do that when he was scheduled to address last Tuesday an annual general assembly of 50 American Jewish groups. But apparently he was not prepared to do that and he must have been relieved that he can skip that much-awaited opportunity by participating in a memorial service for 12 American soldiers and a civilian massacred at a Texas army post by an American-born army psychiatrist of Arab origin and a Muslim.

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Iraqi child victim of depleted uranium

By Prof Souad N. Al-Azzawi

The following text was presented to the Kuala Lumpur International Conference to Criminalise War, Putra World Trade Centre, 28-31 October 2009.

For two decades, the administrations of the United States of America and the United Kingdom have been waging continuous wars on Iraq to occupy this oil rich country.

The armed forces of those two countries attacked civilians with different kinds of conventional, non-conventional, and banned weapons such as cluster bombs ammunitions, napalm bombs, white phosphorous weapons and depleted Uranium weapons.

Depleted Uranium (DU) is a radioactive and chemically toxic heavy metal. If ingested, inhaled, or it enters the human body through wounds or skin, it remains there for decades.

Within the human body the (DU) particles would be a continuous source for emitting alpha particles. With its toxic effects, published research & epidemiological studies have proved that it causes serious health damages to the human body. Some of the damage to the human body is to lymph tissue, kidneys, developing fetuses, neurological system, the bones, lung fibrosis, and an increase in the risk of many types of cancer and malignancies.

Hundreds of tons of (DU) expenditure have been fired & exploded on Iraqi highly populated areas like Basrah, Baghdad, Nasriya, Dewania, Samawa, and other cities.

Exploration programs and site measurements by Iraqi and non-Iraqi researchers all proved the existence of (DU) related contamination over most Iraqi territories.

Iraq's Minister of Environment admitted in July 23, 2007 in Cairo that "at least 350 sites in Iraq are contaminated with (DU)". She added that the nation is facing a tremendous number of cancer cases and called for the international community to help Iraq cope with this problem.

For fullillustrated story go to Uruknet

By Benjamin Joffe-Walt

An Israeli Rabbi living in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank has caused a firestorm in both Israeli and Palestinian media with a new book outlining a series of Jewish theological arguments for killing those who threaten Israel or demand Israeli land.

The 230-page book, "The King's Torah" was released over the weekend by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and gives theological backing to Jews killing those perceived to be violating Jewish commandments or threatening the Jewish nation. A theological treatise based on Rabbi Shapira's interpretation of passages from the Jewish bible, "The King's Torah" is an extensive guide to when it is permissible for Jews to kill non-Jews.

Rabbi Shapiro's book argues that Jewish law allows the killing of "non-Jews who demand the land for themselves", those from a nation which "helps a murderer of Jews," those spreading "hostile blasphemy" and "those who, by speech, weaken our sovereignty."

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By Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

There seems to be a perfect conformity between Gabi Ashkenazi and his last name. The Israeli chief of staff is considered one of the main Israeli war criminals responsible for the virtual genocide against the Gaza Strip during the past winter. On his murderous hands, he carries tons of innocent blood, including that of more than 340 children, killed in Israel’s pornographic bombing of civilian neighborhoods.

Last week, Ashkenazi was quoted as saying that Israel was likely to wage another quasi holocaust on Gaza, adding that the Israeli occupation army would enter the innermost corners and streets of the coastal territory.

As a nefarious mass murderer, Ashkenazi, like the rest of Israeli war criminals, ought to be in the Hague preparing his defense against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. After all the crimes he perpetrated put him on equal footing with Nazi war criminals who had stood trial for their own crimes against humanity during the Second World War.

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By ELLEN CANTAROW

"Disputed” is a word often used about East Jerusalem and homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Would the international community have considered the homes of American blacks attacked by the Ku Klux Kla as “disputed”? Or those of Jews ejected by Brown Shirts in the early 1930s?

The rule of law exists to protect the victims of war and occupation by imposing sanctions and responsibilities on invaders. It is not to be stretched for the convenience of the US at Guantanamo, Russia in Chechnya, Israel in Gaza, or in East Jerusalem. Under the law East Jerusalem and all the Arab homes it contains are part of the occupied West Bank. Despite endless palm-greasing, casuist apologetics, semantic distortions and brute force, Israel’s responsibilities towards the territories it occupies remain articulated in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and Chapter 5 of the 1907 Hague Convention IV. Occupying states are forbidden to seize the land and property of those they occupy, and forbidden to settle their citizens on occupied soil.

But Israel and its US patron have small regard for legal niceties, instead preferring Thucydides’ maxim: “The strong do what they can, and the weak do what they must.”

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By Ramzy Baroud

When British Foreign Secretary David Miliband uttered a few words regarding the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, many wanted to believe that London was taking a sharp stance against Israel’s continued violations of international law. Alas, they were wrong.

The fact is Miliband’s statement, made during a press conference that followed talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, in Amman, was merely tactical, aimed at lessening the negative impact of the feeble position adopted by Washington regarding the same issue.

This is what Miliband had to say: "Settlements are illegal in our view and an obstacle to peace settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements challenge the heart of... a Palestinian state."

But then, he added: "It's so important for all those who care about security and social justice in this region that discussions about borders and territory are restarted in a serious way, because if you can progress on border and territory, you can resolve the settlements issue."

This is classic Miliband. While his clear and decisive statement regarding the illegality of the settlements and the fact that their construction is an obstacle is to be welcomed, one cannot decipher a politician’s statement in increments; to be truly appreciated, they must be understood as a whole.

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At the height of the global anti-apartheid movement, in 1989, a bus in London displays a message calling for boycott of South Africa. (Rahul D'Lucca)

By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 10 November 2009

Anyone who rejects the two-state solution, won't bring a one-state solution. They will instead bring one war, not one state. A bloody war with no end. -- Israeli President Shimon Peres, 7 November 2009.

One of the most commonly voiced objections to a one-state solution for Palestine/Israel stems from the accurate observation that the vast majority of Israeli Jews reject it, and fear being "swamped" by a Palestinian majority. Across the political spectrum, Israeli Jews insist on maintaining a separate Jewish-majority state.

But with the total collapse of the Obama Administration's peace efforts, and relentless Israeli colonization of the occupied West Bank, the reality is dawning rapidly that the two-state solution is no more than a slogan that has no chance of being implemented or altering the reality of a de facto binational state in Palestine/Israel.

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Dennis Kucinich

By George Bennett

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich lasted less than 24 hours as headliner for the Palm Beach County Democratic Party's annual fundraising dinner after some of the party's elected officials blasted the Ohio Democrat's stance on Israel and threatened to skip the event.

"People feel he's anti-Israel. I don't read it that way, but the leadership of AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and other elements of the Jewish community do and I don't want to get into an argument with them," -- county Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel

Kucinich, who has a history of criticizing the actions of the Israeli government and opposing congressional resolutions in support of Israel, withdrew Friday as the keynote speaker for next week's dinner after being announced Thursday.

The liberal former presidential candidate had been called in as a last-minute replacement for moderate Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu. Landrieu was dropped as keynoter this week because party activists were upset by her refusal to commit to blocking a Republican filibuster of health care overhaul legislation.

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Palestinian activist Mohammed Othman. (Stop the Wall)

By Mya Guarnieri, The Electronic Intifada, 9 November 2009

For nearly six weeks now Mohammed Othman, a prominent Palestinian activist and an outspoken advocate of the nonviolent boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, has been held in an Israeli military prison without charges. On 22 September 2009 Othman, 34, was detained at the Allenby Crossing as he attempted to enter the occupied West Bank from Jordan. He was returning from a trip to Norway, where he met with Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen, amongst other officials.

At the beginning of September, Finance Minister Halvorsen announced Norway's divestment from the Israeli company Elbit due to "ethical concerns." Elbit provides security systems for Israel's wall in the West Bank and illegal settlements as well as unmanned aerial vehicles (commonly known as drones) and other technology for the Israeli military. According to many Middle East analysts and human rights groups, Othman played a pivotal role in Norway's decision to disassociate from Elbit.

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Build equality, not walls. (ActiveStills)

By Kevin Coval, The Electronic Intifada, 5 November 2009

Last week I was disinvited from my second Jewish conference in two months for poems I'd written in solidarity with Palestinians, poems that make an unapologetic call for justice. Subsequently, I and the poet I was to read with at the J Street conference, wrote a response to being censored. People from all over the country wrote to us supporting free speech, supporting art as a tool for change, supporting real talk about the degradation of Palestinians, and people wrote to let us know they disagreed. Some more thoughtfully than others.

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Chavez has been a vocal critic of the presence of US troops in neighbouring Colombia [AFP]

Venezuela's president has told his armed forces to "prepare for war", saying a military pact between neighbouring Colombia and the US could set the stage for an invasion.

The comments by Hugo Chavez at the weekend were prompted by the presence of US troops gaining access to Colombian military bases.

Colombia has responded by saying it will protest to the UN security council and the Organisation of American States.

Chavez's comments also sparked clashes on Sunday on the Colombia-Venezuela border, where Colombians fought with Venezuelan border guards who responded by firing tear gas.

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Nil`in protesters damaged the wall on Friday [courtesy Ahmed Meslah]

RAMALLAH - Marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Palestinian demonstrators breached Israel's concrete barrier near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday.

Reporting from the scene, Ma'an's correspondent said the protesters, once they reached the other side, set fire to tires. Israeli forces also opened fire, the reporter said.

Comment:
1 ) anthony / UK
09/11/2009 15:10
The same international community which celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall ignores a seperation barrier that is longer and higher, annexes Palestinian land, changes borders, encompasses illegal settlements and denies basic rights. These protests should be celebrated as an act of resistance

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Iran's ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad Khazaee

Iran has lashed out at certain veto-wielding powers for opposing a UN report on the Gaza war, blaming them for the ongoing Israeli crimes in the region.

"Certain powerful and veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council adamantly oppose continuation of investigation into the report by Richard Goldstone," Iran's ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad Khazaee told the Islamic Student News Agency (ISNA).

On Thursday, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that accuses Israel of war crimes and criminal acts against humanity during the weeks-long onslaught on the Gaza Strip.

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07/11/2009 Once again, the Zionist entity seemed to be "depressed" after another attempt to hit the Lebanese and Palestinian Resistance was found to be useless.

On Wednesday, Israeli Navy commando force, that reached the deep sea in small boats, boarded the Francop, a cargo ship owned by charter company UFS traveling under an Antiguan flag. According to Israeli media, the crew of sailors did not resist the commando and said that they did not know what was in the large container on board. The commando force opened the container and revealed missiles, rockets, shells, grenades, and small arms.

The Israeli "novel" doesn't end here. The main point is the following: the weapons are Iranians, they are destined to Hezbollah. Concentrating in this point, the Zionist entity sought to influence the international public opinion and "fabricate" a new story against the Resistance.

But, "unfortunately," Israel failed in just convincing this international public opinion of the "accuracy" of its "novel."

=> Read more!

BETHLEHEM - America's bond with its Israeli ally is unbreakable, US President Barack Obama reiterated in a prerecorded speech marking the anniversary of late Israeli President Yitzhak Rabin's assassination by a right-wing extremist 14 years earlier.

In remarks broadcast to a crowd of thousands in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, the US leader also told Israelis that they would not find true security so long as Palestinians suffered hopelessness and despair.

"America's bonds with our Israeli ally are unbreakable," Obama said. "We will never waver in defense of Israeli security and we will never lose sight of our shared purpose: A just and lasting peace between Israel, Palestine and the Arab world, one that respects the dignity and security of every human being."

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Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal has declared 'unity and resistance' as the only ways to reach the goal of a free Palestine.

During an address at a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Meshaal said on Friday that years of negotiations with the Zionist enemy has proved that the decades-long conflict cannot be settled through talks and that "it is time to fight for our rights".

"Any leader who wants Al-Quds, the right of return for all Palestinians and our land back as well as ending Israeli settlement expansion should know that the path towards these objectives is not through negotiations but through resistance and national unity", Meshaal told Palestinian refugees at Yarmouk Camp on the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement.

=> Read more!

By Steve Breyman

From December 27, 2008 through January 18, 2009, Israel waged war on the Gaza Strip. Twelve to fourteen hundred Palestinians were killed, including many women and children. Thirteen Israelis were killed; several by friendly fire. Nearly a third of Gazans were left without running water. Tens of thousands were left homeless. The physical structures of Hamas rule were left in ruins. Hundreds of greenhouses and factories were destroyed.

The declared rationale for the assault was the launching of the glorified bottle rockets known as Qassams into southern Israeli towns like Sderot. The February 2009 national elections in Israel likely played a role in the timing of the attacks, six months in the planning. Each side blamed the other for breaking the uneasy ceasefire in effect for six months prior to the winter hostilities. Rocket fire had dwindled to near zero during the lull. Hamas considered the November 4, 2008, Israeli raid on a Gaza tunnel a major violation of the truce, and fired rockets and mortars in retaliation. Back-and-forth exchanges continued until Operation Cast Lead—called the Gaza Massacre in the Arab press--was launched on December 27.

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By William A. Cook

'Even the most perfect of Golem, risen to life to protect us, can easily change into a destructive force. Therefore let us treat carefully that which is strong, just as we bow kindly and patiently to that which is weak. Everything has its time and place.' (Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, 1512-1609)

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 344-36 in support of H. Res. 867, a vote to reject the Goldstone Report Findings and Recommendations, thus protecting Israel against indictment for crimes against humanity and illegal acts of war as determined by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s special investigation of the Christmas invasion of Gaza this past year. The House of Representatives, acting as a body, embodies the most heinous machinations of the ancient legend of a mythical beast called the Golem.

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By John V. Whitbeck

In the wake of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s public praise for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s 'unprecedented' attitude toward continued Israeli settlement expansion, Saeb Erakat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, calmly rolled out a verbal bombshell at a November 4 press conference in Ramallah.

Erakat noted that now may be “the moment of truth” for the Palestinian leadership and raised the possibility that “the two-state solution is no longer an option and maybe the Palestinian people should refocus their attention on the one-state solution, where Muslims, Christians and Jews live as equals.”

This statement just might signal a turning point in the long, frustrating search for peace with some measure of justice in Israel/Palestine.
Throughout the long years of the perpetual "peace process", deadlines have been consistently and predictably missed. Such failures have been facilitated by the practical reality that, for Israel, "failure" has had no consequences other than a continuation of the status quo, which, for all Israeli governments, has been not only tolerable but preferable to any realistically realizable alternative. For Israel, "failure" has always constituted "success", permitting it to continue confiscating Palestinian land, expanding its West Bank colonies, building Jews-only bypass roads and generally making the occupation even more permanent and irreversible.

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Al Ahram

The US is still playing fast and loose with its commitments on Israeli-Palestinian peace, reports Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

Speaking during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in West Jerusalem Saturday, 31 October, visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked that Israel was making "unprecedented concessions" on the issue of settlements. "What the prime minister has offered in specifics on restraints on a policy on settlements is unprecedented in the context of negotiations."

She also claimed that a freeze on settlement building had not been a precondition for peace talks in the past. Clinton reiterated the same old platitudes about America's commitment to a "comprehensive peace agreement" and the need for the resumption of peace talks as soon as possible. Netanyahu, visibly pleased by Clinton's remarks, said "we think we should sit around that negotiating table right away." He termed Palestinian insistence on a settlement expansion freeze a "new Palestinian policy that doesn't advance peace".

Clinton's remarks sent shockwaves in Ramallah, prompting some Palestinian officials to accuse the Obama administration of "fully and brazenly embracing the Israeli position" and "reneging on erstwhile pledges to commit Israel to freeze all settlement expansion activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem". "There can be no excuse for the continuation of settlements, which is really the main obstacle in the way of any credible peace process," said Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

=> Read more!

Saleh Al-Naami details the harsh conditions that Gaza residents will endure this winter

Left homeless after the brutal invasion last December and enduring the continuing seige by Israel, Palestinian refugees in Gaza face a harsh winter

Awatef Al-Assar filled bags of sand to hold down the sides of the tent in a failed attempt to stabilise it. Her children still remember how hard she tried to hold on to the pole of the tent that was sheltering her and her family last winter as the winds blew hard to uproot it. Meanwhile, trying to help, her husband was shaking with cold and fear from the thunder outside. Rainwater swamped the tent as their efforts failed and the tent collapsed on the heads of the children. The entire family was forced to seek refuge at a nearby house.

Like thousands of others, Al-Assar's home was destroyed during Israel's war on the Gaza Strip. Even now she fears a repeat of the same punishing experience of last winter. Her neighbour, Hajja Fatma Hamdan, who is at the same refuge camp with her family, remembers how she was surprised by the amount of rain filling up the tent while her family slept. They awoke startled, and all they could do was abandon all their possessions and seek shelter elsewhere.

=> Read more!

Haaretz

By Gideon Levy

Every few weeks you have to sow fear, every few months you need to make threats, and once every year or two you have to have another little war. Blind cooperation between the defense establishment and the media holds the promise of another round of fighting. In that way, it's possible to escape some of the blame from the Goldstone report and wallow in the conditions we love best: being the victim, feeling threatened and uniting in the face of the great external danger allegedly in the offing.

The Israel Defense Forces will be above it all and cleanse itself of a series of suspicions and failures. This can also translate into huge budgets, glorified importance and influence for both the generals and the military commentators. It also creates good television ratings and sells sensationalist newspapers and advanced weapon systems. What's better than that for us?

The most recent cry of alarm: NASA in Palestine, Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems in Gaza. Hamas launches an Iranian rocket - it must be Iranian - 60 kilometers. The head of Military Intelligence reported on it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke immediately about missile systems, and the media immediately broke into its favorite war dance. "Three million citizens within range," "Confrontation in December," "Are you within range?" "Outskirts of Tel Aviv in danger," "Doomsday weapons" - frightening headlines accompanied by no less scary maps. "This is a new dimension confronting the IDF. It's not a simple matter. It's really a different story altogether. We should remember that there will be many casualties on the home front," roared the national baritone - the military commentator on television.

So again we are dealing with the grotesque - a strip of land under siege wallowing in its distress and ruins, with a pitiful paramilitary organization whose weapons arsenal would be an embarrassment to an IDF basic training camp. And it already proved its inadequacy in the last war. But the militants are portrayed to us as a superpower. That's how they create the scenario for the next war. That's how they empower not just the enemy, but first and foremost the IDF, which can beat the enemy.

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The AIPAC drafted resolution HR-838 was supported by 80% of the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 3. The resolution shamefully calls on the President and the Secretary of State “to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration” of the Goldstone report. In essence, the resolution tells the entire world that the American Congress endorses war crime and crimes against humanity and pledges to prevent the International Community from holding those violating human rights accountable.

Check the full roll call vote at: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2009-838

Published on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 by The Progressive

by Matthew Rothschild

Shame on the House of Representatives, and on the Democratic leadership of the House, for pushing through a resolution once again blindly taking the side of Israeli aggression.

I’m referring to the vote on Tuesday, by a lopsided 344-to-36 margin, to condemn the Goldstone report on Gaza.

That report, by South African jurist Richard Goldstone for the UN, showed that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes in the lead-up to and during Israel’s invasion of Gaza almost a year ago. (To read the executive summary, click here)

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ANKARA (PIC)-- Turkish students in the city of Trabzon on Wednesday hurled rotten eggs at Israeli ambassador to Turkey Gabby Levy during his visit to the Black Sea university in protest at the war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

The students attacked Levy’s car the moment it arrived in front of the university administration and chanted slogans condemning Israeli officials as killers of children.

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By Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

Mahmoud Abbas, the beleaguered head of the Palestinian Authority, has finally but belatedly admitted that the so-called Peace process with Israel has completely failed and that the Palestinian people will have to seek an alternative to it.

In a speech in Ramallah Thursday evening, Abbas rightly blamed Israel for the collapse of the political process, saying that the PA had carried out “all our commitments and obligations” while Israel continued to steal Palestinian land and build Jewish settlements.

The 74-year-old Fatah leader said he decided not to seek a second term as PA Chairman, citing the failure of peace talks with Israel and the Israeli refusal to end the occupation that started in 1967.

He cited America’s embrace of Israeli rejectionism, especially with regard to Jewish settlement expansion, and the so-far unsuccessful efforts to reach national reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, as the main reasons for his decision.

In short, Abbas blamed everyone for his failure, except himself.

=> Read more!

By James Gundun - Washington DC

Like a room filled with methane, the combustible element of failure waited silently for a spark. Neither special envoy George Mitchell nor President Obama could budge the Palestinians from their demand for an Israeli settlement freeze.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with an established pro-Israeli bias, is known to bite. Coming off a three day jaunt in Pakistan that left America with even less friends, she detonated another bombshell in another conflict, her diplomacy more stagecraft than statecraft.

‘What the prime minister has offered, a restraint on the policy of settlements, which he has just described, no new starts, for example, is unprecedented in the context of prior to negotiations,’ an upbeat Clinton said in Jerusalem, next to the solemn Benjamin Netanyahu.

=> Read more!

Most of the report's criticism was directed towards Israel's conduct during the Gaza offensive [AFP]

The United Nations General Assembly has voted in favour of resolution endorsing a UN-sponsored report into war crimes committed during Israel's war on Gaza.

The Goldstone report, which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, was endorsed by the assembly on Thursday by a margin of 114 to 18, after two days of debate.

Forty-four member-nations abstained from voting.

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Haaretz

By Dana Weiler-Polak, Haaretz Correspondent

The government is considering establishing work camps in the south of the country, where illegal migrant workers will receive shelter, food and medical care, Army Radio reported Wednesday. In exchange, illegal migrants would perform manual labor outside the camps, but would not earn a salary.

They would stay at the camp until their asylum claims are decided, which could take months or years.

=> Read more!

05/11/2009 20:05

BETHLEHEM - Ma'an – Mahmoud Abbas has stated he will not seek Fatah's nomination for next January's presidential election, Palestinian officials said on Thursday.

Fatah spokesman Fahmi Az-Zarir said that during a PLO Executive Committee meeting, Abbas announced he had had enough with "Israel's obstruction of the peace process" and its refusal to cooperate with Palestinian and international calls that it fulfill its most basic agreements, namely freezing settlements.

In an interview with Ma'an Radio, Az-Zarir added that Abbas is "upset and angry" over various internal and political matters, but particularly on "the peace process, on which the Palestinian people rely, to end the Israeli occupation with Arab and international support."

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GAZA -- The Palestinian government in Gaza strongly denounced the remarks made during a session of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday by Mahmoud Abbas’s envoy to the UN Riyadh Mansour in which he accused Palestinian parties of committing violations against Israel.

Spokesman for the government Taher Al-Nunu said that such utterances are more dangerous than the crime of delaying Goldstone’s report at the first time.

Spokesman Nunu added that Mansour’s remarks help Israel cover up its war crimes and legitimize its aggression on the Palestinian people.

=> Read more!

By Khalid Amayreh
November 3, 2009

The latest visit by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to Occupied Palestine seems to have effectively terminated whatever hopes the Palestinians and other Arabs may have pinned on the Obama administration to adopt an evenhanded approach toward the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In his public policy discourse toward the Muslim world, which culminated in his Cairo speech on 4 June, President Obama gave a certain impression that his administration would resist Israeli insolence and arrogance of power and introduce a semblance of fairness into its policy toward the Palestinian issue.

Obama also pledged to get Israel to freeze Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a precondition for resuming stalled peace talks between the apartheid Israeli regime and the weak Palestinian Authority (PA).

Now, it is becoming increasingly clear that all Obama’s assertions and promises were mostly disingenuous rhetoric that is meant for public relations consumption.

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A day after the US House of Representatives rejected the Goldstone report as "irredeemably biased", the UN General Assembly has begun debating an Arab-sponsored, non-binding resolution on the same report urging Israel and the Palestinians to independently investigate the report's findings.

Rosiland Jordan reports from New York.

Most of the report's criticism was directed towards Israel's conduct during the Gaza offensive [AFP]

The United Nations General Assembly is debating a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip.

The Goldstone report, which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, has already been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council, which sponsored the fact-finding commission.

The draft under debate at the UN calls on both Israel and the Palestinians to investigate accusations of human-rights violations during the 22-day conflict in December and January.

The resolution, if adopted, would call upon Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, to take the report to the UN Security Council.

Forty-three speakers were scheduled to take the floor during the debate called by the Arab UN group on Wednesday, with the backing of the 118-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

A vote on the non-binding resolution was expected on Thursday.

=> Read more!

Israel intercepts arms-laden ship

A ship carrying hundreds of tons of weapons has been seized by Israeli commandos, government and military officials have said.

Israeli military said on Wedenesday the arms were destined for the Lebanese armed political group Hezbollah.

They also said an Iranian document was found on board, showing that the arms shipment originated from Iran.

The ship, the Francop, is operated by the United Feeder Services, a Cyprus-based shipping company that said it picked up the cargo in Damietta, Egypt, according to the Associated Press news agency.

"It's interesting to point out the timing of this announcement. "The fact that the Israeli army chose to hold the press conference exactly the same time as the UN General Assembly was beginnning its debate on the Goldstone report [on the Israeli war on Gaza]. At the very least, the timing of this announcement was convenient. If one were cynical one could even suggest that actually the announcement was timed to, if anything, to distract some of the attention of the media in Israel from the Goldstone report." -- Jackie Rowland

=> Read more!

The Goldstone report alleges that Israel used disproportionate force in its war on Gaza [Reuters]

The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution rejecting the findings of a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during its military assault on Gaza.

The house voted on Tuesday in favour of the non-binding resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his opposition to the report, which was written by a panel led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge.

=> Read more!

www.democracynow.org

The House is expected to overwhelmingly vote today (Nov. 3) to condemn a UN inquiry that found Israel committed scores of war crimes in its three-week assault on the Gaza Strip.

Headed by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone, the inquiry also accused Hamas of war crimes and said both sides should investigate the allegations or face international prosecution. Over 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attack, a majority of them civilians. Nine Israelis were killed by Palestinians and another four by so-called friendly fire. The bipartisan, non-binding House measure calls the Goldstone inquiry “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.” The vote comes one day before the United Nations General Assembly is expected to take up the inquiry’s findings.

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By BOUTHAINA SHAABAN

When you read a news story saying that “the United Nations called on Israel to stop demolishing Palestinian homes and put an end to the policy of forced evictions in East Jerusalem, warning that there are 60,000 Palestinians threatened of becoming homeless,” you cannot but wonder about the role of the international organization today and about the goal for which it was created on the eve of the victory of the forces of freedom against Nazism and Fascism and whether it is the same organization authorized by history and the world’s peoples to guarantee the right to ‘self determination’.

Is it the same organization charged with “putting an end to colonialism”? Is it the same organization which believes in the right of all peoples to freedom without discrimination in terms of race or religion? If it is the same organization, why does it allow Palestinian civilians to suffer from the brutality of armed settlers?

The evasive and shameful language of the UN’s call comes in the context of the submission of the Security Council to the Zionist will, and consequently commits a historic disgrace in the form of ignoring the legitimate political, civil and human rights of the Palestinian people including their right to life and freedom. For the UN not to take any initiative or measure which leads to giving the Palestinian people the right to self determination will remain a disgrace in the history of the organization which will never be removed.

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Golda Meir: Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be.

By Ali Jawad

Over recent days, cries of "Al-Aqsa fi khatar" (the Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger) have crammed the vestigial, all-too-narrow public space in the Arab world. Despite the iron-fist policies of unpopular Arab leaders—buttressed by imperial Western nations—the popular outbursts witnessed in the aftermath of the sacrilegious storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque once again symbolized the very much living spirit that exists within the Ummah.

Shocked by the level of response exhibited by their populations, "moderate" Arab leaders have timidly remonstrated before their masters, hoping against all hope that the fast-teeming popular mutinies at home be somehow quelled through some benign, retractive gesture by the provocateur-par-excellence.

=> Read more!

Golda Meir: Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be.

By Ali Jawad

Over recent days, cries of "Al-Aqsa fi khatar" (the Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger) have crammed the vestigial, all-too-narrow public space in the Arab world. Despite the iron-fist policies of unpopular Arab leaders—buttressed by imperial Western nations—the popular outbursts witnessed in the aftermath of the sacrilegious storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque once again symbolized the very much living spirit that exists within the Ummah.

Shocked by the level of response exhibited by their populations, "moderate" Arab leaders have timidly remonstrated before their masters, hoping against all hope that the fast-teeming popular mutinies at home be somehow quelled through some benign, retractive gesture by the provocateur-par-excellence.

=> Read more!

Israeli Leaders Barak, Livni and Olmert - the dynamic trio

By George S. Hishmeh

Top aides of the Obama administration have this month been quietly stoking the peace process fire, raising expectations that the American president, whose popularity remains relatively high, may now be willing to go beyond gentle rapping Israeli knuckles.

The ball started rolling when Barack Obama's National Security Advisor General James L. Jones addressed the Fourth Annual Gala of the American Task Force on Palestine on October 15.

"The president is committed to achieving two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security", he began, adding, much to the delight of his large audience, "make no mistake about that". He also stressed that Obama was not going to wait until the end of his administration to do something about Palestine. This is "a clear priority", Jones said. "The president is personally committed to this goal because he believes that peace is in America's interests, just as it is in the interests of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples'".

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A Palestinian girl daydreams at school

By Stuart Littlewood - London

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

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

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Arar alleges that he was tortured during his
spell in Syrian detention

A US federal appeals court has ruled that a Canadian man cannot sue the US after he was held at a New York airport and then transferred to Syria, where he alleges he was tortured.

Maher Arar, a Syrian-born software engineer, was detained by US authorities during a stopover in New York while heading home to Canada in 2002, and then sent to Syria because he was suspected of having links to al-Qaeda.

Arar says he was held in a Syrian jail for almost a year and that he was beaten and whipped with electrical cables during his detention.

In a 7-4 vote on Monday, the US court of appeals for the Second Circuit agreed with a lower court that Arar could not sue US officials, saying that he did not have legal standing.

=> Read more!

By Scott Ritter

There is a curious phenomenon taking place in the American media at the moment: the lionization of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan.

Although he has taken a few lumps for playing politics with the White House, McChrystal has generally been sold to the American public as a “Zen warrior,” a counterinsurgency genius who, if simply left to his own devices, will be able to radically transform the ongoing debacle that is Afghanistan into a noble victory that will rank as one of the greatest political and military triumphs of modern history.

McChrystal’s resume and persona (a former commander of
America’s special operations forces, a tireless athlete and a scholar) have been breathlessly celebrated in several interviews and articles. Reporters depict him as an ascetic soldier who spouts words of wisdom to rival Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad.

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By Aamir Latif

ISLAMABAD – Niv. 2, 2009 -- The emboldened Taliban movement in Afghanistan turned down an American offer of power-sharing in exchange for accepting the presence of foreign troops, Afghan government sources confirmed.

"US negotiators had offered the Taliban leadership through Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil (former Taliban foreign minister) that if they accept the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan, they would be given the governorship of six provinces in the south and northeast," a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official told IslamOnline.net requesting anonymity for not being authorized to talk about the sensitive issue with the media.

=> Read more!

Photo by Getty Images

By Nick Clark in

Less than 70km from the Gulf of Mexico, huge industrial plants flank the banks of the Mississippi, making use of its water. Combine this with the run-off from farmers’ fields and you get perilous cocktail.

The Mississippi River helped build the United States, it made possible the giant agricultural expansion of the 19th century. It is still a crucial artery of industry.

Only from above do you get an impression of the scale of man’s impact. Less than 70 kilometres from the Gulf of Mexico, huge plants flank the banks - there are vast chemical, gas and steel works, all making use of Mississippi water.

The river also drains 40% of the USA and the run-off from farmers’ fields has taken it toll. Pesticides, herbicides and general agricultural run-off flows in to the Mississippi.

This perilous cocktail ends up in the Gulf of Mexico and has created a Dead Zone, nearly 10,000 square kilometres of water, where NOTHING lives.

=> Read more!

Eyes Wide Open, a love story between two Orthodox Jewish men, provoked anger at its screening

By Sakhr al-Makhadi at the London Film Festival

A series of controversial Israeli films are provoking outrage and plaudits in equal measure at the London Film Festival.

The best documentary award has gone to one of the year's most controversial films.

Defamation is a polemic by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. In his expose of America's Anti-Defamation League (ADL), he claims anti-Semitism is being exaggerated for political purposes. He argues that American Jewish leaders travel around the world exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to silence criticism of Israel.

He gets inside the ADL, which claims to be the most powerful lobby group of its type anywhere in the world. With unprecedented access, he travels with them as they meet foreign leaders, and use the memory of the Holocaust to further their pro-Israeli agenda.

At one point, an ADL leader admits to Shamir that "we need to play on that guilt".

=> Read more!

BETHELEM – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that Israel has not done enough to curb the expansion of illegal West Bank settlements, backtracking from earlier comments praising Israeli restraint.

"The Israelis have responded to the call of the US, the Palestinians and the Arab world to stop settlement activity by expressing a willingness to restrain settlement activity," Clinton told reporters in Morocco, where she is to meet Arab foreign ministers.

"This offer falls far short of what our preference would be but if it is acted upon it will be an unprecedented restriction on settlements and would have a significant and meaningful effect on restraining their growth," Clinton also said, according to Reuters.

=> Read more!

Mon Nov 2, 2009 7:27am EST
By Andrew Quinn and Christian Lowe

MARRAKESH, Morocco (Reuters) - Arab foreign ministers on Monday are likely to tell Secretary of State Hillary Clinton they are disappointed she did not exert more pressure on Israel to freeze settlements, the head of the Arab League said.

Clinton was to begin sounding out Arab officials after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at which she endorsed Israel's view that settlement expansion in the West Bank should not be a bar to resuming negotiations.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said Arab states shared the Palestinian position that resuming negotiations was futile without a halt on settlement expansion.

"I am telling you that all of us, including Saudi Arabia, including Egypt, are deeply disappointed ... with the results, with the fact that Israel can get away with anything without any firm stand that this cannot be done," Moussa told reporters on Monday in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh, where Clinton is to meet Arab foreign ministers.

Asked if President Barack Obama's initiative to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process had failed, he said: "I am really afraid that we are about to see a failure."

=> Read more!

Karzai

Hamid Karzai, the incumbent president, has been declared the winner of Afghanistan's presidential election.

Afghanistan's election panel announced the decision after cancelling Saturday's planned runoff.

=> Read more!

The attack was close to the Pearl Continental Hotel and near Pakistan's army headquarters [AFP]

At least 30 people have been killed and 45 others wounded after a suicide bomber targeted workers queuing for their salaries outside a bank and hotel in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad.

The blast, the second bombing in less than a week, occurred on Monday close to Pakistan's army headquarters in the garrison city.

=> Read more!

GAZA, (PIC)-- Senior Hamas official Ismail Radwan stated Sunday that US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s remarks on the need to resume Palestinian negotiations with Israel without asking it in advance to halt settlement expansion dealt a heavy blow to Mahmoud Abbas and his negotiators.

Radwan added that this American stand proved the credibility of the position voiced many times by Hamas that these frivolous negotiations would lead to more Palestinian concessions, vulnerability and begging at American tables.

=> Read more!

From Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

The Israeli occupation authorities on Sunday freed Hatem Qafisha, a member of the Legislative council after a protracted administrative detention in Israeli concentration camps and dungeons.

The “administrative detention” is often referred to as open-ended incarceration without charge or trial and is primarily meant as a reprisal against Palestinian political activists.

Israel rounded up Qafisha and most other Islamist lawmakers in the mid-2006, giving them hefty prison sentences ranging from 35 months to 48 months for taking part in elections under the umbrella of a militant organization.

The Israeli occupation authorities arrested Qafisha numerous times the last of which occurred in November 2007. All in all, Qafisha spent more than 9 years in detention.

He was never accused of any concrete charges apart from generalized and concocted charges pertaining to resisting the Israeli occupation and identifying with a militant organization.

=> Read more!

Hillary Clinton [MaanImages]

Bethlehem - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday evening departed from her administration's insistence that Israel halt settlement growth, instead applauding its "restraint on the policy of settlements."

=> Read more!

At least 11 people have been killed and dozens more injured in four attacks across Iraq.

The deadliest attack killed five people and wounded dozens more in a market in the city of Hillah, in Babil province.

The cause of Sunday's explosion was a bomb attached to a cooler on the back of a bicycle, police said.

=> Read more!

The Palestinians have accused the US of destroying any chance of peace talks after backing Israel over the building of illegal settlements on occupied land.

It comes after the US called for talks to start as soon as possible and without preconditions, a climbdown on earlier demands for Israel to stop settlement building.

Nabil Abu Rdeineh, a spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said: "The negotiations are in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel's intransigence and America's back-pedaling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon."

=> Read more!