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By Eric Zuesse

On 30 December 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a cable (subsequently released to the public by wikileaks) to America’s Ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Pakistan, headlined, “Terrorist Finance: Action Request for Senior Level Engagement on Terrorism Finance.”

She told those Ambassadors to make clear to the given nation’s aristocrats that, under the new U.S. President, Barack Obama, there would no longer be any allowance for continuation of their donations to Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups that attack the United States.

It opened, “This is an action request cable,” meaning that the operations of the local U.S. Embassy in the given nation would be monitored for compliance with the Secretary of State’s “request.”

Clinton’s focus was:

on disrupting illicit finance activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the external financial/logistical support networks of terrorist groups that operate there, such as al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, and Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT). The IFTF’s [Interagency Illicit Finance Task Force] activities are a vital component of the USG’s [U.S. Government’s] Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af/Pak) strategy dedicated to disrupting illicit finance flows between the Gulf countries and Afghanistan and Pakistan. The IFTF has created a diplomatic engagement strategy to assist in the accomplishment of this objective. The strategy focuses on senior-level USG engagement with Gulf countries and Pakistan to communicate USG counterterrorism priorities and to generate the political will necessary to address the problem. The IFTF has drafted talking points for use by all USG officials in their interactions with Gulf and Pakistani interlocutors. These points focus on funding for terrorist groups threatening stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan and targeting coalition soldiers. These points have been cleared through the relevant Washington agencies.

Although the named concern was “groups threatening stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the U.S. Secretary of State was actually telling her agents (the Ambassadors) to warn the local aristocracy to stop funding the groups that pose a terrorist threat to the United States as well.

This cable initiated a process that has led to the world-affairs of today. However, as the cable itself made clear, it was itself the end-product of considerable discussions that had been begun earlier by Richard Holbrooke (whom Secretary Clinton confusingly misidentified in her cable as the “Special Representative to the President for Afghanistan and Pakistan (S/SRAP) Ambassador Richard Holbrooke,” but who was actually the Special Representative of the President, not to the President — an important difference).

Holbrooke was, in fact, a longtime friend and advisor to Hillary, and had been selected for his post jointly by Clinton and Obama, while those two were discussing the possibility of her becoming Obama’s Secretary of State, between the time when Obama was elected, and his inauguration. The arrangement that was settled upon was that Holbrooke would be the “Special Representative of the President” but would not be able to report directly to him; he would instead need to report through the Secretary of State. Hillary was doing Holbrooke a favor to suggest his name, but she would not give him the direct access to the President that a person of Holbrooke’s desire for power would probably much have preferred. Nonetheless, this appointment of Holbrooke got him back into the game, after his eight years in the wilderness, during the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Obama and Clinton had conceived of Holbrooke’s “Special Presidential” post as being intended to engineer the U.S. out of Afghanistan, without getting the Taliban too much into Afghanistan; and, the inclusion of Pakistan among the targets of this cable was for that particular reason: Pakistan has been and is the haven where the Taliban stay when they’re not in power in Afghanistan.

All of the other targets of this cable consisted of the aristocracies that fund not only the Taliban but Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups. Those are the royal families, and their friends, who run the Arabic oil kingdoms. All of them are fundamentalist Sunnis.

Holbrooke was concerned about those Arabic aristocrats because they provide the essential funding for the extremist, Salafist-Wahhabist, ideology, the extremist-Sunni ideology, which drives all of those jihadist groups, not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but throughout the world.

Whereas Shia Islam also has an extremist group, Hezbollah, that group’s focus is specifically against Israel, and it poses no security-threat against the United States, nor against Europe (except to the extent those are helping Israel to cruch Palestinians). All of the jihadism against the U.S. and Europe comes from extremist Sunni Islam, the Wahhabist (inside Saudi Arabia) and the Salafist (outside Saudi Arabia) clergy and their followers. In turn, those clergy receive their funding from the given nation’s royal family and its retainers or associated aristocratic clans. And, in their turn, those fundamentalist Sunni clergy preach that the family that owns their country is approved by God to own it. That’s the basic deal there, and an important part of it is for the aristocracy to fund not only those clerics but the jihadists they inspire to kill nonbelievers.

Holbrooke was aiming to cut off that funding.

He had the right background for this task.

Holbrooke was the vice chairman of Perseus LLC, a leading private equity firm. From February 2001 until July 2008, he was a member of the Board of Directors of American International Group (AIG, which was bailed out by U.S. taxpayers in 2008). He was a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, which is Wall Street’s watering-hole between higher-paid assignments, sort of the door that’s often referred to as “the revolving door” between Washington and Wall Street, and he also formerly served on the Advisory Board of the National Security Network. He was additionally a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Economic Club of New York. He was a member of the Trilateral Commission, and of the Bilderberg group, at the latter of which he was a featured presenter. Consequently, Holbrooke knew all of the people who knew all of the people who knew what needed to be done in order to strangulate the sources of funding to jihadist groups flowing into Afghanistan.

That’s what stood behind Secretary of State Clinton’s cable.

This cable reviewed the existing situation regarding each one of the governments, and it included separate instructions to each of the Embassies:

Concerning Saudi Arabia:

While the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) takes seriously the threat of terrorism within Saudi Arabia, it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority. …

Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide. …

Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT, and other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources. …

She noted that,

In 2002, the Saudi government promised to set up a Charities Committee that would address this issue, but has yet to do so.

She instructed the U.S. Ambassador there to:

encourage the Saudi government to take more steps to stem the flow of funds from Saudi Arabia-based sources to terrorists and extremists worldwide,

and to,

encourage the Saudi government to take more steps to stem the flow of funds from Saudi Arabia-based sources to terrorists and extremists worldwide.

Concerning Qatar:

Qatar’s overall level of CT [Counter Terrorist] cooperation with the U.S. is considered the worst in the region. Al-Qaida, the Taliban, UN-1267 listed LeT, and other terrorist groups exploit Qatar as a fundraising locale. Although Qatar’s security services have the capability to deal with direct threats and occasionally have put that capability to use, they have been hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals. …

However, given the current focus of U.S. engagement with the GOQ [Government of Qatar] on terror finance related to Hamas, it would be counter-productive for Embassy Doha to engage the GOQ at this time on disrupting financial support of terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. [No explanation of that was provided, but one interpretation of it might be: Protecting Israel from Hamas is more important to the Obama Administration than is “disrupting financial support of terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” If so, then Ambassador Holbrooke would seem not to have been assigned to a top-priority function, after all. That might have been a bitter pill for him to swallow.]

Concerning Kuwait:

Kuwait … has been less inclined to take action against Kuwait-based financiers and facilitators plotting attacks outside of Kuwait. Al-Qa’ida and other groups continue to exploit Kuwait both as a source of funds and as a key transit point. …

Clinton noted that though

Kuwait’s law prohibits efforts to undermine or attack Arab neighbors, … the GOK [Government of Kuwait] faces an uphill battle to implement comprehensive terror finance legislation due to a lack of parliamentary support.

In other words: Kuwait’s aristocracy refuse to donate to jihadist groups that attack themselves or the aristocracies of other “Arab” countries, but do contribute to jihadist groups which attack non-Arab countries. Furthermore, the official reason why they do is that the parliament, which consists of people who are elected by the public, supports jihadists who attack non-Arab countries. (Actually, when they support jihadists trying to take over Syria, they are violating that rule, but only because those Sunni jihadists would be replacing a Shiite leader, Bashar al-Assad, who is, to them, even worse: he’s a non-sectarian Shiite, whose political party, the Ba’athist Party, is committed to a separation between church-and-state.)

The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung headlined on 25 April 2014, “Kuwait, ally on Syria, is also the leading funder of extremist rebels.” She reported that, “Last month, the administration decided to go public with its concerns. … Such fundraising was not illegal in Kuwait until last year, when the government took advantage of an unrelated parliamentary boycott to push through a new law. Disappointingly, since then there has not been much vigor shown in implementing a ban on terrorist financing.”

DeYoung went on: “Unlike other monarchies and autocracies in the region, Kuwait’s politics are relatively open and combative. The executive branch, headed by Emir Sabah Ahmed al-Sabah, frequently clashes with a feisty parliament composed of warring political groups within both the Sunni majority and the Shiite minority. Unlike other Gulf countries, Kuwait allows broad freedom of association for its 2.7 million citizens, and Sabah’s rule is characterized more by political incorporation than confrontation.”

Secretary of State Clinton’s cable continued:

A particular point of difference between the U.S. and concerns Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS). … providing financial and material support to al-Qa’ida. … In Kuwait, RIHS enjoys broad public support as a charitable entity. The GOK to date has not taken significant action to address or shut down RIHS’s headquarters or its branches.

So: whereas the Sabah family had been saved by America’s 1991 war against Saddam Hussein’s invasion and attempted takeover there, they won’t crack down against Al Qaeda; they won’t stop the funding to Al Qaeda. They “took advantage of an unrelated parliamentary boycott to push through a new law,” but, after the boycott ended, don’t enforce the new law.

Concerning UAE:
UAE-based donors have provided financial support to a variety of terrorist groups, including al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups, including Hamas.

THE DEAL

President Obama’s first Administration concentrated on disengaging the United States from Afghanistan and from Iraq. Secretary of State Clinton’s cable was specifically motivated by the Afghan situation. Although Obama was able to kill almost all of the top leaders of Al Qaeda, including bin Laden, the United States remained militarily involved in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and even in Pakistan and many other countries, where American drones have killed lots of jihadists but also lots of non-militants. These drone-attacks killing civilians have increased the hostility that Muslims already feel toward the United States.

Why, then, has the jihadist situation against the U.S. been far less of a problem after Obama entered the White House than it had been prior to that? It’s certainly not because the hostility that many Muslims feel toward the U.S. has gone down; it has instead increased.

Whereas Muslim hostility against the U.S. has risen, the U.S. has become safer against Islamic terrorism. There is only one way that I can find to explain this puzzling fact:

Obama’s top international-affairs priority is actually different in his second Administration than it was in his first. In his second Administration, the top priority has been to war against Russia and its allies (which have included not only Putin but Russia’s allies: Bashar al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi, and Viktor Yanukovych), and this target is hated passionately also by Wahhabists-Salafists, ever since the days when the U.S. National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1979 told them, “your cause is right, and God is on your side.” Then, after Afghanistan, Russia dealt mercilessly with the breakaway jihadists in Chechnya; and Russia is dealing in the same way with the jihadists against the non-sectarian government in Syria. Russia’s leadership know that they will be hated by many Sunnis for killing and maiming so many of them in Syria; but, within Syria itself, the public, both Shiite and Sunni, know that the alternative to Assad is Shariah law, rule by jihadists, and even many Sunnis in Syria stand against that and for Assad.

The United States and the Sharia-law countries, the Wahhabist-Salafist nations, are working together in Obama’s second Administration, and the war against Russia and its allies has become co-led by both the Obama Administration and the Saud family, Saudi Arabia’s royal family, the chief financial backers of Al Qaeda.

International terrorism is a strategic foreign-policy tool, which, in almost all instances, is applied by fundamentalist Sunni Islamists, whose operations are financed by fundamentalist Sunni royal families of the Arabic nations. The royals (and their billionaire friends who receive state contracts from them) in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait, are the main financial backers of jihadists. Actually, those royal financial backers are terrorism’s controllers, and the jihadist fighters are merely their soldiers — soldiers who are well paid by their controllers, but who fight not only for the pay: they fight also because they share the same fundamentalist Sunni faith as their controllers do. Their clerics tell them to obey their royal masters, and it’s a ‘holy war.’

Any jihadist group that would target the United States during this time, would lose its funding. The royals would cease donating. In order for the royal families to stay in power in the Arabic countries, they need the approval of their clerics; donations to approved jihadists are essential in order for that ‘holy’ authorization of the royals to rule to continue; and so, the donations continue, and those clerics preach to the faithful that terrorism against the United States would be wrong at the present time, and they issue fatwas against Russia, and against Bashar al-Assad, etc., instead. Consequently, the jihadist groups are now focused against Russia and its allies. The jihadist groups are America’s allies again, much as they had been when the U.S. armed the mujahideen to oust Russia’s allies from Afghanistan.

Holbrooke’s strategy might have failed, but he had been allowed to execute it only within the narrow confines of getting the U.S. out of Afghanistan, not as a policy with broader scope. Once Obama became re-elected and switched to make Russia America’s top enemy, getting the U.S. out of Afghanistan was no longer being pressed as particularly important. And, all of the Arabic royals have followed through on their part of the limited bargain that they apparently struck with Obama: they avoid hitting the United States. They keep their armies of jihadists, but focus it only against Russia and its allies.

There is evidence that Obama was targeting against Russia even prior to his becoming President, but only laid the groundwork for the anti-Russia strike during his first Administration; and, then, during his re-election campaign, when he knew that at that time the American public didn’t yet share his hostility against Russia, Obama publicly derided Mitt Romney’s assertion, “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.” It was one of Obama’s most skillful tricks. He had fooled not only Russia, but Romney too, who apparently thought himself to be taking advantage of an Obama vulnerability, and who never imagined that Obama was just like Romney but much slicker. Obama benefited from both cons: both deceiving Medvedev, and deceiving Romney. And, now, Obama is quadrupling (by 2017) America’s military assets for invading Russia, all the while as he’s calling Russia the most aggressive country on the planet. His hatred of Russia appears to be visceral and perhaps outside the bounds of all reason. His eagerest supporters in this anti-Russia campaign are the Sauds and the other Arabic royals — the very same people who fund jihadists. They’re competing against Russia in the oil and gas markets, and the special prize to be won here is dominance in the world’s largest oil-and-gas market: Europe.

Nobody had figured out Obama prior to his becoming President. He behaved like a perfect CIA operative. Perhaps he even outdoes President George Herbert Walker Bush in that. America’s recent Presidents might not be good, but they’re incredibly slick. They run rings around the voters. Perhaps the days of democracy in America are over, especially after the 9/11 trick.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
18 February, 2016
Countercurrents.org

By Marianne Arens

Five years after the NATO war in Libya, a new war is being prepared against the North African country behind the backs of the world population. Like Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, East Ukraine and Syria, Libya will once again become the arena for war and destruction if the Western powers get their way.

In the past week, a new war in Libya has come dangerously closer. Last Sunday, a proposal for a new “national unity government” in Libya was presented in the Moroccan seaside resort Skhirat under the watchful eye of U.N. representatives.

The main task of the new U.N. puppet government will be to make an official appeal to the so-called “international community” and allow NATO to carry out a new military intervention in Libya under the pretext of a struggle against the Islamic State (ISIS). While negotiations were underway in Skhirat, British Royal Air Force military jets were already flying over the Libyan coast.

On Sunday evening, Fathi al-Majbari, head of the Libyan presidential commission and designated Libyan prime minister, presented the list of members of a new government in Tripoli with thirteen ministers and five state secretaries. He plans to present his agreement to the parliament in Tobruk.

The latest proposal has nothing to do with any kind of “will of the people.” Rather, it came about as a result of an ultimatum by the U.N. Although all nine members of the presidential council were handpicked by U.N. experts, two of them protested and refused to put their signatures on the proposal.

For more than a year, the imperialist powers, including the U.S., Germany, England, France and especially Italy have been working intensely on a new, so-called “robust mandate” for Libya. Such a “robust U.N. mandate” would, according to the U.N. charter, allow the international “air, sea or land armed forces” to carry out measures that are “required for the protection or restoration of world peace and international security.”

In reality, however, the aims of the U.N. in Libya have nothing to do with either the “restoration of world peace,” or the “war on terror,” but rather control of the country’s resources, above all oil and natural gas, as well as strategically important access to the entire African continent.

The NATO powers already reduced the country to rubble five years ago, killing approximately 30,000 people. Libyan head of state Muammar Gaddafi was brutally murdered. Before his assassination, Western intelligence agencies had already carried out a covert war against the Libyan government and systematically armed Islamist groups. This prepared the way for the current chaotic situation in Libya as well as the development of ISIS in North Africa. The resulting chaos is now being used as a pretext for a renewed military intervention in Libya.

Today, at least three governments and six different militias are struggling for power in Libya. The national congress in Tripoli replaced the so-called National Transitional Council (NTC) in the summer of 2012. Two years later, Islamists built the so-called government of national salvation in competition with the internationally recognized House of Representatives that had fled to Tobruk. In 2014, ISIS began to fight ever more fiercely for control of oil resources and developed its presence along the strategically important Mediterranean coast.

Since then, the U.N. has made a desperate effort to bring together the two competing governments in Tripoli and Tobruk and enforce support for a “unity government” that would sanction a further Western military intervention. This would give the Western powers a free hand to “protect” the oil refineries and the ports from the access of ISIS and to place them under their direct control.

“The last thing in the world you want,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Rome at the beginning of February, “is a false caliphate with access to billions of dollars of oil revenue.”

Libya is the country with the largest oil and natural gas reserves in Africa. At the moment, the imperialist powers are collaborating in opposing ISIS, but at the same time there is a struggle behind the scenes over which country and which large energy corporations will have the final say and receive access to the desired resources.

At the end of January, the Pentagon made it known that it was planning a new war in Libya. General Joseph Dunford Jr., head of the U.S. Marine Corps made it clear that U.S. President Barack Obama himself approved a new bombing campaign. Dunford declared that a “decisive military action against ISIL [ISIS]” is being planned and will take place “in conjunction with the political process” in Libya. “The president has made clear that we have the authority to use military force,” he added.

Next to the United States, Italy is playing a leading role in plans for a new campaign against Libya. Italy has a long and bloody colonial history in the regions of Cyrenaika and Tripolitania, which make up a large part of Libya today.

Italy has participated in the exploitation of Libyan natural resources since the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini with the energy corporation ENI (formerly Agip). It also played an active role in the NATO bombardment five years ago. Italian marines have been preparing for months to intervene militarily on the Libyan coast and to secure the offshore oil refineries and transfer ports.

A full year ago, at the beginning of February 2015, Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti publicly declared: “Italy is ready to lead a coalition of regional countries in Europe and North Africa in Libya in order to halt the advance of the kalifates, which have already come up to 350 kilometres from our coasts.” She wanted to prepare five thousand Italian soldiers for this purpose. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has insisted on a U.N. mandate in order to carry out a coordinated military intervention.

In May and June, 2015, the EU Military Committee (EUMC) laid down concrete conditions for the intervention. EU High Representative Federica Mogherini passed a resolution that planned the expansion of the existing EU mission in the Mediterranean and in Libyan territorial waters and on the Libyan mainland. Conditions were specified in which smuggling boats would be destroyed off the Libyan coast and both smugglers and ISIS terrorists could be pursued on Libyan territory. The EU worked out scenarios in this context for the securing of existing institutions such as airports and oil refineries and opened the way for extensive military, police and intelligence agency operations in Libya. All 28 member states agreed to the plan.

The NATO maneuver “Trident Juncture 2015,” which took place last fall with over sixty war ships and 36,000 soldiers in the entire Mediterranean also served to prepare for an intervention in North Africa. All of these scenarios depended up until now on the formation of the impending “national unity government.”

For weeks, the Italian media has been preparing the population for a new invasion of North Africa. “A military intervention in Libya comes ever closer – and this time Italy will take part,” reads the title of an article in VICE News. An article in La Repubblica on January 26, 2016 begins with the words: “at the moment it will not be discussed anymore whether one should invade Libya. The question that poses itself is only when and how. The militaries of the anti-IS coalition are already inspecting the terrain.”

The German elite has long been of the opinion that Germany’s nonparticipation in the NATO war in January 2011 was a mistake and that the geo-strategic and economic interests of Germany must be carried out above all by military means.

In January, Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen made it clear to the Bild newspaper that the German army would take part in the Libyan intervention this time. In answer to the question whether she would shortly send German soldiers to Libya, she said: “Libya is opposite the coast of Europe—separated only by the Mediterranean Sea. The most important thing now is to stabilise the country, and ensure that Libya gets a functioning government. The [new government] will rapidly require assistance to impose law and order in this massive state. And at the same time to combat Islamist terrorism, which is also threatening Libya.”

Then she emphasized: “Germany will not be able to escape the responsibility of making a contribution there.”

At the Munich Security Conference last weekend, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democratic Party/SPD) said: “In Germany and Europe we cannot be indifferent about what takes place a few hundred kilometres to the south of Italy, on the other bank of the Mediterranean. And we definitely cannot be indifferent, when IS terror militias gain a firm foothold on the borders of Europe.” It is now “the moment to take responsibility for Libya.”

19 February, 2016
WSWS.org

 

By Caesar D’Mello

Tourism is instinctively taken as a given by most as an undoubtedly good enterprise. So its advocates would consider that subjecting this popular activity to scrutiny is uncalled for. Tourism’s presence is worldwide, including strikingly in the Global South. With the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) calculating global ‘tourism arrivals’ – the total of individual units of travel undertaken – to be a billion plus per year now, and trending to 1.6 + billion annually by 2020, this sector is estimated to be equivalent to 8 – 10% of the world’s GDP, and is listed as one of the four largest industries on the planet, alongside oil and fuels, arms, and pharmaceuticals. Global South tourism that attracts millions is a major player in this modern ubiquitous phenomenon. The question may well be raised: how are South communities impacted by a tourism shaped within the philosophy of the free market?

Tourism is routinely posited for developing countries as a godsend deemed benign, non-polluting, green, relatively costless, and ‘easy’ means of poverty alleviation. It has become almost a sine qua non for most economic development models and plans – often moulded in the ethos of neo-liberalism – applied in most developing societies. The notion that tourism is an unmixed good is mostly unchallenged, and stays embedded in our consciousness and public discourse as can be intuited from how favourably it is portrayed in media coverage, television programmes, business deliberations, advice from economic planning bodies and multilateral institutions, and so on. Considered a low hanging fruit, tourism is a magnet for South governments who eagerly endorse expensive advertising strategies to entice more and more tourists to their shores. That tourism is a boon is the subtext to the plethora of slogans such as ‘Incredible India’, ‘Thailand: Land of Smiles’, and others, invading our screens and other media.

For countries in the Global North, as well as the well-off in developing countries, tourism in a South destination is usually focused on airlines, hotels, relaxation, and an enjoyable and fun time. As a sizeable chunk of the global tourism numbers head for destinations in Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Latin America, their perspectives are those of privileged travellers embarking with a sense of entitlement on a holiday to relax and unwind, sometimes alloyed with cursory ideas of altruism towards the local population. But their decision-making and plans has little reference to the real consequences of their tourism in the communities in whose midst it takes place. The significant social, economic and environmental damage brought about is glossed over.

Is mass commercial tourism a gift to the Global South?

Already from the seventies – when the tourism sector would have been equivalent to around 5 % of a much smaller global GDP than today’s – there was awareness of its unspoken negatives. The ‘Third World Tourism Workshop’, held in Manila in 1980, and which brought together South civil society, churches and other groups, asserted that shared experience showed that free enterprise, laissez faire tourism itself is a factor in the impoverishment of their communities.

A critique of tourism points to dimensions that apply at a deeper level of people’s lives, than the superficial the sector is happy with. Tourism is an industry that parades what it has not produced. The societies and cultures it features in its advertising have taken millennia. Landscapes, forests, beaches, sea and coastal vistas, hills, mountains and other natural offerings – ¬¬the stock- in – trade of contemporary tourism – are not just spectacles but the habitat of local people. Tourism is not a holiday for them as it alters the social, cultural and economic fabric of their society as essential resources such as land, water, energy, food, state revenue and other assets are diverted to serve the interests and expectations of tourists. Along the way, biodiversity – the subject of much of the ballyhoo on so-called ecotourism – is sacrificed, threatening the survival and sustainability of local life. Dependence on the ‘lazy income’ from tourism creates a false security that undermines traditional occupations including farming, fishing, skilled work, arts, handicrafts and other cottage industries, the mainstay of local people for generations. Some may be employed in the tourism industry, if fortunate to secure a job, while the others miss out. People’s movements for justice and dignity in some countries are sometimes restrained to protect tourism, whereas elsewhere it serves to mask the conflict in their lands, as currently in Palestine. Deteriorating social costs include the abuse of women, children and men for sex tourism, child labour and trafficking. Local employment is often touted as a raison d’etre of tourism, as was argued with this writer by an Asian cabinet minister that critiquing tourism hurt the livelihood of his people. Yet the employment generated is often low status, low paying, seasonal and insecure, with poor working conditions. Moreover, vis-à-vis anthropogenic climate change and global warming, tourism is an important source of carbon emissions with its massive use of fossil fuels-based energy, inter alia, for aviation, cruise shipping, hotels, utilities, maintenance and expansion of airports and the construction of new ones as tourism numbers explode.

As it is structured, mass tourism can be understood as another contemporary form of objectification, making a travesty of human dignity by commodifying human beings as objects and means for enjoyment. With the template of modern tourism crafted around personal gratification, its blueprint is drawn on the basis of the myths, demands, and the financial power of the tourist. In this sense, sex tourism becomes objectification when the other, including children, is consigned to the status of an object of pleasure for one in a superior economic position. Similarly, local people come to be regarded as instruments of service and entertainment, while earning a pittance with little work guarantee and satisfaction but much alienation. Advertising depicts, and markets people and whole nations with simplistic labels and slogans with little reference to their culture, history and values but which resonate with the exaggerated notions of tourists. Nature, too, becomes a mere object when it is peddled as scenery and ‘must see’ destinations. The fantasy, make-believe, and shallow notions of ‘bliss’ and ‘a taste of paradise’ that stoke its escapism have made South tourism evolve as a movement of the relatively few rich to the lands of the predominantly poor for the purpose of self-indulgence.

Some of the consequences and impact of tourism outlined above may be classified under Non-Economic Loss and Damage (NELD), but they incorporate the negative economic fallout inflicted on communities that are supposed to benefit from tourism. A form of tourism other than mass commercial tourism can preclude most of the NELD outcomes. With the right outlook and will, a transformed tourism such as Community Based Tourism (CBT) is possible. Given how it is configured, it is fair and environmentally sustainable tourism geared to creating greater economic benefits for the local communities, enhancing their quality of living, building local capacity through collaborative decision making, and fostering mutual understanding by enabling visitors to interact with local people to gain insight into their real situation and context. Owned, managed, and assessed by the community, CBT ensures a positive exchange between them and the tourists who are assisted to responsibly enjoy local habitats and wildlife, and celebrate traditional cultures, rituals and wisdom. It is a kind of tourism that enshrines values of sharing, and of human dignity. But it is shunned within the monolith of free market-orientated mass commercial tourism, and is left to poorly resourced communities to implement.

Tourism and Neo-Liberalism

Commercial tourism is generally formulated within the belief system of the supposedly ‘scientific’, ‘rational’ neo-liberal free market economics that has attracted a backlash in our times. Expounding his thinking, Milton Friedman wrote: ‘There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits’. Profit maximisation in a free market environment has been a destructive formula for society. Even though a neo-liberal ideology has brought some benefits, the evidence is that their economic and other costs outweigh them. Global free markets are now defined by economic inequality, and it is likely that the current economic stagnation will worsen. Yet the prescription is more of the same: deregulation. Governments, following such advice, are led to believe that a tourism (and other areas, too) fashioned in this light will lead to poverty alleviation. This is fanciful given that free market-ordained profit maximisation indubitably secures the enrichment of the elites but, while exploiting people and natural resources, has been unable to ensure equitable outcomes for the rest, thereby creating an underclass exacerbating the dysfunction in society.

The reach and dominance of mass tourism make it a pervasive facet of life in the Global South. A tourism, however, that typically benefits a few at the cost of an unjust and harmful imprint on people and nature requires serious investigation. Ethical and moral values necessitate a structural analysis of its paradigm within which it operates. The evaluation of tourism should not be dictated by those who spruik it, and profit from it, but by the victims of contemporary tourism. The human cost of this industry is not borne by the financiers and the privileged, but the vulnerable, including women, children, indigenous peoples, those dispossessed of their land, and the marginalised. The weight of the travel numbers, and how they affect in various interlocking ways should concern us. We cannot be satisfied with supposedly intuitive, shallow views of the goodness of tourism. Justice for the many disadvantaged by tourism demands structural solutions to their poverty. We cannot let governments and the industry off the hook when they justify mass tourism, one that rewards a minority, with the facile logic and rationale of ‘ half a loaf is better than none’!

Caesar D’Mello is a Consultant on development issues, following his roles as director of the Ecumenical Coalition On Tourism that was based in Thailand, and of Christian World Service (Australia), an international aid and development agency. He is the lead editor of ‘Deconstructing Tourism: Who Benefits? A Theological Reading from the Global South’. He can be contacted at caesarmdm@gmail.com

17 February 2016

 

By Stephen Kinzer

COVERAGE OF the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.

For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it.

This month, people in Aleppo have finally seen glimmers of hope. The Syrian army and its allies have been pushing militants out of the city. Last week they reclaimed the main power plant. Regular electricity may soon be restored. The militants’ hold on the city could be ending.

Militants, true to form, are wreaking havoc as they are pushed out of the city by Russian and Syrian Army forces. “Turkish-Saudi backed ‘moderate rebels’ showered the residential neighborhoods of Aleppo with unguided rockets and gas jars,” one Aleppo resident wrote on social media. The Beirut-based analyst Marwa Osma asked, “The Syrian Arab Army, which is led by President Bashar Assad, is the only force on the ground, along with their allies, who are fighting ISIS — so you want to weaken the only system that is fighting ISIS?”

This does not fit with Washington’s narrative. As a result, much of the American press is reporting the opposite of what is actually happening. Many news reports suggest that Aleppo has been a “liberated zone” for three years but is now being pulled back into misery.

On Syria: Thank you, Russia!

The US would be more secure if it had followed Russia’s foreign policy lead in the past.
The great dumbing-down of US foreign policy
Does peace in Syria stand a chance?
Putin should have listened to Obama about Syria
In Syria, the US has nothing but bad options

Americans are being told that the virtuous course in Syria is to fight the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian partners. We are supposed to hope that a righteous coalition of Americans, Turks, Saudis, Kurds, and the “moderate opposition” will win.

This is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it. We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media.

Under intense financial pressure, most American newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks have drastically reduced their corps of foreign correspondents. Much important news about the world now comes from reporters based in Washington. In that environment, access and credibility depend on acceptance of official paradigms. Reporters who cover Syria check with the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and think tank “experts.” After a spin on that soiled carousel, they feel they have covered all sides of the story. This form of stenography produces the pabulum that passes for news about Syria.

Astonishingly brave correspondents in the war zone, including Americans, seek to counteract Washington-based reporting. At great risk to their own safety, these reporters are pushing to find the truth about the Syrian war. Their reporting often illuminates the darkness of groupthink. Yet for many consumers of news, their voices are lost in the cacophony. Reporting from the ground is often overwhelmed by the Washington consensus.

Washington-based reporters tell us that one potent force in Syria, al-Nusra, is made up of “rebels” or “moderates,” not that it is the local al-Qaeda franchise. Saudi Arabia is portrayed as aiding freedom fighters when in fact it is a prime sponsor of ISIS. Turkey has for years been running a “rat line” for foreign fighters wanting to join terror groups in Syria, but because the United States wants to stay on Turkey’s good side, we hear little about it. Nor are we often reminded that although we want to support the secular and battle-hardened Kurds, Turkey wants to kill them. Everything Russia and Iran do in Syria is described as negative and destabilizing, simply because it is they who are doing it — and because that is the official line in Washington.

Inevitably, this kind of disinformation has bled into the American presidential campaign. At the recent debate in Milwaukee, Hillary Clinton claimed that United Nations peace efforts in Syria were based on “an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva.” The precise opposite is true. In 2012 Secretary of State Clinton joined Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel in a successful effort to kill Kofi Annan’s UN peace plan because it would have accommodated Iran and kept Assad in power, at least temporarily. No one on the Milwaukee stage knew enough to challenge her.

Politicians may be forgiven for distorting their past actions. Governments may also be excused for promoting whatever narrative they believe best suits them. Journalism, however, is supposed to remain apart from the power elite and its inbred mendacity. In this crisis it has failed miserably.

Americans are said to be ignorant of the world. We are, but so are people in other countries. If people in Bhutan or Bolivia misunderstand Syria, however, that has no real effect. Our ignorance is more dangerous, because we act on it. The United States has the power to decree the death of nations. It can do so with popular support because many Americans — and many journalists — are content with the official story. In Syria, it is: “Fight Assad, Russia, and Iran! Join with our Turkish, Saudi, and Kurdish friends to support peace!” This is appallingly distant from reality. It is also likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death.

Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Follow him on Twitter @stephenkinzer.

18 February 2016

 

By Jeffrey Sachs

In the Milwaukee debate, Hillary Clinton took pride in her role in a recent UN Security Council resolution on a Syrian ceasefire:

But I would add this. You know, the Security Council finally got around to adopting a resolution. At the core of that resolution is an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva, which set forth a cease-fire and moving toward a political resolution, trying to bring the parties at stake in Syria together.

This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton unfit to be President. Clinton’s role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.

In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire being negotiated by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan. It was US intransigence – Clinton’s intransigence – that led to the failure of Annan’s peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among diplomats. Despite Clinton’s insinuation in the Milwaukee debate, there was (of course) no 2012 ceasefire, only escalating carnage. Clinton bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead.

As every knowledgeable observer understands, the Syrian War is not mostly about Bashar al-Assad, or even about Syria itself. It is mostly a proxy war, about Iran. And the bloodbath is doubly tragic and misguided for that reason.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading Sunni powers in the Middle East, view Iran, the leading Shia power, as a regional rival for power and influence. Right-wing Israelis view Iran as an implacable foe that controls Hezbollah, a Shi’a militant group operating in Lebanon, a border state of Israel. Thus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel have all clamored to remove Iran’s influence in Syria.

This idea is incredibly naïve. Iran has been around as a regional power for a long time–in fact, for about 2,700 years. And Shia Islam is not going away. There is no way, and no reason, to “defeat” Iran. The regional powers need to forge a geopolitical equilibrium that recognizes the mutual and balancing roles of the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and Iran. And Israeli right-wingers are naïve, and deeply ignorant of history, to regard Iran as their implacable foe, especially when that mistaken view pushes Israel to side with Sunni jihadists.

Yet Clinton did not pursue that route. Instead she joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and right-wing Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat, Iran. In 2010, she supported secret negotiations between Israel and Syria to attempt to wrest Syria from Iran’s influence. Those talks failed. Then the CIA and Clinton pressed successfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad.

When the unrest of the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the CIA and the anti-Iran front of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey saw an opportunity to topple Assad quickly and thereby to gain a geopolitical victory. Clinton became the leading proponent of the CIA-led effort at Syrian regime change.

In early 2011, Turkey and Saudi Arabia leveraged local protests against Assad to try to foment conditions for his ouster. By the spring of 2011, the CIA and the US allies were organizing an armed insurrection against the regime. On August 18, 2011, the US Government made public its position: “Assad must go.”

Since then and until the recent fragile UN Security Council accord, the US has refused to agree to any ceasefire unless Assad is first deposed. The US policy–under Clinton and until recently–has been: regime change first, ceasefire after. After all, it’s only Syrians who are dying. Annan’s peace efforts were sunk by the United States’ unbending insistence that U.S.-led regime change must precede or at least accompany a ceasefire. As the Nation editors put it in August 2012:

The US demand that Assad be removed and sanctions be imposed before negotiations could seriously begin, along with the refusal to include Iran in the process, doomed [Annan’s] mission.

Clinton has been much more than a bit player in the Syrian crisis. Her diplomat Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was killed as he was running a CIA operation to ship Libyan heavy weapons to Syria. Clinton herself took the lead role in organizing the so-called “Friends of Syria” to back the CIA-led insurgency.

The U.S. policy was a massive, horrific failure. Assad did not go, and was not defeated. Russia came to his support. Iran came to his support. The mercenaries sent in to overthrow him were themselves radical jihadists with their own agendas. The chaos opened the way for the Islamic State, building on disaffected Iraqi Army leaders (deposed by the US in 2003), on captured U.S. weaponry, and on the considerable backing by Saudi funds. If the truth were fully known, the multiple scandals involved would surely rival Watergate in shaking the foundations of the US establishment.

The hubris of the United States in this approach seems to know no bounds. The tactic of CIA-led regime change is so deeply enmeshed as a “normal” instrument of U.S. foreign policy that it is hardly noticed by the U.S. public or media. Overthrowing another government is against the U.N. charter and international law. But what are such niceties among friends?

This instrument of U.S. foreign policy has not only been in stark violation of international law but has also been a massive and repeated failure. Rather than a single, quick, and decisive coup d’état resolving a US foreign policy problem, each CIA-led regime change has been, almost inevitably, a prelude to a bloodbath. How could it be otherwise? Other societies don’t like their countries to be manipulated by U.S. covert operations.

Removing a leader, even if done “successfully,” doesn’t solve any underlying geopolitical problems, much less ecological, social, or economic ones. A coup d’etat invites a civil war, the kind that now wracks Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. It invites a hostile international response, such as Russia’s backing of its Syrian ally in the face of the CIA-led operations. The record of misery caused by covert CIA operations literally fills volumes at this point. What surprise, then, the Clinton acknowledges Henry Kissinger as a mentor and guide?

And where is the establishment media in this debacle? The New York Times finally covered a bit of this story last month in describing the CIA-Saudi connection, in which Saudi funds are used to pay for CIA operations in order to make an end-run around Congress and the American people. The story ran once and was dropped. Yet the Saudi funding of CIA operations is the same basic tactic used by Ronald Reagan and Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s (with Iranian arms sales used to fund CIA-led covert operations in Central America without consent or oversight by the American people).

Clinton herself has never shown the least reservation or scruples in deploying this instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Her record of avid support for US-led regime change includes (but is not limited to) the US bombing of Belgrade in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Iraq War in 2003, the Honduran coup in 2009, the killing of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and the CIA-coordinated insurrection against Assad from 2011 until today.

It takes great presidential leadership to resist CIA misadventures. Presidents get along by going along with arms contractors, generals, and CIA operatives. They thereby also protect themselves from political attack by hardline right-wingers. They succeed by exulting in U.S. military might, not restraining it. Many historians believe that JFK was assassinated as a result of his peace overtures to the Soviet Union, overture he made against the objections of hardline rightwing opposition in the CIA and other parts of the U.S. government.

Hillary Clinton has never shown an iota of bravery, or even of comprehension, in facing down the CIA. She has been the CIA’s relentless supporter, and has exulted in showing her toughness by supporting every one of its misguided operations. The failures, of course, are relentlessly hidden from view. Clinton is a danger to global peace. She has much to answer for regarding the disaster in Syria.

14 February 2016

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

The Syrian military’s resilience should not be dismissed—nor should its support.

By Kamal Alam

Four years ago, Turkey’s then prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that within in a few weeks he would be praying in Damascus’s Umayyad Mosque, as Assad was about to fall. Similarly, Israel’s most decorated soldier, former Defense Minister Ehud Barak, predicted that Assad and his military would be toppled within weeks. That was at the beginning of 2012, when there were no Iranian soldiers on the ground or Russian planes in the skies.

As another round of Geneva peace talks collapses and the world wonders what’s next for Syria, it is time to begin with the warnings of Henry Kissinger and Zbignew Brzezinski. Kissinger and Brzezinski, the most seasoned and influential U.S. policymakers on the Middle East since World War II, havegone against popular opinion and stated that President Bashar al-Assad hasmore support than all the opposition groups combined.

It is no secret that the Saudis and Qataris, with full U.S. support, have tried to bribe some of Assad’s innermost circles to defect. The all-important professional military cadre of the Syrian Arab Army, however, has remained thoroughly loyal.

The Syrian Arab Army was mostly a conscript force with only about eighty thousand professionals in its ranks. At the start of the war, much was made of the “defections” of thousands of officers, but these were mere conscripts who never wanted to be in the army in the first place, and would also have done anything to escape conscription in peacetime. The professional ranks, meanwhile, are still very strong and religiously pluralistic. When the Syrian opposition talks about a future pluralistic Syria, they fail to realize that while they may theoretically be pluralists in Geneva, Washington and Vienna, their representatives on the ground are allied with the most sectarian terrorist groups the Middle East has ever seen.

The Syrian Arab Army has held its own for more than five years. Its numbers might have been depleted, as is normal for any wartime military, but a close glance at its military reveals that its core, perhaps unexpectedly to many, is Sunni. The current minister of defense, Fahd al-Freij, is one of the most decorated officers in Syrian military history and hails from the Sunni heartland of Hama. The two most powerful intelligence chiefs, Ali Mamlouk and Mohammad Dib Zaitoun, have remained loyal to the Syrian government—and are both Sunnis from influential families. The now-dead and dreaded strongman of Syrian intelligence, Rustom Ghazaleh, who ruled Lebanon with an iron fist, was a Sunni, and the head of the investigative branch of the political directorate, Mahmoud al-Khattib, is from an old Damascene Sunni family. Major General Ramadan Mahmoud Ramadan, commander of the Thirty-Fifth Special Forces Regiment, which is tasked with the protection of western Damascus, is another high-ranking Sunni, as is Brigadier G
eneral Jihad Mohamed Sultan, the commander of the Sixty-Fifth Brigade that guards Latakia.

The history of the Syrian Army that Hafez al-Assad built is instructive today. As president, the elder Assad brought senior members of the Syrian Air Force into the military high command. Naji Jamil (another Sunni) served as air force chief from 1970 to 1978 and was promoted to the General Staff committee overseeing defenses on the Iraqi border. Another air force commander was Muhammad al-Khuli, who until 1993 held coveted logistical positions between Damascus and Lebanon. Other prominent officers above the rank of Brigadier in military and civil defense positions post-2000 were Sunnis, including Rustom Ghazaleh, Hazem al Khadra and Deeb Zaytoun. Since 1973, the strategic tank battalions of the Seventieth Armored Brigade, stationed near al-Kiswah near Damascus, have had rank-and-file Alawis under the command of Sunni officers. As well, two of the most decorated officers who rose to be Chief of General Staff under Bashar al-Assad were Sunnis: Hassan Turkmani and Hikmat Shehabi.

From the 1970s until the 1990s, the Syrian Arab Army had a mandate to stabilize Lebanon. During these years, it worked to outmaneuver both the IDF and the U.S. Marines by supporting various proxies in Lebanon. In post-Saddam Iraq, the Americans could never understand which elements of both the Sunni and Shia insurgencies were supported by Syrian military intelligence, much of this owing to the stealth with which the Syrian Army controlled various Iraqi agents dating back to the Lebanese civil war.

The Syrian Arab Army is also the only Arab army with multiple Christians serving as generals. The most famous of these was Daoud Rajha, the Greek Orthodox army chief of staff. The two most influential Lebanese Christian leaders, now on the verge of becoming the next president of Lebanon, are Michel Aoun and Suleiman Franjieh, who are also allies of the Syrian Arab Army and President Assad. Deir al-Zour is an entirely Sunni city which has held out against ISIS encirclement for two years—and is commanded by the Druze General Issam Zahreddine.

The fact remains: The moderate Syrian opposition only exists in fancy suits in Western hotel lobbies. It has little military backing on the ground. If you want to ask why Assad is still the president of Syria, the answer is not simply Russia or Iran, but the fact that his army remains resilient and pluralistic, representing a Syria in which religion alone does not determine who rises to the top. The military also represent as challenge against the spread of terrorism, which is why three of the top British generals of the last five years have openly called for the recognition that the Syrian Arab Army, loyal to President Assad, is the only force capable of defeating ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Levant.

Kamal Alam is a Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London and a Syrian Military Analyst advising several Damascus-based family offices.

12 February 2016

By Vacy Vlazna

To be an effective activist it is important for me to understand the nature of human evil. In that endeavour, I was drawn to read Hannah Arendt’s own discoveries about what she coined, ‘the banality of evil’ in her book, ’Eichmann in Jerusalem’ , reporting on the zionist trial of Adolph Eichmann who oversaw the deportation of Jews to ghettoes and concentration camps.

Arendt concluded that unspeakable evil is not committed by human monsters but by normal people in a systematic unthinking manner devoid of moral qualms and codes.

‘The banality of evil’ i.e. bureaucratic psychopathy is rendered acceptable through what Albert Bandura terms, moral disengagement achieved by perverse moral justification, minimising/ hiding cruelty and dehumanising and blaming the victims.

The concentration and repetition of this faux information on the masses leads to the normalisation of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, torture, extrajudicial killings and genocide.

Today, moral disengagement is the corrupted norm of most governments, whether democratic or totalitarian, and the zionist government has, ironically, out-mastered the Nazi mechanisms of moral disengagement or in a word, Hasbara.

Here’s a small insight into how it works; take MK Yair Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid party that is in coalition with Netanyahu’s Likud party. Lapid recently spruiked to 30 EU ambassadors,

“We will never be like them [Palestinians], because Israel’s power comes first of all from its morality. The difference between us and our enemies is our values. That is why we can ask the world: Why are you continuing to embrace those who support vile murderers?”

Of course any intelligent person knows that in the laying waste of the rights of indigenous people of Palestine, zionist ‘values’ are void of morality: the zionist values of imprisoning and torturing children, of unjustified mass incarcerations, the zionist value of apartheid, of demolishing homes, of stealing Palestinian land, of testing high-tech weaponry on Palestinian families trapped in the zionist siege of Gaza.

Then there are the zionist values of immolating a teenager and a sleeping Palestinian family, of destroying Palestinian agriculture and livelihoods, of the extrajudicial killings of youth throwing stones and carrying invisible knives, of deliberately blocking ambulances and paramedics to treat the wounded, of calculatedly bringing hunger striking Palestinian prisoners, such as Mohammed Al-Qiq, to the brink of death before granting, if at all, a release from imprisonment for crimes never committed.

According to non-practising Israeli, Dr Marcelo Svirsky, moral disengagement is rife among the occupiers,

“The majority of Jewish-Israelis do not critically reflect on their lasting commitment to their collective beliefs, ideas and practices and hence they do not take notice that these are vehicles of privilege and oppression. In other words, most Jewish-Israelis choose, unconsciously or not, to live in peace with the misery they cause.” After Israel:Towards Cultural Transformation

And when Palestinians show true values of sumoud – steadfast and courageous resistance to zionist ‘values’ and violence, they are falsely labelled ‘terrorists’ or ‘vile murderers’.

On reading Arendt, I wonder if the zionist deprecation of Palestinian resistance is rooted in deep shame. Arendt points out that the Eichmann trial revealed the shocking extent of the collaboration of Jewish leaders (Judenräte) with Eichmann and the Nazis and their knowingly withholding from fellow Jews the horrific consequences of deportation to the concentration camps.

“What was new and especially provocative in Arendt’s account was the insistence on challenging Jewish communal leadership. What might they have done differently? Her answers, offered only tentatively, derived from her view of the function of truth in politics. Should the Judenräte have told the Jews the truth, when they knew it, about where they were being deported to? How many might have been able to save themselves somehow had they known the truth? Why were the Judenräe notables so disciplined and servile to authority?”

“Insofar as they had moral authority, why didn’t they advise the Jews to run for their lives or try to go underground? If there had been no Jewish organizations at all and no Judenräte, Arendt suggested, the deportation machine could not have run as smoothly as it did.”

“If the Judenräte had not been so “Germanically” disciplined, if they hadn’t compiled detailed lists of potential deportees, if they hadn’t supplied the Nazis with these lists, if they had refrained from collecting the keys and detailed inventories of vacated apartments for the Nazis to hand over to “Aryans,” if they hadn’t summoned the deportees to show up on a certain day, at a certain hour, at a certain railway station with provisions for a three- or four-day journey, would fewer people have died? Others had asked such questions before. But Arendt went further, implying that Jewish leaders had inadvertently allowed themselves to fall into a fiendish trap and become part of the system of victimization.”

In effect, the Judenräte’s, i.e. mainly zionist Jews, collaboration with the Nazis contributed to Jewish dearths and crushed resistance like the undermining the Jewish boycott in the USA of Nazi products which was undermined by,

“There existed in those first years a mutually highly satisfactory agreement between the Nazi authorities and the Jewish Agency for Palestine—a Ha’avarah, or Transfer Agreement, which provided that an emigrant to Palestine could transfer his money there in German goods and exchange them for pounds upon arrival. It was soon the only legal way for a Jew to take his money with him (the alternative then being the establishment of a blocked account, which could be liquidated abroad only at a loss of between fifty and ninety-five per cent). The result was that in the thirties, when American Jewry took great pains to organize a boycott of German merchandise, Palestine, of all places, was swamped with all kinds of goods “made in Germany.””

Nevertheless Jews resisted the Nazi scourge by way of armed Jewish partisan groups, uprisings in the Treblinka and Sobibor camps, rebellions in ghettoes including the famous Warsaw Ghetto ( wherein, shock-horror, food was smuggled through underground tunnels! ),

“The glory of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and the heroism of the few others who fought back lay precisely in their having refused the comparatively easy death the Nazis offered them—before the firing squad or in the gas chamber. And the witnesses in Jerusalem who testified to resistance and rebellion, to “the small place [it had] in the history of the holocaust,” confirmed once more the fact that only the very young had been capable of taking “the decision that we cannot go and be slaughtered like sheep. “

The glorious resistance of the young calls to mind the present Palestinian youth Intifada against 68 years of zionist brutality at the hands of holocaust survivors and worshippers and against the 21 years of Palestinian Authority/PLO collaboration ( like the Judenräte) with the zionists that has facilitated the growth of zionist colonial expansion and the crushing of Palestinian resistance.

Undaunted, Palestinian resistance is in the breath of daily life under the zionist jackboot; going to school is an act of resistance where children are harassed by the savagery of the deviant zionist colonists who prey on them like wild jackals. These deviants reflect the pathological sickness that is zionism.

Resistance illuminates the dignified ultimatum of Palestinian hunger-striking prisoners, al-Issawi, Adnan and Al-Qiq, for freedom or death, resistance is heard in the dangerous digging of life-blood tunnels, resistance raises money by impoverished Palestinians to rebuild the demolished homes of martyrs, it is smelt in the baking of bread and felt in the shaking of olives from ancient trees, in the indefatigable care and courage by doctors, paramedics and rescuers during the 51 day zionist onslaught of Gaza and in the soothing of terrified children traumatised by drones, bombs and ubiquitous death.

There was a tremendous uplift of pride for the young Gazan men who valiantly resisted the military might of Operation Protective Edge in 2014. That spirit is being acted on by Palestinian youth today while the leaders squander Palestinian dignity and the crucial strategy of unity by either collaborating with the zionists or crawling on their knees to Arab states that don’t give a damn about Palestine.

So how can we resist the banality of evil to protect the rights of Palestinians and further peace in Palestine for all?

Zionist values and the hasbara machine dread empathy. Empathy engages with suffering and survivors of Nazi atrocities and their descendants have the privileged capacity to realise there is no difference between suffering under the Nazi or the zionist jackboot – both of which made and make strides because the machinations of moral disengagement duped the German people back then, just as the Jewish people are duped today along with British, Canadian, American, European, Australian citizens whose governments grant impunity to the zionist scourge in Palestine.

Empathy is power. Empathy’s identification and connection with the Other evokes profound understanding of the interdependence of humanity which transforms moral concern into actions, like BDS, that, individually and communally, can defeat moral disengagement and the banality of evil.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.

11 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org

By Isra Saleh el-Namey

Umaimah Zamalat assumed her papers were in order.

The 52-year-old woman from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip had already undergone one radiation session at the Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem for her aggressive breast cancer.

But when she got to the Erez checkpoint at the boundary between Gaza and Israel, ready to go for a second treatment, she was stopped.

“My permit allows me to travel to Jerusalem until I finish four [radiation therapy] sessions. But when I tried to cross Erez for my second session they told me I am no longer allowed,” Zamalat told The Electronic Intifada.

The Israeli military authorities at Erez gave no explanation when they turned her back. Patients from Gaza are not allowed to stay in Jerusalem or Israeli hospitals for the duration of their treatment and must return between sessions. This leaves them at risk of sudden, unexplained and apparently inexplicable permit revocations.

That, in turn, has inevitable consequences on patients’ health.

“I am extremely worried. Doctors told me that my case is very sensitive to delays,” Zamalat said.

Little hope

Zamalat has reapplied to get another permit to complete her radiation therapy. But she holds out very little hope.

“Our problem is not just being cancer patients. It is with the bitterness of an occupation that we feel in every tiny detail of our lives, even in our illnesses,” she said.

Health care professionals in Gaza have documented a disturbing rise in incidences of cancer in the impoverished strip of land.

Dr. Mohammed Abu Shaban is a Palestinian oncologist who works at different hospitals in Gaza. Over the last two years, he said, citing statistics from the Gaza ministry of health, the number of cancer diagnoses reached some 14,600.

“Every month, we see at least 120 new cancer patients in Gaza,” the doctor told The Electronic Intifada.

Abu Shaban alleged a direct relationship between the increase in the number of patients with cancer and the three wars launched on Gaza over the last eight years. Doctors in Gaza and foreign health professionals have long suspected that Israel has used new forms of weaponry over Gaza, including Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME) or ammunition laced with radioactive material.

“Israeli forces have used illegal weapons with lethal radioactive materials that transfer to the soil,” Abu Shaban said. “People who live next to areas that have been shelled risk being exposed to these materials. That enhances the risk of cancer for these people.”

Leukemia is the most pervasive cancer in Gaza, according to the doctor. Abu Shaban estimates that some 25 percent of cancer-related deaths among children are due to the condition.

In addition to the difficulty of gaining access to treatment is the cost. With poverty and unemployment rates both near 40 percent, Palestinians in Gaza rely on government assistance.

“People cannot afford the exorbitant prices of health care services,” Abu Shaban said. “We are in acute need of more funds to cover extra expenses for our patients.”

Rafah not an option

Amina Ahmad’s condition dramatically deteriorated eight months ago. Diagnosed with lung cancer in 2012, the 46-year-old from Gaza City applied for referral to one of the specialized hospitals in the West Bank or inside Israel six months ago.

But she needs the permit.

“I have my medical reports and all the necessary papers to enable me to move to the West Bank as an urgent humanitarian case. But I have not gotten Israeli approval yet,” Ahmad said.

A delay in obtaining a permit to enter Israel can have dire consequences. If appointments are missed, patients will have to go through the whole application process again. “We are left to die in silence,” Ahmad said.

The situation would be different if the Rafah crossing to Egypt was open, she said. Egypt offers care that Gaza hospitals cannot and, if nothing else, she said, at least she would not be hostage to “the whims of the Israelis.” But Egypt has kept the crossing closed, with only a few dozen days of partial opening, since late 2014.

The siege Israel has imposed on Gaza since 2007 has depleted a health care system that was already under pressure from poverty, overcrowding and rapid population growth.

Under the blockade, said Dr. Ahmed El Shorafa, head of the tumor clinic at the European Hospital in Rafah, the situation can only be described as “catastrophic.”

Gaza suffers a serious shortage of medicine, medical supplies and equipment as well as trained and specialized personnel. “We use the same machines and the same protocols as we did 14 years ago. We have not been able to develop anything,” El Shorafa said.

As a direct result, Gaza’s hospitals are unable to offer radiation or chemotherapy treatments — hence the need for the many referrals to West Bank or Israeli hospitals.

Fear and anger

“What we have observed in the last five years is that the annual referrals of Gaza patients have only risen by only 1.3 percent despite a significant increase in the number of patients,” El Shorafa said. “The very restricted movement has reduced the options open to Gaza patients for specialized care.”

In the first 10 months of 2015, the administrative arm of the Israeli military occupation administration — the body known as the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT — denied 1,035 Palestinians in Gaza permission to exit so that they could receive necessary medical treatment in the occupied West Bank, Israel or Jordan.

This represents almost twice as many denials as were issued the entire previous year.

Six-year-old Sahar Abd al-Aal was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She is currently undergoing radiation treatment at the al-Rantisi pediatric hospital in Gaza City. Hafiza, her mother, waited anxiously for her doctors’ verdict on treatment going forward.

“My daughter has to undergo the last session before doctors assess her case and whether she will need to be transferred,” Hafiza said.

“I am afraid that my daughter will have to be transferred and the Israelis will not allow us,” she added.

In January, dozens of female patients staged a protest to voice their anger over the draconian restrictions, which Israel threatens to tighten, on patient movement.

One of the protesters, Rawan Lubad, has lived with breast cancer for 10 years. The 61-year-old is in constant pain. She has twice applied to get a permit for referral. She was twice denied.

“I am dying here. I feel that I have been sentenced to death,” she said.

Isra Saleh el-Namey is a journalist from Gaza.

11 February, 2016
The Electronic Intifada

By Andrea Germanos

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed a plan to encircle his entire country with a fence as protection against “wild beasts,” referring to those in neighboring Arab states.

He made the comments Tuesday while visiting an 18-mile stretch of fence already under construction on the Israel-Jordan border.

“At the end of the day, in the State of Israel as I see it, there will be a fence like this one surrounding its entirety,” he said, according to a statement on the Prime Minister’s website.

“They tell me: Is this what you want to do, defend the villa? The answer is yes. What, are we going to surround the entire State of Israel with a fence, a barrier? The answer is yes, unequivocally. In the environment in which we live we must defend ourselves from the wild beasts.”

He added that it would be a multi-year project, multi-million dollar project.

“Perhaps the most notorious of Israel’s walls built for ‘security purposes’ runs within the occupied West Bank,” as Al Jazeera reports. It was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004.

Haaretz columnist Asher Schechter argues that “Israel is already not even trying to function like a democracy,” and writes that Netanyahu’s statement is “a display of everything wrong with Israel under his leadership. Israel circa 2016 is fearful, hateful, and paranoid, self-involved to a degree even Donald Trump would find distasteful, and soon it might have big walls surrounding it from every which way, quarantining it, and a political system where only Jews need apply.

On Wednesday Netanyahu also spoke to the Israeli parliament and referred to the existing fence along the border with Egypt, saying that it prevented Israel from being “overrun” with migrants.

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11 February, 2016
Commondreams.org

By Uri Avnery

IT IS not easy to be an Arab in Israel.

It is not easy to be a woman in Arab society.

It is not easy to be an Arab in Israeli politics.

And even less easy to be an Arab woman in the Knesset.

Haneen Zuabi is all these together. Perhaps because of this she wears a perpetual smile – the smile of somebody who has won, after all.

It can be very annoying, this smile. Annoying and provocative.

These days, Zuabi has achieved something no Arab woman in Israel ever dreamed of: the whole country is talking about her. Not for an hour, nor for a day, but for weeks on end.

The vast majority of Jewish Israelis hate her guts. Zuabi’s smile is triumphant.

HANEEN BELONGS to a large Hamula (extended family) that dominates several villages near Nazareth. Two Zuabis were members of the Knesset in its early days – one was a vassal of the (then) ruling Zionist Labor Party, the other a member of the left-wing Zionist Mapam party. It was he who coined the memorable phrase: “My country is at war with my people!”

Haneen Zuabi is a member of the Balad (“homeland”) party, an Arab nationalist party founded by Azmi Bishara, an Israeli-Palestinian intellectual. Bishara was an admirer of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser and his pan-Arab vision. When the Shin-Bet was about to arrest him on some pretext or other, he fled the country, asserting that because of a severe kidney disease, prison would endanger his life.

He left behind a three-man Knesset faction, one of three Arab factions of similar size. All of them were a constant irritation to their Jewish colleagues, so they invented a remedy. A new law was enacted denying Knesset membership to any party that did not gain enough votes for a four-member faction. (A larger minimum could have endangered the Orthodox Jewish party.)

The logic was simple: the three small Arab factions hated each other’s guts. One was Communist (with one Jewish member), one Islamist and one nationalist (Balad).

But lo and behold, under threat of annihilation even Arabs can unite. They formed a “Joint List” (“Joint”, not “United”) and together gained 13 seats – three more than before. They are now the third largest faction in the Knesset, right after Likud and Labor, an eyesore to many of their colleagues.

 

THIS IS the background of the latest outrage.

For months now, Israel has been in the throes of a mini-intifada. In the two former intifadas, “terrorists” acted in groups under the orders of organizations, which were easily infiltrated. This time, individuals act alone, or together with cousins who could be trusted, without any prior signs. The Israeli forces (army, police, Shin Bet) have no information whatsoever and are therefore unable to prevent these acts.

Moreover, many of today’s “terrorists” are children – boys and girls who just pick up a knife in their mother’s kitchen and, on the spur of the moment, run out and attack the nearest Israeli. Some of them are 13, 14 years old. Some of the girls wield scissors. All of them know that in all probability they will be shot dead on the spot by soldiers or passing armed civilians.

The preferred victims are soldiers or settlers. Lacking these, they attack any Israeli, man or woman, in sight.

The mighty Israeli security forces are admittedly helpless against this kind of “infantifada” (as my friend Reuven Wimmer calls it). In their distress, the security forces do what they always do in such situations: use methods that have already failed many times.

Apart from summary executions on the spot (justified or unjustified, these methods include the demolition of the family’s home, to deter others, as well as the arrest of parents and other family members.

Frankly, I detest these measures. They remind me of a Nazi term I remember from my youth: “Sippenhaft” (“kin liability”. It is barbaric. It is also highly ineffective. A boy who has decided to sacrifice his life for his people is not deterred by such things. Not a single piece of contrary evidence has ever been produced. On the contrary, it stands to reason that such barbaric acts increase hatred and provide motivation for more attacks.

BUT THE most atrocious and stupid measure is the withholding of dead bodies. I am almost too ashamed to bring this up.

After almost any “terrorist” act, the body of the perpetrator – adult or child – is picked up by the security forces. Under Muslim law and usage, dead bodies must be buried the same day or the next one. Withholding them is a supreme act of cruelty. Our security services believe that this contributes to prevention. For Muslims, this is a supreme act of sacrilege.

This is the background of the latest scandal. The three Balad members of the Arab faction visited the families of the perpetrators of a “terrorist outrage”, whose bodies had been withheld. Their version is that they came to discuss how to retrieve the bodies. The security forces insist that they also expressed their condolences and even stood in silence for a minute.

The Knesset, “from wall to wall”, was outraged. How dare they? Extolling murderers? Showing sympathy for their families?

The Balad members of the Joint Faction are, apart from Zuabi and her smile, Bassal Gatas, and Gamal Zahalka. I have never met Gatas personally. He is 60 years old, a Christian Arab, a doctor of engineering and a businessman. He was for a long time a member of the Communist Party but was thrown out when he insisted on his right to criticize the Soviet Union. Azmi Bishara is his cousin. On TV, he makes a very sensible impression.

I consider Gamal Zahalka a personal friend. Once we both attended a conference in Italy and undertook some hikes together with our wives. I like him very much.

The three Balad members were banned from the Knesset for several months, except for the right to participate in Knesset votes (a right that cannot be denied). Now a new bill proposes that the Knesset can, by a majority of three fourths, expel members from the Knesset altogether.

This means that – unless the Supreme Court declares this bill unconstitutional – the Knesset will soon be Araber-rein, free from Arabs. A purely Jewish Knesset for a purely Jewish state.

THIS WOULD be a disaster for Israel.

Every fifth Israeli is an Arab. The Arab minority in Israel is one of the largest national minorities, per capita, in the world. Pushing such a minority out of the political process will weaken the very structure of the state.

When the state came into being, we believed that after a generation or two the gulf between the two communities would close, or nearly so. The opposite has happened.

In the early years, political cooperation between Jews and Arabs in a joint peace-camp was strong and getting stronger. These days are long past. The gulf has widened.

There was – and is – an opposite trend, too. Many Arabs are integrated in important professions, such as medicine. The last time I was hospitalized, I could not guess if the chief doctor of my department was Jewish or Arab. I had to ask my (Arab) male nurse, who confirmed that the very gentle doctor was Arab. I have found that Arab medical personnel are generally gentler than Jewish ones.

In several professions, Arabs are more or less integrated. But the general trend is the opposite. Where once there were cordial relations between neighborhoods, or between political organizations, contacts have loosened or disappeared altogether.

There were times when my friends and I visited Arab towns and villages almost every week. Not anymore.

This is not altogether an one-sided process. Insulted and rejected for so long, Arab citizens have lost the appetite for cooperation. Some of them have become more Islamist. The happenings in the Occupied Territories affect them deeply. A third and fourth generation of Israeli Arab citizens is becoming more proud and self-reliant. They are very disappointed by the failures of the Jewish peace movements.

To throw the Arab members out of the Knesset is, as a French politician once famously said, “This is worse than a crime – it is a mistake!”

It would cut the ties between the Israeli state and more than 20% of its citizens. Some Israelis may dream of evicting the Arabs altogether from the historical country – all six million of them in Israel proper, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – but that is a pipedream. The world in which this was once possible does not exist any more.

What is possible, and indeed already exists, is a creeping apartheid. It is already the reality in the West bank and East Jerusalem, and – as this episode shows – it is becoming the reality in Israel proper, too.

The hysteria that has engulfed the country after the “visit to the ‘terrorists’ families” has touched the Labor party, and even Meretz, too.

I am putting “terrorists” in quotation marks because they are terrorists only to the Jews. For Arabs they are heroes, shaheeds, Muslims who sacrifice their lives to “testify” to the greatness of Allah.

The question is, of course, what is the job of an Arab MK? To upset the Jews? Or to narrow the gap and convince Israelis that Israeli-Palestinian peace is both possible and worthwhile.

I am afraid that Zuabi’s smile does not help with the second aim.
IF ANYTHING, this affair has reinforced the arguments for the Two State. Let each of the two states have a parliament of its own, where they can commit all the stupidities they want, and a serious joint Coordination Council, where serious decisions can be taken.