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By James Cogan

Yesterday’s US deployment of the destroyer USS Lassen and surveillance aircraft into the 12-nautical mile zone surrounding the Chinese-controlled Subi and Mischief reefs in the South China Sea has qualitatively escalated tensions across Asia.

The aim of the US action is to humiliate the Chinese regime and present it with only two options: either make a forceful response or bow down to Washington’s flagrant trampling on its long-standing sovereignty claims. The pretext for the military provocation is the claim that the US is asserting its “right of freedom of navigation” in international, not Chinese, waters. This assertion has no more credibility than the claims that Iraq was attacked because of “weapons of mass destruction” or that the US waged war on Libya to defend “human rights.”

Beijing has responded diplomatically and militarily. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang told a press conference yesterday that the USS Lassen “illegally entered” Chinese waters. He stated: “The Chinese side will firmly respond to any deliberate provocation by any country… and take all necessary measures as needed.” Beijing, he declared, urged the US to “honour its commitment of not taking sides on disputes over territorial sovereignty so as to avoid any further damage to China-US relations and regional peace and stability.”

Last night, the US ambassador to China, Max Baucus, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to receive a formal expression of “strong discontent” from the Chinese government over Washington’s provocation.

The editorial of today’s Chinese state-controlled Global Times asserted: “Beijing should deal with Washington tactfully and prepare for the worst. This can convince the White House that China, despite its unwillingness, is not frightened to fight a war with the US in the region, and is determined to safeguard its national interests and dignity.”

Beijing, the Global Times declared, should “track the US warships … launch electronic interventions, and even send out warships, lock them by fire-control radar and fly over the US vessels.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper, the People’s Daily, reported today that the Chinese military ordered two destroyers, the Lanzhou and Taizhou, “to warn the trespassing US warship.” A US official reported that the Chinese vessels “shadowed” the Lassen yesterday but kept a “safe distance.”
The reckless calculation in Washington is that such statements from the Chinese regime are nothing more than rhetoric to try to appease domestic nationalist outrage over the US actions.

The Obama administration and the Pentagon indicated that the Lassen’s deployment is only the start of repeated intrusions into Chinese-claimed areas, with the intention of compelling China to bow to US military dominance over the South China Sea. An unnamed Defense Department official told journalists: “I would expect that this becomes a regular operation.”

Retired Chinese Rear Admiral Yang Yi, a researcher at the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University, responded by telling the Washington Post that if incursions did become “a regular thing, military conflict in the region is inevitable and the US would be the one who started it.”

The Australian and Japanese navies, at Washington’s request, may participate in future and larger-scale intrusions. While only the Lassen was used in yesterday’s provocation, dozens of US and Japanese warships, including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, as well as two Australian frigates, are within striking range of the South China Sea,.

The Australian government immediately declared its backing for the US action. Defence Minister Marise Payne stated that while Australia was not part of yesterday’s operation, it “strongly supports” the “rights” of freedom of navigation and overflight and “continues to cooperate with the United States and regional partners on maritime security.” Press reports indicated that Payne and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop were thoroughly briefed on the planned South China Sea provocation when they were in Washington for ministerial talks earlier this month.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that Japan was “exchanging information” with Washington and “closely monitoring the issue before we decide how to proceed.” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has stated previously that it is prepared to conduct “freedom of navigation” military operations, either alongside or independently of the US.

Kaoru Imori, from Japan’s Meiji Gakuin University, told the Chinese Xinhua news agency yesterday: “The advantage now for the US is that, in essence at least, it has a second de-facto military in the form of Japan—a country with a healthy military budget and cutting-edge means to both produce and export military hardware.”

Japan and Australia are the key partners of the US “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia. Both countries provide crucial bases for the American military and have integrated their armed forces into the US “AirSea Battle” plan. AirSea Battle is a detailed and now well-rehearsed outline of how the US and its allies will launch air and sea attacks on mainland Chinese military facilities in the event of war. The plan also involves imposing a naval blockade to prevent Chinese shipping passing between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, thus starving China of essential imports of energy and raw materials.

The timing of the US operations in the South China Sea underscores the fact that the “pivot” is motivated by the determination of American imperialism, backed at this point by its regional allies, to maintain its post-World War II dominance in Asia. The growth of China’s global economic and geopolitical influence over the past 15 years is viewed in US ruling circles as an unacceptable potential challenge. The ultimate objective of the US confrontation with Beijing is to return China to the status of a semi-colony, economically under the sway of American banks and corporations and politically subordinated to Washington’s dictates.

The deployment of the Lassen was ordered just days after Chinese President Xi Jingping’s tour of Britain and just days ahead of highly touted visits to China by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. Following the sweeping trade and investment agreements struck between Britain and China, the People’s Daily editorialised yesterday—before the US provocation—that the “major European countries are vying for its attention” and that closer economic and political relations with Europe could “offset the restraints imposed by the US-Japan alliance on China.”

Now Merkel, along with the head of Volkswagen and dozens of other German corporate executives, will arrive in Beijing today under conditions in which a military clash could take place between China and the US, Berlin’s ally in the NATO alliance. France’s Hollande is due to visit on November 2.

Over the next two weeks, US President Barack Obama will attend the Asia Pacific Economic Summit in the Philippines, the US-ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Summit and the East Asia Summit in Malaysia. US demands that Asian states fall in behind its actions in the South China Sea will figure prominently at these events, either officially or in backroom talks. Beijing will utilise the two regional summits it attends to apply counter-pressure.

China will expect to be supported by Russia, which has forged closer ties with Beijing as Moscow has come under its own threats and military provocations from the US and NATO in Eastern Europe. Andrei Klimov, a leading Russian parliamentarian close to President Vladimir Putin, told TASS news agency yesterday: “US sabre rattling near the borders of China—a permanent member of the UN Security Council—is likely to draw questions from another UN SC member, Russia. Nobody should feel free to make voyages there without an invitation.” The US, Klimov said, is “playing with fire.”

A fraught process of diplomatic and military brinksmanship is now in motion that could lead to an open clash between nuclear-armed powers and draw countries across the entire Asian region and internationally into a catastrophic war.
28 October, 2015
WSWS.org

 

By Thomas Gaist

The Pentagon is preparing a new escalation of US military operations in Iraq and Syria, including “direct action on the ground,” according to testimony Tuesday by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.

“We won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL [an acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS], or conducting such missions directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground,” Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“We expect to intensify our air campaign, including with additional US and coalition aircraft, to target ISIL with a higher and heavier rate of strikes,” Carter added.

Referring to a raid conducted last week by US Special Forces troops and Kurdish militia to rescue hostages held by ISIS, Carter declared, “While our mission in Iraq is to train, advise, and assist our Iraqi partners, in situations such as that operation—where we have actionable intelligence and a capable partner force—we want to support our partners.”

The “actionable intelligence” in that case proved faulty, as none of the Kurdish hostages being sought were present at the site, and many of those “rescued” turned out to be ISIS members being held by the Islamist militia as suspected spies.

Carter implied that the US will not immediately seek to establish a no-fly zone in Syria, as demanded by many within the military/intelligence and political establishment, but confirmed that such a move was under consideration and, if implemented, would require some type of military occupation on the ground.

“We do not have a concept of operations for a no-fly zone that we’re prepared to recommend,” Carter told the committee. But he later said he would discuss possible no fly zone scenarios behind closed doors with interested senators, and that a no fly zone was “not off the table.”

The Obama administration may authorize the new ground operations in both Iraq and Syria as early as this week, according to the Washington Post. The plans were developed by US military commanders over a period of months following a highly publicized visit by Obama to the Pentagon in July, according to the Post .

Among the operations proposed by the Pentagon are plans to embed US Special Forces teams with Syrian and Kurdish groups in northern Iraq and Syria in preparation for US-backed ground offensives in both areas. “The changes would represent a significant escalation of the American role in Iraq and Syria,” the Post noted.

Carter’s statements and the Post revelations constitute an unambiguous repudiation of the promises of the Obama administration that US troops would not participate in ground combat as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the renewed US military intervention in Iraq authorized by the White House in June 2014.

In his remarks Tuesday, Secretary Carter made clear that the moves are being taken largely in response to the growing Russian intervention in the region. Carter denounced the Russian government for “doubling down on their longstanding relationship with [Syrian President] Assad,” and warned senators about the strengthening of Russian and Iranian influence over the US-installed Baghdad regime.

“I’d have to be candid,” Carter said, “[Iraqi Prime Minister] Abadi does not have complete sway over what happens in Iraq.”

For their part, the Armed Services Committee members from both parties expressed support for aggressive measures to build up Sunni and Kurdish forces as US proxies and bulwarks against an Iranian-Russian dominated Iraq.

In remarks that have been echoed across the US political establishment in recent weeks, Republican Senator Joni Ernst said the Kurdish Peshmerga militias “have been great allies to us” and represented the “only force on the ground that has any momentum.”

The praise lavished on Kurdish militias in the Senate chamber only underscored the immense crisis and deep contradictions plaguing the US intervention in the region. The Senate hearing was held on the same day that the government of Turkey, Washington’s NATO ally, acknowledged that it had launched strikes against US-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

The Kurdish groups struck by Turkey, including People Protection Units (YPG) forces, were “some of the most important allies within Syria of the American-led coalition,” according to the New York Times.

The Turkish strikes, which included attacks against two strategic towns along the Syrian-Turkish border, were intended to shape the military situation in preparation for the establishment of “safe zones” in northern Syria under the auspices of Turkish ground and air forces, according to comments by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday.

“If the YPG moves to the west of the river Euphrates, we will hit it,” the Turkish prime minister said in a televised appearance.

Tuesday’s strikes reflected “a new determination by Turkey to expand military operations against the American-allied group,” the Times wrote.

In off-the-record conversations cited by the Wall Street Journal, unnamed Obama administration officials acknowledged that some portion of the at least 50 tons of military assistance airdropped by the US over northern Syria ended up in the hands of the YPG and other Kurdish groups that are effectively at war with the Turkish state.

“The deepening US cooperation with the YPG in Syria sets the stage for a military response from Turkey, which is worried that emboldened Kurdish leaders will step up their demands for an independent state in Kurdish dominated areas straddling parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran,” the Journal noted Tuesday.

Even amid reports Tuesday that Iran will attend US-Russian sponsored political talks over Syria, the staunchly anti-Iranian Gulf States are signaling their readiness to launch their own military incursions against the Syrian government.

The Qatari foreign minister told CNN last week that Qatar could launch a military intervention in Syria, potentially in league with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, if this became necessary to “protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the regime.”

The fundamental factor driving the Middle East into ever deeper chaos and bloodletting is the continuing, ever more volcanic eruption of US militarism. Faced with the failure of its Middle East policy, Washington is responding with yet another military escalation. President Obama, sold to the American public as the candidate who would end the hated Iraq war, is now committing US troops to combat operations on an open-ended timeline, not just in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq and Syria.

28 October, 2015
WSWS.org

 

He also said ‘more than half’ of the recent stabbing attacks against Jews in Israel had been fabricated

By Doug Bolton

Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman has allegedly accused Israel of fabricating some recent stories about knife attacks against Jews in Israel, and claimed the Conservative party is influenced by “Jewish money,” in a speech at a pro-Palestine event at Parliament.

As reported by The Jewish Chronicle, Kaufman, MP for Manchester Gorton and Father of the House, told the audience at a Palestine Return Centre event that the Government has become more pro-Israel in recent years due to donations from Jewish groups.

“It’s Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party – as in the general election in May – support from The Jewish Chronicle, all of those things, bias the Conservatives,” he said.

“There is now a big group of Conservative members of Parliament who are pro-Israel whatever government does and they are not interested in what Israel, in what the Israeli government does.”

He added: “They’re not interested in the fact that Palestianians are living a repressed life, and are liable to be shot at any time. In the last few days alone the Israelis have murdered 52 Palestianians and nobody pays attention and this government doesn’t care.”

Kaufman then went on to claim “more than half” of the stabbings that have recently happened in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the rest of Israel were fabricated, in comments that were recorded by blogger David Collier.

Reading from an email from a friend who lives in East Jerusalem, Kaufman said: “More than half of the stabbing claims were definitely fabricated. The other half, some were true, the others there was no way to tell since they executed Palestianians and no one asked questions.”

“Not only that, they got to the point of executing Arab-looking people and in the past few days they killed two Jewish Israelis and an Eritrean just because they looked Arab.

“They fabricated a stabbing story to justify the killings before they found out they were not Palestinians.”

Kaufman was referring to an incident which took place earlier this month, in which an Eritrean man was killed by an angry crowd who incorrectly believed he was the accomplice of an Arab attacker.

The Palestine Return Centre, who organised the roundtable event where Kaufman made the comments, is a consultancy which focuses on issues relating to dispersed Palestians and their return to Israel.

Kaufman has been an MP since June 1970, making him the longest-serving MP currently in the House of Commons. He is Jewish, and has long been an outspoken critic of Israel and the Israeli government.

31 October 2015

http://www.independent.co.uk/

By Arshin Adib Moghaddam

“ISIL massacres Shi’a in Iraq”, “Iran wants to Persianise the Arab world”, “Sunni extremist blows up Shi’a mosque in Kuwait”. Headlines like these dominate current media reports about western Asia, conveying the impression that sectarian violence sparked by tempestuous ideologies is at the root of the region’s conflicts. Most of this journalism is simplistic and some of it is plainly wrong. There are no endemic patterns of hatred between Arabs, Persians, Sunni and Shi’a; narratives based on sectarianism are unconvincing. Serious research reveals that none of the traumas that the people of the region are experiencing can be explained simply in terms of a continuous conflict between Shia and Sunni and/or Arab and Persian.

The emotive issue of Syria is an obvious place to start to expose the flaws in the sectarian approach. Iran supports the Assad government, the argument goes, because the core of the Syrian state is Alawite, a sub-branch of Shi’ism. But there are at least three reasons why the idea that a sectarian bond explains Iranian backing for Damascus is wrong.

First, scholars are well aware that the Assad dynasty did not place its ideological bets on religion or a sect. Under the Assads, the ideological foundation of the Syrian state was engineered around Ba’athism, a branch of secular Arab nationalism. Indeed, as members of a minority sect, the Assads were determined to flush out any sectarian references in the official discourse of the state. Syrian children were taught about the glories of Arab history, not the legitimacy of the Alawites or some kind of Shi’a brotherhood. The same is true for Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the Assads’ fellow Ba’athist leader, who was as much non-Sunni as the Assads were non-Shi’a.

Second, Syria has been for Iran a strategic ally since the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), when Hafez al-Assad was the only Arab leader supporting the country against the invading armies of Saddam Hussein. So common interest, not sectarian allegiance, is the reason for the Syrian-Iranian alliance. The point is echoed in the rhetoric of muqawamah (resistance) that linked “Sunni-Arab” Hamas in Palestine, to “Arab-Shi’a” Hizbollah in Lebanon, to “Persian-Shi’a” Iran via “Secular-Arab” Syria. This axis was quite obviously interest-based, and could not be explained along Shi’a/Sunni-Persian/Arab lines.

Third, a Syrian state composed of socialist heathens causes no problem to Iranian decision-makers seeking to build a trusted alliance. For the same reason, Iran can have strong relations with socialist leaders such as the Castros in Cuba, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. If any communist-atheist ruler has a foreign policy conducive to Iran’s agenda, he or she can be embraced as much as would the most pious, god-loving but (essentially) pro-Iranian Shi’a. Conversely, if a Shi’a movement is opposed to the Iranian state, it will be vilified. The thousands of Iranian exiles and secular Shi’a groups can testify to this strict delineation between friend and foe: one based on its stance vis-à-vis the Iranian system, rather than a Shi’a or Iranian “identity”.

A comparable logic applies to Iraq. There, Ayatollah Ali Sistani is not only a Shi’a but a Marja-e Taghlid, a source of emulation constituting the highest clerical rank in the Shi’a hierarchy. His religious credentials outweigh even those of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But Sistani adheres to the quietist tradition of the late Ayatollah al-Khoei (and Ayatollah Boroujerdi in Iran), while Khamenei is heir to Ayatollah Khomeini’s doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (which compels clerics to be political leaders and ideological prophets). There is no love lost between them or their followers.

A need for nuance

Similar dynamics operate elsewhere. Iranian clerics and their Iraqi Shi’a counterparts organised around Muqtada al-Sadr could not agree, but for the opposite reason – i.e., because while Sadr repeatedly positioned himself as a political leader, he was not someone that Iran could work with. In Lebanon,Hizbollah is in Iran’s foreign-policy orbit not because they are Shi’a but on account of the movement’s allegiance to Khomeinism. The late cosmopolitan superstar of Lebanese Shi’ism, Musa al-Sadr (who was of “Iranian origin”), would have been seen in a very different light by today’s leaders in Tehran compared to the combatant Hassan Nasrallah (who is Lebanese). Again, the issue is not Sunni vs Shi’a or Arab vs Persian, but shared interests. In the case of Iraq and Lebanon, this interest is defined by creating a common front against Israel; in the case of Iraq’s prime minister Haider al-Abadi, by finding reliable allies in the fight against Daesh (or ISIL).

Yemen is another example of the trend. The Zai’di Houthis may have overlapping Shi’a beliefs with Iran, but this far from explains the link between the two. The current, Saudi Arabia-led intervention in Yemen has little to do with the danger of an expanding Persian empire, and much more with the threat of a Yemeni government independent of Saudi patronage.

In the intra-Arab “cold war” of the 1960s, a similar factor compelled King Saud to intervene in Yemen (then under British leadership) in order to thwart Nasserite influence. In Oman in the same period, the Shah of Iran – equally opposed to the ambitions of Egypt’s leader – sent troops to quell a Marxist rebellion. But King Saud and the Shah, “objective” allies against Nasserism, were following their own interests and not any sectarian motif. Then and now, the interests of nation or movement override sectarian allegiances: primordial identitarian factors play no major role in the map of conflict. If it were otherwise, Saudi Arabia (“Hanbali-Sunni-Wahhabi”) would be allied to al-Qaida, and ISIL and Iran (“Persian-Twelver Shi’a”) Iran would not support Armenia (“Christian-Orthodox”) in its conflict with Azerbaijan (“Shi’a-Muslim” majority). There are many more such examples.

The same establishment media outlets that view the region’s conflicts through a sectarian prism tend to speak of a unified Islamic threat whenever a terrorist attack happens in north America or Europe. But the people of the region cannot be both imploding in sectarian anarchy and a unified civilisation clashing with the “west”. Such misleading and contradictory paradigms allow damaging myths such as “Arabs vs Persians, Sunni vs Shi’a” to grow. A more informed and refined approach to this complex region, and to world politics generally, is badly needed.

Source: goo.gl/JtxpVh

19 October 2015

By Nick Turse

They’re some of the best soldiers in the world: highly trained, well equipped, and experts in weapons, intelligence gathering, and battlefield medicine. They study foreign cultures and learn local languages. They’re smart, skillful, wear some very iconic headgear, and their 12-member teams are “capable of conducting the full spectrum of special operations, from building indigenous security forces to identifying and targeting threats to U.S. national interests.”

They’re also quite successful. At least they think so.

“In the last decade, Green Berets have deployed into 135 of the 195 recognized countries in the world. Successes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Trans-Sahel Africa, the Philippines, the Andean Ridge, the Caribbean, and Central America have resulted in an increasing demand for [Special Forces] around the globe,” reads a statement on the website of U.S. Army Special Forces Command.

The Army’s Green Berets are among the best known of America’s elite forces, but they’re hardly alone. Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, Army Rangers, Marine Corps Raiders, as well as civil affairs personnel, logisticians, administrators, analysts, and planners, among others, make up U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF). They are the men and women who carry out America’s most difficult and secret military missions. Since 9/11, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has grown in every conceivable way from funding and personnel to global reach and deployments. In 2015, according to Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw, U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to a record-shattering 147 countries — 75% of the nations on the planet, which represents a jump of 145% since the waning days of the Bush administration. On any day of the year, in fact, America’s most elite troops can be found in 70 to 90 nations.

There is, of course, a certain logic to imagining that the increasing global sweep of these deployments is a sign of success. After all, why would you expand your operations into ever-more nations if they weren’t successful? So I decided to pursue that record of “success” with a few experts on the subject.

I started by asking Sean Naylor, a man who knows America’s most elite troops as few do and the author of Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command, about the claims made by Army Special Forces Command. He responded with a hearty laugh. “I’m going to give whoever wrote that the benefit of the doubt that they were referring to successes that Army Special Forces were at least perceived to have achieved in those countries rather than the overall U.S. military effort,” he says. As he points out, the first post-9/11 months may represent the zenith of success for those troops. The initial operations in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 — carried out largely by U.S. Special Forces, the CIA, and the Afghan Northern Alliance, backed by U.S. airpower — were “probably the high point” in the history of unconventional warfare by Green Berets, according to Naylor. As for the years that followed? “There were all sorts of mistakes, one could argue, that were made after that.” He is, however, quick to point out that “the vast majority of the decisions [about operations and the war, in general] were not being made by Army Special Forces soldiers.”

For Linda Robinson, author of One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare, the high number of deployments is likely a mistake in itself. “Being in 70 countries… may not be the best use of SOF,” she told me. Robinson, a senior international policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, advocates for a “more thoughtful and focused approach to the employment of SOF,” citing enduring missions in Colombia and the Philippines as the most successful special ops training efforts in recent years. “It might be better to say ‘Let’s not sprinkle around the SOF guys like fairy dust.’ Let’s instead focus on where we think we can have a success… If you want more successes, maybe you need to start reining in how many places you’re trying to cover.”

Most of the special ops deployments in those 147 countries are the type Robinson expresses skepticism about — short-term training missions by “white” operators like Green Berets (as opposed to the “black ops” man-hunting missions by the elite of the elite that captivate Hollywood and video gamers). Between 2012 and 2014, for example, Special Operations forcescarried out 500 Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) missions in as many as 67 countries, practicing everything from combat casualty care and marksmanship to small unit tactics and desert warfare alongside local forces. And JCETs only scratch the surface when it comes to special ops missions to train proxies and allies. Special Operations forces, in fact, conduct a variety of training efforts globally.

A recent $500 million program, run by Green Berets, to train a Syrian force of more than 15,000 over several years, for instance, crashed and burned in a very public way, yielding just four or five fighters in the field before beingabandoned. This particular failure followed much larger, far more expensive attempts to train the Afghan and Iraqi security forces in which Special Operations troops played a smaller yet still critical role. The results of these efforts recently prompted TomDispatch regular and retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich to write that Washington should now assume “when it comes to organizing, training, equipping, and motivating foreign armies, that the United States is essentially clueless.”

The Elite Warriors of the Warrior Elite

In addition to training, another core role of Special Operations forces is direct action — counterterror missions like low-profile drone assassinations andkill/capture raids by muscled-up, high-octane operators. The exploits of the men — and they are mostly men (and mostly Caucasian ones at that) — behind these operations are chronicled in Naylor’s epic history of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the secret counterterrorism organization that includes the military’s most elite and shadowy units like the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 and the Army’s Delta Force. A compendium of more than a decade of derring-do from Afghanistan to Iraq, Somalia to Syria, Relentless Strikepaints a portrait of a highly-trained, well-funded, hard-charging counterterror force with global reach. Naylor calls it the “perfect hammer,” but notes the obvious risk that “successive administrations would continue to view too many national security problems as nails.”

When I ask Naylor about what JSOC has ultimately achieved for the country in the Obama years, I get the impression that he doesn’t find my question particularly easy to answer. He points to hostage rescues, like the high profile effort to save “Captain Phillips” of the Maersk Alabama after the cargo ship was hijacked by Somali pirates, and asserts that such missions might “inhibit others from seizing Americans.” One wonders, of course, if similar high-profile failed missions since then, including the SEAL raid that ended in the deaths of hostages Luke Somers, an American photojournalist, and Pierre Korkie, a South African teacher, as well as the unsuccessful attempt to rescue the late aid worker Kayla Mueller, might then have just the opposite effect.

“Afghanistan, you’ve got another fairly devilish strategic problem there,” Naylor says and offers up a question of his own: “You have to ask what would have happened if al-Qaeda in Iraq had not been knocked back on its heels by Joint Special Operations Command between 2005 and 2010?” Naylor calls attention to JSOC’s special abilities to menace terror groups, keeping them unsteady through relentless intelligence gathering, raiding, and man-hunting. “It leaves them less time to take the offensive, to plan missions, and to plot operations against the United States and its allies,” he explains. “Now that doesn’t mean that the use of JSOC is a substitute for a strategy… It’s a tool in a policymaker’s toolkit.”

Indeed. If what JSOC can do is bump off and capture individuals and pressure such groups but not decisively roll up militant networks, despite years of anti-terror whack-a-mole efforts, it sounds like a recipe for spending endless lives and endless funds on endless war. “It’s not my place as a reporter to opine as to whether the present situations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen were ‘worth’ the cost in blood and treasure borne by U.S. Special Operations forces,” Naylor tells me in a follow-up email. “Given the effects that JSOC achieved in Iraq (Uday and Qusay Hussein killed, Saddam Hussein captured, [al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab] Zarqawi killed, al-Qaeda in Iraq eviscerated), it’s hard to say that JSOC did not have an impact on that nation’s recent history.”

Impacts, of course, are one thing, successes another. Special Operations Command, in fact, hedges its bets by claiming that it can only be as successful as the global commands under which its troops operate in each area of the world, including European Command, Pacific Command, Africa Command, Southern Command, Northern Command, and Central Command or CENTCOM, the geographic combatant command that oversees operations in the Greater Middle East. “We support the Geographic Combatant Commanders (GCCs) — if they are successful, we are successful; if they fail, we fail,” says SOCOM’s website.

With this in mind, it’s helpful to return to Naylor’s question: What if al-Qaeda in Iraq, which flowered in the years after the U.S. invasion, had never been targeted by JSOC as part of a man-hunting operation going after its foreign fighters, financiers, and military leaders? Given that the even more brutal Islamic State (IS) grew out of that targeted terror group, that IS wasfueled in many ways, say experts, both by U.S. actions and inaction, that its leader’s rise was bolstered by U.S. operations, that “U.S. training helpedmold” another of its chiefs, and that a U.S. prison served as its “boot camp,” and given that the Islamic State now holds a significant swath of Iraq, was JSOC’s campaign against its predecessor a net positive or a negative? Were special ops efforts in Iraq (and therefore in CENTCOM’s area of operations) — JSOC’s post-9/11 showcase counterterror campaign — a success or a failure?

Naylor notes that JSOC’s failure to completely destroy al-Qaeda in Iraq allowed IS to grow and eventually sweep “across northern Iraq in 2014, seizing town after town from which JSOC and other U.S. forces had evicted al-Qaeda in Iraq at great cost several years earlier.” This, in turn, led to the rushing of special ops advisers back into the country to aid the fight against the Islamic State, as well as to that program to train anti-Islamic State Syrian fighters that foundered and then imploded. By this spring, JSOC operators were not only back in Iraq and also on the ground in Syria, but they were soon conducting drone campaigns in both of those tottering nations.

This special ops merry-go-round in Iraq is just the latest in a long series of fiascos, large and small, to bedevil America’s elite troops. Over the years, inthat country, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, special operators have regularlybeen involved in all manner of mishaps, embroiled in various scandals, andimplicated in numerous atrocities. Recently, for instance, members of the Special Operations forces have come under scrutiny for an air strike on a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Afghanistan that killed at least 22 patients and staff, for an alliance with “unsavory partners” in the Central African Republic, for the ineffective and abusive Afghan police they trained and supervised, and for a shady deal to provide SEALs with untraceable silencers that turned out to be junk, according to prosecutors.

Winners and Losers

JSOC was born of failure, a phoenix rising from the ashes of Operation Eagle Claw, the humiliating attempt to rescue 53 American hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1980 that ended, instead, in the deaths of eight U.S. personnel. Today, the elite force trades on an aura of success in the shadows. Its missions are the stuff of modern myths.

In his advance praise for Naylor’s book, one cable news analyst called JSOC’s operators “the finest warriors who ever went into combat.” Even accepting this — with apologies to the Mongols, the Varangian Guard, Persia’s Immortals, and the Ten Thousand of Xenophon’s Anabasis — questions remain: Have these “warriors” actually been successful beyondbudget battles and the box office? Is exceptional tactical prowess enough? Are battlefield triumphs and the ability to batter terror networks through relentless raiding the same as victory? Such questions bring to mind an exchange that Army colonel Harry Summers, who served in Vietnam, had with a North Vietnamese counterpart in 1975. “You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield,” Summers told him. After pausing to ponder the comment, Colonel Tu replied, “That may be so. But it is also irrelevant.”

So what of those Green Berets who deployed to 135 countries in the last decade? And what of the Special Operations forces sent to 147 countries in 2015? And what about those Geographic Combatant Commanders across the globe who have hosted all those special operators?

I put it to Vietnam veteran Andrew Bacevich, author of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country. “As far back as Vietnam,” he tells me, “the United States military has tended to confuse inputs with outcomes. Effort, as measured by operations conducted, bomb tonnage dropped, or bodies counted, is taken as evidence of progress made. Today, tallying up the number of countries in which Special Operations forces are present repeats this error. There is no doubt that U.S. Special Operations forces are hard at it in lots of different places. It does not follow that they are thereby actually accomplishing anything meaningful.”

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Nation Institute. A 2014 Izzy Award and American Book Award winner for his bookKill Anything That Moves, his pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Intercept, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly atTomDispatch. His latest book is Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa.

Copyright 2015 Nick Turse

26 October, 2015
TomDispatch.com

 

By Barry Grey

Amid a flurry of diplomatic activity regarding a possible political settlement in Syria, the Obama administration is signaling its intention to escalate US military action in both Syria and Iraq.

On Friday, the same day as an inconclusive meeting in Vienna between US Secretary of State John Kerry and the foreign ministers of Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey on the civil war in Syria, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters there would be more US combat actions like the one the previous day that had resulted in the first US troop death in Iraq since 2011.

On October 22, US special forces participated in a joint attack with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters against an Islamic State (ISIS) installation near Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler was killed in what the Pentagon claims was a successful action to free 70 prisoners being held by ISIS. The attack was the first publicly acknowledged US combat operation since Washington launched its new war in Iraq, ostensibly against ISIS, in June of 2014.

The operation and the death of Wheeler shattered the repeated claims of President Barack Obama that the current US intervention in Iraq would not involve direct American combat actions. But Carter, far from presenting the Kirkuk incident as an aberration, unconditionally defended the operation and seized on it as an opportunity to assert the intention of the US military to intensify its operations in Iraq.

“There will be more raids,” Carter said at Friday’s Pentagon press conference. Confirming reports that he had personally authorized the raid, he added that American forces “will be in harm’s way, there’s no question about it.” He further declared that the US was “committed to enhancing the support we provide” to anti-ISIS forces in Iraq.

A White House spokesman also defended the raid, saying it was “consistent with our mission to train, advise and assist Iraqi forces.”

Carter’s defense of last Thursday’s US combat operation is consistent with other developments pointing to intensified US military involvement in Iraq beyond the current campaign of air strikes against ISIS forces. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joe Dunford, after visiting Iraq last week said it was time to “open the aperture” in military operations there.

Last month, Carter installed Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland to oversee operations in both Iraq and Syria, taking the place of three officers who had been responsible for different aspects of the military campaign in the two countries.

On the Syrian front, the New York Times last week carried a report based on leaks from senior Obama administration officials indicating that Secretary of State Kerry and others are pushing for the US to set up no-fly zones in Syria under the pretext of protecting the civilian population. According to the Times, Defense Secretary Carter and the Pentagon are resisting such a move, warning that it would involve a major deployment of US forces and could easily lead to a direct conflict with Russian jets that are carrying out intensive bombing of anti-Assad “rebel” forces in the north and west of the country.

US moves to step up its military intervention in Iraq and Syria are largely driven by concerns over the growing influence of Russia in both countries and throughout the Middle East. They follow Moscow’s decision at the end of September to begin bombing attacks on Islamist militias, including Al Qaeda-linked forces backed by the CIA, battling to overthrow Russia’s sole Arab ally in the Middle East, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russia intervened to protect its sole military base outside the borders of the former Soviet Union, its air base at Tartus, and oil and gas pipeline routes critical to the oligarchs represented by the regime of President Vladimir Putin.

For the US, the war against ISIS has always been subordinated to its determination to oust Assad and install a puppet at the head of the Syrian government. This is deemed critical to American imperialism’s agenda of establishing US hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East.

Nearly 25 years of US military aggression in the region, beginning with the first Gulf War in 1991, have produced a debacle for the United States. The Afghan puppet regime is besieged by the Taliban, causing Obama to reverse his pledge to remove all US troops by the end of this year; Libya has disintegrated following the US-led war to remove and murder Muammar Gaddafi; Washington has failed thus far to dislodge Assad; and the government it installed in Iraq is ever more openly aligned with Iran and tilting toward Russia.

The Iraqi ambassador to the US, Lukman Faily, recently told CNN that the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad would welcome Russian efforts to “complement the fight we have against ISIS.” Prominent Shiite Iraqi leader Hakim al-Zamili told Reuters earlier this month, “In the upcoming few days or weeks, I think Iraq will be forced to ask Russia to launch air strikes, and that depends on their success with Syria.”

He added, “We are seeking to see Russia have a bigger role in Iraq. Yes, definitely a bigger role than the Americans.”

Also, on Friday, Russia announced an agreement with Jordan, a key US ally, to coordinate military operations in Syria.

The same day, the White House officially announced the departure of Gen. John R. Allen, appointed last year by Obama to be his point man in the war on ISIS. The retired Marine officer and former commander of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan will step down in mid-November and be replaced by Brett McGurk, his State Department deputy. Reporting the announcement, the New York Times noted matter-of-factly that there are differences between the Pentagon and the State Department on US policy in Syria.

Already existing divisions within the American state and foreign policy establishment have been sharply exacerbated by the Russian military intervention in Syria. Congressional Republicans, every Republican candidate for the 2016 presidential election, retired military and intelligence officials and a section of the Democratic leadership have denounced the Obama administration’s policy as insufficiently aggressive and demanded a major escalation directed against both Assad and Russia. Most are calling for the establishment of no-fly zones in Syria and some are demanding a major expansion of the US troop presence in the region.

These critics include former US commander in Iraq and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus and the editorial boards of publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Their number also includes the current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is calling for the creation of so-called “safety zones” in Syria.

On the other side, prominent political figures have recently gone into print to call on the administration to drop its demand for Assad’s removal and seek an accommodation with both him and Russian President Putin. These include former President Jimmy Carter, who published a column in the New York Times last week advocating a “five nation plan” to end the Syrian civil war that would involve both Russia and Iran in a transitional process to ease Assad out of power and install a mutually agreeable successor.

Henry Kissinger published a similar commentary earlier this month, headlined “A Path Out of the Middle East Collapse,” which calls for an accommodation with both Russia and Assad.

Friday’s meeting of US, Russian, Saudi and Turkish foreign ministers in Vienna ended without any agreement on the key issue of Assad’s future. Washington and Riyadh continue to insist that any settlement be predicated on an agreement that Assad leave office, while Moscow, without ruling out Assad’s departure, refuses to make it a precondition.

Nevertheless, both Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the discussions as positive and agreed to a further meeting, with a greater number of participants, to be held as early as this week. Russia, Iraq and the European Union are insisting that Iran be among the nations invited, but Kerry has for now ruled that out.

There are also signs that Moscow may be placing increased pressure on Assad to make an eventual exit. Last week, Assad was called to Moscow for intensive discussions, and since then Lavrov and other Russian officials have called for early parliamentary and presidential elections in Syria to be held next year.

Whatever the diplomatic maneuvers, however, American imperialism is not prepared to accept being dislodged from its preeminent position in the Middle East. Its militarist and criminal policy has produced a catastrophe for the peoples of the region, with hundreds of thousands if not millions killed, and many more millions turned into refugees, without securing the predatory aims behind Washington’s wars.

The lying pretexts used to justify the wars—the supposed war on terrorism, the threat of weapons of mass destruction, human rights, democracy—have all been thoroughly exposed and discredited. Today, Washington is openly allied with Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the al-Nusra Front, which the US State Department itself has designated as a foreign terrorist organization, in America’s war for regime-change against Assad.

Left to its own devices, the American ruling class will inevitably respond to its deepening crisis in the Middle East by doubling down on military violence and subversion, increasing the danger of a war with nuclear-armed Russia. All the more urgent is the development of an international movement of the working class against imperialist war and the capitalist system that gives rise to it.
26 October, 2015
WSWS.org

 

By Bill Van Auken

Talks held Friday in Vienna between US, Russian, Turkish and Saudi foreign ministers on the Syrian crisis were dominated by the opposed positions of Washington and Moscow on the US demand for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.

The discussions came after more than three weeks of Russian air strikes in Syria, which have apparently begun to shift the tide of battle on the ground. Syrian government forces have made advances on several fronts, including in the western province of Latakia and around Syria’s second city, Aleppo. They are fighting against a collection of Islamist militias dominated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra Front, which have received backing from the US and its regional allies.

The meeting was also accompanied by indications that the Obama administration may be preparing an escalation of its own intervention in Syria, in a dangerous bid to counter Russia’s growing influence over the conflict.

On the eve of the talks in Vienna, US Secretary of State John Kerry spelled out Washington’s continuing insistence on the bringing down of Assad. He said that all of the countries with an interest in Syria, including Iran and Russia, were agreed on the need for a unified, secular and pluralistic government.

“One thing stands in the way of being able to rapidly move to implement that, and it’s a person called Assad- Bashar Assad,” Kerry said. “So the issue is, can we get to a political process during which time the future devolution and allocation of power in Syria is properly allocated by the people of Syria?”

In essence, Kerry is demanding that negotiations secure for Washington what it has been unable to achieve through the proxy war for regime change that it unleashed in Syria four years ago at the cost of over a quarter of a million lives and the displacement of nearly half the country’s population.

Answering the American position Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov condemned the US “fixation” with Assad, insisting that “the fate of the president of Syria must be decided by the Syrian people” and not dictated by outside powers.

The Vienna talks came in the wake of this week’s trip to Moscow by Assad for discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian officials. It was the first time he had left the country since 2011 and was meant to signal Russia’s recognition of his role as the head of the “legitimate government” of Syria.

The US wants Assad deposed and a puppet of Washington put in his place, while keeping the state structure in Syria largely intact. Moscow, on the other hand, is determined to maintain its influence in Syria, with or without Assad in the presidency. This includes the sole Russian military base outside of the former Soviet Union, and Syria’s strategic position in terms of energy pipelines, vital to the interests of the Russian oligarchy. The US and Russian armed forces have been unleashed in Syria for these diametrically opposed purposes, even as both sides claim that they are there to combat “terrorism.”

Nothing of substance was reported to have come out of Friday’s discussions outside of an agreement to hold another meeting as early as next week.

Kerry said that the talks would be followed by a “broader meeting in order to explore whether there is sufficient common ground to advance a meaningful political process.”

Washington’s intransigence has apparently dictated the shape of the discussions thus far. The US has opposed the inclusion of its supposed allies in Europe, who have asked to participate along similar lines as the so-called P5+1 talks that secured the nuclear deal with Iran and included the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States; plus Germany.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Wednesday called for a similar arrangement of the Syrian talks, to be “enlarged with regional partners.” Diplomatic sources added that the European position was that Iran should be included in the discussions.

Lavrov on Thursday said that Moscow also wants the talks enlarged “to ensure a maximally effective fight.” He indicated that Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and China should be added to the four countries that met in Vienna. “This quartet is clearly not enough,” Lavrov added.

Kerry and other US officials have signaled their desire to keep the negotiations closed to those “directly involved,” meaning the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which have served as the principal supporters of the Islamist militias in Syria, while also carrying out air strikes against ISIS positions in the country, and Russia, which is conducting its own military intervention.

Iran, however, is also directly involved, with Iranian officials Friday announcing a stepping up of military support for the Assad government, which they classified as an advisory mission. Tehran has also announced the deaths of several Iranian commanders and soldiers in Syria.

Kerry flatly rejected Iran’s participation in the Syria talks. “There will come a time perhaps where we will talk to Iran but we are not at the moment at this point of time,” he said.

Summing up the arrogance of US imperialism, he added: “If some country with whom we have differences were to participate in any kind of meeting, then it would be very quick and easy to determine whether the country is there as an obstruction or as a… participant seeking a solution.”

The New York Times Friday carried a front page story based on leaks from senior Obama administration officials indicating that Kerry and others are pushing for the US to create no-fly zones in Syria under the pretext of protecting the civilian population.

The proposal was reportedly put forward at a White House meeting on Monday in which Defense Secretary Ashton Carter pushed back with what the newspaper described as “sobering estimates of the extensive military resources required to enforce such zones” as well as a warning of an “inadvertent clash” with the Russian military if US air power is employed to control areas of the country.

The Times reported that advocates of the no-fly zone said that they believed the Pentagon had deliberately “inflated” its estimate of the costs of the operation in a bid to kill the proposal.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon this week deployed a dozen A-10 flying gunships to the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, from which US warplanes have been carrying out air strikes in Syria.

The slow-flying aircraft, which are equipped with rapid-fire cannon, missiles and other ordinance is utilized to bring devastating power to the close-air support of ground forces. It is the same warplane that was used in the US attack on the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan that massacred 22 patients and medical staff.
24 October, 2015
WSWS.org

 

By Ryan Rodrick Beiler

Hebron resident and anti-occupation activist Hashem al-Azzeh died Wednesday after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli forces.

According to Palestinian media reports, al-Azzeh, who suffered from a heart condition, began feeling chest pains while in his home in the Israeli-controlled Tel Rumeida neighborhood of the occupied West Bank city.

“There was no chance to get an ambulance there,” Hisham Sharabati, coordinator of the Hebron Defense Committee and a field worker for the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, told The Electronic Intifada. Israeli forces do not allow Palestinian vehicles to drive on the streets near his home, which are reserved for Jewish motorists.

Neighbors had to carry al-Azzeh down the hill to the nearest military checkpoint, where there were clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian youth.

“There was tear gas there and the army kept them [al-Azzeh and his neighbors] for 10 minutes,” said Sharabati. “He had heart problems from before, but his situation deteriorated because the tear gas made it worse and then the checkpoint delay.”

When al-Azzeh was eventually brought to a hospital, he was pronounced dead upon arrival. He leaves behind his wife Nisreen and four children, the oldest of whom is 16.

Pregnant wife assaulted

Al-Azzeh lived in a part of Hebron that was frequently attacked by Israeli settlers.

“Hashem lived in a hilly area where the settlers’ homes are higher than his,” said Sharabati.

Like all Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, the Tel Rumeida settlement is illegal under international law. But this particular enclave, comprised of stacks of trailers flanked by Israeli army checkpoints, houses some of the most fanatical and violent settlers in the West Bank.

Al-Azzeh and his family endured sustained harassment from these extremists, including an attack in which settlers assaulted his nephew, then aged 9. The settlers forced a rock into the boy’s mouth to crush his teeth, al-Azzeh had said in a video recording:

In another incident, al-Azzeh’s own teeth were smashed when settlers attacked his home, ransacking it and destroying the furniture. Al-Azzeh’s wife was assaulted by settlers twice while she was pregnant in her first and second trimesters. She miscarried both times.

Fanatic settlers

“Hashem had a big role in showing the world, showing the press, showing solidarity groups, showing any visitor the details of the harassment by the Israeli colonizers in the city of Hebron,” said Sharabati. “The settlers practice all these crimes in the presence of the Israeli army who do not do anything to stop them.”

“Everybody who knew him loved him for his method of giving the point of view of the Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida and Hebron who are suffering from the settlements,” said journalist and Hebron Defense Committee member Bassam Shweiki.

“The settlers of Hebron are the most fanatic settlers in the West Bank,” he added.

One of the Tel Rumeida settlement’s founding residents is the US-born Baruch Marzel, who has been arrested dozens of times by the Israeli authorities and whose criminal record includes acts of violence against Palestinians and Israeli police. Marzel has told The Times of Israel, “We need to remove from here all our enemies.”

Graffiti spray-painted on the side of a Palestinian school near the al-Azzeh home reads “Gas the Arabs/JDL.”

JDL is the acronym for the Jewish Defense League, which was founded by the right-wing settler Meir Kahane. Kahane founded Kach — an organization so racist and extreme that even in Israel it was outlawed and classified as a terrorist group.

Baruch Marzel, who joined the JDL during his teenage years, is a vociferous supporter of Kahane.

Another infamous JDL member was Brooklyn, New York-born settler Baruch Goldstein. In 1994, Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians and injured 125 inside Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque before he was beaten to death by survivors.

Following the massacre, the Israeli authorities divided the mosque into Muslim and Jewish sections. The killings also precipitated the closure of Shuhada Street and other areas of Hebron’s Old City — collectively punishing Palestinian residents for the actions of an extremist settler.

Harassed during harvest

For al-Azzeh, simply remaining in his home was an act of resistance. While many of his immediate neighbors left as closures choked off virtually all economic activity in the area, he and his family stayed, often hosting international visitors and sharing his stories of struggle with them.

This reporter witnessed a typical episode of Israeli repression three years ago during the olive harvest. It was the first time al-Azzeh had been able to harvest his olives in five years.

Accompanied by a handful of International Solidarity Movement volunteers, al-Azzeh made relatively short work of his few trees as many of the olives had already been picked by the settlers.

As the work was finishing, settlers barged into the small grove, claiming that not only were the olive trees theirs, but that the entire land had been given to them by God. When soldiers arrived on the scene, they separated the two groups and in the process arrested a volunteer and two Palestinians — one al-Azzeh’s next-door neighbor and the other a videographer for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

Even though an Israeli officer eventually acknowledged al-Azzeh’s ownership of the land, the officer ordered him and his supporters to leave the area for the rest of the day. Baruch Marzel stood among the settlers watching the scene unfold from above.

Pattern of abuse

That incident of settler belligerence facilitated by the Israeli army is typical of the harassment and abuse endured by the al-Azzeh family and many other Palestinians in Hebron.

More than 50 Palestinians have been killed in shootings and clashes with Israeli forces since the beginning of October, during which time 10 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians.

“There are many Palestinians who are involved in resisting the occupation,” said Sharabati. “It’s true that maybe some try to stab an Israeli settler or an Israeli soldier. But we believe that in many other cases the soldiers and the settlers just invented these excuses after shooting.”

Hashem al-Azzeh’s form of resistance was “social struggle,” according to Shweiki: “Struggle by words — by giving every moment of his time whenever possible to explain what’s happening.”

“He was a simple man in his character, but he was solid,” Shweiki added. “He called for peace all over the world. He didn’t call for any violence. But he wanted to live in peace in his own land in his home.”

Ryan Rodrick Beiler is a freelance photojournalist and member of the ActiveStills collective who lives in Oslo, Norway.

24 October, 2015
The Electronic Intifada

By Nora Barrows-Friedman

Since 1 October, Israeli forces have killed more than 50 Palestinians, including at least 10 children, across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. According to initial data from Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), more than 100 Palestinian children have sustained injuries in that period — and the number keeps climbing.

DCI-P also states that “In response to escalating violence, Israeli forces appear to be implementing a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy, which in some incidents may amount to extrajudicial killings.” Israeli officials have given the green light to military and police forces to fire live ammunition during protests in Jerusalem and the broader West Bank.

In an interview with The Electronic Intifada, Brad Parker, attorney and international advocacy officer at DCI-P, said that the current level of attacks is “an inevitable outcome of policies that have been implemented to varying degrees … against Palestinians, as part of the occupation.”

He added that it “is part of a trend we’ve seen since 2014, where Israeli forces have used increasing lethal force, but also the use of excessive force, against Palestinian demonstrators — particularly children.”

“Dire and urgent”

Across East Jerusalem, Israeli forces have raided Palestinian neighborhoods, arresting dozens of people in just the last few days. Israel has also placed countless roadblocks and installed new checkpoints, concrete walls and barbed wire to isolate Palestinian neighborhoods within the city.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) released a map on Friday detailing the current restrictions inside East Jerusalem, saying that “As of 21 October, 38 obstacles, including 17 checkpoints, 20 cement blocks and one earth mound have been placed.”

UNOCHA adds that “These obstacles directly impact nine Palestinian neighborhoods home to approximately 138,000 people, or some 45 per cent of East Jerusalem’s Palestinian population.”

On Thursday, Wafa News Agency reported that Israeli forces also installed roadblocks at the northern entrance to Bethlehem, which is encircled by Israel’s wall in the West Bank.

The Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Silwan, East Jerusalem, released a video earlier this week documenting the effects of the intensified occupation inside the city, particularly on Palestinian schoolchildren.

arker said that “the situation is pretty dire and urgent for Palestinian children, particularly in East Jerusalem, but it’s really not confined to just Jerusalem. We have kids who have been killed in Gaza, at the border fence,” referring to the boundary between Gaza and present-day Israel.

As part of their work, attorneys with DCI-P provide advocacy and legal representation to children who have been arrested, detained, interrogated and tortured inside Israeli jails and detention centers. Parker described the deep psychological impacts of Israel’s ongoing policies of detention of Palestinian children, saying the effects are significant and long-lasting.

“Once they’re released from detention, they withdraw,” he said. “It shapes the way they live their life.”

https://youtu.be/pehx7wT9dLo

Listen to the interview with Parker via the media player above.

https://soundcloud.com/intifada/killings-palestinian-children-inevitable-outcome-of-israeli-policies

Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, and is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine (Just World Books, 2014).

24 October, 2015
The Electronic Intifada

 

By Robert Barsocchini

As Saudi Arabia, backed and coordinated by the United States, continues a war of aggression against Yemen, the US has decided to sell Saudi dictator Salman bin Abdulaziz four more warships as well as munitions and other equipment valued at $11.25 billion.

Saudi Arabia is currently using US ships to block food, fuel, and medical supplies from entering Yemen, with US-manned ships “patrolling alongside”. Doctors Without Borders has reported that the blockade is “killing as many people in Yemen as the bombing”, and the Red Cross and other groups have said it is causing a humanitarian crisis, as Yemen imports almost one hundred percent of its food.

While nationalist news outlet Reuters asserts that deals like the current weapons shipment to Saudi Arabia are “carefully vetted”, independent investigative journalist Gareth Porter asked the Obama regime about the clear “illegality of resupplying further munitions to the Saudis”, and was told only that the US has asked King Abdulaziz to investigate himself regarding his war crimes.

US government sources told Reuters that “Saudi Arabia’s concerns about Iran” hastened the new weapons deal. Sources failed to mention that among these “concerns” is that Iran’s influence might bring democratic reform to the Saudi kingdom.

Reuters quotes another anonymous US government source who says that by using the Saudis as a proxy to destabilize, starve, and spread Saudi-style despotism to Yemen through war of aggression, the US is “promoting peace and stability”. Since the US/Saudi campaign against Yemen began, al Qaeda and ISIS have both made major gains in that country.

Obama has a history of large arms sales to the Saudis. The “world’s largest” arms trafficker and peace prize winner secured the biggest arms sale in US history in 2010, stocking the Saudi dictator with $60 billion in lethal weaponry and equipment, and later hundreds of millions of dollars in banned cluster bombs, which the dictator has since used against Yemenis.

Robert Barsocchini focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and also writes professionally for the film industry. Updates on Twitter.

22 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org