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By Franklin Lamb

18 May, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Homs, Syria: It’s not hard to find critics of the Assad government in the Governorate (Muhafazat) of Homs or for that matter, to varying degrees in Syria’s other thirteen Governorates according to Syrian analysts interviewed by this observer and reports from human rights groups including lawyers representing dissidents in Syria. However, after nearly 27 months of turmoil, the public opinion pendulum is markedly shifting back in support of the current regime.

One international political result was registered at the United Nations this past week when a US-Qatari-Saudi drafted General Assembly Resolution that was designed to increase pressure on the Assad government stumbled badly and fell far short of what the Saudi Ambassador to the UN and other US allies predicted would be an overwhelming vote in favor.

Effect of shift in popular opinion in Syria

Over the past four or five months it has become increasingly clear that public opinion in Syria is shifting for reasons that include, but are not limited to the following:

While inflation at the grocery stores in probably the most common complaint heard from a cross-section of society here, the population is adapting somewhat to higher prices and it appears to credit the government for efforts, some successful, to soften the impact of the illegal US-led sanctions that target this same Syrian population for purely political reasons to achieve regime change.

While Syrians demand dignity and freedom from oppressive security forces and an end to corruption, as all people do in this region and beyond, they are witnessing a return to near normalcy with respect to supplies of electricity, benzene, mazout fuel oil, bus schedules, schools, and a host of public services such as garbage collection, street sweeping, park maintenance, and sympathetic traffic cops who are rather understanding of short-cuts taken by drivers and pedestrians due to “the situation”.

In addition, public service announcement and even text messages demonstrate that the government is aware of the degree of suffering among the population, accept partial blame, and are focusing on remedial measure and crucially, ending the crisis with its horrific bloodshed. One observes here a definite trend of the pulling together of a high percentage of Syrians who share a very unique history and culture and who are deeply connected to their country and who are increasingly repelled by the continuing killing from all sides including the recent barbarisms of body mutilations and summary executions videotaped and broadcast on Utube by jihadist elements. The latter who these days come from nearly three dozen countries, paid for and indoctrinated by enemies of Syria’s Arab nationalism and deep rooted pillar of resistance to the occupation of Palestine.

In addition, many among Syria’s 23 million citizens, who initially supported the uprising following government reaction to event in Deraa in March 2011, now have serious second thoughts about who exactly would replace the current government. Events in Syria are also making plain that the army is still loyal to the Assad government, and according to Jane’s Defense Weekly, is actually gaining experience and strength as well as the well-known fact that as western diplomats are admitting, the “opposition militias” are hopelessly fractured, turning one another, many essential mafia outfits, and beginning to resemble their fellow jihadists from Libya, Chechnya and in between.

Opinion in Damascus and surrounding areas visited this past week, confirms this observers experience the past five months of a sharp and fairly rapid shift in opinion that now strongly favors letting the Syrian people themselves decide, without outside interference, whether the Assad regime will stay, and indeed, whether, the Baathist party will continue to represent majority opinion, not through wanton violence but rather via next June’s election. Many express confidence in the run up to this critical vote, noting that the election will be closely monitored by the international community to assure fairness.

Perhaps aided by the current glorious May weather, a certain optimism, that was more scarce in the past, pervades many neighborhoods.

For different reasons, foreign powers, including the USA, Turkey, European Union, the UK Jordan and even the majority population of the six Gulf Cooperation Council family run countries, according to Pew Research, are shifting their earlier positions which were based in part of the US administration, NATO, and Israeli assurances that the Assad government would surely fall quickly, “A matter of days, not weeks” US President Obama promised. That was two years ago.

As noted above, this trend has accelerated since the UN General Assembly vote with last weeks which did not go as planned on the biased and politicized non-binding draft resolution on Syria.

The public reaction in Syria and across the Middle East is substantially that the “Friends of Syria” non-binding GA resolution contradicts the reality on the ground, backs terrorism in Syria and hinders the international efforts to help achieve a political solution to the crisis in this country. Only 107 states voted in favor of the resolution, 12 against while 59 countries, mostly from Africa and Latin America, abstained from voting.

One reason the vote fell short of the 130 favorable votes that the basically same resolution garnered the past two times is that it is widely viewed as ignoring the crimes and atrocities committed by the armed jihadist groups in Syria and the flow of thousands of international terrorists backed by the West, the Gulf states and Turkey who provide them with weapons and money. According to the Russian delegate, backed by several other speakers, “the resolutions ignores all the terrorists’ heinous crimes and denounces what it called the escalation of the attacks by the Syrian government”. Afterward one Latin American Permanent Representative told Inner City Press that the count would have been below 100 if not for some “last minute arm-twisting.” As it turned out, 15 countries didn’t vote at all, opting to “get coffee,” as one African Permanent Representative put it before the vote.

Syria’s Ambassador al-Jaafari exposes a hoax in the Gulf

Syria’s permanent Envoy to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari said his country regretted the adoption of a biased and unbalanced UN resolution, thanking the countries that rejected the resolution “for their responsible positions which support the UN principles and the international law articles”. He noted that the decrease in the number of countries that voted in favor and the increase of numbers of those who abstained from voting indicates the growing international understanding of the reality of what is happening in Syria due to the foreign interference, support of terrorism, the spread of extremism and incitement besides the refusal of dialogue.

“We rely on the UN and its member states to support Syria and its people against the culture of extremism and terrorism, and to encourage the comprehensive national dialogue to peacefully resolve the Syrian crisis.” he said. In a statement released after the vote on the UN draft resolution on Syria, al-Jaafari He said that the French delegation had foiled the issuance of a number of UN press releases to condemn the terrorist acts committed by al-Qaeda-linked armed groups in Syria which claimed the lives of thousands of Syrians as it foiled a UN release to condemn the attempt of assassination of the Syrian Premier.

After Qatar’s ambassador spoke in favor of the resolution his country drafted (and re-drafted several time), Ja’afari revealed that there existed an e-mail, from the representative of the Syrian opposition given to Syria’s embassy in Qatar, showing Qatar’s involvement in the kidnapping of UN peacekeepers by the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade. He read out a phone number from the e-mail as several Gulf diplomats grimaced or scowled, and three left the Chamber.

Visibly stunned, the UK Permanent Representative Lyall Grant called the whole matter “deeply confusing”. Another Permanent Representative, from a militia contributing country, said that if true, it’s “very problematic.” The reasons include the fact that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had just thanked Qatar for its roles in the release of the UN Peacekeepers the earlier kidnapping of whom the Qatari government may have planned, paid for and executed.

Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon’s spokesperson Martin Nesirky said he would not disclose any more about the “negotiations to free the peacekeepers or who was behind the crime.”

Score a major diplomatic victory for Syria’s UN Ambassador al-Jaafari as public opinion shifts in favor of the Assad government and both pressure as well as optimism build in the run-up to the Geneva II conference being organized by the White House and the Kremlin.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and Lebanon and can be reached c/o fplamb@gmail.com

18 May 2013

@ BBC News Middle East

A Saudi woman has made history by reaching the summit of the world’s highest mountain.

Raha Moharrak, 25, not only became the first Saudi woman to attempt the climb but also the youngest Arab to make it to the top of Everest.

She is part of a four-person expedition that also includes the first Qatari man and the first Palestinian man attempting to reach the summit.

They are trying to raise $1m (£660,000) for education projects in Nepal.

Originally from Jeddah, Ms Moharrak is a university graduate currently based in Dubai.

Coming from Saudi Arabia – a conservative Muslim country where women’s rights are very restricted – she had to break a lot of barriers to achieve her goal, her climb team said.

A biography on the expedition website said convincing Ms Moharrak’s family to agree to her climb “was as great a challenge as the mountain itself”, though they fully support her now.

“I really don’t care about being the first,” she is quoted as saying. “So long as it inspires someone else to be second.”

By Mazin Al Nahawi

18 May, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

It is a shame that John Baird and his boss Stephen Harper haven’t learned yet from Canada’s colonial past.

For over a century, the Palestine question has been described as the most complex political issue of our modern time. A very “complicated” equation that after a half of a century of Zionist colonization to set up and establish a colonial “Jewish state” in Palestine, a mathematician, none other than Einstein himself, had something to say about the crimes committed in his name as a Jew, and in the name of Judaism.

In a letter by Einstein to the Zionist, Shepard Rifkin, executive director for “American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”, dated April 10, 1948 (the date is very important, it’s only a month before the illegal creation of the Zionist state in Palestine.)

Mr. Shepard Rifkin

    Dear Sir:

    When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations build up from our own ranks.

    I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.

    Sincerely yours,

    (Signed, ‘A. Einstein’)

It didn’t require more than three lines to solve this “complex” matter, and it seems that Einstein was very confident in naming the culprits for the “catastrophe in Palestine”, as he precisely described it.

One month after that letter, the Palestinian Arabs began to call the day of the creation of the Israeli occupation state, which consisted of the robbery of their homeland and existence as AL NAKBA (Cataclysm or Catastrophe). That was 65 years ago.

The fact that someone like Einstein could figure out such a complicated issue can not eliminate the complexity of the matter. Indeed, Palestinians are still waiting, because 65 years was not enough for most of the “civilized world” to understand the Palestinian struggle for liberation and justice and acknowledge its root causes.

Unlike the Zionist sympathizers, apologists and propagandists nowadays, the Zionist leadership who committed genocide against the indigenous Arabs of Palestine in order to establish a “Jewish state” in a land originally had less than 3.5 % Jewish population by 1880s 1 , were more frank about the colonial nature of their Zionist project, and from its beginning and early formation stages.

Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian, journalist and the father of the political Zionist movement, wrote in his diary:

“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” 2

More sickening, and in order to accomplish his fantasy plan and “buy” Palestine from the Turks; Herzl was ready to exploit the Turkish crimes against the Armenians and “to influence the European press (in London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna) to handle the Armenian question in a spirit more friendly to the Turks.” 3 In his admission, he used his profession and betrayed his integrity as a journalist. A journalist must have principles, morals, integrity and honesty, and Herzl, at his best was an excellent professional propagandist.

Russian colonialist Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the Zionist state, in an address to the English Zionist Federation on September 19, 1919:

“By a Jewish National Home I mean the creation of such conditions that as the country is developed we can pour in a considerable number of immigrants, and finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English or America American.” 4

Concerning the issue of Palestine’s native population, Weizmann in his remarks about the 1917 Balfour declaration, on record with the Jewish Agency Executive, stated:

“With regard to the Arab question – the British told me that there are several hundred thousand Negroes there but that this matter has no significance.” 5

The British colonialists were not less racist toward the Arab Palestinians, they had already sponsored and incorporated the Zionist colonization in their own imperial project to dominate the East Mediterranean strategic position and secure the on-going theft of its resources.

Balfour, the author of the shameful Balfour Declaration, explained the British position toward the natives of Palestine:

“For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country… The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right.” 6

Of course the natives who suddenly inhabited Balfour’s “ancient land“ and their whole existence are only a matter of “desire and prejudices” and for the sake of humanity they needed to be expelled to open the door for Britain’s new 20th Century Crusade and expand its imperial needs.

Another Russian colonialist, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the icon of the Zionist right wing, explained the Zionist aims in Palestine in his article “The Iron Wall”. He wrote:

“We cannot give any compensation for Palestine, neither to the Palestinians nor to other Arabs. Therefore, a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in total, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy. Not only must this be so, it is so whether we admit it or not. What does the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate mean for us? It is the fact that a disinterested power committed itself to create such security conditions that the local population would be deterred from interfering with our efforts.” 7

For Jabotinsky it was just another European settler colonization, like the United States, Canada or Australia. He was aware of Zionism as a colonial adventure with direct brutal assault against the indigenous natives. He stated:

“My readers have a general idea of the history of colonization in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonization being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.” He added later: “Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of “Palestine” into the “Land of Israel”.” 8

Moshe Dayan, a Zionist war criminal who helped form the Haganah gangs, and participated in organizing the terror and massacres against the Palestinians to expel them from their ancestors’ land, in a rare confession said:

“Let us not today fling accusation at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before [the Palestinians’] very eyes we are possessing the land and villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived … We are the generation of colonizers, and without the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home.” 9

Finally, David Ben Gurion, the main director of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, in a letter to his son in 1937, stated:

 

“We must expel the Arabs and take their places and if we have to use force, to guarantee our own right to settle in those places ­ then we have force at our disposal.” 10

The conscience of that Polish colonist surprisingly developed later when he told Nahum Goldman president of the World Jewish Congress:

“I don’t understand your optimism,” Ben-Gurion declared. “Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is NATURAL: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism 11 : the Nazis 12 , Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it’s simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.” 13

Ben Gurion was an atheist. Still, while admitting to the Zionist theft of Palestine, he managed to talk about an imaginary friend in the sky, God and his “promised land”! And based on a book Ben Gurion published in 1918 in New York, he believed that the Arab natives of Palestine were the “flesh and the blood of old Judeans” 14 , yet later when the same natives rejected his “Jewish state” in their land, he did not object to expelling them and stealing their land. Actually, with regard to the Arabs expulsion, he told a meeting of the Jewish Agency:

“I don’t see anything immoral in it.” 15

Now if I should put all these damning statements and confessions in one sentence to explain why the Palestinians are resisting it would be:

It is the occupation, stupid!

In spite of all of the Zionist leadership literature, writings, documented minutes of cabinet meetings regarding colonization and the plans to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous Arabs ( See Plan Dalet ), still Canada has sustained all manner of support for the Zionist project and its racist establishment, including military, while promoting itself as a “fair and peace-loving state”.

Before the Zionists decided on Palestine as a homeland for Jews, in their first conference in Basel 1897, Canadian Evangelicals were already sending their religious colonial settlers and crusades to “prepare” the land for the “return” of the Jews to quicken the Apocalypse. Even before Herzl initiated his efforts to approach the Ottomans, who were themselves occupiers in Palestine, a Canadian Christian Zionist, Henry Wentworth Monk, was working to accomplish that exact goal, to “buy” Palestine from the Turks.

On the state level, Lester Pearson summarized Canadian foreign policy regarding Palestine. He was a devoted Christian Zionist whose memoirs refer to the Zionist state as “the land of my Sunday school lessons” 16 . The same Sunday religious “lessons” taught him the geography of his imaginary biblical holy land so he knew it “more than the geography of Ontario” 17 . If someone with these qualifications chaired the pivotal United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, there can be no surprise when later the Zionist state was carved out of historical Palestine. Pearson stated:

“I have never waivered in my view that a solution to the problem was impossible without the recognition of a Jewish state in Palestine. To me this was always the core of the matter.” 18

As if Palestine was a part of Pearson’s family property and the Arab “tenants” having no say.

Gandhi, who luckily missed Pearson’s type of “school and lessons,” had the simple common sense which easily debunked the racist mentality of Pearson and his Zionist buddies. Gandhi wrote in September 1938:

“The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews, partly or wholly as their national home.” 19

It is important to note that Pearson upheld the racist Mackenzie Law which did not allow European Jews fleeing the Holocaust in Europe to enter Canada. His desire to “protect” Jews was not different from Ben Gurion’s who said:

“If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel.” 20

Talking of the imaginary history which many Zionists like Ben Gurion and Pearson have used to legitimize their crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Arab Palestinians, Tel Aviv University Professor of Archaeology Ze’ev Herzog summed up the major archaeological findings of 70 years of intensive excavations in Palestine with the following:

“The patriarchs’ acts are legendary, the Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants to hear about it.” 21

The core of the matter for colonialists like Pearson and his overseers in London and Washington is simply to allow greedy corporations, destructive oil and gas companies, to continue their theft of the resources and minerals underneath a “land without people.” “Balfour of Canada” or “Rabbi Pearson”, as many Zionists once called him, said: “Israel may assume an important role in Western defence as the southern pivot of current plans for the defence.” 22 Pearson’s devotion to Zionism did not add much to the nonsensical Zionist colonial narrative. Theodor Herzl already portrayed the prospective “Jewish state” as Europe’s “wall of defense against Asia” and an “outpost of civilisation against barbarism.” 23

Let us remember Pearson’s true legacy: he “refused to call for Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, and had Canada deliver weapons to the French to put down the Algerian and Vietnamese independence movements.” 24 Many other atrocities are detailed in Yves Engler’s book: Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping – The Truth may Hurt.

Actually Noam Chomsky outlined what kind of war criminal Pearson was when he wrote in the foreword of Engler’s book:

“Lester Pearson was a major criminal, really extreme. He didn’t have the power to be like an American president, but if he’d had it, he would have been the same. He tried.” 25

So what John Baird did during his recent visit to Jerusalem, occupied Palestine is nothing but another example of the long bond and co-operation between the Canadian state and the Israeli occupation state.

Another obvious sign of the unconditional support, aid, and cover-up for the racist Israeli apartheid in Palestine, John Baird, still proud of the shameful ties, said:

“Let me state at the outset, and for the record, that Israel has no greater friend in the world than Canada.

I make that point around the world often.” 26

The irony is that Canada refused entry to Jewish refugees who were trying to escape the European Holocaust and helped to block every escape route except Palestine. This same Canada is now claiming to be the greatest friend of the “Jewish state”. Herzl foresaw the help being offered by the anti-Jewish societies who do not accept Jews among themselves, but want them to “return to their ancient homeland”, Palestine. He predicted in his diary that:

“The antisemites will become our most loyal friends, the antisemites nations will become our allies.” 27

The Canadian government has a history of supporting apartheid, along with other destructive policies from mining, to militarism, and backing up big corporations stealing from poor nations. Just ask Haitians about Canada’s part in dismantling and privatizing their country 28 , but the Canadian corporate media does a good job of comforting and baby sitting the Canadian audiences.

In the past the Canadian government gave similar support and aid to the other European racist apartheid in South Africa. Nelson Mandela said clearly:

“But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” 29

Not so in the case of Canada which acts as if it still does not “know” about its continuing complicity with apartheid. Although it was exposed in South Africa, it is still patiently waiting to be exposed in Palestine.

John Baird needs to visit the indigenous “reservations”, the Canadian bantustans style in his “democratic state” and listen to their vocabulary. Words like “Colonization” and “Decolonization” are very common and repeated consistently among the threatened indigenous people inside Canada and outside. Both terms express reality and solution to their struggle. But these words are absent and will never be herd in any of the mainstream corporate media.

A colonialist promoter like Baird should know that he is not welcome in Jerusalem, occupied Palestine, nor in Canada State if it were up to the indigenous people.

But unlike Einstein’s brain, the Zionist brains of Pearson, Harper and Baird are the average abnormal brains in the Canadian government, never evolved from their colonial racist limited mentality.

In 1904 a Canadian Christian Zionist called Reverend Lucas, who had qualifications to be a Sunday school teacher anywhere in Canada, wrote a book called “Canada and Canaan”, and in it he made this amazing note:

“Canada instead of Canaan! Moses would have danced with joy.” 30

Indeed, Canada and the Israeli apartheid in Canaan/Palestine are nothing but twin colonial settler states built on racism, genocide, and dispossession.

Notes

The Population of Palestine: Population Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and The Mandate (Ch 1, Table 1.4D) by Prof Justin McCarthy (Columbia University Press, 1990.)

The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, vol. 1, p. 88.

The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p.387.

Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 , by Nur Masalha, p. 41. And The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann: August 1898-July 1931 , by Chaïm Weizmann, p. 257.

Chaim Weizmann quoted by Arthur Ruppin [ The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians , by Noam Chomsky, p481. Source: Yosef Heller, Bama’avak Lamdina (Jerusalem, 1985), p.140]

Crossroads to Israel 1917-1948 , by Christopher Sykes, (1965, reprinted Indiana University Press, Bloomingtron, IN, 1973), p. 5.

The Iron Wall: We and the Arabs. 1923.

Ibid.

The Iron Wall , by Avi Shlaim, p. 101.

See the full English translation of Ben-Gurion’s letter . The original Hebrew (from the Ben-Gurion Archives) – Source: Journal of Palestine Studies.

The word “Semitic” is an adjective derived from “Shem”, one of the three sons of “Noah” in the Biblical mythology (Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21). The term was first coined by a German “historian” theologist August Ludwig von Schlözer in Eichhorn’s “Repertorium”, vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Schlözer used the term to refer to the languages related to “Hebrew”, which is nothing but an appropriation of a square Aramaic (See: Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean , by Basem L. Ra’ad. ) The term “antisemitism” was first used by Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904), a German racist nationalist Journalist, who created it in 1879 to describe the anti-Jewish campaigns in Europe. Ironically the Zionists themselves carry on the same term.

See: The Zionist-Nazi Collaboration , by William James Martin.

The Jewish Paradox , by Nahum Goldman, 1978, p. 99.

David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Eretz Israel in the Past and in the Present , 1918.

Righteous Victims , by Benny Morris, p. 144.

Personal Policy Making: Canada’s Role in the Adoption of the Palestine Partition Resolution , by Eliezer Tauber, p. 84.

Ibid.

The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict , by David Taras, p. 129.

The Jews In Palestine . By Mahatma Gandhi. Published in the Harijan 26-11-1938.

The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust , by Tom Segev, Henry Holt and Co., New York, First Owl Books Edition 2000, p. 28.

Ha’aretz Magazine, Friday, October 29, 1999.

Lester Pearson’s 1952 memo to cabinet.

One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate , by Tom Segev, 2001, p. 150.

See Yves Engler’s post: The truth about Lester Pearson .

Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping – The Truth May Hurt , by Yves Engler. Publisher: RED Publishing (Mar 15 2012), p. 9.

Address by Minister Baird to the American Jewish Committee May 3, 2012 – Washington, D.C.

The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl. Vol. 1, p. 84.

See this article: Canada’s ‘Right Arm’ : FOCAL’s Role in the Privatization of Haiti . And this one: A Very Canadian Coup d’état in Haiti : The Top 10 Ways that Canada’s Government Helped the 2004 Coup and its Reign of Terror .

From President Mandela’s speech at the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 04 December 1997, Pretoria.

Lucas, D.V. Canaan and Canada . Toronto: William Briggs, 1904, p. 33.

Mazin Al Nahawi is a Palestinian refugee from Safad, occupied Palestine. He finished the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts – Criticism Department, Damascus, Syria in 1996. Now he lives in Victoria, BC, Canada, on land that is the traditional territory of the Lkwungen, Esquimalt, and W_SÁNEC peoples.

By Roula Khalaf and Abigail Fielding Smith

@ Financial Times

16 May 2013

The gas-rich state of Qatar has spent as much as $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels.

The cost of Qatar’s intervention, its latest push to back an Arab revolt, amounts to a fraction of its international investment portfolio. But its financial support for the revolution that has turned into a vicious civil war dramatically overshadows western backing for the opposition.

In dozens of interviews with the Financial Times conducted in recent weeks, rebel leaders both abroad and within Syria as well as regional and western officials detailed Qatar’s role in the Syrian conflict, a source of mounting controversy.

The small state with a gargantuan appetite is the biggest donor to the political opposition, providing generous refugee packages to defectors (one estimate puts it at $50,000 a year for a defector and his family) and has provided vast amounts of humanitarian support.

In September, many rebels in Syria’s Aleppo province received a one-off payment of $150 courtesy of Qatar. Sources close to the Qatari government say total spending has reached as much as $3bn, while rebel and diplomatic sources put the figure at $1bn at most.

For Qatar, owner of the world’s third-largest gas reserves, its intervention in Syria is part of an aggressive quest for global recognition and is merely the latest chapter in its attempt to establish itself as a major player in the region, following its backing of Libya’s rebels who overthrew Muammer Gaddafi in 2011.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms transfers, Qatar has sent the most weapons deliveries to Syria, with more than 70 military cargo flights into neighbouring Turkey between April 2012 and March this year.

But though its approach is driven more by pragmatism and opportunism, than ideology, Qatar has become entangled in the polarised politics of the region, setting off scathing criticism. “You can’t buy a revolution,” says an opposition businessman.

Qatar’s support for Islamist groups in the Arab world, which puts it at odds with its peers in the Gulf states, has fuelled rivalry with Saudi Arabia. Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Qatar’s ruling emir, “wants to be the Arab world’s Islamist (Gamal) Abdelnasser”, said an Arab politician, referring to Egypt’s fiery late president and devoted pan-Arab leader.

Qatar’s intervention is coming under mounting scrutiny. Regional rivals contend it is using its financial firepower simply to buy future influence and that it has ended up splintering Syria’s opposition. Against this backdrop Saudi Arabia, which until now has been a more deliberate backer of Syria’s rebels, has stepped up its involvement.

Recent tensions over the opposition’s election of an interim prime minister who won the support of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood has also driven Saudi Arabia to tighten its relationship to the political opposition, a job it had largely left in the hands of Qatar.

The relegation of Qatar to second place in providing weapons follows concern in the West and among other Arab states that weapons it supplies could fall into the hands of an al-Qaeda-linked group, Jabhat al-Nusrah.

Diplomats also say the Qataris have had trouble securing a steady supply of arms, something the Saudis have been able to do via their more developed networks.

A supply route across Jordan’s border to southern Syria has opened up in recent months. The Jordanian government, which is terrified of jihadis getting the upper hand in its neighbour, has been reluctantly allowing Saudi deliveries.

The west’s reluctance to intervene more forcefully in Syria has all but left Bashar al-Assad’s opponents reliant for support on Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey though since late last year, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan have joined the rebels’ backers as junior partners.

Khalid al-Attiyah, Qatar’s state minister for foreign affairs, who handles its Syrian policy, dismissed talk of rivalry with the Saudis and denied allegations that Qatar’s support for the rebels has splintered Syria’s opposition and weakened nascent institutions.

In an interview with the Financial Times, he said every move Qatar has made has been in conjunction with the Friends of Syria group of Arab and western nations, not alone. “Our problem in Qatar is that we don’t have a hidden agenda so people start fixing you one,” he says.

 

By Nile Bowie

15 May, 2013

For anyone who has been critical of the Western narrative on Syria, the ongoing diplomatic circus begs a very basic question: How can the countries that have bankrolled and armed the insurgency honestly broker a meaningful peace deal? Well, they can’t. The joint effort recently announced by Moscow and Washington to bring the government and insurgents to an international conference in line with the Geneva Communiqué is a welcoming development, but some major issues have already come to the fore. There is an ongoing disagreement over who should represent the opposition in a Syrian peace process; in addition to the blatant Qatari proxies in the Syrian National Coalition, Russia has requested that the National Coordinating Body also be present. In stark contrast to the foreign-based SNC (lined with figures who have spent the past few decades in the West), the NCB is the internal opposition, and it has caught a lot of flak because it opposes the armed uprising and also talks to the Syrian government.

The SNC has maintained it could not accept an invitation to dialogue unless Assad’s removal was guaranteed. Russia will not allow for Assad’s departure to be a precondition of talks, and Kerry looks to have shifted the US position by saying Assad’s exit should be the outcome of negotiations on a transitional government, rather than a starting point. Let’s be clear – before this conflict started in 2011, Assad oversaw a political system that was certainly authoritarian. The economy was stagnate, the state poorly handled overpopulation issues, the agricultural sector was suffering from long periods of drought. When Bashar took over from his father, he granted more political breathing space to dissidents, and then backpedalled on reforms when popular movements fast took shape. In combating the insurgency, Syrian forces killed many of their own citizens in the crossfire. No matter what anybody thinks of Assad, it is not the place of Washington, London, or Doha to deicide his political fate.

Let’s look at the situation on the ground; after more than two years of fighting, the Ba’ath establishment is firmly intact and functioning. The state controls the vast majority of territory, there are no major defections, and the business communities in the major cities support Assad. No one denies that many Syrian civilians want to see the end of Ba’athist rule, but the swathes of Assad supporters and their plight are almost universally obfuscated from the mainstream narrative. Bashar al-Assad, for better or for worse, heads the legitimate government of Syria, and excluding him from any peace talks or transitional government will simply negate the success of peace efforts. If Assad faces an opposition coalition in the scheduled 2014 elections, and international monitors confirm his victory with a fair democratic majority, can anyone expect those sharks and vultures of the NATO-GCC bloc to respect the people’s choice? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

It seems like those attempting to broker peace in Syria subscribe to two separate versions of reality. A group of UN human rights investigators headed by Carla Del Ponte has compiled evidence that Syrian rebels were behind the sarin nerve gas attacks that killed dozens in Aleppo and elsewhere. British PM David Cameron seems to think otherwise, maintaining that the Assad regime held responsibility; Kerry, too, maintains “strong evidence” exists to blame the regime, despite the fact that UN officials and other US officials say there is no evidence. Despite UN findings, Britain and France continue their push to end arms embargoes to Syria, allowing them to openly arm militants who more-than-likely used chemical weapons. The Obama administration is also flirting with providing “direct lethal aid” to the insurgents – as in anti-tank guided missiles and surface-to-air missiles. The idea of flooding more arms into a country where civil war has killed some seventy thousand can only be described as one thing: pathological – not to mention giving weapons to non-state actors that are on record for committing war crimes! It’s batshit crazy. A decade after Iraq, right wing and liberal hawks are again joining forces to call for stronger US military intervention in Syria.

In keeping with US-mafia-minded protocol, all options remain on the table, and there is now talk of imposing a no-fly zone and air strikes against Assad’s forces, and some in the US political establish are behind the use of American and other ground troops to secure Assad’s chemical weapon stockpiles. And all the while, Western mainstream media remains totally complicit and presents an up-side-down version of events to their audiences. As Israel transparently violates international law and kills dozens by striking inside Syrian territory, Russia is the bad guy for honoring contracts already signed to provide defensive weapons to Syria. Western media perpetuates the idea that Syria – the victim of a brutal foreign-backed insurgency campaign, the recipient of numerous Israeli strikes, and a country partially under occupation – having the capabilities to defend itself as totally unacceptable and a threat to regional peace.

It’s difficult to shake the feeling of living in bizarro-world when commentators and analysts on television highlight the egregious violations committed by Iran and Hezbollah in Syria, while completely obfuscating the vicious role of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the CIA throughout this conflict. Syria tells us important things about the international policy system as it exists; mainly, that some countries can trounce international law while others must forfeit the right to defend themselves, and that the UN is an ineffective body incapable of meting out justice to global hegemons. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. The odds are stacked against the foundation of a fragile peace. The Saudis and Qataris are pushing for the allocation of Syria’s seat at the UN to the Western-supported opposition. Nasrallah claims that transfer of the weapons to Hezbollah would be Syria’s “strategic response” to the airstrikes that hit the outskirts of Damascus. Syria says any new Israeli assault would bring a “harsh and painful” response. No matter how bad Assad is, the Tablianization of Syria is no solution. As this regional conflict deepens and Syria teeters on red lines of all sorts, the world cannot expect ruthless purveyors of violence to become effect purveyors of peace.

Nile Bowie is a Malaysia-based political analyst and a columnist with Russia Today. He also contributes to PressTV, Global Research, and CounterPunch. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

 

 

 

By: Bruno Jäntti [1]

13 May , 2013

@ al-akhbar english

During Israel’s latest onslaught against the Gaza Strip in November 2012, a major conference was held in Tel Aviv: the 2nd Israel HLS International Conference. Among the most prominent sponsors of the homeland security event were two of Israel’s largest weapons companies, Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), both of which cooperate closely with the Israeli military. But the conference also had another grandiosely advertised partner: the European Commission.

As is often the case, this undisguised cooperation between the EU and Israeli military companies went fully unchallenged – let alone noticed – in the European media. Not even the rather conspicuous fact that the EU-sponsored conference occurred simultaneously with Israel’s devastating Gaza assault in which Israel used the equipment of both Elbit and IAI.

The same inability, or unwillingness, by the European media to report such collaboration, let alone deplore it, manifested itself even more prominently in January 2009. A day after Israel’s 22-day long assault on the Gaza Strip, the leaders of six European states, including the UK, France, and Italy, arrived in Israel for a gala dinner [2], voicing their support for Israel. The dinner was hosted by Israel’s then-prime minister Ehud Olmert. The European leaders vowed, of all things, to stop the flow of arms to Hamas. Meanwhile, the Israeli strikes on Gaza would kill 926 civilians.

As a trading and co-sponsoring partner, Elbit is among the most disagreeable of all the Israeli military companies. Being at the very core of Israel’s breaches of international law, Elbit is deeply involved in Israel’s drone programs that have targeted and killed scores of civilians [3], including children. The former president and chief executive of Elbit proclaimed that the company is “the backbone [4]” of Israel’s drone operations. Elbit also provides surveillance equipment [5] to the illegal wall Israel has built in the West Bank. Besides being an instrumental partner of the Israeli air force, it is also sells equipment to the Israeli navy.

The EU also funnels funds to Elbit through allocating [6] EU-taxpayers’ money to the company under the umbrella of scientific research. Indeed, another barely publicized yet lucrative form of EU-Israeli cooperation that directly benefits Israel’s private military sector are scientific research subsidies. David Cronin, who has put together a pioneering compendium [7] on the EU’s complicity in Israel’s illegalities, estimates that by the year 2013, Israel will have received EU research grants [8] for more than €500 million. Israel currently takes part in over 800 schemes with European universities and corporations.

The massive EU-Israel bilateral trade remains one of the least talked about, yet among the most crucial enablers of Israel’s ever-continuing breaches of international law.

 

The EU is Israel’s main trading partner with a total annual trade of approximately €30 billion [9] (€29.7 billion in 2012). The volume of the trade is more than ten times that of the US foreign aid to Israel. While it is reasonable to assume that US-Israeli relations will remain intact in the coming years, the EU has the required economical leverage and legal means to exert unprecedented pressure on Israel, compelling it to abide by international law.

According to a 2003 European Commission poll [10], 60 percent of the EU citizenry sees Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. In this respect, European public opinion is more informed than that in the US. Another factor that makes it feasible for EU to alter its policy towards Israel is that the EU-Israel Association Agreement [11] that governs all trade and cooperation between the EU and Israel states that “[r]elations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles.”

Hence, whereas a drastic shift in the US-Israeli relations remains an unlikely scenario, the EU has both the informed public opinion required for, and a no-brainer legal case demanding, relatively swift and highly momentous changes.

As of now, however, the EU is both a major client for Israel’s occupation-powered, export-oriented and multi-billion military manufacturing and homeland security sector as well as a major exporter of military equipment to Israel.

Besides the military and homeland security imports from Israel, the EU also continues to violate its own regulations on arms exports. The EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports [12] states that the EU is “DETERMINED [sic] to prevent the export of equipment which might be used for internal repression or international aggression or contribute to regional instability.”

How determined exactly has the EU been in its adherence to this provision? Based on the criteria set out by the EU in the above regulation, Israel is an illegitimate country for arms exports. After all, in addition to violating a whole list of UN resolutions, Israel has been and remains exceptionally committed to violating international law.

Although Israel is an invalid trading partner according to the EU Code of Conduct regulations, the value of licenses granted by the EU over the past decade for arms exports to Israel amounts to billions of Euros.

Although Israel is an invalid trading partner according to the EU Code of Conduct regulations, the value of licenses granted by the EU over the past decade for arms exports to Israel amounts to billions of Euros.

Whereas 18 of 27 EU member states export military equipment to Israel, the bulk of the total EU exports originate from the major EU states: Italy, France, Germany and the UK, according to Amnesty International’s “Fuelling conflict: Foreign arms supplies to Israel/Gaza.”

In terms of violating EU arms exports regulations, Italy has the most abominable track record [13]. Italy’s biggest defense contractor, Finmeccanica, announced in July 2012, that it had won and signed a $1 billion (€752 million) deal with Israel. Finmeccanica will provide training jets to the Israeli air force, which repeatedly carries out egregious attacks against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians and infrastructure.

Out of the total €752 million deal, the most sizable part belongs to Finmeccanica’s subsidiary Alenia Aermacchi which provides [14] 30 M-346 advanced trainer aircraft to the Israeli air force. It is reported [13] that the Italian government played a major role in brokering the contract.

Another EU member state that carries out large-scale military trade with Israel is France. Between 2003 and 2008, France exported more than €521 million [15] worth of weaponry to Israel.

An Amnesty International report [16] from February 2009 revealed that electrical components made in France were found in the rubble of buildings destroyed by the Israeli military during the 2008-2009 Gaza massacre. The components were installed in Hellfire AGM missiles manufactured by the US company Hellfire Systems, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. France also exported [17] specialized equipment for reconnaissance, such as laser systems, to Israel.

Another major arms exporter to Israel is Germany. Germany sold major conventional weaponry to Israel for more than €580 million [15] between 1996 and 2000, including Dolphin Class Submarines, which are assumed to be capable of launching nuclear warheads. In 2000 alone, German weapons trade with Israel was worth more than €130 million [15]. Germany exported torpedoes, armored cars, and parts for the Israeli Merkava tanks used in occupied Palestine.

The UK also exports considerable amounts of military equipment to Israel. In 2009, after Israel had destroyed the Gaza Strip, the UK authorities granted export licenses for electronic warfare equipment, naval radars, and sniper rifles to Israel. In 2009, the then-Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary David Miliband revealed that the Israeli equipment used in Israel’s murderous and destructive assault against Gaza “almost certainly [18]” contained components that had been delivered by the UK.

In recent years, the UK government has annually licensed arms exports directly to Israel for between €12 million and €36 million. In 2008, UK authorities granted military export licenses for more than €34 million.

Besides these major European powers, one state enjoys exceptional clout as a strict adherent to international law, but has excelled at conducting arms trade with Israel, namely Finland. The total value of the Finnish-Israeli arms trade is €200 million [19].

In addition to the fact the Finland has conducted more military trade with Israel than a number of much bigger EU member states, what sets Finland apart from all the other arms trading partners of Israel is the severity of domestic criticism the trade has elicited.

A petition [20] signed by more than 250 Finnish dignitaries from the arts, academia, and politics is a telling indicator of the wave of criticism arising from the military trade between Israel and Finland. Among those calling for an immediate discontinuation of all forms of military trade with Israel are the foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja and world-renowned expert on international law Martti Koskenniemi.

It merits emphasis that the continuation and, often the mere existence, of the trade has arguably had no support in the Finnish mainstream media.

As the 2003 European Commission poll already revealed, the ever-continuing business-as-usual attitude by the EU to Israel’s actions fully contradicts union public opinion. The freezing of the EU-Israel Association Agreement and the seizing of all weapons exports from the EU to Israel – both actions required by EU provisions – could force Israel to finally recognize and respect the rights of the Palestinians.

Bruno Jäntti is an investigative journalist with a focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is the chair of ICAHD Finland (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions).

By Shamus Cooke

13 May, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The tempo of events in Syria has accelerated in recent weeks. The government forces have scored significant battlefield victories over the rebels, and this has provoked a mixture of war provocations and peace offers from the U.S. and its anti-Assad allies .

With Obama’s blessing Israel fighter jets recently attacked Syria on three occasions; in one massive air strike on a military installation in Damascus 42 Syrian soldiers were killed. Shortly thereafter Obama finally agreed to a peace conference with Russia, which had been asking for such talks for months.

Obama is entering these talks from a weakened position; the Syrian government is winning the war against the U.S.-backed rebels, and success on the ground is the trump card of any peace talks. Obama and the rebels are in no position to be demanding anything in Syria at the moment.

It’s possible that Obama wants to avoid further humiliation in his Syria meddling by a last minute face-saving “peace” deal. It’s equally likely, however, that these peace talks are a clever diplomatic ruse, with war being the real intention. It’s not uncommon for peace talks to break down and be used as a justification for an intensification of war, since “peace was attempted but failed.”

And Obama has plenty of reasons to pursue more war:  he would look incredibly weak and foolish if Syria’s president were to stay in power after Obama’s administration had already announced that Assad’s regime was over and hand picked an alternative government of Syrian exiles that the U.S. — and other U.S. allies — were treating as the “legitimate government of Syria.”

Here’s how the BBC referred to Obama’s Syrian puppet government:

“… the Syrian opposition’s political leadership – which wanders around international capitals attending conferences and making grand speeches – is not leading anyone. It barely has control of the delegates in the room with it, let alone the fighters in the field.”

If an unlikely peace deal is reached, these Syrian exiles — who only a tiny minority of the rebel fighters actually listen to — will be the ones to sign off on the deal.

Many politicians in the U.S. are still clamoring for war in Syria, based on the unproven accusation that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the rebels. In actuality, however, the UN so far has only indicated that the exact opposite is true : there is significant evidence the U.S.-backed rebels used chemical weapons against the Syrian government:

Of course this fact only made the back pages of the U.S.media, if it appeared at all. Similarly bad news about the U.S.-backed rebels committing large scale ethnic/religious cleansing and numerous human rights violations didn’t manage to make it on to the front pages either. And the numerous terrorist bombings by the U.S.-backed rebels that have indiscriminately killed civilians have likewise been largely ignored by U.S. politicians and the media.

The U.S. position is weakened further by the fact that the majority of the rebel fighters are Islamic extremists, who are fighting for jihad and sharia law, not democracy. The Guardian reported recently :

“Syria’s main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organization with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad’s [Syrian] regime.”

The New York Times adds:

“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.”

But even with all these barriers to the U.S. dictating its terms to the Syrian government, Obama has trump cards of his own: the U.S. and the Israeli military.

It’s possible that the Israeli airstrikes on Syria were used as a bargaining chip with the proposed peace conference in Russia. If Obama threatened to bomb Syria into the Stone Age there is plenty of evidence —Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya — to back up this threat.

Following through with this kind of threat is actually considered intelligent foreign policy to many politicians in the U.S., since a country not aligned with the U.S. will have been weakened and fragmented as an opposing force, lowering the final barrier to war with Iran.

U.S. foreign policy is now completely dependent on using the threat of annihilation. As U.S. economic power has declined in relation to China and other countries, the economic carrot has been tossed aside in favor of the military stick. Plenty of U.S. foreign policy “experts” are demanding that Obama unsheathe the stick again, lest this foundation of U.S. foreign policy be proven to be just talk and no action.

This is the essence of U.S. involvement in Syria, which is risking regional war that could include Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Iran, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia with the potential to drag in the bigger powers connected to these nations, the U.S. and Europe on one hand and Russia and China on the other.

The fate of the already-suffering Middle East is hanging in the balance.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action ( www.workerscompass.org )  He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/they-may-be-fighting-for-syria-not-assad-they-may-also-be-winning-robert-fisk-reports-from-inside-syria-8590636.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22456875

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10039672/UN-accuses-Syrian-rebels-of-chemical-weapons-use.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/20/world/la-fg-syria-rights-report-20120321

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/30/syria-damascus-bomb-chemical-weapons

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/08/free-syrian-army-rebels-defect-islamist-group

By Franklin Lamb

13 May, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Damascus: The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine , Professor Richard Falk, came to Lebanon last week on an unofficial visit to survey opinion while fact finding the condition in Palestinian refugee’s camps.

It was the Professors first visit to Lebanon since the fateful summer of 1982.   Back then, en route by sea to Beirut , which was under Israeli siege and blockade, Falk was Vice-Chair of the Sean McBride Commission of Inquiry into Israeli crimes against Lebanon . Mid-way between Cyprus and Lebanon , the Zionist navy, in a blatant act of piracy on the high seas, intercepted, boarded and commandeered the vessel. Eventually, under reported American pressure via US Envoy Morris Draper’s telephoned profanity to Tel Aviv, the pirates allowed Falk’s delegation to disembark at the port of Jounieh , just north of Beirut . Draper, who like so many US diplomats, claims he finally “saw the light after retiring”, told this observer that “I never swore so much in my life as I did at those SOBS during that summer of 1982 and after I learned the details of Ariel Sharon’s choreography of the Sabra-Shatila massacre!” Ambassador Draper added, “The world will never know the extent of Israeli crimes committed against Lebanon and its refugees until Washington threatens to cut off all aid until Tel Aviv opens up its archives on this period.”

Professor Falk, as he mentioned during several events here, including a first-rate conference on the status of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and their struggle for the most elementary civil rights to work and to own a home, organized by the Institute of Palestine Studies, came to Lebanon not to offer counsel to Lebanon’s sects or even to the Palestinians. (The IPS, ( http://www.palestine-studies.org ) founded in 1969, is considered by this observer and many others, as the most reliable and authoritative source of information on Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israel conflict.)

Falk came to listen and to learn. He did both. He listened intently to each speaker, scribing hurried notes regarding the current conditions of Palestinian refugee, including education and health status, in Lebanon ‘s 12 camps and two dozen “gatherings,” reports that were presented by several academics and NGO’s based here.

Falk and others in attendance at the briefings found the findings sobering and alarming.  They included but are not limited to, the following.

There are currently 42,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria who have been forced into Lebanon as a result of the crisis in Syria . The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East – UNRWA -reported to the IPS workshop, that they expect 80,000 Palestinians by the end of the year.  Others estimate the December 2013 number will exceed 100,000. According to figures, forwarded to Professor Falk by the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, supplied by refugee camp committees, approximately 6,000 Palestinians who fled Syria remain in Lebanon ‘s Bekaa |Valley, close to the Syrian borders, in two main gatherings, al-Jalil (4,216 refugees) and central Bekaa (2,352). In the North, Baddawi camp hosts 4,116 and Nahr al Bared 2,016. In Beirut , Burj al-Barajneh camp hosts 2,928 additional refugees from Syria , Shatila and the surrounding areas 2,800, and Mar Elias 862. In the South, 8,549 refugees arrived to Ain al-Hilweh and 2,400 are dispersed around Saida. Mieh Mieh camp hosts 1,512, with an additional 2,160 in Wadi al-Zaineh. Further south to Tyre , Palestinian refugees from Syria are distributed among Shabriha (184), Rashidieh (1,370), Al Bass (478), Burj al-Shemali (2,800), Qasimiyeh (372), and Jal al-Bahr (128).

Falk knew, before gracing Lebanon with his visit, that UNWRA is basically out of money and cannot continue to meet its mandate for aiding Lebanon ‘s Palestinians even less those arriving from Syria at the rate of more than two dozen families per day. On 5/5/13 , the popular committee representative at Jalil Camp near Baalbec reported that they receive on average 8 additional families per day, with dozens now living in the Jalil camp cemetery.

Palestinian children in Lebanon , Falk was advised, unfortunately provide textbook examples of the fact of life that it is difficult to concentrate on school when ones stomach is growling with hunger. And it’s even harder to stay in school when there’s even a remote chance to work odd jobs and earn money for food – something education doesn’t immediately offer. One new local initiative is the Meals for Schools, whose organizers hope serve food to impoverished schoolchildren in Lebanese slum areas. One idea is to give coupons for meals to schools. Unfortunately the scope will not include Palestinian children “at this time due to limited funding”, according to one AUB student hoping to help children stay in school by helping them to have breakfasts.

Palestinian refugee children have limited access to the public educational system in Lebanon . Only 11 per cent these “foreign” children can access free public education in Lebanon while most refugees can’t afford the high tuition fees of private schools. Palestinian refugees who attend one of the 58 UNRWA begin at age seven since UNWRA cannot afford pre-school level education. Consequently, for Palestinians here, while the elementary sector comprises more than 60% of students, the number drops to 28% in intermediate and only 10% at the secondary level. While the attendance rate for 7 year olds is 98.6%, by the time they reach age 11 attendance falls to 93.4%.   But from this level, the primary level school completion rate cascades to only 37%, due to astronomical dropout rates. The above figures reveal that Palestinian education levels have been indeed progressively dropping in recent years. This is further supported by the passing rate in the Brevet Official exams (official diploma qualifying entry into secondary) which was in some schools as low as 13.6% in some schools according to the UNRWA results of Brevet exams, despite the average passing rate in UNRWA schools being 43% for the 2009-10 academic year.

Professor Falk was briefed on myriad realities including the fact that Palestinians camps in Lebanon remain sites of control and surveillance by the Lebanese Army. People’s mobility and access to construction materials have been restricted by the army check points at the entrance of camps. Palestinian refugees are forbidden by law – since 2001 – to own or inherit real estate in Lebanon; consequently when a Palestinian dies, even if she or he inherited property between 1948-2001, before a wave of revenge led to the 2001 racist law, the property goes to Sunni Muslim Dar al-Fatwa one of the richest real estate holding entities in Lebanon.  Accused of deep corruption by some, their leadership has a history of opposing full civil rights for Palestinian refugees here remain opposed to home ownership.

The UN’s humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, reported this week that seven million people need humanitarian assistance in Syria . “The needs are growing rapidly and are most severe in the conflict and opposition-controlled areas” of the civil-war ravaged country, the global body’s humanitarian chief Valerie Amos told the U.N. Security Council. Amos  cited data showing there are 6.8 million people in need — out of a total population of 20.8 million — along with 4.25 million people internally displaced and an additional 1.3 million who have sought refuge in neighboring countries.

Falk was briefed on most recent household surveys of Palestinian refugees carried out by the American University of Beirut which show that two thirds of Palestine refugees are poor. The extreme poverty rate in camps (7.9%) is almost twice of that observed in gatherings (4.2%). The study also developed a Deprivation Index based on components of welfare which included components such as good health, food security, and adequate education, access to stable employment, decent housing, and ownership of essential household assets. The Deprivation Index showed that 40% of Palestine Refugees living in Lebanon are deprived. The study reported that 56% of refugees are jobless and only 37% of the working age population is employed (Hanafi et al. 2012). It is unsurprising that the poor socio-economic situation often encourages students to leave school to get a paid job.

Despite the importance of education fewer Palestinian refugee students are actually interested in continuing their higher education. Lack of motivation to learn, is believed to be one of the main reasons for the high dropout rates.   Palestinian refugees’ access to Lebanon ‘s public university is limited by their status as foreigners, and their access to private universities is restricted by a lack of resources to pay tuition fees (Hroub, 2012).

The old cliché that stated that “The Palestinians are the most educated Arab nation”, is just a myth today. This educational hemorrhage among young Palestinians has been attributed to a number of factors such as the deteriorating socio-economic conditions amongst Palestinian refugees and the growing disillusionment with schooling and the benefits it brings. Palestinian students also suffer from an education acculturation as they are forced to learn only the Lebanese curriculum without being able to access the country’s system. The following section examines these three main challenges.

Statistics indicate that just under half of the classrooms in public schools have less than 15 students per class while 20 % are overcrowded with 26 to 35 students per class. However, in UNRWA schools, the average number of students per classroom is 30 making them the most crowded classrooms in Lebanon .

With respect to the UN refugee agency, (UNHCR) the current situation in both Syria and among the more than 450,000 Syrian in Lebanon is only marginally better than the conditions of arriving Palestinians. As Maeve Murphy, UNHCR’s Senior Field Coordinator in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, explained to this observer and others during a visit on 5/5/13, near the Nicolas Khoury Center in Zahle, Lebanon, amidst sea of hundreds of Syrians, some waiting for three months or longer just to get registered, the UN refugee agency is also unable to meet its mandate for the same reason as UNRWA and the World Food Program and others. Ms. Murphy reported that over 453,000 Syrians have either registered with the U.N. agency or are waiting to register. An additional several hundred thousand people are thought to be refugees but haven’t approached the U.N.

Complicating the desperate situation of Palestinian and Syrian refugees seeking sanctuary in Lebanon is the fact that millions of Syrian refugees face food rationing and cutbacks to critical medical programs because oil-rich Gulf states have failed to deliver the funding they promised for emergency humanitarian aid, an investigation by James Cusick  for The Independent on Sunday has found. Pledges for $ 650 minion in donations from various sources including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, made during  the January 2013, Kuwait UN  emergency conference, have yet to materialize.

The World Food Program (WFP), the food aid arm of the UN, says it is spending $19m a week to feed 2.5 million refugees inside Syria and a further 1.5 million who have fled to official camps in Jordan , Turkey , Lebanon and Iraq . By July, the WFP says, there is no guarantee that its work on the Syrian crisis can continue. A spokesman told the UK Independent,  “We are already in a hand-to-mouth situation. Beyond mid-June – who knows?”

The emergency conference in Kuwait – hosted by the Emir of Kuwait and chaired by Mr Ban Ki Moon – promised to bring a “message of hope” to the four million Syrian refugees. Mr Ban proclaimed the outcome a shining example of “global solidarity in action”. The reality has been markedly different. Oxfam recently issued an appeal: “The League of Arab States must urge all Arab countries that have pledged to the Syrian crisis, to be transparent and to share information about their commitments, and mechanisms for fulfilling their pledges.”

Mousab Kerwat, Islamic Relief’s Middle East institutional funding manager, said: “It’s better for countries to stay away from donor conferences than to attend and make pledges they don’t intent to keep. As a minimum, they should communicate where their pledges have gone in a transparent process.

If Professor Falk was weary as he left Lebanon from all the data, visits, and wrenching experiences he was presented with, it would be understandable. But the humanitarian and scholar he showed no signs of fatigue but rather appeared to be energized by the experience. Given his history as a supporter of resistance to occupation and oppression, Richard Falk’s assurances that he will continue his work armed with the above sampling of data offers new hope for Palestinian and Syrian refugees from Syria and to those who support their Right and Responsibility to Return to Palestine.

Franklin P. Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut and Board Member, The Sabra Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Beirut-Washington DC Email: fplamb@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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By John Scales Avery

13 May, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

A large-scale general war in the Middle East would be a catastrophe for everyone involved. It would be a catastrophe for Syria. Iraq and Iran; a catastrophe for the other Islamic states of the Middle East; a catastrophe for Pakistan and Russia, should they become involved; and a catastrophe for Israel and the United States. In fact, all of the peoples of the world would suffer.

How could such a general war come about? Several paths are possible. The United States has recently agreed to give Israel the sophisticated aerial refueling equipment that would be needed to attack Iran, making such an attack more likely.

What would be the consequences, if Israel should bomb Iran? Last September, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh. the commander of Iran’s missile systems, stated that if there is a military conflict between Israel and Iran, “nothing is predictable…and it will turn into World War III.” He added that Iran would consider any Israeli strike to be conducted with US authorization, and so “whether the Zionist regime attacks with or without US knowledge, then we will definitely attack US bases in Bahrain, Qatar and Afghanistan.” Thus the decision on whether there will be a war involving Israel, the US and Iran seems to be in the dangerous hands of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Meanwhile, President Obama has stated that if Israel is attacked by Iran, “all options are on the table”. This is clearly a threat of US military involvement. But if Israel bombs Iran, how can Iran fail to respond?

The Middle East is already a deeply troubled region, filled with wars, proxy wars, revolutions and civil wars. It is a region in which Israel and the United States can hardly be said to be universally popular. What would be the reaction of the Islamic states to a military conflict between Iran, Israel and the United States? Would not all of them, including Pakistan, join the war on the side of Iran? Pakistan’s government is very unstable, and it might be overthrown in such a situation, putting nuclear weapons into the hands of religious fanatics.

Russia has always been a staunch ally of Iran and Syria, and we read that Russia is preparing for the threatened war by massing troops and supplies in Armenia. It seems likely that Russia would enter a general war in the Middle East on the side of the Islamic states.

The bombing of Iran by Israel is one path by which a large-scale general war in the Middle East might start, but it is not the only one. There has been a massive buildup of US forces in the Persian Gulf, and also an incident in which a US Navy ship fired on an unarmed Indian fishing boat, killing one person and injuring three others. We must remember that in the past, small incidents have often escalated into general wars. As long as the presence of a US fleet in the Persian Gulf is maintained, there is a danger of incidents that will escalate into a large-scale general war in the Middle East.

At the entrance of the Persian Gulf is the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the Middle East’s oil must pass to reach the outside world. Any large-scale conflict in the region would endanger or entirely stop this flow of oil, with the result that oil prices throughout the world would skyrocket. Just as the Middle East is already a deeply troubled region, so also the global economy is already deeply troubled. In fact we are balancing on the edge of a depression that might rival or surpass the Great Depression of the 1930’s. A steep rise in oil prices might well push us over the edge.

In addition we must remember that a large-scale general war in the Middle East might escalate uncontrollably into a nuclear war, especially since Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be involved. A nuclear war would be the ultimate ecological disaster, inflicting great damage on global agriculture and making large areas of the world permanently uninhabitable because of long-lasting radioactive contamination.

Those who doubt that small wars can escalate uncontrollably into large ones should remember the events that started World World I: A small action by Austria, aimed at punishing Pan-Serbian nationalists, escalated uncontrollably into a nightmarish disaster that still casts a dark shadow over the world a century later.

Members of the Jewish community should ask themselves whether this is really what they want. Would not Israel suffer in the event of a general war in the Middle East? Would not not the United States also suffer? Would not all the peoples of the world suffer from such a war?

One hopes that these questions will be debated in liberal Jewish organizations devoted to peace, such as J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace. Perhaps the question of whether a general war in the Middle East is really desirable could even be debated at meetings of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Organizations such as AIPAC are currently pushing the United States government in the direction of what might turn out to be a global disaster of enormous proportions. It is time to pause for a moment and think. It is time to draw back from the precipice.

 

John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com

By Marjorie Cohn,

10 May, 2013

@ Reader Supported News

More than 100 of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo are starving themselves to death. Twenty-three of them are being force-fed. “They strap you to a chair, tie up your wrists, your legs, your forehead and tightly around the waist,” Fayiz Al-Kandari told his lawyer, Lt. Col. Barry Wingard. Al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti held at Guantanamo for 11 years, has never been charged with a crime.

“The tube makes his eyes water excessively and blood begins to trickle from the nose. Once the tube passes his throat the gag reflex kicks in. Warm liquid is poured into the body for 45 minutes to two hours. He feels like his body is going to convulse and often vomits,” Wingard added.

The United Nations Human Rights Council concluded that force-feeding amounts to torture. The American Medical Association says that force-feeding violates medical ethics. “Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions,” AMA President Jeremy Lazarus wrote to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Yet President Barack Obama continues the tortuous Bush policy of force-feeding hunger strikers.

Although a few days after his first inauguration, Obama promised to shutter Guantanamo, it remains open. “I continue to believe that we’ve got to close Guantanamo,” Obama declared in his April 30 press conference. But, he added, “Congress determined that they would not let us close it.” Obama signed a bill that Congress passed which erected barriers to closure. According to a Los Angeles Times editorial, “Obama has refused to expend political capital on closing Guantanamo. Rather than veto the defense authorization bills that have limited his ability to transfer inmates, he has signed them while raising questions about whether they intruded on his constitutional authority.”

“I don’t want these individuals to die,” Obama told reporters. In fact, Obama has the power to save the hunger strikers’ lives without torturing them. Eighty-six – more than half – of the detainees remaining at Guantanamo have been cleared for release for the past three years. Section 1028(d) of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act empowers the Secretary of Defense to approve transfers of detainees when it is in the national security interest of the United States. Fifty-six of the 86 cleared detainees are from Yemen. Yet Obama imposed a ban on releasing any of them following the foiled 2009 Christmas bomb plot by a Nigerian man who was recruited in Yemen. Obama must begin signing these certifications and waivers at once.

Indeed, Obama said in his press conference, “I think – well, you know, I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe … It hurts us in terms of our international standing … It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

In addition, Obama’s March 7, 2011, Executive Order 13567 provides for additional administrative review of detainees’ cases. The Periodic Review Board (PRB) would provide an opportunity for a detainee to challenge his continued detention. Yet Obama has delayed by more than a year PRB hearings at which other detainees could be cleared for release. Despite a requirement that the PRB begin review within one year, no PRB has yet been created. Obama should appoint an official to oversee the closure of Guantanamo and commence periodic reviews immediately so that detainees can challenge their designations and additional detainees can be approved for transfer.

Moreover, as suggested by Lt. Col. David Frakt, who represented Guantanamo detainees before the military commissions and in federal habeas corpus proceedings, Obama should direct the attorney general to inform the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that the Department of Justice no longer considers the cleared detainees to be detainable. Obama has blocked the release of eight cleared detainees by opposing their habeas corpus petitions. “[W]hen the Obama administration really wants to transfer a detainee, they are quite capable of doing so,” Frakt wrote in JURIST.

The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment, which includes two former senior U.S. generals, and a Republican former congressman and lawyer, Asa Hutchinson, issued a report that concluded the treatment and indefinite detention of the Guantanamo detainees is “abhorrent and intolerable.” It called for the closure of the prison camp by next year.

Twenty-five former Guantanamo detainees issued a statement recommending that the American medical profession stop its complicity with abuse force-feeding techniques; that conditions on confinement for detainees be improved immediately; that all detainees who have not been charged be released; that the military commissions process be ended; and that all those being charged be tried in line with the Geneva Conventions.

The detainees who are refusing food have been stripped of all possessions, including a sleeping mat and soap, and are made to sleep on concrete floors in freezing solitary cells. “It is possible that I may die in here,” said Shaker Aamer through his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith. “I hope not, but if I do die, please tell my children that I loved them above all else, but that I had to stand up for the principle that they cannot just keep holding people without a trial, especially when they have been cleared for release.” Aamer, a British father of four, was approved for release more than five years ago.

Col. Morris Davis, who served as Chief Prosecutor for the Terrorism Trials at Guantanamo, personally charged Osama bin Laden’s driver Salim Hamdan, Australian David Hicks, and Canadian teen Omar Khadr. All three were convicted and have been released from Guantanamo. “There is something fundamentally wrong with a system where not being charged with a war crime keeps you locked away indefinitely and a war crime conviction is your ticket home,” Davis wrote to Obama.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. Her most recent book is The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse. See www.marjoriecohn.com.