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8 August , 2013

@ http://on.rt.com/2kb37h

The Philippines is to enter talks with the US about a heightened military presence in its region and has informed congressional leaders that an increase in the troop numbers will be sought. The US has expressed interest in monitoring “intrusions” there.

Filipino secretaries of national defense and foreign affairs stated that allowing US troops to install an “increased rotational presence” would aid the country in developing a “minimum credible defense” to bolster the guarding of its own territory. The establishment of a full military base is ‘unconstitutional.

“The Philippines will shortly enter into consultations and negotiations with the United States on a possible framework agreement that would implement our agreed policy of increased rotational presence,” Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said in a letter.

Gazmin stated that US troops would only have access to existing military bases, with the two sides yet to agree the length for which further troops, planes and ships would be allowed in the country.

The Philippines is currently continuing in its attempt to modernize its own military, according to the letter, which was obtained by Associated Press, on Thursday, and seeks American aid while it takes the necessary steps.

On Tuesday, the Philippines took into its possession a former US Coast Guard ship which marked the biggest military upgrade the country has witnessed in decades. It is seeking to build up its forces as increased attention falls on the region from both China and the US.

The establishment of US military bases in the country is controversial, and both countries are steering clear of the issue. The Philippines was once a US colony and the constitution now bars foreign troops from being stationed on a permanent basis.

However, island disputes in the area involving China have heightened Filipino pressure on the US. The Philippines has been reaching out to Washington for help in arms upgrades and the US has been seeking to ensure its influence in the region is sustained, especially as China’s increases as it reiterates its own claims to territory in the area.

The US has previously sought to increase military presence in the country by its own impetus, negotiating an agreement with the Philippines in July to let it install military equipment and increased numbers of troops, still avoiding the issue of establishing military bases despite seeker longer terms for US presence.

The negotiations for increased military access come amid simmering tensions between the Philippines and China over areas in the South China Sea claimed by both countries and moves by the United States to ensure it retains influence in the region, even as China’s grows.

The US is a close ally of the Philippines despite the exodus from the last of its bases in 1992. The US has paid several short-term visits since to undertake joint training exercises, disaster response and humanitarian work.

Under a current Visiting Forces Agreement, enacted in 2002, hundreds of US counterterrorism troops have been permitted to remain in the Philippines’ southern Mindanao to train Filipino soldiers battling Al-Qaeda-linked militants and a small group of foreign terrorist suspects.

China aroused concern last year when it placed forcers in the Scarborough Shoal, a disputed territory just 124 nautical miles off the Philippine coast. China put up two concrete columns in order to erect a rope barrier to consolidate their control over entry into the lagoon. The move followed a confrontation with Philippine vessels.

Under Washington’s military financing program, the Philippines received a 46-year-old Hamilton-class cutter for free from Washington. However, it spent some $15 million on weapons and radar upgrades.

Before the increase in help from the US – which included a decision at the end of July to up annual military assistance to the Philippines from $30 million to about $50 million – Philippine Foreign Minister Albert Del Rosario told reporters that it would mark the highest level of aid provided by the US since troops returned to the Philippines 13 years ago.

The increased presence “is for the protection of our West Philippine Sea,” Defense Secretary Gazmin told the Associated Press at the time, referring to Manila’s adopted name for the South China Sea.

The US has repeatedly insisted that it would not get involved in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, but has continually helped the Philippines upgrade its military defenses.

US forces have been nurturing alliances from the Middle East to Asia, with force realignment involving 2,5000 marines being deployed in northern Australia and installing combat vessels in Singapore.

    *The Philippines was established as a US colony in 1898 following the Philippine Revolution against Spain two years earlier. Partial autonomy was allotted in 1935.

    It fell under attack during WWII when Japanese troops occupied its constituent territories. The US suffered heavy losses.

    The US recognized its sovereignty in 1946. However, it retained a presence in the region. 

    Tens of thousands of troops were stationed at the country’s Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base north of Manila until the early 1990s.

    The bases were abandoned amid anti-American sentiment and a clash over rent. The Philippines’ senate voted to shut down large US bases in Subic and Clark, near the capital in 1991.

    The Philippines’ constitution prohibits permanent foreign bases, but the US conducts successive short-term visits.

 

By Richard Falk

02 August, 2013

@ Richard Falk Blog

Appointing Martin Indyk as Special Envoy to the upcoming peace talks was to be expected. It was signaled in advance. And yet it is revealing and distressing.

The only other candidates considered for the job were equally known as Israeli partisans: Daniel Kurtzer, former ambassador to Israel before becoming Commissioner of Israel’s Baseball League and Dennis Ross, co-founder in the 1980s (with Indyk) of the AIPAC backed Washington Institute for Near East Policy; handled the 2000 Camp David negotiations on behalf of Clinton.

The winner among these three was Martin Indyk, former ambassador to Israel (1995-97; 2000-01), onetime AIPAC employee, British born, Australian educated American diplomat, with a long list of pro-Israeli credentials.

Does it not seem strange for the United States, the convening party and the unconditional supporter of Israel, to rely exclusively for diplomatic guidance in this concerted effort to revive the peace talks on persons with such strong and unmistakable pro-Israeli credentials?

What is stranger, still, is that the media never bothers to observe this peculiarity of a negotiating framework in which the side with massive advantages in hard and soft power, as well as great diplomatic and media leverage, needs to be further strengthened by having the mediating third-party so clearly in its corner. Is this numbness or bias? Are we so accustomed to a biased framework that it is taken for granted, or is it overlooked because it might spoil the PR effect of reviving the moribund peace process?

John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, whose show this is, dutifully indicated when announcing the Indyk appointment, that success in the negotiations will depend on the willingness of the two sides to make ‘reasonable compromises.’ But who will decide on what is reasonable? It would be criminally negligent for the Palestinians to risk their future by trusting Mr. Indyk’s understanding of what is reasonable for the parties. But the Palestinians are now potentially entrapped. If they are put in a position where Israel accepts, and the Palestinian Authority rejects, “(un)reasonable compromises,” the Israelis will insist they have no “partner” for peace, and once more hasbara will rule the air waves.

It is important to take note of the language of reasonable compromises, which as in earlier attempts at direct negotiations, excludes any reference to international law or the rights of the parties. Such an exclusion confirms that the essential feature of this diplomacy of negotiations is a bargaining process in which relative power and influence weighs heavily on what is proposed by and acceptable to the two sides. If I were advising the Palestinians, I would never recommend accepting a diplomatic framework that does not explicitly acknowledge the relevance of international law and the rights of the parties. In the relation of Israel and Palestine, international law could be the great equalizer, soft power neutralizing hard power. And this is precisely why Israel has worked so hard to keep international law out of the process, which is what I would certainly recommend if in Tel Aviv’s diplomatic corner.

Can one even begin to contemplate, except in despair, what Benjamin Netanyahu and his pro-settler cabinet consider reasonable compromises? On what issues can we expect Israel to give ground: borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security?

It would have been easy for Kerry to create a more positive format if he had done either of two things: appointed a Palestinian or at least someone of Middle Eastern background as co-envoy to the talks. Rashid Khalidi, President Obama’s onetime Chicago friend and neighbor, would have been a reassuring choice for the Palestinian side. Admittedly, having published a book a few months ago with the title Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Undermined Peace in the Middle East, the appointment of Khalidi, despite his stellar credentials, would have produced a firestorm in Washington. Agreed, Khalidi is beyond serious contemplation, but what about John Esposito, Chas Freeman, Ray Close? None of these alternatives, even Khalidi, is as close to the Palestinians as Indyk is to the Israelis, and yet such a selection would have been seen as a step taken to close the huge credibility deficit. Yet such credibility remains outside the boundaries of the Beltway’s political imagination, and is thus inhabits the realm of the unthinkable.

It may be that Kerry is sincere in seeking to broker a solution to the conflict, yet this way of proceeding does not. Perhaps, there was no viable alternative. Israel would not come even to negotiate negotiations without being reassured in advance by an Indyk-like appointment. And if Israel had signaled its disapproval, Washington would be paralyzed.

The only remaining question is why the Palestinian Authority goes along so meekly. What is there to gain in such a setting? Having accepted the Washington auspices, why could they not have demanded, at least, a more neutral or balanced negotiating envoy? I fear the answer to such questions is ‘blowin’ in the wind.’

And so we can expect to witness yet another charade falsely advertized as ‘the peace process.’ Such a diversion is costly for the Palestinians, beneficial for the Israelis. Settlement expansion and associated projects will continue, the occupation with all its rigors and humiliations will continue, and the prospects for a unified Palestinian leadership will be put on indefinite hold. Not a pretty picture.

This picture is made more macabre when account is taken of the wider regional scene, especially the horrifying civil war in Syria and the bloody military coup in Egypt. Not to be forgotten, as well, are Israeli threats directed at Iran, backed to the hilt by the U.S. Congress, and the terrible legacy of violent sectarian struggle that is ripping Iraq apart. Naturally, there is speculation that some kind of faux solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict would release political energy in Washington that could be diverted to an anti-Assad intervention in Syria and even an attack on Iran. We cannot rule out such infatuations with morbid geopolitical projects, but neither should we assume that conspiratorial scenarios foretell the future.

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008). He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. http://richardfalk.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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By Professor Francis A. Boyle

02 August, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

I’m not going to go through the subsequent history of thedivestment disinvestment movement, except to say that in the late summer of 2002 the President of Harvard, Larry Summers accused those of us Harvard alumni involved in the Harvard divestment campaign of being anti-Semitic.

After he made these charges, WBUR Radio Station in Boston, which is a National Public Radio affiliate, called me up and said: “We would like you to debate Summers for one hour on these charges, live.” And I said, “I’d be happy to do so.” They then called up Summers and he refused to debate me.

Summers did not have the courage, the integrity, or the principles to back up his scurrilous charges. Eventually Harvard fired Summers because of his attempt to impose his Neo-Conservative agenda on Harvard, and in particular his other scurrilous charge that women are dumber then men when it comes to math and science. Well as a triple Harvard alumnus I say: Good riddance to Larry Summers! (laughter).

Debating Dershowitz

WBUR then called me back and said, “Well, since Summers won’t debate you, would you debate Alan Dershowitz?” And I said, “Sure.” So we had a debate for one hour, live on the radio. And there is a link that you can hear this debate if you want to. I still think it’s the best debate out there on this whole issue of Israeli apartheid. Again that would be WBUR Radio Station, Boston, 25 September 2002.

The problem with the debate, of course, is that Dershowitz knows nothing about international law and human rights. So he immediately started out by saying “well, there’s nothing similar to the apartheid regime in South Africa and what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.” Well the problem with that is that Dershowitz did not know anything at all about even the existence of the Apartheid Convention.

The definition of apartheid is set out in the Apartheid Convention of 1973.

And this is taken from my book Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law, Trial Materials on South Africa, published in 1987, that we used successfully to defend anti-apartheid resistors in the United States. If you take a look at the definition of apartheid here found in Article 2, you will see that Israel has inflicted each and every act of apartheid set out in Article 2 on the Palestinians, except an outright ban on marriages between Israelis and Palestinians. But even there they have barred Palestinians living in occupied Palestine who marry Israeli citizens from moving into Israel, and thus defeat the right of family reunification that of course the world supported when Jews were emigrating from the Soviet Union.

Israel: An Apartheid State

Again you don’t have to take my word for it. There’s an excellent essay today on Counterpunch.org by the leading Israeli human rights advocate Shulamit Aloni saying basically: “Yes we have an apartheid state in Israel.” Indeed, there are roads in the West Bank for Jews only.

Palestinians can’t ride there and now they’re introducing new legislation that Jews cannot even ride Palestinians in their cars.

This lead my colleague and friend Professor John Duguard who is the U.N. Special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine to write an essay earlier this fall that you can get on Google, saying that in fact Israeli apartheid against the Palestinians is worse than the apartheid that the Afrikaners inflicted on the Blacks in South Africa. Professor Duguard should know.

He was one of a handful of courageous, white, international lawyers living in South Africa at the time who publicly and internationally condemned apartheid against Blacks at risk to his own life. Indeed, when I was litigating anti-apartheid cases on South Africa, we used Professor Duguard’s book on Human Rights and the South African Legal Order as the definitive work explaining what apartheid is all about.

So Professor Duguard has recently made this statement. Of course President Carter has recently made this statement in his book that Israel is an apartheid state. And certainly if you look at that definition of the Apartheid Convention, right there in front of you, it’s clear – there are objective criteria. Indeed if you read my Palestinian book I have a Bibliography at the end with the facts right there based on reputable human rights reports, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc. Many of them were also compiled and discussed by my friend Professor Norman Finklestein in his book Beyond Chutzpah, which I’d encourage you to read.

Professor Francis A. Boyle is an international law expert and served as Legal Advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat on the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, as well as to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations from 1991 to 1993, where he drafted the Palestinian counter-offer to the now defunct Oslo Agreement. His books include “ Palestine, Palestinians and International Law” (2003), and “ The Palestinian Right of Return under International Law” (2010).

By Steve Weissman,

02 August 13

@ Reader Supported News

Without specifically naming the Egyptian military, the Obama White House has condemned the crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood protestors in Cairo and Alexandria and has halted shipment to Egypt of four F-16 fighter jets. That is the good news. The bad news is that, for all the wide-eyed celebration of a pro-democratic popular uprising in Egypt, the military has charged the ousted president with espionage and sidelined “the democrats” to little more than cheerleaders for Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has put himself at the center of an extravagant cult of personality.

“In dark sunglasses and a uniform studded with medals, Egypt’s top general is everywhere, looking down from posters and banners proclaiming him ‘lion of the nation,'” wrote the Associated Press. “Adoring songs vow ‘We are behind you.'”

Al-Sisi’s bloody attacks against ousted president Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood have greatly embarrassed civilian supporters of the coup, like Nobel prize-winner Mohamed ElBaradei. Though nominally the new government’s interim vice president for foreign affairs, he has condemned the “excessive use of force” and – without blaming the military – has called on all factions to denounce violence. Similar calls have come from leaders of Tamarod and the allied April 6th Youth Movement, the groups that led the protests against Morsi, the country’s first elected president. Tamarod has also called for branding the Muslim Brotherhood as “a terrorist organization.”

According to Human Rights Watch, the generally nonviolent pro-Morsi forces have taken huge casualties from the military and its supporters, who have been shooting their victims in the head and chest. But the Brotherhood and other Muslim allies remain in the streets demanding Morsi’s reinstatement. True to their principles, they refuse to give in to direct threats from the military or impassioned entreaties to accept the coup from the European Union’s Catherine Ashton.

“Regardless of what happens to the president, we will continue our protest. Our numbers are increasing every day. Citizens are recognizing the tyranny and the long-term danger of the military coup,” said Brotherhood spokesman Gehad el-Haddad. “It may take weeks, months, more than a year – we will still hold our ground.”

Even more embarrassing – for Obama as well as the Egyptian liberals – is a brief review of the historical evidence of how the coup came about. Please forgive the clutter of Internet links, but several readers have asked for more documentation.

Start with a prescient article in Foreign Policy magazine on April 6, 2012. It is called “Finish What You Start,” and was written by Srdja Popovic, one of the leaders of Otpor, the Serbian student movement that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic, and Robert Helvey, a former top official in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and later president of the nonviolent Albert Einstein Institution. In March 2000, Col. Helvey taught Popovic and some 20 other Otpor militants how to create a nonviolent revolution against the Serbian strongman, with ample funding, supplies, and backup from Uncle Sam. Popovic went on to co-found the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS, which famously taught several young Egyptians how to bring down Hosni Mubarak.

“In Egypt, the success of 19 days of ‘nonviolent blitzkrieg’ that toppled Mubarak gave way to an interregnum dominated by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF),” wrote Popovic and Helvey by way of follow-up. “The moving forces behind Mubarak’s downfall last winter – secular youth groups – have been relegated to the margins.”

Popovic and Helvey’s solution was to continue direct nonviolent action and keep the newly elected government “under public pressure and accountable from day one.”

One year later, in April 2013, a group of young Egyptians organized themselves as Tamarod and began a classic CANVAS-style campaign to “foment rebellion” against Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. As I documented in a previous column with WikiLeaked emails from the private intelligence group Stratfor, CANVAS is “still hooked into the U.S. funding and basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like).”

The Stratfor emails also showed Washington’s ties to another famous group that trained Egyptians to overthrow Mubarak and then Morsi. This was Google and, in particular, the head of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, who helped train digital activists of the April 6th Youth Movement.

The emails made two points about Egypt’s “facebook revolution” that Internet romanticists tend to overlook. The Egyptian military “got exactly what they wanted,” wrote Stratfor’s CEO, George Friedman. “They got rid of Mubarak and held on to power. The demonstrations were a tremendous help to them in achieving their goals.” Another Stratfor exec – former State Department security official Fred Burton – stressed the importance of the White House hand in training Egypt’s would-be revolutionaries. “Cohen’s rabbi” was Google’s billionaire boss and “Obama lackey” Eric Schmidt, wrote Burton, drawing on his Google sources. Google had “White House and State Department support and air cover. In reality, they are doing things the CIA cannot do.”

Thanks to WikiLeaks, the Stratfor emails add to the picture of Obama’s preference for covert action that David Sanger presents in “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power.” As Sanger makes clear, neither Obama nor the CIA expected the training efforts to bring down Mubarak. But, with the movement against Morsi, Washington had a much clearer view. Accepting support from former Mubarak backers, the leaders of Tamarod openly called for the military to step in. Some, like ElBaradei, saw no alternative. Others, like Mahmoud Badr, one of the founders, went overboard in repeatedly praising the military and still does even after the violence. “We salute the Army! We salute them!” he proclaimed on TV right after Gen. al-Sisi gave Morsi 48 hours to calm the crisis that Tamarod had created. “They have shown that they are with the people.”

“The military helped Tamarod from early on, communicating with it through third parties,” reported the Associated Press. The Egyptian military also communicated regularly with Washington, expressing their unhappiness with Morsi in May and June of 2013. Obama made no public change in his policy of getting along with Morsi, but no later than Monday, July 1, he urged Morsi to give in to the demand from Tamarod and the military that he step down.

Between Washington’s support for the training of Tamarod and the April 6th Youth Movement and Obama’s direct participation in the final days, I think it fair to speak of Obama’s coup, just as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger will forever own Gen. Pinochet’s coup against Salvador Allende in Chile. But whether or not others agree with my characterization, the question now is whether Obama can step out of the shadows long enough to work with his Republican adversaries, European allies, and sensible Egyptians to limit the human disaster that is already under way.

A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, “Big Money: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How To Break Their Hold.”

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Garikai Chengu

01 August, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

A bloodless revolution is silently taking place in Zimbabwe. President Mugabe’s Indigenisation of the land and the economy will set a precedent for the creation of a forerunning, economic model for Africa. Consequently, a victory for Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe’s election is a resounding victory for the future of the African continent.

Only ninety years ago, the British South Africa Company owned every square inch of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean land and natural resources were taken violently and divided amongst European settlers. All the while, indigenous Zimbabweans were considered subjects and assets, solely belonging to the British Crown.

After decades of liberation struggle, Africans finally placed the crown on their own heads. But, in 2013, where are the jewels of this crown?

The mining and extraction of precious resources, like oil, natural gas, gold, and platinum, enrich Western corporations. Here, we see the West’s current control over Africa’s “jewels”.

Western economic control of Africa casts a shadow of poverty throughout the continent. Whether in the Niger Delta or the Democratic Republic of Congo, the majority of people experience lives of misery and receive very little benefit from the richness of their land.

In fact, Africa’s natural resources, land, and forced labour have fueled the world’s economy for centuries. To this day, Africa is still the world’s engine-room for economic growth.

In short, Africa fuels the global economy, while reaping little profits at home; this is the “black man’s burden.” Indigenisation is designed to allow Zimbabweans to free themselves of this centuries’ old burden. Lifting this crushing millstone is our generation’s greatest struggle.

At President Mugabe’s last campaign rally, he proclaimed that, “we must re-write the economic books for our children. Those books were written to suite the West’s agenda of exploiting our resources. Our children must know that our resources are more significant, more precious than their capital.”

Years from now, economic books will use Zimbabwe’s Indigenisation Program as a model for African decolonisation. African politicians will look to Zimbabwe as a point of reference.

As with tobacco, diamonds, cocoa and oil, Africa exports its precious resources to the West, only to buy them back at a premium. This is Africa’s greatest problem and biggest opportunity. The solution to this problem is simple: Africa must not only control its raw materials but also build the capacity to make them into finished products.

Indigenisation is the much needed bridge between poverty and industrialization, and therefore, transforming Africa into a first world power.

No longer will Europeans take our natural resources; no longer will they control our industrial processes. We will not be burdened; we will not be stripped of our land, our pride, our Africa.

If Africans indigenise our economies and resolutely build the capacity to refine our crude oil, gold and platinum, as well as the capability to cut and polish our diamonds, we will certainly turn this into an African century.

Clearly, Africa is not under-developed; she is over-exploited. Western foreign investors are merely foreign exploiters.

According to a recent UN Africa Progress Report, Africa loses 63 billion dollars, each year, through foreign multinational corporations’ illegal tax evasion and exploitative practices. This figure surpasses all the money coming into the continent through Western aid and investment.

It is for this reason that Zimbabwe’s new Indigenisation model emphasizes local ownership and foreign partnership with emerging nations, such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Zimbabwe’s Indigenisation Program is as much about looking inward as it is about looking east.

Today, I say, with confidence, that Zimbabwe is the only economically liberated, black nation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Zimbabwe has proved to her African brothers and sisters that it is possible, and indeed desirable, to take back our land.

Let us now look to our recent past for guidance into our new economic future.

A few years ago, the international media houses and Western academics repeated the same, twisted narrative about the Indigenisation of Zimbabwe’s land, claiming it was an economic failure, which only benefited ‘Mugabe’s cronies.’

The West’s economic sanctions on Zimbabwe were designed to cripple our economy, in an attempt to dissuade other African nations from emulating our cause.

Western sanctions sent a clear message to Africa’s landless and economically disempowered masses: “You can have your democracy, but keep the economic power in the hands of the white minority; otherwise, you’ll end up like Zimbabwe.”

The World Bank still estimates that a staggering 65% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s best arable land is still controlled by white settlers or multinational corporations. The World Bank also estimates that as much as 70% of the net wealth in Sub-Saharan Africa is owned by non-indigenous Africans or foreigners.

Clearly, the West is fine with other African nations adopting democratic governments, but any attempt to democratize the economy and the land is dealt with by NATO, the CIA, or economically destabilizing sanctions.

Nowadays, those same Western media houses and academics are admitting that Zimbabwe’s land democratization program has not only benefited over a million people, but also pioneered a more economically productive way of farming.

President Mugabe’s Indigenisation of land has created employment and support for the livelihood of over 1.7 million Zimbabweans.

This year alone, Zimbabwe raked in over a half billion dollars from tobacco sales. Before land Indigenisation, a handful of rich, white farmers would have greedily divided these profits, moving the money away from African pockets and into Western bank accounts.

In fact, the World Bank estimated that, “nearly 40 percent of Africa’s aggregate wealth has fled to foreign bank accounts.”

Indigenisation will combat this outflow of wealth by creating more African corporate owners. These local shareholders are more likely to save their rent in local banks, spend their dividends on domestic goods, and invest their profits in local businesses.

 

Today, 75,000 indigenous Zimbabweans benefit from the tobacco sales’ profits of a half billion dollars. Land reform is now possible in all African countries after Zimbabwe’s successful example.

With a rapidly growing and indigenously owned economy, many African nations will increasingly seek to emulate Zimbabwe. Years from now, African states will strive to achieve Zimbabwe’s economic success.

Say what you want to say about Mr. Mugabe, but today, Zimbabweans own Zimbabwe.

By re-electing President Mugabe, the people of Zimbabwe are making history. ZANU-PF will now have five more years to finish implementing a revolutionary economic model that will inevitably spread across the continent.

Garikai Chengu is Fellow of the Du Bois Institute for African Research Harvard University. Garikai Chengu can be contacted at chengu@fas.harvard.edu

By Mary Shaw

01 August, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

On July 30, in a military trial at Fort Mead, Maryland, war crimes whistleblower Bradley Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy (the most serious charge against him) but was found guilty of 19 other charges. While serving as a Private First Class in the U.S. Army, Manning had released hundreds of thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks which exposed U.S. war crimes and other government misconduct. Doing so led to his court-martial.

In response to the verdict, Amnesty International suggested that the U.S. government needs to reassess its priorities: “The government’s priorities are upside down. The U.S. government has refused to investigate credible allegations of torture and other crimes under international law despite overwhelming evidence,” said Widney Brown, Amnesty’s senior director of international law and policy. “Yet they decided to prosecute Manning who it seems was trying to do the right thing – reveal credible evidence of unlawful behavior by the government. You investigate and prosecute those who destroy the credibility of the government by engaging in acts such as torture which are prohibited under the U.S. Constitution and in international law… It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that Manning’s trial was about sending a message: the U.S. government will come after you, no holds barred, if you’re thinking of revealing evidence of its unlawful behavior.”

In other words, U.S. policy is to shoot the proverbial messenger.

The lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) agree. The CCR had filed a case challenging the lack of transparency around the Manning trial. Now, in the wake of the verdict, the CCR has released a statement condemning the charges against Manning related to the Espionage Act: “[T]he Espionage Act itself is a discredited relic of the WWI era, created as a tool to suppress political dissent and antiwar activism, and it is outrageous that the government chose to invoke it in the first place against Manning. Government employees who blow the whistle on war crimes, other abuses and government incompetence should be protected under the First Amendment.”

The CCR statement goes on to question the future of journalism and the First Amendment itself: “We now live in a country where someone who exposes war crimes can be sentenced to life even if not found guilty of aiding the enemy, while those responsible for the war crimes remain free. If the government equates being a whistleblower with espionage or aiding the enemy, what is the future of journalism in this country? What is the future of the First Amendment?”

Indeed. And it’s not just journalists and whistleblowers who should be worried.

Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist, with a focus on politics, human rights, and social justice. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views appear regularly in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail: mary@maryshawonline.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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By Countercurrents.org

01 August, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Diplomacy moving around Mohammad Morsi, the Egyptian president overthrown by the country’s army, shows the US-UK-EU have not abandoned Muslim Brotherhood and the army is not the sole ally of the axis. Germany , Washington and the European Union have earlier urged an end to the secrecy imposed on Morsi’s whereabouts, heaping pressure on the interim government to free the toppled president. The US State Department condemned the detentions of Morsi and members of the Muslim Brotherhood as “politically motivated” and urged the military to free them.

Media reports from Egypt said:

The UK has called on the Egyptian authorities to release Morsi. It also held the Egyptian security forces responsible for killing of the civilian protesters.

In a phone talks with Mohamed El Baradei, Egyptian vice president for foreign affairs, the UK foreign secretary William Hague called for “the release of all political detainees, including president Morsi, unless there are criminal charges to be made against them.”

This is the first time since his removal by the army, the UK called Morsi a president.

Hague’s remarks came hours after the Egyptian cabinet extended mandate to interior ministry to confront what it called ‘acts of terrorism and road-blocking.’

In a statement after his talks with El Baradei, Hague said he also emphasized that it is vital that any charges against detainees are not politically motivated.

A UK foreign Office spokesman refused to say whether his government is convinced that the charges Morsi is facing are criminal not politically motivated.

Alistair Burt, the UK Middle East minister, visited Egypt last week and met the interim government official and Muslim Brotherhood.

At the end of the visit he said Egypt needs a political process that includes all groups on an equal footing leading to early and fair elections which all parties are able to contest, and a swift return to civilian-led government.

US

Two leading US senators have been asked by US president Barack Obama to travel to Egypt to urge the country’s military to hold new elections.

Republican senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, seen as leading legislative voices on US foreign policy and security matters, told reporters that they plan to travel next week to Cairo.

“The president asked Senator McCain and me to go to Egypt next week, so we’re trying to find a way to get there,” said Graham.

Graham said the goal of the trip is to “reinforce in a bipartisan fashion the message that we have to move to civilian control — that the military is going to have to allow the country to have new elections and move toward an inclusive, democratic approach.”

He and McCain, who was the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2008, intend to “talk to the military and the political leaders — hopefully including the Muslim Brotherhood — to have a unified message that we want Egypt to be successful,” said Graham.

The South Carolina lawmaker continued: “You cannot stop the progress and the march for democracy that the military has to turn over as fast as possible control to a civilian government.”

Graham added: “The days of supporting friendly dictators or military regimes are behind us, the Arab Spring is real.

US defense secretary Chuck Hagel called once again on Egypt ‘s military to show restraint in the wake of deadly protests.

Hagel spoke to General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi by telephone after EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton paid a first-of-a-kind visit to ousted president Mohamed Morsi.

Hagel spoke to El-Sisi “to discuss the security situation in Egypt and urge restraint by Egyptian security forces in dealing with ongoing protests,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said.

The two spoke about Ashton’s visit and “the need for an inclusive reconciliation process,” Little said.

Germany

The Egyptian presidency said it had received a request from German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle to meet detained former president Morsi, but hinted it might not have the authority to allow such visit.

In a statement on July 31, 2013 , the presidency said it had informed the German foreign minister that “the former president is under investigation and is facing numerous charges,” suggesting it may not have the authority to accept Westerwelle’s meeting request.

The German foreign minister is expected to visit Cairo to discuss the political situation in Egypt with interim government officials and a number of Muslim Brotherhood members.

Earlier, in mid-July, the German chancellor Angela Merkel renewed calls for the release of Morsi.

Merkel called for “an inclusive political process involving all groups of the Egyptian population.” She gave her remarks in a press conference in Berlin .

In mid-July, Germany called for the release of Morsi.

“We call for an end to the restrictions on Mr Morsi’s whereabouts,” a foreign ministry spokesman told reporters.

The German ministry spokesman said a “trusted institution” such as the International Committee of the Red Cross should be granted access to Morsi.

EU

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton met Morsi for two hours on July 29, 2013 at an undisclosed location.

Morsi was “well,” Ashton said at a press conference in Cairo the day after the meeting.

“Mohamed Morsi is fine, I met him and we had a friendly discussion for two hours,” said Ashton.

“I do not know where he is, it is an undisclosed location,” she said. “He is in good health and he sends good wishes to the outside world.”

Morsi has access to TV and newspapers, she confirmed.

Ashton was not blindfolded

Catherine Ashton was not blindfolded while traveling to meet Morsi, said European officials.

EU aides told the New York Times that Ashton was transported to the meeting at night via helicopter so as to maintain secrecy around the former president’s location.

A delegation of human rights activists who visited Morsi before Ashton’s trip were similarly misled as to Morsi’s location, circling in a helicopter for 15 minutes before landing at the undisclosed site.

According to the Egyptian military, the intense security shrouding Morsi’s detention is intended for the ousted president’s own safety.  There are also speculations that his location remains undisclosed in order to discourage supporters from camping-out in protest, as which occurred outside the Republican Guard headquarters in early July.

African Union

Morsi was also visited on July 30, 2013 by a delegation from the African Union Wise Men Committee delegation, led by former Malian president Alpha Omar Konare.

The AU had suspended Egypt ‘s membership in the group shortly after Morsi’s deposition.

Both Ashton and the AU meetings aimed at reaching a resolution to the current impasse in Egypt .

Mohamed Morsi told the African Union Wise Men Committee that he was the victim of an injustice and had been wrongly ousted from power.

The AU delegation discussed the outcome of the meeting during a press conference in Cairo .

According to former president of Botswana Festus Gontebanye Mogae, the delegation told Morsi that as a leader, he must contribute to achieving peace and ending violence.

Mogae added that the delegation pressed on Morsi to encourage his supporters to achieve peace.

The AU Wise Men Committee also met representatives from the April 6 Youth Movement and the Tamarod. “We did not come here to make judgment on matters, but to hear from all parties” said Mogae, adding that a summary of the visit will be presented to the African Union secretariat.

Alpha Oumar Konar, the former president of Mali who heads the ‘Wise Men’ delegation, stated that if inclusive reconciliation is not reached, Egypt may be on the path to a civil war.

Tamarod

Leaders of the anti-Morsi ‘Rebel’ (Tamarod) campaign met Catherine Ashton in Cairo and stressed they reject “deals” and a safe exit for Morsi and other leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Everyone involved in bloodshed must be subject to a fair trial,” Mahmoud Badr, one of the leaders of Rebel said, according to a statement on the group’s official website.

“We asked her if she would personally accept an armed sit-in to be set up under her house, one that would force her to go to her home before being searched thoroughly and would turn the gardens surrounding her house to places for people to sleep, and would construct toilets in them,” read the statement.

Badr said the delegation told the EU’s top diplomat that the Egyptian people respect those who respect their will and “all countries must respect our will.”

He also posed her a question about whether European nations would allow sit-ins by Al Qaeda in their cities, pointing out that “black flags of Al Qaeda are present at all of the pro-Morsi rallies.”

The archaic black flag carrying “there is no God but Allah” in white is used by Al-Qaeda. It has appeared in numerous Islamist and Brotherhood rallies in Egypt over the past two years.

By Countercurrents.org

31 July, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Tunisia’s largest trade union called on July 30, 2013 for the dissolution of the Islamist-led government and the interior minister offered to resign as a political crisis deepened. Calls for the ouster of the government are continuing. Now , it’s from members of the government and the National Constituent Assembly’s (NCA) ruling coalition. Civil society and political parties joined calls for a new government in separate press conferences.

Media reports from Tunisia said:

The powerful Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), which has about 600,000 members in the public and private sectors, said a technocratic government should replace the one led by Ennahda. The union called for the dissolution of the government and for the appointment of a committee of experts to examine the constitution.

“We consider this government incapable of continuing its work,” Hussein Abbassi, general secretary of the UGTT, said in a statement.

Although endorsing demands for the government to fall, the UGTT has opposed dissolving the assembly – a measure which would throw the country’s fragile transition process into limbo.

“We propose maintaining the Constituent Assembly but … with a time-frame to speed up completion of its work”, said Abbassi. The UGTT brought much of the country to a halt with a one-day strike on Friday.

The UGTT leader said that if this” terrorism is not uprooted, Tunisia will fall into a blood bath.”

Softening its rejection of demands for the government’s departure, the Islamist party Ennahda said it was ready for a new government, but opposed any move to disband an elected body that has almost completed work on a new draft constitution.

“We are open to all proposals to reach an agreement, including a salvation or unity government,” said Ennahda official Ameur Larayedh. “But we will not accept dissolving the Constituent Assembly. This is a red line.”

Along with political unrest the army is struggling to contain Islamist militants, who killed eight soldiers on July 29, 2013 in a mountainous region near the Algerian border in one of the bloodiest attacks on Tunisian troops in decades.

The secular opposition in Tunisia has stepped up pressure on the Ennahda-led government to quit.

Some opposition leaders were dissatisfied with Ennahda’s offer to form a new government but keep the Assembly in place.

“The street wants to dissolve the Constituent Assembly, which is already dying politically and ethically. Its legitimacy is over,” said Mongi Rahoui, a leader in the Popular Front. Rahoui also said Ennahda must relinquish the post of prime minister in any deal.

Opposition leaders criticize the Assembly for far exceeding the one-year deadline it set in December 2011 to complete its tasks, which include drafting a constitution.

Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou, a judge and political independent from the Al Qasreen area near where the troops were ambushed by militants, said in a radio interview Tuesday: “I am ready to resign. A salvation government or national unity government must be formed to get Tunisia out of this bottleneck. I am trying to see the implications of my resignation. Once a salvation government is formed, I will give up my position to the new government.”

“Parties should gather, put their differences aside, and form a national salvation   government,” said Jeddou.

Earlier, the secular party Ettakatol threatened to withdraw from the ruling coalition unless a unity government was formed to defuse widespread and often violent protests.

In their statement, Ettakatol has call ed for the dissolution of the government . However, the party has urge d the NCA to finish the constitution and electoral law and to approve the Law of Transitional Justice and the Independent Board for Elections (ISIE) before October 23.

The opposition, angered by the assassination of two leftist leaders – Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi – has rejected several concessions and power-sharing proposals from the Ennahda-led coalition in the last few days.

The ruling coalition headed by primeminister Ali Larayedh has begun to fray in the last few days as political turmoil and street unrest grip the North African nation of 11 million.

The demand for a national salvation government was echoed by current members of the government.

The Democratic Alliance, an opposition political party, called for a national salvation government. The Alliance suggested a committee of leading political figures be formed to support and advise the independent members of the proposed salvation government.

The initiative is also calling all parties to sign an agreement that sets October 23 as a deadline for the NCA, and to dissolve Leagues for Protection of Revolution, a group that many say promotes violence to support the Islamist Ennahdha.

“There is no legitimacy that is higher than the interest of the country and the security and blood of Tunisians,” said Mohamed Hamdi, member of the Democratic Alliance.

 

“As for the NCA, we don’t really cling to it but we don’t also believe its dissolution is imperative. We are being pragmatic. This is the democratic path we started and chose and people were enthusiastic about. These deadlines that are not respected are making things worse. We need the NCA to be restricted to a date and limit his work to getting Tunisia to the elections,” Hamdi said in a press conference .

“We are with the call for consensus and for the idea of an expert committee to examine the constitution so that it is not discussed in the plenary sessions until it is scrutinized by these experts,” he added.

Gilbert Naccache, a leftist Tunisian politician and activist, denounced the demand to dissolve the NCA in an interview with Express FM.

“We have no interest in dissolving the NCA since the [aftermath of the assassination] shows the weakening of Ennhadha, which now needs to make concessions when it comes to the constitution. It is not the time to dissolve the NCA. I might not trust certain political movements but I do not trust [a committee of independent] experts on this.”

“Politically, it is madness to put the constitution under the scrutiny of a committee of experts. We either dissolve the NCA and find a way to write the constitution or keep the NCA and continue pressuring them to make the constitution as democratically as possible. Here, it is the constituent assembly members who decided and not experts. Experts can only intervene when it comes to formality aspect of writing the constitution, not the contents,” he added.

“Islamists and Troika will not leave power unless they are forced. Is it necessary to get them to leave? What is the alternative to the NCA? ” ,   he asked, referring to the ruling coalition.

A Tunis datelined Reuters report said:

More than any threat of military force, the power of Tunisia ‘s main trade union may be what pushes the Islamist-led government to accept opposition demands for it to quit.

The secular opposition in Tunisia has taken to the streets to demand a new government. Thousands of its supporters have been joined by ordinary Tunisians fed up with rising instability and economic stagnation.

All this had seemed to leave the ruling party Ennahda unmoved – until Tuesday. Then the Tunisian General Labour Union, courted for days by the opposition, came out in support of creating a new echnocrat government. Ennahda later said it was willing to consider that plan.

Whereas in Egypt military power decided the Islamist government’s fate, in Tunisia the economic muscle of the union may prove decisive . J ust one day of strikes can cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars.

“It is the force capable of influencing the street and its leaders can topple the government,” said opposition activist Sofian Chourabi. “The UGTT can reshuffle the political cards because of its manpower and its political and economic weight. It can play the role that the Tunisian army can’t.”

The UGTT has been a major political player since it staged regional strikes in 2011. These helped protesters to force out autocratic ruler Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, setting off a wave of uprisings across the region.

On the cost of strike the report cited economists:

More recently economists estimate a one-day strike, called by the UGTT to protest against the assassination of leftist politician Mohamed Brahmi, cost up to $422 million last week.

Economist Moez Joudi told local newspaper Assabah that the stoppage caused a stock market dive and pushed the Tunisian dinar to its lowest value ever against the dollar and euro.

Such influence gives the union a forceful hand to play in a country suffering economic stagnation and rising unemployment – problems which are already increasing frustration with the government.

A leftist workers’ body, the UGTT is ideologically already close to the secular opposition that has been on the offensive.

Brahmi’s killing drew further support to the opposition’s cause.

The Tunisian army may have played a role in Ben Ali’s overthrow by refusing to shoot demonstrators. But unlike the Egyptian military, which helped protesters to topple fellow autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011, it remains politically weak.

It has few strings to pull and, unlike the Egyptian military, little economic privilege to protect.

“The Tunisian army is neutral and won’t force its will… It has no established custom of playing a political role,” said a source close to the military.

Though most opposition leaders publicly deny wanting military intervention, average supporters make no secret of their desire for an ” Egypt scenario”.

Young activists have even copied the Egyptian campaign group Tamar o d (Rebel!) by organizing their own petition calling for the government to quit. Their movement (also called Tamar o d) says it has collected more than 200,000 signatures.

In a face-off on the streets, it is unclear whether the opposition could force Ennahda to accept its demand to dissolve not only the government, but also the transitional Constituent Assembly – which is weeks away from finishing a draft constitution.

On the role of the internal security forces the Reuters report said:

Some observers suggest internal security forces could play a more influential role. Under Ben Ali, Tunisia was a police state where Interior Ministry forces had influence and power, but they are now as divided as the general population.

At recent protests in Tunis , Reuters reporters heard some security force members arguing about whether to fire tear gas at demonstrators.

“The Interior Ministry is a mess of divisions. Some departments are now in the hands of Ennahda, others are holdovers from the former regime,” said Tunisian analyst Youssef Welati. “I don’t think they have any kind of decisive role. And neither does the army. The most they can do is decide not to suppress protests.”

Citing sources close to the opposition the report said:

Opposition leaders trying to form a rival “salvation government” are proposing security force members, such as Rachid Ammar, the former army chief, and former defense minister Abd Elkarim al-Zbidi.

On the role of trade union the report said:

But the institution the opposition is best poised to benefit from is the UGTT. Historically, the unions have been a powerful force and the UGTT organized against French colonial authorities before independence in the 1950s.

“We are a national organization whose role it is to rescue the country,” Sami Tahri, the assistant secretary general, told reporters on Monday.

The union has hinted it may consider more strikes if the political situation doesn’t improve but is also trying to create for itself a more unifying role. It has rejected opposition calls to dissolve the constitutional assembly, apparently aware of complaints that this would be destructive and could lengthen Tunisia ‘s transition to democracy.

That stand seems to have eased Ennahda’s fears and allow it to open up to the possibility of a new government.

“The UGTT can find a deal that guarantees the continuity of the state but at the same time meets some of the demands of angry protesters,” activist Chourabi said. “It may be the one who can create a consensual exit plan from the crisis.”

 

By Jonathan Cook

@ The Electronic Intifada

Nazareth

31 July 2013

Leaders of Israel’s Palestinian minority have accused the Israeli authorities of intensifying efforts to push Christian and Muslim communities into conflict, as part of a long-running divide-and-rule strategy towards the country’s Palestinian citizens.

The allegations have been prompted by a series of initiatives to pressure Christian school-leavers into the army, breaking the community’s blanket rejection of the Israel army draft for the past 65 years.

Leaders from the Palestinian community, Christian and Muslim, who have spoken against this new enlistment effort have been called in for investigation by Israel’s secret police. In an Orwellian inversion, they have been accused of “incitement to violence.”

The issue first came to prominence last October when the defense ministry quietly staged a conference close to Nazareth, the effective capital of Palestinians in Israel, to promote military service among Christians.

The participation of three local clergymen in the conference sent shock waves through the Muslim and Christian communities.

The move was seen as a prelude to launching a more general recruitment drive among Palestinian Christians. Currently both Christians and Muslims, comprising nearly a fifth of Israel’s population, are exempt from conscription.

Instilling “Zionist values”

In an apparently related step in July, a Christian in Nazareth whose brother is an official in the defense ministry announced the establishment of a Christian-Jewish party. Municipal elections are due in late October.

The movement, which also runs an enlistment forum to encourage Christians to serve in the army, has paired with a far-right Jewish group, Im Tirtzu.

Im Tirtzu has been behind various McCarthyite campaigns, including pressuring Israeli universities to dismiss staff seen as left-wing; lobbying to strengthen “Zionist values” in the school curriculum; and seeking penalties for Israeli nongovernmental organizations supporting the rights of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Officials in Nazareth have warned that their city is at risk of becoming a flash-point for inter-communal fighting if Israel continues to stir up sectarian tensions.

Dominated by its Christian institutions but with a two-thirds Muslim majority, Nazareth has been struggling to temper sectarian divisions since the late 1990s. That was when the Israeli government promoted a provocative project to build a mosque next to the city’s main Christian pilgrimage site, the Basilica of the Annunciation.

Israel’s Palestinian Christians, numbering 125,000, or about nine percent of the Palestinian minority, are mostly located in Nazareth and its surrounding villages.

Divide and conquer

The issue of military service is an especially contentious one for the Palestinian minority, said Azmi Hakim, leader of the Greek Orthodox community council in Nazareth.

Most Palestinian citizens refuse to join the army because they reject the role of the Israeli military in oppressing other Palestinians and in enforcing an occupation that violates international law. However, there are strong objections on other grounds.

“Israel has tried to use military service as a way to break us up as a national group since the state’s earliest days,” Hakim said. “It wants us to be weak, separate religious communities incapable of organizing and demanding our rights.”

The Druze community, of a similar size to the Christian one, has been conscripted into the army since the 1950s. As a consequence, Israel designated the Druze a national group distinct from the rest of the Palestinian minority, and created a separate education system to inculcate “Zionist values.”

Israel has also persuaded some Bedouins to volunteer as army trackers. Otherwise, only a tiny number of Christians and Muslims request to have their exemption waived — in most cases, according to scholar Rhoda Kanaaneh, in the hope of accruing extra financial benefits related to army service.

Abir Kopty, a former Nazareth councilor, said that Israel had long tried to instill in Christians an insecurity towards their Muslim neighbors.

“Israel’s goal is to make Christians feel like a vulnerable minority and that they will be safer only if they have been trained by the army and have a gun. We hear Christian youngsters who consider enlistment saying things like, ‘I want to protect myself and my family,’” she said.

In similar fashion, Druze youths have been known to turn their weapons on Christian and Muslim neighbors when disputes have arisen. In one notorious incident, in 2003, Druze soldiers fired an anti-tank missile at a church in the village of Rama in the Galilee (“Communal pitfalls,” Al-Ahram Weekly, 6-12 March 2003).

Sectarian campaign

The pro-enlistment conference held in October was arranged by Ehab Shlayan, a career officer in the Israeli military from Nazareth who was recently appointed as “adviser on Christian issues” in the defense ministry.

It was staged in Upper Nazareth, a city established on Nazareth’s lands in the 1950s as part of Israel’s project to “Judaize the Galilee,” the area where the Palestinian community in Israel is concentrated. The mayor, Shimon Gapso, an ally of Avigdor Lieberman’s far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, helped sponsor the event.

Palestinian leaders said Gapso’s role was entirely cynical.

Last year Gapso described Nazareth as a “nest of terror” and called on the government to cut all funding to the city. He argued that Nazareth’s residents should be expelled to Gaza.

In recent years he has angrily denounced the growing trend for families from Nazareth, many of them Christian, to move to his city, with much of the migration spurred by land shortages that have made it increasingly difficult to build in Nazareth.

Palestinians now comprise as much as a quarter of Upper Nazareth’s population, but Gapso has publicly declared they are unwelcome. He recently erected large Israeli flags at all entrances to the city “so that people will know Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city.”

Gapso’s antipathy towards the Palestinian minority has demonstrably included Christians. In winter 2010 he banned Christmas trees from all public buildings, and has refused to allow the establishment of a church in his city.

Recent reports revealed that he secretly appointed a “settlement adviser” – Rabbi Hillel Horowitz, a settler from Hebron – on ways to bring extremist religious Jews to the city in the hope of driving out Palestinian residents “Mysterious ‘adviser on settlement affairs’ no. 13 on Habayit Hayehudi slate,” Haaretz, 11 January).

“Good Arabs”

News of the conference on recruiting Christian community members was revealed on social media a short time after it was held in October. More than 120 Christian teenagers were reported to have attended, mostly drawn from the local Greek Catholic and Maronite scout groups.

However, the fact that three senior clergy from Nazareth took part and spoke in favor of Christian enlistment has caused particular consternation.

They include 39-year-old Bishop Jibril Nadaf, from the Greek Orthodox community, the largest Christian denomination in Israel, and Father Masoud Abu Hatoum, of the Greek Catholic community.

Nazareth’s Greek Orthodox council, an elected body that represents the community’s interests in the city, immediately issued a statement denouncing Nadaf’s participation. A short time later the patriarch in Jerusalem, Theophilus III, barred Nadaf from entering the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation.

According to church officials, Theophilus will announce Nadaf’s relocation to Jerusalem in the next few weeks.

Azmi Hakim said Israel had been trying to find a way to recruit Christians to the army – to sever them from the 80 percent of the minority who are Muslim – since the state’s creation. The chief obstacle, he said, had been finding a religious leader who would give the initiative the stamp of the church’s approval.

“Now they think they have a way to split the Christian community by using Nadaf’s authority to justify an enlistment drive,” he said. “But only the council can speak for the community.”

Nadaf has also been criticized by Palestinian members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, including MK Haneen Zoabi from the Balad party and MK Muhammad Barakeh from Hadash. Both have called for his dismissal.

So far Nadaf has remained defiant. He stated in June: “We want young Christians to be completely integrated into Israeli society, and this means also carrying an equal share of the burden. Our future as a Christian minority is wrapped up in the future of the State of Israel” (“Arab pastor: Our future is with Israel,” Israel Today, 9 July).

Nadaf’s mention of “sharing the burden” was a reference to a government campaign to justify continuing to deny Palestinian citizens their rights unless they either serve in the military or perform an equivalent civilian service.

Nadaf has since received public calls of support from government ministers, most notably from the justice minister Tzipi Livni and the interior minister Gideon Saar.

Activists harassed

Likud MK Miri Regev, who heads the Knesset’s interior committee, this month criticized the Palestinian MKs’ intervention, calling them “Trojan horses in the Knesset.” She accused them of “incitement against a Christian priest who encourages young Christians to enlist in the IDF [Israel’s military].”

The Israeli publication Ynet reported that the police had received “a green light” to question the MKs for possible incitement (“Arab MKs to be questioned on suspicion of incitement,” Ynetnews.com, 3 July).

Those who have led opposition to the conference have found themselves called in for interrogation by the police and Israel’s domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet. They have been warned that they are under investigation for “incitement to violence.”

 

Hakim said he had been called for interrogation on three occasions since he and the council denounced Nadaf.

He was also phoned by the Shin Bet two hours before the council met to issue its statement: “They warned me, ‘This is bigger than you or the council.’ They told me not to get involved.”

He has faced a hate campaign and death threats ever since the council issued its statement. “Shortly afterwards, I received an anonymous phone call identifying my children, my place of work and my home address. I was told people would come for me, to behead me,” he said.

He has repeatedly complained about a Hebrew hate site on Facebook created in his name. Despite repeated complaints to the police, nothing appears to have been done to remove the page.

Azmi Hakim, the Greek Orthodox community leader in Nazareth, was required to sign a statement that he would not approach or contact Nadaf but has refused to sign another stating that he would not mention his name.

Abir Kopty was also called for interrogation after writing a blog post in Arabic and English criticizing those who participated in the conference.

The Shin Bet have demanded of all those brought in for interrogation an unexpected condition: that they agree to provide a DNA sample.

Suhad Bishara, a lawyer with the Adalah legal center for the Arab minority in Israel, said the requirement to submit to a DNA test was illegal in both Hakim and Kopty’s cases.

This month Adalah sent a letter to the attorney general saying there was no basis for an investigation of either of them. Bishara said: “This is clearly a free speech matter and the investigations are a transparent attempt to intimidate and silence them.”

New Jewish-Christian party

In an apparent sign that Israeli officials are now keen to push ahead with enlistment, a new Jewish-Christian party was established in Nazareth this month called “Sons of the New Testament.”

The founder, Bishara Shilyan, a 58-year-old former merchant navy captain, has several sons who volunteered for the army. His brother, Ehab Shilyan, works for the defense ministry as an adviser on Christian issues.

Bishara Shilyan, who refers to himself as an “Arabic-speaking Israeli Christian,” told the New York-based Jewish weekly the Algemeiner Journal: “We live in Israel, and I feel a part of the state and the Jewish People. Israel belongs to the Jews, and we are part of it.”

The campaign is reported to have already increased enlistment among school leavers. According to the Maariv newspaper, 90 Christians joined the Israeli military in recent months, a threefold increase from 2010.

Shilyan’s party has sought to play on Christian fears of what it describes as a growing “Muslim threat” in the region, as Islamic movements struggle for power in neighboring countries such as Egypt and Syria. “People see what’s happening now in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria,” Shilyan told the Times of Israel. “They understand where we’re living” (“New Christian Arab party calls for IDF enlistment,” 10 July 2013).

That message was echoed in an editorial in The Jerusalem Post, which rallied to Bishop Nadaf’s side: “Trying to survive under the Muslim thumb inside Israel’s Arab sector, Christians have kept a low profile, striven to give no offense and toed even the most extremist line to evince loyalty and avoid risk. … Those young Christians now eager to break the cycle should be encouraged, not discouraged” (“Father Nadaf,” 26 June).

Shilyan’s forum has been coordinating with the defense ministry in arranging regular meetings with Israeli Jewish Knesset members. The Israeli military recently announced that it had made Christian conscription easier at the nearest office in the Galilee, in Tiberias.

Shilyan is among those arguing that the Israeli military could increase enlistment numbers if it stopped assigning Christians to the Bedouin Reconnaissance Battalion, where they serve alongside Bedouin soldiers.

Sectarianism

The Israeli military also has a poor track record in its treatment of Palestinian soldiers. It was recently widely reported that, under pressure, the military had finally agreed to allow non-Jewish soldiers killed in action to be buried in the same cemeteries as Jewish soldiers, although they will be kept in separate rows.

The matter came to a head on Memorial Day this year because the chief of staff, Benny Gantz, following traditional practice, laid a wreath on the grave of the last Jewish soldier to have been killed over the past year. As a result, he overlooked a soldier whose Jewishness was in doubt.

According to some observers, Shilyan has received support from a small group of Palestinian Christians based in the nearby town of Kafr Yasif who have adopted Christian Zionist positions. This has led to suggestions that the party may be receiving funds from Christian Zionist groups in the United States.

Hakim said the government’s latest efforts to recruit Christians to the army were a continuation of its meddling in Nazareth in the late 1990s, in what has come to be known as the “Shihab al-Din affair.”

In the run-up to the arrival of Pope John Paul II for the millennium celebrations in Nazareth, the Israeli government gave the go-ahead to a group of Muslims to build a large mosque in a square in front of the Basilica of the Annunciation, the destination for hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. The square is the resting place of Shihab al-Din, a nephew of the Crusaders’ nemesis, Saladin.

The decision surprised observers, both because the mosque threatened to overshadow the Basilica and because it required unprecedented Israeli state recognition of Muslim claims to restitution of property confiscated in the 1948 war.

As the Muslim group took over the site, tensions escalated and by Easter 1999 violent clashes between Muslims and Christians were reported on front pages around the world.

Israel later reneged on its promises to the Muslim group and in 2003 demolished the foundations of the mosque that were under construction (“Divide and destroy,” Al-Ahram Weekly, 3-9 July 2003).

Widely-held suspicions in Nazareth are that the government sought to inflame sectarian violence in Nazareth at that time, shortly before peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian leadership at Camp David in 2000, to help strengthen Israel’s case that only it could be entrusted to look after the holy sites in Jerusalem in a final-status agreement.

Accounts from Camp David suggest that Israel’s prime minister at the time, Ehud Barak, remained adamant that Israel should have exclusive sovereignty over the al-Aqsa compound of mosques in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Longstanding policy

The latest moves to recruit Christians to the army echo earlier efforts by Israeli officials, as part of a policy that sought to undermine the Palestinian population’s cohesion and its national identity.

A key figure among the Christians in the state’s early years was George Hakim, the Greek Catholic bishop for the Galilee.

According to Hillel Cohen, author of Good Arabs, a book about early collaboration by Palestinian leaders, Hakim sold church lands close to Nazareth in the early 1940s to Jewish pre-state organizations. He also established a Christian militia during the 1948 war.

It was therefore perhaps unsurprising that he and many of his followers, unlike most other refugees, were allowed to return from exile in Lebanon at the end of the war in 1949.

Hakim went on to transform the Catholic Scouts into a Zionist youth movement opposed to the Communist party, a joint Jewish-Arab party popular among Israel’s Palestinian citizens. It was then the only non-Zionist political movement allowed.

In 1958 Hakim considered signing an agreement with the army similar to that of the Druze leadership, but found little support among the wider Christian community. A photograph in Good Arabs shows Hakim seated next to Druze leader Sheikh Amin Tarif at an Israeli military parade for Independence Day in 1959.

The logic of Israel’s moves to recruit the Christians and Druze was explained in 1965 by Shmuel Toledano, the prime minister’s Arab affairs adviser: “The communal frameworks of religious and linguistic groups should be fostered, except for the Muslim, and the individuality of each and every separate community should be consolidated.”

Recent events highlight that this policy formulated in the state’s early years – to use sectarian differences to isolate the largest Palestinian community, of Muslims, from their Christian and Druze compatriots – holds to this day.

With Palestinian communal solidarity seen as a serious threat to the state’s Jewishness, Israel would prefer to push Muslims, Christians and Druze into open conflict.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilizations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His new website is jonathan-cook.net.