Archives: Articles

April 22, 2013

By Salma Yusuf

In post-war Sri Lanka, a reprioritising of the national agenda, a change in attitude to state structures and innovating new approaches to embrace forgotten stakeholders remain critical for social change

Though social justice and the advancement of peace has not yet evolved to occupying centre-stage in the corporate agenda, a significant development in the international arena is that businesses are no longer averse to the idea. Moreover, there has been acknowledgement within the international business sector that the credibility of its operations can be strengthened by subscribing to altruistic ideological pursuits and embracing its latent social role.

In Sri Lanka too, there has begun a national momentum to raise awareness on the need to develop the social conscience of the private sector, following the conclusion of the three-decade war that ravaged the country. In this context, what is required is a more radical reprioritising of the national agenda in the post-war situation to socio-economic and political aims to facilitate such a progressive movement.

What must be recommended is the adoption of investment in four areas as critical to a strategy for contributing to reconciliation and peace-building: First, livelihood and income generation activities; second, training and empowerment through capacity building in soft-skills including those that increase innovation, entrepreneurship and employability; third, a need to engage directly with individuals and communities in war-affected regions of the country and finally, to ensure that all endeavours undertaken embrace the vision of preventing economic stagnation which has been at the root of most political conflicts.

The attractiveness of investing in the north of the country must not be forgotten in this endeavour. The availability of rich natural resources in the region such as limestone, land, groundwater, sea salt, fisheries and agriculture could be tapped into in order to create industries, income generation and livelihood opportunities.

Additionally, the market demand for produce and jobs is increasing with the return of formerly displaced persons to their original habitats. Further, there exists potential for development of tourism-related infrastructure as Jaffna is gaining increasing currency as a tourist destination, both by locals and foreigners. It was recorded that with the removal of travel restrictions to the north of the country, a total of 31,000 persons had travelled to the north in 2012 alone. This in itself is a testament to the promise for both local and foreign tourism in the north of the country which would benefit immensely from private sector investment.

The conflict between the north and south of Sri Lanka has been largely due to the lack of economic opportunities. Waiting for perfect conditions to invest can be counter-productive to social progress. Reflecting on the Sri Lankan political history, both insurrections in the south, and the north, were largely resource, class and caste related. Leaving behind a segment of the community whether in the north or the south will result in the seeds of dissent taking root. Allowing marginalisation of a segment of the community will result in ethnic entrepreneurs exploiting it for personal and political advantage.

To this end, certain considerations need to be made when decisions to invest in the north and the east are taken, namely, that youth and adult populations in the north have been deprived of basic education during the conflict. Capacity building is a sine qua non for generating employability and creating opportunities for income generation.

The business community is well placed for developing capacity of potential entrepreneurs by playing a major role in skill building. Hence, recognition of such a role for the private sector and business community must be taken seriously. Although engagement of the business community has been acknowledged as essential for peace-building by both the World Bank and the United Nations, a system of rewards to lure early private sector entry has yet to be devised, at the international and national levels.

Further, it is recommended that involving the private sector in the larger work of formulating the post-war recovery strategy in Sri Lanka will help generate ownership of the process, and in turn sustainability of outcomes. This would require innovative thinking by both the public and private sectors.

The challenge therefore lies in finding new means to make such engagement attractive by establishing appropriate economic and non-economic incentives for investment.

Possible incentives would be, first, to demonstrate to businesses how early – entry into the war – torn regions are a test of the resilience of the sector’s ability to navigate adverse conditions and establish suitable conditions for economic proclivity.

Second, it can play a crucial self-serving role in shaping of the market for decades to come by securing preferential rights for early entrants and contributing to developing the legal and regulatory framework in which they will have to operate. Such need to be highlighted to the private sector in Sri Lanka who are still weary of potential fallouts associated with investing in the war-affected regions of the country; and are only now being sensitised to the critical role that they can play in re-building the nation and fostering durable peace.

Closely related to this is the need to cultivate a positive attitude towards state structures, administrative structures, public service and international institutions. Hence, these two considerations ought to be integral to Sri Lanka’s foreign policy strategy, which would necessarily involve both direct bilateral and multi-lateral engagement with relevant foreign powers and world bodies.

In Sri Lanka, the need for economic prosperity or at least movement away from abject poverty and economic hopelessness is pivotal to moving towards reconciliation and peace building if the spirit of peace is to not falter and be extinguished. It is the private sector that can provide in the long-term economic growth opportunities, jobs and wealth creation.

By Benjamin Lytal

21 April 13

@ The Daily Beast

As everyone followed the Boston manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers, thoughts turned to Tolstoy’s final novel, ‘Hadji Murad,’ about Chechen rebels fighting Russian imperialism. Benjamin Lytal checks in on the master’s tale of anti-heroism and betrayal.

 

On Friday, while CNN was making constant reference to the Tsarnaev brothers’ attempt “to go out in a blaze of glory,” a micro-meme lit up social media: didn’t Leo Tolstoy have a novel about Chechnyan rebels, called Hadji Murad? He does: it was his last, a thin book that everyone should read. While it offers few overt parallels to a case of 21st century terrorism, Tolstoy’s novel sets the stage for the Chechen grievance-and tribal dysfunction. But what is more piercing, when Dzokhar Tsarnaev’s image is haunting the public eye, is Tolstoy’s insight into the dire symbiosis between heroic desires and boyish innocence.

Tolstoy would have been the first to reject an idea like “going out in a blaze of glory.” In battle scenes he was a master of anticlimax: perhaps the best-remembered moment in all of War and Peace is young Nikolai Rostov’s first cavalry charge: knocked from the saddle by a bullet the bewildered twenty-year-old turns tail: “They’re not after me! They can’t be after me! Why? They can’t want to kill me! Me. Everybody loves me!'” Like, one suspects, many a hunted young man-boy, Nikolai is haunted by “all the love he had from his mother, from his family and his friends.” He can’t reconcile such a background with all the trouble he has gotten into.

Tolstoy was a complicated man, however. He understood glory, even in its shallowness. Maxim Gorky tells the story, in his priceless Recollections, of Tolstoy’s reaction to two proud young cuirassiers, walking down the street in their shining armor. As they approached, he cursed them: “What magnificent idiocy! They’re nothing but circus animals trained with a stick . . . ” But as they passed, Tolstoy gazed on admiringly: “How beautiful they are! Ancient Romans, eh, Lyovushka?”

Tolstoy’s 1904 novel begins with a fifteen-year-old boy staring at the eponymous hero. “Everyone in the mountains knew Hadji Murad, and how he slew the Russian swine.” Betrayed by the Chechnyan chieftain, Shamil, Murad is at the novel’s beginning a fugitive, wrapped in a burka. The boy can’t stop staring at him-indeed, the boy’s “sparkling eyes, black as ripe sloes” contain all the sickly-sweet potential of a desperate boy’s life. Several chapters later the boy’s village, where Murad had taken refuge, will be razed by Russian troops.

The Russians, no less than the Chechnyans, are eager to get a look at Murad. Forced by his feud with Shamil to defect, he arranges to ride over to the Russians: the officer who takes him into custody has no translator, and has to gesture and smile. Murad smiles back, “and that smile struck Poltorátsky by its childlike kindliness. . . . He expected to see a morose, hard-featured man; and here was a vivacious person, whose smile was so kindly that Poltorátsky felt as if he were an old acquaintance. He had but one peculiarity: his eyes, set wide apart, gazed from under their black brows attentively, penetratingly and calmly into the eyes of others.” The much-feared Murad charms the Russians. They give him a translator and allow him to pray at the appointed times. “He is delightful, your brigand!” reports an officer’s wife. Tolstoy is very sensitive to the way we look at our babyfaced enemies: our outward condescension, our inner relief, our deluded, liberal belief that we already know them.

It is strange that Tolstoy, by this time a guru of peaceful resistance who would inspire Ghandi, wrote his final novel about a hero who kept multiple daggers on his person. To be clear: neither Murad nor the other Chechnyans in Tolstoy’s book are terrorists. They are rebel insurgents defending their homeland against Russian invaders, who want to annex the Caucasus in order to connect their empire to Georgia. Murad hopes that the Russians will give him an army that he might march against Shamil. He dreams about how he would “take [Shamil] prisoner, and revenge himself on him; and how the Russian Tsar would reward him, and he would again rule over not only Avaria, but also over the whole of Chechnya.” Most Chechnyans in this book are sworn to some form of political violence. But it is usually directed at other Chechnyans: theirs is a world of mutually recognized blood feuds. It is a function of their myopic passion that they think they of the Russian Empire as a pawn in their game.

As with War & Peace or Anna Karenina, Tolstoy built Hadji Murad out of multiple plots, which he cycles between for cunning, highly-contrastive effect. But because Hadji Murad is only 100 pages long, its structure is more obvious, even flashy. Ludwig Wittgenstein, of all people, admired it. It has the cold, distilled clarity of late work. Critic John Bayley reads the book as a fantasy, for Tolstoy, of certainty: the ruthless Murad being the opposite of the Tolstoy who, dying at the Astapovo railway station repeated over and over, “I do not understand what it is I have to do.” But the book must also be read as a study in just this kind of indecision. Fit into its 100 pages is every viewpoint: Tolstoy fully characterizes and motivates everyone from Tsar Nicholas I (a useless letch) to individual soldiers-like Butler, a good man heartbreakingly addicted to gambling, or Avdeev, whose death opens up a startling sidelight on his peasant parents-to several of Murad’s disciples (notably shy Eldár, with his ram’s eyes) to Shamil himself.

In so much context, anybody’s brave death basically has to be meaningless. If Murad is a hero, perhaps Bayley is right: it is simply because he is resolute. Tired of waiting on the Russians to make up their minds about his cause, he rides out with his disciples one day, shakes his escort, and makes for the mountains. However, in trying to cut across a flooded rice field, he and his friends are bogged down. They decide to hide, and sleep through the night. Meanwhile a peasant tips off the army. At dawn, Murad finds a line of Russians advancing on one side. On the other-and this is the decisive tactical fact-are Chechnyan fighters who have betrayed him.

With the right soundtrack, in the hands of a Hollywood director, it could have been a blaze of glory. But we know that Murad’s life is no longer glorious. He has spent the entire novel in the waiting rooms of Russian generals. The decision to cross the rice field seems stupid, meaningless. Tolstoy is a master of anticlimax. Apocalypse is not, as some terrorists have it, now. If his final novel presents a more balanced view of imperialist politics than even Heart of Darkness (with which it was contemporary), it is because Tolstoy knows there are no climaxes: conflicts like this one will drag on forever.

Ultimately, Tolstoy cares less about glory than about another theme: He’s interested in the way that childhood haunts heroism. Murad’s head is cut off and carried from camp to camp: “The shaven skull was cleft, but not right through, and there was congealed blood in the nose. . . . Notwithstanding the many wounds on the head, the blue lips still bore a kindly, childlike expression.” The Russians who had befriended Murad turn away, shocked.

It is just before his final, rebellious escape, that Murad meditates on his own childhood-and on that of his son, whom he fatefully, tragically wants to rescue. He is reminded of a song, one his mother composed at his birth, addressed to his father:

“Thy sword of Damascus-steel tore my white bosom;

But close on it laid I my own little boy;

In my hot-streaming blood him I laved; and the wound

Without herbs or specifics was soon fully healed.

As I, facing death, remained fearless, so he,

My boy, my dzhigit, from all fear shall be free!”

**All quotes are from Aylmer Maud’s translation of Hadji Murad (Orchises: Alexandria, VA, 1996).

 

By Dan Beeton

17 April 2013

@ Americas Blog

Opposition protests turned deadly on April 15, 2013, with at least seven people having been reported killed and over 61 others injured as opposition groups reportedly burned the homes of PSUV leaders, community hospitals, and mercales (subsidized grocery stores), attacked Cuban doctors, attacked state and community media stations, and threatened CNE president Tibisay Lucena and other officials.

Violence is likely to continue on April 16, 2013, as both Capriles and Maduro have called for their supporters to demonstrate in the streets. Maduro and other senior government officials have condemned the acts and have warned that the opposition is attempting a coup d’etat. PSUV legislators have suggested they may pursue legal action against Capriles for promoting instability.

The campaign of violent protest, in conjunction with opposition candidate Henrique Capriles’ refusal to recognize the election results, represents the first major extra-legal destabilization attempt by Venezuela’s opposition since the failed coup in 2002 and oil strike in 2003. It is also significant in that the US is backing Capriles’ position, thereby helping to provoke conflict in Venezuela — even though most Latin American nations and many other governments around the world have congratulated Maduro on his victory and called for the results to be respected.

The opposition strategy is predictably divisive, however. Factions within Venezuela’s opposition have long opposed extra-legal and especially violent methods of attempting to force change. Some in the opposition have also hinted that Capriles’ cries of “fraud” are not credible. Opposition-aligned CNE rector Vicente Diaz has said that, while he supports a full audit of the votes, he has no doubt in that the results given by the CNE are correct. Diaz made comments to this effect on opposition station Globovision on April 15, 2013; the TV hosts then quickly concluded the interview.

Opposition blogger Francisco Toro, meanwhile, has criticized the opposition strategy of crying fraud, noting that, if any such fraud exists, it will be found in the 54 percent audit of the votes that the CNE conducts as a routine verification for each election.

Toro writes:

Listen, I understand how “count every vote” is an appealing slogan: bumperstickable and easy to understand and hard to resist.

It’s also a red herring: the evidence of fraud, if fraud happened, isn’t some exotic species out there that you have to go out and hunt. The evidence of fraud, if fraud did happen, is already in the thousands of paper-based hand-tally reports from the “hot audit” now in the hands of opposition witnesses all over the country. That hot audit has [been] done as a matter of routine in a randomly-selected 54% of all voting tables on election night after every vote since 2005, and includes at least one table in every voting center in the country. MUD’s job now — and it’s not a trivial one — is to put all those tally-sheets under one roof, key them into a computer, and check.

It is unclear exactly how such fraud could have been committed, given the safeguards in Venezuela’s electoral process, and few media outlets seem interested in pressing the Capriles campaign for answers.

Foreign media reports, while downplaying the extent of the violence in opposition protests, have also noted that Capriles and the members of the opposition who back him risk delegitimizing themselves by refusing to accept the results and waging a protest campaign in response. Reuters reported today:

The strategy could backfire if demonstrations turn into prolonged disturbances, such as those the opposition led between 2002 and 2004, which sometimes blocked roads for days with trash and burning tires and annoyed many Venezuelans.

A protracted fight also could renew questions about the opposition’s democratic credentials on the heels of their best showing in a presidential election, and just as Capriles has consolidated himself as its leader. “Where are the opposition politicians who believe in democracy?” Maduro said on Tuesday.

It is also noteworthy that three opposition legislators, Ricardo Sanchez, Carlos Vargas, and Andres Avelino, publicly broke with Capriles last month, decrying what they described as a plan to stoke instability by refusing to accept the election results, and use students as “cannon fodder” in a violent protest campaign. While this did get some scattered attention in Venezuela at the time, it was regrettably ignored by major foreign media outlets.

Dan Beeton is International Communications Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Follow Beeton on Twitter @Dan_Beeton. This article was first published in CEPR’s Americas Blog on April 16, 2013 under a Creative Commons license.

By Niall Green

16 April, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Last week the Al Nusra Front, the military backbone of the US-sponsored Syrian opposition, openly swore its loyalty to Al Qaeda.

Al Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born cleric who served for many years as Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command.

“The sons of Al Nusra Front pledge allegiance to Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri,” al-Golani said in a recorded message released last week. The statement also indicated that the Syrian terrorist group would merge with Al Qaeda in Iraq, from which Al Nusra has received personnel and training.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State in Iraq, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in that country, said last week that his group would join with Al Nusra under the shared banner of “The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.”

The Al Nusra Front (or Jabhat al-Nusra) became the most effective armed group in the US-backed Syrian opposition last year. Its cadres, Islamist militants recruited internationally with combat experience from other wars, have inflicted several defeats on Syrian government forces, while carrying out sectarian atrocities against minority groups and alleged regime sympathizers.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the loose coalition of militias sponsored by Washington and its allies in their proxy war against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, issued a statement disavowing any formal ties with Al Nusra.

“We don’t support the ideology of Al Nusra,” an FSA spokesman said. “There has never been and there will never be a decision at the command level to coordinate with Al Nusra.”

This denial appears meaningless, however, as the FSA then admitted that it planned to continue co-operating with Al Nusra fighterson “certain operations.”

Without Al Nusra, the FSA would have very limited fighting capabilities. In July 2012, the UK-based Guardian newspaper reported from within Syria that the FSA frequently relied on al-Nusra when fighting the Syrian army. In the piece, titled “Al-Qaeda turns tide for rebels in battle for eastern Syria,” FSA personnel said that they had called upon Al Nusra to carry out truck and car bombings, plant roadside bombs, and to supply fighters, small arms and ordnance.

The FSA lacks a popular base of support, and appears to have little operational authority, within Syria. Rather, it is various sectarian and ethnic-based militias that carry out strikes against the Syrian regime, each for their own ends. Among these groups, it is Al Nusra that has proved to be the most deadly. Its militants, drawn to the Syrian war under the banner of Islamist jihad, are recruited from the ranks of Sunni extremist veterans of the wars in Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Its shadowy leader, al-Golani (his nom de guerre ), is believed to have been a fighter in the Al Qaeda-linked insurgency in Iraq during the US occupation and subsequent ethno-sectarian civil war in that country.

Al Nusra has claimed responsibility for the overwhelming majority of suicide bombings inside Syria, including the December 2011 twin-suicide attack in Damascus that killed 49 people and injured over 160 others, the May 2012 bombing in the capital in which 55 people died and some 400 were wounded, and a triple suicide attack in Aleppo in October, which killed 48. In all these atrocities, and hundreds of other attacks carried out by the group over the past fifteen months, the majority of casualties have been civilians.

Al Nusra’s formal declaration of solidarity with Al Qaeda thus comes more as an inconvenience than a surprise to the Obama administration and its allies.

Islamist militias, including those associated with Al Qaeda, have received hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and materiel from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other US-backed forces—all under the watchful eye of the CIA, whose agents oversee the flow of supplies to the Syrian opposition across the borders of Turkey and Jordan.

On Thursday, the Assad government called on the UN to designate Al Nusra as a terrorist organization, like Al Qaeda. In a letter to the UN Security Council, the Syrian foreign ministry claimed that the announced merger confirmed previous assertions by Damascus that Al Nusra is engaged in terrorist crimes against the Syrian people.

The letter to the Security Council criticized the efforts within the “international community” to prevent Al Nusra from being branded as a terrorist organization, with the Assad regime attempting to put diplomatic pressure on US allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have sponsored the Islamist fighters.

Washington was compelled to officially blacklist Al Nusra as a terrorist group in December. The designation came in the context of the establishment in November 2012 of a new US-sponsored anti-Assad umbrella group, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. Al Nusra was hostile to this group, which includes moderate Sunnis as well as secular and Kurdish personnel.

The terrorist label applied to Al Nusra by the Obama administration was mainly symbolic, however. In the months since the designation, al-Golani’s fighters have proven themselves even more capable of striking at Syrian regime targets and carrying out terrorist attacks.

On December 23, al-Nusra declared a “no-fly zone” over the city of Aleppo, the main commercial center of Syria prior to the civil war. According to Al Jazeera, the group was able to deploy 23mm and 57mm anti-aircraft guns against Syrian armed forces aircraft, as well as civilian planes that were suspected of carrying government personnel or supplies.

Al-Nusra has emerged as the principal opposition group in the battle for control of Aleppo, which lies close to the Turkish border and the large US Air Force base at Incirlik. It regularly fights off Syrian government assaults on rebel-held areas.

Given the extensive presence of the US military and the CIA in and around Syria, and Washington’s influence within the despotic Persian Gulf sheikhdoms that bankroll the opposition, it is inconceivable that Al Nusra or similar outfits could function without tacit support from US imperialism.

Secretary of State John Kerry effectively acknowledged that the US would turn a blind eye to the arming of al-Nusra during a press conference last month with Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, a Qatari royal. Kerry insisted that Washington was doing everything to ensure that support went to the “right people” in the Syrian opposition. He added, however, that there could be “no one hundred percent guarantee” that the flood of arms and money coming into Syria from the US and its allies would not end up in the hands of the local branch of al-Qaeda.

By Barry Grey

16 April, 2013

@ WSWS.org

The explosion of two bombs Monday afternoon at the Boston Marathon has been accompanied by a rush to judgment by the media, in which claims of a broad new terror attack are being made without any factual substantiation.

The bombs exploded near the finish line of the marathon in the heart of the city’s downtown area. According to media reports, at least three people were killed and 144 wounded, including 15 with critical injuries. Witnesses on the scene and at hospitals have reported that the injuries include amputated lower limbs.

The explosions took place within about 20 seconds of one another and 50-100 yards apart, while thousands of marathoners were still running and many thousands of spectators were lined up along the route. The blasts shattered storefront windows, sending shards of glass and other debris into the crowd.

No individual or organization has as yet claimed responsibility for this brutal and criminal act.

Copley Square was evacuated and will reportedly remain closed off for 24 hours. Parts of the city’s public transit system were shut down and aircraft grounded for several hours at Logan International Airport, but service resumed in the early evening.

The federal government increased security around the White House, and New York City announced it had elevated its security operations.

In a press conference several hours after the blasts, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said there was a third explosion several miles away at the John F. Kennedy Library, which authorities were treating as related to the bombings at the marathon. However, officials subsequently said the incident at the JFK Library was “fire-related” and not connected to the marathon bombings.

There were also multiple press reports of a third bomb deliberately detonated by authorities following the initial blasts, and the Associated Press cited an unnamed intelligence official as saying at least one other device was found in the area of the race.

In the absence of clear facts or forensic evidence, many of the statements made by the media amounted to pure speculation, aimed at promoting an unstated political agenda and encouraging a mood of panic. Many assertions contradicted one another. For example, some commentators claimed the explosive devices were small and primitive, while others said they were sophisticated and indicated the work of a terrorist organization.

Some media outlets in particular seemed bent on steering the public toward the view that the Boston events were a terror attack along the lines of 9/11. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer directed the network’s reportage along these lines, encouraging his “expert” commentators to make wide-ranging claims within minutes of the explosions and while the mayhem on the streets of Boston was still unfolding. Jane Harman, the former Democratic chair of the House Intelligence Committee, appearing as a CNN commentator, claimed the bombings pointed in the direction of Al Qaeda.

The Murdoch press’ New York Post ran a banner headline, “Clearly an Act of Terror,” and featured a second article headlined “Authorities ID suspect as Saudi national in marathon bombings, under guard at Boston hospital.”

NBC Evening News featured as its terrorism expert Michael Leitner, former director of the US National Counterterrorism Center under both the Bush and Obama administrations. Without any factual substantiation, Leitner declared that the bombings were the act of a “terrorist organization.”

However, President Obama, in a brief statement from the White House delivered at about 6 PM, pointedly refrained from labeling the incident as an act of terror. He said the “full resources of the federal government” and the “full weight of justice” would be deployed against those responsible, while admitting that the government did not know “who did this or why.”

There appeared to be an element of confusion or conflict within the state over the response to the bombings. The media widely reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had declared the bombings to be a terrorist act. And only minutes after Obama’s White House statement, a “senior administration official” told Fox News, “When multiple devices go off, that’s an act of terrorism.”

It is necessary to treat all of the initial reports by the media with extreme skepticism. Whether the Boston bombing was a terror attack by Al Qaeda or by a home-grown right-wing organization, or an act carried out with state involvement, remains unknown.

 

In maintaining a critical attitude and avoiding falling prey to media manipulation, it is useful to recall the role of the media in previous cases of alleged terrorist attacks. In the anthrax incidents that occurred shortly after 9/11, for example, the media made sweeping claims of Al Qaeda and Islamist involvement, none of which proved to be true.

 

16 April 2013

@ http://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2013/04/boston-bombings.html

At first I thought I should not comment on the Boston bombings as it is obvious that we in Palestine, under siege and regular bombardment would clearly sympathize with the victims. But then I saw the usual pundits on mainstream media trying to spin the tragedy to serve racism.  The Israeli Consul-General in Boston told the Jerusalem Post that “Boston is a very quiet and calm place, especially when we come from Israel…..Still, the Jewish community and the consulate are on alert and security has been increased”.  He speaks as if he represents Jews of Boston (and only them) and insinuates as usual that problems in Palestine (‘Israel’) are because of the native “Arabs” not because of the Zionist colonization.  CNN gave extensive time to the Zionist ex-congresswoman Jane Harman who claimed this terrorist attack is likely linked to AlQaeda Islamists while trying to connect herself to victims when she supports terrorism herself. Besides her appalling record in voting for more weapons and money to Israel to kill Palestinians, she was unashamedly more pro-Israel to the point of challenging US interests on several occasions.  In October 2006, Time magazine stated that Harman had agreed to lobby the US Department of Justice to reduce espionage charges against Steve J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, two officials at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In exchange, Time said there was a quid pro quo in which AIPAC would lobby then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to appoint Harman as chair of the House Intelligence Committee! Then came Wolf Blitzer, another Zionist who now poses as the serious looking global “reporter” for CNN.   Here is Norman Finkelstein speaking the truth while Blitzer in defends racism/Zionism and shows where his loyalties stand in a public debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-8aTGnjHnI But if you thought his CNN appointment made him moderate his stance, you would be mistaken.  He continues to use all opportunities (including this tragedy) to use smoke and mirrors to hide facts.  Many Zionist pundits appeared in mainstream media spinning the same web.

There is no mention by those with “Israel first” mentality of the billions of taxpayer dollars given to Israel annually because of the Zionist lobby and how many innocent people are killed or displaced by it.  There is no mention of past false flag operations by the Israeli Mossad (for example in Egypt against US and British interests and in Iraq against Jewish institutions to drive Jews to migrate to colonize Palestine).  There is no mention of billions made by investors with inside knowledge; no mainstream media tried to investigate the short selling and the US stock market collapse that happened hours BEFORE the bombings (who profited?).  And while most western media had hours of continuous coverage of this bombing that killed three individuals, they rarely mention the daily bombings and killings of hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians especially by US drones in places like Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (where there are no first class medical facilities as exists in Boston).  Nor do they care to mention killing by proxy of hundreds of civilians monthly by US puppet dictators from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia or by the US supported racist apartheid regime of Israel or of western funded Islamist groups in Syria.  Alas, Blitzer and Harman and hundreds like them assume their audience is stupid to buy their Zionist spin.  Let us hope that US citizens will finally challenge the staggering cost of Israeli apartheid and Israel-firsters in their midst. Let us hope that someone in the FBI is smart enough to look more carefully at the clues in Boston and find the real culprits behind these bombings instead of buying the Zionist spin.

 

The Staggering Cost of Israel to Americans By Pamela Olson.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34485.htm?utm_source=ICH%3A+9%2F11%3A+Illegitimacy+of+US+Government&utm_campaign=FIRST&utm_medium=email

US Aid to Israel Jumps to $11 Million Dollars Per Day as US States, Counties and Cities go Bankrupt!

http://america-hijacked.com/2013/04/13/us-aid-to-israel-jumps-to-11-million-dollars-per-day/

AIPAC’s legislative agenda dividing members of Congress

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/292069-aipacs-legislative-agenda-dividing-members-of-congress?+Analysis

A response from Dave Evans to this information:

The billions of dollars Congress sends in direct aid to Israel pales in comparison to the TRILLIONS of dollars spent on wars the US undertakes for Israel. ($4 to 6 trillion for two wars alone: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/iraq-afghanistan-wars-will-cost-u-s-4-6-trillion-dollars-report/  ), not counting funding mercs in Syria and other dark wars for Israel; wars that are planned and executed by these people:  http://www.erichufschmid.net/TFC/FromOthers/list-of-neocons-for-Iraq-war.htm

to fulfill this Israeli agenda: http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html

Consider this that gets little press:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/03/14/iran-north-koreas-axis-of-evil-revived-by-new-nuclear-ties/

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/02/israel-fears-north-korea-become-a-nuke-supplier-middle-east.html

The bombings in Boston were painful to see since we lived nearby in Connecticut and our son went to school in Boston and we visited regularly. Our deepest sympathies to the victims and their families. Knowing the local community there, I know they have strength and resilience and goodness that can overcome this evil.

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities in occupied Palestine. He serves as chairman of the board of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People and coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour He is author of “Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle” and “Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment”

By Nile Bowie

15 April 2013

Each year on April 15th, North Koreans pay homage to the founder of their nation, Kim il-Sung – the most revered figure in the North Korean psyche. Despite the tense state of affairs on the Korean peninsula and war-like rhetoric emanating from the North, the mood in the country is one of patriotic celebration as citizens of Pyongyang take part in communal dancing and other festivities to remember their departed leader. Kim il-Sung was a guerilla fighter who fought for Korean independence against the Japanese, who occupied the peninsula prior to the Korean War. He was installed into power by the Soviet Union, which bankrolled the North’s post-war reconstruction efforts and shaped its economic policy. After a turbulent history of being under the thumb of larger regional powers, Kim il-Sung is credited with freeing Korea from the yoke of colonialism, even earning him sympathy from some of the elderly generations living in the South. North Korea’s reverence for Kim il-Sung appears wholly Stalinistic to the Western eye, but there are complex reasons why the North Korean ruling family continues to be venerated unquestionably, part of which deals with North Korea’s race-based brand of nationalism that few analysts take into account.

Imperial Japan ruled the Korean peninsula for thirty-five years beginning in 1910, and historians claim that Koreans of the time had little patriotic or nationalistic sensibilities and paid no loyalty toward the concept of a distinct Korean race or nation-state. The Japanese asserted that their Korean subjects shared a common bloodline and were products of the same racial stock in an attempt to imbue Koreans with a strong sense of national pride, suggesting the common ancestry of a superior Yamato race. Following the independence of the DPRK, its leaders channeled the same brand of race-centric nationalism. Domestic propaganda channeled rhetoric of racial superiority different from that of the Aryan mythology of Nazi Germany; mythmakers in Pyongyang focused on the unique homogeneity of the Korean race and with that, the idea that its people are born blemish-free, with a heightened sense of virtuousness and ethics. The characteristic virginal innocence of the Korean people is stressed incessantly in North Korean propaganda, obliging the guidance of an unchallenged parental overseer to protect the race – that’s where the Kim family comes in.

Both Kim il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-il, who ruled North Korea from 1994 to 2011, are credited with super-human feats that North Korean school children learn about from the cradle. The domestic portrayal of Kim il-Sung and Kim Jong-il is that of a firm parental entity who espouses both maternal concern and paternalistic authority. The personality cult around the Kim family is itself is built into the story of racial superiority, mythicizing Kim il Sung into a messianic entity destined to lead the Korean people to independence through a self-reliance philosophy known as the Juche idea. The Juche ideology channels vague humanistic undertones while trumpeting autonomy and self-reliance. Analysts argue that the Juche idea and the volumes of books allegedly written by the leaders on a broad series of Juche-based social sciences is essentially window dressing designed more for foreign consumption. Foreign visitors are lectured about Juche thought and kept away from the central ideology, which is that of a militant race-based ultra-nationalism.

Defectors also claim that there is a stronger effort on indoctrinating the masses internally with the official fantasy biographies of the leaders to further their messianic character, rather than a serious application of teachings such as Juche thought. In North Korea, the leader is never seen exerting authority onto his people; he is instead depicted as caring for injured children in hospitals and nurturing soldiers on the front lines. State media has once described Kim Jong-il as “the loving parent who holds and nurtures all Korean children at his breast.” The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea may have a communist exterior, however it bares little resemblance to a Marxist-Leninist state in its commitment to improve material living standards; economics are nowhere near a central priority in contrast to the importance placed on the military. Domestic propaganda encourages its subjects to remain in their natural state of intellectual juvenescence and innocence, under the watch of the great parent. Kim il-Sung, given the title of “Parent Leader” in state media, was portrayed as a nurturing maternal figure, fussing over the food his soldiers consumed and making sure they had warm clothing.

Much like the mysticism around Japan’s Mount Fuji during the time of the Imperial Japanese occupation, Korea’s highest peak, Mount Paektu, was designated a sacred place and given a central role in official mythology. Kim Jong-il’s birth supposedly took place on the peaks of Mt. Paektu beneath twin rainbows in a log cabin during the armed struggle against the Japanese occupiers. His biography reads, “Wishing him to be the lodestar that would brighten the future of Korea, they hailed him as the Bright Star of Mount Paektu.” Images of fresh snowfall and snow-capped peaks of Mount Paektu are conjured to exemplify the pristine quality of Korean racial stock, and state media often refers to the DPRK as the “Mount Paektu Nation” and Kim Jong-un as the “Brilliant Commander of Mount Paektu.” Pyongyang is often depicted under snow, symbolizing the purity of the race, described by state media as “a city steeped in the five thousand year old, jade-like spirit of the race, imbued with proudly lonely life-breath of the world’s cleanest, most civilized people – free of the slightest blemish.”

Nearly all of the North’s domestic propaganda maintains a derogatory depiction of foreigners, especially of Americans, who are unanimously viewed as products of polluted racial stock. Six decades of ethno-centric propaganda has reinforced the North’s xenophobia and unwillingness to interact with the outside world. In his book ‘The Cleanest Race,’ DPRK expert B.R. Meyers cites a conversation between North and South Korean personnel discussing the increasing presence of foreigners in the South, to which the North Korean general replied, “Not even one drop of ink must be allowed.” Domestic propaganda reinforces the trauma and devastation experienced during the Korean war, when nearly a third of the North Korean population were killed in US led aerial bombardments, flattening seventy eight cities and showering over fourteen million gallons of napalm on densely populated areas over a three year period, killing more civilian causalities than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Credible threats to the DPRK’s national security have allowed the ruling family to consolidate power, while legitimizing the ‘Songun Policy’ or military-first policy.

North Korea’s most unstable period came after the death of Kim il-Sung in 1994, as economic difficulties deepened following the fall of the Soviet Union and severe environmental conditions that resulted in a period of the famine from 1995 to 1997, killing nearly one million people. As the economy collapsed, social discipline and internal security began to breakdown outside of Pyongyang. Defectors reported seeing streets littered with famished corpses of the starving. Instances of soldiers robbing civilians in search of food and cases of cannibalism in rural areas were prevalent. Kim Jung-il maintained in this period that the US-led economic blockade against Korea was the dominant cause of the famine and economic stagnation. Kim Jong-il realized that having the backing of military generals was crucial to maintaining his power and authority, so as to quell the possibility of an ambitious general staging a military coup. The introduction of ‘Songun Policy’ gave members of the army preferential treatment with respect to receiving food rations, in addition to granting more authority to hardline generals. Much of the food aid received from abroad was redistributed directly to the military.

Kim Jong-il, having overseen the most arduous and economically stagnate period of North Korean history, sought to legitimize his rule through the procurement of nuclear weapons. “In 2006 the Dear General successfully saw the acquisition of a nuclear deterrent that would protect the Korean race forever. Truly, the son had proven himself worthy of his great father,” as described by state media. The state propaganda apparatus had done much to equate this accomplishment as the pride of the nation, depicting it as integral to the national defense of the country and the race. Understanding the role of the DPRK’s nuclear weapons is crucial for policymakers in the US and South Korea, who have placed the North’s denuclearization as a prerequisite for dialogue. North Korea cannot be expected to commit political suicide, nor can it be made to forfeit its main source of pride, legitimacy and defense in exchange for only thin assurances of security and prosperity from the US.

The North Korean regime is complicated, and its doctrine of race-based militant ultra-nationalism bares more resemblance to National Socialism than to Communism. The DPRK is a product of brutal occupation, subsequent isolation, and decades of failed rapprochement policies on the part of South Korea and the US. It will take decades of interaction with the outside world to undo the social conditioning that North Koreans have lived under for six decades, something that can only be accomplished with delicate diplomacy and the incremental normalization of inter-Korean relations. Kim Jong-un has revolutionary credentials, and eventually the old guard of generals and advisors that surround him will pass, and he will exert total control over the nation and its direction. At its current pace of military development, the North will have the technology to act on its many threats in the coming years. If the current crisis tells the world anything, its that the approach of the US and South Korea is not conducive to peace, and further calls for the North to denuclearize will not yield results any different from what the world has already seen. While Kim Jong-un’s actions in the present scenario are grounded in building his domestic appeal, the underlying message is that North Korea is a nuclear state, and it wishes to be recognized as one for the purposes of defense and national security.

The policies of conservative President Lee Myung-bak deeply strained inter-Korean relations, and incumbent President Park Geun-hye has picked up where he left off. Although it would be described as unrealistic by South Korea’s conservative establishment, the only possible method for rapprochement that could actually work would come in the form of South Korea distancing itself from the United States. Given the unique paranoia and xenophobia of North Korea’s regime and how they’ve managed the country in near-isolation since its independence, the only hope of changing the regime’s behavior is accepting it in its current form, increasing inter-Korean cooperation in areas of trade and tourism through the construction of special industrial zones in the North. The Sunshine Policy years spearheaded by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung showed that inter-Korean relations faired far better under a policy of openness and economic exchange over the conservative approach of the South Korean right.

Sanctions, demands of denuclearization, and backing the North into a corner will only yield the same familiar results – an ugly stalemate that throws the Korea peninsula into a serious security crisis every so often. South Korea has a better chance of convincing the North to denuclearize only after trust and normalized relations are established, and that can only happen if the South is willing to scale back its military partnership with the US and acknowledge Pyongyang’s right to defend itself. Although Seoul would be viewed as giving into Pyongyang’s threats, a revival of the Sunshine policy is the only way to mend relations between the two Koreas. Regardless of Pyongyang’s nuclear policy, the establishment of inter-Korean industrial zones and economic spaces will herald greater opportunity for civilians from both Koreas to come into contact, allowing opportunities for North Koreans to be exposed to outsiders and to become familiarized with modern industrial technologies and work methods.

North Korea’s approach in the current scenario is widely viewed as irrational, and it has behaved in a way that undermines its legitimate security concerns. The only way to deradicalize the North’s xenophobic ethno-militarism is through economic exchange and the normalization of relations, and that can only happen if the South incrementally scales back its military exercises and recognizes the North as a nuclear state. There is no reason for tension on the Korean peninsula today, and if new policy directions were taken by the administration in Seoul, such instability would not have to occur. Being part of the same race, a neutral-Seoul could have much greater influence over Pyongyang than China ever could, and the normalization of relations would yield mutually beneficial economic growth that would stabilize the North and reduce the long-term insecurities that Kim Jong-un would face – inter-Korean cooperation is in the interests of all countries in the region. The current standoff on the Korean peninsula is much like a fork in the road of inter-Korean relations; pride should be pushed aside because its either sunshine or war.

Nile Bowie is an independent political analyst and photographer based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com

 

 

By John Chan

15 April, 2013

@ WSWS.org

In meetings with Chinese leaders last weekend, US Secretary of State John Kerry engaged in a barely disguised form of blackmail to pressure Beijing to use “all options” to force its ally North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs and destroy its nuclear weapons. Impoverished North Korea is completely dependent on China for vital imports, including oil and economic aid.

In recent weeks, Washington has aggressively ratcheted up tensions on the Korean Peninsula following North Korea’s third nuclear test in February. As well as flying nuclear capable B-2 and B-52 strategic bombers to South Korea, the US has bolstered anti-missile ballistic systems in Alaska and Guam, and moved two Aegis-class destroyers, equipped with anti-missile defences, closer to Korean waters.

Beijing has in the past protested against the build-up of US anti-ballistic missile systems in the Asia-Pacific region, knowing that China is the primary target. Speaking in Seoul before arriving in Beijing, Kerry made clear that the US would continue to deploy such weapons, unless Beijing “put some teeth” into forcing North Korea to denuclearise.

After meeting with Chinese leaders, Kerry said the discussion had included “why we have taken the steps that we have taken” in missile defence. “Now obviously if the threat disappears—i.e. North Korea denuclearises—the same imperative does not exist at that point of time for us to have that kind of robust forward leaning posture of defence,” he said.

While the US has no intention of dismantling its anti-missile systems in the region, Kerry’s arm-twisting appears to have produced some results. For Beijing, the latest Korean crisis has intensified its dilemma over Pyongyang. If China is unable to rein in its ally, the US, as well as Japan and South Korea, will exploit the situation to justify an ongoing military expansion. However, if Beijing enforces an economic blockade of North Korea, it could lead to acute political and social turmoil on China’s northern borders.

Kerry provided no details of his meetings with Chinese leaders, but did tell reporters: “I can assure you that we left no option off the table and we had a full discussion about what the possibilities might be.” The reference to “all options” implies that military, as well as economic threats, were discussed.

The sinister implications of Kerry’s comments were underlined by his announcement that further talks with Chinese officials would take place, involving US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey and US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

Beijing’s willingness to accommodate the Obama administration was underlined by the venue. Symbolically, Kerry’s meeting with China’s top official in charge of foreign affairs, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, took place in Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guest House, the site of US President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, when the two countries sealed a bloc against the former Soviet Union.

Yang said both the US and China supported the goal of denuclearising the Korean peninsula. He also called for a return to the six-party talks, involving US, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas, that collapsed in 2008 after the Bush administration provocatively sought to alter a deal reached on North Korea’s nuclear programs. The Obama administration has never sought to restart the talks.

No doubt, sharp divisions still exist within the Chinese leadership over how to respond to Washington’s increasing diplomatic and strategic pressure, which is not limited to North Korea, and extends over a range of economic and geo-strategic issues.

After meeting President Xi Jinping, Kerry declared at their joint press conference that he had called for China to cooperate with the US on “some very challenging issues”. These included “issues on the Korean peninsula”, Iran’s nuclear program, Syria and the Middle East at large, as well as the worsening global economic crisis. Kerry did not elaborate on the Chinese leader’s response, except to describe the discussion as “forward-looking”.

Xi made no mention of North Korea in his remarks, insisting that relations between the US and China were at “a new historical stage and got off to a good start”. He declared that both countries should resolve their differences based on “respecting each other’s core interests”.

The official Xinhua news agency was more forceful, criticising the US for “fanning the flames” on the Korean peninsula. “It keeps sending more fighters, bombers and missile defence ships to the waters of East Asia and carrying out massive military drills with Asian allies in a dramatic display of pre-emptive power,” it warned.

The Chinese defence ministry has denied reports of “large-scale troop movements” near the Chinese-North Korea border. But the state media reported last week that live-fire exercises by Chinese forces in the region, involving tanks and armoured vehicles, as well as civilian air raid drills, had taken place. This indicates that China is clearly worried about a possible outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula.

During the last stop of his Asian tour, Kerry made clear in Tokyo that the US would keep the pressure on China. He insisted that the additional missile defence capacity ordered by Obama recently would continue until “the peninsula de-nuclearised”.

At the heart of the US “pivot” is the strengthening of military alliances and strategic partnerships throughout Asia, especially with Japan, South Korea, Australia and India. In Tokyo, Kerry reassured the Japanese government that the US-Japan military alliance had “never really been stronger than it is today” and that Washington was “committed to the defence of Japan”.

Strong US backing has only encouraged its allies to take a tougher stance against China across the region. Before the latest Korean crisis, the final months of 2012 were dominated by a dangerous standoff between Japan and China over disputed islands in the East China Sea. In April 2012, a confrontation flared up between the Philippines and China over the contested Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.

Both Japan and the Philippines have bought into the Korean crisis. In remarks directed at China, the right-wing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday called on the international community “to make North Korea understand that the situation will become progressively severe.” The Philippine foreign and defence ministers provocatively declared that if war broke out on the Korean Peninsula, the US would be allowed to use Philippine bases.

While the Obama administration is exploiting the Korean crisis to extract concessions from China, it is also leaving the door open to a US accommodation with North Korea—if it falls into line with US demands. Kerry declared in Tokyo that he would be willing to consider direct talks with North Korea at the appropriate moment, but added: “There are standards we need to reach to get to negotiations.”

By Dr. Elias Akleh

15 April, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The state of Israel was established and is sustained on the continuous perpetration of genocides, destruction of whole towns, land theft, home demolition, ethnic cleansing, and terror against Palestinians. The massacre of the Palestinian small town of Deir Yassin in 9 th of April 1948 is one such massacre which the Palestinians will never forget.

Palestine at the time was under the British occupation (Mandate) that ended on 15 th of May 1948. Until that time there was no Israeli government or Israeli army, rather Zionist Jewish militia groups financed and armed by World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency. The largest was the Haganah; a secret Jewish terrorist group armed and trained by officers from the British army. The Haganah, later, formed the backbone of the present Israeli army. Within the Haganah there was an elite striking force called the Palmach, who specialized in assassination, terror and demolition. There were also two other smaller underground terrorist groups; Itzel or Irgun founded by Se’ev Jabotinsky the head of the Jewish Zionist Organization, and Lehi or Stern founded by the Zionist terrorist Abraham Stern.

Before the end of the British Mandate the Zionist leaders launched on April 4 th 1948 their general expansionist colonial plan dubbed as “Plan Dalet”; a Zionist master offensive military plan with many sub-operations such as Nachshon, Harel, and Maccabi, whose aim was the systematic ethnic cleansing of as many Palestinians as possible and the theft of as much Palestinian land as possible before the end of the British Mandate. The Haganah had committed many massacres against the Palestinian population and had totally razed as many as 400 Palestinian towns. The Haganah thus gained popularity among the Zionist Jews.

There developed a competition between the Haganah on one side and the Irgun and Lehi on the other for popularity among Jews and for political leadership in the perceived future Israeli state. Such gain was achieved by one side in uprooting and transferring Palestinians and in the destruction of their towns and villages more than the other side.

During the first week of April 1948 the Haganah launched Operation Nachshon to carve out and hold a highway passage for their forces from Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast in the west all the way to Jerusalem in the interior of the country committing on their way many massacres of Palestinian civilians and demolishing their towns. The Haganah, at the time, was held up still by Palestinian fighters at Al-Qastal; west of Jerusalem and a few miles away from the village of Deir Yassin .

On the other side Irgun and Lehi terrorist groups wanted to gain popularity over the held-up Haganah through a military victory. They chose an easy virtually unarmed defenseless village of Deir Yassin as their target. Deir Yassin was a small Palestinian village located west of Jerusalem with about 750 inhabitants, who lived peacefully with their neighboring Zionist Jewish colony of Giv’at Shaul despite all the political and military conflicts of that time. The two communities had signed a non-aggression agreement between them. Yet, typical of Zionist Jews, who throughout their long history had never honored any agreement they signed with non-Jews, Zionist Jewish terrorist groups of Irgun and Lehi came out of Giv’at Shaul, attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin on Friday 9 th of April 1948 and savagely murdered scores of them; men, women and children, blew up their homes and wiped the village off the map.

Irgun was headed by Menachim Begin, who became the 6 th Israeli prime minister, while Lehi was headed by Yitzhak Shamir, who became the 7 th Israeli prime minister. Israel is the only country where terrorist leaders such as Menachim Begin and Yitzhak Shamir (also Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon) are rewarded with the position of prime ministers.

In a joint operation coded “Operation Unity” the two Zionist Jewish terrorist groups attacked Deir Yassin in the morning of April 9 th , 1948 with the aim of killing as many Palestinians as possible and of forcing the rest out of their homes and land. Driving through the only street leading to the village the attackers were held up by Palestinian snipers using old one-shot hunting rifles. When four attackers were killed the terrorist groups called the commander of the Haganah, David Shaltiel, for help. He sent some of his troops among them a Palmach unit commanded by Mordechai Weg. With an armored vehicle and a two-inch mortar they were able to silence the resistance and occupy the village in a matter of two hours.

A process of cleaning up the village was, then, conducted by the terrorist groups which included the rape of some women, the cold murder of many Palestinians, and the blowing up of homes. Men and women were lined up against the walls in the main street and executed in cold blood. Members of whole families were murdered in their homes even after surrendering. Girls and women were raped and then murdered. The Zionist terrorists had bayoneted the wombs of Pregnant women and crushed the heads and bodies of dozens of children and babies. This cleanup process continued through the next two days, Saturday and Sunday, and demonstrated the savagery of the Zionist Jewish terrorists.

Members of the Zionist terror groups, themselves, had reported such atrocities. Among the many of them was Yehoshua Gorodenchik, an Irgun physician, reported that they had to withdraw at one time and had decided to murder all prisoners. “ We had prisoners and before the retreat we decided to liquidate them, we also liquidated the wounded… we eliminated every Arab we came across up to that point.”

Eliyahu Arbel, a Haganah operations officer, inspected the village and reported: “ I have seen a great deal of war, but I never saw a sight like Deir Yassin … largely comprised of the bodies of women and children, who were murdered in cold blood.”

Israeli colonel Meir Pa’el admitted that “The Irgun and Lehi men came out of hiding and began to ‘clean’ the houses. They shot whoever they saw, women and children included, the commanders did not try to stop the massacre …”

Zvi Ankori, who commanded one of the terrorist units at Deir Yassin stated: “I went into 6 to 7 houses. I saw cut off genitalia and women’s crushed stomachs. According to the shooting signs on the bodies, it was direct murder.” (New York Jewish Newsletter in October 1960)

Alfred Engel, a Jewish physician, who was on site, saw that “It was clear that the attackers had gone from house to house and shot the people at close range.”

The most damning graphic description of the massacre of Deir Yassin came from Jacques de Reynier, the then representative of the International Red Cross, who was the first to reach the site. His statement indicated that “there were people rushing everywhere, in and out of houses, carrying Sten guns, rifles, pistols and long ornate knives. They seemed half mad. I saw a beautiful girl carrying a dagger still covered with blood. I heard screams … everything had been ripped apart. There were bodies strewn around… cleaning up was done with guns and grenades, the work finished with knives.” Reynier estimated seeing some 200 bodies, one of a woman, probably eight months pregnant, shot in the stomach. There were also butchered infants. Schoolgirls and elderly women have been raped and then murdered. Ears had been severed to remove ear rings, bracelets had been torn from arms and rings from fingers.

Journalists Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre had obtained a dossier of 1948 British Mandate criminal investigation into Deir Yassin. According to the dossier, one woman among others described being sexually assaulted while “other women around me were being raped, too.” (Statement of Safiyeh Attiyeh, dossier 179/110/17 GS, “Secret,” quoted in Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem! 275,276). According to Collins and Lapierre, the British investigation was corroborated by physical evidence obtained through medical examination of the survivors.

On hearing of the atrocities committed at Deir Yassin the Haganah commander, David Shaltiel, insisted that Irgun and Lehi terrorists never leave the village before burying all the dead. The Zionist terrorist groups refused the order and left the village, so a burial crew was sent to do the job. They hauled about 70 bodies to a quarry, piled them in a heap, poured gasoline and set them ablaze. But when the fire did not do a thorough job, they used bulldozers to fill the quarry with dirt to bury the bodies. (Milstein, Out of Crisis Comes Decision, p. 273; Milstein, “Deir Yassin”)

In an attempt to boost their popularity the members of the Zionist Jewish terrorist groups of Irgun and Lehi loaded about twenty five Palestinian men, women and children into trucks, stripped them naked, and paraded them victoriously through the Jewish Zakhron Yosef quarter in Jerusalem, then they drov back into a stone quarry in Deir Yassin and executed them in cold blood. Harry Levin, a Haganah broadcaster and future Israeli diplomat, recorded seeing “three trucks driving slowly up and down King George V Avenue bearing men, women and children, their hands above their heads, guarded by Jews armed with sten-guns and rifles.” (Levin, Jerusalem Embattled, 57)

Fifty five children, who survived the massacre, were dumped at the Mendelbaum Gate in Jerusalem . Some of them knocked on the door of Palestinian Jerusalemite Hind Al-Husseini seeking shelter. After hearing about the massacre Al-Husseini rushed to find the rest of the children deciding to care for all of them. She turned her grandfather’s mansion into an orphanage and school calling it Dar Al-Tifl Al-Arabi (Home of the Arab Child). Al-Husseini dedicated her whole life to the orphans of Deir Yassin and to other Palestinian children.

The number of massacred Palestinians was disputed. Most sources, including The New York Times of April 13, put the number of the victims at 254, including 25 pregnant women and 52 children. Many sources had quoted Irgun’s commander, Raanan, who in a press conference, described the massacre as a successful battle and exaggerated the numbers of dead in order the boost the Jewish moral and to frighten other Palestinians into flight. He later explained “I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published and so that Arabs would panic … across the country.” (Milstein). A 1987 study undertaken by Birzeit University ‘s Center for Research and Documentation of Palestinian Society ( CRDPS ) found the numbers of those murdered does not exceed 120.

The massacre of Deir Yassin has a significant importance in the history of the Arab/Israeli conflict although it was not the first or the last massacre the Israelis committed against Palestinians. Unlike previous massacres of Palestinians and the wiping off of their towns, the massacre of Deir Yassin was the first to be known by the outside world due to its vicinity to the capital of Jerusalem . This allowed the Red Cross to investigate and to report the massacre.

Also, the commanders of Irgun and Lehi had called for a press conference, during which they announced their victory in occupying the first Palestinian town in cooperation with the Haganah’s Palmach forces. Their exaggeration of the number of victims was echoed through press into the Arab and Western capitals resulting in strong international condemnations. Such condemnation embarrassed the Jewish Agency, prompting its leader at the time David Ben-Gurion, to send a telegram of apology to Jordanian King, Abdullah, condemning the “rogue” Zionist organizations of Irgun and Lehi.

Although the Haganah had tried to distance itself from the Irgun and Lehi and to deny its role in the massacre, its full participation is very well known to everybody. The leader of Irgun, Menachim Begin, had admitted on December 28, 1950 in a press interview in New York that the Deir Yassin “incident” had been carried out in accordance with an agreement between the Irgun and the Jewish Agency and the Haganah. In October 1960 the New York Jewish Newsletter reported that Menachim Begin had bragged that “The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory at Deir Yassin.”

Mordechai Nisan of the Truman Research Centre of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem wrote an article for “The American Zionist Journal” in which he expressed his concern about the failure to understand the major significance of terrorism in the struggle for Jewish sovereignty. He wrote: “Without terror it is unlikely that Jewish independence would have been achieved when it was.”

Nisan’s statement describes a fundamental fact throughout the three thousand years of Jewish history. Jewish independence and statehood could have never achieved except through terrorism and genocide as prescribed in their religion. Their Talmud commands them to perpetrate genocides against all non-Jews, including women, children and old, even their animals, and to destroy their towns. Check Isaih 13:16-18, Samuel I 15:2-3, Numbers 31:16-18, Deuteronomy 2:34, Deuteronomy 3:6-7, Ezekiel 9:5-6, and Joshua 6:21 for just very few examples of their genocidal religious teachings.

Unfortunately, western countries such as UK, France, Germany, Canada and particularly the US, who claim themselves to be the champions of democracy, freedom, protectors of human rights, and the fighters of terrorism, are providing blind and unconditional financial, military and political support to Israeli state terrorism. I can understand Zionist Israeli Jewish genocidal and terrorist tendencies in lieu of their religion, but I cannot understand western support to such terrorism. I wonder what religion are they, really, prescribed to?

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the “Nakba” of 1948 war during the first Zionist occupation of part of Palestine, then from Beitj-Jala after the “Nakseh” of 1967 war when Zionist Israeli military expansion occupied the rest of all Palestine. He is living now in exile in the US and publish articles on the web.

By Judy Bello

11 April, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

A woman finds herself alone on the street in an unfamiliar neighborhood of an unfamiliar city.   The people around her don’t speak her native language, and in fact, she doesn’t understand their language.  She is accompanied by a 12 year old boy, Ali.  She doesn’t recognize him, but she has a great affection for children, and he is in her care. He will later be identified as her son, Ahmed whom she has not seen in the 5 years since they were abducted from a taxi in Karachi not far from their home.  She doesn’t know  how she got there, and she isn’t entirely sure why she is there.  Small and slender, no more than 110 lbs, he seems fragile, a little disoriented, out of place.  She will later say that she was looking for her husband, or another time,  that she was looking for a particular woman.   It’s possible she really doesn’t know why she is there.  She hears the Muezzin’s call and begins to move towards the mosque. Perhaps she will find a refuge there.

The Afghan police in Ghazni notice a woman on the street.  Something draws their attention to her.  She doesn’t appear to belong to the place.  Perhaps she isn’t dressed in the local style.   She is on the street in the early afternoon on a Friday when most men are at the Mosque and women are in their homes. The Police say she seemed out of place, lost.   The police would later say that she was loitering after dark, but among the court documents, there is an interview with the shopkeeper in front of whose store she was detained.   He says that he wasn’t in the store because it was Friday, he was attending the prayer service at the Mosque.  It would have been between 1 pm and 3:30 pm.   He swears the woman is a stranger and he has never seen her before.  Though they will later say that they only approached her because she seemed out of place, they check his shop and even his phone to make sure.  There is nothing on his phone except some pornographic images of white girls.  He is innocent. [3]

So what did attract their attention?  Most likely we will never know for sure. Maybe its her ap parent disorientation as they will later state, or perhaps it is just that they don’t recognize her.  Maybe they have been tipped off to look for her.  When they confront her,  she is startled and defensive.    She screams at them not to touch her.  She accuses them of being Americans or American operatives.  [3]  It is clear that neither she nor the boy speaks the local language, so a translator is called.  A WikiLeaked document identifies a shopkeeper who was enlisted as translator.   He says that she shouts at the police  and curses them in Urdu.  She calls on Allah and demands that they not touch her.  Of course the same document says that she was picked up after dark.  [1]   If they are just asking what she is doing, why is she so distressed?  Have they physically detained her, or is she just panicked by their uniforms?  They take her in for questioning.

They have found a number of incriminating objects in her handbag.  According to a document later published through Wikileaks, her purse contains “numerous documents on how to build explosives, chemical weapon use, targeting US military assets, excerpts from the Anarchist’s Arsenal and a 1 GB (gigabyte) thumb drive with additional related material”  along with “unknown chemical materials sealed in containers”.  [1]  During the course of the interrogation she is severely beaten.     She admits that she is a suicide bomber whose target is the local governor.  Apparently his home is nearby the place she was detained.   She has a passport, which apparently has her true identity because they recognize her name as being on the FBI Most Wanted List .  (Pretty good reckoning for local Afghan National Police who don’t speak English).   Perhaps it just confirms that she is definitely the one they were looking for.  They call Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Americans at Bagram, as well as the Governor she was supposedly targeting, who immediately takes advantage of the opportunity for publicity and calls a press conference.  [2]

Soon the Americans arrived,  FBI agents with soldiers and translators in tow, to collect their prey.   She is sitting on a bed behind a curtain in a rather small room. She is bruised and exhausted.    Perhaps she has dozed and is awakened by the entrance of as many as 10 men into the small room where she is being held.   Now she is alert.  It is interesting that the interrogators have brought along translators, but perhaps they need them to communicate with the Afghan police. The woman speaks good enough English to get a Masters Degree from MIT and PhD from Brandeis University.   She was a dynamo then, busy with her studies and her charities and her family.  Now she is exhausted, beaten, frightened, alone in a room full of heavily armed men.

One of the soldiers seats himself near the curtain and sets his automatic rifle on the floor near his chair.   He will later say that it hadn’t occurred to him that the prisoner was in the room. [1]  I suppose that is understandable.  In the world these Americans normally inhabit, prisoners are regularly shackled and hooded.  They are brought into a room when everyone else is in place like chained animals being brought into the ring at a circus.  Even so, it is a pretty serious breach of responsibility for the Sergeant in charge of the security team to lay his rifle on the floor next to a closed curtain.

This prisoner is curious about the commotion and anxious.  She wants to know what is happening.   She rises and steps forward.  She peeks through the curtain . . .   Snatches the gun . . . . and Fires the gun .  . . according to the Americans .   Someone yells out “The prisoner is free.”  Shots ring out.  She  falls to the ground, wounded,  with a bullet in her belly and one in her side.  When her attackers come to rescue her, she curses them in English and screams at them not to touch her, even as they wrestle her to the ground.  Later, in court, the Americans will swear that she took the gun and fired it.   They will say they had no choice but to defend themselves.  The Afghans will state that they didn’t see what happened but they heard shots fired.   The woman says that she came to the curtain to see what was going on.

The prisoner is brought to Bagram Hospital for surgery, where a portion of her intestines is removed, along with a kidney.   She is in shock and near death on arrival.  Numerous transfusions are required to bring her back and stabilize her prior to and during the emergency surgery.   Afterwards, she is shackled, hand and foot, to her bed.   Imagine, if you will, a surgery where the patient is cut from breastbone to pubis, and then shackled to a bed on her back, bound hand and foot like a crucifixion.  A pair of watchful FBI Agents stay by her side, encouraging her to talk about herself, about her life.  [3]  She will later refer to him as her only friends.   She is heavily sedated with pain killers, and one can imagine they might be very helpful, given her restraints, and comforting, given her state of utter dependence and aloneness.  A week later, she is flown to New York and arraigned before the Southern Court of New York in a wheelchair on separate charges obtaining a lethal weapon and of attempting to kill each person in the room.

This terrible story is like something out of a nightmare, or a bad novel.  But it is a true story, in so far as you can find the truth of events that are disputed and cloaked in the secrecy of multiple ‘security operations’.   At least it is part of the story of the ordeal of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman, born into an upper middle class family with conservative religious values, who placed a high value on education and on service.   It is a part of the story of a young woman who came to the US, initially to Texas, later to Massachusetts to attend various colleges, eventually achieving a degree in ‘Neuroscience’, though she was did not enjoy biology and chemistry but preferred the study of psychology and education.  In fact she had prepared for a career teaching developmentally disabled children. [3]

Aafia Siddiqui had lived in the US for more than 10 years, married here and borne her children here.  She carried the family standard as she engaged in teaching and preaching Islam as the clearest and brightest truth and supporting Muslim Charities in war zones like Croatia and later, Afghanistan; sending Qur’ans to prisoners and teaching children at an impoverished inner city mosque.  But something has gone terribly wrong to bring our heroine her to this terrible pass.  And it will only get worse.

Returning to the present story, common sense would indicate it would have been very difficult for this small battered woman to have lifted and fired a powerful automatic rifle.  The least amount of compassion would indicate that even if she did take the gun, even if she managed to fire the high power automatic rifle without being knocked to the ground, the action would have been in the service of escape rather than a murderous rampage.   However, there is no forensic evidence whatsoever that she held the gun or fired it.  No one was shot except the prisoner herself.  There were no bullet holes in the walls or ceiling of the small room, and no shell casings recovered from the floor.   There were no fingerprints on the gun, and there was no gunpowder on the prisoner’s hands or the curtain in front of her. [Court Documents] Yet a year later, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national who never should have been extradited from Afghanistan to the US in the first place, a bright, well educated person with a PhD from Brandeis University,  now incapable if a consistent description of where she had been for the past 5 years, incapable of recognizing her own son,  was convicted of separate counts of attempted murder and assault for every American in the room, sentenced to 86 years in prison and incarcerated in Carswell Medical Center in Texas.

According to Cornell University Legal Information Institute , under Federal law: the maximum sentence for manslaughter

Sources:

The Express Tribune: Wikileaks Aafia’s Incriminating Purse

Court Document, USA vs. Aafia Siddiqui, Document #256 ( Aafia Siddiqui’s testimony to FBI agents at her bedside while in Bagram hospital after her surgery )

Sentencing, USA vs. Aafia Siddiqui, Document #314

Case Summary, 1:08-cr-00826-RMB USA v. Siddiqui, “Count 1: Conspiracy ( with whom? ) to Kill A US Citizen [] Count 4: Violent Crime/Drugs/ Machine Gun (!) (Use of a firearm during crime of violence (?) “  — Emphasis and red comments interjected are mine.

Definitions from Findlaw.com

Attempt to Commit Murder or Manslaughter

Protection of Officers and Employees of the United States

Assaulting Resisting or Impeding Certain Officers or Employees

*** Armed Career Criminal Act (Terrorism Enhancement)

Other crimes in 18 U.S.C.

Cornell LII: Trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude, or forced labor

Cornell LII: Violence at International Airports

Cornell LII: Manslaughter

Cornell LII: Threatening the President

Cornell LII: Assaulting a Supreme Court Officer

Cornell LII: Helping Al Qaeda develop a nuclear weapon

Judy Bello is currently a full time activist thanks to the harsh and unforgiving work environment in the Software Development Industry. Finally free to focus on her own interests in her home office, she is active with The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, and with Fellowship of Reconciliation Middle East Task Force and often posts on their blog at http://forusa.org . She has been to Iran twice with FOR Peace Delegations, and spent a month in the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya in 2009. Her personal blog, Towards a Global Perspective, is at http://blog.papillonweb.net and she is administers the Upstate anti-Drone Coalition website at http://upstatedroneaction.org . She can be reached at: jb.papillonweb@gmail.com