Archives: Articles

Successive Israeli cabinets have worked to enforce on the ground in Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories a situation that they could present as irreversible. Have they now reached the point where the biblical book of Daniel’s prophecy is once again relevant?

Negotiating in good faith

Abba Eban, the most sophisticated foreign minister Israel ever had, is said to have declared in 1973, after the aborted Peace Conference that was convened in Geneva in December of that year: “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” The saying accords with Eban’s speech at this conference when, after emphasizing that “a new opportunity is born,” he declared: “We have no way of knowing whether this opportunity will be fulfilled or wasted. … Israel for its part is resolved to seize the chance.”

Those were the times when Israel could present itself as a seeker of peace confronted by Arab governments and political forces that were still reluctant to negotiate with it, let alone conclude a peace. Syria indeed boycotted the Geneva Conference, although the gathering was cosponsored by its patron, the Soviet Union. Its attitude was not altogether negative, however, and soon after, in May 1974, Damascus signed a military disengagement agreement with Israel. In the following years, the boldest initiatives in seeking a Middle East peace agreement were indisputably taken by Arab leaders.

Whereas a maverick Abie Nathan had flown from Israel to Egypt on February 28, 1966, requesting to meet President Gamal Abdel-Nasser only to be deported back to Israel and arrested there, it was Nasser’s successor himself, President Anwar El-Sadat, who flew from Egypt to Israel on November 19, 1977, extending the hand of peace to the Israeli Knesset and power elite in scenes that looked almost unreal. The world watched Sadat descending the staircase from his plane in the same state of stupefaction, if not more, with which it had watched a few years earlier the first man walking on the moon.

And it was with similar astonishment that the world learned of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s secret negotiations with the Israeli government of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in Oslo, Norway, and their conclusion of a peace deal signed in Washington in October 1993 – in another surreal ceremony that raised much hope. In both cases, Israel conceded none of its fundamental interests: it gave back to Egypt the Sinai that it had occupied in 1967, while making sure that this vast stretch of semi-desert land remained under surveillance and devoid of Egyptian army troops. Sadat, for his part, broke with all Arab states as he violated their principles of collective negotiations and collective peace, undercutting fellow Syrians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Palestinians.

Likewise, Arafat concluded the Oslo deal behind the backs of most members of the PLO executive committee. He recognized Israel officially and accepted an outcome that did not provide for any of the basic demands of the Palestinians – not even a freezing of Zionist settlements in the Occupied Territories, let alone their dismantlement. The Israeli concessions that he obtained in return were only implementing the plan that Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon had designed for the perpetual control of the West Bank, shortly after Israel invaded it in June 1967. It was indeed during the early negotiations on the implementation of the Oslo accords, in 1994, that Rabin’s government started building what would become the Separation Wall.

As for the only spectacular Israeli so-called peace initiative of all those years, the evacuation of Gaza ordered by Oslo-opponent turned into Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, in 2005, it was part of a ‘unilateral disengagement’ purposely avoiding striking a deal with the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas. Sharon did not want a precedent that could be invoked for the West Bank. Indeed he never hid the fact that he was willing to concede to the Palestinian Authority much less of the occupied West Bank than the area his Laborite predecessors were willing to give up. In the same year as the unilateral Gaza disengagement, he revised the route of the Separation Wall, annexing de facto a larger portion of the West Bank to Israel. After consigning Yasser Arafat to forced residence under siege from 2002 until the Palestinian leader’s death in 2004, Sharon did his best to undermine the credibility of Abbas, thus facilitating the electoral victory of Hamas in January 2006 – the month Sharon went into a coma.

The truth is that it is Israel – not the Arabs – that never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity to conclude a real peace with its neighbors. And this has been true since the outset. Claims, like that of Abba Eban’s, about Arab intransigence are usually buttressed with a reference to the founding act of the creation of Israel in international law: the UN General Assembly’s vote on the partition of Palestine in November 1947, at a time when the majority of UN member states were western and western-dominated countries. The Arabs and the Palestinians are blamed for having rejected this partition, which would have granted them a larger portion of Palestine than the one they – more accurately the Jordanian accomplice of the Zionist movement, King Abdullah – ended up controlling after the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. In other words, the Arabs are blamed for having rejected a deal that granted 56% of the territory of Palestine west of the Jordan River to Jewish inhabitants, who constituted one-third of its total population – most of them immigrants/refugees who had arrived from Europe during the previous fifteen years.

The UN 1947 partition resolution could not have been reasonably accepted by any Arab leader – or by any people in their shoes, for that matter. Accepting it would have amounted to capitulation without battle and relinquishment of fundamental rights. As for sympathy for the plight of Jewish Holocaust survivors, the Arabs, let alone the Palestinians, could legitimately say that they had already accommodated much more than their fair share of them, compared with the rest of the world, especially the victors of World War II. On the other hand, the League of Arab states had made a peace offer that is hardly mentioned in the propagandistic literature that prevails on this topic. Their proposal was summed up by the UN Special Commission on Palestine in September 1947:

1. That Palestine should be a unitary State, with a democratic constitution and an elected legislative assembly,
2. That the constitution should provide, inter alia, guarantees for
   1. i.          the sanctity of the Holy Places and, subject to suitable safeguards, freedom of religious practice in accordance with the status quo
   2. ii.          full civil rights for all Palestine citizens, the naturalization requirement being ten years’ continuous residence in the country
   3. iii.          protection of religious and cultural rights of the Jewish community, such safeguards to be altered only with the consent of the majority of the Jewish members in the legislative assembly
3. That the constitution should provide also for
   1. i.          adequate representation in the legislative assembly of all important communities, provided that the Jews would in no case exceed one-third of the total number of members [that is, the proportion of Jews in the Palestinian population in 1947, regardless of the date on which they immigrated]
   2. ii.          the strict prohibition of Jewish immigration and the continuation of the existing restrictions on land transfer, any change in these matters requiring the consent of a majority of the Arab members of the legislative assembly
   3. iii.          The establishment of a Supreme Court which would be empowered to determine whether any legislation was inconsistent with the constitution.

This proposal was congruent with the perspective of a binational state in Palestine as advocated by pacifist “cultural” Zionists – the likes of Martin Buber and Judah Magnes – and, officially at least, by leftwing Zionist organizations such as Hashomer Hatzair. It was flatly rejected by the Zionist leadership, dedicated to the project of a Jewish State in Palestine. In reality, the Ben-Gurion Laborite leadership of the Zionist movement was always much closer to its rightwing rivals of Revisionist Zionism founded by Vladimir Jabotinsky than to the “cultural Zionists” and the radical left. In essence, the statist project of Ben-Gurion matched Jabotinsky’s aspiration, albeit in a more ‘realistic’ and tactical fashion. Thus Jabotinsky said openly and loudly what the others thought as well, but did not want to proclaim lest it spoil their Machiavellian maneuvering.

The Iron Wall

The most commented-on essay by Vladimir Jabotinsky is certainly his 1923 piece entitled “The Iron Wall.” It is rightly regarded as a premonitory statement of what actual Zionist policies in Palestine/Israel would become and why they missed no opportunity of missing an opportunity to make peace with the Palestinians. While affirming that the Arabs are culturally “500 years behind us,” the man whom Laborite Zionists denounced as a fascist teased them by expressing more respect for the Arabs than he attributed to them:

 ny native people – it is all the same whether they are civilized or savage – views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. … And so it is for the Arabs. Compromisers in our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains. I flatly reject this assessment of the Palestinian Arabs… Individual Arabs may perhaps be bought off but this hardly means that all the Arabs in Eretz Israel are willing to sell a patriotism that not even Papuans will trade. Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement.

Hence, Jabotinsky’s assertion of the Iron Wall doctrine:

Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.

Eventually, added Jabotinsky, the Arabs will come to peace under Zionist conditions, when they have no other choice left:

All this does not mean that any kind of agreement is impossible, only a voluntary agreement is impossible. As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people make such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. … But the only path to such an agreement is the iron wall, that is to say the strengthening in Palestine of a government without any kind of Arab influence, that is to say one against which the Arabs will fight. In other words, for us the only path to an agreement in the future is an absolute refusal of any attempts at an agreement now.

This view informed the action of Jabotinsky’s heirs in the Likud toward the Palestinians, ever since they took the helm of the Israeli state in 1977. Having secured Egypt’s neutralization, Menachem Begin thought he could force the Palestinians to capitulate by occupying their last stronghold in Lebanon in 1982. The occupation of Lebanon proved a very costly undertaking for Israel, which was compelled to complete the evacuation of the country 18 years after, in 2000. Meanwhile, squeezed financially by its traditional Arab backers among the oil states and facing what, after 1991, looked like a solid US hegemony in the Middle East, a Yasser Arafat who was both hopeless and naively hopeful seemed willing to make the “enormous concessions” that Jabotinsky foresaw. He had become hopeless about his goal of securing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza as part of a regional deal under international auspices; and he lured himself into believing that his Israeli interlocutors would grant him such a state if he showed them, and showed their sponsors in Washington above all, how compliant he could be.

Successive Israeli cabinets from both Labor and Likud – Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak – took advantage of the Oslo framework and the end of the first Intifada in order to considerably intensify the building and expansion of settlements in the West Bank, thus enforcing on the ground a situation that they could present as irreversible in order to justify Israel’s annexation of a substantial part of that remaining 22% of Palestinian territory. As a result, the number of Israeli settlers on the West Bank – excluding the Jerusalem area, the largest settlement of all – which had built up to 112,000 in the 26 years from the beginning of the occupation until 1993, doubled in the six years between 1994 and 2000, the year the Oslo process came to its explosive end; and has increased to 305,000 since then. At the same time, these successive cabinets were building the Separation Wall, thus fulfilling literally Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall vision.

When Likud’s foremost firebrand Ariel Sharon came to power in February 2001, he reversed the Oslo process by bloodily reoccupying the territories under Palestinian control, and accelerated the construction of the wall while revising its route in order to expand the amount of territory annexed. This policy continued under Ehud Olmert, Sharon’s successor at the head of Kadima, the party that Sharon founded out of a split from Likud, and then under Likud’s Netanyahu, now heading a cabinet that brings together Zionist parties ranging from Labor to the racist far-right party of Avigdor Lieberman. Simultaneously, the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza have been facing the most tragic period in their history, enduring the most desperate conditions since they came under Israeli occupation in 1967. The cruel assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009 moved the world’s conscience – a conscience that Judge Richard Goldstone admirably embodied, thus provoking the fury of Israel’s rulers.

Oslo Contradictions

For all that, the Palestinians are not any closer to accepting Israel’s land grab in the West Bank and the less-than-Bantustan “state” that Israel’s rulers are offering them. If any of them were willing to make such ‘enormous concessions’, however, they know that they would be isolated and repudiated by the overwhelming majority of their people. That is where Jabotinsky got it wrong indeed: his vision foreshadowed the Zionists’ policies, but not the Palestinians’ stance. For behind the apparently higher consideration in which Jabotinsky held the Arabs, he still despised them too much to understand that their self-pride and sense of justice would never allow them to accept demeaning surrenders. His lack of realism combined with his racist view of the Arabs prevented him from facing the truth: given the sheer fact of numbers and geographic extension, there is no way by which Israel could subjugate the Palestinians and the Arabs to the point of getting them to accept its inflexible conditions.

Oslo was based on contradictory calculations. Israel’s rulers seem to have tried to test whether the Palestinians are “some kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains.” Confronted with the failure of this expectation, they increased their repression of the Palestinians – to little avail. Even the extremely ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas – who is seen as a traitor by part of his people – proved unable to deliver what the Israelis wanted from him without substantial Israeli concessions in return. The increasing violence of Israel’s rulers in applying the Iron Wall doctrine, far from reaching its goal, only succeeded in increasing resentment and the desire for revenge among Palestinians, and beyond – far beyond.

Over the last decades Israel has managed to antagonize a formidable range of forces that were not part of its enemy spectrum until then. It has already lost quite a few teeth in attempting to subdue Lebanon, where it faced the firm resistance spirit of Hezbollah combatants resorting to their ‘asymmetric’ advantage as guerrilla fighters in defending their land against a conventional army. The increasing levels of hatred sown in the whole Middle East by western invasions, as well as by Israeli violence, are fostering the rise of an ‘apocalyptic terrorism’ that contemplates resorting to weapons of mass destruction as another ‘asymmetric’ means of offsetting the overwhelming military superiority of its enemies. Last but certainly not least, Israel is now facing the prospect, in the short or medium term, of a nuclear-armed Iran – a development that would bring the region dangerously close to a nuclear holocaust if Israel keeps threatening to launch military strikes.

Coda

Jabotinsky should have remembered that the image of the wall is associated in the Jewish tradition with bad omens. His present disciples would be well advised to anticipate the impending catastrophe, before it is too late: they would be well advised to reverse their colonizing and aggressive policies, stop trying to dictate to the Palestinians who should represent them, and renew the kind of attitude that Israeli negotiators displayed in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that were held in Taba in early 2001. And, they should completely lift their criminal blockade on Gaza to start with. For they do not need a new interpreter of the writing on the wall that they are building on the West bank with so much hubris: the biblical Daniel’s interpretation has become relevant again.

Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin: the days of your kingdom are numbered; you have been weighed and found wanting; your kingdom will be divided and lost. The last word Pharsin carried a dual meaning: it was interpreted as referring also to the Persians, who took over Babylon when King Belshazzar was assassinated little after the writing appeared on the wall. Persia, of course, is the former name of Iran.

by Gilbert Achcar 

About the author

Gilbert Achcar is Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His most recent book is Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, Saqi 2010.

29 June 2010

http://www.opendemocracy.net/

Over the past 60 years, the racist regime of Israel has been continually scoffing the international community under the cover of “deliberate ambiguity” to develop one of the most perilous nuclear arsenals in the world. According to the Federation of American Scientists, Israel possesses more than 200 nuclear warheads which are simply adequate to evaporate the whole world in a matter of moments.

Israel which is the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and one of the three non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has blatantly rejected the appeal of the 189 signatories of the NPT, including its key ally the United States, to sign up to the treaty and put its nuclear facilities under the comprehensive safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The 2010 NPT review conference which wrapped up on May 28 in New York and was attended by the representatives from the NPT member states called on the five United Nations Security Council permanent members to move towards eliminating their nuclear arsenals and affirmed the necessity of Israel’s joining the treaty and abiding by its international obligations with regards to nuclear non-proliferation.

Zionist officials, however, rejected the appeal and resorted to the excuse that Israel is not signatory to the NPT, so they’re not legally obliged to reveal the information related to their nuclear arsenal, nor are they responsible for reducing their atomic weapons, let alone eliminating them whatsoever.

Israel which has been recurrently given impunity from international laws by the United States and enjoyed imperviousness to any kind of legal and judicial responsibility before the international community with regards to its criminal acts of mass murder, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment is now reminding the public opinions of the chauvinistic and mischievous apartheid regime of South Africa which was ruled by the National Party government between 1948 and 1994.

Israeli regime which has killed more than 6,300 Palestinians since the September 2000 and demolished more than 24,000 Palestinian homes since 1967 as a part of its expansionistic policy of extending its borders from the Nile to the Euphrates has been subject to 65 UN resolutions since its establishment which include resolutions that legally obligate Israel to annihilate its nuclear arsenal. The UNSC resolution 487 which was adopted on June 19, 1981 explicitly called “upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards”.

On September 23, 1987, 12 IAEA members including Iran submitted a draft resolution to the IAEA General Conference titled “Israeli Nuclear Capabilities and Threat” which demanded that Israel place all its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards in compliance with the Security Council Resolution 487 of 1981. It also requested the IAEA director general to consider the implementation of provisions in the UN General Assembly resolutions 41/12 and 41/93 in which Israel was officially asked to legalize its illegal nuclear activities.

In an October 29, 1986 resolution, the UN General Assembly had called upon Israel to urgently place all of its nuclear facilities under the IAEA supervision and commit itself to avoid attacking the nuclear facilities of other countries. This resolution was adopted in support of the UNSC 487 resolution after a squadron of Israeli F-16A jetfighter aircraft bombed and destructed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981.

Since then, Israel has been recurrently under the pressure of independent nations who couldn’t tolerate the double standards of the U.S. and Israel with regards to nuclear non-proliferation. Israel has been asked and demanded a number of times, by various international organizations and IAEA member states, to move towards nuclear disarmament; however, the irrational leaders of the Israeli regime adamantly stuck to their excuse that Israel is not an IAEA signatory and hence would not be necessarily responsible to heed the calls.

Israel’s explicit violation of UNSC resolution 487 and its inattentiveness to the final resolution of the NPT 2010 review conference however, has been supported by the United States which has discriminatorily disregarded the demand of the NPT signatories who want a nuclear-free Middle East.

In a statement released last Friday, the U.S. National Security Advisor Gen. James L. Jones unambiguously supported Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons: “The United States will not permit a conference or actions that could jeopardize Israel’s national security. We will not accept any approach that singles out Israel or sets unrealistic expectations.”

The message transmitted by General Jones was clear and unequivocal. Israel’s national security is hinged on its ownership of nuclear weapons. Should Israel annihilate its nuclear arsenal, its frail security will be threatened seriously. Expecting that Israel abides by its international obligations is unrealistic, because Israel has never been a realistic regime. Its very foundation was based on imaginary pedestals and its flimsy existence continues to be imaginary. Singling out Israel is not accepted, because a nuclear-free Middle East means the overthrow of Israel’s apartheid regime.

The Government of Israel published a statement on Saturday night that transparently exhibited Israel’s impunity from any kind of international law: “As a non-signatory state of the NPT, Israel is not obligated by the decisions of this Conference, which has no authority over Israel. Given the distorted nature of this resolution, Israel will not be able to take part in its implementation.”

This statement was clearly an invitation to global revolt by the regime of Israel. If a country is not a signatory to the NPT, then it would be exempted from nuclear obligations, so it can possess nuclear weapons; therefore, “O! You countries who want to hold nuclear weapons; pull out of the NPT and exempt yourself from its compulsions. You can freely possess nuclear weapons, should you be a non-signatory to NPT. That makes you free. Become liberated!”

However, the interesting section of the story is that not only will Israel move towards nuclear disarmament, but it has plans to expand its nuclear capability. A 2002 book published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace titled “Deadly Arsenals” revealed that Israel is attempting to arm its diesel submarines with nuclear cruise missiles: “Published reports going back to 1998 describe Israel’s acquisition of diesel submarines and testing of cruise missiles. Israel “is believed to have deployed” 100 Jericho short-range and medium range missiles that are nuclear capable.”

In a September 24, 2009 blog post, the renowned British writer and human rights activists alludes to his country’s negligence with regards to Israel’s growing nuclear arsenal. He explains that one of his friends working in MI6 has told him that the Israeli nuclear capacity is greater than that of Britain by 2009. Murray then goes on to criticize the British ex-Premier Gordon Brown who never told a single word about Israel’s nuclear weapons, but ironically stated that his country would move towards nuclear disarmament: “I am very pleased that Brown has put the UK’s nuclear weapons into disarmament talks and has endorsed the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. But with Israel not a party to any of the treaties, and with Brown and Obama refusing to admit even that the World’s fourth largest nuclear arsenal exists, I can only presume they believe that nobody should possess nuclear weapons – except Israel.”

By Kourosh Ziabari

How Israel’s Gaza Blockade and Washington’s Sanctions Policy Helped Keep the Hardliners in Power

Iran’s Green Movement is one year old this Sunday, the anniversary of its first massive demonstrations in the streets of Tehran. Greeted with great hope in much of the world, a year later it’s weaker, the country is more repressive, and its hardliners are in a far stronger position — and some of their success can be credited to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sanctions hawks in the Obama administration.

If, in the past year, those hardliners successfully faced down major challenges within Iranian society and abroad, it was only in part thanks to the regime’s skill at repression and sidestepping international pressure. Above all, the ayatollahs benefited from Israeli intransigence and American hypocrisy on nuclear disarmament in the Middle East.

Iran’s case against Israel was bolstered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued enthusiasm for the Gaza blockade, and by Tel Aviv’s recent arrogant dismissal of a conference of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatories, which called on Israel to join a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Nor has President Obama’s push for stronger sanctions on Iran at the United Nations Security Council hurt them.

And then, on Memorial Day in the United States, Israel’s Likud government handed Tehran its greatest recent propaganda victory by sending its commandos against a peace flotilla in international waters and so landing its men, guns blazing, on the deck of the USS Sanctions. Yesterday’s vote at the U.N. Security Council on punishing Iran produced a weak, much watered-down resolution targeting 40 companies, which lacked the all-important imprimatur of unanimity, insofar as Turkey and Brazil voted “no” and Lebanon abstained. There was no mention of an oil or gasoline boycott, and the language of the resolution did not even seem to make the new sanctions obligatory. It was at best a pyrrhic victory for those hawks who had pressed for “crippling” sanctions, and likely to be counterproductive rather than effective in ending Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. How we got here is a long, winding, sordid tale of the triumph of macho posturing over patient and effective policymaking.

Suppressing the Green Movement

From last summer through last winter, the hardliners of the Islamic Republic of Iran were powerfully challenged by reformists, who charged that the June 12, 2009, presidential election had been marked by extensive fraud. Street protests were so large, crowds so enthusiastic, and the opposition so steadfast that it seemed as if Iran was on the brink of a significant change in its way of doing business, possibly even internationally. The opposition — the most massive since the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79 — was dubbed the Green Movement, because green is the color of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, among whom losing presidential candidate Mirhossein Moussavi is counted. Although some movement supporters were secularists, many were religious, and so disarmingly capable of deploying the religious slogans and symbols of the Islamic Republic against the regime itself.

Where the regime put emphasis on the distant Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Levant, Green Movement activists chanted (during “Jerusalem Day” last September), “Not Gaza, not Lebanon. I die only for Iran.” They took their cue from candidate Moussavi, who said he “liked” Palestine but thought waving its flag in Iran excessive. Moussavi likewise rejected Obama administration insinuations that his movement’s stance on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was indistinguishable from that of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He emphasized instead that he not only did not want a nuclear weapon for Iran, but understood international concerns about such a prospect. He seemed to suggest that, were he to come to power, he would be far more cooperative with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The Israeli government liked what it was hearing; Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu even went on “Meet the Press” last summer to praise the Green Movement fulsomely. “I think something very deep, very fundamental is going on,” he said, “and there’s an expression of a deep desire amid the people of Iran for freedom, certainly for greater freedom.”

Popular unrest only became possible thanks to a split at the top among the civilian ruling elite of clerics and fundamentalists. When presidential candidates Moussavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and their clerical backers, including Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanaei and wily former president and billionaire entrepreneur Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, began to challenge the country’s authoritarian methods of governance, its repression of personal liberties, and the quixotic foreign policy of President Ahmadinejad (whom Moussavi accused of making Iran a global laughingstock), it opened space below.

The reformers would be opposed by Iran’s supreme theocrat, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, who defended the presidential election results as valid, even as he admitted to his preference for Ahmadinejad’s views. He was, in turn, supported by most senior clerics and politicians, the great merchants of the bazaar, and most significantly, the officer corps of the police, the basij (civilian militia), the regular army, and the Revolutionary Guards. Because there would be no significant splits among those armed to defend the regime, it retained an almost unbounded ability to crackdown relentlessly. In the process, the Revolutionary Guards, generally Ahmadinejad partisans only grew in power.

A year later, it’s clear that the hardliners have won decisively through massive repression, deploying basij armed with clubs on motorcycles to curb crowds, jailing thousands of protesters, and torturing and executing some of them. The main arrow in the opposition’s quiver was flash mobs, relatively spontaneous mass urban demonstrations orchestrated through Twitter, cell phones, and Facebook. The regime gradually learned how to repress this tactic through the careful jamming of electronic media and domestic surveillance. (Apparently the Revolutionary Guards now even have a Facebook Espionage Division.) While the opposition can hope to keep itself alive as an underground civil rights movement, for the moment its chances for overt political change appear slim.

Nuclear Hypocrisy

Though few have noted this, the Green Movement actually threw a monkey wrench into President Obama’s hopes to jump-start direct negotiations with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program. His team could hardly sit down with representatives of Ayatollah Khomeini while the latter was summarily tossing protesters in filthy prisons to be mistreated and even killed. On October 1, 2009, however, with the masses no longer regularly in the streets, representatives of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany met directly with a representative of Khomeini in Geneva.

A potentially path breaking nuclear agreement was hammered out whereby Iran would ship the bulk of its already-produced low-enriched uranium (LEU) to another country. In return, it would receive enriched rods with which it could run its single small medical reactor, producing isotopes for treating cancer. That reactor had been given to the Shah’s Iran in 1969, and the last consignment of nuclear fuel purchased for it, from Argentina, was running out. The agreement appealed to the West, because it would deprive Iran of a couple of tons of LEU that, at some point, could theoretically be cycled back through its centrifuges and enriched from 3.5% to over 90%, or weapons grade, for the possible construction of nuclear warheads. There is no evidence that Iran has such a capability or intention, but the Security Council members agreed that safe was better than sorry.

With Khomeini’s representative back in Iran on October 2, the Iranians suddenly announced that they would take a timeout to study it. That timeout never ended, assumedly because Khomeini had gotten a case of cold feet. Though we can only speculate, perhaps nuclear hardliners argued that holding onto the country’s stock of LEU seemed to the hardliners like a crucial form of deterrence in itself, a signal to the world that Iran could turn to bomb-making activities if a war atmosphere built.

Given that nuclear latency — the ability to launch a successful bomb-making program — has geopolitical consequences nearly as important as the actual possession of a bomb, Washington, Tel Aviv, and the major Western European powers remain eager to forestall Iran from reaching that status. As the Geneva fiasco left the impression that the Iranian regime was not ready to negotiate in good faith, the Obama team evidently decided to respond by ratcheting up sanctions on Iran at the Security Council, evidently in hopes of forcing its nuclear negotiators back to the bargaining table. Meanwhile, Netanyahu was loudly demanding the imposition of “crippling” international sanctions on Tehran.

Washington, however, faced a problem: Russian Prime Minister and eminence grilse Vladimir Putin initially opposed such sanctions, as did China’s leaders. As Putin observed, “Direct dialogue… is always more productive… than a policy of threats, sanctions, and all the more so a resolution to use force.” Moreover, the non-permanent members of the Council included Turkey and Brazil, rising powers and potential leaders of the non-permanent bloc at the Council. Neither country was eager to see Iran put under international boycott for, from their point of view, simply having a civilian nuclear enrichment program. (Since such a program is permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, any such Security Council sanctions on Iran represent, at best, arbitrary acts.)

By mid-May, Obama nonetheless appeared to have his ducks in a row for a vote in which Russia and China would support at least modest further financial restrictions on investments connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Many observers believed that such a move, guaranteed to fall far short of “crippling,” would in fact prove wholly ineffectual.

Only Turkey and Brazil, lacking veto power in the Council, were proving problematic for Washington. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey leads the Justice and Development Party, which is mildly tinged with Muslim politics (unlike most previous strongly secular governments in Ankara). Viewing himself as a bridge between the Christian West and the Muslim world, he strongly opposes new sanctions on neighboring Iran. In part, he fears they might harm the Turkish economy; in part, he has pursued a policy of developing good relations with all his country’s direct neighbors.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has led a similar charge against any strengthened punishment of Iran. He has been motivated by a desire to alter the prevailing North-dominated system of international relations and trade. Popularly known as “Lula,” the president has put more emphasis on encouraging South-South relations. His country gave up its nuclear weapons aspirations in 1980, but continued a civilian nuclear energy program and has recently committed to building a nuclear-powered submarine. Having the Security Council declare even peaceful nuclear enrichment illegal could be extremely inconvenient for Brasilia.

On May 15th, Erdogan and Lula met with Ahmadinejad in Tehran and announced a nuclear deal that much resembled the one to which Iran had briefly agreed in October. Turkey would now hold a majority of Iran’s LEU in escrow in return for which Iran would receive fuel rods enriched to 19.75% for its medical reactor. Critics pointed out that Iran had, by now, produced even more LEU, which meant that the proportion of fuel being sent abroad would be less damaging to any Iranian hopes for nuclear latency and therefore far less attractive to Washington and Tel Aviv. Washington promptly dismissed the agreement, irking the Turkish and Brazilian leaders.

Meanwhile, throughout May, a conference of signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was being held in New York to hammer out a consensus document that would, in the end, declare the Middle East a “nuclear free zone.” Unexpectedly, they announced success. Since Israel is the only country in the Middle East with an actual nuclear arsenal (estimated at about 200 warheads or similar to what the British possess), and not an NPT signatory, Tel Aviv thundered: “This resolution is deeply flawed and hypocritical… It singles out Israel, the Middle East’s only true democracy and the only country threatened with annihilation… Given the distorted nature of this resolution, Israel will not be able to take part in its implementation.”

The hypocrisy in all this was visibly Washington’s and Israel’s. After all, both were demanding that a country without nuclear weapons “disarm” and the only country in the region to actually possess them be excused from the disarmament process entirely. This was, of course, their gift to Tehran. Like others involved in the process, Iran’s representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency immediately noted this and riposted, “The U.S… is obliged to go along with the world’s request, which is that Israel must join the NPT and open its installations to IAEA inspectors.”

A Windfall for the Hardliners: The Flotilla Assault

With the Tehran Agreement brokered by Turkey and Brazil — and signed by Ahmadinejad — and Israel’s rejection of the NPT conference document now public news, Obama’s sanctions program faced a new round of pushback from China. Then, on May 31st, Israeli commandos rappelled from helicopters onto the deck of the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish aid ship heading for Gaza. They threw stun grenades and fired rubber-jacketed metal bullets even before landing, enraging passengers, and leading to a fatal confrontation that left at least nine dead and some 30 wounded. An international uproar ensued, putting Israel’s relations with Turkey under special strain.

The Mavi Marmara assault was more splendid news for Iran’s hardliners at the very moment when the Green movement was gearing up for demonstrations to mark the one-year anniversary of the contested presidential election. Around the Israeli assault on the aid flotilla and that country’s blockade of Gaza they were able to rally the public in solidarity with the theocratic government, long a trenchant critic of Israeli oppression of the stateless Palestinians. Green leaders, in turn, were forced to put out a statement condemning Israel, and Khomeini was then able to fill the streets of the capital with two million demonstrators commemorating the death of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.

The flotilla attack also gave the hardliners a foreign policy issue on which they could stand in solidarity with Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and the Arab world generally, reinforcing their cachet as champions of the Palestinians and bolstering the country’s regional influence. There was even talk of sending a new Gaza aid flotilla guarded by Iranian ships. Because Turkey, the aggrieved party, is at present a member of the Security Council, this fortuitous fillip for Iran has denied Obama the unanimity he sought on sanctions. Finally, the incident had the potential to push international concern over Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program and that country’s new assertiveness in the Middle East into the background, while foregrounding Israel’s brutality in Gaza, intransigence toward the peace process, and status as a nuclear outlaw.

In the end, President Obama got his watered-down, non-unanimous sanctions resolution. There is no doubt that Netanyahu’s reluctance to make a just peace with the Palestinians and his cowboy military tactics have enormously complicated Obama’s attempt to pressure Iran and deeply alienated Turkey, one of yesterday’s holdouts.

His election as prime minister in February 2009 turns out to have been the best gift the Israeli electorate could have given Iran. The Likud-led government continues its colonization of the West Bank and its blockade of the civilian population of Gaza, making the Iranian hawks who harp on injustices done to Palestinians look prescient. It refuses to join the NPT or allow U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities, making Iran, by comparison, look like a model IAEA member state.

By Juan Cole

Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and director of its Center for South Asian Studies. He maintains the blog Informed Comment. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

When the Oslo Document was originally presented by the Israeli government to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations in the Fall of 1992, it was rejected by the Delegation because it obviously constituted a bantustan. This document carried out Menachem Begin’s disingenuous misinterpretation of the Camp David Accords–expressly rejected by U.S. President Jimmy Carter–that all they called for was autonomy for the people and not for the land too.

Soon thereafter, unbeknownst to the Delegation and to almost everyone else, the Israeli government opened up a secret channel of negotiations in Norway. There the Israeli government re-presented the document that had already been rejected by the Palestinian Delegation in Washington, D.C. It was this document, with very minor modifications, that was later signed at the White House on 13 September 1993.

Before the signing ceremony, I commented to a high-level official of the Palestine Liberation Organization: “This document is like a straight-jacket. It will be very difficult to negotiate your way out of it.” This PLO official agreed with my assessment and responded: “Yes, you are right. It will depend upon our negotiating skill.”

Of course I have great respect for Palestinian negotiators. They have done the best they can negotiating in good faith with the Israeli government that has been invariably backed up by the United States. But there has never been any good faith on the part of the Israeli government either before, during or after Oslo. Ditto for the United States.

Even if Oslo had succeeded, it would have resulted in the imposition of a bantustan upon the Palestinian People. But Oslo has run its course! Therefore, it is my purpose here today to chart a NEW DIRECTION for the Palestinian People to consider.

An agenda for an international legal response:

First, we must immediately move for the de facto suspension of Israel throughout the entirety of the United Nations System, including the General Assembly and all U.N. subsidiary organs and bodies. We must do to Israel what the U.N. General Assembly has done to the genocidal rump Yugoslavia and to the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa! Here the legal basis for the de facto suspension of Israel at the U.N. is quite simple:

As a condition for its admission to the United Nations Organization, Israel formally agreed to accept General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) (1947) (partition/Jerusalem trusteeship) and General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) (1948) (Palestinian right of return), inter alia. Nevertheless, the government of Israel has expressly repudiated both Resolution 181 (II) and Resolution 194 (III). Therefore, Israel has violated its conditions for admission to U.N. membership and thus must be suspended on a de facto basis from any participation throughout the entire United Nations System.

Second, any further negotiations with Israel must be conducted on the basis of Resolution 181 (II) and its borders; Resolution 194 (III); subsequent General Assembly resolutions and Security Council resolutions; the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949; the 1907 Hague Regulations; and other relevant principles of public international law.

Third, we must abandon the fiction and the fraud that the United States government is an “honest broker.” The United States government has never been an honest broker from well before the very outset of these negotiations in 1991. Rather, the United States has invariably sided with Israel against the Palestinians. We need to establish some type of international framework to sponsor these negotiations where the Palestinian negotiators will not be subjected to the continual bullying, threats, harassment, intimidation and outright lies perpetrated by the United States government.

Fourth, we must move to have the U.N. General Assembly impose economic, diplomatic, and travel sanctions upon Israel pursuant to the terms of the Uniting for Peace Resolution (1950), whose Emergency Special Session on Palestine is now in recess.

Fifth, the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine must sue Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for inflicting acts of genocide against the Palestinian People in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention!

An International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) can be established by the UN General Assembly as a ‘subsidiary organ’ under article 22 of the UN Charter. Article 22 of the UN Charter states the UN General Assembly may establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions. The purpose of the ICTI would be to investigate and Prosecute suspected Israeli war criminals for offences against the Palestinian people.

On January 4, 2009, Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire wrote to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon and Father Miguel D’Escoto President of United Nations General assembly adding her voice to the many calls from International Jurists, Human rights Organizations, and individuals, for the UN General Assembly to seriously consider establishing an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel in view of the ongoing Israeli atrocities against the people of Gaza and Palestine.

Maguire said:

“In November 2008 I visited Gaza and was shocked at the suffering of the people of Gaza, being under ‘siege’ as they are for over two years. This collective punishment by the Israeli Government, has lead to a great humanitarian crisis. Collective punishment of the civilian community by the Israeli Government breaks the Geneva Convention, is illegal and is a war crime and crime against humanity.

Instead of protecting the civilian community of Gaza and relieving their Suffering by lifting the ‘siege’, the Israeli military have carried out 7 days consecutive bombardment of civilians, by sea and air. Dropping Israeli bombs from the air and sea on unarmed civilians, many women and children, destroying mosques, hospitals, and and homes, and infrastructure, is illegal and constitutes war crimes. The deaths of people in Gaza is now over 600 with over 2,500 people injured – many women and children. The infrastructure of Gaza has been destroyed, and the people cut off from the world – including journalists, Humanitarian workers, locked out of Gaza, and unable to go to the aid of the people.

The UN must help uphold Human rights and Justice for Palestinian People, by seriously considering establishing an International criminal tribunal for Israel, (ICTI) in order that Israeli Gov., be held accountable for war crimes.”

NOTE:  Professor Boyle’s call for an International Criminal Tribunal on Israel is now being circulated by member states of the UN General Assembly.

By Francis A. Boyle

1st June 2010

By Kavaljit Singh

Kavaljit Singh works with Public Interest Research Centre, New Delhi (www.madhyam.org.in).

Unofficial estimates place the number of dead as high as 1,000 and the wounded in the many thousands. The New York Times reported Monday that Pierre-Emmanuel Ducruet, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said inspections of morgues “suggested that more than 700 people had been killed in Osh alone, and that ‘not less than 3,000’ people were in need of medical help, mostly for gunshot wounds.”

Tens of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks have flooded from the major towns of Osh and Jalalabad and their surrounding villages across the border into Uzbekistan, seeking refuge.

The Uzbek government says some 75,000 ethnic Uzbeks have fled from Kyrgyzstan—about 10 percent of the Uzbek population of the country. Refugee camps have sprung up on the Uzbek side of the border where, according to Red Cross spokesmen, conditions are horrific. There are reports of dysentery among refugee children.

There are also thousands of refugees struggling to get across the border, which the Uzbek government ordered closed Monday.

The center of the attacks reportedly shifted from Osh to Jalalabad on Sunday and Monday. Fighting reportedly broke out Thursday night in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second largest city, with a population of about 225,000.

Initially, it seems, both ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks were victims of violence, but the fighting quickly turned into a wave of mob assaults on Uzbek neighborhoods. Entire Uzbek areas have been torched, according to reports, and those ethnic Uzbeks remaining have barricaded themselves in their homes.

While the violence receded in Osh on Sunday, arson and shooting of Uzbeks were reportedly increasing in Jalalabad on Monday.

The interim government headed by President Rosa Otunbayeva has been unable to restore order in the south. Police, security forces and troops were ordered to the region Friday, but they failed to curtail the attackers. Some Uzbeks reported that government forces aided the gangs that attacked their homes and businesses.

In a desperate bid to restore order and save her government, Otunbayeva on Saturday requested that Russia send in peacekeeping troops. That request intensified tensions in the region and between Washington and Moscow. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev rejected the request, at least for the present, but he did dispatch an additional 300 paratroopers to fortify the Russian military base near the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek.

An emergency meeting of the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on Monday likewise refused to send troops, instead agreeing to send the embattled government in Bishkek military equipment and road transport. The CSTO consists of Russia and former Soviet republics Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The US State Department on Monday called for a coordinated international response, involving the US, Russia, the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Washington does not want to see a unilateral Russian intervention, which would dramatically shift the balance of influence over Kyrgyzstan and potentially threaten the US air base outside of Bishkek.

Uzbeks make up 15 percent of the 5.5 million population of Kyrgyzstan, but in the southern regions that border Uzbekistan they are almost as numerous as the Kyrgyz.

The eruption of violence is the result of immense economic hardship and poverty, decades of corrupt and repressive governments, and a festering political crisis. All of these factors have been compounded by the destabilizing impact of the US war and occupation of Afghanistan, for which the Manas air base serves as a central hub for the movement of US and NATO troops and supplies.

The US has been seeking to increase its military/intelligence presence in Kyrgyzstan. Last month the Pentagon put out bids for companies to help construct an anti-terrorism training center in Osh.

China also has a huge interest in the fate of Kyrgyzstan, with which it shares an extended border. The Chinese have been expanding their trade with the country in recent years.

The disintegration of Kyrgyzstan could fuel ethnic tensions and separatist tendencies inside both Russia and China, as well as within the neighboring former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.

Russia and the US, in particular, have been vying for dominance over Kyrgyzstan, especially since the US established the Manas base in the former Soviet Republic at the start of the Afghan war in 2001. The fall of the Kyrgyz government and breakup of the country could precipitate a major crisis between the two powers.

Zharikhin Vladimir, deputy director of the Commonwealth of Independent States Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, warned that the unrest would reverberate beyond Kyrgyzstan’s borders. “These events will have a negative influence on the stability of the region,” he said, adding, “The likelihood that Kyrgyzstan will disintegrate has grown considerably. South Kyrgyzstan borders Uzbekistan and the border of Afghanistan is nearby. The region is a knot of nerves for the whole of Central Asia.”

The eruption of ethnic violence occurs barely two months after the overthrow of the regime of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, following mass protests in Bishkek against government corruption and a sharp rise in utility rates. Bakiyev was succeeded by the interim government headed by Otunbayeva.

The interim government has never fully consolidated control of the south of the country, a stronghold of ousted President Bakiyev. In that region, including Osh and Jalalabad, most Kyrgyz reportedly continue to support Bakiyev, while most Uzbeks support the new government.

Otunbayeva heads a fragile and fractious coalition that lacks deep-going popular support. She and her cohorts came to power April 7 promising to usher in a new period of democracy and progress. However, she is a longtime political operative, having served in the 1990s as ambassador to both the US and Britain in the despotic regime of Askar Akayev, and then backed Bakiyev in the so-called “Tulip Revolution” of 2005 which overthrew Akayev.

Her coalition partners are similarly veterans of the previous corrupt and authoritarian regimes.

The interim government, which initially promised to hold elections in October, has put them back to the end of 2011. It has called a national referendum for June 27 to endorse Otunbayeva’s presidency until then and to adopt a new constitution.

Otunbayeva accuses Bakiyev, who is in exile in Belarus, of instigating the rioting in the south in order to block the referendum and topple her government. The deposed president denies the charge, but his family members and supporters have reportedly been active in leading attacks on ethnic Uzbeks since last Thursday.

Last month, ethnic fighting erupted, on a far smaller scale, in Jalalabad, Bakiyev’s home region. Two were killed and dozens wounded when ethnic Kyrgyz attacked a private university attended mostly by Uzbeks. Days earlier, Bakiyev supporters had seized government buildings in Osh and Jalalabad, expelling local leaders loyal to the interim government before being overrun by government forces.

The tragic events in Kyrgyzstan are a product both of the US colonial aggression in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, which was engineered by the Stalinist bureaucracy itself with the support of Western imperialism.

In the dying days of the USSR, as nationalist elements within the Stalinist apparatus in Kyrgyzstan were preparing to break away and establish independence (which came in 1991), ethnic violence erupted in Osh. Hundreds were killed until order was restored by Soviet troops.

The breakup of the Soviet Union and capitalist restoration has produced an unmitigated disaster in Kyrgyzstan. The economy of the former Soviet republic, which had exported 98 percent of its goods to the rest of the USSR, collapsed. Kyrgyzstan is now desperately poor, having a gross domestic product one-ninth that of Kazakhstan. The average daily wage for those fortunate enough to have a job is $5.

By Barry Grey

On Saturday 5th June, 2010, 35 heavily armed Israeli Navy Seals commandeered our boat, MV Rachel Corrie, one of the Freedom Flotilla, in International waters (30 miles off the coast of Gaza). As they did so, we 19 humanitarian activists and crew, sat on the deck.

We were quietly anxious, aware of the solitary figure in the wheelhouse with his hands held high against the window, in full view of the three Israeli warships, 4 approaching zodiacs and 2 commando carriers, whose guns were pointing in his direction. I personally wondered if the courageous Derek Graham would live to tell the tale, conscious of what happened on the Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara, earlier in the week.

On Monday 3lst May, 2010, we heard via satellite phone that the Israeli Commandoes had boarded in International waters, from helicopter and zodiacs, the Turkish Ship, MV Mavi Marmara, killing and injuring many people. It was later confirmed that 8 Turkish people, l Turkish/USA, unarmed civilians had been shot (2 in the head and several in the back). All 6 boats on the Freedom Flotilla had been commandeered by Israeli Navy and taken to Israel and during this attack by Israel over 40 people were injured.

These killings of unarmed civilians was devasting news to us all and something we never expected to happen. All those participating in the Freedom Flotilla participated because they were moved by the suffering of the people of Gaza.

They were not Terrorists, they were human beings, who cared for other human beings in their suffering. Gaza, cut off by land crossing, sea (its port had been closed for over 40 years since Israeli occupation and had the Free Gaza Rachel CorrieCargo boat been able to enter Gaza, it would have been the first Cargo boat ever to do so). Gaza has rightly been been described as the largest open air prison in the world. With Israel holding all the keys for its one and a half million people living under a policy of collective punishment by Israeli.

Under siege for over 3 years now, with a shortagee of medicine, basic materials to rebuild their homes, after the 22 day bombardment by Israeli in Dec/Jan.2009 has left Gaza and its people, a place of suffering and isolation.

The flotilla was not only to bring humanitarian aid, books for children, toys, writing material, but to help break the siege of Gaza, which is slowly strangling its people.

The violations of international law committed by Israel are well documented by the UN, and many independent human rights bodies. All of these violations of International laws and norms are committed under the guise of ‘national security’ and A policy of isolating Gaza to weaken Hamas.

It is a policy that is clearly not working. As we have learned in N.Ireland, violence never works, so why not try talking to Hamas, as the British Government had to talk to rep. of IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries, in order to move to peace.

The brutal and illegal attack of aid ships in International waters on May 3lst and the subsequent boarding of the MV Rachel Corrie, also in international Waters, is a symptom of the culture of impunity under which Israel operates.

The Israeli Government was quick to blame the activists on board the MV Mavi Marmara, claiming that they attacked first and were members of terrorist groups.

They also claimed that the HLL the Turkish Humanitarian Group who organized the Mavi Marmara had terrorist links. The HLL is not a banned organization in Turkey and has no links to terrorist organizations. It was disappointing to see how many International governments and media outlets immediately accepted Israel’s version of events without further investigation.

Sure, there have been calls for a ‘prompt, Impartial, credible and transparent’ investigation into the events of May 3lst by the United Nations Security Council.

Yet the United States and others seem to think that Israel can conduct such an investigation on its own.

In the words of my colleague, Nobel Jody Williams, this is like “the fox accounting for the number of chickens left in the henhouse” such a response cannot stand, and nothing less than An Independent investigation will be acceptable to the international community.

This attack on the Freedom Flotilla is a tipping point. It is time for the International Community to finally stop allowing Israel to act with blatant disregard for Human Life, Human rights and International Law.

The partial lifting of the siege shows what International pressure can achieve, but it is not enough and only a full lifting of the siege can bring re freedom to the people of Gaza.

It is time for Israel to choose peace. It is time for world leaders and the international Community to join together and call on Israel to lift the siege of Gaza completely, End the occupation of Palestine and allow the Palestinian people their right to Self-determination.

To help bring closer that day we can all do something. Not everyone can go with The Freegaza boat people, but supporting the BDS campaign, calling for an end to EU special trading status with Israel insisting that USA end its economic/military assistance to Israel until it upholds it International commitments. Palestine is a key to peace in the Middle East so by us all refusing to be ‘silent’ in the face of Israel’s continued apartheid policies we can all bring closer an end to all violence in the Middle East.

19th June, 2010

EMAIL: mairead.home@btinternet.com

As everyone knows, Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the Washington Press Corps, has gone into retirement after making some heretical remarks about Israel and Israelis. The current Wikipedia entry reads in part as follows:

“On May 27, 2010, outside a White House Jewish heritage event, Rabbi David Nesenoff asked if Thomas had any comments on Israel. Thomas replied, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine… Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land.” She was then asked where the Israelis should go, to which she replied: “they should go home” to “Poland, Germany… America and everywhere else.” Thomas subsequently issued an apology on her personal web site: “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.”

She was perhaps the last representative of a proud tradition of American journalism, of calling it like you see it and damn the torpedoes – in a word, of telling the truth. Presidents have either trusted or feared her, depending on their own proclivities for truth telling, hardly a hallmark of politicians of whatever rank. There she always was, up front and center due to her rank as America’s premier representative of the press, ready to ask that one piercing question directed at whatever cover-up, hypocrisy or skullduggery the DC suits were up to at the moment. The most recent example was her pointed question to President Obama, asking President Obama to name all the countries in the Middle East that have nuclear weapons, which was avoided by the President, who claimed to not want to “speculate”. Thomas claims that knowledge of Israeli nukes is very public in DC and Obama’s answer shows a lack of credibility. She explains the importance of this question for U.S. policy in the region. Finally, she confides that she has not been called on by the President since that day, but that if she does, she will ask him whether or not he has found any more information about nukes in the Middle East since their last encounter.

In preparation for my bar-mitzvah I attended Hebrew School at a place called Temple Emeth in Brookline, MA. Emeth is Hebrew for truth, and I was young enough, 11-12, to be curious what that meant. What I mostly discovered was an ancient cult dedicated to telling old wives tales meant to frighten and cajole its adherents into becoming and remaining loyal members of the tribe. The “truth” indeed. But I do remember that some of the old texts frequently mentioned something called “righteousness,” which was somehow supposed to be the bedrock of the whole thing. Of course, no one actually believed in God. The “enlightened” Jews of Europe threw out that retro concept generations ago. Their new faith was Zionism, which can be summed up with the words, “God does not exist, but he gave us the Land.” In replacing the old faith with the new, that old notion of “righteousness” conveniently disappeared – the baby got thrown out with the bathwater. What did remain was the actual faith of the Pharisees going back to biblical times, the worship of the Golden Calf, the belief in and absolute devotion to money and power.

She has seen it all, and if there’s anyone who knows what the truth is, it is Helen Thomas. She saw the pressure and treachery applied by the Zionist mafia that led to the birth of Israel as an American protectorate in the Middle East. She saw her country that she so loved fall prey to a ruthless fifth column that has turned America into an obedient puppet of what a French diplomat once called “that shitty little state.” She watched as the Chicago Jewish political mafia picked out and groomed a nobody for the Presidency, the perfect Uncle Tom with a silken tongue who would smoothly carry out Massa’s orders

Who knows what the “rabbi” said to set her off, but whatever it was, she could no longer contain what she (and hundreds of millions of others who have not been duped or seduced by the Zionist) have felt all along, so she said what is so obvious – a bunch of genocidal settler-colonialist Eastern European fascists have no business being in Palestine in any other capacity than as tourists and should just get the hell out.

Organized attack on most revered member of White House Press Corp

Like a cat ready to pounce, the Israel Above All clique has been waiting for its chance to snare America’s most senior journalist, the redoubtable Helen Thomas. One false move and she is trapped. The attackers only exposed themselves; the extent to which they will go to stifle opposition to Israel’s policies, the extent to which they are able to quickly organize their attacks, the extent to which they are able to publish false information, the extent to which they are capable of controlling media, and the extent of their self-immolation.

A careful analysis of the incident reveals a backfire and, as the truth of the incident emerges, hopefully a fair and honest America will plead for the return of one of the White House press corps most revered journalist; an 89 year old and ever brave woman who cemented the highway for other women into the higher echelons of journalism and serves as an encouragement for senior citizens by showing them that life is not over until capitulation. As her return is urged, those who initiated this injustice (imagine attacking an 89 year old woman) should be politely asked to depart from public life so they no longer misuse public trust to damage others.

(1) Helen Thomas did not relate the statements as they were reported by the media.

(2) Helen Thomas didn’t say anything more than something to generate a spontaneous tête á tête with a reporter.

(3) Many major Americans: presidents, congressmen, media commentators and reporters have made worse statements by several magnitudes and have not generated similar vehemence, abuse and result; except when the remarks accused Israel, as did Helen’s remarks.

(4) Helen Thomas only made a few remarks, which others interpreted for their convenience as recommending ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Israel has had consistent policies of ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Those who attacked the few words from Helen have never contradicted Israel leaders’ words recommending expulsion of Palestinians nor Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing.

Start with Helen Thomas’ statements and the reporting of them.

Although media headlines quoted MS. Thomas as having said “The Jews should get the hell out of Palestine,” and “go home to Germany and Poland,” the dean of White House correspondents never used the word Jews nor uttered the quotes as they were presented.

The complete video of the verbal exchange between Ms. Thomas and the reporter shows that she was asked her thoughts on Israel. “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine,” she answered in a jocular manner. “Remember, these people are occupied. It’s their land. It’s not Germany, not Poland.” She was subsequently asked: “What should they do?” and not “What should the Jews do?” She answered, “They should go back to their land.” To the next question: “Where is their land?” Helen replied, “Germany, Poland.” It is the interviewer who then says provocatively, “So you say the Jews should go back to Germany and Poland.” Helen adds. “And to America.”

Before examining how the dean of White House correspondents is being singled out for censure and why the censors are suspect, let’s examine the statements.

First of all, an antagonistic expression towards Israel does not merit the usual attempt to attach the anti-Semitic label. Israel contains only Israelis, many of whom happen to be Jews. Some Jews are Israelis. Most Jews are not Israelis. It is obvious that Ms. Thomas was not referring to Jews specifically (an interlocutor assumption), but to those who had come from afar to occupy a land. Are Helen Thomas’ statements that Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine,” and “these people are occupied,” unique? Probably many of the world’s citizens have similar sentiments. Actually, many of Israeli and Russian Jews have been going to Germany. The Federal Republic of Germany contains a large immigration of Jews during the last decade.

Due to one expression, must the dean of White House correspondents be pilloried? Maybe Ms. Thomas was thinking of Israel the oppressor, which has already thrown most of the early Palestinians out of the area and daily tries to get rid of more – not by words, but by actual deeds. Maybe she was thinking of meritocracy Israeli laws that throw its Palestinian citizens aside – few college scholarships, unable to purchase land, no public housing, no mortgages, no legal marriages performed on Israeli territory between a Jew and non-Jew.

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President George H.W. Bush during an administration that featured the most outrageous prevarications and deceptions, which led the nation to catastrophe, and Lanny Davis, advisor for sheltering President Bill Clinton’s somewhat immoral conduct, adjudicated Helen Thomas’ inquisition.

On CNN, after an introduction by CNN interviewer, who showed how fair he was by characterizing Ms. Thomas’ statement as anti-Semitic, Fleischer, overflowing with rage, said: “Helen’s statement calling for the religious cleansing of Israel is reprehensible. If this isn’t bigotry, what is? What she said is as bad as someone saying all blacks should leave America and go back to Africa. Hearst Newspapers should do the right thing and let Helen go.”

Note that Fleischer used the term “blacks” and not African Americans. Note also that African Americans were brought here against their will, have been citizens for generations and have not taken anyone else’s land or expelled them. Is Ari’s comparison sensible, and doesn’t it defeat what he is trying to say?

Lanny Davis quickly entered the air waves with almost identical remarks: “Helen Thomas, who I used to consider a close friend and who I used to respect, has showed herself to be an anti-Semitic bigot. She has a right to criticize Israel …. However, her statement that Jews in Israel should leave Israel and go back to Poland or Germany is an ancient and well-known anti-Semitic stereotype of the alien Jew not belonging in the land of Israel that began 2,600 years with the first tragic and violent Diaspora caused by the Romans. If she had asked all blacks to go back to Africa, what would the White House Correspondents Association’s position be as to whether she deserved White House press room credentials – much less a privileged honorary seat?”

The two men proposed similar charges of anti-Semitism, compared Helen’s words to all “blacks” to go back to Africa, and repeated words that the media used, but Helen never said. Davis added a controversial story; violent Diaspora caused by the Romans. Who issues these vituperative macros and repeats controversial history?

Are these legitimate rebuttals or a continuous and concerted abuse by scheming attackers?

Here is the introduction to a Letter to the Editor that appeared, during March 2010, in The Beacon, a Montgomery County, Maryland, senior oriented newspaper.

For sure these same persons have never replied to much more serious statements by either Israeli officials or American public figures. Please send the statements to them and ask, “Why haven’t you responded to these repulsive statements?” Here are only some of the thousands of bigoted expressions.

“It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.”

Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

How about U.S. Commentators? Just a random few of millions of bigoted comments.

What would happen if any U.S. politician or media commentator uttered similar expressions about African Americans?

Given that Helen Thomas spoke inappropriate words. That is an issue, but not the only issue. Demeaning and humiliating a person who has contributed much to American society, and attempting to control what people say and what others should listen to are not the American way. The American public should eloquently forgive Ms. Thomas for what seems to be an overheated exchange and politely request that she be returned to her admired position as dean of the White House press Corp, and then complete the redemption by showing disapproval for the despicable, mendacious and obviously arranged assault on an eighty- nine year old treasure of the United States of America.

By Dan Lieberman

Dan Lieberman is editor of Alternative Insight, a monthly web based newsletter. He can be reached at:  alternativeinsight@earthlink.net

Reports from the Gulf of Mexico just keep getting worse. Estimates of the rate of oil spillage from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead just keep gushing (the latest official number: up to 60,000 barrels per day). Forecasts for how long it will take before the leak is finally plugged continue pluming toward August—maybe even December. In addition to the oil itself, BP has (in this case deliberately) spilled a million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersant. Biologists’ accounts of the devastation being wreaked on fish, birds, amphibians, turtles, coral reefs, and marshes grow more apocalyptic by the day—especially in view of the fact that the vast majority of animal victims die alone and uncounted. Warnings are now being raised that the natural gas being vented along with the oil will significantly extend the giant dead zones in the Gulf. And guesses as to the ultimate economic toll of this still-unfolding tragedy—on everything from the tourism and fishing industries of at least five coastal states to the pensioners in Britain whose futures are at risk if BP files for bankruptcy or is taken over by a Chinese oil company—surge every time an analyst steps back to consider the situation from another angle.

We all want the least-bad outcome here. But what if events continue on the current trajectory—that is, what if the situation keeps deteriorating? Just how awful could this get?

For weeks various petroleum engineers and geologists working on the sidelines have speculated that the problems with the Deepwater Horizon may go deep—that the steel well casing, and the cement that seals and supports that casing against the surrounding rock, may have been seriously breached far beneath the seabed. If that is true, then escaping oil mixed with sand could be eroding what’s left of the well casing and cement, pushing out through the cracks and destabilizing the ground around the casing. According to Lisa Margonelli in The Atlantic.

There is the possibility that as the ground and the casing shift, the whole thing collapses inward, the giant Blow Out Preventer falls over, the drill pipe shoots out of the remains of the well, or any number of other scenarios,” that could making it virtually impossible ever to cap the well or even to plug it at depth via relief wells.

Read, for example, this comment at TheOilDrum.com, a site frequented by oil industry technical insiders who often post anonymously. The author of the comment, “dougr,” argues fairly persuasively that disintegration of the sub-surface casing and cement is the best explanation for the recent failure of “top kill” efforts to stop the oil flow by forcibly injecting mud into the wellhead.

Concerns about the integrity of the sub-seabed well casing appear also to be motivating some seriously doomerish recent public statements from Matt Simmons, the energy investment banker who decided to go rogue a couple of years ago following the publication of his controversial Peak Oil book Twilight in the Desert. Simmons says, for example, that “it could be 24 years before the deepwater gusher ends,” a forecast that makes little sense if one accepts the conventional view of what’s wrong with the Deepwater Horizon well and how long it will take to plug it with relief wells.

Are these concerns credible? From a technical standpoint, it is clear that improperly cemented wells can and do rupture and cause blowouts. It’s fairly clear that this is part of what happened with Deepwater Horizon. But is the well casing further disintegrating, and is oil escaping the well bore horizontally as well as vertically? We just don’t know. And that is largely due to the fact that BP is as opaque on this score as it has been with regard to nearly every sensitive technical issue (including the rate of leakage) since its drilling rig exploded two months ago.

So far, up to 3.6 million barrels of oil have spilled into the Gulf. The size of the Macondo oilfield has been estimated as being anywhere from 25 to 100 million barrels. It is unclear how much of that oil-in-place would escape upward into Gulf waters if its flow remained completely unchecked, but it is safe to assume that at least half, and probably a much greater proportion, would eventually drain upward. That means many times as much oil would enter the Gulf waters as has done so until now.

Already Deepwater Horizon is the not only the worst oil spill, but the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Multiplying the scale of this existing catastrophe multiple times sends us into truly uncharted territory.

Already, coastal ecosystems are being shredded; for a sense of how bad it is for wildlife in the Gulf now, just read “Biologists fear Gulf wildlife will suffer for generations.”In a truly worst case, oil — and perhaps dissolved methane as well — would hitch a ride on ocean currents out to the deep Atlantic, spreading ecological destruction far and wide.

For the economies of coastal states, a worst-case leakage scenario would be utterly devastating. Not only the fishing industry, but the oil industry as well would be fatally crippled, due to the disruption of operations at refineries. Shipping via the Mississippi River, which handles 60 percent of all U.S. grain exports, could be imperiled, since the Port of South Louisiana, the largest bulk cargo port in the world, might have to be closed if ships are unable to operate in oil-drenched waters. Unemployment in the region would soar and economic refugees would scatter in all directions.

The consequences for BP would almost certainly be fatal: it is questionable whether the corporation can survive even in the best case (that is, if “bottom kill” efforts succeed in August); if the spill goes on past the end of the year, then claims against the company and investor flight will probably push it into bankruptcy. Americans may shed few tears over this prospect, but BP happens to be Great Britain’s largest corporation, so the impact to the British economy could be substantial.

The consequences for the oil industry as a whole would also be dire. More regulations, soaring insurance rates, and drilling moratoria would lead to oil price spikes and shortages. Foreign national oil companies could of course continue to operate much as before, but the big independent companies, even if they shifted operations elsewhere, would be hit hard.

For President Obama, an environmental disaster of the scale we are discussing could have political consequences at least equivalent to those of the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter presidency. Obama’s only chance at survival would be an FDR-like show of leadership backed by bold energy and economic plans and ruthless disregard for partisan bickering and monied interests.

For the U.S. economy, already weakened by a still-unfolding financial crisis, a worst-case scenario in the Gulf could be the last straw. The cumulative impacts—falling grain exports, soaring unemployment in southeastern coastal states, higher oil prices—would almost certainly spell the end to any hope of recovery and might push the nation into the worst Depression in its history.

We would all prefer not even to contemplate such a scenario, much less live with it. It is irresponsible to inflict needless worry on readers on the basis of entirely speculative and extremely unlikely events. But the more I learn about the technical issues, and the worse news gets, the more likely this scenario seems. We all hope that a relief well will succeed in stopping the oil flow sometime around August, and that until then BP will be able to siphon off most of the oil escaping through the riser and damaged blowout preventer. But one has to wonder: is anyone at the White House seriously considering the worst-case scenario? And what should citizens be doing to prepare, just in case?

By Richard Heinberg