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By NBC News staff and wire reports

January 24, 2013, 8:30 pm

@ NBCNews.com

JERUSALEM – Israel voiced doubt on Tuesday about claims that chemical weapons had been used against rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

Activists on Monday claimed civilians had suffered injuries consistent with exposure to some kind of poisonous gas.

“We have seen reports from the opposition. It is not the first time. The opposition has an interest in drawing in international military intervention,” Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Army Radio.

“As things stand now, we do not have any confirmation or proof that (chemical weapons) have already been used, but we are definitely following events with concern,” he said.

Syria activists: Several die after Assad’s forces use ‘poisonous gases’

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gathered activist accounts on Sunday of what they said was a poison gas attack in the city of Homs. The reports are difficult to verify, as the government restricts media access in Syria.

The Observatory, a British-based group with a network of activists across Syria, said those accounts spoke of six rebel fighters who died after inhaling smoke on the front line of Homs’s urban battleground. It said it could not confirm that poison gas had been used and called for an investigation.

Syria has said it would never use chemical weapons against its citizens.

Asked about images purported to show patients being treated for possible gas poisoning, Yaalon said: “I’m not sure that what we’re seeing in the photos is the result of the use of chemical weapons.

“It could be other things,” he said, without elaborating.

On Sunday, senior Israeli defense official Amos Gilad said Syria’s chemical weapons were still secure despite the fact that Assad had lost control of parts of the country.

As Syria’s southern neighbor, Israel has been concerned about chemical weapons falling into the hands of Islamist militants or Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, cautioning it could intervene to stop such developments.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama warned Assad that the use of chemical weapons by his regime would be “totally unacceptable.””If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons there will be consequences and you will be held accountable,” he said.

By Jean Shaoul

24 January, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing electoral alliance, Likud-Beiteinu, and his religious coalition partners won a much-reduced majority in Tuesday’s elections, resulting in a hung parliament.

The election was shaped by a number of key factors. Of particular importance was the larger than expected 67 percent turnout, the highest since 1999. This testifies to the fact that the social discontent manifest in the mass protests of summer 2011 has not gone away.

Secondly, there was a surprisingly strong showing for Yesh Atid, formed last year, which was able to benefit from professions of support for economic and social measures to benefit Israel’s middle classes.

And finally, there was the ongoing splintering of short-lived political parties and factions without any real social base, under the impact of the global financial crisis.

Netanyahu called an early election in the belief that the disarray of the opposition parties would enable him to win a large majority, in turn allowing him to push through an austerity budget for 2013, while at the same time pursuing an aggressive policy towards the Palestinians and preparations for an attack on Iran.

But hostility to his social and economic policies and his drive to expand Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank—which has strained his relations with Washington, Israel’s ultimate guarantor—meant that his calculations backfired.

There is still uncertainty about the number of seats won by some of the smaller parties and final results will not be known until January 30. But with 99 percent of the votes counted, the broad outline is clear.

Netanyahu has the support of about 61 members of the 120-seat Knesset, Israel’s parliament. This has forced him to say he will seek a broad coalition to govern Israel. Under the constitution, he has six weeks to try to strike a deal with either the religious parties or with Yesh Atid and other secular parties.

Under such conditions, he is unlikely to be able to form a stable government that can push through both his militaristic agenda abroad and his austerity programme at home. It portends increasing political and social volatility.

Likud will have 20 seats in this parliament, seven fewer than before, while Yisrael-Beiteinu will have 11, four fewer. The main winner on the extreme right with 11 seats is the newly formed Jewish Home party, led by Naftali Bennett, once Netanyahu’s political aide.

Shas and other religious parties have 18 seats.

Anti-austerity opinion and hostility to Netanyahu’s pro-war policies find no genuine means of articulation in the rightward-lurching official “left” and “centrist” alternatives. The political outcome of the mass social protests of 2011, whose leaders insisted upon a “no politics” politics, has been a temporary strengthening of these moribund and essentially reactionary parties.

Yesh Atid came a close second to Likud, taking 19 seats. Its very name—There Is a Future—testifies to the vacuous and unprincipled nature of its politics. Its leader, Yair Lapid, a television anchorman and son of the late Tommy Lapid, himself a TV personality who headed the secular Shinui party from 1997 to 2006, ran a campaign aimed at the middle class, whipping up tensions between the secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews. He called for the ultra-Orthodox to be drafted into the army and workforce. While seeking a deal with the Palestinians, he does so on Israel’s terms—refusing calls to give back East Jerusalem and insisting on the retention of the settlements.

Labour, which has seen several splits and defections of leading members, ran a campaign on “social issues,” with two of the leaders of the protest movement high up on its list. Despite that, it failed to make a significant impact, winning 15 seats, up from 13 in the 2009 elections, to become the third largest party.

Its leader, ex-journalist Shelly Yachimovich, distanced herself from her party’s former programme of “peace” with the Palestinians, supporting Netanyahu’s assault on Gaza last November and the settlement project.

Hatnua, with six seats, was formed by former Kadima leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. It campaigned on the issue of reaching a deal with the Palestinians, but only in order to forestall a Palestinian majority in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

 

Meretz, the social democratic party that was once associated with peace advocates, doubled its representation in the Knesset, with six seats.

It is still unclear whether Kadima, which won the most seats in 2009 (28), has gained enough votes to win any seats at all. The party collapsed last year after its leader Shaul Mofaz took Kadima into Netanyahu’s coalition only to quit six weeks later over the failure to secure an end to exemption from military service for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

The parties to which Israel’s Palestinian citizens, who form 20 percent of the population, have traditionally given their votes have won 12 seats, 10 percent of those available.

Netanyahu now faces the need to fashion a coalition that will accommodate the far-right wing of his Likud party and other settler and religious parties, who have scuppered every attempt at a settlement with the Palestinians, as well as some of the centrist parties. All of them are seeking exemptions from the forthcoming austerity budget for their own social base. Netanyahu is in talks with the rightwing parties, Lapid’s Yesh Atid and possibly Livni’s Hatnua to try and cobble together a workable coalition.

Lapid is now in the position of kingmaker. Netanyahu called him shortly after the polls. Lapid, for his part, has indicated he is willing to work with Netanyahu, saying that the only way to face Israel’s challenges was “together.” He added, however, “What is good for Israel is not in the possession of the right, and nor is it in the possession of the left. It lies in the possibility of creating here a real and decent centre.”

Labour’s Yachimovich has said that she too would try and “form a coalition on an economic-social basis that will also push the peace process forward,” but it is unlikely that she can do so. At the very least, it would require her to include the parties which have the Palestinian Israeli vote, something that no governing party has ever been willing to do.

The “centre” and “left” agree on all fundamentals. Whichever parties ultimately form the next coalition government, they will support Netanyahu’s war agenda and impose the diktats of Israel’s plutocrats and the international financial elite on Israel’s already impoverished workers and their families through further cuts in welfare and public services, along with tax hikes.

Instead of relying on parties tied to capitalism and Zionism, Israeli workers, youth and students must organise themselves independently of all wings of the ruling class, and unite with their class brothers and sisters regardless of religion or ethnicity within Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories and throughout the Middle East. They must fight on a socialist programme for a workers’ government that will expropriate the banks and big business and reorganise the economy on the basis of social need not private profit.

By Oliver Campbell

15 January, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Speaking at a Holocaust memorial in New York on Saturday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stepped up the vilification of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad by comparing the death toll in the country’s civil war to the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II. Ban’s comments are another sign that the major powers are preparing for direct intervention in Syria.

Ban specifically invoked the UN’s fraudulent “responsibility to protect” that provides the pretext for the US and its allies to violate national sovereignty to “protect” the local population. “The responsibility to protect applies everywhere and all the time,” he declared. “It has been implemented with success in a number of places, including in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire. But today it faces a great test in Syria.”

The reference to Libya is significant. It provides a model for the operations being considered against the Assad regime—the imposition of a “no-fly” zone and relentless aerial bombardment to complement the arming of militias on the ground. Ban’s remarks coincide with the deployment of Patriot missile batteries and the stationing of 1,200 NATO troops on the Syria-Turkey border, a necessary prelude to any air war. Thousands more troops are stationed in neighbouring countries.

The propaganda war was also intensified by a draft letter signed by more 50 countries, calling for the situation in Syria to be referred to the International Criminal Court. As reported by the Associated Press on Saturday, France and Britain are the most prominent signatories. Apart from further demonising the Syrian regime, the move is designed to intensify pressure on Assad to go.

There are a number of indications that the US and its allies are preparing for direct intervention in Syria.

According to a CNN report, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta countenanced the possibility of sending US troops to Syria, on the pretext of securing chemical weapons, once a “transition” from the Assad regime had begun. “We’re not talking about ground troops, but it depends on what… happens in a transition,” Panetta said last Thursday.

Speaking in the British parliament on the same day, Foreign Secretary William Hague again called for the scrapping of a European Union embargo on providing arms to anti-Assad militias in Syria, when the embargo comes up for review on March 1. He went further, however, declaring that “we should send strong signals to Assad that all options are on the table”—that is, including military intervention.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani was even more blunt on Saturday. He called for a deadline for diplomatic efforts to end the conflict in Syria of “three or four weeks, but no more.” Hamad again insisted that any “political solution” to the conflict required Assad’s removal.

Talks in Geneva last Friday between US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, mediated by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, resulted in no agreement. On Saturday, Russia reaffirmed its opposition to calls for the removal of Assad as a precondition for a “political transition in Syria.”

The Russian defence ministry announced on Friday that it would hold major naval exercises in the eastern Mediterranean, involving anti-ship, anti-submarine, and air defence operations. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu reportedly described the naval exercises as “the biggest in the history of our country.” Russia operates a naval maintenance base in Syria at the port of Tartus. The US and its allies already have warships in the same area.

The danger of the Syrian civil war sparking broader conflict has prompted concern in British ruling circles. Responding to Hague’s comments, Liberal Democrat MP Menzies Campbell warned: “There is a risk that we will have a proxy war between Russia and NATO fought out on the streets of Syria by Syrians.”

Anti-Assad forces appear to be targetting infrastructure outside the main cities. On Friday, opposition fighters claimed to have seized control of Taftanaz, a major helicopter base in the northern province of Idlib. The base has been the scene of heavy fighting for months. The opposition victory was reportedly due, in large part, to the arrival of Islamist reinforcements at the beginning of the year, including members of the al-Nusra Front, which has links to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Largely as a public relations move, Washington branded the al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organisation in December, but is well aware that its Syrian proxies continue to collaborate closely with, and rely militarily on, the Islamists. A Washington Post article raised concerns, not over the role of the al-Nusra Front as a fighting force in assisting the US to oust Assad, but its role if and when he was forced out.

Entitled, “Worries about a ‘failed state’ in Syria,” the article explained that an intelligence report provided by Syrian sources to the US State Department referred the situation in Aleppo, where “disorganised fighters, greedy arms peddlers and profiteering warlords” were facilitating the growing influence of the Islamists.

The report provided a bleak picture of the pro-Western Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Aleppo: “The FSA has [been] transformed into disorganised rebel groups, infiltrated by large numbers of criminals. All our efforts with MCs [military councils] were abolished… Warlords are a reality on the ground now… A [failed] state is the most likely outcome of the current condition, unless adjustment [is] done.”

Washington Post writer David Ignatius warned that the “dangers of US passivity” could lead to a situation akin to Libya. He urged the Obama administration to support “moderate military forces” to assist “a stable transition.” In reality, the concern is to establish a pliable pro-US regime, based on “moderates,” to safeguard American economic and strategic interests in Syria, as in Libya. That has been Washington’s aim from the outset.

The conditions in Libya, more than a year after its so-called liberation, are a devastating indictment of Ban Ki-Moon’s promotion of intervention of the major powers under “the responsibility to protect.” A pro-Western regime sits atop a country divided up between rival regional and tribal militias, each vying for a slice of political power and oil profits, even as the majority of the population confronts mass unemployment and abject poverty. Now the same is being prepared for Syria.

By Kourosh Ziabari

15 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

If you’ve ever tried to search for reliable information and analyses which expose the concealed and obscured side of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, you’ve surely come across to the website “If Americans Knew.” This website belongs to a non-profit organization which focuses on the Israeli – Palestinian conflict and the foreign policy of the United States toward the Middle East . “If Americans Knew” publishes commentaries and articles that the American mainstream media pusillanimously shun and reject because of their fear of the influential Zionist lobby which predominantly rules the U.S. administration and Congress. “If Americans Knew” releases statistical reports on the history of Israeli – Palestinian conflict including the number of Palestinian casualties, the number of children murdered by the Israel Defense Forces, the number of Palestinians detained in the Israel jails and the number of Israel’s illegal settlements on the Palestinian lands.

American freelance journalist and researcher Alison Weir is the founder and executive director of “If Americans Knew.” She has written several articles and compiled investigative reports on the Israeli Palestinian conflict and provoked the furious and frantic criticism of Zionist organizations such as Anti Defamation League. Her articles have appeared on a number of media outlets and news websites including Counter Punch, Antiwar.com, The Link, Znet, Los Angeles Times, Greenwich Post, Poynter.org and Washington Report for Middle East Affairs.

Alison Weir is at the forefront of combating the biased coverage of Israeli – Palestinian conflict in the mainstream media and through her sincere efforts has revealed the plight of the Palestinian nation under the occupation of Zionist regime. She believes that criticizing Israel in public will cost a journalist his career. She says that it’s far less damaging for an American journalist to write critically of the United State government than of Israel .

What follows is the complete text of my interview with Alison Weir in which we discussed a variety of topics including the dominance of Israeli lobby over the U.S. administration and Congress and also the biased coverage of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict by the western mainstream media.

Kourosh Ziabari: Ms. Weir; Let me start with the question that, what would really happen if Americans knew? What would happen if they knew that their taxes go to empower an occupying regime which kills women and children ruthlessly, massacres innocent civilians relentlessly and destroys their homes unjustifiably?

Alison Weir: They would be outraged and would demand that this stop. I have found that when I speak to groups around the country the most common question I receive is, “What can we do about this?!”

KZ: What made you think of establishing “If Americans Knew?” Actually, what were your motives for taking such a sensitive step?

AW: When I returned from my first trip to Gaza and the West Bank , I was determined to tell Americans what was going on. I felt that while I could probably occasionally get articles into the mainstream media, the context would remain so distorted that they would make little difference. Therefore, I felt it was essential to begin an organization that would work to get the information straight to the public in as many ways as possible and that would also study and expose media malfeasance on this issue.

KZ: What difficulties did you face while working on this project?

AW: One of the most difficult aspects is raising enough money to sustain the organization. The good news is that we have been able to keep going for almost ten years. The unfortunate reality is that there’s never been enough money to go beyond a paid staff of about 2-3 people. Zionist organizations of all sorts have extremely large staffs, extensive offices, etc. They also have a great many people of sufficient wealth that they can work on this issue without compensation. We’re in a far different situation.

KZ: Have you ever been pressured by the Zionist-controlled mainstream media or the Israeli lobby in the United States not to talk of Israeli regime critically?

AW: I don’t recall being pressured by the Israeli Lobby directly. Instead, they frequently try to pressure local organizations not to have me speak.

Mainstream media organizations also don’t pressure me directly. Rather, they simply don’t report about my information or inform their audiences about the existence of If Americans Knew. Democracy Now is among this group.

One book editor commissioned an article by me and then attempted to censor what I wrote.

KZ: Have you ever been threatened or seriously intimidated for the content which you publish?

AW: Yes. I received a death threat in 2003. You can read the details here . We periodically receive obscene or harassing emails and phone calls from Zionists. There are websites that misconstrue my work and that defame me, including the very powerful Jewish “Anti-defamation League.”

There are infiltrators in the pro-Palestinian movement who initiate whispering campaigns against me and work to prevent groups from inviting me to speak and from using our written materials. This often fails; sometimes it succeeds.

Recently a man knocked my phone from my hands. You can see this here .

Once when I tried to go to Palestine I was stopped at Ben Gurion Airport , held in a detention cell for 28 hours, and deported. Twice I have been briefly detained by Israeli soldiers while trying to film incidents in the Occupied Territories .

KZ: Several renowned politicians, academicians, activists and writers have likened Israel ‘s treatment of the subjugated Palestinians to the deplorable situation of the blacks under the South African Apartheid regime. From the former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to the Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan and from the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu to former Israeli Knesset member Uri Avnery, many people believe that Israel undeniably resembles aspects of the South African Apartheid regime. What’s your viewpoint in this regard? Does the Israeli regime have the features of an apartheid state?

AW: While no two situations are ever identical, it is clear that Israeli actions are a form of apartheid. As you note, South African experts who have visited Palestine have stated this and they are clearly in a position to know.

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa commissioned a legal study of the Israel-Palestine situation to “scrutinize the situation from the nonpartisan perspective of international law, rather than engage in political discourse and rhetoric.” Their 15-month investigation found that “ Israel , since 1967, is the belligerent Occupying Power in occupied Palestinian territory, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.”

In addition, inside Israel itself there is systemic discrimination against non-Jews.

KZ: In your recent article, you referred to statistical studies which reveal that primetime network news shows report on Israeli children’s deaths at rates up to 14 times greater than they report on Palestinian children’s deaths. The same is applicable to the other aspects of mainstream media’s portrayal of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. For example, we clearly witnessed the exercise of double standards by the Western media during the Gaza War of 2008 – 2009. Why do the American media treat the Israeli – Palestinian conflict so unfairly?

AW: I feel there are most multiple causes. Below are some of the main ones:

1. Advertising and consumer pressure by Israel partisans against media that begin to provide more accurate coverage on this issue. These are often orchestrated and cause considerable financial damage to news organizations.

2. Reporters and editors who are biased towards Israel . I recently was astounded to learn how many of the allegedly “objective” journalists in the region reporting for American media have close ties to the Israeli military. Ethan Bronner, New York Times bureau chief, has a son in the Israeli army. Others have themselves served in the Israeli military. “Pundit” Jeffrey Goldberg, who is often interviewed for commentary on U.S. mainstream news broadcasts, served in the Israeli military.

I’ve written several articles and made a video on this topic:

1 , 2 , 3 and 4

The Associated Press is probably the primary source of international news for media all over the U.S. and is probably an extremely significant cause of the problem. Its control bureau, through which virtually all reports on the region must pass, is located in Israel and is staffed largely by Jewish and Israeli journalists, many with close family ties to the Israeli military. Their reporting invariably contains pro-Israel spin and context. Quite often, they don’t even send out reports on newsworthy items that reveal negative facts about Israel .

3. Media owners, publishers, CEOs, etc. who are biased toward Israel, for example, Mortimer Zuckerman, Leslie Moonves, Sumner Redstone, etc. Journalist Jeffrey Blankfort has reported on this .

4. Editors who know nothing about this issue and would not necessarily be Israel partisans but are taken in by AP, the New York Times, etc. Journalists who have never been to the region, never read a book on it, or studied it independently, often think they are experts on the subject because they’ve been reading AP et al reports for years. They have no idea how filtered and slanted these are.

5. Journalists quickly learn that reporting honestly on Israel-Palestine is not a good career move and often self-censor. It is much safer not to touch the “third rail” of American journalism; they are aware that the people who pay them won’t like it. It is far less damaging to one’s career to write critically of the American government than of Israel .

6. Fear of being called “anti-Semitic” and of being black-balled. The ADL, similar organizations, and Israel partisans are quite powerful in the U.S. People don’t wish to come under their attack; they’ve seen what happened to Helen Thomas and others.

KZ: Many American citizens who voted for President Obama in the 2008 presidential elections had hoped that he would be a different, sincere and trustworthy politician and a real man of change who would detach himself from the hawkish policies of George W. Bush. However, no essential change of policy was observed during President Obama’s administration. What’s your analysis of the performance of President Obama? Why did he fail to fulfill his promise of change?

AW: Because he is aware that pro-Israel groups and individuals determine who has the chance to be a major contender for the Presidency of the United States . If he tried to do something substantial, there would be a powerful – and successful – campaign to prevent him from winning a second term. This campaign would consist of funneling donations away from him to his opponents and of defaming him on a variety of issues in the media. Plus, even if he tried to do something, Congress would over-rule him, out of the same fears. Long before Mearsheimer and Walt wrote their exposé on this, Paul Findley described this situation in his powerful book, “They Dare to Speak Out.” Richard Curtiss, Janet McMahon, and Delinda Hanley, from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, have been exposing this for many years.

KZ: Following the 9/11 attacks, a wave of Islamophobic sentiments began to encompass the public sphere in the United States and the European society. The U.S. administration portrayed a horrific and appalling image of Islam and sowed the seeds of hatred against Muslims in the hearts of the Western citizens. However, we already know that they were not Muslims who planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks. Even if we admit that it was Osama Bin Laden who masterminded the 9/11 attacks, I as a Muslim should promulgate that he was not a devout Muslim, but rather a CIA asset since the Afghan-Soviet war in 1980s. What’s your viewpoint in this regard? Why is the American society’s stance toward the Muslim so repulsive?

AW: Islamophobia in the U.S. has been largely promulgated by media, individuals, and organizations working on behalf of Israel . This is one of their most despicable and dangerous campaigns and has been going on for decades. Among those whose work, statements, and or funding have resulted in making Americans fear and hate Muslims are Pamela Geller, Steve Emerson, Aubrey and Joyce Chernick, Martin Kramer, Charles Jacobs, David Horowitz, David and Meyrav Wurmser, Frank Gaffney, Caroline Glick, Daniel Pipes, etc. John Sugg has written on this topic for years; more recently Max Blumenthal, Maidhc O Cathail, and several others have exposed it.

See 1 , 2 , 3 and 4

KZ: The Zionist lobby and organizations such as Anti Defamation League, as you have pointed out in your articles, denounce as anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish every single criticism of the actions and policies of the Israeli regime, thus demoralizing and discrediting the critics of Israel who dare to call into question the illegal and immoral actions of this regime. What’s your take on this? How should the critics of Israel find podiums to voice their opposition to the actions and policies of the Israeli regime without being demonized?

AW: This is one of their most widely used tactics. Their intention is two-fold: to undermine the credibility of people speaking and writing accurately on Israel , and to intimidate people from doing this.

I feel that people should simply ignore these attacks and continue to write and speak as honestly and accurately as possible. Such smears have become so widespread that they are beginning to be a bit like crying wolf too often. An increasing number of Americans are rolling their eyes when they hear that yet another person with no record of bigotry is allegedly “anti-Semitic.” In fact, such an attack often helps to raise interest in the person being so maligned, many people assuming – often correctly – that this is a person giving the true facts on Israel and/or the Israel Lobby.

KZ: You may admit that as long as the United States gives its unconditional support to the Israeli regime, vetoes any UNSC resolution critical of Tel Aviv and prevents the international community from investigating its crimes and illegal activities, including its underground military nuclear program, no progress may be made in the course of holding Israel accountable for its actions and policies and therefore no change will be resulted and the suffering of the Palestinian nation will continue. Do you foresee a future in which Israel is eventually held responsible for its criminal actions before the international community? Is such a thing practically possible at all?

AW: Yes, I believe strongly that this will change when Americans learn the facts and demand a change in U.S. policies. The reality often forgotten in analyses on this issue is that Israel ‘s power comes from the U.S. When the sleeping giant in this relationship, i.e. the American public, wakes up, everything will change. The fact that this is already starting is reflected by the creation of entities such as J Street trying to co-opt this growing movement.

 

Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning Iranian journalist and media correspondent. He writes for Global Research, CounterCurrents.org, Tehran Times, Iran Review and other publications across the world. His articles and interviews have been translated in 10 languages. His website is http://kouroshziabari.com

By Dr Paul Larudee

13 January, 2013

@ Counterpunch.org

Amazing stuff, India ink. A few drops spread vigorously with a roller for several minutes on an iron plate are enough for eight sets of fingerprints and two sets of handprints on four ancient double-sided and folded Indian police fingerprint forms. By contrast, the mug shot was taken with a digital camera. After that, I was issued an official deportation order, for which I signed to acknowledge receipt. My passport remained in police custody until I got to the security check at the airport, when it was returned to me.

My crime? I had spoken to an audience of 22,000 youth at a Student Islamic Organization conference in Kerala State without having a visa that authorized public speaking or conference participation. India is perhaps the only “democracy” where free speech for foreigners depends upon the visa they are carrying. In fact, it is probably the only such country that has no visit visa category at all, and which has one of the most convoluted, bureaucratic and invasive visa application procedures this side of North Korea.

Not that the visa restrictions are always enforced. However, the myriad regulations and procedures (“for public protection”) permit the security apparatus to control individuals and events at their discretion without having to cite the true reasons for their enforcement. Every effective police state knows the drill.

In my case, I used a tourist visa, because the conference visa is a truly onerous procedure unless it is a state-sponsored event. In fact, that is the only type of conference participation permitted, because even private groups must seek state sponsorship in order to bring speakers from outside. In today’s India, however, state sponsorship is hardly a routine bureaucratic procedure.

It shouldn’t have been this way. India was supposed to have been the model for tolerant multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, multi-confessional societies. And when India was a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, carefully balancing its relationships among great and small powers and supporting those who might otherwise be a mere pawn in world affairs, this promise seemed plausible.

Regrettably, India has now become a home-grown Raj, choosing sides and fomenting discord between competing interests as a means of governing and controlling, in the best traditions of its colonial past. Thus, for example, conservative Salafist clerics are welcome when they attend conferences on tourist visas, while human rights speakers like David Barsamian, John Esposito, Yvonne Ridley, Wilhelm Langthaler and myself are unwelcome, and are denied visas or expelled, and/or their hosts are prosecuted.

The Salafist treatment is part of a Machiavellian formula hatched by India with its newest partner, Israel. Salafists deserve free speech as much as anyone, but the reason India accords more of it to them is on the advice of Israel. Israel promotes Islamophobia as part of its strategy of demonizing Palestinians and Arabs, a majority of whom are Muslims, and the Salafist brand of Islam fits Israel’s agenda of portraying Islam as an extremist ideology. This stokes the flames of the more extreme nationalist Hindu groups in India and plays on the fears of many other non-Muslim groups, as well. Since Pakistan is an external Muslim enemy, such demonization helps to unify non-Muslim India and permit popular tolerance of greater government control as well as encroachment of security forces on civil rights and privacy.

In fact, India has its own version of the U.S. Patriot Act, curbing the rights of its people. It is called the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), and while the title is more honest than “Patriot”, it is also a bit scary. It implies that people can be snatched from the edge of a sidewalk on the pretext that they were intent on jaywalking. No need for the infraction to happen first.[i] UAPA is an illustration of the degree to which human rights have been marginalized in the land of M.K. Gandhi and Abdulghaffar Khan.

Not that India doesn’t have real security concerns. Communal strife is as old as India itself and has sometimes risen to the level of genocide, which drove the 1947 Pakistan secession. However, it is one thing to use law enforcement to prevent fighting and quite another to use it to drive a wedge between communities with a view towards playing them off against each other.

A case in point is the role that Israel is playing. The self-proclaimed Jewish state is selling itself to India as a worthwhile ally on the basis that it is a) an experienced and effective leader in the fight against Islamist extremism and terrorism, b) a supplier of high-tech weapons and intelligence, and c) a means of access to U.S. support and cooperation. In effect, Israel is saying that both states have common friends and enemies and that Israel is in a position to provide what India needs.

India appears to be buying, and is currently the largest customer for Israeli military arms systems and services. Never mind that the expensive Iron Dome systems are effective less than 50% of the time against rockets from Gaza that use 16th century technology. Like most governments, India has been seduced by the promise of omniscient surveillance systems and the prospect of winning battles rather than preventing them.

This is obviously a devil’s bargain. True to the nature of such contracts, however, are the surprises that await the unwary. It is instructive to remember that Israeli agents once planted bombs in Baghdad synagogues to encourage Iraq’s Jews to emigrate to Israel. (It worked, and encouraged Iraqi thugs toward violence, as well.)

Since then, Israel has stolen nuclear weapon technology and weapons grade fissionable material from the U.S., conducted the most massive spying operation in U.S. history against its “ally”, and staged numerous assassinations and “black ops” actions outside its borders, including friendly countries. Questions currently surround the killing of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria and the putative assassination attempt on Israeli diplomats in India. Israel blamed both of these on Iran on the basis of flimsy evidence, possibly fabricated in collaboration with its allies, the violent Mujahedin-e-Khalq Iranian exile group.

India would do well to be more circumspect toward friends like this. Vilifying Iran is high on Israel’s current agenda, and Israel reportedly provided “evidence” and pushed the Indian government to prosecute the case. The result was the arrest of journalist Syed Mohammed Ahmed Kazmi, who anchors a news program on West Asia providing alternative views of events in the region. His open advocacy of better relations with Iran and his Iranian contacts were enough make him an Israeli target and an Indian suspect. After seven months of incarceration, however, the Indian government had to release him for lack of evidence.

Kazmi and I shared the podium at the SIO conference in Kerala and I was able to chat with him privately just prior to the event. He is a courageous man, willing to accept the risk of speaking in public so soon after his release, but appears to hold no bitterness. Peaceful dissent of this kind needs to be encouraged in India, which is well advised to heed John F. Kennedy’s warning that, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Sadly, Israel sees violent revolution in foreign countries to be in its national interest, under the “divide and conquer” principle. However, one would think that India’s principle would be the opposite if it wants to remain a successful unified nation with a highly diverse population seeking assurance that all their voices are heard in a national consensus. Furthermore, there is no need for India to acquire the same enemies as Israel. It may be in Israel’s perceived interests, but is it in India’s?

My few days in Kerala were an inspiring glimpse of what is possible. I saw thousands of young Indian Muslims whose religious and social mission is to benefit all mankind, to alleviate the social ills of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to promote interfaith cooperation and to create an umbrella that is inclusive of everyone.

Although this was a Muslim event, many who attended were not Muslim and were invited directly by their Muslim neighbors. I was invited to be the keynote speaker even though I am not Muslim and spoke more generally about human rights and about Palestinian issues, which are not specifically Muslim or Indian. Roughly 40% of the attendees were young women, in a society not always known for its success in promoting women’s rights.

These young people were politically aware, committed, well organized and motivated. Society is supposed to create models for young people, but in this case it was the young that created a model for their society.

Dr. Paul Larudee is a human rights advocate and one of the co-founders of the movement to break the siege of Gaza by sea. He was deported from India on 31st December, 2012.

[i] For a fictional treatment illustrating the absurdity of this proposition, see the film Minority Report (2002).

By Eileen Fleming

13 January, 2013

@ Eileenfleming.org

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this year coincides with the inauguration of President Barack Obama’s second term.

To bring attention to the urgent need for action on climate change, leaders and individuals from Buddhist, Christian [Catholic, Evangelical and Protestant], Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and other faith traditions will unite with the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate for “A Pray-in for the Climate” in front of the White House on Tuesday, January 15th, the 84th birthday of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

On January 19, the Jewish Voice for Peace, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace will lead a Rally and March to the White House calling for “No Blank Check for Israel” which can be signed onto here: http://www.obamaletter.org

Inspired by Rev. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, which directly challenged his “fellow clergymen” I seized the liberty to spin it as a Citizens of Conscience Manifesto for my 2012 run for US House of Representatives:

I am on the Internet because injustice can be expressed here. I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in comfort and not be concerned about what happens in Israel Gaza Palestine.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives in the world can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; examining one’’s motives and acting on conscience with direct action.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community, which has constantly refused to negotiate, is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension, which is necessary for growth.

Too long has The Peace Process been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. We must come to see that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but also a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine “an unjust law is no law at all.”

A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

Segregation [Translates to Apartheid in Afrikaner] distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.

Hence segregation; apartheid, conscription and military occupation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound; it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?

An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and it was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’’s Germany.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever and if repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. -End of Letter from Birmingham Jail [1]

In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, King reminded his fellow clergymen that Jesus was an extremist for love who taught his follower’s to “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

King recalled to his fellow clerics that the Hebrew prophet Amos was an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.”

The world is pulled to change by extremism and our only dilemma is what will we be extremists for? Hate or love? God or State? The preservation of injustice or the extension of justice; equal human rights?

The clinging to the status quo is a form of extremism for all around US are the deep groans from the oppressed, as King addressed from his jail cell:

Few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.

Too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

There was a time when the church was very powerful——in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”

Small in number, they were big in commitment and by their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent——and often even vocal——sanction of things as they are.

If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twenty-first century.

King wondered if organized religion was too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world.

He knew that “Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.”

We who claim to be Christian are called to love our enemies and that the daughters and sons of God are the peacemakers. The last words Jesus spoke to his follower’s before his martyrdom was to “put down the sword” and his first words after his resurrection was “My peace be with you.”

During one of my seven trips to occupied Palestine since 2005, Mohammad Alatar, film producer of “The Ironwall” addressed my group on an Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions tour through Jerusalem and to the village of Anata and the Shufat refugee camp, in the very area where the prophet Jeremiah in the 6th century B.C. critiqued the violent conflicts in the Mid East, which were already old news:

“I hear violence and destruction in the city, sickness and wounds are all I see.” [Jeremiah 6:7]

The remains of a 7-story Palestinian apartment building, one of over

22,000 Palestinian homes that Israel has demolished

After we broke bread and ate a typical Palestinian feast prepared by the Arabiya family in the Arabyia Peace Center, Mohammad Alatar said:

“I am a Muslim Palestinian American and when my son asked me who my hero was I took three days to think about it. I told him my hero is Jesus, because he took a stand and he died for it.

“What really needs to be done is for the churches to be like Jesus; to challenge the Israeli occupation and address the apartheid practices as moral issues.

“Even if every church divested and boycotted Israel it would not harm Israel. After the USA and Russia, Israel is the third largest arms exporter in the world. It is a moral issue that the churches must address.” [IBID]

While he lived the FBI placed wiretaps on Reverend King’s home and office phones and bugged his hotel rooms throughout the country. By 1967, King had become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic.

In his “Beyond Vietnam”speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 [a year to the day before he was murdered] King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

In 1986 the federal government ‘honored’ King with a national holiday.

I IMAGINE if we the people of this homeland would honor King by following his example, it would be a very different world.

1. Vanunu’s WAIT for LIBERTY, Remember the USS LIBERTY and My Life as a Candidate of Conscience for US HOUSE 2012

By Glen Ford

13 January, 2013

@ BlackAgendaReport

A long-planned U.S. escalation of its military presence in Africa will soon get underway, with the permanent deployment of a 3,500-strong brigade. The heavy combat team will make itself at home in African bases in 35 countries. “This is a very different kind of invasion – more like an infiltration-in-force.”

2013 is the year the U.S. kicks off its wholesale military occupation of Africa. The escalation should come as no surprise, since the Army Times newspaper reported, back in June, that a U.S. brigade of at least 3,000 troops would become a permanent presence on the continent in the new year. On Christmas Eve, the Pentagon announced that 3,500 soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade, in Fort Riley, Kansas, will be sent to Africa, supposedly to confront a threat from al-Qaida in Mali, where Islamists have seized the northern part of the country. But the 2nd Brigade is scheduled to hold more than 100 military exercises in 35 countries, most of which have no al-Qaida presence. So, although there is no doubt that the U.S. will be deeply involved in the impending military operation in Mali, the 2nd Brigade’s deployment is a much larger assignment, aimed at making all of Africa a theater of U.S. military operations. The situation in Mali is simply a convenient, after-the-fact rationale for a long-planned expansion of the U.S. military footprint in Africa.

The Pentagon’s larger purpose in placing an army brigade on roving duty all across the continent is to acclimate African commanders to hosting a permanent, large scale U.S. presence. This is a very different kind of invasion – more like an infiltration-in-force. The Pentagon’s strategy is designed to reinforce relationships that the U.S. Africa Command has been cultivating with African militaries since the establishment of AFRICOM during George Bush’s last year in office. As an infiltrating force, AFRICOM has been a phenomenal success.

Militarily speaking, the African Union has become an annex of the Pentagon. The AU’s biggest operation, in Somalia, is armed, financed and directed by the U.S. military and CIA. The 17,000 African troops on so-called peace-keeping duty in Somalia are, for all practical purposes, mercenaries for the Americans – although poorly paid ones. Ethiopian and Kenyan forces act as extensions of U.S. power in the East Africa. U.S. Special Forces roam the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic – ostensibly looking for the fugitive warlord Joseph Kony but, in reality, establishing a web of U.S. military infrastructures throughout center of the continent. Uganda and Rwanda keep the eastern Congo’s mineral riches safe for U.S. and European corporations – at the cost of 6 million Congolese lives. Their militaries are on the Pentagon’s payroll.

In northwest Africa, the 16 nations of the region’s economic community await the intervention of the United Nations – which really means the United States and France – to expel the Islamist forces from Mali. Militarily, the West Africans are totally dependent. But, more importantly, they show no political will to escape this dependency – especially after the demise of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

The creeping, continental U.S. expeditionary force, soon to be spearheaded by the 1st Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade, will bunk down in African military bases throughout the continent, not as invaders, but as guests. Guests who pay the bills and provide the weapons for African armies whose mission has nothing to do with national independence and self-determination. Three generations after the beginnings of decolonization, the African soldier is once again bowing to the foreign master.

Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

By Fil Munas

13 January, 2013

@ Countercurrentsorg

They made her kneel and extend her neck, severing her young head with an unmerciful swish of a sword, shortly before noon on Wednesday, January 9, 2013. The forlorn woman was publicly beheaded by the pitiless Saudis in the town square of Dawadmi in Saudi Arabia, slaughtered like an animal for everyone to see, her separated head dropping to the ground with a muffled thud. Her name was Rizana Nafeek and she was from Muttur in Sri Lanka.

The tragedy of Rizana Nafeek is a gruesome story of innocence betrayed, the ghoulish tale of a precious life destroyed. It began in 2005 when Rizana, hardly seventeen, left her impoverished homeland of Sri Lanka to work as a servant maid in the oil-rich country of Saudi Arabia. She had embarked on this ill-fated journey to support her penurious family at home — they lived in a decrepit shack, her father scavenged and sold firewood from the surrounding jungle for their sustenance, her desperate parents could not adequately provide for the children. Young Rizana, fired by the dreams and the innocence of youth, aspired to make a difference for her family with the relatively handsome wages she hoped to earn as a servant in Saudi Arabia.

Rizana arrived in Riyadh on May 4, 2005. She was immediately sent to work in the household of her sponsoring employer in the town of Dawadmi in central Saudi Arabia. Besides her numerous housekeeping tasks, she was ordered to care for her employer’s infant child who was about four months old at the time. While tending the infant on May 22, 2005, the baby choked while feeding and died as the maid frantically tried to save the child’s life.

Rizana and the baby were in a room by themselves when this happened. As the distraught maid shrieked in horror, the infant’s absent mother who did not witness any of the antecedents, now rushed into the room and instantly accused Rizana of murdering the child.

Rizana was arrested on the spot. She was forced to confess to a crime she did not commit by the Saudi police using inhuman duress, then convicted of murder without any access to due process or the presumption of innocence. On June 16, 2007, the authorities sentenced the miserable maid to death by public beheading. Rizana subsequently stated she was threatened and beaten by the local police into signing the “confession.” No reason was given at the time of the one-sided trial to explain why someone who had worked hardly two weeks in a brand new country should suddenly develop a motive to murder her employer’s child. No autopsy was ever performed to ascertain the cause of death.

Rizana was abandoned by the authorities of her native Sri Lanka who did nothing to help her legally. At great financial expense, the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong appealed the sentence to the highest Saudi tribunals, but without success. Upon confirming her execution last Wednesday, the Saudi Interior Ministry added that Rizana was beheaded because she “strangled the baby” after “a dispute with the mother.” To the best of anyone’s knowledge, no revelations of any dispute with the mother or evidence that the baby was strangled, was ever offered by the Saudi authorities during the seven years they had her incarcerated. This cynical dissembling by the Saudi government in the post-execution statement, besmirching an innocent person they had killed in cold blood, is beyond mind-boggling. Rizana’s grieving parents requested her body returned home for a decent burial. The Saudis refused and buried her in a derelict’s grave.

Rizana had many supporters around the world pleading for her young life, yet none could save her from the immoral actions of a Saudi government oblivious to human rights and natural justice. Inexplicably, the modern world leaves unchallenged the odious behavior of an irrational and medieval regime riddled with self-righteous sanctimony and intolerance, possessing no respect for human rights or gender equality. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights must publicly denounce this monstrous abuse of a person and the unlawful death inflicted on an innocent fellow human by the custodians of a sordid system. High Commissioner Navanethem Pillay should speak out boldly against this abomination for her to have any credibility among fair-minded people around the world, and if she wishes to demonstrate that her Commission has a conscience.

Fil Munas, M.D. is a psychiatric physician and hobby bee-keeper living in Southern Illinois, USA. He may be reached at 1american.muse@gmail.com

By Ismail Salami

13 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The ethnic cleansing in Pakistan has reached an alarming point, with over 120 Shia people killed and several severely wounded in the recent bombings across the country.

The families of the victims decline to bury the bodies of their loved ones unless they hear at least a word of condemnation from the Pakistani government.

In spite of a salvo of ethnic killings in the country, the government turns a blind eye to the tragedy and refuses to take any measures whatsoever in curtailing the inhumane trend. The reason may be tracked down to the fact that militancy has been implicitly backed by government-affiliated organizations such as ISI and the intelligence agencies for the past two decades. There is a purported claim that the ISI is not in the least affiliated to the government and that it operates out of its own volition in eliminating the Shia population which forms at least one-fourth of the population.

Human rights activists said on Thursday that the police and the security forces had failed to protect the vulnerable community. “The callousness and indifference of the authorities offers a damning indictment of the state, its military and security agencies,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, the Pakistan director at Human Rights Watch.

The assassination attempts in Pakistan initially included the Shia elites such as doctors, professors, engineers, and lawyers. However, in recent months, the appalling assassinations have come to encompass any Shia gatherings regardless of their social ranks. Unfortunately, the Pakistani government has constantly tried to put a lid on these crimes, attribute them to sectarian violence and refuse to arrest the guilty parties. As usual, the West has chosen the ‘wise’ policy of media blackout on the inhumane issue. And if there is, the Western media tries to depict the tragedy in the light of a sectarian violence between the Sunnis and the Shias. Their choice of words in this regard well attests to their deliberate manipulation and misreporting of this horrific incident which springs from nothing but blind ignorance and prejudice. In a report by BBC, the network said “Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi said it carried out the deadliest of Thursday’s attacks killing at least 85”, sought to attribute it to sectarianism and shrewdly avoided siding with the victims or condemning the terrorist attack.

The epicenters of these Shia killings include Quetta, Gilgit-Baltistan, Parachinar, lower Punjab and several regions in North West. However, recent months have witnessed Shia killings in large cities such as Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi and Rawalpindi.

The root causes of religious extremism in Pakistan are traceable to the time when the US government sought to oust the Soviet forces from Afghanistan. In those days, the ISI was heavily mobilized by the US and funded by the Saudi Wahhabis to achieve this goal. No wonder, the only countries that recognized the Taliban with the green light of Washington were Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and United Arab Emirates.

A prominent Harvard researcher Nawaf E. Obaid says a former high-ranking Pakistani civil servant with close ties to his country’s intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), told him that “the US provided the weapons and the know-how; the Saudis provided the funds; and we provided the training camps and operations bases for the mujahidin in the early 1980s, then for the Taliban.” According to Obaid, the Saudi political Mogul Sheikh Mohamed bin Jubier, who is known to be the `exporter’ of the Wahhabi creed in the world, was a strong advocate of aiding the Taliban.”

Henry Kissinger writes that although the US and the Taliban had nothing in common, they shared a common enemy and that made them allies. Michael Semple of the Kennedy School of Government also says they shared a common enemy with the United States and both the Carter and Reagan administrations gave the Mujahadeen $3 billion in military aid to fight the Soviets.

After the exit of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the US government decided to continue using these forces in a new direction, a direction which could pave the way for political inequilibrium and religious extremism in Pakistan in particular and in the region in general.

In the meantime, a large number of Shia groups reacted strongly to this new-fledged radicalism which threatened to hurl the country deeper into chaos and commotion. Instead, the US government discerned a strong necessity to curb this fighting force. Therefore, it embarked on a series of complicated and comprehensive plans: to smother this political and intellectual resistance. In the course of time, the US started strengthening radical groups such as al Qaeda, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Sepah Sehabeh, Jundallah and other fledgling extremists in Pakistan. All this was accomplished with the financial assistance of Saudi Arabi and some Arab states in an effort to promote religious extremism and counter the burgeoning influence of Iran in the region.

The assassinations in Pakistan are in fact products of that twisted ill-defined mentality systematically promoted and funded by the US and its puppet Arab regimes.

No matter what labels we use to describe the tragedy, the fact is that what is happening in Pakistan to the Shia minority is an ugly truth, an indelible human stain and an act of genocidal ideology the bitter memory of which will rankle in the minds for many years to come.

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

By Alan Hart

13 January, 2013

@ Alanhart.net

Moshe Feiglin, one of the most deluded and racist of those who make up the extreme right of Israeli politics and who is guaranteed his first seat in the Knesset after the upcoming election, has proposed what I imagine he regards as a nice way to complete Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

At a recent settler-organized conference in Jerusalem, he said Israel should pay Palestinian families to leave the West Bank, using funds earmarked for security measures. “We can give every family in Judea and Samaria $500,000 (USD) to encourage them to emigrate… This is the perfect solution for us.”

I imagine he regards it as a “perfect” solution because it would save Israel from having to create a pretext to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank by military means.

The question somebody should ask him is this. “For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that such an offer is made to the Palestinians on the West Bank and they reject it, what then?”

Feiglin lives in a West Bank settlement and heads Likud’s Jewish Leadership faction. He believes that the Bible, interpreted literally, should form the basis of Israel’s legal system. “This is just the beginning. Eventually, we will build the temple and fulfill our purpose in this land.” And his credentials as a racist are impeccable. In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg for New Yorker, he said:

“Why should non-Jews have a say in the policy of a Jewish state? For two thousand years, Jews dreamed of a Jewish state, not a democratic state. Democracy should serve the values of the state, not destroy them. In any case, you can’t teach a monkey to speak and you can’t teach an Arab to be democratic. You’re dealing with a culture of thieves and robbers. Muhammad, their prophet, was a robber and a killer and a liar. The Arab destroys everything he touches.”

Just imagine what the reaction would be if an Arab politician running for office expressed similar vile thoughts about Israeli and other Jews and their prophets!!! (Zionism’s unquestioning supporters would call it a blood libel. Feiglin’s statement is that plus).

During the conference at which Feiglin made his proposal there was also a most interesting and, I think, very revealing contribution from Yuli Edelstein, currently the Minister of Information and Diaspora in Netanyahu’s coalition government. (I stopped using the term diaspora to describe the collective of the Jews of the world when my very dear friend Ilan Pappe explained to me why it was wrong to do so. Diaspora means, is the consequence of, the movement, migration or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral home. The term “Jewish diaspora” implies that all the Jews of it are from the same established or ancestral home, and that is nonsense. Edelstein’s original homeland, for example, is the Ukraine in what was part of the Soviet Union when he was born there in 1958).

Edelstein told the conference that the lack of Israeli sovereignty over Area C – the 60% of the occupied West Bank under full Israeli military control and in which most of Israel’s illegal settlements are situated – “strengthens the international community’s demand for a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.”

I think he was doing more than calling in code for the formal annexation of Area C. He was also signalling the need for Zionism to pre-empt any possible international pressure for withdrawal by going ahead with annexation without too much further delay. This would see Zionism resorting to its tried and tested way of defying international law. Effectively Israel’s leaders say to the world: “We know we should not have done this, but we’ve done it. What are you going to do about it?” On the evidence of history to date Zionism knows the answer to that question, “Nothing.”

Edelstein is not alone. As the battle for rightwing votes intensifies, more and more members of the Likud-Beiteinu election alliance are using the “a” (annexation) word.

What Feiglin, Edelstein and others said at the conference was seized upon by Tzipi Livni, the former Kadima leader and foreign minister, as an opportunity to advance the election prospects of her own newly formed “centrist” party, Hatnua. She said the conference had “removed the masks” of the Likud-Beiteinu alliance.

She went on:

“Likud-Beiteinu is extreme right wing and will make Israel into a boycotted, isolated and ostracised state” and “lead to the destruction of Zionism and the establishment of a bi-national state.”

Those of us who are concerned with the need for justice for the Palestinians and peace with equal rights and security for all have to hope that her prediction will not be proved wrong by events.

Update

I wrote this piece shortly before hundreds of thousands of Palestinian supporters of Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction were allowed by Hamas to rally in Gaza to mark Fatah’s 48th anniversary. If that’s a sign that there is now a real prospect of a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation for the sake of Palestinian unity, the probability is that the Israeli right will be strengthened in its conviction that the ticking demographic time-bomb of occupation must be defused by any means, including, if necessary, a final ethnic cleansing by military means, not the nice way Feiglin proposed.

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs at http://www.alanhart.net and tweets via http://twitter.com/alanauthor