Ziomania

Posts for April 13, 2011

2011-04-13T10:13:00.001-07:00

WikiLeaks Cable #09SANAA1662Iran in Yemen: Tehran's shadow looms large, but footprint is small

2011-04-02T07:42:00.000-07:00

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reference ID e.g. #09SANAA1662. Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin 09SANAA1662 2009-09-12 14:02 2010-12-03 21:09 SECRET//NOFORN Embassy Sanaa (c-ne9-01257) REF: A. STATE 86584
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Â¶B. SANAA 1628
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Â¶C. SANAA 876 Classified By: Ambassador Stephen Seche for reasons 1.4(b) and (d).
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Â¶1. (S/NF) SUMMARY. Despite repeated ROYG accusations of Tehran's material and financial support to the Houthi rebels in Sa'ada and increasingly belligerent media exchanges between Yemen and Iran, Iranian influence in Yemen has thus far been limited to informal religious ties between Yemeni and Iranian scholars and negligible Iranian investment in the energy and development sectors. While Iran has good strategic reasons to involve itself in Yemeni affairs - including Yemen's proximity to Saudi Arabia and the presence of a large Zaydi Shiite population ) the only visible Iranian involvement remains the Iranian media's proxy battle with Saudi and Yemeni outlets over support for the Houthis. Significant gaps exist in post's knowledge of Iranian activities in Yemen due to the sensitivity of the subject and post's very limited access to events in Sa'ada. Post believes that while documented influence is limited, Iran's strategic interests in Yemen merit close monitoring in the future. END SUMMARY.

Iran-royg relations

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Â¶2. (S/NF) After two high-profile Iranian official visits to Sana'a in early 2009, the formal bilateral relationship has rapidly deteriorated as a result of renewed fighting in Sa'ada governorate. Iran maintains an embassy in Sana'a headed by Ambassador Mahmoud Zada. According to DATT sources, Iran is not providing any military training to the Yemenis, and there have been no announced military sales between the two countries in recent years. Iranian Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani visited Yemen in May 2009 to discuss Iranian investment in Yemen's energy and infrastructure sectors and the bilateral relationship. During Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki's June visit to Sana'a, his second in two years, both nations maintained at least a public appearance of normal bilateral cooperation. Mottaki told local media at the time, "Iran is pursuing an honest and friendly approach towards Yemen. Iran wants progress, security and prosperity for Yemen."
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Â¶3. (S/NF) With the August onset of the sixth war in Sa'ada, however, the ROYG has reverted to its previous position that Iran is intent on meddling in Yemen's internal affairs. Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Chief of Protocol Abdullah al-Radhi, who spent over a decade in Tehran as a student and diplomat, including a tour as Yemen's ambassador to Iran, echoed the near-unanimous attitude of ROYG officials when he told the DCM on August 23 that he believes Iran wants a strong political card to play in Yemen similar to Hizballah in Lebanon. He said that Yemen tried to normalize the relationship with the visits of Larijani and Mottaki, but Yemen "cannot accept" Iranian attempts to convert the Yemeni Zaydis to Twelver Shiism. (Note: The ROYG views Zaydi Shiites as less extremist and closer in practice to Sunnis than the Twelver Shiism predominant in Iran. End Note.) Radhi also said that the Iranians are still upset about Yemen,s support for Iraq during and since the first Gulf War.

Iran and the houthis

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Â¶4. (S/NF) Although the ROYG maintains that Iran is providing material and financial support to the Houthi rebels in Sa'ada, little evidence has surfaced to date that supports this claim. President Saleh told General Petraeus in a July 26 meeting that the National Security Bureau (NSB) had a DVD showing Houthi rebels training with Hizballah uniforms and tactics. (Note: In a follow-up conversation, NSB Deputy Director Ammar Saleh claimed no knowledge of the DVD. End Note.) In an August 17 meeting, Saleh told Senator McCain that Iran was working against Yemeni stability because it believed that a weakened Yemen would hurt the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, both traditional enemies of Iran. In the same meeting, NSB Director Ali Mohammed al-Ansi claimed that the ROYG had arrested two separate "networks" of Iranians in Yemen on charges of espionage in connection with the Houthis and that one of the accused admitted to providing $100,000 every month to the Houthis on behalf of the Iranian Sanaa 00001662 002 of 004 government. Ansi told Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan on September 6 that the ROYG was unable to share the evidence from this case because it was still in the courts. (Comment: Since the outbreak of hostilities in 2004, the ROYG has used many different arguments, including the Houthis' alleged ties to Iran and Hezballah, to attempt to convince the USG to declare the Houthis a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). In 2008, the ROYG gave post a dossier of information purporting to show ties between the Houthis and Iran. Post passed on the file to the inter-agency community in Washington. Analysts agreed that the information did not proove Iranian involvement in Sa'ada. End Note.)

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Â¶5. (S/NF) ROYG spokesman Hassan al-Lawzi has repeated statements throughout the three weeks of fighting in Sa'ada accusing Iran of supporting the Houthi rebels. On September 1, Foreign Minister Abubakir al-Qirbi publicly warned Iran that interference in the Sa'ada conflict would have a negative impact on bilateral relations and that, if such interference continued, Yemen could be forced to make "hard decisions," according to media reports. Qirbi also lodged an official complaint with the Iranian Embassy in Sana'a detailing Yemen's displeasure with Iranian support for the Houthis. Director for External Financial Relations at the Ministry of Finance Fouad al-Kohlani told PolOff on August 19 that the Houthis' level of organizational sophistication and military successes against government forces indicate a higher level of financial resources than the Houthis could attain on their own. He speculated that because of its strategic interest in gaining a foothold near Saudi Arabia, Iran was likely the Houthis' financial backer. The Iranians, for their part, continue to deny any interference in Sa'ada. On August 23, the Iranian Embassy in Bahrain stated that Iran had no connections to events in Yemen and "supports any movement that works to unify the ranks of the Yemeni people," according to Bahraini media. The Iranian Embassy in Sana'a repeated these statements on September 7, Yemeni media reported.
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Â¶6. (S/NF) Media reports on August 22 cited ROYG officials claiming to have uncovered six storehouses of Houthi-owned, Iranian-made weapons ) including machine guns, short-range rockets and ammunition ) near Sa'ada City. In an August 25 meeting, however, Ministry of Defense Chief of Staff Major General Ahmed al-Ashwal told the OMC Chief that a limited number of weapons "of Iranian manufacture" were found in the area, but would not provide information on the quantity or type, and avoided a direct request from EmbOffs to view the weapons. In June, ROYG military contacts told the DATT that relations between the two countries were "strained" because of Iran's support for the Houthis, and denied that the ROYG was either communicating or in cooperation with Iranian ships conducting counter-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden. (Note: GRPO reporting confirms ROYG refusals to allow Iranian vessels access to Aden harbor, reportedly over ROYG concern that Iran was using Eritrea to ship weapons to the Houthis. End Note.) According to xxxxx, however, the Houthis do not need to receive weapons from outside of Yemen because they can easily capture or purchase them from the Yemeni military. xxxxx, who communicates on a daily basis with Houthis and other Sa'ada residents, agreed that the Houthis' weapons came from the Yemeni military ) either through capture or abandonment on the battlefield or via black-market arms deals by corrupt military commanders - and not from an external source such as Iran.
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Â¶7. (S/NF) The general consensus among civil society is that Iranian government influence in Sa'ada is minimal, but the Houthis might receive some financial support from Iranian groups or individuals. xxxxx, who travels to Sa'ada frequently, told PolOff on August 26 that Iran had not been involved historically in the conflict in Sa'ada, but with changingdomestic circumstances in Iran, might have become involved in the latest round of fighting. He addd, however, that he has no knowledge of any Iranian nationals in Sa'ada in recent years. (Note: The ROYG used to grant Iranians living in Yemen hajj visas to travel overland to Mecca, but stopped issuing the visas some time ago because the ROYG was uncomfortable about Iranians traveling through Sa'ada into Saudi Arabia. End Note.) xxxxx speculated that Iranian groups are likely giving Sanaa 00001662 003 of 004 money to the Houthis, but he does not know to what extent. With that money, the Houthis buy weapons from corrupt elements of the Yemeni armed forces that sell weapons and munitions, xxxxx alleged. Civil society actors, however, were also unable to provide any concrete evidence of the involvement of any Iranian nationals in Sa'ada.
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Â¶8. (S/NF) To date, Iran's most visible involvement in the sixth war in Sa'ada has been the Iranian media's proxy battle with Saudi and Yemeni outlets over Iranian support for the Houthi rebels (Ref B). Continuing a tradition that dates back to the earliest stages of the Sa'ada conflict, the ROYG has accused Iran of financially and materially supporting the Houthi rebels. For its part, Iran ) through state media outlets including English-language Press TV and Arabic-language al-Alam TV ) has claimed that Saudi Arabia is directly involved in the military campaign against the Houthis. The Sa'ada conflict has thus become a propaganda war between Yemen, eager to enlist the support of its Sunni Arab neighbors and the U.S., and Iran, allegedly seeking to nurture a Shi'a proxy force on the Arabian Peninsula. On August 24, Iranian al-Alam TV quoted rebel leader Yahya al-Houthi as denying Iranian support for the Houthis. Iranian media have consistently shown video footage intended to embarrass the ROYG, including images of alleged soldiers fleeing the fighting and Houthis dancing on top of abandoned ROYG armored vehicles.

Iran and the south

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Â¶9. (S/NF) Little evidence ) or even debate ) exists regarding Iran's role with the Southern Movement. The southern secessionist movement, which is formally a secular organization that has among its ranks former Sunni jihadists, has, to date, no established connections with either the Houthis or Iran.xxxxx, told PolOff in May and July that the movement had repeatedly rejected offers of collaboration with the Houthis. xxxxx told PolOff on September 6 that the movement's leaders wanted to continue peacefully advocating for separation, rather than affiliating themselves with the Houthis or external actors willing to advocate violence such as Iran. Some limited evidence, on the other hand, indicates that Iran might be a more willing partner with southerners fed up with the current regime. According to DATT contacts, the ROYG asked the then-Iranian military attache to leave Yemen in 2008, purportedly because he had attempted to make contact with separatists in the southern governorates. He has not been replaced. Former Yemeni Ambassador to Iran Radhi said that the Iranian Ambassador in Muscat had been instructed to "study the south of Yemen," especially Hadramout and Shabwa governorates.

Iran's soft power in yemen

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Â¶10. (S/NF) Perceived Iranian influence in other arenas is limited to informal religious ties between Yemeni and Iranian scholars and negligible Iranian investment in the energy and development sectors. Despite Yemen's 40% Zaydi Shiite population, religiously-based interaction between Yemen and the world's largest Shi'a country is limited, perhaps because the form of Shiism Zaydis practice hews closer to Sunni Islam than the Twelver Shiism of Iran. Ambassador Radhi, however, told the DCM on August 23 that he believes there is a lot of "coordination on Yemen" between Qom and Najjaf, with 40-50 Yemenis studying Islam in Najjaf, and some (NFI) studying in Qom as well. (Note: Given that Yemen has over 9 million Zaydis, it appears that the number of religious students studying in Iraq and Iran combined is very small. End Note.)
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Â¶11. (S/NF) Iranian direct investment in the Yemeni economy is negligible, according to local Iranian businessmen xxxxx, and xxxxx. The only recent significant Iranian commercial activity in Yemen involves the ROYG,s tortuous experience hiring the Tehran-based Parsian HV Substations Development Company to build the substation of the Marib 1 power plant (Ref C). ROYG officials at all levels told EconOff that the decision to hire the Iranian firm was purely political, rather than economic, stemming from a desire in 2005 to expand relations with Iran. The delays caused by the technical incompetence of the Iranian firm have resulted in hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in foregone savings from switching away from expensive diesel and towards natural gas in the power sector. (Comment: Post believes Iranian commercial activity will remain limited in Yemen, absent future politically-driven bilateral trade missions. End Comment.) The Iranian government funds two hospitals in Sana'a that are among the better medical facilities in the capital. The management of the hospitals is Iranian, but the staff is largely local. Comment -------
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Â¶12. (S/NF) Yemen's formal relationship with Iran is by all accounts relatively fragile, and has continued to deteriorate in recent months. Since the start of the Sa'ada conflict in 2004, Yemen has looked to pin the Houthis' strength and resilience in fighting the ROYG on the Iranians. Despite Yemen's seemingly heartfelt concerns that Iran is backing the Houthi rebels and the ROYG's desire to convince its powerful friends (the U.S. and Saudi Arabia) of Iran's nefarious intentions in Yemen, it has to date been unable to produce any concrete evidence of what it says is wide-scale meddling. It is post's firm belief that if Yemen had any concrete evidence that the Houthis had connections to either Hizballah or Iran, it would have produced it immediately; the lack of such evidence likely indicates that the ROYG lacks any real proof of such links. On the other hand, Iran has clear strategic interests in gaining a foothold in Yemen (Sa'ada) and developing a proxy ally in the Houthis similar to Hizballah in Lebanon. Post believes that, while it is worth keeping an eye on Iranian activities in Yemen, Tehran's reach to date is limited. END COMMENT. Seche

Viewing Wikileaks cable # 05SANAA1352: President Saleh is more interested in enriching his family

2011-04-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
05SANAA1352 2005-05-23 14:02 2011-03-21 14:02 SECRET Embassy Sanaa

This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

Cable dated:2005-05-23T14:26:00
S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 SANAA 001352SIPDISE.O. 12958: DECL: 05/21/2015TAGS: PREL PGOV PTER PINR KMCA KMPI DOMESTIC POLITICS

¶1. (S/NF) Ambassador met informally with xxxxxxxxxxxx. XXXXXXXXXXXX said that President Saleh is more interested in enriching his family than in making the strategic choices necessary to lead Yemen into the future. XXXXXXXXXXXX was gloomy about President Saleh’s ability to understand the importance of the issues of controlling SA/LW and intelligence sharing to U.S.-ROYG cooperation, and said Saleh did not comprehend what was necessary to maintain a close relationship with the USG in the long term. End Summary.

¶2. (S/NF) Echoing what we are increasingly hearing from those ROYG interlocutors closest to the Embassy, XXXXXXXXXXXX said that Saleh is more and more isolated, and less and less responsive to advice from those practical, progressive ROYG insiders XXXXXXXXXXXX. XXXXXXXXXXXX moaned that Saleh “listens to no one,” and is “unrealistically and stupidly confident” that he will always make the right decisions. Saleh, he said, does not think strategically and cares only about enriching his own family, particularly: XXXXXXXXXXXX Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar Commander of Northern Army (considered the second most powerful man in Yemen); XXXXXXXXXXXX

¶3. (S/NF) Together with Sheikh Abdullah al Ahmar’s clan (speaker of the Parliament and supreme chief the Hashid tribal confederation which includes Saleh’s tribe), all of Yemen’s wealth is being squandered and stolen by Saleh who is increasingly “greedy and paranoid,” especially regarding American intentions, said XXXXXXXXXXXX. XXXXXXXXXXXX are making millions working the diesel smuggling and black market along with Ali Mohsen, using military vehicles and NSB and CSF staff to move the fuel to markets in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. XXXXXXXXXXXX

¶4. (S/NF) XXXXXXXXXXXX also said that his contacts in Saada, including a leading sheikh (he would not give his name), are all furious with Saleh over the amount of indiscriminate killing and destruction perpetrated by the regular army in the north during last month’s suppression of the al-Houthi rebellion. XXXXXXXXXXXX claimed that the “Believing Youth” were by far the minority of the fighters in Saada, rather he said, most fighters came from tribes allied together against Saleh and the central government. He said Saleh is “extremely concerned” that he could lose control of the tribes in Saada and that this will spread to the al-Jawf and Ma’rib tribes.

¶5. (S/NF) “Everyone”, according to XXXXXXXXXXXX, has had it with the corruption of Saleh and his family. As an example, XXXXXXXXXXXX cited the outrageous costs of this Sunday’s May 22 celebration of the fifteenth Unity Day being held in Mukalla at a cost, claimed XXXXXXXXXXXX, of more than 300 million USD, most of which will go into the pockets of those government officials arranging the show. (Note: The price tag XXXXXXXXXXXX gave likely includes some of the massive development projects in Mukalla and elsewhere that the government is rushing to complete before May 22. End Note.)

¶6. (S/NF) Comment: XXXXXXXXXXXX is only one source, and this is not the first time he has given a pessimistic assessment of Saleh and his cronies. XXXXXXXXXXXX. But we are increasingly hearing hints and murmurs from others, including XXXXXXXXXXXX and SXXXXXXXXXXXX (who told Ambassador recently that he “wants out” of politics because the President no longer listens to his advice). Even XXXXXXXXXXXX, who, while most certainly profiting from the corrupt business dealings of XXXXXXXXXXXX and Saleh, claimed that he and a group of young GPC and Islah MP’s intend to band together to force the government to control corruption and enact reforms.

¶7. (S/NF) Comment Continued. We have heard rumors backing up XXXXXXXXXXXX’s claim of an opposition candidate in 2006. Saleh is worried about a possible political challenge next year from Islah and the new opposition coalition JMP, or even from within the GPC. We may well see another clamp-down on the press and political parties “for security reasons” that will roll back some or much of the progress made in democratic reforms and human rights just in time for this year’s MCC reports. End Comment. Krajeski

Syrian authorities make arrests following protests

2011-04-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

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AP
Saturday, 2 April 2011
Syrian security agents have arrested dozens of people after thousands took to the streets across the country in pro-democracy marches, activists said on Saturday.
At least seven people were killed Friday as security forces cracked down on demonstrations, bringing the death toll from two weeks of protest to at least 79. Authorities began arresting people, mostly in and around the capital, Damascus, in the hours after the protests broke up and into early Saturday, activists said.
They asked that their names not be used for fear of reprisals.
The extraordinary wave of protests has proved the most serious challenge yet to the nearly five-decade rule of the Arab Socialist Baath Party, one of the most rigid regimes in the Middle East.
The government blamed Friday's bloodshed on "armed gangs." However, the state-run news agency acknowledged for the first time that Syria was seeing gatherings of people calling for reform.
The strength of the burgeoning protest movement is difficult to gauge because Syria has restricted media access and expelled journalists, making it difficult to determine the extent of the protests and how many people are turning out. Two Associated Press journalists were ordered to leave the country Friday with less than an hour's notice.
President Bashar Assad has made limited gestures of reform in the wake of the protests, but he has offered no specfics.
In his first public appearance Wednesday since the demonstrations began, he blamed a "foreign conspiracy" for the unrest. He then announced he was forming committees to look into civilian deaths and the possibility of replacing Syria's despised emergency laws, which have been in place for decades and allow security forces to arrest people without charge.
His reaction enraged many Syrians who hoped to see more serious concessions after the wave of protests in a country where any rumblings of dissent are crushed.
The unrest comes against the backdrop of revolutionary change across the wider Middle East, including Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syrian-authorities-make-arrests-following-protests-2260528.html

NATO airstrikes kill Libyan civilians

2011-04-02T06:50:00.000-07:00

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Sat Apr 2, 2011 1:13PM

The warplanes belonging to the Western-led military coalition have killed several Libyan civilians as they dropped bombs on opposition-held town of Brega.

The opposition says at least 13 of its fighters and several civilians were killed in a NATO airstrike on the outskirts of Brega on Saturday.

The Libyan regime also says at least seven civilians were killed when foreign jets pounded a village near the oil city of Brega.

The developments come a day after a top Vatican official said NATO airstrikes on Libya have killed dozens of civilians.

Iovanni Martinelli said on Friday that there were several witness accounts that least 40 civilians have been killed in Western bomb attack in Tripoli alone.

The US-led military alliance admits that its forces have killed dozens of civilians and wounded several others in the ongoing aerial attacks on key Libyan cities.

A top NATO commander has recently said that the alliance has launched an investigation into the killings.

Meanwhile, revolutionary forces confirm that they have regained control of the oil town of Brega from forces loyal to embattled ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

Several bodies of pro-Gaddafi fighters and burnt-out army vehicles have reportedly been seen along the road in the eastern suburbs of the city.

Brega has been the scene of intense fighting between the government troops and the revolutionary forces in recent days.

Gaddafi's troops have now started their offensive to recapture the city of Misratah from the revolutionaries.

The government has rejected a ceasefire proposal by the opposition.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172730.html

Police shoot one dead in Oman protest: witnesses

2011-04-02T06:44:00.001-07:00

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(AFP)
MUSCAT — Omani police shot dead a protester on Friday in the port of Sohar, north of Muscat when they opened fire to disperse demonstrators demanding the release of prisoners, witnesses told AFP.

It was the second death in the port during the current wave of unrest sweeping across the region, after police killed a protester at the end of February in Sohar, an industrial area some 200 kilometres (124 miles) north of the capital Muscat, particularly badly hit by unemployment.

Police tried to disperse a crowd of protestors who were hurling stones at them and fired on the crowd when the victim was hit, a witness said.

"Dozens of Omanis emerged from mosques in Sohar after Friday prayers to protest and demand the release of jailed relatives" detained during protests earlier this week, one witness said.

"One protester, Khalifa al-Alawi, was hit in the head by a bullet during confrontations with the police and died immediately," the witness said.

Shortly afterwards, the army was deployed in the town to restore order.

On Tuesday the Omani army stormed the Earth roundabout in Sohar, removing a small group of pro-reform protesters and ending a month-long sit-in, witnesses said. The roundabout has become the symbol of protest after the earlier killing of a demonstrator near a police station in the town.

Sohar has been the scene of sit-ins this week, and last Sunday demonstrators pressed public sector workers in the city to go on strike in protest against corruption.

The normally peaceful sultanate has been caught up the general upheaval and protest movement in the Arab world, with people taking to the streets to demonstrate for better living conditions, forcing ruler Sultan Qaboos to bow to pressure and announce a cabinet reshuffle and the creation of 50,000 jobs at the start of March.

But demonstrators in Oman have insisted all along that their protest was aimed at "corrupt" officials, not at Qaboos himself, who has ruled the sultanate for 40 years.

In addition, the Gulf Cooperation Council has set up a 20-billion-dollar development fund for Oman and Bahrain, the two Gulf monarchies worst hit by the crisis.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j1t6UcsUhhalNFSFPviQqiy3pxng?docId=CNG.1fd1c4853d22c9c6fd2476a783525b0d.6e1

Finding a voice to protest in Yemen

2011-04-02T06:41:00.000-07:00

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By Genevieve Bicknell
Sanaa, Yemen

Thousands of anti-government protesters in Yemen have been calling on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down - and they have not given up despite arrests, beatings and fatal shootings.

On a side street, under the shade of a row of tall spreading trees, a small group of men, women and children stand and watch as a soldier runs his hands through the dishes of pasta, rice and fish that the visitors have brought.

He is searching for anything that should not be there.

It is Tuesday morning - visiting hour at Yemen's Political Security Prison in the capital, Sanaa.

The air is still - the chants of the protesters across the city in Change Square cannot be heard from here.

There is nothing for Alia to do but wait. Her two young daughters scuff their shoes in the dust blown in from the desert, and hold on to their mother's abaya, the long black robe that most women here wear.

The smell of fish and spaghetti bolognese starts to drift down the street.

Alia is here to visit Waleed, her husband, who was taken by security forces a year and a half ago.

That afternoon, while Waleed was at work, there was a power cut.

The banging on the front door, when it came, reverberated through the darkened hallway.

Outside in the street, soldiers had surrounded the block.

Waleed's belongings were taken. Waleed never came home.

Silent protests

For three months, Alia did not know where he was - the authorities claimed to have no knowledge of his whereabouts - there was no trace of him.

“ All my life I knew that President Saleh was bad, but I knew not to say anything ”

That was when Alia started her campaign. She made placards with Waleed's photo surrounded by quotations from Yemen's constitution.

Along with her mother-in-law, she began weekly silent protests outside the offices of the security forces.

She went on marches, met other campaigners, and, after three months, she finally got the authorities to admit that they were holding Waleed.

The first time she saw him in the political prison was difficult. It was hard to talk to her husband when they were separated by two wire fences with a wide gap in between.

Since then, they have become used to this form of prison visiting and call across to each other, ignoring the guards who stand beside them listening to their conversation.

Waleed is accused of collaborating with Iran and supporting a Shia Muslim movement that is fighting an on-off war against the government in the north of Yemen.

The charge is based on the fact that he had bought books from Iran to set up a Shia bookstore in the capital, and on confessions that Waleed made - confessions that Alia claims were obtained by torture.

As Waleed awaits trial, Alia is becoming increasingly active.

Once so shy that, according to her family, you could barely hear her when she spoke. She now addresses rallies and gives press interviews.

The placards lie in the boot of her car, ready for the next protest. Nothing seems to intimidate her.

Last year she was invited to attend a human rights conference in Beirut, but was prevented from boarding the plane. Instead she was ushered into a back office and had her passport cancelled.

Being beaten by the security forces during one of the weekly protests only encouraged her further, and she says, smiling at me, her face now healed, that she will continue her work as a human rights activist even after Waleed is released.

Her husband's imprisonment has changed Alia's life in many ways.

"I've never been stronger," she remarks.

This unyielding, dedicated resistance is probably not what President Ali Abdullah Saleh had intended to inspire.

Yet, it is being replicated in the streets and squares all over Yemen, as protesters demand an end to his 32 years of rule.

“ Over the last few weeks Yemenis from all walks of life have started to speak without fearing ”

As Waleed's sister, Mawadha, puts it: "All my life I knew that President Saleh was bad, but I knew not to say anything, but now, after Waleed's arrest, we've started being more open and saying what we think.

"It has made us speak without fearing."

Over the last few weeks, Yemenis from all walks of life have started to speak without fearing, and most are telling President Saleh to go.

And however he tries to quell these protests - with tear gas, with paid thugs brandishing sticks and knives, and with snipers firing from rooftops, he only succeeds in increasing the number of protesters.

Oppression, he is discovering, can be counter-productive.

Outside the prison, the shadows cast by the trees shrink as the sun moves overhead. The midday call to prayer begins echoing across the city, one call melding into another until they become one rolling wave of sound.

The soldier eventually finishes inspecting the dishes of food brought by Alia and her daughters.

It has been a long wait, but finally they are allowed into the prison to visit Waleed.

But how long will the people of Yemen have to wait to see if President Saleh heeds their calls for change?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9443731.stm

Many arrested in Syria after protests

2011-04-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

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Rights group says 21 people rounded up by security forces day after witnesses say several protesters killed.

Last Modified: 02 Apr 2011 12:04

Syrian security forces have arrested more than 20 people, a rights group said, a day after at least four deaths were reported as thousands marched in pro-reform protests.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights named 21 people who had been rounded up on Saturday in the southern city of Daraa and in Homs to the north of the capital.

"It is assumed their arrests are as a result of the last protests," the group said in a statement.

"[The group] demands that the Syrian authorities release all detainees of opinion and conscience and to stop the practice of arbitrary arrests against political opposition and civil and human rights activists."

A day earlier, thousands took to the streets in major cities after Friday prayers, defying security forces who fired tear gas and live ammunition and used batons to try and disperse protesters who have dismissed a limited reform gesture by Bashar al-Assad, in power for the last 11 years.

Witnesses said security forces killed at least four protesters in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Friday.

The authorities have denied that the security forces were responsible for the deaths, blaming them on an "armed group" which opened fire from rooftops in the town on demonstrators and police alike.

They acknowledged that there were an unspecified number of deaths and said there were dozens of wounded, some of them police.

State television charged that "some of the demonstrators had daubed their clothes with red dye to make foreign reporters believe that they had been injured".

The total number of deaths since demonstrations began in Daraa on March 18 is unclear but activists say the toll is at least 60.

UN condemnation

UN chief Ban Ki-moon is "deeply concerned" about the situation, a statement from his office said.

"The secretary-general is deeply concerned about the situation in Syria, where more civilian deaths have been reported during the latest popular demonstrations," it said. "He deplores the use of violence against peaceful
demonstrators and calls for it to cease immediately."

In a much-anticipated speech on Wednesday, his first since the protests erupted, president Assad failed to lift almost 50 years of emergency rule.

He later ordered the formation of a panel that will draft anti-terrorism legislation to replace emergency law, a
move critics have dismissed, saying they expected the new legislation would give the state much of the same powers.

Ending emergency law has been a central demand of protesters, who also want political prisoners freed, and to know the fate of tens of thousands who disappeared in the 1980s.

Assad also ordered an investigation into protest deaths in Daraa and Latakia, and formed a panel to "solve the problem of the 1962 census" in the eastern region of Hassake. Following the controversial census, about 150,000 Kurds living in Syria were denied nationality.

The developments come amid severe restrictions to media operations in Syria. The Damascus correspondent of the Reuters news agency was expelled last week. One foreign journalist was released by authorities on Friday, three days after he had been detained, while a Syrian Reuters photographer remains missing since Monday. Two other foreign Reuters journalists were also expelled.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/20114211257594538.html

Libya Hypocrisy

2011-04-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

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by Charles V. Peña, April 01, 2011
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To quote Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "Let me count the ways."

In October 2002, then Senator Barack Obama had this to say about the prospect of the Bush administration using military force against Iraq:

"[Saddam Hussein] is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

"He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

"But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history."

But he essentially used his rationale for not taking action against Iraq as the basis for the legitimacy of his decision as president to use military force against Libya: "For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant – Muammar Gadhafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world." And Gadhafi doesn’t even have those scary WMDs that the Bush administration used as a pretense for making Saddam a phantom menace.

As a United States senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama stated, "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." In stating his case for military intervention against Libya, the president used the terms "strategic interest" and "national interest" but not "an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Indeed, he all but admitted that Libya wasn’t a threat: "There will be times, though, when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and our values are." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was more blunt when asked directly if Libya posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States: "No, no. It was not – it was not a vital national interest to the United States."

Those Republicans who have been critical of President Obama’s decision to use military force against Libya have done so largely on "technical" grounds. According to Congressman Tim Johnson of Illinois, "Constitutionally, it is indisputable that Congress must be consulted prior to an act of war unless there is an imminent threat against this country. The president has not done so, and in fact, this is the same man who questioned President Bush’s constitutional authority to commit troops to war." Actually, the War Powers Act (passed in 1973) is what states that the president "shall consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities." The Constitution, however, is clear (Article 1, Section 8) that it is the power of Congress "to declare war." So although Bush strong-armed Congress into approving the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, he did not have a declaration of war any more than President Obama does (and the sad truth is that Congress has abdicated its responsibility to declare war in every instance of the use of U.S. military force since World War II – so, arguably, the Congress is also in violation of the Constitution). So while Republicans arguing the Constitution are technically right, they’re also skating on thin ice because they’re just as guilty when it comes to Bush and Iraq.

Indeed, Republicans – except for the few, such as Ron Paul, who opposed the Iraq War from the beginning – are saddled with being cheerleaders for regime change in Iraq using almost the exact same rationale that Obama is using for military intervention in Libya.

Ultimately, the larger problem is that the differences between Democratic and Republican administrations are more style than substance. Clinton demonized Slobodan Milosevic to justify his 1999 Kosovo bombing campaign: "What if someone had listened to Winston Churchill and stood up to Adolf Hitler earlier? How many people’s lives might have been saved? And how many American lives might have been saved?" Bush characterized Saddam Hussein as "a threat to world peace." According to Obama, Gadhafi is a tyrant who "has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world" and was intending to commit a "massacre." All three presidents argued that these demons had to be vanquished, using words like "freedom," "democracy," and "humanitarian" to justify their actions. So the whys and wherefores are essentially the same. Where they differ is "how." Not surprisingly, both Obama and Clinton believe that an international coalition and working with allies is what’s important. Bush, however, was willing to take a more unilateral and "coalition of the willing" approach to intervention.

But unnecessary intervention is unnecessary intervention, regardless of how it’s conducted. And – just as importantly – if there is no threat to the country or our way of life, it doesn’t matter if the president and Congress follow the Constitution to the letter. It’s still an unnecessary war.

http://original.antiwar.com/pena/2011/03/31/libya-hypocrisy/

Gaddafi regime starts talks with the west to end conflict

2011-04-02T06:28:00.000-07:00

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Rebels offer ceasefire as doctor says seven civilians have been killed in an air strike

Peter Beaumont , Chris McGreal in Benghazi and Nicholas Watt
guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 April 2011 20.17 BST

Libyan rebels shell pro-Gaddafi forces outside Brega. Photograph: Nasser Nasser/AP

The regime of Muammar Gaddafi has initiated a concerted effort to open lines of communication with western governments in an attempt to bring the conflict in the country to an end.Libya's former prime minister, Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, told Channel 4: "We are trying to talk to the British, the French and the Americans to stop the killing of people. We are trying to find a mutual solution."Although the regime last night rejected a rebel offer of a ceasefire if Gaddafi withdraws his military from Libya's cities and permits peaceful protests, senior British sources said the Gaddafi government was open to dialogue."If people on the Gaddafi side want to have a conversation, we are happy to talk," one said. "But we will deliver a clear and consistent message: Gaddafi has to go, and there has to be a better future for Libya."The regime rejected the rebels' ceasefire conditions, saying government troops would not leave cities as demanded.However, signs that the regime was looking to reach out to the west came after the Guardian reported that a meeting had taken place between Mohammed Ismail, a senior aide to Gaddafi's influential son Saif al-Islam, and British officials on Wednesday in London. Ismail is a fixer who has been used by the Gaddafi family to negotiate arms deals and has considerable contacts in the west.Ismail and Moussa Koussa, the Libyan foreign minister who defected to Britain on Wednesday night, are not the only current and former supporters of the regime to have been in contact with Britain.British officials have been in contact with a number of Libyan officials in recent weeks in behind-the-scenes diplomacy, according to a spokesman for David Cameron. He stressed that Britain had not been negotiating any possible trade-offs aimed at sealing Gaddafi's exit from power. "There are no deals."The disclosure of the dialogue came as the revolutionary leadership in the east laid down conditions for a ceasefire, after a visit by the UN's special envoy Abdelilah al-Khatib to the rebel capital, Benghazi."We agree on a ceasefire on the condition that our brothers in the western cities have freedom of expression and also that the forces that are besieging the cities withdraw," said one of the leadership, Mustafa Abdul Jalil. "Our aim is to liberate and have sovereignty over all of Libya."The rebels' initiatives were announced as the first credible report of civilian casualties from the western air campaign emerged. Suleiman Refadi, a doctor who has worked with the rebels, told reporters that seven civilians, including three girls from the same family aged 12 to 16, were killed on Wednesday in an air strike.Refadi said three youths and a fourth girl were also killed when missiles hit a government ammunition lorry and destroyed two houses about nine miles from Brega and what is now the frontline. About 25 people were injured. The report was not independently confirmed.In Tripoli, gunfire was heard near Gaddafi's compound. Reuters reported that residents said they saw snipers on rooftops and pools of blood on the streets.The rebels made it clear their offer of a ceasefire should not be seen as a sign of weakness. In an attempt to finally bring order to its chaotic military campaign, the leadership deployed the first of its newly trained troops in the move on Brega, which was seized by the government earlier this week, and hauled up rocket launchers.They were also seen to have communications equipment, which the rebels have asked foreign governments to provide.The newly uniformed soldiers included officers who, the rebels said, would establish lines of command to end shambolic confrontations in which revolutionaries have only been able to move forward under the cover of western air strikes and have been unable to hold ground because they lack plans for defence.While the rebels prepared for a new offensive in the east, Gaddafi's forces meanwhile launched a fresh assault on Misrata, the last enclave in the west still under the revolutionaries' control. Libya's third largest city was hit with tank and artillery fire."It was random and very intense bombardment," a spokesman, called Sami, told Reuters by telephone. "We no longer recognise the place. They are targeting everyone, including civilians' homes."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/01/gaddafi-talks-west

Goldstone rethinks controversial report

2011-04-02T06:20:00.000-07:00

Head of UN probe into alleged war crimes carried out by Israel, Hamas during 2008 Gaza conflict laments his criticism of Israel in article published by Washington Post; claims Goldstone Report would have been a different document 'if I had known then what I know now'
Yitzhak Benhorin

WASHINGTON – Richard Goldstone regrets a report that accused Israel of war crimes. In an article published Friday in the Washington Post, titled "Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes," the South African judge wrote: "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

Goldstone wrote that now he knows that the final report by the UN committee of independent experts, headed by Justice Mary McGowan Davis determined that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza while the de facto authorities (Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks
against Israel.”

The South African judge noted that while the crimes committed by Hamas during Operation Cast Lead, including the indiscriminately rocket fire toward civilian targets were intentional, "The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion."

'Cold-blooded slaughter'

Goldstone agreed with the conclusions of the Israeli investigation into the IDF shelling of the al-Simouni family home that killed some 29 people.

"The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack," he wrote in the article.
Goldstone said he regrets that the "fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes," adding that "Israel’s lack of cooperation with our investigation meant that we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants."

The author of the controversial report stressed that he indicated from the very beginning that Israel's cooperation would have been welcomed.

"The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a foregone conclusion against Israel. I insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel," he wrote.

In his article, Goldstone denounced the murder of the Fogel family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar last month, saying "The Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.

To conclude, the judge wrote, "Our report has led to numerous 'lessons learned' and policy changes," adding that "regrettably, there has been no effort by Hamas in Gaza to investigate the allegations of its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-4050990,00.html

The New Colonialism: Washington’s Pursuit of World Hegemony

2011-04-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

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Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
April 1, 2011

What we are observing in Libya is the rebirth of colonialism. Only this time it is not individual European governments competing for empires and resources. The new colonialism operates under the cover of “the world community,” which means NATO and those countries that cooperate with it. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was once a defense alliance against a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Today NATO provides European troops in behalf of American hegemony.

Washington pursues world hegemony under the guises of selective “humanitarian intervention” and “bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed peoples.” On an opportunistic basis, Washington targets countries for intervention that are not its “international partners.” Caught off guard, perhaps, by popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, there are some indications that Washington responded opportunistically and encouraged the uprising in Libya. Khalifa Hifter, a suspected Libyan CIA asset for the last 20 years, has gone back to Libya to head the rebel army.

Gaddafi got himself targeted by standing up to Western imperialism. He refused to be part of the US Africa Command. Gaddafi saw Washington’s scheme for what it is, a colonialist’s plan to divide and conquer.

The US Africa Command (AFRICOM) was created by order of President George W. Bush in 2007. AFRICOM describes its objective:

“Our approach is based upon supporting U.S. national security interests in Africa as articulated by the President and Secretaries of State and Defense in the National Security Strategy and the National Military Strategy. The United States and African nations have strong mutual interests in promoting security and stability on the continent of Africa, its island states, and maritime zones. Advancing these interests requires a unified approach that integrates efforts with those of other U.S. government departments and agencies, as well as our African and other international partners.”

Forty-nine countries participate in the US Africa Command, but not Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, and Ivory Coast. There is Western military intervention in these non-member countries except for Zimbabwe.
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23940

One traditional means by which the US influences and controls a country is by training its military and government officers. The program is called International Military and Education Training (IMET). AFRICOM reports that “in 2009 approximately 900 military and civilian students from 44 African countries received education and training in the United States or their own countries. Many officers and enlisted IMET graduates go on to fill key positions in their militaries and governments.”

AFRICOM lists as a key strategic objective the defeat of the “Al-Qaeda network.” The US Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) trains and equips “partner nation forces “ to preclude terrorists from establishing sanctuaries and aims to “ultimately defeat violent extremist organizations in the region.”

Apparently, after ten years of “the war on terror” an omnipotent al-Qaeda now ranges across Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia in Africa, across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the UK and is such a threat within the United States itself as to require a $56 billion “Homeland Security” annual budget.

The al-Qaeda threat, a hoax as likely as not, has become Washington’s best excuse for intervening in the domestic affairs of other countries and for subverting American civil liberties.

Sixty-six years after the end of World War II and 20 years after the Collapse of the Soviet Union, the US still has an European Command, one of nine military commands and six regional commands.

No other country feels a need for a world military presence. Why does Washington think that it is a good allocation of scarce resources to devote $1.1 trillion annually to military and security “needs”? Is this a sign of Washington’s paranoia? Is it a sign that only Washington has enemies?

Or is it an indication that Washington assigns the highest value to empire and squanders taxpayers’ monies and the country’s credit-worthiness on military footprints, while millions of Americans lose their homes and their jobs?

Washington’s expensive failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have not tempered the empire ambition. Washington can continue to rely on the print and TV media to cover up its failures and to hide its agendas, but expensive failures will remain expensive failures. Sooner or later Washington will have to acknowledge that the pursuit of empire has bankrupted the country.

It is paradoxical that Washington and its European “partners” are seeking to extend control over foreign lands abroad while immigration transforms their cultures and ethnic compositions at home. As Hispanics, Asians, Africans, and Muslims of various ethnicities become a larger and larger percentage of the populations of the “First World,” support for the white man’s empire fades away. Peoples desiring education and in need of food, shelter, and medical care will be hostile to maintaining military outposts in the countries of their origins.

Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (Ad)

Who exactly is occupying whom?

Parts of the US are reverting to Mexico. For example, demographer Steve Murdock, a former director of the US Census Bureau, reports that two-thirds of Texas children are Hispanics and concludes: “It’s basically over for Anglos.”

Ironic, isn’t it, while Washington and its NATO puppets are busy occupying the world, they are being occupied by the world.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.

http://www.infowars.com/the-new-colonialism-washingtons-pursuit-of-world-hegemony/

Israel holds secret talks with Russia in bid to thwart recognition of Palestinian state

2011-04-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

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Home Print Edition News Published 01:00 01.04.11 Latest update 01:00 01.04.11 Israel holds secret talks with Russia in bid to thwart recognition of Palestinian state

France, Germany and the U.K. are pushing for announcing a new international peace initiative which may include setting up two states on the basis of the 1967 borders.

By Barak Ravid

Isaac Molho, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior adviser and top negotiator on the Palestinian channel, made a secret trip to Moscow on Wednesday and met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The purpose of the visit was to dissuade Russia from supporting the European Union’s intention to present in two weeks’ time a plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

Molho was accompanied on the trip by the Foreign Ministry’s legal advisor, Daniel Taub, and spent over an hour with Lavrov. Taub and Molho also met with the Russian envoy to the Middle East, Sergei Yakovlev, and other senior Russian officials. A senior Israeli official told Haaretz that Taub and Molho used the visit “to present new Israeli ideas for re-launching the peace process with the Palestinians.”

The visit comes just two weeks before the foreign ministers of the Quartet - the United States, Russia, the European Union and the UN - are to meet. France, Germany and the United Kingdom are pushing for announcing a new international peace initiative. The principles of the initiative known so far include setting up two states on the basis of the 1967 borders with territorial swaps; a fair, realistic and agreed-upon solution to the predicament of the Palestinian refugees; Jerusalem as a capital for both states and security arrangements that would protect Israel but not infringe on Palestinian sovereignty.

Hague rules out interim agreements

U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Wednesday that interim arrangements alone cannot end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and progress must be made in the peace process before September. He also called on the United States and the rest of the Quartet to present clear principles for the process, based on the new initiative, as soon as possible.

The European initiative is strongly supported by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is lobbying all members of the Quartet to have it officially endorsed in the upcoming meeting. However, Abbas has yet to confirm whether he will return to the negotiating table if the lobbying succeeds.

The U.S. administration has yet to comment on the initiative, but it has already won the support of the UN and, it would seem, Russia.

Last week, Netanyahu planned to dispatch Molho to a round of talks in London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels to persuade the Europeans to postpone the initiative’s launch. That trip was canceled at the last moment, after the prime minister understood Molho was unlikely to persuade the European governments to withdraw from the plan without new diplomatic statements on the peace process coming from Israel itself.

Molho’s Moscow trip appears to indicate that Netanyahu thought the Russians would prove more attentive to Israel’s objections, and could be persuaded to oppose or at least stall the move.

The results of Molho’s mission remain to be seen, but Lavrov’s statements during the meeting may mean Russia will be reluctant to block the initiative. Lavrov told Molho that continued efforts to find a way out of the impasse were important, and that trust between Israel and the Palestinians needed to be restored. Quartet envoys are expected to visit Israel next week, to prepare the foreign ministers’ summit. They will meet Molho and the Palestinian negotiators. Netanyahu is expected to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday in Berlin.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-holds-secret-talks-with-russia-in-bid-to-thwart-recognition-of-palestinian-state-1.353404

Yemen: Beginning of the end?

2011-04-01T08:53:00.000-07:00

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Yemen: Beginning of the end?

By Ginny Hill Chatham House

Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh is celebrating his 66th birthday on Monday, confronting the reality that a powerful military rival - acting in the name of Yemen's popular revolution - is making a bid to remove his family from power.

Tanks under the command of Mr Saleh's eldest son, Ahmed, are parked at the gates of the palace in the capital, Sanaa. Tanks are also stationed outside the ministry of defence and the central bank.
These defensive deployments to protect Mr Saleh's control follow the announcement that military commander Gen Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar has voiced support for Yemen's pro-democracy protesters.
The general's defection follows similar moves by a growing number of ministers, ambassadors, parliamentarians and prominent businessmen during the past few days.
Defections have gathered rapid pace since Friday, when snipers opened fire on a pro-democracy camp in the capital, Sanaa, killing more than 50 people.
US officials condemned Friday's violence "in the strongest terms" and expressed hope that Yemen might still achieve a political solution through negotiations and dialogue.
Stalemate
The US administration has been pushing the same line on negotiations and dialogue ever since Yemen's pro-democracy movement began to gain momentum in January.

Mr Saleh has adeptly played on fears of chaos if he loses control in Yemen

However, the trust required to achieve a political settlement has been absent and Yemen's opposition politicians calculated that they had nothing to gain by cutting a power-sharing deal.
As a result, stalemate prevailed, while young Yemenis - frustrated with the failures of an entire generation of politicians - took to the street in ever greater numbers.
The US administration's recent attempts to encourage bipartisan dialogue have been based on a fundamental misreading of the real political dynamics in Yemen.
While diplomats have focused their attention on the established political parties, the gaps between the formal institutions of the state and the elaborate networks of patronage and corruption that are closely entwined with Mr Saleh's regime have gradually been moving into open view.

Economic and social problems

Poorest country in the Middle East with 40% of Yemenis living on less than $2 (£1.25) a day
More than two-thirds of the population are under 24
More than a third are jobless; illiteracy stands at over 50%
Dwindling oil reserves and falling oil revenues; little inward investment
Acute water shortage
Weak central government

With Gen Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar's defection, long-standing competition between different factions within the regime has finally been exposed.

Now, Yemenis are waiting to see what happens next, and Twitter is buzzing with speculation. Many Yemenis are expressing jubilation, or stunned disbelief, at the prospect that Mr Saleh might be removed from office after more than 30 years in power. Others are warning of a massacre - or civil war.
Pro-democracy protesters are nervous that their popular revolution will be hijacked by established military and commercial interests, who will simply nominate a new face to govern the country without making any substantial changes to the status quo.
Tipping point
In this scenario, Gen Ahmar is likely to act as a kingmaker, while opposition politician Hameed al-Ahmar may emerge as one of the beneficiaries.
US officials may now have to make a rapid recalculation about their short-term and long-term interests in Yemen.
To date, they have taken a cautious approach with Mr Saleh - one that seemed out of step with much bolder messages delivered to Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who were both told that the game was up within a matter of days of popular unrest in their respective countries reaching a critical tipping point.

A crucial factor influencing US decision-makers is their assessment that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, ranks among the most active branches of the global terror organisation.
For several years, the US administration has been supplying military aid and training to elite security and intelligence units under the command of Mr Saleh's son and nephews. The White House is nervous about losing these relationships with local proxies, who have been willing to co-operate in US counter-terrorism operations.
However, the longer US officials try to keep Mr Saleh and his family in place, the more they risk damaging their own interests. Yemenis are furious that units from the US-backed Central Security Forces, commanded by one of Mr Saleh's nephews, have played such a prominent role in cracking down on pro-democracy protests.
US-made CS gas canisters, allegedly intended for counter-terrorism operations, have also been used in raids against pro-democracy protesters.
For many years, Mr Saleh has adeptly played on fears of chaos if he loses control in Yemen but his internal support is swiftly ebbing away.
Ginny Hill runs the Yemen Forum at Chatham House, an independent international affairs think tank.

Middle East social indicators
Country	pop. (m)	median age	jobless (%)	below poverty line (%)	internet users (m)
Source: CIA World Factbook
Algeria	34.5	27.1	9.9	23	4.7
Egypt	80.5	24	9.6	20	20
Jordan	6.4	21.8	13.4	14.2	1.6
Lebanon	4.09	29.4	na	28	1
Libya	6.4	24.2	30	33	0.35
Morocco	31.6	26.5	9.8	15	13.2
Saudi Arabia	25.7	24.9	10.8	na	9.6
Syria	22.1	21.5	8.3	11.9	4.4
Tunisia	10.5	29.7	14	3.8	3.5
W Bank & Gaza	2.5	20.9	16.5	46	1.3
Yemen	23.4	17.89	35	45.2	2.2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12809568

Egypt seeks to end gas exports to Israel

2011-04-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

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Fri, 18 Mar 2011 08:35:56 GMT

A popular campaign by a group of Egyptian activists against gas exports to Israel has won a court case on the terms of the country's gas deal with Tel Aviv.

The court ruled on the ministry of petroleum “not to export one single unit of gas before satisfying the local needs,” head of the Campaign against Gas Export to Israel Ibrahim Yousri told Press TV on Wednesday.

For Egyptians, the issue of supplying the Israeli regime with gas has always been a contentious one. Egyptians view Israel as an enemy and oppose engaging in any kind of business with the regime.

Egypt's gas supply to Israel has been one of the main economic conditions of the US-sponsored 1979 peace treaty between the two sides.

Under a $2.5-billion export deal with Tel Aviv, signed in 2005, the Israeli regime gets around 40 percent of its gas supply from Egypt at a considerably low price.

However, after Egyptians faced electricity blackouts last summer due to gas shortages, most experts are demanding an extensive revision of the deal.

Muslim Brotherhood Spokesman Walid Shalaby also told Press TV, “This deal was made in the dark, away from the sight of supervisory and legislative bodies. It has to be proposed to the new parliament which will decide on who to export to and to determine the price of the exported gas.”

The development comes despite a reported Israeli plan to opt for gas instead of nuclear energy following the recent crises in Japan over radiation leaking from a crippled nuclear power plant.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Tel Aviv is going to reconsider its nuclear energy plans for the coming years and choose natural gas as the main alternative.

Egypt has resumed exporting natural gas to Israel after a one-month hiatus due to an explosion that damaged the pipeline delivering gas to Israel, Jordan and Syria.

On Wednesday, Israeli firms confirmed that supplies had resumed but that initial quantities were below normal level. The resumption of gas deliveries was delayed repeatedly due to leaks.

ASH/MB

http://previous.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=170528&sectionid=351020502

How the so-called guardians of free speech are silencing the messenger

2011-04-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

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10 March 2011

By John Pilger

As the United States and Britain look for an excuse to invade another oil-rich Arab country, the hypocrisy is familiar. Colonel Gaddafi is “delusional” and “blood-drenched” while the authors of an invasion that killed a million Iraqis, who have kidnapped and tortured in our name, are entirely sane, never blood-drenched and once again the arbiters of “stability”.

But something has changed. Reality is no longer what the powerful say it is. Of all the spectacular revolts across the world, the most exciting is the insurrection of knowledge sparked by WikiLeaks. This is not a new idea. In 1792, the revolutionary Tom Paine warned his readers in England that their government believed that “people must be hoodwinked and held in superstitious ignorance by some bugbear or other”. Paine’s The Rights of Man was considered such a threat to elite control that a secret grand jury was ordered to charge him with “a dangerous and treasonable conspiracy”. Wisely, he sought refuge in France.

The ordeal and courage of Tom Paine is cited by the Sydney Peace Foundation in its award of Australia’s human rights Gold Medal to Julian Assange. Like Paine, Assange is a maverick who serves no system and is threatened by a secret grand jury, a malicious device long abandoned in England but not in the United States. If extradited to the US, he is likely to disappear into the Kafkaesque world that produced the Guantanamo Bay nightmare and now accuses Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks’ alleged whistleblower, of a capital crime.

Should Assange’s current British appeal fail against his extradition to Sweden, he will probably, once charged, be denied bail and held incommunicado until his trial in secret. The case against him has already been dismissed by a senior prosecutor in Stockholm and given new life only when a right-wing politician, Claes Borgstrom, intervened and made public statements about Assange’s “guilt”. Borgstrom, a lawyer, now represents the two women involved. His law partner is Thomas Bodstrom, who as Sweden’s minister for justice in 2001, was implicated in the handover of two innocent Egyptian refugees to a CIA kidnap squad at Stockholm airport. Sweden later awarded them damages for their torture.

These facts were documented in an Australian parliamentary briefing in Canberra on 2 March. Outlining an epic miscarriage of justice threatening Assange, the enquiry heard expert evidence that, under international standards of justice, the behavior of certain officials in Sweden would be considered “highly improper and reprehensible [and] preclude a fair trial”. A former senior Australian diplomat, Tony Kevin, described the close ties between the Swedish prime minister Frederic Reinheldt, and the Republican right in the US. “Reinfeldt and [George W] Bush are friends,” he said. Reinhaldt has attacked Assange publicly and hired Karl Rove, the former Bush crony, to advise him. The implications for Assange’s extraidition to the US from Sweden are dire.

The Australian enquiry was ignored in the UK, where black farce is currently preferred. On 3 March, the Guardian announced that Stephen Spielberg’s Dream Works was to make “an investigative thriller in the mould of All the President’s Men” out of its book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. I asked David Leigh, who wrote the book with Luke Harding, how much Spielberg had paid the Guardian for the screen rights and what he expected to make personally. “No idea,” was the puzzling reply of the Guardian’s “investigations editor”. The Guardian paid WikiLeaks nothing for its treasure trove of leaks. Assange and WikiLeaks -- not Leigh or Harding -- are responsible for what the Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, calls “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years”.

The Guardian has made clear it has no further use for Assange. He is a loose cannon who did not fit Guardianworld, who proved a tough, unclubbable negotiator. And brave. In the Guardian’s self-regarding book, Assange’s extraordinary bravery is excised. He becomes a figure of petty bemusement, an “unusual Australian” with a “frizzy-haired” mother, gratuitously abused as “callous” and a “damaged personality” that was “on the autistic spectrum”. How will Speilberg deal with this childish character assassination? e

On the BBC’s Panorama, Leigh indulged hearsay about Assange not caring about the lives of those named in the leaks. As for the claim that Assange had complained of a “Jewish conspiracy”, which follows a torrent of internet nonsense that he is an evil agent of Mossad, Assange rejected this as “completely false, in spirit and word”.

It is difficult to describe, let alone imagine, the sense of isolation and state of siege of Julian Assange, who in one form or another is paying for tearing aside the façade of rapacious power. The canker here is not the far right but the paper-thin liberalism of those who guard the limits of free speech. The New York Times has distinguished itself by spinning and censoring the WikiLeaks material. “We are taking all [the] cables to the administration,” said Bill Keller, the editor, “They’ve convinced us that redacting certain information would be wise.” In an article by Keller, Assange is personally abused. At the Columbia School of Journalism on 3 February, Keller said, in effect, that the public could not be trusted with the release of further cables. This might cause a “cacophony”. The gatekeeper has spoken.

The heroic Bradley Manning is kept naked under lights and cameras 24 hours a day. Greg Barns, director of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, says the fears that Julian Assange will “end up being tortured in a high security American prison” are justified. Who will share responsibility for such a crime?

http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/how-the-so-called-guardians-of-free-speech-are-silencing-the-messenger

Good-bye despotism

2011-04-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

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March 9, 2011
Al-Ahram

Similar popular uprisings, same brutal reaction by ruling regimes, same result: the end of despotic regimes is neigh across the Arab world, writes Khalil El-Anani*

Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire and the rest is history. First it was Tunisia, then Egypt, and now it is Libya and God knows who's next. A lot of things are set to change in this part of the world. Egypt's ability to lead would be restored, for one thing. And the region's political map is going to undergo a lasting change. History is speaking, and we're all listening.

The Arab world is in the throes of a revolution, one that will change its shape, mindset and future. Forget partial reform and gradual evolution. As the demonstrators told us in no uncertain terms, "The people want to bring down the regime." If this is not a revolution, what is?

We are now faced with a new and unprecedented situation. The collective Arab conscience is being reborn, and things are never going to be the same again. It's hard to know where this will take us, but allow me to share with you what is known so far:

- The ongoing revolutions are "grassroots" revolutions. They are not imposed from above, nor brought about by military coups. For the first time in six decades, the upper echelons of the political regime are not the ones showing us the way. The Arab people, for the first time ever, are deciding the fate of their own presidents and regimes. The revolution has been spontaneous, fluid, and so far irreversible. The masses that took to the streets were intent on bringing about radical change. They refused to go home before their leaders were ousted. They made history, and they are going to make some more.

- What we see today are not revolutions against despotic regimes alone, but also against conventional elites and the opposition that was part of those elites. A radical shift of existing elites is about to happen. The legitimacy of despotic regimes is gone, and with it the legitimacy of the former opposition. Therefore, the traditional opposition must step aside and refrain from riding the revolutionary wave.

- Part of the vitality of the current wave of Arab revolutions is due to the fact that they were not led from above. In the Tunisian case, the revolution had no unified leadership, although labour and professional groups offered some guidance. In the Egyptian case, there was a lack of unified leadership or even organised groups from the scene. Scattered groups offered horizontal coordination, and I am sure we'll learn more about them in the near future. In Libya, all we can see so far is a spontaneous eruption of anger feeding on historical and psychological injustices.

- The aim of the ongoing revolutions is not only to depose despotic regimes but also to establish true democracy. This is rather ironic considering the disdain with which Arab officials and their Western interlocutors held the idea of democracy in the Arab world. The despotic media tried to dismiss democracy as being a figment of the imagination, a secular idea with no relevance to reality, but the demonstrators begged to differ.

- Arab revolutionaries have proved themselves to be uncompromising in their demands. Their central demand has been to oust the regime regardless of the cost. Over the past few weeks, we've been told of how simple folks were proud of the sacrifices their children have made for the cause of freedom. The way we view martyrdom has changed as a result.

- The revolutionaries didn't seem to care much for what foreign powers thought of them. They didn't ask for foreign assistance. Actually, in Egypt and Tunisia, and lately in Libya, foreign powers seemed to be more of a hindrance than otherwise. The first reaction of Western powers was either to aid and abet the despots or to ignore the whole thing. Indeed, the revolutions brought down the masks of falsehood and double standards, for the West generally acted as if supporting despots was worthier than the cause of freedom and democracy. In one instance, the French foreign minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, offered to train the Tunisian police on crowd control.

7.-been refuted. This used to be a favourite cliché, invented by Arab officials and reiterated by Western academics. Now it is thoroughly discredited, and not a moment too soon. Researchers must take note, and books will need to be rewritten.

- The current Arab revolutions speak volumes about the crimes post-independence regimes have committed against their own people. Those regimes stand now accused of undermining Arab culture and stifling the Arab spirit, of giving birth to one-party and despotic governments. And when shove came to push, those regimes didn't hesitate to fire teargas and live ammunition at their own people, even sending planes to strafe innocent civilians.

The pattern of Arab revolution has turned out to be astoundingly uniform. It starts with a small and localised protest. Faced with brutal suppression, the protests go out of hand until the whole country is engulfed in revolution. At one point, the army is asked to deploy, but it either stays neutral or take sides with the people. The dictators eventually leave. But before that, their reactions are quite similar. They make concessions that are too late, they promise reform that is too limited, and they speak of foreign conspiracies and blame the uprising on Islamists.

The question now is not which country will revolt next. It is whether one autocrat or another will actually step down without first committing brutalities. Either way, the Arab despotic state is fast becoming a thing of the past.

* The writer is a researcher at School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1037/op174.htm

The former president of Brazil Lula da Silva addresses the Sixth Annual Al Jazeera Forum on the topic of the Arab world in transition.

2011-04-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

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Al Jazeera Forum: Lula da Silva

Al Jazeera Forum Last Modified: 13 Mar 2011 09:09 GMT

It is a great pleasure for me to be back here to Qatar, where I was already here twice as president of the Republic. In March of 2009 to participate in the 2nd summit meeting of Arab and South American countries and in May of last year on an official trip for business meeting between Brazil and Qatar. On these two occasions I was received by my friend the Emir of Qatar and it is a great pleasure for me to be here in this event that is being promoted by Al Jazeera, a very important broadcasting company not only for the Arab countries, but also for the rest of the world, for which I have given nothing less than four interviews as president of Brazil.

I could not refuse the invitation made by Al Jazeera to participate in this forum in such a crucial moment where the peoples of so many Arab nations raised their voices and stand up to demand democracy, social fairness and the creation of opportunities.

In a moment where Al Jazeera has played and continues to play such a relevant role in informing about these events demonstrating high regards for these facts and great tuning with the feelings and demands of these people, and more giving first hand the Arab viewpoint about the unfolding events, in the Arab countries without the need of third party mediators, and how good that is for the world to have that viewpoint.

I came here to learn with all of you, to get to know your experience, to feel what happens in your hearts, especially from the young people, the youngest ones, that with great enthusiasm, experience and courage are writing a new page in the history of this region.

I could not miss such an opportunity. But I also came here to convey our experience of Brazil and of South America in the struggle for democracy, for economic growth, and for social inclusion.

Latin America has experienced dictatorial regimes till the decade of the eighties of the last century. These were difficult times, the people had no voice, they had no opportunity, they could not speak out, and they were not heard. Thousands died so that this terrible page of our history could be overcome. To conquer democracy, our peoples had to make great sacrifices to struggle a lot and to go through great political maturity.

Now here, I would like to - I'm not going to extend myself too much, because my minister of foreign affairs of Brazil, he was here my foreign minister last week in Qatar and he had a discussion about the authoritarian regimes in my country, and we discovered that democracy is not only a speech, is not only a discourse, it is a very difficult construction that demands the participation of all, the respect of differences of opinion, and the maturity to know how to live with divergences, although they could be very annoying.

It is a very complicated construction that demands patience and determination and that also demands a deep understanding that the people should be in the core, in the centre of the political life, and that they need to have their demands listened to and they should be taken into account. It is the people and not the rulers that are the driving force of transformation. It is the democratic institutions that were built by the people and not by the leaders, even though they may be very competent, it is the democracy built by the people that should prevail.

And here I would like to mention one example in my country. Very recently in Brazil we had presidential elections in October of last year. And in the year 2009 my party wanted for me to discuss at the national congress the possibility of a third term so that I could continue in power in the presidency of Brazil. And I said that I was against this idea of a constitutional amendment for my third term. I never accepted the idea that any leader can not be considered as someone who cannot be replaced, or someone that is considered indispensible. When a leader thinks he is indispensible, or that he could not be replaced, then we start to see the birth of a dictator, or the birth of a dictatorship.

Change in power is necessary so that we can guarantee the strengthening of democracy, and democracy can only be the winner when we have clear cut rules of the game defined, and everybody, everybody, without any differentiation should respect the rules that were defined by everybody. Because democracy, maybe it is not the most perfect regime that the world needs, but certainly at least till now, no one yet has presented anything better than democracy, so that we can exercise politics and for us to rule.

Maybe many of you are not aware of my personal story. But I believe it is important for you to know why I value so much democracy. I come from a very poor region in Brazil, which is the northeastern region of Brazil. I am the son of small family farmers. I did not manage to have access to higher education, I do not have a university degree. I only went to vocational training school and I became a lathe operator in my country. As a metal worker, I was the first son of eight brothers and sisters that managed to have a house on my own, have a TV set, that could buy a refrigerator. I was the first one in the family to earn a little bit more than the minimum salary.

And due to this profession that I learned, I became a labour leader. But it was not foreseen in the annals of political sociology that a metal worker could build a political party that could build a national labour federation and that could become one day the president of the country.

I've lost three presidential elections before I was elected. And I accepted the results of these three defeats that I suffered, and instead of giving up, every time that I lost a presidential election, I prepared myself even more to run for the next presidential elections. In the fourth presidential race, I managed to win the elections in Brazil for the presidency.

And I learned saying something to the Brazilian people, democracy is not a vague concept. Democracy is not a state of spirit. Democracy is an achievement that society as a whole conquers and exercises in a collective way. Democracy is not only the right to shout out and say that you're hungry, it is the right for you to have food on the table. It's not only the right that you want to work, it's really to have an opportunity to work. It's not only to have the possibility to shout out that you want to study, but you have to study truly when democracy at work when they meet these interests of society, then democracy will be consolidated and then the people will see and live in peace and tranquility.

So what happened in the Middle East many people can say that it was a spontaneous movement. A lot of people can say whatever they wish. It's too early for us to have the exact dimension of what's happening in the Middle East. The only thing that we have certainty is that if a fruit is rotten in the tree after a certain period, the political leaders also, they reap and the fruit gets rotten when time is overdue for changes. And possibly, this maybe has been the determinant factor so that at the same time so many people decided to shout out and stand up, and this happened in Brazil in the 1980s.

We only managed to overthrow the military regime when millions and millions of Brazilians went to the streets and to shout out and stand up for direct elections for the presidency, and that's when we managed to achieve democracy.

These were workers in the streets going on strike, we had students going on street demonstrations, women complaining, the youngsters in the streets struggling until the moment we managed to achieve democracy in Brazil.

And so I have reached where I reached, in my journey, because of democracy. I achieved what I achieved through democracy. Only through democracy a worker, someone that was born in a very poor family like I was, could reach the presidency of a country of one-hundred-and-ninety million inhabitants that Brazil has, and today a country that is amongst the ten largest economies of the world.

Or only democracy could allow someone from the indigenous people to reach the presidency of a country like Bolivia, and only democracy allows that a black man could reach the presidency of the US, or a black person that is majority could reach the presidency of South Africa.

But our arrival in government also meant that people wanted democracy and something more than what they had till then. They wanted to be treated with respect and dignity. The people want to work with great pride in their own country. The people wanted opportunities, jobs, decent work and salaries, the possibility to progress in life, and to leave for their children a better life.

In summary, they wanted social inclusion and the end of the absurd inequalities that existed in our countries. We were not elected to do more of the same thing that was done in the past. No we were elected to change what was wrong and to give a better present and future of hope to the Brazilian people.

In all its history, Brazil was ruled only to reach the demands one-third of the population. Two-thirds of the people were excluded of the opportunities made by progress. The rulers considered them as weight - a heavy weight, and an annoyance. They closed their eyes to the suffering of two-thirds of the people. So we decided that if the people had the courage to elect a member of the working class for the presidency of the republic, the president should also have the courage and the determination to govern for all Brazilians.

And we proved that the people were not dead weight, but the people represented energy. The people were not an annoyance, they were our major asset. So that's why we had to confront prejudice, false truth and the dominance of the ruling thought that was sold as if it were the only possible way to think things.

Dear friends. In the 80s and 90s of the 20th century, hegemonic conservative thought imposed backward economic adjustment models that were discriminatory and very empty in terms of social concerns. These policies separated economic growth from income distribution. They said they would privilege to stability and they made our countries deepen recession, unemployment and macroeconomic chaos.

We do not accept these absurd ideas. Just to start with, we decided it was necessary to give the minimum conditions of survival to the poor, and I said to govern a country is to govern a household. The mother should take care of the children in the same way but should give special attention to the weakest, to the needy.

So that's why we decided to develop public policies that would put a little bit more money in the hands of those that were in need. And so Brazil was a capitalistic economic country that had no capital - neither to fund production, and neither to fund agriculture.

And so the first thing that we did was to develop a public policy of income transfer programmes through the family stipend - giving to the poorest - around 11 million people, we're talking 44 million people, 11 million households - they were receiving a stipend so that they could buy foodstamps and basic foods and we should give the money to women so that we would have the certainty that the money would reach the households and the mouths of the children through the housewives and the women of the households.

And at the same time we increased doing our term of the minimum salary by 74 per cent and we raised the salaries of the workers generally speaking. Besides that we developed the largest microcredit and credit policy in Brazil. In the year 2003 Brazil had 380 million Reais - which is the equivalent of 200 million dollars, in credit lines.

Today, Brazil has almost 1 trillion dollars in credit and credit now reaches the poorest, which had no access to credit in the past, to the retired worker, and to the ordinary citizen, making the Brazilian economy to have great dynamism through these credit lines.

During the global financial meltdown in 2008, I used to say that Brazil would be the last country to suffer with the crisis but would be the first one to get out of the crisis, and that's exactly what happened. We were the last country to be hit by the crisis because the poor people had a little bit of money and because of the development policies that we put in practice was already bringing extraordinary results for us. That's why we were less affected by the global financial crisis.

In Brazil, it went back to growth. The domestic market has grown and enhanced, and now 36 million Brazillians were lifted to middle class, and another 28 million were lifted above the poverty line. Investing in education, we created 14 federal universities, 214 vocational training schools, more than a hundred extension courses and through scholarship programmes for the poor students in the periphery, we put in 960,000 youngsters that lived in the periphery and marginalised now study in private universities in our country through scholarship programmes.

And at the same time, we perceived that it was necessary to solve the problem of unemployment, and in the 8 years of my term, we created 15 million new jobs. Just to have an idea what I'm talking about here, while Europe has 9.3% unemployment rate while the US has almost 10% unemployment rates while Spain has 20% unemployment rates, in December of 2010, Brazil had 5.3% unemployment.

That is to say, last year, where we had unemployment in all the rich countries in the world, we created 2.5 million new jobs in 2010. Just for that year.

Ten years ago, we were the 12th largest economy in the world, we are now the 7th largest economy in the world, by the concept of parity purchasing power. That is to say, Brazil today experiences an excellent moment. Our institutions are very sound and solid, and are improving themselves. We live in a society where everybody has free speech, the press can say whatever they want to say to, not always the truth, but they have the freedom to say whatever they wish to say and whatever they understand they should say.

We have now elected for the first time in our history a woman as president of the republic. You can not imagine how proud I felt as being the first worker to be elected president of the republic in the moment that a woman took office as president of my country.

That is to say, Brazil has managed to overcome prejudice twice. The fact of the matter in the last years, we have not only had extraordinary socio-economic progress, we also progress in the political arena. We deepened tremendously our democracy, and here I would like to mention above all that our friends from the Arab world pay attention to my next words.

I'm not aware, and I don't want to be presumptuous or arrogant, but I am not aware of any other government that has exercised democracy with the ultimate consequences as we have exercised democracy. In 8 years of my term in the presidency, I held 73 national conferences, each one of these national conferences that were called by the government we had 3 levels - the local level, the province level and the national level. These conferences helped to define the public policies the government should follow.

These were conferences to discuss women's issues, health issues, education, cities, land development, agrarian reform, black issues, indigenous people issues, communication, human rights issues, gays, street scavengers, homelessness, disabled people, 73 national conferences with the participation of more than 5 million people attended these conferences at these levels that helped us to define the public policies that the government should put in practice in our country.

And the result of all these conferences was extraordinary. The result was that - I don't know if there is any precedent in a government that ends its term after 8 years - with more positive ratings than when they won the elections and better ratings than in the first year of their term.

That is to say, we ended our term after 8 years in power with almost 90% approval of positive ratings from the people in the polls.

So what did we see? What we saw was that the result in the exercise in democracy is an extraordinary one. The ruler makes less mistakes in a democracy. The ruler is much more productive. The ruler demonstrates that they are there only to meet the needs of the people, that is to govern to the people for the people by the people.

So what we are seeing and with great satisfaction is that this movement of social inclusion and democracy is also being experienced intensively by our brothers and sisters in Latin America. We experienced a historical moment of strong democracies and fighting inequalities in Latin America and South America. Never before have so many governments brought economic development and social fairness as being their core concern as we have today in our dear South America.

This has allowed us to advance an agenda of a new kind of integration, based on overcoming the asymmetries and the development of highway and energy infrastructure in Latin America. our policies are guided by the respect of diversity, and correcting situations that cause damage to our smaller partners in the regions of South America.

So I believe that the most extraordinary thing that we managed the achieve in Brazil and South America and Latin America today is our self esteem. I always say that no one respects somebody if they are not being respected.

And for a long time, Latin America, South America and my country, we were subordinated to a rationale, to logic that was determined by the superpowers, either the European Union or by the US. We were turning our backs to one another, Brazil was not looking toward South America, Brazil was not looking toward Africa, Brazil was not looking toward the Middle East. Brazil was looking towards Europe only, and only Washington in the US, or New York or maybe London. And so we decided to change our policy and to establish a new rationale and new logic for international relations for our country.

And then we decided to follow the international relations logic - I used to say that it was necessary to change this rationale of the world geopolitics and the rationale of the trade policies, so that's why my dear friends it does not suffice that we have democracy in our countries, it is necessary to prevail in the international relations democracy and in the international bodies.

In the same way that a country cannot be the property of one or another ruler, the world cannot be the property of one or another country. The multilateral bodies today need a democratic reform so that they can give a voice and a chance to all. They represent the political geography of 1945 and not the political geography of 2011. How can we explain that we do not have yet seats in the UNSC that the Arab countries don't have at least 1 representative, 1 seat in the UNSC? How can you explain that China is in the UNSC but Japan is not in the security council? How can you explain that Africa does not have a seat in the security council? How can you explain that Latin America has no permanent representative in the UNSC?

So the UNSC became a club of friends than a global governance body to try to help understand the issues that we face in the world today. So that's why we fought so much for a change in the UNSC, and that it should be a truly multilateral institution that should have an active voice, for example, in the solution of the crises in the Middle East. If the UN created the state of Israel, they should also give the Palestinian state, and give the guarantees for the Palestinian state to function.

But for that to happen, it is necessary for the UNSC to be more representative and to have much more people participating in that council, it's necessary to bring in more players, new players, we need new negotiators. It's necessary to have political will.

The truth of the matter my dear friends, is that for a long time, many leaders of the world believed that they did not need to rule their countries, to govern their countries, because the markets would do everything. The market would govern. But it would suffice to happen that the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy or collapse, or the subprime crisis in the US was - and people would start to understand that governments are elected to govern, to rule, and that the markets exist only to earn money and not to be concerned with social issues.

The markets are not concerned with education, the markets are not to be used for income distribution, the markets do not serve social fairness. Who has these concerns? It's the state - the government, not the markets. And what we perceived with the crisis is that those countries that seemed to know everything they know nothing actually, in the midst of the global financial meltdown.

Those that used to say to us how to solve the problems of the poor countries - they have their recipe - they did not know how to solve their own problems in the midst of the global financial crisis. For example, the IMF gave us the impression that they knew everything. They had all the prescriptions. But when the crisis hit the rich countries, the IMF didn't know what to do and had no solution for the crisis, the World Bank didn't know what to do.

Who was better prepared to confront the crisis? It was exactly the emerging countries. the emerging markets, the developing countries were better off. Countries like Brazil, China, India and others, had a better possibility to build a domestic market that would be very strong, and resilient to the global financial crisis. Just for you to have an idea, I went to the national TV broadcast to make an appeal to the Brazilian people to buy more, to consume more, to not allow the crises to be even worse in my country.

So dear friends, I would like to say to all of you that what is happening now in the Middle East is something easier to understand if we understand that the world needs more democracy. The world needs more freedom. And the world needs more equality.

In each one of our countries, as you are demonstrating now with your struggles, courage and willingness to confront sacrifices, I believe that the world needs and could end up with social unfairness, our economies would become stronger and not weaker, when everybody has the same opportunity.

And so I believe that the world is going toward a new global governance, and if the countries understand and the world trade organisation, the UN, the IMF, the WB, if we - the multi-lateral bodies, institutions - if they have this understanding that we are moving toward a democratic global governance.

And I would like to say to our friends that we need to rethink how to make world development reach and benefit all, how can we take care of the African continent, how can we develop and strengthen democracy in Africa, how can we develop the African economy - what can the rich countries do so that we can stop reading the newspapers to see Africa as a mirror of a poor continent when in the 18th and 19th century Africa was self-reliant in food production, and today they are dependent, they are not self reliant anymore in food production.

What can we do to guarantee democracy in the Middle East? And what can we do so that we would not allow democracy to be something that is considered to be a secondary issue.

I want to show my solidarity to all of those in the Middle East and in any part of the world that are struggling for freedom, that are struggling for democracy, that are struggling for social fairness.

I would like to say to all of you that with my experience in 8 years as president of Brazil, with my experience of someone that founded a political party - the workers party - and as someone who created the largest national labour federation in Latin America, with the experience I had that lost three presidential elections, and with the experience that I had of assuming commitment that I could not afford to make mistakes in my presidency. I would like to say to all of you that it is possible, yes, to build a new world.

Yes, it is possible to build a new political, economic and social order. It's necessary to live in peace and harmony in the world if we want to reach that. And it is also necessary to understand that change in power is not something bad, it is a need to bring oxygen to society and to democracy. I would like to say to all of you that I came here with great pleasure, so that I could convey a little bit of the experience of what happened in my country.

Those of you that would visit Brazil would perceive that Brazil has changed a lot in the last years. And Brazil has changed, changed in a democratic way, socially, and today the very few countries in the world that have a people that have a belief in their country as the Brazilian people believe in Brazil.

So we do not need to have middlemen in building a world we want to live. We don't need intermediaries. It suffices to build what we understand for all the world. And I can say to all of you that all my life I exercised democracy to its ultimate consequences.

I was elected as president of the trade union with 92% of the votes. In my 2nd reelection for the trade union, I could have continued another 30-40 years in the trade union. And when I was reelected as president of the trade union, I passed in the general assembly of workers that no president of the trade union should be reelected for more than 2 terms. In the presidency of the republic I did the same thing. I could have fought for a third term. But I believe that for a democracy, we should not play with democracy, we can't play with democracy, we have to respect the rules of the game.

And for us to respect democracy, it suffices that we should allow the people to stand up, to speak out freely, that the leader should not hide themselves from the people.

Usually when there is a crisis, the leader hides themselves in their offices and does not go out in the streets, but actually it is in the midst of crisis it's when the people standing up to the leader that was elected to govern and to rule then he or she should go to the streets and talk to the people directly.

And they should not see the opposition as the enemy. The opposition should be seen as a citizen who is not happy with what the leader is doing and that change is necessary.

And so I think that this is the extraordinary reason for which we should value so much democracy. It's to live with, in a democratic way, diversity. democracy, cultural democracy, mass media democracy, democracy in the economy, democracy in the society's demonstrations.

I say every day in my country, that there's no worse censorship for the mass media than the TV viewer, than the one who listens to the radio, than the one who reads newspapers. You don't need state censorship, government censorship. Whoever lies, for the better or for the worse, will lose all its credibility.

The only chance to survive, is a commitment with the truth. And above all today, when the internet, the world wide web, went beyond any communications limits that we had up till today. In the old days we waited 6 months to listen to news, and then we waited 24 hours for the news, 12 hours, 6 hours, now it's in real time and we get news and information.

There's no way someone continues to lie thinking that the people will not discover that it's a lie, and I think that the internet and the new means of communication are giving a lot of headache to some leaders in the world but they are providing an extraordinary service to the strengthening of democracy in my country, and in the world. And the almighty wish that some people that are interested in helping the Middle East should understand what is going on in our country in Brazil, what happened in Brazil. Because many of the things that happened in Brazil could serve to help you build a new democracy that the world is demanding.

Thank you very much.

Source: Al Jazeera

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/2011313842452274.html#

Egypt-Israeli relations continue to cool

2011-04-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

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Omar Radwan

Wednesday, 09 March 2011 13:15

There have been indications that relations between the two will be much cooler than under Hosni Mubarak.
The success of the Egyptian revolution has cast a shadow of uncertainty over future relations between Israel and Egypt. Even though it is too early to predict the course of events, there have been indications that relations between the two will be much cooler than under Hosni Mubarak.

The appointment of Nabil al-Arabi as Egypt's new foreign minister is a case in point. Al-Arabi's predecessor, Ahmed Abouelgheit, was all too willing to cooperate with Israel; during his term in office, Egypt faithfully collaborated in imposing the siege on Gaza, while in late 2009 it began building a steel wall designed to cut off Gaza's only lifeline, the smuggling tunnels beneath the Egyptian border. Al-Arabi, on the other hand, is not only an outspoken opponent of the Israeli siege of Gaza which depends on Egyptian cooperation, he was also a critic of the Camp David peace treaty despite being part of the team that negotiated it.

Shortly after the revolution began there was a great deal of hysteria in the Israeli press about what it would mean for Israel. Having lost all legitimacy in his own country, Israel was the only place where Mubarak was still popular. In an Israeli opinion poll, 65% of respondents said that Mubarak's removal would be dangerous for Israel. Much of the hysteria was focused on the possibility of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt. This was treated by the Israeli press as almost inevitable, even though there was never any serious prospect of it happening. Although the Muslim Brotherhood took part in the protests which toppled Mubarak, it was not the main driving force behind them. What Israel really feared was the coming to power of a democratic government that would represent the interests of the Egyptian people.

The Israeli strategy for dealing with the Arab world has always been to support and rely on autocratic regimes willing to put Israel's interests before those of their own countries. In the case of Mubarak's Egypt, this subservience could firstly be seen through its cooperation with Israel in its siege of Gaza which violated international law and severely damaged Egypt's standing and reputation in the Arab and the wider world. Moreover, Egypt gained absolutely nothing from this policy. Another example was the sale of Egyptian gas to Israel for prices well below the global market rate. Egypt supplied Israel with 40% of its natural gas imports at this heavily discounted price. There was no clear reason why Egypt should do so and an Egyptian court ruled in 2008 that the government should stop selling gas to Israel at this price. This ruling was ignored by the government, which later succeeded in getting the ban overturned.

There are now signs that both these policies, which are so detrimental to the interests of the Egyptian people, will change. During the revolutionary unrest in Egypt, the pipeline supplying gas to Israel was blown up and the supply of gas was suspended. Initially Israel received assurances that supplies would resume soon. However it now looks likely that the suspension will be indefinite. The cessation of gas exports to Israel was one of the key demands of Egyptian protesters during the revolution and the new government will likely want to distance itself from such an unpopular policy. As for the siege of Gaza, the views of the newly appointed foreign minister, Nabil al-Arabi, are clear. Last month he published an article in the Egyptian journal, Al-Shurouk, saying that Egypt was violating international law by participating in the siege of Gaza and that it was beneath its dignity to do so.

Al-Arabi was formerly a judge at the International Court of Justice and he sat on the panel which declared Israel's apartheid wall illegal. Israel tried unsuccessfully to remove him from his post. His opposition to the Camp David treaty was primarily because it was detrimental to the interests of the Palestinians. Given his views, his appointment has come as something of a surprise and has been greeted with delight in Gaza and dismay in Tel Aviv. Egypt's previous policy of supporting the siege of Gaza has created some deeply damaging and embarrassing incidents. Aid convoys have been held up by the Egyptian authorities, with activists being beaten by police and pro-government thugs while aid was confiscated and left to rot. All this is now likely to change. It seems inevitable that the siege of Gaza will be at least partially eased. However, it remains to be seen whether the Egyptian government will be able to fully lift it.

Even though the Higher Military Council which now governs Egypt has said that it is committed to the Camp David Treaty, there have been several other indicators of a cooling of Israeli-Egyptian relations in the aftermath of the revolution. On Sunday, Egypt temporarily stopped issuing visas to holders of Israeli passports and prior to that the Higher Military Council allowed two Iranian warships to pass through the Suez Canal on their way to Syria - something that would have been unthinkable under Mubarak's rule. Despite more than thirty years of peace between Israel and Egypt, the majority of the Egyptian people still see Israel as an enemy thanks largely to its continued oppression of the Palestinians. As they take charge of their own country after decades of dictatorial rule, it seems inevitable that Israel's relations with Egypt will suffer and Israel will now suffer the consequences of relying on dictators like Mubarak to maintain its regional hegemony

http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/articles/middle-east/2126-egypt-israeli-relations-continue-to-cool

Arabs reject "foreign intervention" in Libya: Iraq

2011-04-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

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Dina Zayed and Marwa Awad Dina Zayed And Marwa Awad – Wed Mar 2, 7:54 am ET
CAIRO (Reuters) – The Libya crisis is an internal Arab affair and foreign powers should refrain from any intervention, Iraq's foreign minister said at meeting of the Arab League, which has suspended Muammar Gaddafi's government.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, in opening remarks to an Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo on Wednesday, said the Libyan leadership must make brave decisions to stop violence and respect the "legitimate rights" of the people.

The Cairo-based Arab League has suspended Libya's participation in condemnation of a violent crackdown by Gaddafi forces against protests that have grown into a rebellion against his rule.

Zebari called on the ministers to stand in silence in memory of Arabs killed in a wave of pro-reform protests that have swept the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia from power and are challenging the rule of others in Bahrain and Yemen, as well as Libya.

"We hope the Libyan people can overcome these difficult conditions, and that the Libyan leaders take brave stands to stop bloodshed and respect the legitimate desires and rights of its people to live in a free, democratic nation," Zebari said.

He said the Arabs confirmed their "desire for no foreign intervention" in Libya, whose seat stood empty at the Cairo meeting.

A draft resolution drawn up by Arab League representatives on Tuesday stated the Arabs' rejection of "any foreign military intervention in Libya" and stressed "the unity and integrity of Libyan soil."

"RENAISSANCE"

The foreign minister of Oman, one of the states where protesters have been challenging their rulers, said Wednesday's meeting was the first of a "new Arab renaissance." Speaking about the Arab nation, Youssef bin Alawi bin Abdullah said "nobody should interfere in her affairs."

The United States has sent warships toward Libya and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the country and its NATO allies are still considering a "no-fly" zone over Libya, though Western states appear hesitant to stage an intervention.

Amr Moussa, the Arab League's secretary general, did not mention the prospect of foreign intervention in his opening remarks to the meeting.

"The situation in Libya is sorrowful and it is not correct that we accept it or live with it," said Moussa, who intends to run for the Egyptian presidency from which Hosni Mubarak was toppled on February 11.

"The reality is the Libyan people are suffering greatly and facing violations and attempts to assassinate its desire for freedom," he said.

Libya's Arab League representative is one of the Libyan diplomats around the world who have deserted Gaddafi's administration. The Libyan delegation has renounced links to Gaddafi, saying it now represented the will of the people and condemned "the heinous crimes against unarmed citizens."

(Writing by Tom Perry; editing by Ralph Boulton)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110302/wl_nm/us_libya_arabs_statement

Yemen’s Saleh seeks deal with bourgeois opposition

2011-04-01T08:13:00.001-07:00

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Yemen’s Saleh seeks deal with bourgeois opposition
By Niall Green
28 March 2011
Faced with mass opposition in the country and a split in ruling class circles, the US-backed president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, entered negotiations with his political rivals on Saturday.

As protests continued across the country, the government of Saleh is still holding out for a deal with some opposition parties and powerful figures from the national elite that will allow the president to remain in office for the remainder of the year.

Saleh, whose dictatorial regime receives millions of dollars of aid as well as military training from Washington, has repeatedly launched vicious attacks on protests, which broke out in the Middle Eastern country in late January. In the most recent massacre, Saleh’s forces killed an estimated 52 demonstrators on the streets of the capital, Sanaa, on March 18.

The crackdown failed to quell the mass protest movement, with hundreds of thousands pouring onto the streets of Sanaa in the following days, joined by contingents of tribesmen from the surrounding countryside. Outside the capital, the regime has almost no authority. Anti-government forces have taken over government buildings and driven Saleh’s representatives from office in towns and districts across the country, including the major port city of Aden.

Fresh clashes took place on Sunday in the southern province of Abyan. An Islamist group, alleged to be associated with Al Qaeda, took control of several government buildings, including a munitions factory, in the towns of Jaar and Lowdar. Yemeni troops retook the area in fighting that left six soldiers and an unknown number of Islamists dead.

Massive protests against the government are continuing in Sanaa. Tens of thousands marched through the capital on Friday, chanting anti-Saleh slogans and demanding democratic government and improved living conditions. Al Jazeera reported that at least one demonstrator was shot on Friday. Onlookers told the news agency that police snipers, who were responsible for most of the March 18 deaths, were still on the roofs of buildings in the city.

An armed pro-Saleh mob attempted to attack anti-government protesters near Sanaa University on Friday, but was dispersed by soldiers from units that have mutinied against the government.

In order to head off mass popular opposition to the regime, a section of the military top brass and senior figures from government broke with Saleh last week. Voicing support for the “youth revolution,” these members of the ruling class, who for decades collaborated in the repression and exploitation of the Yemeni people, are now jockeying to secure their interests.

Of particular significance was the defection of Major General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, one of the most powerful figures in the military and formerly a close ally of Saleh. The general, who has fallen out of favor with Saleh in recent years, sent his forces to take control of large parts of Sanaa last week, under the guise of protecting demonstrators from police attacks.

It was the defection of some military commanders—not the weeks of protests on the streets—that gave the signal to other powerful figures to split from Saleh. Among the new supporters of the “revolution” are several former ambassadors, government ministers and the head of the Yemen Oil Company, Omar al-Arhabi, who is Saleh’s brother-in-law.

On Saturday, representatives of this “opposition” met with the Saleh regime in Sanaa to strike a deal to end the crisis. One of the key figures negotiating with the government was Mohammed al-Sabri, leader of the Nasserite Unionist People’s Organization. A nationalist party that sits on the opposition benches of the country’s toothless parliament, the Nasserites have been an established fixture in Yemeni politics since the organization was legalized in 1989.

The Nasserites have worked loyally with Saleh ever since, even praising supposed attempts by the president to act against corruption in the armed forces. Al-Sabri, in an interview with the Yemen Post in 2008, described the Yemeni army as a “national institution and property to all Yemeni citizens.”

That the Nasserites should now be in league in figures such as Major General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar—one of the wealthiest and most corrupt leaders in the military—speaks volumes about their democratic principles.

In a further expression of the anti-democratic nature of the negotiations between oppositionists and the regime, the US ambassador to Yemen, Gerald Feierstein, was present at Saturday’s talks. Washington has backed Saleh throughout the mass protests, with the US State Department offering only the most muted criticism of the slaughter of unarmed demonstrators by Saleh’s forces.

Feierstein has previously voiced opposition to the protests in Yemen. In comments made to Reuters earlier in the month, the ambassador said that the US did not “believe that the demonstrations are the place where Yemen’s problems will be solved.”

Representing the government at the talks, Vice President Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi rejected calls for Saleh to step down. Presidential spokesman Ahmed al-Sufi said the demands placed on the government were “impossible to accept” and that “the president wants an honorable transfer of power according to the constitution through elections.”

Saleh has promised not to run in early elections proposed for later this year, and that his sons would not stand to replace him.

Political analyst Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani told Reuters that Saleh was now only “maneuvering for favorable exit terms. Still, with tanks on the streets of Sanaa, he is holding the city hostage.”

The mass protests have rejected Saleh’s offer to step down later this year, correctly realizing that even if the president honored his word, the intervening period would be used to ramp up repression of opposition forces while consolidating the power and wealth of the Saleh family and their coterie.

That Saleh is still able to cling to power and negotiate for a favorable outcome, despite the near collapse of his government, is testament to the support that he continues to receive from the US.

The presence of the US ambassador at the meeting on Saturday indicates that it is Washington calling the shots in the negotiations. The outcome of such a sordid compromise between Saleh, the bourgeois opposition and US imperialism will be an equally venal regime opposed to the most elementary demands of the Yemeni masses.

Speaking before the US-brokered talks, Saleh, whose elite Republican Guard forces still control key government and military installations in the capital, announced on the Al-Arabiya satellite television network that only he could prevent the fracturing of the country.

“Yemen is a ticking time bomb and if the political system collapses and there’s no constructive dialogue there will be a long civil war that will be difficult to end,” Saleh declared. Seeking to whip up sectarian backing for his rule, Saleh claimed that the Houthis, a Shiite Muslim tribal group based along Yemen’s boarder with Saudi Arabia, had influenced the protests. The Houthis have fought a protracted war with Saleh’s forces and the Saudi monarchy over their demands for autonomy.

Yemen had been divided during the Cold War, with Saleh ruling US-backed North Yemen from 1979 until he took over the unified state in 1990. There is a powerful secessionist movement in the south of the country, as well as numerous tribal and sectarian tensions.

The main concern for the parties to the negotiations is the preservation of bourgeois rule in Yemen and across the Arabian Peninsula. To the extent that Saleh is seen as a liability, Washington is preparing sections of the opposition leadership to enter a future government in order to strangle the movement of workers.

The uprising across the Middle East and North Africa has seen the working class come into open conflict with the Arab bourgeoisie, which has for decades enriched itself from the region’s resources while brutally repressing any expression of the social and democratic aspirations of the masses.

In another US-backed dictatorship in the region, security forces in Bahrain used police batons and teargas to quell crowds still protesting against the regime on Friday. Al Jazeera reported that clouds of gas could be seen across the capital city, Manama. “People will march down the street and a helicopter will appear, police will move in, and people move indoors,” the news agency’s correspondent reported.

A 71-year-old man died of asphyxiation after police fired tear gas grenades into crowds gathered in the town of Maameer. At least 20 people have been killed since anti-government protests began in February, and hundreds more have been wounded.

Demonstrations in Bahrain have been smaller in recent days after the government of King Hamad al-Khalifa, backed by over a thousand troops from Saudi Arabia, launched a crackdown in Manama on March 17 that left at least six people dead. Pro-regime thugs have also been terrorizing working class neighborhoods, attacking businesses and entering the homes of Shiite Muslims, the religious majority of Bahrain who face discrimination from the Sunni al-Khalifa monarchy.

Workers and youth in Yemen and Bahrain and across the Arab world have sought the ouster of hated dictators and monarchs, but they have also demanded social and economic rights: job creation programs for youth, secure employment, an end to the privatization of state-owned assets, and the equitable distribution of oil revenues.

These demands for social equality cut directly across the interests of the ruling class in every country in the region. But the uprisings also threaten the interests of the imperialist powers, who for decades have backed these regimes in order to profit from the mineral wealth of the Middle East and North Africa.

In order to protect their predatory interests, Washington and the other major powers continue to back Saleh and al-Khalifa, as well as the other despots of the region—while utilizing feigned concern for “human rights” to justify a colonial war of plunder against Libya.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/yeme-m28.shtml

African Union rejects foreign military intervention in Libya

2011-04-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

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Posted on March 12, 2011

The African Union has released a declaration on the situation in Libya and named a select group of African leaders to meet with Libyan officials in the hope of resolving the conflict. The Union also rejected foreign military intervention in Libya. The full official text of the AU’s communique is published below.
COMMUNIQUE OF THE 265th MEETING OF THE PEACE AND SECURITY COUNCIL
The Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU), at its 265th meeting held at the level of Heads of State and Government, on 10 March 2011, adopted the following decision on the situation in Libya:
Council:

1. Takes note of the statements made by the Chairperson of the Commission, as well as by the representative of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya;

2. Recalls communiqué PSC/PR/COMM(CCLXI) adopted at its 261st meeting, held on 23 February 2011, and the statement issued, the same day, by the Chairperson of the Commission;

3. Expresses AU’s deep concern at the prevailing situation in Libya, which poses a serious threat to peace and security in that country and in the region as a whole, as well as to the safety and dignity of Libyans and of the migrant workers, notably the African ones, living in Libya. Council is equally deeply concerned with the resulting humanitarian situation;

4. Expresses AU’s solidarity with Libya, and underscores the legitimacy of the aspirations of the Libyan people for democracy, political reform, justice, peace and security, as well as for socio‐economic development, and the need to ensure that these aspirations are fulfilled in a peaceful and democratic manner; in this context, Council takes note of the stated commitment of the Libyan authorities to embark upon the path of reforms;

5. Reiterates AU’s strong and unequivocal condemnation of the indiscriminate use of force and lethal weapons, whoever it comes from, resulting in the loss of life, both civilian and military, and the transformation of pacific demonstrations into an armed rebellion; Council deeply deplores the loss of human life, conveys its condolences to the families of the victims and wishes early recovery to those who have been injured;

6. Reaffirms its strong commitment to the respect of the unity and territorial integrity of Libya, as well as its rejection of any foreign military intervention, whatever its form;

7. Expresses its conviction that the current situation in Libya calls for an urgent African action for: (i) the immediate cessation of all hostilities, (ii) the cooperation of the competent Libyan authorities to facilitate the timely delivery of humanitarian assistance to the needy populations, (iii) the protection of foreign nationals, including the African migrants living in Libya, and (iv) the adoption and implementation of the political reforms necessary for the elimination of the causes of the current crisis;

8. Decides to establish an AU ad‐hoc High‐Level Committee on Libya comprising five Heads of State and Government, as well as the Chairperson of the Commission; Council requests the Chairperson of the Commission to finalize the consultations undertaken in this respect and to announce the composition of the Committee as soon as possible. Council further decides that the Committee is mandated to:

(i) engage with all parties in Libya and continuously assess the evolution of the situation on the ground,

(ii) facilitate an inclusive dialogue among the Libyan parties on the appropriate reforms,

(iii) engage AU’s partners, in particular the League of Arab States, the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, the European Union and the United Nations, to facilitate coordination of efforts and seek their support for the early resolution of the crisis ;

9. Further decides that the AU ad‐hoc High‐Level Committee on Libya be supported by a team comprising the Ministers of Foreign Affairs/External Relations and/or other relevant Ministers of the countries concerned, as well as the AU Commissioner for Peace and Security;

10. Requests all AU Member States to provide logistical and humanitarian support to all African migrant workers wishing to leave Libya, as well as to those neighboring countries forced to bear a disproportionate burden and to the countries of origin to facilitate the socio‐economic reinsertion of these migrant workers. In this respect, Council requests the Chairperson of the Commission to take the necessary steps to coordinate such an effort, including the convening of a conference to facilitate the mobilization of the required resources and other related measures;

11. Recalls the provisions of the OAU Convention on the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa; Council requests the Commission to gather information on the reported presence of mercenaries in Libya and their actions, to enable it, should these reports be confirmed, to take the required measures in line with the Convention;

12. Requests the Chairperson of the Commission to transmit this decision to the United Nations Security Council, the League of Arab States, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the European Union and other concerned AU partners, for their action as appropriate;
13. Decides to remain actively seized of the matter.
H/T: Mathaba

http://www.myweku.com/2011/03/african-union-rejects-foreign-military-intervention-in-libya/

The Zionist Plan for the Middle East

2011-04-01T07:48:00.001-07:00

The Zionist Plan for the Middle East.
Translated and edited by Israel Shahak

In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: "From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates."

Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947: "The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon."

Khalil Nakhleh

July 23, 1982

The Association of Arab-American University Graduates finds it compelling to inaugurate its new publication series, Special Documents, with Oded Yinon's article which appeared in Kivunim (Directions), the journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization. Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. To our knowledge, this document is the most explicit, detailed and unambiguous statement to date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East. Furthermore, it stands as an accurate representation of the "vision" for the entire Middle East of the presently ruling Zionist regime of Begin, Sharon and Eitan. Its importance, hence, lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare which it presents.

The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel's satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.

This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme. This theme has been documented on a very modest scale in the AAUG publication, Israel's Sacred Terrorism (1980), by Livia Rokach. Based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach's study documents, in convincing detail, the Zionist plan as it applies to Lebanon and as it was prepared in the mid-fifties.

The first massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 bore this plan out to the minutest detail. The second and more barbaric and encompassing Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, aims to effect certain parts of this plan which hopes to see not only Lebanon, but Syria and Jordan as well, in fragments. This ought to make mockery of Israeli public claims regarding their desire for a strong and independent Lebanese central government. More accurately, they want a Lebanese central government that sanctions their regional imperialist designs by signing a peace treaty with them. They also seek acquiescence in their designs by the Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and other Arab governments as well as by the Palestinian people. What they want and what they are planning for is not an Arab world, but a world of Arab fragments that is ready to succumb to Israeli hegemony. Hence, Oded Yinon in his essay, "A Strategy for Israel
in the 1980's," talks about "far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967" that are created by the "very stormy situation that surrounds Israel."

The Zionist policy of displacing the Palestinians from Palestine is very much an active policy, but is pursued more forcefully in times of contlict, such as in the 1947-1948 war and in the 1967 war. An appendix entitled "Israel Talks of a New Exodus" is included in this publication to demonstrate past Zionist dispersals of Palestinians from their homeland and to show, besides the main Zionist document we present, other Zionist planning for the de-Palestinization of Palestine.

It is clear from the Kivunim document, published in February, 1982, that the "far-reaching opportunities" of which Zionist strategists have been thinking are the same "opportunities" of which they are trying to convince the world and which they claim were generated by their June, 1982 invasion. It is also clear that the Palestinians were never the sole target of Zionist plans, but the priority target since their viable and independent presence as a people negates the essence of the Zionist state. Every Arab state, however, especially those with cohesive and clear nationalist directions, is a real target sooner or later.

Contrasted with the detailed and unambiguous Zionist strategy elucidated in this document, Arab and Palestinian strategy, unfortunately, suffers from ambiguity and incoherence. There is no indication that Arab strategists have internalized the Zionist plan in its full ramifications. Instead, they react with incredulity and shock whenever a new stage of it unfolds. This is apparent in Arab reaction, albeit muted, to the Israeli siege of Beirut. The sad fact is that as long as the Zionist strategy for the Middle East is not taken seriously Arab reaction to any future siege of other Arab capitals will be the same.
FORWARD by Israel Shahak - June 13, 1982

The following essay represents, in my opinion, the accurate and detailed plan of the present Zionist regime (of Sharon and Eitan) for the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states. I will comment on the military aspect of this plan in a concluding note. Here I want to draw the attention of the readers to several important points:
The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the "best" that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: "The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part" (Ha'aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.

The strong connection with Neo-Conservative thought in the USA is very prominent, especially in the author's notes. But, while lip service is paid to the idea of the "defense of the West" from Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli establishment is clear: To make an Imperial Israel into a world power. In other words, the aim of Sharon is to deceive the Americans after he has deceived all the rest.

It is obvious that much of the relevant data, both in the notes and in the text, is garbled or omitted, such as the financial help of the U.S. to Israel. Much of it is pure fantasy. But, the plan is not to be regarded as not influential, or as not capable of realization for a short time. The plan follows faithfully the geopolitical ideas current in Germany of 1890-1933, which were swallowed whole by Hitler and the Nazi movement, and determined their aims for East Europe. Those aims, especially the division of the existing states, were carried out in 1939-1941, and only an alliance on the global scale prevented their consolidation for a period of time.
The notes by the author follow the text. To avoid confusion, I did not add any notes of my own, but have put the substance of them into this foreward and the conclusion at the end. I have, however, emphasized some portions of the text.

A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties

By Oded Yinon

This essay originally appeared in Hebrew in KIVUNIM (Directions), A Journal for Judaism and Zionism; Issue No, 14--Winter, 5742, February 1982, Editor: Yoram Beck. Editorial Committee: Eli Eyal, Yoram Beck, Amnon Hadari, Yohanan Manor, Elieser Schweid. Published by the Department of Publicity/The World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem.

At the outset of the nineteen eighties the State of Israel is in need of a new perspective as to its place, its aims and national targets, at home and abroad. This need has become even more vital due to a number of central processes which the country, the region and the world are undergoing. We are living today in the early stages of a new epoch in human history which is not at all similar to its predecessor, and its characteristics are totally different from what we have hitherto known. That is why we need an understanding of the central processes which typify this historical epoch on the one hand, and on the other hand we need a world outlook and an operational strategy in accordance with the new conditions. The existence, prosperity and steadfastness of the Jewish state will depend upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs.

This epoch is characterized by several traits which we can already diagnose, and which symbolize a genuine revolution in our present lifestyle. The dominant process is the breakdown of the rationalist, humanist outlook as the major cornerstone supporting the life and achievements of Western civilization since the Renaissance. The political, social and economic views which have emanated from this foundation have been based on several "truths" which are presently disappearing--for example, the view that man as an individual is the center of the universe and everything exists in order to fulfill his basic material needs. This position is being invalidated in the present when it has become clear that the amount of resources in the cosmos does not meet Man's requirements, his economic needs or his demographic constraints. In a world in which there are four billion human beings and economic and energy resources which do not grow proportionally to meet the needs of mankind, it is unrealistic to expect to fulfill the main requirement of Western Society,1 i.e., the wish and aspiration for boundless consumption. The view that ethics plays no part in determining the direction Man takes, but rather his material needs do--that view is becoming prevalent today as we see a world in which nearly all values are disappearing. We are losing the ability to assess the simplest things, especially when they concern the simple question of what is Good and what is Evil.

The vision of man's limitless aspirations and abilities shrinks in the face of the sad facts of life, when we witness the break-up of world order around us. The view which promises liberty and freedom to mankind seems absurd in light of the sad fact that three fourths of the human race lives under totalitarian regimes. The views concerning equality and social justice have been transformed by socialism and especially by Communism into a laughing stock. There is no argument as to the truth of these two ideas, but it is clear that they have not been put into practice properly and the majority of mankind has lost the liberty, the freedom and the opportunity for equality and justice. In this nuclear world in which we are (still) living in relative peace for thirty years, the concept of peace and coexistence among nations has no meaning when a superpower like the USSR holds a military and political doctrine of the sort it has: that not only is a nuclear war possible and necessary in order to achieve the ends of Marxism, but that it is possible to survive after it, not to speak of the fact that one can be victorious in it.2

The essential concepts of human society, especially those of the West, are undergoing a change due to political, military and economic transformations. Thus, the nuclear and conventional might of the USSR has transformed the epoch that has just ended into the last respite before the great saga that will demolish a large part of our world in a multi-dimensional global war, in comparison with which the past world wars will have been mere child's play. The power of nuclear as well as of conventional weapons, their quantity, their precision and quality will turn most of our world upside down within a few years, and we must align ourselves so as to face that in Israel. That is, then, the main threat to our existence and that of the Western world.3 The war over resources in the world, the Arab monopoly on oil, and the need of the West to import most of its raw materials from the Third World, are transforming the world we know, given that one of the major aims of the USSR is to defeat the West by gaining control over the gigantic resources in the Persian Gulf and in the southern part of Africa, in which the majority of world minerals are located. We can imagine the dimensions of the global confrontation which will face us in the future.

The Gorshkov doctrine calls for Soviet control of the oceans and mineral rich areas of the Third World. That together with the present Soviet nuclear doctrine which holds that it is possible to manage, win and survive a nuclear war, in the course of which the West's military might well be destroyed and its inhabitants made slaves in the service of Marxism-Leninism, is the main danger to world peace and to our own existence. Since 1967, the Soviets have transformed Clausewitz' dictum into "War is the continuation of policy in nuclear means," and made it the motto which guides all their policies. Already today they are busy carrying out their aims in our region and throughout the world, and the need to face them becomes the major element in our country's security policy and of course that of the rest of the Free World. That is our major foreign challenge.4

The Arab Moslem world, therefore, is not the major strategic problem which we shall face in the Eighties, despite the fact that it carries the main threat against Israel, due to its growing military might. This world, with its ethnic minorities, its factions and internal crises, which is astonishingly self-destructive, as we can see in Lebanon, in non-Arab Iran and now also in Syria, is unable to deal successfully with its fundamental problems and does not therefore constitute a real threat against the State of Israel in the long run, but only in the short run where its immediate military power has great import. In the long run, this world will be unable to exist within its present framework in the areas around us without having to go through genuine revolutionary changes. The Moslem Arab World is built like a temporary house of cards put together by foreigners (France and Britain in the Nineteen Twenties), without the wishes and desires of the inhabitants having been taken into account. It was arbitrarily divided into 19 states, all made of combinations of minorites and ethnic groups which are hostile to one another, so that every Arab Moslem state nowadays faces ethnic social destruction from within, and in some a civil war is already raging.5 Most of the Arabs, 118 million out of 170 million, live in Africa, mostly in Egypt (45 million today).

Apart from Egypt, all the Maghreb states are made up of a mixture of Arabs and non-Arab Berbers. In Algeria there is already a civil war raging in the Kabile mountains between the two nations in the country. Morocco and Algeria are at war with each other over Spanish Sahara, in addition to the internal struggle in each of them. Militant Islam endangers the integrity of Tunisia and Qaddafi organizes wars which are destructive from the Arab point of view, from a country which is sparsely populated and which cannot become a powerful nation. That is why he has been attempting unifications in the past with states that are more genuine, like Egypt and Syria. Sudan, the most torn apart state in the Arab Moslem world today is built upon four groups hostile to each other, an Arab Moslem Sunni minority which rules over a majority of non-Arab Africans, Pagans, and Christians. In Egypt there is a Sunni Moslem majority facing a large minority of Christians which is dominant in upper Egypt: some 7 million of them, so that even Sadat, in his speech on May 8, expressed the fear that they will want a state of their own, something like a "second" Christian Lebanon in Egypt.

All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with inner conflict even more than those of the Maghreb. Syria is fundamentally no different from Lebanon except in the strong military regime which rules it. But the real civil war taking place nowadays between the Sunni majority and the Shi'ite Alawi ruling minority (a mere 12% of the population) testifies to the severity of the domestic trouble.

Iraq is, once again, no different in essence from its neighbors, although its majority is Shi'ite and the ruling minority Sunni. Sixty-five percent of the population has no say in politics, in which an elite of 20 percent holds the power. In addition there is a large Kurdish minority in the north, and if it weren't for the strength of the ruling regime, the army and the oil revenues, Iraq's future state would be no different than that of Lebanon in the past or of Syria today. The seeds of inner conflict and civil war are apparent today already, especially after the rise of Khomeini to power in Iran, a leader whom the Shi'ites in Iraq view as their natural leader.

All the Gulf principalities and Saudi Arabia are built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil. In Kuwait, the Kuwaitis constitute only a quarter of the population. In Bahrain, the Shi'ites are the majority but are deprived of power. In the UAE, Shi'ites are once again the majority but the Sunnis are in power. The same is true of Oman and North Yemen. Even in the Marxist South Yemen there is a sizable Shi'ite minority. In Saudi Arabia half the population is foreign, Egyptian and Yemenite, but a Saudi minority holds power.

Jordan is in reality Palestinian, ruled by a Trans-Jordanian Bedouin minority, but most of the army and certainly the bureaucracy is now Palestinian. As a matter of fact Amman is as Palestinian as Nablus. All of these countries have powerful armies, relatively speaking. But there is a problem there too. The Syrian army today is mostly Sunni with an Alawi officer corps, the Iraqi army Shi'ite with Sunni commanders. This has great significance in the long run, and that is why it will not be possible to retain the loyalty of the army for a long time except where it comes to the only common denominator: The hostility towards Israel, and today even that is insufficient.

Alongside the Arabs, split as they are, the other Moslem states share a similar predicament. Half of Iran's population is comprised of a Persian speaking group and the other half of an ethnically Turkish group. Turkey's population comprises a Turkish Sunni Moslem majority, some 50%, and two large minorities, 12 million Shi'ite Alawis and 6 million Sunni Kurds. In Afghanistan there are 5 million Shi'ites who constitute one third of the population. In Sunni Pakistan there are 15 million Shi'ites who endanger the existence of that state.13

This national ethnic minority picture extending from Morocco to India and from Somalia to Turkey points to the absence of stability and a rapid degeneration in the entire region. When this picture is added to the economic one, we see how the entire region is built like a house of cards, unable to withstand its severe problems.

In this giant and fractured world there are a few wealthy groups and a huge mass of poor people. Most of the Arabs have an average yearly income of 300 dollars. That is the situation in Egypt, in most of the Maghreb countries except for Libya, and in Iraq. Lebanon is torn apart and its economy is falling to pieces. It is a state in which there is no centralized power, but only 5 de facto sovereign authorities (Christian in the north, supported by the Syrians and under the rule of the Franjieh clan, in the East an area of direct Syrian conquest, in the center a Phalangist controlled Christian enclave, in the south and up to the Litani river a mostly Palestinian region controlled by the PLO and Major Haddad's state of Christians and half a million Shi'ites). Syria is in an even graver situation and even the assistance she will obtain in the future after the unification with Libya will not be sufficient for dealing with the basic problems of existence and the maintenance of a large army. Egypt is in the worst situation: Millions are on the verge of hunger, half the labor force is unemployed, and housing is scarce in this most densely populated area of the world. Except for the army, there is not a single department operating efficiently and the state is in a permanent state of bankruptcy and depends entirely on American foreign assistance granted since the peace.6

In the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt there is the largest accumulation of money and oil in the world, but those enjoying it are tiny elites who lack a wide base of support and self-confidence, something that no army can guarantee.7 The Saudi army with all its equipment cannot defend the regime from real dangers at home or abroad, and what took place in Mecca in 1980 is only an example. A sad and very stormy situation surrounds Israel and creates challenges for it, problems, risks but also far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967. Chances are that opportunities missed at that time will become achievable in the Eighties to an extent and along dimensions which we cannot even imagine today.

The "peace" policy and the return of territories, through a dependence upon the US, precludes the realization of the new option created for us. Since 1967, all the governments of Israel have tied our national aims down to narrow political needs, on the one hand, and on the other to destructive opinions at home which neutralized our capacities both at home and abroad. Failing to take steps towards the Arab population in the new territories, acquired in the course of a war forced upon us, is the major strategic error committed by Israel on the morning after the Six Day War. We could have saved ourselves all the bitter and dangerous conflict since then if we had given Jordan to the Palestinians who live west of the Jordan river. By doing that we would have neutralized the Palestinian problem which we nowadays face, and to which we have found solutions that are really no solutions at all, such as territorial compromise or autonomy which amount, in fact, to the same thing.8 Today, we suddenly face immense opportunities for transforming the situation thoroughly and this we must do in the coming decade, otherwise we shall not survive as a state.

In the course of the Nineteen Eighties, the State of Israel will have to go through far-reaching changes in its political and economic regime domestically, along with radical changes in its foreign policy, in order to stand up to the global and regional challenges of this new epoch. The loss of the Suez Canal oil fields, of the immense potential of the oil, gas and other natural resources in the Sinai peninsula which is geomorphologically identical to the rich oil-producing countries in the region, will result in an energy drain in the near future and will destroy our domestic economy: one quarter of our present GNP as well as one third of the budget is used for the purchase of oil.9 The search for raw materials in the Negev and on the coast will not, in the near future, serve to alter that state of affairs.

(Regaining) the Sinai peninsula with its present and potential resources is therefore a political priority which is obstructed by the Camp David and the peace agreements. The fault for that lies of course with the present Israeli government and the governments which paved the road to the policy of territorial compromise, the Alignment governments since 1967. The Egyptians will not need to keep the peace treaty after the return of the Sinai, and they will do all they can to return to the fold of the Arab world and to the USSR in order to gain support and military assistance. American aid is guaranteed only for a short while, for the terms of the peace and the weakening of the U.S. both at home and abroad will bring about a reduction in aid. Without oil and the income from it, with the present enormous expenditure, we will not be able to get through 1982 under the present conditions and we will have to act in order to return the situation to the status quo which existed in Sinai prior to Sadat's visit and the mistaken peace agreement signed with him in March 1979.10

Israel has two major routes through which to realize this purpose, one direct and the other indirect. The direct option is the less realistic one because of the nature of the regime and government in Israel as well as the wisdom of Sadat who obtained our withdrawal from Sinai, which was, next to the war of 1973, his major achievement since he took power. Israel will not unilaterally break the treaty, neither today, nor in 1982, unless it is very hard pressed economically and politically and Egypt provides Israel with the excuse to take the Sinai back into our hands for the fourth time in our short history. What is left therefore, is the indirect option. The economic situation in Egypt, the nature of the regime and its pan-Arab policy, will bring about a situation after April 1982 in which Israel will be forced to act directly or indirectly in order to regain control over Sinai as a strategic, economic and energy reserve for the long run. Egypt does not constitute a military strategic problem due to its internal conflicts and it could be driven back to the post 1967 war situation in no more than one day.11

The myth of Egypt as the strong leader of the Arab World was demolished back in 1956 and definitely did not survive 1967, but our policy, as in the return of the Sinai, served to turn the myth into "fact." In reality, however, Egypt's power in proportion both to Israel alone and to the rest of the Arab World has gone down about 50 percent since 1967. Egypt is no longer the leading political power in the Arab World and is economically on the verge of a crisis. Without foreign assistance the crisis will come tomorrow.12 In the short run, due to the return of the Sinai, Egypt will gain several advantages at our expense, but only in the short run until 1982, and that will not change the balance of power to its benefit, and will possibly bring about its downfall. Egypt, in its present domestic political picture, is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into account the growing Moslem-Christian rift. Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political aim of Israel in the Nineteen Eighties on its Western front.

Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority. If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt. The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized government as to date, is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run.13

The Western front, which on the surface appears more problematic, is in fact less complicated than the Eastern front, in which most of the events that make the headlines have been taking place recently. Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precendent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.14

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.15

The entire Arabian peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution due to internal and external pressures, and the matter is inevitable especially in Saudi Arabia. Regardless of whether its economic might based on oil remains intact or whether it is diminished in the long run, the internal rifts and breakdowns are a clear and natural development in light of the present political structure.16

Jordan constitutes an immediate strategic target in the short run but not in the long run, for it does not constitute a real threat in the long run after its dissolution, the termination of the lengthy rule of King Hussein and the transfer of power to the Palestinians in the short run.

There is no chance that Jordan will continue to exist in its present structure for a long time, and Israel's policy, both in war and in peace, ought to be directed at the liquidation of Jordan under the present regime and the transfer of power to the Palestinian majority. Changing the regime east of the river will also cause the termination of the problem of the territories densely populated with Arabs west of the Jordan. Whether in war or under conditions of peace, emigrationfrom the territories and economic demographic freeze in them, are the guarantees for the coming change on both banks of the river, and we ought to be active in order to accelerate this process in the nearest future. The autonomy plan ought also to be rejected, as well as any compromise or division of the territories for, given the plans of the PLO and those of the Israeli Arabs themselves, the Shefa'amr plan of September 1980, it is not possible to go on living in this country in the present situation without separating the two nations, the Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to the areas west of the river. Genuine coexistence and peace will reign over the land only when the Arabs understand that without Jewish rule between the Jordan and the sea they will have neither existence nor security. A nation of their own and security will be theirs only in Jordan.17

Within Israel the distinction between the areas of '67 and the territories beyond them, those of '48, has always been meaningless for Arabs and nowadays no longer has any significance for us. The problem should be seen in its entirety without any divisions as of '67. It should be clear, under any future political situation or mifitary constellation, that the solution of the problem of the indigenous Arabs will come only when they recognize the existence of Israel in secure borders up to the Jordan river and beyond it, as our existential need in this difficult epoch, the nuclear epoch which we shall soon enter. It is no longer possible to live with three fourths of the Jewish population on the dense shoreline which is so dangerous in a nuclear epoch.

Dispersal of the population is therefore a domestic strategic aim of the highest order; otherwise, we shall cease to exist within any borders. Judea, Samaria and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for national existence, and if we do not become the majority in the mountain areas, we shall not rule in the country and we shall be like the Crusaders, who lost this country which was not theirs anyhow, and in which they were foreigners to begin with. Rebalancing the country demographically, strategically and economically is the highest and most central aim today. Taking hold of the mountain watershed from Beersheba to the Upper Galilee is the national aim generated by the major strategic consideration which is settling the mountainous part of the country that is empty of Jews today.l8

Realizing our aims on the Eastern front depends first on the realization of this internal strategic objective. The transformation of the political and economic structure, so as to enable the realization of these strategic aims, is the key to achieving the entire change. We need to change from a centralized economy in which the government is extensively involved, to an open and free market as well as to switch from depending upon the U.S. taxpayer to developing, with our own hands, of a genuine productive economic infrastructure. If we are not able to make this change freely and voluntarily, we shall be forced into it by world developments, especially in the areas of economics, energy, and politics, and by our own growing isolation.l9

From a military and strategic point of view, the West led by the U.S. is unable to withstand the global pressures of the USSR throughout the world, and Israel must therefore stand alone in the Eighties, without any foreign assistance, military or economic, and this is within our capacities today, with no compromises.20 Rapid changes in the world will also bring about a change in the condition of world Jewry to which Israel will become not only a last resort but the only existential option. We cannot assume that U.S. Jews, and the communities of Europe and Latin America will continue to exist in the present form in the future.21

Our existence in this country itself is certain, and there is no force that could remove us from here either forcefully or by treachery (Sadat's method). Despite the difficulties of the mistaken "peace" policy and the problem of the Israeli Arabs and those of the territories, we can effectively deal with these problems in the foreseeable future.

Conclusion

Three important points have to be clarified in order to be able to understand the significant possibilities of realization of this Zionist plan for the Middle East, and also why it had to be published.
The Military Background of The Plan

The military conditions of this plan have not been mentioned above, but on the many occasions where something very like it is being "explained" in closed meetings to members of the Israeli Establishment, this point is clarified. It is assumed that the Israeli military forces, in all their branches, are insufficient for the actual work of occupation of such wide territories as discussed above. In fact, even in times of intense Palestinian "unrest" on the West Bank, the forces of the Israeli Army are stretched out too much. The answer to that is the method of ruling by means of "Haddad forces" or of "Village Associations" (also known as "Village Leagues"): local forces under "leaders" completely dissociated from the population, not having even any feudal or party structure (such as the Phalangists have, for example). The "states" proposed by Yinon are "Haddadland" and "Village Associations," and their armed forces will be, no doubt, quite similar. In addition, Israeli military superiority in such a situation will be much greater than it is even now, so that any movement of revolt will be "punished" either by mass humiliation as in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or by bombardment and obliteration of cities, as in Lebanon now (June 1982), or by both. In order to ensure this, the plan, as explained orally, calls for the establishment of Israeli garrisons in focal places between the mini states, equipped with the necessary mobile destructive forces. In fact, we have seen something like this in Haddadland and we will almost certainly soon see the first example of this system functioning either in South Lebanon or in all Lebanon.

It is obvious that the above military assumptions, and the whole plan too, depend also on the Arabs continuing to be even more divided than they are now, and on the lack of any truly progressive mass movement among them. It may be that those two conditions will be removed only when the plan will be well advanced, with consequences which can not be foreseen.
Why it is necessary to publish this in Israel?

The reason for publication is the dual nature of the Israeli-Jewish society: A very great measure of freedom and democracy, specially for Jews, combined with expansionism and racist discrimination. In such a situation the Israeli-Jewish elite (for the masses follow the TV and Begin's speeches) has to be persuaded. The first steps in the process of persuasion are oral, as indicated above, but a time comes in which it becomes inconvenient. Written material must be produced for the benefit of the more stupid "persuaders" and "explainers" (for example medium-rank officers, who are, usually, remarkably stupid). They then "learn it," more or less, and preach to others. It should be remarked that Israel, and even the Yishuv from the Twenties, has always functioned in this way. I myself well remember how (before I was "in opposition") the necessity of war with was explained to me and others a year before the 1956 war, and the necessity of conquering "the rest of Western Palestine when we will have the opportunity" was explained in the years 1965-67.
Why is it assumed that there is no special risk from the outside in the publication of such plans?

Such risks can come from two sources, so long as the principled opposition inside Israel is very weak (a situation which may change as a consequence of the war on Lebanon) : The Arab World, including the Palestinians, and the United States. The Arab World has shown itself so far quite incapable of a detailed and rational analysis of Israeli-Jewish society, and the Palestinians have been, on the average, no better than the rest. In such a situation, even those who are shouting about the dangers of Israeli expansionism (which are real enough) are doing this not because of factual and detailed knowledge, but because of belief in myth. A good example is the very persistent belief in the non-existent writing on the wall of the Knesset of the Biblical verse about the Nile and the Euphrates. Another example is the persistent, and completely false declarations, which were made by some of the most important Arab leaders, that the two blue stripes of the Israeli flag symbolize the Nile and the Euphrates, while in fact they are taken from the stripes of the Jewish praying shawl (Talit). The Israeli specialists assume that, on the whole, the Arabs will pay no attention to their serious discussions of the future, and the Lebanon war has proved them right. So why should they not continue with their old methods of persuading other Israelis?

In the United States a very similar situation exists, at least until now. The more or less serious commentators take their information about Israel, and much of their opinions about it, from two sources. The first is from articles in the "liberal" American press, written almost totally by Jewish admirers of Israel who, even if they are critical of some aspects of the Israeli state, practice loyally what Stalin used to call "the constructive criticism." (In fact those among them who claim also to be "Anti-Stalinist" are in reality more Stalinist than Stalin, with Israel being their god which has not yet failed). In the framework of such critical worship it must be assumed that Israel has always "good intentions" and only "makes mistakes," and therefore such a plan would not be a matter for discussion--exactly as the Biblical genocides committed by Jews are not mentioned. The other source of information, The Jerusalem Post, has similar policies. So long, therefore, as the situation exists in which Israel is really a "closed society" to the rest of the world, because the world wants to close its eyes, the publication and even the beginning of the realization of such a plan is realistic and feasible.

Israel Shahak - June 17, 1982 - Jerusalem
About the Translator

Israel Shahak is a professor of organic chemistly at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. He published The Shahak Papers, collections of key articles from the Hebrew press, and is the author of numerous articles and books, among them Non-Jew in the Jewish State. His latest book is Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression, published by the AAUG in 1982. Israel Shahak: (1933-2001)
Notes
American Universities Field Staff. Report No.33, 1979. According to this research, the population of the world will be 6 billion in the year 2000. Today's world population can be broken down as follows: China, 958 million; India, 635 million; USSR, 261 million; U.S., 218 million Indonesia, 140 million; Brazil and Japan, 110 million each. According to the figures of the U.N. Population Fund for 1980, there will be, in 2000, 50 cities with a population of over 5 million each. The population ofthp;Third World will then be 80% of the world population. According to Justin Blackwelder, U.S. Census Office chief, the world population will not reach 6 billion because of hunger.
Soviet nuclear policy has been well summarized by two American Sovietologists: Joseph D. Douglas and Amoretta M. Hoeber, Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War, (Stanford, Ca., Hoover Inst. Press, 1979). In the Soviet Union tens and hundreds of articles and books are published each year which detail the Soviet doctrine for nuclear war and there is a great deal of documentation translated into English and published by the U.S. Air Force,including USAF: Marxism-Leninism on War and the Army: The Soviet View, Moscow, 1972; USAF: The Armed Forces of the Soviet State. Moscow, 1975, by Marshal A. Grechko. The basic Soviet approach to the matter is presented in the book by Marshal Sokolovski published in 1962 in Moscow: Marshal V. D. Sokolovski, Military Strategy, Soviet Doctrine and Concepts(New York, Praeger, 1963).
A picture of Soviet intentions in various areas of the world can be drawn from the book by Douglas and Hoeber, ibid. For additional material see: Michael Morgan, "USSR's Minerals as Strategic Weapon in the Future," Defense and Foreign Affairs, Washington, D.C., Dec. 1979.
Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov, Sea Power and the State, London, 1979. Morgan, loc. cit. General George S. Brown (USAF) C-JCS, Statement to the Congress on the Defense Posture of the United States For Fiscal Year 1979, p. 103; National Security Council, Review of Non-Fuel Mineral Policy, (Washington, D.C. 1979,); Drew Middleton, The New York Times, (9/15/79); Time, 9/21/80.
Elie Kedourie, "The End of the Ottoman Empire," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 3, No.4, 1968.
Al-Thawra, Syria 12/20/79, Al-Ahram,12/30/79, Al Ba'ath, Syria, 5/6/79. 55% of the Arabs are 20 years old and younger, 70% of the Arabs live in Africa, 55% of the Arabs under 15 are unemployed, 33% live in urban areas, Oded Yinon, "Egypt's Population Problem," The Jerusalem Quarterly, No. 15, Spring 1980.
E. Kanovsky, "Arab Haves and Have Nots," The Jerusalem Quarterly, No.1, Fall 1976, Al Ba'ath, Syria, 5/6/79.
In his book, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said that the Israeli government is in fact responsible for the design of American policy in the Middle East, after June '67, because of its own indecisiveness as to the future of the territories and the inconsistency in its positions since it established the background for Resolution 242 and certainly twelve years later for the Camp David agreements and the peace treaty with Egypt. According to Rabin, on June 19, 1967, President Johnson sent a letter to Prime Minister Eshkol in which he did not mention anything about withdrawal from the new territories but exactly on the same day the government resolved to return territories in exchange for peace. After the Arab resolutions in Khartoum (9/1/67) the government altered its position but contrary to its decision of June 19, did not notify the U.S. of the alteration and the U.S. continued to support 242 in the Security Council on the basis of its earlier understanding that Israel is prepared to return territories. At that point it was already too late to change the U.S. position and Israel's policy. From here the way was opened to peace agreements on the basis of 242 as was later agreed upon in Camp David. See Yitzhak Rabin. Pinkas Sherut, (Ma'ariv 1979) pp. 226-227.
Foreign and Defense Committee Chairman Prof. Moshe Arens argued in an interview (Ma 'ariv,10/3/80) that the Israeli government failed to prepare an economic plan before the Camp David agreements and was itself surprised by the cost of the agreements, although already during the negotiations it was possible to calculate the heavy price and the serious error involved in not having prepared the economic grounds for peace.
The former Minister of Treasury, Mr. Yigal Holwitz, stated that if it were not for the withdrawal from the oil fields, Israel would have a positive balance of payments (9/17/80). That same person said two years earlier that the government of Israel (from which he withdrew) had placed a noose around his neck. He was referring to the Camp David agreements (Ha'aretz, 11/3/78). In the course of the whole peace negotiations neither an expert nor an economics advisor was consulted, and the Prime Minister himself, who lacks knowledge and expertise in economics, in a mistaken initiative, asked the U.S. to give us a loan rather than a grant, due to his wish to maintain our respect and the respect of the U.S. towards us. See Ha'aretz1/5/79. Jerusalem Post, 9/7/79. Prof Asaf Razin, formerly a senior consultant in the Treasury, strongly criticized the conduct of the negotiations; Ha'aretz, 5/5/79. Ma'ariv, 9/7/79. As to matters concerning the oil fields and Israel's energy crisis, see the interview with Mr. Eitan Eisenberg, a government advisor on these matters, Ma'arive Weekly, 12/12/78. The Energy Minister, who personally signed the Camp David agreements and the evacuation of Sdeh Alma, has since emphasized the seriousness of our condition from the point of view of oil supplies more than once...see Yediot Ahronot, 7/20/79. Energy Minister Modai even admitted that the government did not consult him at all on the subject of oil during the Camp David and Blair House negotiations. Ha'aretz, 8/22/79.
Many sources report on the growth of the armaments budget in Egypt and on intentions to give the army preference in a peace epoch budget over domestic needs for which a peace was allegedly obtained. See former Prime Minister Mamduh Salam in an interview 12/18/77, Treasury Minister Abd El Sayeh in an interview 7/25/78, and the paper Al Akhbar, 12/2/78 which clearly stressed that the military budget will receive first priority, despite the peace. This is what former Prime Minister Mustafa Khalil has stated in his cabinet's programmatic document which was presented to Parliament, 11/25/78. See English translation, ICA, FBIS, Nov. 27. 1978, pp. D 1-10. According to these sources, Egypt's military budget increased by 10% between fiscal 1977 and 1978, and the process still goes on. A Saudi source divulged that the Egyptians plan to increase their militmy budget by 100% in the next two years; Ha'aretz, 2/12/79 and Jerusalem Post, 1/14/79.
Most of the economic estimates threw doubt on Egypt's ability to reconstruct its economy by 1982. See Economic Intelligence Unit, 1978 Supplement, "The Arab Republic of Egypt"; E. Kanovsky, "Recent Economic Developments in the Middle East," Occasional Papers, The Shiloah Institution, June 1977; Kanovsky, "The Egyptian Economy Since the Mid-Sixties, The Micro Sectors," Occasional Papers, June 1978; Robert McNamara, President of World Bank, as reported in Times, London, 1/24/78.
See the comparison made by the researeh of the Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and research camed out in the Center for Strategic Studies of Tel Aviv University, as well as the research by the British scientist, Denis Champlin, Military Review, Nov. 1979, ISS: The Military Balance 1979-1980, CSS; Security Arrangements in Sinai...by Brig. Gen. (Res.) A Shalev, No. 3.0 CSS; The Military Balance and the Military Options after the Peace Treaty with Egypt, by Brig. Gen. (Res.) Y. Raviv, No.4, Dec. 1978, as well as many press reports including El Hawadeth, London, 3/7/80; El Watan El Arabi, Paris, 12/14/79.
As for religious ferment in Egypt and the relations between Copts and Moslems see the series of articles published in the Kuwaiti paper, El Qabas, 9/15/80. The English author Irene Beeson reports on the rift between Moslems and Copts, see: Irene Beeson, Guardian, London, 6/24/80, and Desmond Stewart, Middle East Internmational, London 6/6/80. For other reports see Pamela Ann Smith, Guardian, London, 12/24/79; The Christian Science Monitor 12/27/79 as well as Al Dustour, London, 10/15/79; El Kefah El Arabi, 10/15/79.
Arab Press Service, Beirut, 8/6-13/80. The New Republic, 8/16/80, Der Spiegel as cited by Ha'aretz, 3/21/80, and 4/30-5/5/80; The Economist, 3/22/80; Robert Fisk, Times, London, 3/26/80; Ellsworth Jones, Sunday Times, 3/30/80.
J.P. Peroncell Hugoz, Le Monde, Paris 4/28/80; Dr. Abbas Kelidar, Middle East Review, Summer 1979; Conflict Studies, ISS, July 1975; Andreas Kolschitter, Der Zeit, (Ha'aretz, 9/21/79) Economist Foreign Report, 10/10/79, Afro-Asian Affairs, London, July 1979.
Arnold Hottinger, "The Rich Arab States in Trouble," The New York Review of Books, 5/15/80; Arab Press Service, Beirut, 6/25-7/2/80; U.S. News and World Report, 11/5/79 as well as El Ahram, 11/9/79; El Nahar El Arabi Wal Duwali, Paris 9/7/79; El Hawadeth, 11/9/79; David Hakham, Monthly Review, IDF, Jan.-Feb. 79.
As for Jordan's policies and problems see El Nahar El Arabi Wal Duwali, 4/30/79, 7/2/79; Prof. Elie Kedouri, Ma'ariv 6/8/79; Prof. Tanter, Davar 7/12/79; A. Safdi, Jerusalem Post, 5/31/79; El Watan El Arabi 11/28/79; El Qabas, 11/19/79. As for PLO positions see: The resolutions of the Fatah Fourth Congress, Damascus, August 1980. The Shefa'amr program of the Israeli Arabs was published in Ha'aretz, 9/24/80, and by Arab Press Report 6/18/80. For facts and figures on immigration of Arabs to Jordan, see Amos Ben Vered, Ha'aretz, 2/16/77; Yossef Zuriel, Ma'ariv 1/12/80. As to the PLO's position towards Israel see Shlomo Gazit, Monthly Review; July 1980; Hani El Hasan in an interview, Al Rai Al'Am, Kuwait 4/15/80; Avi Plaskov, "The Palestinian Problem," Survival, ISS, London Jan. Feb. 78; David Gutrnann, "The Palestinian Myth," Commentary, Oct. 75; Bernard Lewis, "The Palestinians and the PLO," Commentary Jan. 75; Monday Morning, Beirut, 8/18-21/80; Journal of Palestine Studies, Winter 1980.
Prof. Yuval Neeman, "Samaria--The Basis for Israel's Security," Ma'arakhot 272-273, May/June 1980; Ya'akov Hasdai, "Peace, the Way and the Right to Know," Dvar Hashavua, 2/23/80. Aharon Yariv, "Strategic Depth--An Israeli Perspective," Ma'arakhot 270-271, October 1979; Yitzhak Rabin, "Israel's Defense Problems in the Eighties," Ma'arakhot October 1979.
Ezra Zohar, In the Regime's Pliers (Shikmona, 1974); Motti Heinrich, Do We have a Chance Israel, Truth Versus Legend (Reshafim, 1981).
Henry Kissinger, "The Lessons of the Past," The Washington Review Vol 1, Jan. 1978; Arthur Ross, "OPEC's Challenge to the West," The Washington Quarterly, Winter, 1980; Walter Levy, "Oil and the Decline of the West," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1980; Special Report--"Our Armed Forees-Ready or Not?" U.S. News and World Report 10/10/77; Stanley Hoffman, "Reflections on the Present Danger," The New York Review of Books 3/6/80; Time 4/3/80; Leopold Lavedez "The illusions of SALT" Commentary Sept. 79; Norman Podhoretz, "The Present Danger," Commentary March 1980; Robert Tucker, "Oil and American Power Six Years Later," Commentary Sept. 1979; Norman Podhoretz, "The Abandonment of Israel," Commentary July 1976; Elie Kedourie, "Misreading the Middle East," Commentary July 1979.
According to figures published by Ya'akov Karoz, Yediot Ahronot, 10/17/80, the sum total of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the world in 1979 was double the amount recorded in 1978. In Germany, France, and Britain the number of anti-Semitic incidents was many times greater in that year. In the U.S. as well there has been a sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents which were reported in that article. For the new anti-Semitism, see L. Talmon, "The New Anti-Semitism," The New Republic, 9/18/1976; Barbara Tuchman, "They poisoned the Wells," Newsweek 2/3/75.

US Diplomatic cable # 09CAIRO1177

2011-04-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
09CAIRO1177 2009-06-23 12:12 2011-02-16 21:09 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Cairo
SUBJECT: EGYPTIAN MFA ON ARAB LG MINISTERIAL; LEBANON; YEMEN

Classified By: Minister-counselor William R. Stewart Reasons: 1.4 (B) and (D)

1.(C) Key points: -- MFA Cabinet Advisor for Arab Affairs Mahmoud Afifi does not expect the Syrian, Qatari or Saudi foreign ministers to attend the June 24 Arab League ministerial meeting in Cairo. He expects the focus to be on Middle East peace and the tone to be generally muted on intra-Arab disputes. -- Afifi said that Saad Hariri was very upbeat in a June 22 Cairo meeting with FM Aboul Gheit. Afifi assessed that Saad Hariri does not seem willing to compromise with Hizballah on the Hariri tribunal. Afifi expected that the opposition would need time to regroup and would not provoke a crisis, but worried that external factors (i.e. the tribunal and Iran developments) might affect the situation. -- Afifi said that Egypt remains worried about Yemen, noting that Al Qaeda continues to make gains throughout the country.

AL MINISTERIAL

2.(C) MFA Cabinet Advisor Mahmoud Afifi told us June 23 that he expects the Arab League ministerial of June 24 to focus almost exclusively on Middle East peace, including the President's June 4 speech and Israeli PM Netanyahu's June 14 remarks, as well as the internal Palestinian situation. Afifi said that Egyptian FM Aboul Gheit would brief the ministerial on Palestinian reconciliation, at Arab League SYG Moussa's request.

3.(C) Beyond Middle East peace efforts, Afifi expected the discussion to be muted, especially on intra-Arab disputes. He expected an anodyne reference to the Lebanon election, and was unsure how the ministerial would address the situation in Iran. Afifi said he had learned that the Qatari, Syrian and Saudi FMs were not planning to attend. Commenting on the Qataris, Afifi said that they are currently maneuvering in bilateral channels, e.g. with the French, and are losing momentum among the Arabs following the Lebanese election. Doha has been quiet, and regrouping, he assessed.

LEBANON

4.(C) Afifi said that Saad Hariri was in Cairo, and had seen FM Aboul Gheit, and was scheduled to see President Mubarak that day (June 23). "He is in great spirits and is now a statesman," Afifi said. From Cairo, Hariri will go to Riyadh, where Afifi said he expects Hariri will receive "guidance" on formation of a Lebanese government. Hariri told the Egyptians he did not foresee too much difficulty in government formation. Afifi assessed that the Lebanese opposition "may not get the blocking third in the way that they want it," and that Hizballah was focused on a compromise position that would keep the issue of Hizballah arms out of the national dialogue and obtain some kind of assurance that some executive and judicial positions would be designated for opposition members.

5.(C) The major issue of contention, in Afifi's view, is the Hariri tribunal. Hizballah is very worried, he assessed, especially that the focus of the investigation will shift from Syria and onto Hizballah, something that would have a practical impact as well as on Hizballah-Syrian relations. Afifi said that Hizballah is seeking some sort of assurance from Saad Hariri on the tribunal, but it was unclear what Hariri could provide. More importantly, Hariri had told the Egyptians that it is "not appropriate to exclude any party" from the investigation.

6.(C) Afifi believed that Hizballah and the opposition will take time to regroup, and will pester the majority, but not in any way that approaches the discord in the run-up to the Doha meeting of May 2008. The bottom line is that the opposition's coalition is badly fractured, Afifi said. One contingency that concerns the Egyptians is that tension from the tribunal over the short to medium term could be coupled with an Iranian decision to divert attention from its domestic situation through destabilizing actions in Lebanon, or for that matter, Iraq. Afifi commented that Damascus' statement that it "stood beside" Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime was unwise.

YEMEN

7.(C) Afifi expressed concern about the situation in Yemen. Al Qaeda is "flourishing," he said and gaining control of the mountain areas, and taking advantage of weak provincial authorities in both the north and south. Al Qaeda is now in the process of forming cooperative relationships with disaffected tribal leaders, and Al Qaeda operatives are flowing into Yemen from Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

8.(C) Afifi said that President Mubarak and FM Aboul Gheit are in touch with the Yemenis, as well as the Saudis, over the emerging crisis. He said that the Egyptians have counseled the Yemenis to stop resorting to tactical military operations in the south and adopt a more just, flexible approach to the southerners. He said that there has been billions pledged in assistance for Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, but hardly any of these funds have been used on projects in the south. So long as the Yemenis approach the situation in this "heavy handed way," the south will remain a major problem, Afifi assessed.

SCOBEY

FRANKLIN LAMB : As Tahrir Square goes so goes the Middle East?

2011-04-01T06:59:00.000-07:00

February 4, 2011 posted by Franklin Lamb · 6 Comments

“The US-Israel imperative appears designed to immediately regain control and co-opt the Tahrir uprising and quickly channel the uprising into a political cul de sac until Egypt can be returned to “normal”, meaning US-Israel shared hegemony.”

By Frankling Lamb

IT is difficult to overstate the potential for Egyptian citizens advancing universal aspirations for freedom, dignity and basic human rights now spreading from the determination of those who for more than a week have risked their lives while inspiring much of the World at Cairo’s Tahrir (“Liberation”) Square. Tahrir public plaza near central Cairo has been the traditional site for numerous major protests and demonstrations over the years, including during the 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots and the March 2003 protests against the American war in Iraq. Washington DC and Tel Aviv are reportedly shocked by the rapidly unfolding and unpredictable revolution.

One can quickly recall a long list of geographic place names that are indelibly etched in the annals of humanity’s quest for freedom and whose very geographical place name connotes resistance to aggression, oppression, occupation and tyranny. Names like Le Place de la Resistance, Tiananmen Square, the Gdansk Shipyards, Bunker Hill, Iran’s Azadi Square, Bogside, Martyr’s Square, Karbala, Aita Shaab, among scores of others. Tahrir Square has become a name symbolizing every people’s willingness, indeed insistence, to make personal, potentially life taking, sacrifices to achieve freedom from an illegitimate, corrupt, brutal, treasonous dictatorship or from occupiers or aggressors.

Less than one week after few outside Egypt had heard of or much less could locate on a blank map of Cairo, “Tahrir Square” the World now realizes it as the epicenter of the Middle East’s unfolding and unpredictable earthquake event. The Tahrir Square uprising has led to one Arab diplomat, currently posted to Beirut, observing yesterday: “If there were to be an Arab League meeting this week attended by all the Arab Heads to State, an honest participate might tell the assembled potentates to look to their right and then look to their left and realize that in perhaps 24 months close one third may not be attending subsequent Arab League summits.

The Tahrir uprising may, following a cursory examination, appear unconnected with much outside the Egyptian publics urgent longings to escape poverty, unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, caused by decades of regime economic mismanagement, police brutality and government torture chambers, and pervasive corruption that has seeped into nearly every aspect of Egyptian life. But increasingly it appears that other forces are influencing recent events, noted below.

The eyes, hope and solidarity of much of the Middle East are on Tahrir Square and the bloodied but unbowed Egyptian people, who, old and young, religious and secular, illiterates and lettered, paupers and moneyed all of whom today, following upon the glow of a spontaneous intifada in the cradle of civilization stand to win or lose so much for the region.

As the Mubarak regime plots a path for the beleaguered President to stay in power it is employing the well tested bromide of most despots including citing the need for stability, orderly transition, prevention of religious fanatics and extremists from taking over and the need for fighting “terrorism.” The pro-Mubarak Egyptian daily Al-Yawm Al-Sabah is claiming that Hamas is behind much of the instigation to violence in Tahriri Square and other areas of the country.

Not buying all of these scare tactics, the Obama Administration’s is reviving up its “now means three days ago and counting” demands. Mr .Mubarak told CNN on 2/3/11 that he’s fed up and would like nothing better than to step down but chaos and the Muslim Brotherhood would surely follow. His closest political confident and just appointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman also predicted chaos if Mr Mubarak resigned, saying it would leave a body without a head. The White House is still leaning toward Omar Suleiman but believes that Suleiman was aware of the campaign in recent days to intimidate the opposition, and are staffers are wondering whether he is still an acceptable choice. Late word from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is that the Obama Administration may support Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, who has joined anti-Mubarak protests in Tahrir Square, and is hinting he may run for president in the upcoming election. Israel would support him over Mohammad al Baradei who many view as pro-Iranian.

Still, the Mubarak regime is not without supporters. Former Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer has defended Egyptian President Hosni Mubrak, saying his collapse will be a “tremendous loss” for Israel. The former army general praised Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for supporting Israel for thirty years, Israel’s Arutz Sheva newspaper reported. “When I watched his speech in which he said he would step down, it pained me to see his collapse,” Ben-Eliezer said on 2/2/11 about Mubarak.

Both Washington and Tel Aviv are were reported shocked by the speed of the Egyptian revolt and their intelligences agencies admit not seeing it coming. Much of the American reaction is being scripted by AIPAC and other Israel lobby agents who regularly contribute campaign cash to 90 percent of the US Congress , including 390 of the 435 Members of the House of Representative ( 89.7%) who voted to support Israel after it committed repeatedly condemned serial murders of innocent civilians and myriad crimes against humanity in Gaza. These Israeli pushed “American” initiatives will likely range from possibly terminating aid to Lebanon ( some Obama Administration friends of Israel claim there is a a link between the South Beirut Hezbollah neighborhood of Dahiyeh and Cairo’s Tahir Square events ) and cutting off Egypt’s nearly 30 years of annual multi-billion dollar cash grants as well as massive military hardware.

The US-Israel imperative appears designed to immediately regain control and co-opt the Tahrir uprising and quickly channel the uprising into a political cul de sac until Egypt can be returned to “normal”, meaning US-Israel shared hegemony.

What will ultimately determine in which ways the Middle East moves following Tahrir Square events is not the armed might of the regional super power or the weapons of the global superpower. Both Israel and the US can have a short term impact but the former is shaking while the latter, equally impotent to subdue 83 million Egyptians and perhaps soon millions of Palestinians, Jordanians, Yemenis and others, is trying to stall any major regime change in favor of cosmetic adjustments to the current government. Even the Obama Administrations current public choice, Omar Sulieman is meeting with increasing resistance in Washington as details of his CV emerged including being a torture specialist and possibly a Mossad agent.

What both Israel and the US fear most is a determined and successful grass roots movement than will liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation. The Obama administration can be expected to continue to temporize events as best it can while calculating how to insert its choice of a compliant President in Mubarak’s palace. As one Congressional commented by email: “ The last thing the White House or Israel want is an Egyptian Chavez, or even someone like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Completely unacceptable would be anyone with even the hint of pro-Iranian or Hezbollah leanings. The State Department favors another strong man, with an essentially rubber stamp Parliament after “free elections” (as long as there are no troublesome Algerian, Gaza, or Lebanon style election results. The US-Israel bottom line is that Egypt’s next government must be one that will guarantee that the 1979 Camp David Accords and Egypt’s willingness to continue accepting a total of more than three billions in US taxpayer dollars annually as bribe money to collaborate with Israel against Palestine.

History is filled with ironies. One of them is the coincidence that two of the fundamental causes of the unfolding Egyptian revolution happened within months of each other both 30 years ago— soon to be followed by the beginning of the current Mubarak dictatorship—the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the US sponsored Camp David Accords. The Camp David giveaway and cave-in to colonialist Israel was never accepted by the Egyptian people, by the Islamic Republic, or by any but a small percentage of the people of the Middle East.

The hegemonic objectives of the 1979 Camp David have rolled across the region for three decades, being rejected and increasingly confronted by a growing culture of Resistance set in motion with the 1979 Imam Khomeini led revolution. Both 1979 events fueled myriad other more immediate causes including those noted above and significantly inspired the current Egyptian eruptions, some of the paths of which are predictable while the results are unknown.

There are many other Tahrir Squares in the Middle East. One of which is Al Aksa square in Jerusalem, the eternal and indivisible capital of Palestine. It remains to be seen when or if Palestinians will revive Jerusalem as a modern day resistance place name and whether like Tahrir Square, Egypt, Jerusalem will rise up in support of increasing cries for Palestinian liberation as the inspiration and revolution of their neighbors in Tahrir Square spreads.

Copyright @ Franklin Lamb

US Diplomatic cable #07TRIPOLI972

2011-04-01T06:51:00.000-07:00

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin

07TRIPOLI972 2007-11-18 16:04 2011-01-31 21:09 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Tripoli

SUBJECT: Anti-Israel boycott incident with libyan national procurement authority

REF: 10/07 MILLER-MASON-DAVISON EMAILS CLASSIFIED BY: Chris Stevens, DCM, Embassy Tripoli, Department of State. REASON: 1.4 (b), (d)

1.(C) Summary: A U.S. company was recently presented with a Libyan government contract containing Israel boycott language. The U.S. company refused to sign the contract and ultimately succeeded in having the language removed, facilitating completion of the deal. End Summary.

2.(C) In the process of negotiating a multi-million dollar spare parts contract with U.S. company Oshkosh Trucks (of Oshkosh, WI), Libya's National Procurement Authority (NPA) presented a draft contract containing language requiring a comprehensive boycott of Israel. The language was expansive, barring any business contact with or investment in Israel, and calling on the U.S. company to abide by all laws and decisions related to the Arab League's (AL's) boycott action. Oshkosh representatives refused to sign the contract and walked away from the deal. After doing so, they contacted post and met with Econoff to discuss options. Econoff confirmed Oshkosh's judgment that it could not legally sign a contract containing such language, nor could it empower an agent do so on its behalf. Econoff also reminded Oshkosh of its obligation to report the incident to the Department of Commerce.

3.(C) In the end, Oshkosh's hard line did not scuttle the deal. Just hours before they were due to depart the country, the team was called back to the bargaining table by the NPA and was informed that the offensive language had been removed in its entirety. To reinforce the decision and avoid potential for subsequent misunderstanding, the parties agreed on and signed only an English-language version of the contract (i.e., without a signed Arabic translation).

4.(C) Charge d'Affaires subsequently raised the issue with MFA Secretary for the Americas Dr. Ahmed Fituri, stressing that such SIPDIS contract stipulations would undermine GOL efforts to attract U.S. business. (Note: Senior GOL officials have repeatedly expressed disappointment that more U.S. firms are not rushing to re-enter the Libyan market. End note.) Fituri responded that the GOL and private entities are compelled by Libyan law stemming from the AL resolution to include such language. Drawing a comparison between the "unilateral" American imposition of sanctions on Libya in the 1980's and 1990's, he argued that it would be "hypocritical" of the USG to insist that Arab states not enforce implementation of the anti-Israel boycott.

5.(C) Comment: This is the second instance of GOL boycott enforcement we have heard of
http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2007/11/07TRIPOLI972.html

US Diplomatic #cable 06CAIRO941.

2011-04-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

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Viewing cable 06CAIRO941, FBI DIRECTOR MUELLER'S VISIT TO EGYPTREF: CAIRO 493

Egypt's Soliman had warned the Hamas leaders that they would not get Egypt's support unless they recognized "Israel"

Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
06CAIRO941 2006-02-15 07:07 2011-02-07 11:11 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Cairo
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.Cable dated:2006-02-15T07:44:00

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 CAIRO 000941SIPDISE.O. 12958: DECL: 02/14/2016 TAGS: PTER PREL KISL EG

SUBJECT: FBI DIRECTOR MUELLER'S VISIT TO EGYPTREF: CAIRO 493

Classified by DCM Stuart Jones for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

Â¶1. (C) During his February 8-9 visit to Egypt FBI Director Robert Mueller held a series of cordial and productive meetings with President Mubarak, Intelligence Chief Soliman, Interior Minister Adly, and State Security Director Abdel Rahman. The strength of the bilateral security relationship, and means to expand it, was a key topic of conversation. Also discussed were the implications of the Hamas victory in the Palestinian legislative elections, the proliferation of extremist ideologies, and the nebulous nature of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptians were typically conservative in their assessments, but warmly welcomed the Director's push to further develop security ties through specific technical cooperation programs. End summary.

----------------------------
Security Ties Solid, Durable
----------------------------

Â¶2. (C) Director Mueller's early morning February 9 call on President Mubarak set the tone for all of his meetings with the GOE. Accompanied by the Ambassador, Cairo LEGAT Joe Brent, and FBI Counter Terrorism Analysis Section Chief Leonard â€œChipâ€ Yorke, the Director was warmly received by Mubarak, who affirmed that he was very supportive of the strong bilateral security relationship. EGIS Director Soliman, Interior Minister Adly, and State Security Director Abdel Rahman all echoed the view that U.S. - Egypt cooperation in the fields of counter terrorism and law enforcement were solid and to the benefit of both sides.

---------------------
Expanding Cooperation
---------------------

Â¶3. (C) The Egyptians also welcomed Director Mueller's call for expanding the scope of U.S.-Egypt security cooperation by focusing on specific areas like the sharing of biometric data on suspected terrorists/extremists. With the advent of new technologies, increasingly shadowy and diffuse terrorist movements, and porous international borders, close technical cooperation and information-sharing between allied governments was now an absolute necessity, the Director argued. The issue was discussed in particular detail in the Director's conversations with Interior Minister Adly and State Security Director Abdel Rahman. Noting that the U.S. had collected biometric data on tens of thousands of suspected terrorists and extremists around the world, including many thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past three years, the Director asserted that the U.S. was prepared to share all of our data, and related hardware and technical expertise used to collect, store, and process it, with Egypt. Both Adly and Abdel Rahman indicated enthusiasm in response.

Â¶4. (C) Over lunch at State Security Headquarters, Director Abdel Rahman said that his staff enjoy strong working relations with the Cairo LEGAT office and pledged that State Security would continue to be as responsive as possible to U.S. requests for information and assistance. At the lunch, Director Mueller invited his counterpart to lead a team of senior State Security officials to visit the United States and see first hand the latest facilities and technologies the U.S. could share with allies like Egypt in the global war against terrorism and extremism. Director Mueller hoped that, in particular, the State Security Director could visit the FBI's fingerprint facility in West Virginia and the training academy in Quantico, Virginia. Abdel Rahman affirmed that he would welcome such an opportunity.

-----------------------------
Extremism and Regional Unrest
-----------------------------

Â¶5. (C) During all of the Director's meetings in Cairo, his Egyptian hosts noted the unrest in different parts of the region and the threat these problems posed for the overall security environment. Continuing violence in Iraq, political instability in the Palestinian territories, and tensions between the West and Iran were all being exploited by extremists to incite the Arab-Muslim public, President Mubarak and the other GOE officials noted. The Danish cartoon controversy was the latest manifestation of this problem, Mubarak observed, criticizing the Danish Government for what he saw as its awkward and â€œarrogantâ€ handling of the matter. In his meeting with the Director, EGIS Director Soliman underlined that insufficient educational and economic opportunities were at the root of extremism in Egypt and the wider region, and asserted that Egypt had a â€œfive year planâ€ to address this problem, with Mubarak's economic cabinet working intensely to shore up and modernize Egypt's economy.

------------------------
Egypt's Stabilizing Role
------------------------

Â¶6. (C) Mubarak quickly outlined for the Director Egypt's efforts (further detailed in the Director's meeting with Soliman) to promote stability in the region, citing recent efforts to cool tensions between Lebanon and Syria and offer training and technical support to Lebanon's fledgling security services, as they attempt to fill the vacuum left by Syria's withdrawal. While disdaining the government in Teheran, Mubarak counseled a measured and cautious approach toward Iran, with an emphasis on multilateral diplomatic efforts. The political crisis in the Palestinian territories, and its implications for security, was a subject of particular focus in the Director's meetings with President Mubarak and EGIS Director Soliman. Egypt has long been working to tame and moderate Palestinian extremist movements, Soliman noted, reporting that he would soon visit Damascus in an attempt to get the leadership of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to abandon its violent ways in favor of negotiation.

------------
Hamas Rising
------------

Â¶7. (C) Though Mubarak and Soliman, as well as Interior Minister Adly, all expressed wariness over the implications of the Hamas victory in the Palestinian legislative elections, Mubarak nonetheless advised a pragmatic approach, warning that cutting aid to the Palestinians would be counterproductive. Soliman detailed Egypt's efforts to press Hamas to adopt realistic and responsible positions, most recently during an early February visit to Cairo by a delegation of senior Hamas leaders. Unless Hamas lives up to the PA's international obligations, abandons violence, and recognizes Israel, Soliman had warned the Hamas leaders, they would not get Egypt's support. Soliman reported that Hamas leaders appeared to understand that they needed Egypt and seemed ready to fulfill the PA's international obligations and adhere to a cease-fire with Israel, but that they were still balking at recognizing Israel's right to exist. Soliman added that the issue of recognition might be finessed through Hamas' joining the PLO. Given the PLO's previous explicit recognition of Israel, Hamas' entry into the group would imply recognition and thus be a step forward, he opined. Director Mueller thanked Egypt for its consistently constructive role, in difficult circumstances, in international efforts to manage the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

------------------------------------
Muslim Brotherhood on the Home Front
------------------------------------

Â¶8. (C) Like all of the Director's Egyptian interlocutors, Mubarak slammed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as a â€œdangerousâ€ and duplicitous movement XXXXXXXXXXXX. Mubarak underscored the historic links between the MB and Hamas, also noting the Egyptian MB's counterpart groups in Jordan, Kuwait, and farther a field. EGIS Director Soliman noted that the MB was â€œneither a religious organization, nor a social organization, nor a political party, but a combination of all three.â€ The principal danger, in Soliman's view, was the group's exploitation of religion to influence and mobilize the public. Soliman asserted that the MB has spawned â€œ11 different Islamist extremist organizations'most notably the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Gama'a Islamiya (Islamic Group). Soliman termed the MB's recent success in the parliamentary elections as â€œunfortunate'adding his view that although the group was technically illegal, existing Egyptian laws were insufficient to keep the MB in check. Director Mueller told the Egyptians that the Bureau was keeping an eye on the MB's fundraising and organizational efforts in the U.S. and would keep Egypt advised of relevant information the FBI developed.

Â¶9. (U) Director Mueller did not clear this message before departing Egypt. RICCIARDONE

Cherry-picking war criminals

2011-04-01T06:26:00.000-07:00

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March 16, 2011
With greater and greater concentrations of wealth throughout the world and income inequality on the rise, Middle Eastern revolutionaries should beware of corporate dictatorship in the region, says Mohamed El-Khairy*

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After maintaining a deafening silence about Israel's atrocities against civilians, Britain suddenly wants a "day of reckoning" for war criminals -- as long as they are Libyan.

While protesters' attempt to oust Muammar Gaddafi and his circle, the UK's Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva Peter Gooderham called on the UN Human Rights Council Special Session on Libya to take whatever steps were necessary "to ensure that those responsible for the awful human rights violations that are currently occurring in Libya are held to account".

He said the Libyan government was trying to stop the world seeing what was happening. "We are appalled by the levels of violence... The use of military force against civilians and the attacks on funeral processions have caused deep anger throughout the country and across the world... We join the High Commissioner in calling for an international inquiry into the violence... The United Kingdom will do everything we can to make sure those responsible in the Libyan regime are held accountable for their actions."

Foreign Secretary William Hague announced he had signed a directive revoking Gaddafi's diplomatic immunity in the United Kingdom and also the diplomatic immunity of his sons, his family, and his household. He spoke of Britain's readiness to provide humanitarian help. "Our department of international development now has teams on both borders, on the Tunisian and Egyptian borders of Libya looking at how we can deliver such assistance if necessary."

He bragged how the UK "drove" through a Security Council resolution referring what was happening in Libya to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. "That sends a clear message to all involved, in the regime and any other groups that if they commit crimes and atrocities there will be a day of reckoning for them."

Bravo. What a splendidly high-principled chap that Mr Hague suddenly seems to be. And how swiftly he managed to get the International Criminal Court's attention when he wanted to.

But we didn't hear Hague and his colleagues call for a reckoning with the war criminals of the Israeli regime when they committed mega-atrocities against Gaza's civilians just two years ago. We haven't heard them driving anything constructive through the UN to halt those endless crimes. On the contrary, they're busy tinkering with our laws of universal jurisdiction to enable Zionist thugs to come and go without fear of arrest.

Gaddafi may not be welcome in London but the Foreign Office will happily roll out the red carpet for Livni, Lieberman, Barak and Netanyahu, while Hague conducts the brass band.

And nobody saw the Department of International Development waiting on Gaza's borders with humanitarian help.

Where was HMS Cumberland when British nationals on the Mavi Marmara and the Dignity and other vessels were being assaulted and terrorised in international waters by Israeli pirates, abducted and thrown in their stinking jails?

Our warships Cumberland and York magically appear in the Mediterranean when Hague and Prime Minister David Cameron snap their fingers. The ships have been protecting victims of Gaddafi, and the York unloaded tons of medical supplies and other humanitarian aid for the Benghazi Medical Centre, donated by the Swedish government.

Funny how these two vessels couldn't be deployed to bring life-saving aid to innocent Palestinians after Israel's indiscriminate "Cast Lead" blitzkrieg. Those same Palestinian civilians are still being bombed and strafed with impunity on a daily basis, so when the Libyan crisis dies down shouldn't HMS York be loaded up with more supplies and sail for Gaza, where the humanitarian crisis continues unabated?

On the Libya situation Hague has been sounding off with loud threats of retribution. "Crimes will not go unpunished and will not be forgotten; there will be a day of reckoning and the reach of international justice is long," he says.

He also talks of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya to protect its people. One option would involve RAF patrols from Cyprus. Hague told Sky News: "One thing we have to plan for and work out is how we would do it with allies and partners if it became necessary and if it had the necessary international support."

The BBC reported that according to Hague a no-fly zone over Libya would not necessarily need a green light from the UN. "There have been occasions in the past when such a no-fly zone has had clear, legal, international justification even without a Security Council resolution. It depends on the situation on the ground."

Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs that he had asked the head of Britain's armed forces to work with allies to see if a military no-fly zone was possible.

So if the answer is yes, there's no reason not to impose a no-fly zone over Gaza, is there...? Oops, I forgot. The maniacs doing the murdering there are Whitehall's "friends", right? And Hague and Cameron have publicly pledged undying support for them, right? So, their balls are in a vice, right?

Even 1,400 dead, the vast majority civilians including 350 children, is not slaughter enough to wrench them free... the thousands maimed and the tens of thousands homeless not enough cruelty.

As for freedom and democracy in the Middle East, spare us the sermon. The British government has discounted Palestinian democracy since 2006 and ganged up with other bullies to spitefully punish the people for making the wrong choice. Britain chose (as if it was any of our business to do the choosing) to prop up the treacherous and utterly discredited election losers and stand idly by while the decades of imprisonment and suffering continue.

The Jerusalem Post reports this week how David Cameron told Jewish dinner guests: "With me you have a prime minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible... I will always be a strong defender of the Jewish people. I will always be an advocate for the State of Israel."

He also said Israel has a right to search vessels entering Gaza. Oh? So Israeli piracy on the high seas or in Palestinian waters is OK? The blockade is OK? Does this mean vessels sailing for Israeli ports can be stopped and searched for weapons that might be used against Israel's neighbours?

Cameron also said "Some people try to judge Israel's government by a higher code of conduct than they would apply to their own government."

And he said that even as the Israeli authorities continue to deny the Jerusalem residency permit of the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, a state of affairs that has dragged on for six months "without tangible results" despite efforts by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the British Foreign Secretary (Hague) and the British ambassador. The bishop will now have to resort to legal remedies to go about his duties.

* The writer is author of the book Radio Free Palestine.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1038/op162.htm

No to neo- Mubarakism

2011-04-01T06:12:00.000-07:00

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The former president may have gone, but the system that kept him in power is still in place, writes Bahieddin Hassan

On 11 February, the dictator fell. But he did not take the dictatorial regime down with him. The textbook police state which he built up over the years, and that wasn't much different from that of Tunisia, is still with us.
Mubarak is gone, and key members of his regime are being investigated for possible crimes ranging from corruption to human-rights violations and mismanagement. Yet, this does not mean that the mechanisms and underpinnings of the despotic police state have disappeared. Mubarak is down, but not Mubarakism.
The main task facing us now is to dismantle the pillars of this police state and to lay the foundations of a secular and democratic regime that respects human rights. In order to do this, we need to remove the constitutional and legislative pillars that the previous regime used to survive and to masquerade at being "legitimate". We must dismantle the institutions and organisations that the regime used in order to survive and to defeat and debilitate its opponents.

Despotic regimes in Egypt have drawn their strength from the constitutions that have been in place since the 1952 revolution, all of which give the executive branch of government supremacy over the judicial and legislative branches. These constitutions have granted the president -- irrespective of who he may have been -- absolute power unfettered by accountability.

What is needed now is to scrap the existing constitution and not to amend it. No amendments, however extensive, would be enough to salvage it because the philosophy and spirit of the constitution are diametrically opposed to democratic values and human rights. The present constitution can only encourage despotism.
The most important institution, indeed the mainstay, of the police state in Egypt has undoubtedly been the State Security Service, an organisation that dominated every aspect of life in the country. Any delay in dissolving this body means that the revolution has only succeeded in replacing one head with another, while keeping in place the tentacles that suffocated civil and political liberties in the country and led to extensive human-rights violations, including torture, abduction and assassination.

Egypt does not need presidential or parliamentary elections right away. What it needs instead is for the political and legislative environment to be changed completely. Unless this is done, the same corrupt environment that produced one of the worst parliaments in Egyptian history will stifle the birth of new institutions, institutions that match the spirit of the 25 January Revolution.

Under the current laws, the young political groups that led the 25 January Revolution against the wishes of the regime, and also against the wishes of the traditional opposition parties, are considered to be illegal. Meanwhile, those political parties that did not boycott last year's rigged elections and that refused to take part in the Day of Anger are considered legitimate.

Most of Egypt's current opposition parties belong politically and structurally to Mubarakism, and they have nothing to do with the spirit, values and demands of the 25 January Revolution.

What we need during this transitional phase are far-reaching constitutional and legislative reforms that will open the door to the forces and currents that launched the 25 January Revolution, allowing them to take part in paving the way to a democratic secular state and one that respects human rights.
\
Unless this is done, we run the risk of handing the country over either to neo-Mubarakism or to the Islamists.
The writer is director of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights Studies.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1035/op213.htm

Obama's Yemeni odyssey targets China

2011-04-01T06:07:00.000-07:00

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By M K Bhadrakumar
January 9, 2009
A year ago, Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh made the startling revelation that his country's security forces apprehended a group of Islamists linked to the Israeli intelligence forces. "A terrorist cell was apprehended and will be referred to the courts for its links with the Israeli intelligence services," he promised.

Saleh added, "You will hear about the trial proceedings." Nothing was ever heard and the trail went cold. Welcome to the magical land of Yemen, where in the womb of time the Arabian Nights were played out.

Combine Yemen with the mystique of Islam, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Israeli intelligence and you get a heady mix. The head of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus, dropped in at the capital, Sana'a, on Saturday and vowed to Saleh increased American aid to fight al-Qaeda. United States President Barack Obama promptly echoed Petraeus' promise, assuring that the US would step up intelligence-sharing and training of Yemeni forces and perhaps carry out joint attacks against militants in the region.

Another Afghanistan?

Many accounts say that Obama, who is widely regarded as a gifted and intelligent politician, is blundering into a catastrophic mistake by starting another war that could turn out to be as bloody and chaotic and unwinnable as Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, on the face of it, Obama does seem erratic. The parallels with Afghanistan are striking. There has been an attempt to destroy a US plane by a Nigerian student who says he received training in Yemen. And America wants to go to war.

Yemen, too, is a land of wonderfully beautiful rugged mountains that could be a guerilla paradise. Yemenis are a hospitable lot, like Afghan tribesmen, but as Irish journalist Patrick Cockurn recollects, while they are generous to passing strangers, they "deem the laws of hospitality to lapse when the stranger leaves their tribal territory, at which time he becomes 'a good back to shoot at'." Surely, there is romance in the air - almost like in the Hindu Kush. Fiercely nationalistic, almost every Yemeni has a gun. Yemen is also, like Afghanistan, a land of conflicting authorities, and with foreign intervention, a little civil war is waiting to flare up.

Is Obama so incredibly forgetful of his own December 1 speech outlining his Afghan strategy that he violated his own canons? Certainly not. Obama is a smart man. The intervention in Yemen will go down as one of the smartest moves that he ever made for perpetuating the US's global hegemony. It is America's answer to China's surge.

A cursory look at the map of region will show that Yemen is one of the most strategic lands adjoining waters of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. It flanks Saudi Arabia and Oman, which are vital American protectorates. In effect, Uncle Sam is "marking territory" - like a dog on a lamppost. Russia has been toying with the idea of reopening its Soviet-era base in Aden. Well, the US has pipped Moscow in the race.

The US has signaled that the odyssey doesn't end with Yemen. It is also moving into Somalia and Kenya. With that, the US establishes its military presence in an entire unbroken stretch of real estate all along the Indian Ocean's western rim. Chinese officials have of late spoken of their need to establish a naval base in the region. The US has now foreclosed China's options. The only country with a coastline that is available for China to set up a naval base in the region will be Iran. All other countries have a Western military presence.

The American intervention in Yemen is not going to be on the pattern of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama will ensure he doesn't receive any body bags of American servicemen serving in Yemen. That is what the American public expects from him. He will only deploy drone aircraft and special forces and "focus on providing intelligence and training to help Yemen counter al-Qaeda militants", according to the US military. Obama's main core objective will be to establish an enduring military presence in Yemen. This serves many purposes.

A new great game begins

First, the US move has to be viewed against the historic backdrop of the Shi'ite awakening in the region. The Shi'ites (mostly of the Zaidi group) have been traditionally suppressed in Yemen. Shi'ite uprisings have been a recurring theme in Yemen's history. There has been a deliberate attempt to minimize the percentage of Shi'ites in Yemen, but they could be anywhere up to 45%.

More importantly, in the northern part of the country, they constitute the majority. What bothers the US and moderate Sunni Arab states - and Israel - is that the Believing Youth Organization led by Hussein Badr al-Houthi, which is entrenched in northern Yemen, is modeled after Hezbollah in Lebanon in all respects - politically, economically, socially and culturally.

Yemenis are an intelligent people and are famous in the Arabian Peninsula for their democratic temperament. The Yemeni Shi'ite empowerment on a Hezbollah-model would have far-reaching regional implications. Next-door Oman, which is a key American base, is predominantly Shi'ite. Even more sensitive is the likelihood of the dangerous idea of Shi'ite empowerment spreading to Saudi Arabia's highly restive Shi'ite regions adjoining Yemen, which on top of it all, also happen to be the reservoir of the country's fabulous oil wealth.

Saudi Arabia is entering a highly sensitive phase of political transition as a new generation is set to take over the leadership in Riyadh, and the palace intrigues and fault lines within the royal family are likely to get exacerbated. To put it mildly, given the vast scale of institutionalized Shi'ite persecution in Saudi Arabia by the Wahhabi establishment, Shi'ite empowerment is a veritable minefield that Riyadh is petrified about at this juncture. Its threshold of patience is wearing thin, as the recent uncharacteristic resort to military power against the north Yemeni Shi'ite communities bordering Saudi Arabia testifies.

The US faces a classic dilemma. It is all right for Obama to highlight the need of reform in Muslim societies - as he did eloquently in his Cairo speech last June. But democratization in the Yemeni context - ironically, in the Arab context - would involve Shi'ite empowerment. After the searing experience in Iraq, Washington is literally perched like a cat on a hot tin roof. It would much rather be aligned with the repressive, autocratic government of Saleh than let the genie of reform out of the bottle in the oil rich-region in which it has profound interests.

Obama has an erudite mind and he is not unaware that what Yemen desperately needs is reform, but he simply doesn't want to think about it. The paradox he faces is that with all its imperfections, Iran happens to be the only "democratic" system operating in that entire region.

Iran's shadow over the Yemeni Shi'ite consciousness worries the US to no end. Simply put, in the ideological struggle going on in the region, Obama finds himself with the ultra-conservative and brutally autocratic oligarchies that constitute the ruling class in the region. Conceivably, he isn't finding it easy. If his own memoirs are to be believed, there could be times when the vague recollections of his childhood in Indonesia and his precious memories of his own mother, who from all accounts was a free-wheeling intellectual and humanist, must be stalking him in the White House corridors.

Israel moves in

But Obama is first and foremost a realist. Emotions and personal beliefs drain away and strategic considerations weigh uppermost when he works in the Oval Office. With the military presence in Yemen, the US has tightened the cordon around Iran. In the event of a military attack on Iran, Yemen could be put to use as a springboard by the Israelis. These are weighty considerations for Obama.

The fact is that no one is in control as a Yemeni authority. It is a cakewalk for the formidable Israeli intelligence to carve out a niche in Yemen - just as it did in northern Iraq under somewhat comparable circumstances.

Islamism doesn't deter Israel at all. Saleh couldn't have been far off the mark when he alleged last year that Israeli intelligence had been exposed as having kept links with Yemeni Islamists. The point is, Yemeni Islamists are a highly fragmented lot and no one is sure who owes what sort of allegiance to whom. Israeli intelligence operates marvelously in such twilight zones when the horizon is lacerated with the blood of the vanishing sun.

Israel will find a toehold in Yemen to be a god-sent gift insofar as it registers its presence in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a dream come true for Israel, whose effectiveness as a regional power has always been seriously handicapped by its lack of access to the Persian Gulf region. The overarching US military presence helps Israel politically to consolidate its Yemeni chapter. Without doubt, Petraeus is moving on Yemen in tandem with Israel (and Britain). But the "pro-West" Arab states with their rentier mentality have no choice except to remain as mute spectators on the sidelines.

Some among them may actually acquiesce with the Israeli security presence in the region as a safer bet than the spread of the dangerous ideas of Shi'ite empowerment emanating out of Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah. Also, at some stage, Israeli intelligence will begin to infiltrate the extremist Sunni outfits in Yemen, which are commonly known as affiliates of al-Qaeda. That is, if it hasn't done that already. Any such link makes Israel an invaluable ally for the US in its fight against al-Qaeda. In sum, infinite possibilities exist in the paradigm that is taking shape in the Muslim world abutting into the strategic Persian Gulf.

It's all about China

Most important, however, for US global strategies will be the massive gain of control of the port of Aden in Yemen. Britain can vouchsafe that Aden is the gateway to Asia. Control of Aden and the Malacca Strait will put the US in an unassailable position in the "great game" of the Indian Ocean. The sea lanes of the Indian Ocean are literally the jugular veins of China's economy. By controlling them, Washington sends a strong message to Beijing that any notions by the latter that the US is a declining power in Asia would be nothing more than an extravagant indulgence in fantasy.

In the Indian Ocean region, China is increasingly coming under pressure. India is a natural ally of the US in the Indian Ocean region. Both disfavor any significant Chinese naval presence. India is mediating a rapprochement between Washington and Colombo that would help roll back Chinese influence in Sri Lanka. The US has taken a u-turn in its Myanmar policy and is engaging the regime there with the primary intent of eroding China's influence with the military rulers. The Chinese strategy aimed at strengthening influence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar so as to open a new transportation route towards the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Africa, where it has begun contesting traditional Western economic dominance.

China is keen to whittle down its dependence on the Malacca Strait for its commerce with Europe and West Asia. The US, on the contrary, is determined that China remains vulnerable to the choke point between Indonesia and Malaysia.

An engrossing struggle is breaking out. The US is unhappy with China's efforts to reach the warm waters of the Persian Gulf through the Central Asian region and Pakistan. Slowly but steadily, Washington is tightening the noose around the neck of the Pakistani elites - civilian and military - and forcing them to make a strategic choice between the US and China. This will put those elites in an unenviable dilemma. Like their Indian counterparts, they are inherently "pro-Western" (even when they are "anti-American") and if the Chinese connection is important for Islamabad, that is primarily because it balances perceived Indian hegemony.

The existential questions with which the Pakistani elites are grappling are apparent. They are seeking answers from Obama. Can Obama maintain a balanced relationship vis-a-vis Pakistan and India? Or, will Obama lapse back to the George W Bush era strategy of building up India as the pre-eminent power in the Indian Ocean under whose shadow Pakistan will have to learn to live?

US-India-Israel axis

On the other hand, the Indian elites are in no compromising mood. Delhi was on a roll during the Bush days. Now, after the initial misgivings about Obama's political philosophy, Delhi is concluding that he is all but a clone of his illustrious predecessor as regards the broad contours of the US's global strategy - of which containment of China is a core template.

The comfort level is palpably rising in Delhi with regard to the Obama presidency. Delhi takes the surge of the Israeli lobby in Washington as the litmus test for the Obama presidency. The surge suits Delhi, since the Jewish lobby was always a helpful ally in cultivating influence in the US Congress, media and the rabble-rousing think-tankers as well as successive administrations. And all this is happening at a time when the India-Israel security relationship is gaining greater momentum.

United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is due to visit Delhi in the coming days. The Obama administration is reportedly adopting an increasingly accommodative attitude toward India's longstanding quest for "dual-use" technology from the US. If so, a massive avenue of military cooperation is about to open between the two countries, which will make India a serious challenger to China's growing military prowess. It is a win-win situation as the great Indian arms bazaar offers highly lucrative business for American companies.

Clearly, a cozy three-way US-Israel-India alliance provides the underpinning for all the maneuvering that is going on. It will have significance for the security of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. Last year, India formalized a naval presence in Oman.

All-in-all, terrorism experts are counting the trees and missing the wood when they analyze the US foray into Yemen in the limited terms of hunting down al-Qaeda. The hard reality is that Obama, whose main plank used to be "change", has careened away and increasingly defaults to the global strategies of the Bush era. The freshness of the Obama magic is dissipating. Traces of the "revisionism" in his foreign policy orientation are beginning to surface. We can see them already with regard to Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine problem, Central Asia and towards China and Russia.

Arguably, this sort of "return of the native" by Obama was inevitable. For one thing, he is but a creature of his circumstances. As someone put it brilliantly, Obama's presidency is like driving a train rather than a car: a train cannot be "steered", the driver can at best set its speed, but ultimately, it must run on its tracks.

Besides, history has no instances of a declining world power meekly accepting its destiny and walking into the sunset. The US cannot give up on its global dominance without putting up a real fight. And the reality of all such momentous struggles is that they cannot be fought piece-meal. You cannot fight China without occupying Yemen.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LA09Ak02.html

Mubarak heads the list

2011-04-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

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New names are being added daily to the list of former government officials charged with abuse of office and corruption, reports Mona El-Nahhas

Egypt's Prosecutor-General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud issued an order on Monday confiscating the assets, including bank accounts, real estate holdings and stocks and shares, of former president Hosni Mubarak and members of his family and imposing a travel ban on them.
Egyptian banks were ordered to implement the order immediately, with the Cairo Appeals Court setting a date next Saturday to examine the order at the Cairo Criminal Court.
According to Adel El-Said, assistant prosecutor-general and spokesman for the state prosecution service, the order was made as a result of documents accusing the former president and his family of illegal enrichment during his time in office. One set of documents were filed by former MP Mustafa Bakri, with copies being sent to the bodies concerned for examination.
The Illicit Gains Authority, part of the Ministry of Justice, is investigating bank accounts in the name of the former president, his wife, his two sons, his daughters-in-law and his grandsons and granddaughters, who are legally minors.
Last week, Mahmoud asked Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit to request other countries to freeze the assets of former president Mubarak and his family, reportedly deposited in a number of banks abroad.
The Swiss government has announced that it is freezing accounts held by Mubarak and his family in Switzerland that are thought to contain millions of Swiss francs and that it is investigating possible further assets.
Reports circulating about Mubarak's personal wealth following his ouster in the Egyptian revolution have put his wealth at up to $70 billion.
A number of businessmen and former ministers are also being investigated, many of them now remanded in custody in Torah Prison, with the Cairo Criminal Court backing an earlier order issued by Mahmoud on Monday that confiscated property and froze bank assets.
The order had been issued as a precautionary measure pending investigation of alleged corruption and the looting of billions of dollars of public funds levelled at officials including former tourism minister Zoheir Garana, former information minister Anas El-Fiqi, former housing minister Ahmed El-Maghrabi, former trade and industry minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid, the head of the Radio and TV Union Osama El-Sheikh, the chairman of the board of the newspaper Akhbar Al-Yom Mohamed Ahdi Fadli, the former secretary for organisational affairs of the former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) Ahmed Ezz, the head of the Industrial Development Authority Amr Asal, and a number of Egyptian and Arab businessmen.
Garana and El-Maghrabi are due to appear before the Cairo Criminal Court on Sunday, with Rachid, Ezz and Asal summoned to appear on Tuesday. The prosecution of former interior minister Habib El-Adli, charged with money laundering and profiteering, will start on Saturday.
El-Adli was interviewed by state prosecutors for more than 10 hours last Monday, and in addition to charges of illegal enrichment, he also faces charges of ordering the security services to use live ammunition against demonstrators on Friday 28 January, killing dozens of protesters.
The former minister is also charged with releasing criminals from the country's prisons on the same day in order to create chaos, while at the same time deliberately evacuating police from the streets. El-Adli has been remanded in custody in Torah Prison for a further two weeks while investigations are carried out.
In his defence, El-Adli has said that the orders he issued while interior minister reflected the policies of the ministry at the time. He had given the orders after receiving reports that criminals had infiltrated the demonstrations, intending to commit acts of sabotage, he said.
He denied giving orders to use live ammunition against the demonstrators, telling prosecutors that he had ordered tear gas to be used to disperse protesters. Those who had used live ammunition should bear personal responsibility for doing so, El-Adli said.
However, for their part the former assistants to the minister who were also questioned by the prosecution said that they had only been implementing the minister's orders. According to their accounts, anyone not carrying out El-Adli's orders had been threatened with dismissal.
Commenting on the cases, El-Said said that the results of the investigations would be announced to the public and suspects referred for trial as soon as the investigations were over.
El-Adli has been criticised by human rights organisations for years for allegedly allowing the torture of detainees in police stations and prisons, causing the deaths of an unspecified number of people.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1037/eg21.htm

Bahrain and the "Freedom Contagion"

2011-04-01T05:56:00.000-07:00

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Weekend Edition
February 25 - 26, 2011

A Jittery GCC

Bahrain and the "Freedom Contagion"

By RANNIE AMIRI

“Saudi Arabia did not build a causeway to Bahrain just so that Saudis could party on weekends. It was designed for moments like this, for keeping Bahrain under control.”
– Dr. Toby Jones, expert on Saudi Arabia at Rutgers University

If Saudi Arabia was rattled by the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, they will be in convulsions should Bahrain’s monarchy collapse. By all indications, the five other member nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) (Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) will go to all lengths to prevent it.

The Arab world’s “freedom contagion” is rapidly spreading. Bahrain’s revolt is being spearheaded by the country’s poor, disenfranchised Shia Muslim majority. Although Mubarak was deposed by a nation of 80 million, unrest in the tiny island kingdom of only 530,000 citizens poses a greater ostensible threat to the GCC, particularly Saudi Arabia and its own sizable, restive Shia minority.

While many turned to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television network for coverage of the Tunisian, Egyptian—and now Libyan—revolutions, scant coverage was accorded to Bahrain, even when unarmed, peaceful protestors were being gunned down on the streets of the capital just a day after sleeping protestors in Pearl Square were savagely attacked by the regime’s security forces.

Should other Shia, like those in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province (where they form a majority), become “infected” with the idea of taking to the streets to peacefully demand political reforms and representation, civil rights, and freedom of religion and assembly, other citizens might do likewise.

This explains why King Abdullah, who returned from Morocco on Wednesday after a prolonged 3-month convalescence from back surgery, announced he will lavish $37 billion in benefits on Saudis in the form of pay raises, unemployment benefits, debt forgiveness and housing subsidies.

Among those who first greeted Abdullah upon his arrival was the very one counting on the aging Saudi monarch for the survival of his regime—Bahrain’s king, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. In a bid to placate Bahraini Shias, Sheikh Hamad released 100 political prisoners from Manama’s prisons prior to leaving for Riyadh, including the 25 activists charged last year with plotting against the state.

Saudi Arabia has sustained resource-poor Bahrain with a steady cash inflow for years and it wasted no time in issuing a statement saying it would stand by the monarchy “with all capabilities.” It had always justified doing so by framing Bahrain as an alleged bulwark against perceived encroaching Iranian influence, but today it is to help insulate Saudi Arabia from experiencing similar events along its eastern border and beyond. The emir of Kuwait added that “the security of Bahrain is the security of the region.” Last Tuesday, as tanks were rolling into Pearl Square, GCC foreign ministers met in Manama to reaffirm their solidarity with al-Khalifa rule.

Exactly one week later, Bahrain witnessed the largest anti-regime protests to be staged since the revolt began: 100,000 people strong—one-fifth of all nationals—turned out in massive, peaceful demonstrations along the highway leading into Pearl Square.

“This is the first time in the history of Bahrain that the majority of people, of Bahraini people, got together with one message: this regime must fall,” said one.

As the al-Khalifa regime’s brutality escalated, so did protestors’ demands. Initially it was for Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the king’s uncle and four-decade-old prime minister, to step down. Then came calls for Bahrain to transform itself into a legitimate constitutional monarchy. Now, many say the monarchy itself must be abolished.

So how influential has Bahrain’s uprising been?

Small protests have broken out in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. Saudi troops have already starting heading that way.

Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.

http://www.counterpunch.org/amiri02252011.html

America is not a role model

2011-04-01T05:51:00.000-07:00

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A country that launches a war at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars when it lacks the ability to care for millions of homeless people and poor children cannot consider itself enlightened or a liberator.

By Gideon Levy

Those who trample human rights in Israel are having a field day: Look at the behavior of the Americans in Iraq, they say. Every time troops open fire at a checkpoint, every killing of a civilian, every picture of siege and plight, leads to merriment here. The United States, the cradle of democracy, the leader of the free world, is behaving like us.

According to one report, "IDF officers find it difficult to stop smiling" when they hear the reports of the war in Iraq. From now on, no one will be able to criticize their conduct in the territories. The New York Times reported that Israel even hastened to suggest that the United States learn from its experience in the use of tanks, helicopters and bulldozers in the center of cities and refugee camps.

Similar delight has also gripped those wishing to curb the media in Israel: Look at how America is censoring the images of the war in its media - no coffins and no prisoners, how the media has volunteered enthusiastically to enlist in the war effort. And how they fired the courageous reporter Peter Arnett, without so much as batting an eyelash, for expressing his opinions on enemy television.

This keeping in line with the behavior of the United States is another case of the collateral damage of this base war. America is not an example for anything. Even before going to war, there was no way it could serve as a role model, and going to this unjustified war in Iraq has deprived it completely of the right to serve as a light unto the nations and the Jews in upholding freedom, morality and human rights.

So let us not be quick to conclude that what America is allowed to do, we are allowed to do, too. Neither they nor we have the right to kill needlessly, to harm and humiliate civilians, deprive them of their freedom, starve them, take away their livelihood and trample on their sovereignty, or to recruit the media for the war effort.

America, which is fighting an illegal war, is an occupier in every respect.

Long before the first Iraqi civilian was shot at a checkpoint, the United States was in no position to take pride in all its deeds, either at home or externally. Not all its citizens benefit from the fact that it is a large democracy.

For example, in the past 29 years, 816 people have been executed in the United States, as in the darkest of regimes, with a clear bias against the blacks. Studies show a black murderer is 11 times more likely to be executed than a white person convicted of the same crime. More than one-fifth of the children in the country that is supposed to be the leader of the free world live below the poverty line, and 41 million Americans, among them 8.5 million children, do not have any form of medical insurance. Is that the definition of a just society? Some 3.5 million Americans are registered as homeless, though the real number is estimated to be twice that many.

A country that launches a war at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars when it lacks the ability to care for millions of homeless people and poor children cannot consider itself enlightened or a liberator.

Outside its borders, the United States cannot always serve as a moral model, either. Hundreds of thousands of people, including many civilians, have been killed and murdered in the wars and military campaigns it has launched since World War II - such as in Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere - and in the murderous regimes the United States has brought to power or assisted.

However, even if the United States had been a beacon of justice, its decision to go to war in Iraq and turn its army into an occupying force deprives it of the right to be considered a paragon. To the remarks of journalist Thomas Friedman (in an interview to Ari Shavit in Haaretz Magazine over the weekend), to the effect that the American democracy becomes aggressive when threatened, we should add that democracies cease to be such when they become occupiers. France, Belgium, Britain, the United States and Israel, all of them enlightened democracies, lost the justness of their cause when they became occupying powers. That is inevitable.

As soon as the United States starts to become mired in the occupation, today's enlightened soldiers will become tomorrow's inhuman troops. They will lose the remnants of their moral image and will kill, destroy and abuse. The children huggers will become the children persecutors, the food distributors will turn into agents of starvation, the wound healers will block ambulances at checkpoints, the liberators will become jailers. Humiliating the occupied and stripping them of their rights will become the norm. The liberated Iraqi people will pay in the form of heavy losses, hunger and humiliation, even if these are temporary. And they will not forget. That is the impact of occupation, whether in the narrow alleys of a Gaza Strip refugee camp or in the sprawling city of Baghdad.

If there is one lesson Israel can impart to the Americans, it is that every occupation is appalling, that it tramples the occupied and corrupts the occupier. If the Americans pause for a moment to see what is going on in the Tul Karm refugee camp and in the casbah of Nablus, they will see what they will soon become. And if Israelis look at what is happening in Iraq, perhaps they will understand that it is not the Palestinians but, above all, we who have created the present situation.

An occupier is an occupier, whether he comes from a democracy that is two- and-a-quarter centuries old or from "the only democracy in the Middle East."

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/america-is-not-a-role-model-1.13807

The economic, social and political disaster produced by the Zionist project part 2

2009-12-31T17:35:00.000-08:00

...................
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/isra-j22.shtml
The economic, social and political disaster produced by the Zionist project
Part two
By Jean Shaoul
22 January 2009

We repost below the conclusion of a two-part report on Israel and Palestine by Jean Shaoul to an expanded meeting of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board held in Sydney, Australia from January 22 to 27, 2006. Shaoul is a WSWS correspondent and a member of the Socialist Equality Party in Britain. The first part was posted on January 22.

Let us consider the social conditions within Israel. First, a few statistics.

Despite some slight improvement in the economic situation over the past year as terrorist attacks have declined, unemployment is nearly 9 percent.

The latest report published by the National Insurance Institute in August 2005 shows:

* Over 1.5 million Israelis, one quarter of the 6 million population, were living below the poverty level, an increase of 119,000 over the previous year

* 23 percent of the elderly live below the poverty line

* Child poverty has increased 50 percent since 1988

* 714,000, or 1 in 5, children go hungry each and every day.

A 2004 survey showed that a shocking 40 percent of children live in poverty, squalor and delinquency, and that another 30 percent could slip into a similar fate. Yitzhak Kadman, director of the National Council for the Child, said: “Israeli society is deluding itself if it thinks that it can give up 40 percent of its children who are the citizens of its future.... There is no chance Israeli society will be able to exist in 20 years, standing on the spindly legs of 30 percent of its children. This criminal negligence of a considerable proportion of Israel’s children who are living in poverty, sickness and neglect is going to cost the state dearly in every way.”

* The proportion of children in Israeli society fell from 39 percent in 1970 to 33 percent in 2002.

* The average number of children per family fell consistently from 2.7 in 1980 to 2.3 in 2002, while the number of single child families doubled.

* There are 50,000 abortions a year, mostly for economic reasons.

All this is in a country where its population is key to its future existence as a Jewish state.

More than 140,000 children living in Israel do not have full Israeli citizenship:

* 71 percent live in East Jerusalem

* 29 percent are children of legal foreign workers in Israel, children of immigrants of unclear status, and children from mixed marriages of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.

In a recent poll, 80 percent of Israelis considered themselves “poor”.

The head of the National Insurance Institute, Yohanan Stessman, warned that: “Without the welfare benefits, Israeli society would fall apart and we would reach a point of civil war.” Opposition politicians have attacked the Sharon government, saying: “Poverty and inequality are becoming the country’s most serious strategic threat, not its neighbours.” Eli Yishai. the leader of Shas, one of the ultra-orthodox religious parties, said: “The government’s policies undermine the cohesion of our society,” pointing to Finance Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s cuts in welfare spending and tax breaks that favoured the rich.

The vacuum created by the government’s retreat from welfare provision is being filled by soup kitchens, not-for-profit organisations that provide food for the poor and religious networks. Children as young as 10 have been arrested for stealing food to quell their hunger. There have been newspaper reports of single mothers in Beer Sheva, whose benefits have been cut by 40 percent, approaching supermarket managers to tell them of their plight, and their intention to fill their trolleys and make off without paying. Managers have stood by and let them do it. “There are so many, we don’t stop them,” one said.

While more than 40 percent of those defined as poor have jobs, the government is determined to see wages fall further in order to make Israel “internationally competitive”.

It is these conditions that lie behind the constant strikes and threats of industrial action. In many cases, the workers seek not so much to improve their wages and conditions but simply to get paid. It is not unknown for municipal and other public service workers, including teachers, to go unpaid for months.

These economic and social conditions also help to explain the attraction of the settlements to hard-pressed Israelis. Central government gives twice as much per capita to local government in the Occupied Territories than in Israel. Investment in housing is 5.3 times that of Israel.

According to one Israeli academic, only 50,000 settlers—out of a total 450,000 settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—are hard-core expansionists. Most have moved for “quality of life considerations, tax breaks and cheaper mortgages.... Many want to leave but ... nobody will buy their homes.” According to a Peace Now survey, the majority would leave if offered compensation for withdrawal.

Jewish Israeli society is not just divided between rich and poor. It is riven with divisions based on ethnicity and religion. Jews from the Middle East and North Africa have the worst-paid jobs, while Jews of European origin are generally better paid, with an average income of 1.5 times that of those from the Middle East and North Africa.

Israel is also divided along religious lines; between religious and secular Jews, as the religious authorities seek ever-increasing social control over marriage, divorce and travel on Saturday, making it all but impossible for secular Jews to live in Jerusalem.

If the situation is dire for the average Israeli, the situation is much worse for Arab Israelis:

* Average wages are less than half those of the Jews of European origin

* 42 percent of Arab families live below the poverty line

* Every second Arab child (compared with every fourth child in the general population) lives in poverty

* Unemployment is higher than average. While Jewish unemployment rose 53 percent between 1996 and 2001, it rose 126 percent for Israeli Arabs in the same period

* In 2003, the Orr Commission reported, “decades of discrimination against the Israeli Arab minority”. It found a pattern of government prejudice, neglect and discrimination against the one million or more Arab Israelis—the Palestinians who were not forced out of their ancestral homeland when the Jewish state was created in 1948. Arab municipalities are starved of cash and deprived of government-sponsored industrial development

* Educational facilities are much poorer than their Jewish counterparts

* Many long-standing communities are not recognised by the state, refused all services, including electricity and water, and their homes threatened with demolition

* Arab Israelis are more likely to be subject to verbal and physical abuse by the police and security services, and investigation and trials.

While Israel appears to have a relatively high average per capita income that places it within the top 25 countries, this is deceptive. Average income masks the enormous and ever rising inequality within Israel.

* Despite the recession, in 2003, Israel’s richest 10 percent became richer

* In 1994, top managers earned on average 30 times the minimum wage. In 2002, they earned 36 times more

* Their share of total income rose by 5.6 percent in the same period, while the share of the bottom 80 percent fell by between 0.4 percent and 0.8 percent

* Average annual income of the top 10 percent of households was about NIS 42,000, compared to NIS 3,100 for the poorest 10 percent. That is, the richest households have 14 times more income than the poorest

* The gini coefficient, a widely used statistic to measure income inequality, shows that at .38, Israel has one of the highest rates of inequality in the world, second only to the US in the advanced countries.

As elsewhere, the government’s cuts and reforms are directed at further enriching these layers. The emasculation of the labour movement has removed all constraints on them. Whereas in the 1950s, Zionism offered a level of social equality on a par with Sweden, and from the 1960s to 1980s, a standard of living that was on a par with that of the advanced countries, that perspective is in tatters. It is these economic and social conditions that have led to Israel’s political instability and shifting political alliances.
Political conditions in Israel

Once touted as the region’s only liberal democracy, political life in Israel is now in an advanced state of putrefaction. Israel faces a very real threat of civil conflict—and not just between Jews and Arabs. The rise of ultra-religious and nationalist forces after the 1967 war, largely funded by the US, played a key role in shifting Israeli politics sharply to the right, despite their small numbers. Their foremost political patron was until recently Ariel Sharon.

Israel’s political system is made up of a large number of political parties, with constantly changing alliances and new parties. At no point has the majority party ever been able to rule on its own. Coalitions are the order of the day, and the right-wing small parties therefore have enormous power.

While Labour dominated for the first 30 years, the break up of the post-war order and the expansion of Israel’s territories after the 1967 war required a different type of government. The 1977 elections brought a right-wing Likud government to power and since then it has been the dominant party, in government for 23 out of 29 years.

Consider the nature of the Likud prime ministers. Menachem Begin, as leader of the terrorist Irgun, had blown up the British Headquarters based at the King David Hotel in 1946 and orchestrated the massacre of 256 Palestinians at Deir Yassin. Yitzhak Shamir, the leader of the terrorist Stern gang, was responsible for a string of terrorist attacks, including the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Military Governor in 1944. Ariel Sharon is an unindicted war criminal. Labour prime minister Ehud Barak led murderous raids on the PLO leadership in Tunis in the 1980s, culminating in the assassination of Abu Jihad. No other country in the world has been headed by such a series of infamous thugs.

Israel’s political and business leaders are mired in corruption. Tel Aviv has for some decades been one of the foremost money and stolen diamond laundering countries in the world. Two of the biggest business scandals in Israel’s history took place in 2005, involving money laundering and industrial espionage. Sharon and his predecessors, Ehud Barak, Benyamin Netanyahu and Yitzhak Rabin, were all under investigation for bribery and corruption but charges were never brought.

It seemed at one point when Sharon was prime minister, that he would face the prospect of indictment for bribery when he was foreign minister, in a case that also implicated his successor, Ehud Olmert, until the incoming Attorney General refused to press charges. In a separate case, Sharon’s son, as his campaign manager, is currently awaiting sentencing for illegal campaign contributions during his 1999 election to the Likud leadership.

The Labour party’s perspective is in tatters after a brief and unsustainable makeover as the party of peace by Peace Now. It was this that led them to hand over power to Sharon and Likud, then join and prop up his Likud coalition, and help it force through its military strategy of annexing much of the West Bank. It simply held its nose over Sharon’s Palestinian policy—genocide and ethnic cleansing—that supplanted the promise of a two-state solution embodied in the 1993 Oslo Accords. This is the inexorable logic of the nationalist programme that they embraced, albeit with socialist pretensions, in the early days of the last century.

These economic and social tensions have led to a political realignment. Last November, the left-talking Amir Peretz’s surprise defeat of the 82-year-old Shimon Peres in the Labour party leadership contest triggered a realignment of Israeli politics. He pulled out Labour’s cabinet members from Sharon’s coalition, already rocked by the withdrawal from Gaza, precipitating an early general election, now scheduled for March 28.

While Peretz won the leadership on the basis of ending the conflict with the Palestinians through a negotiated settlement and looking after the interests of ordinary Israeli families hard hit by the Sharon government, he soon began to back-pedal from his leftist rhetoric.

In relation to the Palestinians, he is now insisting that Jerusalem remains the undivided capital of Israel and that the Palestinian refugees be denied the right of return to their former homes in Israel. Such preconditions preclude any possibility of reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians.

In relation to social and economic policies, Peretz offers only minor changes to the government’s free-market policies and an increase in the minimum wage. “I don’t intend to damage the free market and competition,” he declared. “But I intend that the free market in Israel will be a market that serves people and that competition will be fair,” he continued. In other words, he presents no challenge to the basic interests of the capitalist ruling class.

Indeed, Labour’s financial spokesman, a former World Bank economist, hastened to reassure the international financial institutions at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Israel would pursue pro-market policies and would not raise taxes or increase government debt. “We will be more competitive,” he said.

When Sharon’s Likud coalition became unworkable because of settler-religious opposition to Gaza, he pulled out of the Likud party that he had helped to form in 1977 and set up theKadima party, with 14 of his Likud colleagues and several leading Labour MPs, including Shimon Peres and Haim Ramon. Kadima was, until Sharon’s stroke, widely expected to win the most seats in the next parliament, although not sufficient to rule without a coalition.

In so far as Kadima is widely portrayed as a “centrist” formation, this only reflects the extreme right-wing nature of Israeli politics. Its mission is threefold.

* First, to prevent the emergence of any domestic opposition to the annexation of much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, for which Sharon had gained US approval behind the smokescreen of the withdrawal from Gaza.

* Second, to gain a consensus around Sharon’s right-wing economic and social agenda imposed under his Likud government.

* Third, to curb the influence of the settler movement and the ultra-religious parties that had come to dominate within Likud.

As far as big business and international commentators are concerned, these ultra right-wing forces are an obstacle to the consolidation of secure borders of the significantly expanded Israeli state, the removal of what remains of the welfare state and the rationalisation of military expenditure, much of it taken up with defending the settlers.

While Kadima has won important support from Israel’s political establishment and backing from the Bush administration, its popular support rests upon the so-called peace camp’s ability to promote illusions in Kadima’s readiness to end the military conflict. To this end, Israel’s liberal media and political establishment has stepped nobly into the breach, including the architects of Oslo, Peres and Yossi Beilin. This is despite the fact that Sharon’s perspective for “peace”—and that of all his successors in Kadima—is based on confining the Palestinians within a well-guarded and impoverished ghetto. So, far from being a solution, Kadima’s Palestinian policy is a recipe for continued conflict with the Palestinians, while its neo-liberal economic agenda promises civil strife at home.

Taken together, this means that Israeli workers have no party that represents their interests.

In short, Israel with all its cultural advantages, an educated workforce, and massive aid, is an economic and political disaster, dominated by enormous social inequality. The Israeli government does not represent the interests of the majority of the Jewish people who live in Israel, let alone the Jewish people all over the world. It is the political representative of a section of Israel’s financial elite, a corrupt and venal clique of international gangsters who operate on behalf of their masters in Washington.

The future heralds intensifying conflicts both within Israel and with the Palestinians. Furthermore, Israel’s role as a subcontractor for US imperialism means ever-greater military expenditure and attacks on its neighbours, threatening increasing political and military instability both in pursuit of its own interests and those of the US. While Israeli workers have thus far enjoyed a higher standard of living than their Arab neighbours, this is not set to continue.

All this is a far cry from the secure economic future that the Zionist dream seemed to offer the Jewish people.

This brief review has vindicated the principled approach taken by the Fourth International 60 years ago to the situation in Palestine. The conditions in Israel, Palestine and indeed the whole of the Middle East today differ in no fundamental way from the predictions made by the Fourth International.

The central lessons we must draw from this strategic experience concern the critical responsibilities of Marxists. Our task is to build independent revolutionary parties of the working class, sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, which base themselves on implacable theoretical firmness and tell the working class the truth.

Concluded

great article on anti-normalization

2009-12-31T17:34:00.000-08:00

great article on anti-normalization
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/482/op5.htm

Al-Ahram Weekly
18 - 24 May 2000

From front line to periphery
By Laura Drake *

Accusations are flying these days, directed by pan-Arab civil society elements against this or that Arab state on the periphery making suspicious moves toward normalisation of relations with Israel. Atop the list are Mauritania, Tunisia, Algeria, and Yemen, in that order. Morocco is old news, whereas Oman and Qatar have made clear that they are waiting for Syria and/or Palestinian final status.

Of the three, Mauritania has gone the farthest; there are no doubts as to its intentions. Algeria is on the fence: it could easily dismiss its recent suspicious handshake gesture, if it wanted to, as an instance of "diplomatic entrapment" with no harm done -- provided that it takes no further steps in this direction.

As for Yemen, it is most likely that Sana'a's recent hosting of Israeli tourists of Yemeni origin has been dramatically misinterpreted. The accusations are at this point clearly unwarranted. This is not the first time Yemen has hosted Jewish visitors of Yemeni origin coming from Israel. Yemen has hosted such people before, with no political implications whatsoever. The central criterion is that Yemen did not accept the Israeli passport; instead, the Yemenis insisted that these individuals use Yemeni travel documents. This procedure is in line with pan-Arab custom, which insists that Jews originating in Arab countries are Arab Jews and, like Jews of any origin, they and their descendants -- like their ancestors -- are the rightful citizens not of occupied Palestine but of the countries from which they hail. Yemen does in fact consider these people to be its citizens, just as Syria and Iraq and others considered the Jews in and from their countries to be their citizens.

As for Iraq today, the subject must be brought up in the context of a country that does not fit cleanly into either the front-line or peripheral state category. While Iraq technically is not a front-line state, due to the lack of a border with Israel, it has always behaved as if it were. This is the combined result of Baghdad's long-term regional leadership aspirations and the depth of its pan-Arab ideology. Furthermore, Iraq now faces Israel militarily on both its Turkish border to the north and its Jordanian border to the west, which latter has essentially been turned into Israel's new security border.

That said, the pressure that Iraq is facing today to re-settle Palestinian refugees from Lebanon in its territory as a condition for the eventual lifting of sanctions is intense and long-term, yet Iraq has been steadfastly resisting that pressure since late 1993. Had Iraq capitulated to the insidious scheme, it would have been evident by now.

These individual judgements on this select group of countries, however, obfuscate the reality of the larger divide in the Arab world relating to the problem of normalisation. Underneath it all lies a classic geopolitical split on the large scale, which pits the interests of the Arab cordon states that share borders with occupied Palestine -- and which are hence enmeshed in the "peace process" -- against those of the far-flung states on the Arab periphery that do not. Underneath the periodic normalisation "alarms" that we hear about from time to time regarding periphery state moves toward Israel, there lurks a profound disconnect on the matter between the Arab cordon and the Arab periphery. This exists in the form of a gap in expectations in an atmosphere of divergent priorities. It is a problem of strategic communication, one that fortunately can be solved through serious inter-Arab negotiations given the requisite political will on all sides. Before continuing, however, a few disclaimers.

On the part of the true front-line states -- namely, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and the Palestinians -- there is an expectation of national duty that periphery states should not "rush to normalisation." According to this understanding, Arab patriotism dictates they reject premature normalisation, excessive normalisation, or any normalisation at all.

The standard response of the periphery runs approximately as follows: "Each of you, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Palestinians, has entered a peace process whose declared end result is to normalise relations with Israel. Furthermore, you the Palestinians specifically, who stand at the centre of this conflict, have already signed on and done that very thing. We have been defending the Palestinian cause faithfully for all these years, yet now that you are ready to stop fighting you expect us to keep fighting. Why should we be more Catholic than the Pope?" I personally have encountered this argument from "moderate" intelligentsia personalities, fortunately only a handful, in places as far away as Iran.

The unspoken answer from the cordon states and the Palestinians is approximately thus: "We are doing it not by choice, but because our territory is occupied, and this is the only way to get it back. Even after we do sign, normalisation will be kept at the absolute minimum possible. You, as Arab states sharing no border with Israel, do not need the return of any territory from it, nor are you threatened by its massive military machine even in the absence of a formal peace, so why should you undermine our future leverage and yours by normalising relations with it? You must know that this is going to be an armed peace and not a friendly one; Israeli leaders have said it themselves. And in any case, why would you "want" to normalise relations with Israel, even in the most minimalist of ways, when you don't have to? Why would you enter willingly into a formal peace that we are entering into only under extreme duress?" The underlying theme here is that any such move would be foolhardy, contrary to both individual and shared Arab national interests.

This is as far as it usually goes, but here we take it one step further. Here is the deeper, second-layer response of the periphery states that is not being heard in the Arab Mashreq: "You, the front-line states, are benefiting financially or are poised to benefit -- by way of US assistance programmes and access to international loans on favourable terms -- as a result of your peace with Israel. Look at how you, the Egyptians, are already benefiting; and you, the Syrians, are also going to benefit from American financial assistance, albeit not to the same degree, as soon as you sign. And look at Jordan, with the forgiving of all that foreign debt."

To continue the periphery state argument: "We are poorer than you, and our economic situation is higher on the list of priorities for us than it is for you. The Americans tell us that their assistance is subject to political conditions, and we can find no way around it: they tell us that we cannot hope to receive financial assistance from them, either directly or indirectly, unless we make some moves toward normalising our relations with Israel."

This must be addressed, and it must be addressed seriously. Although it is true that US foreign aid is being decreased, due to pressure from US citizens who think foreign economic assistance constitutes a much higher percentage of the US budget than it actually does, periphery states point out that every little bit makes a difference for countries mired in poverty. Economics is foremost on their minds. They have a different order of priorities from that of those front-line states whose strategic agenda is consumed by matters of war, peace, occupied territory, and foreign policy independence. And even though the front-liners are signing on for the territory and not the financial rewards, periphery states nevertheless seem to resent their reaping those rewards and then preaching abstinence and national duty to everybody else.

The only solution that can conceivably be postulated under this unfortunate set of circumstances is some sort of inter-Arab resource-sharing arrangement to make up for the small amounts of economic aid the peripherals might hope to receive from the United States if they take steps to normalise their relations with Israel. The responsibility for this will fall equally upon Egypt and post- agreement Syria and Lebanon on the one hand, and on the Arab Gulf states perhaps together with Iran (and post-embargo Iraq) on the other.

As for Oman and Qatar, or any other GCC members that may or may not be considering steps toward normalisation: they do not need the money, the US has no strategic leverage on Gulf states since it cannot do without them, and hence these countries have no conceivable excuse for entering into normalisation under any circumstances -- even if Syria does achieve a Golan withdrawal, and even in the event a final status agreement is reached on the Palestinian track. This expectation is of course contingent on Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians not taking the normalisation any single inch further than is absolutely and minimally required of them to achieve the territorial withdrawals. In fact, post-Sadat Egypt has proven to be a good example in this regard.

The desired outcome of an inter-Arab dialogue -- in the form of a serious discussion between Arab cordon and periphery states -- is that once arrangements are made, nobody beyond the front line should feel compelled to normalise for any reason, even after all the front-liners have completed their withdrawal agreements. This desired end will require that whatever financial incentive might be offered to the periphery by Washington -- and it will be small indeed, as more and more geopolitically minor countries are being cut out of the foreign aid loop -- be offset by the front-line states, the Arab Gulf states, and Iran each doing their part in upholding the forthcoming national (and Islamic) duty.

The supporting role of Arab civil society, and particularly the anti-normalisation movement, is to launch direct diplomatic initiatives with the foreign ministries in the periphery states concerned. Since the anti-normalisation movement is strongest in the front-line countries, their civil society elements will obviously initiate the dialogue, but they will have to do it together with anti-normalisation counterparts who live in the periphery countries concerned. The goal would be to convince the periphery states via direct dialogue -- by presenting details of their own experiences as front-liners with normalisation to date -- that whatever benefits the peripherals might hope to achieve from the United States will be vastly outweighed by the damage that Israel will inflict upon their economies and their national independence if they succumb to the pressures of normalisation.

Anti-normalisation forces need look no further than their own front yard for concrete evidence to support their warnings: they need only demonstrate the carnage currently being inflicted on Jordan's sovereign economy by the invasion of Israeli capital into its domain.

*The writer is adjunct professor of international relations at the American University in Washington.
weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg

links

2009-12-31T17:33:00.002-08:00

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A Tragically Bad and Unsustainable Idea

2009-12-31T17:33:00.001-08:00

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitbeck10192009.html

October 19, 2009
A Tragically Bad and Unsustainable Idea
Zionism: an Anti-Semite's Dream?

By JOHN V. WHITBECK

In a commentary published in the Arab News (Jeddah) on October 17, the British journalist Neil Berry focuses on a reality which is rarely mentioned in polite society: that Zionism is, and has always been, an anti-Semite's dream come true, offering the hope that one's own country's Jews can be induced to leave and move elsewhere.

Berry writes: "The imperious British statesman, A.J. Balfour, who gave his name to the declaration, was an earnest supporter of the 1905 Alien Act, which was specifically designed to stem the inflow into Britain of Jews who were fleeing from persecution in czarist Russia. A century ago, immigrant Jews were seen by many, much as Muslims are now, as subversive intruders menacing the British way of life.... Zionism and anti-Semitism became inextricably bound up with one another."

Citing a better-known cause for the enduring shame of Western states, Berry continues: "In the aftermath of the liquidation by the Nazis of some 6 million Jews during World War II, the United States, Australia and Canada, brushing aside Arab pleas to treat displaced Jews as a challenge for the whole world, refused to relax their immigration restrictions, thereby ensuring that the great majority of them poured into Palestine, even though many would have preferred to settle elsewhere.... It was with shrewd foresight that Herzl predicted that anti-Semitism would become Zionism's greatest ally."

Western governments which, today, are not anti-Semitic should, rather than feeding justice, human decency and international law into a shredder through blind subservience to a racial-supremicist, settler-colonial experiment (and thereby earning themselves the hatred of much of mankind), be opening their doors wide to any and all Israeli Jews who might be tempted to build a new and better life for themselves and their children, with less injustice and less insecurity, by returning to their countries of origin or emigrating to other countries of their choice, offering them immediate residency rights, generous resettlement assistance and a rapid road to citizenship (if they do not already have it).

Such "Laws of Return" would be profoundly philo-Semitic, pro-Jewish and, yes, anti-Zionist. They would reflect a moral, ethical and self-interested recognition that Zionism, like certain other prominent 20th century "isms" which once captured the imaginations of millions, was a tragically bad idea -- not simply for those innocents caught and trampled in its path but also for those who embraced it -- which is unsustainable, which does not deserve to be sustained and which has already caused (and, if perpetuated, will continue to cause) profound problems for the Western world and the Western world's relations with the rest of the world.

Democracy and equal rights in a unitary state in the land which, until 1948, was called Palestine, coupled with freedom of choice (with attractive choices for resettlement being generously provided) for those who would prefer not to live in such a state, would offer a far greater hope for eventual peace in the Middle East than continued cyncical recycling of a partition-based "peace process" which is now widely recognized to be both a fraud and a farce and which, even if "successful", would simply legitimize, reward and perpetuate ethnic cleansing, racism and apartheid -- scarcely a recipe for lasting peace, let alone for any measure of justice.

If Western politicians cared more about the welfare and happiness of individual Jewish human beings than they do about the money and ability to hurt them of a few wealthy and powerful Zionists, most of whom live comfortably and safely far from the Middle East, democracy, equal rights and freedom of choice, all principles to which Western states profess devotion, might actually come to the "Holy Land".

Politicians being what they are, civil society will have to take the lead in delegitimizing Zionism and pointing the way toward a better future for all concerned -- and, like it or not, everyone on this planet is concerned.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of "The World According to Whitbeck".

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http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=127581&d=20&m=10&y=2009

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http://article.wn.com/view/2009/12/27/Nasrallah_Israels_greed_brutality_have_no_borders/

'Lost Jews' video shows Israeli chutzpah towards Diaspora Jewry

2009-09-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

Excuse me: What is 'Diaspora Jewry'? That would be all the white European Jewry and Black African Jewry and South American Jewry that is away from their ancestral home of Palestine? Right? Silly! Look in the mirror! If you are a Jew of European origin, the person reflected on the mirror would be European; and if of African origin, you should be looking at a black person! Palestine is ancestral home of Arabs only (Christians, Muslims and Jews). Let's dispense with the dishonesty!

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Last update - 10:15 09/09/2009
'Lost Jews' video shows Israeli chutzpah towards Diaspora Jewry
By Benjamin L. Hartman, Haaretz Correspondent

An Israel outreach program has pulled from its Web site a campaign video meant to scare the Israeli public about the inevitable 'de-Judaization' that occurs to good Jewish stock in the Diaspora.

The Masa organization last week released a video, which shows eerie headshots of young, smiling youths with painfully Jewish names. Each of these faces gaze at the camera from atop flyers that read 'Missing' and 'Lost' in English, Russian, and Spanish.

An Israel outreach program has pulled from its Web site a campaign video meant to scare the Israeli public about the inevitable 'de-Judaization' that occurs to good Jewish stock in the Diaspora.

The Masa organization last week released a video, which shows eerie headshots of young, smiling youths with painfully Jewish names. Each of these faces gaze at the camera from atop flyers that read 'Missing' and 'Lost' in English, Russian, and Spanish.

'Lost Jews' campaign is racist, despicable and disgusting

2009-09-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

Last update - 12:35 10/09/2009
'Lost Jews' campaign is racist, despicable and disgusting
By Gideon Levy
Joel Fein is lost. So is Josh Feldman. Their images on police-style posters like those of criminals or missing persons are featured in a new advertising campaign. The Prime Minister's Office and the Jewish Agency present: the "lost" campaign. The advertising agency responsible for the water conservation scare campaign "Israel is drying up" strikes again. This time they are scaring us over assimilation.

"Call MASA," the tip line suggests, and report a Jew who has married (may the Almighty protect us) a goy (Lord have mercy) - and they'll know how to take care of it. It is a racist, despicable, disgusting campaign. It isn't just the act of informing on someone, which is repulsive in itself. It is primarily the content of this nationalistic scare campaign, which has meanwhile been toned down in view of the reaction it engendered. A Jew who marries a goy is not "lost." Maybe, he will live happily ever after. The idea that cheap propaganda will dissuade him from his love or his faith, or lack of faith, is a backward thought. No other people would conduct such a campaign. The Jewish people no longer needs one, and the State of Israel has no right to conduct one.

There are about 13 million Jews in the world, 40 percent of whom live in Israel and 40 percent in the United States. The Israelis are in the process of consolidating a new identity, which is not affected by assimilation. As for the rest of the Jews in the world, one must assume that if they want to, they'll assimilate. If they don't want to, they won't assimilate. Israel must continue to serve as a refuge or an option for immigration for them, but no more than that.
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Life in Israel is more dangerous for Jews, in any event, than in any other place, and life for the non-Jewish minority in Israel is immeasurably worse than life as a minority for most of the Jewish communities around the world. The concept of "a year in Israel, a love for a lifetime," as the MASA slogan says, is misleading. Isn't there a single tourist, either Jewish or non-Jewish, who after visiting here swore never to set foot in this place again? The violence, the crudeness, the materialism, the nationalism, the militarism, the aggressiveness and the occupation don't suit everyone.

The cheap propaganda campaigns of the Jewish Agency, Birthright (Taglit in Hebrew), the Israel Experience and MASA, try at any price to present the beautiful Israel, just and strong - but even the opportunity to take a photo in an IDF uniform, visit Sderot or have a good matchmaking experience don't ensure anything. If Israel were indeed beautiful and just, there would be no need for all the propaganda. As long as it isn't, all of the propagandists won't help. We should prefer the assimilationists, genuine friends of Israel, to Jewish friends of the occupation.

It's time to overcome such nonsense. About half of the Jewish people are assimilating, which is their choice and complete right, and we shouldn't complain about it. They're not "lost," certainly not more than those who married Jews, which we so want and push for. If a portion of the Diaspora assimilates, no catastrophe will occur. In an open and liberal society, there is no place for scare tactics over this fictitious danger. But with us, as always, size matters. We not only want a Land of Israel large in size but also a large Jewish people and to hell with all the rest.

A big Israel doesn't make it better or more just. And a larger Jewish people isn't worth anything. The time has also come to dismantle the anachronistic propaganda machines of the Jewish Agency and its affiliates. A lot of money was poured into them for nothing. What was right for a people without a state is no longer relevant. The tie with world Jewry should be based on the State of Israel as a source of pride - and it isn't. On the contrary, through its actions Israel more than once has endangered and shamed the Diaspora. Ask the Jews of the world what their neighbors said after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. As them when they last felt pride in Israel's actions.

If the Jews of the world are really dear to us, it would be better if we became less of an outcast as a country. It would bring us much more respect and honor ,and a stronger Jewish connection than any MASA or other such program. True, some of them work with youth, especially those whose lives are empty, but disappointment isn't far off. At the end of any trip to Israel on Taglit, which means "discovery" in Hebrew, another discovery is liable to pop up, a more genuine discovery about the nature of the society and the state that has been established here. Josh and Joel aren't lost. Those who call them that seem much more lost.

Inmates Celebrate B’not Mitzvah

2009-09-17T11:21:00.001-07:00

September 9, 2009
Inmates Celebrate B’not Mitzvah

by Annabelle Gurwitch

Two women, identified as Carol and Pamela — not their real names — became b’not mitzvah on Saturday, Sept. 5. Both are inmates at the California Institution for Women (CIW) in Corona, located about 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The event is believed to be the first bat mitzvah to take place inside prison walls in the United States.

Carol and Pamela approached the rabbi with the idea of a bat mitzvah six months ago — both are incarcerated for a variety of offenses, including drug-related charges — and their preparation for the day included learning Hebrew and writing a speech. The service took place in the prison chapel, which the Jewish community shares with Muslims, Catholics and Protestants, and was led by Rabbi Moshe Halfon, who has served as Jewish chaplain at the facility for the last three years. Halfon describes himself as a spiritual healer and explorer; he is also a Reconstructionist rabbi and holds a master’s degree in educational psychology and organizational process from Temple University. Halfon is the co-founder of Am Or Olam (People of the Eternal Light), a nonprofit center in Southern California that promotes holistic healing, Jewish spirituality, the arts and, now, prison outreach as well.

Halfon spends Wednesdays through Saturdays at the prison teaching classes, and he conducts services there almost every Friday night and Saturday, as well as additional holiday observances. Halfon’s curriculum includes traditional prayer, but early into his tenure he decided that teaching spirituality, ethics and basic rituals were most important.

Carol, 29, came into the Jewish community not long after arriving at CIW in May 2008. She is of Jewish descent, and was exposed to Judaism as a child through her grandparents, who were Orthodox. Her professional and family life were torn apart as a result of her substance abuse and other dysfunctional behavior, and she no longer is in contact with her family. Carol is scheduled for parole in December and hopes to return to a professional life and to one day be reunited with her children, who currently are in foster care.

Pamela, 25, is Jewish and has been incarcerated since December 2007. She did not grow up with a religious background, but by chance was assigned to work in the kosher kitchen at CIW, where she became interested in the community. She has earned an associate degree while at CIW, and she plans to go to college. Her family is currently caring for her 5-year-old son.

Both women undertook intense and dedicated study in preparation for their b’not mitzvah day. Each studied Hebrew on her own time, during hours not filled with work, classes, 12-step programs and other prison-mandated activities.

The women took Hebrew names — Pamela chose Zohara Binah and Carol chose Chava Shira. During the service, they led prayers, chanted the Parashat Nitzavim, and each delivered a devar Torah — both of them on the theme of choosing life. (Even though it wasn’t the week’s portion, the women chose to study Parashat Nitzavim because of their connection to the text and the particular constraints relating to the timing of the service.)

In her writings, Zohara Binah called the Jewish community “a lifeline of hope and light in an abyss of futility and despair.” She said she experiences the “renewal style of Judaism embracing and encompassing other religious philosophies, adding an air of tolerance which is tantamount to spiritual practice behind prison walls.”

Her speech included teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, while Chava Shira spoke personally and pointedly of the mistakes she had made in the past and her commitment to choosing the path of life; she has also written of how she has been influenced by the teaching of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. Both women are hoping upon release to go to Beit T’Shuvah, the Jewish residential addiction recovery center in Culver City.

Numerous volunteers attended the service, including the Rev. Shayna Lester, an interfaith minister who spends two days a week teaching a course in Jewish ethics at the prison, providing spiritual education and guidance to the incarcerated women. During the service, Lester expressed her desire for the two women “to become their truest and most authentic selves.”

In addition, other leaders in the Jewish community flew in from the Bay Area, including Nancy Goldberg, vice president of Jewish Family and Children’s Services of San Francisco and the surrounding areas. Inmates from the institution’s general population also gathered in the chapel to support the women, participating in the service along with the inmates who regularly attend classes and services. One woman, K, who is not Jewish but a regular at services, holds an advanced degree in economics from Stanford and is incarcerated for a white-collar crime. She said she sought out the community after observing that the women who attended services were “leaving with light in their hearts.”

L, a Jewish inmate who has long been active in the prison’s Jewish community, has been incarcerated for 24 years and has tattoos with the Hebrew words from the Song of Solomon, “I am my beloved, my beloved is mine.” At the time of the service, L was scheduled for release in 14 days and hopes to stay connected to the Jewish community.

Traditional Jewish songs along with standards like “Stand by Me” were played. Carol and another inmate performed an a cappella version of Christina Aguilera’s “You Are Beautiful.”

Institutional regulations prevented Pamela’s parents from attending, but they sent an inspirational message that was read aloud by the inmate congregants. Pamela’s father wrote of his love for her, saying, “I love you yesterday, today and tomorrow.” Her mother sent a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”

Ariella Lewis, co-founder with Halfon of Am Or Olam, read words of inspiration to Carol, speaking of two sephirot (emanations) on the kabbalistic tree of life: Netzach, the quality of endurance, and Hod, the quality of integrity and majesty — qualities needed to stand up as individuals.

The horn blew at 4:30 p.m., calling the inmates back to their units, a sudden and stark reminder that some in attendance were convicted felons and others would leave to resume their lives outside. Zohara Binah, Chava Shira and the other inmates returned to their evening institution regimen.

Actress and writer Annabelle Gurwitch hosts the carbon foot printing series “WA$TED” on Planet Green Network. Her new book, “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up,” a love story co-written with her husband, Jeff Kahn, will be published by Crown Books in February 2010.

After 20 years, why has Russian immigration to Israel stagnated?

2009-09-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

Last update - 14:59 12/09/2009

After 20 years, why has Russian immigration to Israel stagnated?

By Tracy Levy
Twenty years after Russia opened its doors to mass emigration, the number of immigrants choosing to move to Israel has stagnated.

Since 1989, over one million Russians have immigrated to Israel. In the past few years, Israel has seen an average of between five and six thousand Russian immigrants per year.
Professor Eliezer Leshem, a former Hebrew University professor and current Professor Emeritus at Ariel University Center of Samaria, believes that the current cessation of immigration may have something to do with discrimination many Russians felt while being absorbed into Israeli society.

Leshem, who is an expert on Russian immigration, cites the state's doubt about some immigrants' Jewish status, as well as trouble integrating into the job market as signs of the intolerance the Russian community has had to face.

"Russians face suspicion about their Judaism even after converting. The attitude of the rabbinical establishment is winning," Leshem said. In addition, only 20 percent of immigrants have been integrated into the same jobs they worked in Russia; the rest have had to settle for different, and in many cases, lower status jobs.

Margo Garshina, who immigrated to Israel last year, prefers not to focus on the negative aspects of the history of immigrant absorption in Israel. The 22-year-old, who emigrated from Moscow, foresees a bright future for herself in this country; she will begin studying for a master?s degree in communication this fall at Tel Aviv University.

"I feel much better here than I did in Russia," Garshina said. She believes the low number of new immigrants from Russia may have something to do with the way that Israel is represented back in Russia. "People think it's a war zone where people are killing each other on the streets. My friends thought I was moving to the end of the world, where I would be in danger at every second."

Garshina decided to move to Israel after coming on a Taglit Birthright trip; she was the only one out of several groups with 40 each who decided to move here.

Choosing not to identify herself too closely with the Russian community in Israel, Garshina represents the new generation of young Russian immigrants.

"I'm trying to integrate in to Israeli society, not Russian society," says Garshina who has been studying Hebrew since she moved to Israel. "Many Russians come here and don't communicate with people outside of the Russian community and I don't think that's right."

Meanwhile, Leshem is doubtful that emigration from Russia will increase in the future, partly due to economic changes and increased opportunities in the country.

"If you don?t receive the immigrants properly and the motivation for them to leave is low then you can only expect five to six thousand immigrants a year."

Garshina recalls walking off the plane into Israel, a country where she has no family and knew no one. She knows firsthand how daunting moving to a foreign country can be regardless of one's nationality.

"I think anyone would be afraid to take such a big step in their lives," Garshina said about the future of Russian immigration

Artists, authors sign letter protesting Israeli spotlight at TIFF

2009-09-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

Mark Medley, National Post Published: Thursday, September 03, 2009

TORONTO -- The signatories of a new letter accusing the Toronto International Film Festival of becoming "complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine" run the gamut from an Oscar-winning actress to a rabble-rousing author to a Talking Head.

More than 50 people have added their name to what's being called The Toronto Declaration, including musician David Byrne, actors Danny Glover and Jane Fonda, and author Alice Walker.

The letter, drafted by a committee that includes Canadian writer Naomi Klein and Israeli filmmaker Udi Aloni, is the latest move in a controversy that began when Canadian director John Greyson withdrew his short documentary, Covered, from the festival last week. The veteran filmmaker is protesting the festival's inaugural City to City Spotlight on Tel Aviv, a 10-movie program that TIFF's website promises will "explore the evolving urban experience while presenting the best documentary and fiction films from and about a selected city." This year is Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary.

Greyson penned an open letter to festival co-directors Piers Handling and Cameron Bailey, as well as to Noah Cowan, artistic director of the under-construction Bell Lightbox, blasting the initiative.

The declaration states that while the signatories are not protesting the individual filmmakers participating in the program and do not seek to exclude Israeli films from the festival, "in the wake of this year's brutal assault on Gaza, we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann have all characterized as an apartheid regime."

The protesters say that the City to City Spotlight is connected with the Israeli government's "Brand Israel" media and advertising campaign, which was launched in 2008.

Both Greyson's letter and the declaration mention an August 2008 article in the Canadian Jewish News in which Israeli Consul General Amir Gissin says Israel would have a major presence at this year's festival. Gissin was not available for comment.

It is a charge Bailey denies.

"The City to City series was conceived and curated entirely independently," Bailey writes in a letter posted on the festival website. "There was no pressure from any outside source. Contrary to rumours or mistaken media reports, this focus is a product only of TIFF's programming decisions. We value that independence and would never compromise it."

The protesters' efforts are misguided, say critics of the protest.

"I think some of these people are well-meaning, some of these people are less well-meaning," said Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, when reached in New York City. "Frankly, I think there's no other word but anti-Semitism. I don't know if they're doing it consciously or unconsciously, I want to make that clear, but the idea that anything that Israel does is by definition illegitimate, and anything that the other side does is by definition legitimate, what do you call that?"

The Emmy Award-winning documentarian, who divides his time between Toronto and Israel, says Greyson's original letter was "full of lies" and says the festival "shouldn't be intimidated by this coalition of lies."

Avi Benlolo, president and CEO of the Toronto Chapter of the Friends of the Simon Wiethensal Centre, says he found the decision "ludicrous."

"For him to have pulled his film, and for the 50 signatories to have done that, what they're in fact doing is just using the International Film Festival ... as a forum, a vehicle, to delegitimize the state of Israel.

"I think Cameron Bailey's response is to be applauded," he adds. "It's not branding and it has nothing to do with politics."

Canadian filmmaker Mike Hoolboom, who has signed the letter, says the protest isn't an attempt to hijack the festival.

"No one is calling for a boycott of the entire festival," he said, "only for a boycott of the program."

In his letter, Greyson maintains his protest "isn't against the film or filmmakers" chosen but against the City to City program, specifically, and "the smug business-as-usual aura it promotes."

He compares the "uncritical celebration" of Tel Aviv to "celebrating Montgomery (Ala.) buses in 1963" or "South African fruit in 1991."

Bailey counters that "[Greyson] writes that his protest isn't against the films or filmmakers we have chosen, but against the spotlight itself. By that reasoning, no films programmed within this series would have met his approval, no matter what they contained."

National Post

mmedley@nationalpost.com

http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/toronto-film-festival/story.html?id=1960040

Hollywood Jews: Toronto film fest protest against Israel a 'blacklist'

2009-09-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

Hollywood Jews: Toronto film fest protest against Israel a 'blacklist'
September 16, 2009 | 5:39 pm

Someone always causes a ruckus at the Toronto film festival. But this year even the reliably controversy-stirring Michael Moore has had to take a back seat to the uproar over a protest letter, signed by a variety of showbiz dignitaries, claiming that Toronto's embrace of a sister city program with Tel Aviv was a "celebration" of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, charging the festival with being complicit "in the Israeli propaganda machine." The letter was signed by such prominent artists as David Byrne, Julie Christie, Ken Loach, Wallace Shawn and Jane Fonda (who's now taking some baby steps backing away from some of the letter's more heated accusations).

Tiff2009 The protest was sparked by the Canadian documentary filmmaker John Greyson, who pulled his film from the festival, decrying the festival's spotlight on Tel Aviv, which he called -- quoting Naomi Klein -- "the smiling face of Israeli apartheid." There have been a variety of counter-protests, but the biggest one arrives Thursday in the form of a full-page ad in Variety, signed by more than a hundred, mostly Jewish Hollywood filmmakers, actors, writers, producers and executives.

Titled "We Don't Need Another Blacklist," the ad applauds the festival for including the Israeli film community in its City to City program. It says the filmmakers of Israel represent the best of open and uncensored artistic expression that are "in no way a propaganda arm" for government policy. It goes on to add: "Blacklisting them only stifles the exchange of cultural knowledge that artists should be the first to defend and protect. Those who refuse to see these films for themselves or prevent them from being seen by others are violating a cherished right shared by Canada and all democratic countries."

The group of signatures supporting the ad's declaration include a who's who of Hollywood, including Jerry Seinfeld, Seth Rogen, Robert Duvall, Halle Berry, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lisa Kudrow, Lenny Kravitz, Ed Zwick, Jason Alexander, Chazz Palminteri and David Cronenberg, along with a host of top producers and executives like Ron Meyer, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Sherry Lansing, Neal Moritz, Jonathan Glickman, Nina Jacobson, Darron Star, Nathan Kahane and Gail Berman. (Writer-director signatory Michael Tolkin gets credit for a polish on the shaping of the ad's language.)

Dan Adler, an L.A. based entrepreneur and former CAA executive, was one of the driving forces behind the ad, which is officially sponsored by Jewish Federation of Los Angeles and the UJA Federation of Toronto. "We all spent a lot of time talking about the original protest letter, in the sense that it seemed to be going after the wrong target by attacking Israel and its film artists," said Adler. "When I sat down at my computer and started asking for people to sign on, all I got was passion and enthusiasm. Everyone said, 'I'm in,' and then, even better, added, 'Can I get you someone else?' "

I'm not a big fan of political action letter writing and protest ads, since as Fonda proves in her painfully awkward "restatement" of her position, too many celebrities either go whichever direction the wind is blowing or have no real grasp of the complexity of political issues in the first place. Israel's role in the mess in the Middle East is, for example, far too endlessly complicated to be accurately captured in a protest letter or counter-protest ad. But I think this ad strikes the right chord, since as Adler puts it: "This was a cut and dried issue -- it's important to stand up for the rights of artists, wherever they are, especially in the film community of Israel which has been a beacon of open, often critical free expression."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2009/09/hollywood-jews-call-toronto-film-fest-protest-against-israel-a-blacklist.html

Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen and Natalie Portman slam Toronto Film Festival protest

2009-09-17T10:55:00.001-07:00

Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen and Natalie Portman slam Toronto Film Festival protest
By Natasha Mozgovaya and Itamar Zohar
Tags: TIFF boycott, Israel News
Jewish actors sign letter in L.A. Times and Toronto Star protesting boycott of festival over homage to Tel Aviv.

WASHINGTON - A number of Hollywood stars circulated a letter Tuesday protesting a petition calling for a boycott of the Toronto International Film Festival over a Tel Aviv-themed event.

The letter, which appeared simultaneously in the Los Angeles Times and the Toronto Star was signed, among others, by Jerry Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen, Natalie Portman, Jason Alexander and Lisa Kudrow.

The letter, which was paid for by Jewish organizations in Los Angeles and Toronto, said, "Anyone who has actually seen recent Israeli cinema, movies that are political and personal, comic and tragic, often critical, knows they are in no way a propaganda arm for any government policy."
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Film festival boycotters, which included culture critic Naomi Klein, and directors John Greyson and Richard Fung, said the Israeli films presented at the festival promote Israel's recent publicity campaign, which seeks to show Israel and Tel Aviv as enlightened, liberal places, without conducting a dialogue on their treatment of Palestinians.

The Toronto festival's management did not give in to pressure, and showed all 10 films in the City of City event, which spotlighted Tel Aviv. Among them were Ephraim Kishon's "Big Dig," Assi Dayan's "Life According to Agfa," and Keren Yedaya's "Bride of the Sea."

Meanwhile, Jane Fonda, who had initially opposed the spotlight on Tel Aviv at the festival, Tuesday released a statement that she had changed her mind.

"I signed the letter without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn't exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue," Fonda wrote on the huffingtonpost.com. She added that the suffering of both sides should be articulated.

Russia won't agree to tougher Iran sanctions

2009-09-17T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last update - 13:27 14/07/2009
Source: Russia won't agree to tougher Iran sanctions
By Reuters

Russia will not agree to tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program in exchange for a new nuclear arms cuts deal with Washington, Interfax news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry source as saying on Tuesday.

Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama's nuclear adviser suggested that progress on a U.S.-Russian nuclear arms pact could help persuade Moscow to be more cooperative on Iran.

"There are no reasons to link these issues or count on Russia being more cooperative in toughening sanctions against Iran if there is progress in talks with the United States on further cuts in strategic offensive weapons," the source said.
Russia is negotiating a new nuclear arms cuts deal with the United States to replace the 1991 START-1 pact, which expires in December. It is also involved in international efforts to persuade Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program.

The sharp tone of the Russian comments contrasted with the positive mood that dominated last week during Obama's visit to Moscow aimed at "resetting" thorny bilateral ties.

Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev committed themselves during the talks to working on the new START pact despite outstanding disagreements over U.S. plans to deploy elements of an anti-missile system in Europe.

Obama has said that the European elements of the missile shield will not be needed if Iran halts what Israel, the U.S. and other Western nations say is a military program to create its own nuclear bomb.

Iran insists that the program is for civilian purposes only.

Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, has been reluctant to allow strong sanctions against Iran and has praised Obama for promising to pursue direct dialogue with Iranian leaders.

Obama's special assistant for arms control, Gary Samore, made his comments about the potential for a change in Russia's stance at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies last week.

"If we make concessions on strategic nuclear issues the Russians are much more willing to be cooperative when it comes to Iran," Samore told experts.

A Kremlin source told Reuters that the exchange of remarks over START and Iran did not indicate any change in the overall atmosphere of Russia-U.S. contacts.

"It was nothing more than an exchange of remarks over a specific suggestion," the source said.

Russia is helping Iran build a nuclear power plant and also stood steadfastly behind the Tehran regime despite its massive crackdown on street protests following last month's disputed presidential election.

Netanyahu aide likely to pay price for 'secret' Russia trip

2009-09-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

Last update - 03:01 11/09/2009
Netanyahu aide likely to pay price for 'secret' Russia trip
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

At least one person will pay the price for the fiasco of the prime minister's visit to Russia: Maj. Gen. Meir Kalifi, Benjamin Netanyahu's military secretary. It isn't that Kalifi is free of blame in this story, but it seems that the speed with which he was identified as the near sole person responsible for the embarrassment was meant to spare others responsible, including Netanyahu, his political adviser, Uzi Arad, and his media adviser, Nir Hefetz, from any blame.

Sacrificing the military secretary, who lacks political support or any personal commitment from Netanyahu (having been appointed to the post during the tenure of Ehud Olmert), is not particularly media savvy and whose military career is in any case close to its end, is expected to put an end to the rumor mill surrounding the sensitive nature of the visit, and the failed effort to keep it a secret.

No less important, it may temporarily contain the infighting at the Prime Minister's Bureau, among those who are battling for Netanyahu's graces: Arad vs. Hefetz, and government secretary Zvi Hauser.
Thursday there were already rumors that Kalifi had prepared a letter of resignation. The officer, responding to Haaretz, denied the rumor. But there is no doubt that he is furious at the way he has been treated.

The story had already appeared in the press Thursday: Netanyahu and Arad kept Hefetz in the dark on the planned visit. The Prime Minister's disappearance on Monday stirred a wave of rumors and reporters called on Netanyahu's media adviser, who admitted he did not know. Later, Hefetz issued a false announcement, which was, unusually, made under Kalifi's name, claiming that Netanyahu was in a security related facility.

It was reported that Hefetz at that time still had no idea where Netanyahu was. Kalifi was also not in Russia.

The newspapers wrote Thursday that Kalifi was behind the announcement, and that he knew where Netanyahu was. He was quoted as having said that "for state security one may sometimes not tell the whole truth." At the same time someone recommended to the reporters to turn to the IDF, and ask the chief of staff whether he planned to reprimand Kalifi (the answer, as far as we know, is negative).

Those who spoke with Kalifi Thursday heard a different version of events than the one published in the media. Accordingly, he did not know that the false statement on Netanyahu's whereabouts was being issued under his name to the media. Only in retrospect did the military secretary comprehend the trap that had been set for him and its implications: the whole affair was blamed on him and he was made to appear to be a liar.

Kalifi's future in the IDF had been limited in any case. The chief of staff had skipped him over when he made the appointments for commander of ground forces and GOC Central Command.

Under the current circumstances and the stain that has been smeared on him it is hard to imagine Kalifi surviving much longer at the Prime Minister's Bureau.

Kalifi is the man whom the IDF sent to the front, during two sad incidents in the Gaza Strip: the death of seven members of the Ghalia family in 2006 from a blast on the Gaza beach, and the killing of 18 Palestinians by IDF artillery in Beit Hanoun. He is the man who investigated the incidents, and presented the conclusions to the media.

In both cases the IDF came out with minor damage. His willingness to deceive in the name of security this week has shed some doubt also on his statements in the past.

Missile crisis

One of the main issues that, according to reports, was apparently on Netanyahu's agenda in Russia was the S-300 air defense missile deal with Iran. Initial reports on Moscow's intention to deliver the advanced missiles to Iran were published seven years ago.

Since then, the deal has been placed on hold: it seems that the Russians promised to sell the equipment to Iran, but did not say when. Israel would very much like to see the deal stopped, or at least delayed, because the delivery of this system would substantially improve Iran's ability to defend its nuclear installations against an air strike. It is for this reason that Israel agreed to Russia's request that it cease to sell weapons to Georgia.

However, the Russian position is not unequivocal, and Moscow has not stopped from hinting that it intends to go through with the deal.

One of the Russian claims is that selling advanced air defense systems to countries like Iran and Syria actually contributes to stability in the Middle East because it dissuades Israel from any offensive adventurism. Russia and Iran continue to have clandestine exchanges in matters that give Israel cause to suspect that Moscow is playing both sides.

Another option is that Moscow considers the possibility of selling advanced air defense systems to Iran as a way of bargaining with the West over U.S. plans to deploy an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Pleas to Russia over Iran just humiliate Israel

2009-09-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

Yossi Melman
Pleas to Russia over Iran just humiliate Israel
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent
Sepy 17, 2009

The mysterious visit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid to Moscow early last week was another hopeless bid by Israel to try to influence Russian foreign policy. Netanyahu did just what his predecessors did, with one possible difference: In the past, meetings with the Russians have been not been kept secret. Netanyahu, because of his personal style and his way of doing things, preferred to create superfluous drama and to give his trip an air of secrecy.

There is nothing that is or has to be clandestine about an Israeli prime minister visiting Russia and meeting with its leaders. Every prime minister since the 1990s - Yitzhak Rabin, Netanyahu (during his first premiership), Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert - has gone there.

The pattern is always the same: The premier travels to Moscow armed with "secret" information emanating from Israel's intelligence community about some intention on Russia's part to sell arms or nuclear equipment to Iran or Syria. The Russians listen in silence to the Israeli complaints. In cases where Israel fears that Russian weaponry has trickled to Hezbollah via Iran, or that smuggled Russian technology has reached Iran's nuclear program, the Russians mostly deny it or ask for more information or promise they will look into it. And there, more or less, the matter rests.
What Israel's leaders fail to appreciate is that Russia has its own Middle Eastern interests and policies, which usually do not correspond with Israeli interests, aspirations and desires. Again and again, they fall into the trap of hoping that perhaps this time they will manage to persuade the Russians. And then, of course, they are humiliated.

Judging from its statements at least, Russia, unlike Israel and the United States, believes that Iran will not make nuclear weapons. But even if it does fear such an eventuality, it is less worried than either Israel or the United States, and is therefore not prepared to join them and the European Union in demanding harsher sanctions on Iran. Russia's interest is to bolster its economic and political influence in the Middle East and to challenge the United States. It is therefore ready to sell arms to Iran and Syria and to conduct a dialogue with Hamas.

There is perhaps only one thing Russia and Israel have in common, although Israelis will probably not rejoice at the comparison: Russia is ready to sell arms to almost any country in the world, exactly as Israel is. And, like Israel, Russia maintains its defense industry in order to advance its foreign policies, provide jobs and earn foreign currency.

Incidentally, Israel's arms sales and defense exports last year surpassed Russia's. Israel is the third largest arms exporter in the world, after the United States and France. Moreover, the claim that Russia sells weapons to Israel's enemies, while Israel does not sell weapons to those whom Russia perceives as enemies, is not accurate: Israel sold arms to Georgia for years and ignored all of Russia's protests over this. Only at the last moment before the war between Russia and Georgia broke out did the Defense Ministry reconsider and bar a large tank deal, one of whose initiators was the ministry's former director general, Amos Yaron.

The Russians say they will not sell offensive arms to Israel's enemies, only defensive ones, if at all. Therefore, they see Israel's demand that Russia refrain from selling weapons to Iran and Syria as presumptuous - especially when it comes to the deal involving the sale of S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Iran. Why does Israel want to stop this deal? Because these weapons will make it difficult to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. And that is exactly what Russia's foreign policy aims to achieve.

Israeli Minister to Swedish Jews: Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism

2009-09-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

Last update - 15:41 16/09/2009

By Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz Correspondent

Anti-Zionism is a new form of anti-Semitism that can be found in foreign media, Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein (Likud) told Swedish Jews Tuesday. The comments were made during a videoconference held following the controversial publication in a Swedish paper of an article claiming Israeli soldiers stole organs from Palestinians.

Edelstein took questions from six Swedish Jews about Israel's attitude toward anti-Semitism, criticism of its policies, Jewish communities in the Diaspora, immigration and emigration.

Last month's organ-theft article by the tabloid Aftonbladet - which drew fierce criticism from Israel and Jewish organizations, and which may have led to the cancellation of a planned visit to Israel by Sweden's foreign minister - did not dominate the discussion, but seemed to have at least shaped some of it.
"Criticism is legitimate as long as it does not border on demonization or denying our right to the land of Israel," Edelstein told Omri Grinberg, who asked the minister whether he "immediately crosses out as irrelevant to his purposes" those who oppose "Israel's ongoing occupation."

"There are many NGOs that use the right to freedom of speech and work under false pretenses of concern for Israel, when what they are actually doing is causing damage to Israel and exposing it to danger," Edelstein added.

John Gradowski asked the minister how Israel balances its efforts to draw more Jews to immigrate with its stated goal of strengthening Jewish communities in the Diaspora.

"Israel does not believe that it is possible or essential that all Jews live in Israel," Edelstein responded, also as part of an answer to yet another question on this topic. "There is definitely a need for flourishing communities in the Diaspora that can both feel a connection to the Jewish people."

Tuesday's videoconference is part of a project initiated by European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor, which aims to foster stronger ties between Diaspora communities and Israel. The project will allow representatives from one Jewish community every month to hold a video-recorded discussion with an Israeli official or opinion-shaper. The videos will be posted online at www.leadel.net.

Arie Zuckerman, Secretary General of the European Jewish Fund, who promoted the project alongside Kantor, told Haaretz that the meeting with the Swedish community had been scheduled before the eruption in the wake of the Aftonbladet article.

"While we remain conscious of the great contributions in many areas of large communities such as the British and the French ones, we are trying here to reach out to smaller, more distant communities such as in Sweden," he said. The next videoconference will be held in October with Hungarian Jews, and the one following with representatives from the Jewish community in Milan.

Netanyahu calls UN Gaza probe a 'kangaroo court' against Israel

2009-09-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

Last update - 23:46 16/09/2009

By Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday blasted a United Nations probe into Israel's winter offensive against Hamas as nothing but a "kangaroo court," after the investigators accused Israel of committing war crimes in a report.

"The Goldstone report is a kangaroo court against Israel, whose consequences harm the struggle of democratic countries against terror," said Netanyahu during closed meetings, in his first response to the report, which was released on Tuesday.

He was referring to the report's author, Richard Goldstone, a South African war crimes prosecutor.

Earlier Wednesday, Israel's deputy foreign minister said the report, which focuses on Israel's winter offensive against Hamas in the coastal territory, was "dangerous" and legitimized terrorism.

"The Goldstone report is a dangerous attempt to harm the principle of self-defense by democratic states and provides legitimacy to terrorism," Danny Ayalon told the heads of the American Jewish Committee during a meeting in New York.

The deputy minister urged the Jewish community leaders to work together in order to combat the report.

Though the report accuses both Israel and Hamas of carrying out war crimes during the three-week campaign in Gaza, it focuses primarily on Israel's actions during the hostilities.

The hostilities erupted on 27 December 2008 and lasted three weeks; Israel says 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the offensive, of whom the majority were militants. Human rights groups say, however, that approximately 1,400 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis were killed during the fighting: ten soldiers and three civilians.

Israel launched the offensive in response to persistent Palestinian rocket fire against towns and communities in the western Negev.

Ayalon added: "The Goldstone Report should be treated like the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism, thus we must mobilize and act with all force against the report in order to remove it".

Peres: Gaza probe makes mockery of history

President Shimon Peres issued a similarly scathing response to the report on Wednesday, which he said "makes a mockery of history."

"The Goldstone Commission report is a mockery of history," said Peres in reference to Richard Goldstone, the author of the report. "It fails to distinguish between the aggressor and a state exercising its right for self defense."

In his statement, Peres added: "The report in practice grants legitimacy to terrorism, premeditated shooting and killing while ignoring the duty and the right of a state to defend itself, something which is explicitly stated in the UN charter."

He blamed Hamas for launching the war, and said it also committed other "horrific crimes."

"Hamas has employed terrorism for years against Israeli children," he said. "It has detonated explosive devices in the heart of Israeli cities, harmed civilians, launched over 12,000 missiles and mortar shells aimed at innocent civilians with one clear goal in mind - to kill."

Peres noted that Israel had evacuated its soldiers and citizens from Gaza, opened the Hamas-ruled territory's crossings and aided in the rehabilitation of the Strip. After the Israeli evacuation in 2005, he said, Gaza was overrun by force by a "murderous, illegitimate terrorist organization," which launched a coup against the Palestinian Authority.

"Instead of building Gaza and worrying about the welfare of its residents, Hamas built offensive tunnels against Israel and brutally used Palestinian children and civilians in order to conceal terrorists and hide weapons," Peres said.

The president added that criticism against Israel's actions fails to offer effective alternatives that can stifle rocket fire against the country's outlying towns.

"It is a fact that the criticism leveled against Israel's actions in response to Hezbollah fire from Lebanon and Hamas fire from Gaza and against the building of the separation fence did not stop the shooting in the south, the shooting in the north, and the planting of explosives in the center," he said.

"IDF operations are what brought about economic prosperity in the West Bank, liberated Lebanon from the wrath of Hezbollah, and enabled Gaza residents to return to their daily routines."

Barak: UN Gaza report is a 'prize for terror'

The findings of the UN report constitute "a prize for terrorism," aides to Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio on Wednesday.

"The comparison between those who foment terrorism and its victims is unconscionable," an Israeli defense official told Israel Radio.

The defense establishment is making efforts to extend legal aid to officers who may face indictment on war crimes charges abroad, Israel Radio reported.

Earlier Wednesday, Ayalon said the findings of the UN report were predetermined, Israel Radio reported on Wednesday.

Ayalon said that Israel's cooperation with Goldstone would not have altered "one word" of the report. On the contrary, it would have "legitimized" the findings, Ayalon told Israel Radio.

Ayalon said the report "is a cynical attempt at role reversal in blaming Israel for war crimes instead of terrorist organizations." He added that Israel would work to enlist the support of Western democracies in a campaign "to prevent turning international law into a circus."

The deputy foreign minister, who is currently on a trip to Washington, told Israel Radio that the U.S. and the European Union both opposed the UN commission of inquiry.

Ayalon said he planned to meet Wednesday with U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice to discuss ways to minimize the report's damage to Israel before it is submitted to the Security Council for deliberations.

Israelis can now travel to Serbia with no visa

2009-09-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

Last update - 17:18 16/09/2009
Israelis can now travel to Serbia with no visa
By The Associated Press

Israel has agreed with Serbia to abolish travel visas between the two countries.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Serbia Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic signed the agreement Wednesday in Belgrade. They say the deal will help boost economic and other ties.

It was the first ever official trip to Serbia by an Israeli foreign minister. Lieberman has also traveled to Croatia and will next visit Montenegro as part of his Balkans tour.
Lieberman says Israel has a history of friendly relations with Serbia, adding that Serbs and Jews fought together against the Nazis

Venezuela: Spain will represent our interests in Israel

2009-09-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

Last update - 18:28 16/09/2009
Venezuela: Spain will represent our interests in Israel
By The Associated Press

President Hugo Chavez's government says Spain will represent Venezuela's diplomatic interests in Israel.

Venezuela's Foreign Ministry says its consular affairs will be conducted through the Spanish diplomatic mission. Late Tuesday's statement says the agreement was reached during Chavez's trip to Spain last week and it will be formalized in the coming hours.

Venezuela broke off diplomatic ties with Israel in January to protest its military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Last week, Chavez accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people, telling a French newspaper that the bombing of Gaza late last year was an unprovoked attack.

"The question is not whether the Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinians. They're doing it openly," Chavez said in an interview with Le Figaro published on Wednesday.

The Venezuelan president, who has just completed a tour of Middle Eastern and Arab countries, brushed aside Israeli assertions that its attack on Gaza was a response to rocket fire from Islamist group Hamas which rules the coastal enclave.

"What was it if not genocide? ... The Israelis were looking for an excuse to exterminate the Palestinians," Chavez said, adding that sanctions should have been slapped on Israel.

Earlier in September, Chavez said that Iran will "not back down" in its quest for peaceful nuclear energy, French news agency AFP reported.

The statement came during a visit Chavez paid to Iran, where he met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, shortly after he said Iran will not bow to pressure in meeting any deadline set by world powers and is ready for more sanctions over its nuclear program.

In wake of UN Gaza probe, how can Israel go to war again?

2009-09-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

Last update - 15:52 16/09/2009
In wake of UN Gaza probe, how can Israel go to war again?
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent

The United Nations fact-finding mission into the Gaza offensive describes Israel as perpetrating war crimes - a police state which persecutes minorities - and tars the Palestinian leadership in the Gaza Strip and West Bank with similar accusations.

If its findings and recommendations are accepted, the International Criminal Court in The Hague could call a summit meeting between the leaders of Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority on the defendants' stand.

But the ultimate adjudicator on the report's fate will be Barack Obama, who now has another whip with which to flay Benjamin Netanyahu - if you don't freeze the settlements and agree to concessions, legal proceedings will commence against those responsible for Operation Cast Lead.
It's doubtful that Obama wishes to make such a threat, which would set a precedent against other militaries fighting terror in civilian areas, as is the U.S. army in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report brings up a number of findings. First, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon erred in 2005 in not seeing the Gaza disengagement to its conclusion by asking the international community for recognition that the occupation of Gaza had ended. A significant portion of the crimes for which Israel is now blamed stemmed from its humanitarian responsibility for the residents of the Strip.

Second, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak (prime and defense ministers respectively during Cast Lead) erred in ignoring the Gazan population's suffering, and in allowing the death and destruction the IDF perpetrated during the Gaza campaign.

Lengthening the operation and choosing to send in ground forces - decisions which won widespread support among the Israeli public - wrought untold damage to Israel's international image, and bolstered the legitimacy of Hamas.

Third, Western governments may ignore this damning report, but it will now serve as the basis of criticism against Israel in public opinion, the media, on campuses and in think tanks, places where UN documents are still taken seriously.

Fourth, Israel decided to question the investigators' legitimacy and not cooperate with commission chair Richard Goldstone and his team. None of the defenses heard in Israeli media after the Gaza operation - that the IDF is "the most moral army in the world," that striking civilian-populated areas was necessary and proportional - were reported to the commission. To a university student in Britain or Spain, Israel's silence is perceived as an admission of guilt.

The appearance of Israeli "private citizens" before the panel proved its usefulness: Noam Shalit testified, and then Goldstone called for the release and return of his son.

Maybe it would have been better if the government had behaved as Shalit did, flooding Goldstone with information?

Last, and perhaps most important, the Goldstone report reinforces the most serious strategic threat Israel brought upon itself with the Gaza offensive, in that it saps international legitimacy for a similar operation in the future.

A country considering attacking the nuclear reactor in Iran, and then endangering itself to rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza in response, will have to take into account whether the world will give Israel another opportunity for a severe, crushing response.

Goldstone's daughter: My father's participation softened UN Gaza report

2009-09-17T10:28:00.001-07:00

Last update - 18:00 16/09/2009

By Haaretz Service

Had Richard Goldstone not served as the head of the UN inquiry into the Gaza war, the accusations against Israel would have been harsher, Goldstone's daughter, Nicole, said in an interview conducted in Hebrew with Army Radio on Wednesday.

"My father took on this job because he thought he is doing the best thing for peace, for everyone, and also for Israel," Nicole Goldstone told Army Radio.

She added that her father wrestled with the decision to take on the task. "It wasn't easy [for him]," Nicole Goldstone said. "My father did not expect to see and hear what he saw and heard."

Nicole Goldstone, who currently lives in Canada with her family, spoke of her great love for Israel. "Every time I dream of returning to the country or that my son will one day immigrate there," she told Army Radio. "Israel is more important to me than anything. I'm not there at the moment, but my heart is always there." Nicole Goldstone said she expects to host her father for the upcoming Rosh Hashanah holiday.

Israel seeks Obama backing on Gaza probe

2009-09-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

Last update - 12:47 17/09/2009

By Barak Ravid and Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondents

Israel on Wednesday asked a number of senior members of the Obama administration to assist in curbing the international fallout from the Goldstone Commission report released this week, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

The Foreign Ministry decided Wednesday to focus their efforts to combat the report's accusations on the United States, Russia and a few other members of the United Nations Security Council and the Human Rights Council that are involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Israeli message is that the Goldstone report threatens those countries because it makes the war on terror very difficult, and therefore efforts must be made to prevent it from being brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the issue Wednesday with U.S. special Middle East envoy George Mitchell, while Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon discussed it with U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and other senior officials.

The international commission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council and headed by Judge Richard Goldstone accuses Israel of war crimes, and is passing on its recommendations to the ICC in The Hague.

According to the report: "Some of the actions of the Government of Israel might justify a competent court finding that crimes against humanity have been committed," and "...the Mission finds that there have been a number of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law."

The Foreign Ministry has established a forum of legal experts to follow any lawsuits that could be filed as a result of the report and to prepare for a scenario in which a suit would be brought forward in The Hague.

Ayalon, who is on a working visit to the United States, began Tuesday to transmit messages to senior members of the U.S. administration and Congress on the need to object to the report. He noted that the same approach that was taken to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism needs to be taken regarding the Goldstone report.

President Shimon Peres Wednesday released a statement saying that the Goldstone report "made a mockery of history."

The Prime Minister's Office decided Wednesday that Peres would take the front lines in Israel's campaign against the report. Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman would not express themselves publicly on the matter, but would engage in quiet diplomacy.

Senior Foreign Ministry officials said Wednesday that Israel's decision not to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission was the right one. They insisted this was the case, despite the fact that every Israeli who testified before the Goldstone Commission independently, like Noam Shalit, father of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, had an impact on the report and Goldstone himself related to each of the Israeli testimonies.

"We knew the report was going to be harsh, but Goldstone surprised us with how harsh," a senior Foreign Ministry official said. "It just goes to show we were right not to cooperate. If we would have, we would have legitimized this scandal."

The 575-page report describes 36 specific cases in which the IDF ostensibly broke international laws. A great many of the cases were already investigated by the IDF following the operation, within the units that took part in the fighting and by five committees established by order of Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. In most cases, the investigations determined that the soldiers acted according to orders as well as international law. However, it has not yet been decided whether to make public use of the material gathered by the IDF to refute the findings of the Goldstone panel, or to leave it as evidence in the event that suits are brought against specific Israel Defense Forces officers abroad.

The IDF and the Justice Ministry are concerned that the report will make it difficult for Israeli officers to travel abroad. A joint panel of the Justice Ministry, IDF and Foreign Ministry already has a team of legal experts that advise officers not to leave the country and in some cases has prevented them from visiting specific countries.

Every soldier and officer is required to undergo a security briefing before traveling abroad; over the past year, some officers who have participated in the fighting in Gaza, particularly if their names have appeared in the media, are required to undergo a special briefing.

Legal sources said that civilian experts are mainly involved in dealing with the issue, rather than the Military Advocate General's office.

Other than its participation in the joint panel, the IDF has officially declined to respond to the allegations in the Goldstone report. The army has decided to leave responses to criticism abroad of its actions to the Foreign Ministry.

Following Operation Cast Lead, Haaretz revealed a directive by the IDF not to publish the names and photos of battalion commanders who took part in the operation due to fear of legal reprisals against them. A few months later, the IDF reversed itself on the matter.

Israel is concerned that officers, and even senior government officials and ministers who were involved in approving the operation, would be at risk of being arrested in any country that is a signatory to the treaty recognizing the ICC in The Hague and is therefore obligated to respect its arrest warrants.

The authorities are particularly concerned about officers visiting countries that allow their legal systems "universal jurisdiction" - following complaints filed by private citizens or the initiatives of investigative judges - to try an individual suspected of war crimes in another country. Such countries include Britain, Belgium, Spain and Norway.

To date, there has only been one case of an IDF officer at risk of being tried in a foreign country - Maj. Gen. Doron Almog, former GOC Southern Command - who had to remain on board the plane when he flew to London and return to Israel for fear of being arrested, after a Palestinian group filed a suit against him for war crimes.

The water supply in the Gaza Strip is on the very of collapse due to

2009-09-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

Last update - 11:15 17/09/2009
UN report: Gaza water supply on verge of collapse
By Zafrir Rinat, Haaretz Correspondent

The water supply in the Gaza Strip is on the very of collapse due to
pollution that has been worsened by damage to infrastructure during Operation Cast Lead, according to a United Nations Environment Program report released Tuesday.

Sewage contamination of the water table far exceeds allowable levels set by the World Health Organization, the report states. The UN report notes that it will take more than 20 years and a billion dollars to rehabilitate the water system in Gaza.

The report, based on a visit by representatives of the United Nations
Environmental Program to Gaza in May, says that nearly one-fifth of the
greenhouses in Gaza were destroyed in the war in Gaza. The movement of tanks caused long-term damage to the ground that will impede cultivation.

Damage to sewage facilities apparently led to waste water penetrating the
aquifer.

In a number of places, high concentrations of toxic substances were found, which had originated from within homes or industrial structures, although no significant source of pollution dangerous to humans was found.

However, the most severe problem according to the UN report is a decline in the quality of drinking water. The decline is not directly connected to Operation Cast Lead, but rather to prolonged over-pumping from Gaza's aquifer, which has led to its salination.

The report recommends seeking alternative water sources as soon as possible for Gaza, including desalinated sea water.

Gaza's population faces severe health problems due to the decline in drinking- water quality, such as the so-called "blue baby syndrome" in which babies' blood is damaged by exposure to nitrate compounds in waste. The babies become cyanotic, which causes their skin to take on a blue tinge, and to suffer from respiratory and intestinal problems.

U.K. labor unions back Israel boycott in wake of Gaza war

2009-09-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

British labor unions on Thursday agreed to support a boycott of some Israeli goods in response to the offensive in Gaza last winter.

The boycott, proposed by the Fire Brigades Union, calls for a ban on importing goods produced in some Israeli settlements, an end of arms trading with Israel and disinvestment from some companies.

A motion to be debated on Thursday at a conference of labor union officials also condemns the actions of Hamas
About 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, were killed in the December-January offensive, which sought to stop rocket fire by Gaza militants on southern Israeli towns. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.

In May of this year, Norway's largest labor union urged the Scandinavian country to lead an international boycott of Israel if it did not reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, whose members constitute more than a third of the country's employees, said in a statement that both Israel and the Palestinians deserve to live in peace and security, and as long as this was not achieved, the Israeli government was to be held accountable.

Last update - 18:33 17/09/2009

U.K. labor unions back Israel boycott in wake of Gaza war

By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press

British labor unions on Thursday agreed to support a boycott of some Israeli goods in response to the offensive in Gaza last winter.

The boycott, proposed by the Fire Brigades Union, calls for a ban on importing goods produced in some Israeli settlements, an end of arms trading with Israel and disinvestment from some companies.

A motion to be debated on Thursday at a conference of labor union officials also condemns the actions of Hamas
The organization urged Israel to put an end to the "illegal occupation," respect the 1967 borders, halt the expansion of the settlements and remove the security barrier.

In February, Irish trade unionists said that they plan to launch a boycott of Israeli goods in 2009. Meanwhile, Manchester University Student Union adopted a resolution supporting a boycott of Israel.

In moving ahead with plans to boycott Israel, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) says it is relying on "evidence" left in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion into Gaza in December.

It also said to be drawing from a "fact-finding mission" to Gaza by a dozen of its senior members more than a year ago. Leaders within the Irish Congress of Trade Unions are to hold a conference this year to act as "a springboard" for their campaign.

Goldstone: Punish commanders who broke laws in Gaza

2009-09-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

Last update - 18:01 17/09/2009

Goldstone: Punish commanders who broke laws in Gaza

By Haaretz Service

The head of a United Nations commission that charged Israel with committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip during its offensive there earlier last winter wrote Thursday that soldiers and commanders must be held accountable for serious violations during the fighting.

In a New York Times op-ed, Richard Goldstone wrote that "Israel must investigate, and Hamas is obliged to do the same. They must examine what happened and appropriately punish any soldier or commander found to have violated the law."

Goldstone accused both Israel and Hamas of conducting biased and ineffectual investigations, if at all, saying that "unfortunately, both Israel and Hamas have dismal records of investigating their own forces."

The head of a United Nations commission that charged Israel with committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip during its offensive there earlier last winter wrote Thursday that soldiers and commanders must be held accountable for serious violations during the fighting.

In a New York Times op-ed, Richard Goldstone wrote that "Israel must investigate, and Hamas is obliged to do the same. They must examine what happened and appropriately punish any soldier or commander found to have violated the law."

Goldstone accused both Israel and Hamas of conducting biased and ineffectual investigations, if at all, saying that "unfortunately, both Israel and Hamas have dismal records of investigating their own forces."

Calling a spade a spade

2009-09-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

Al-Ahram
Sept 17, 2009

What more does it take to discredit current formulations of what constitutes the peace process, asks Ayman El-Amir*

Israel has decided to pre-empt the next stage in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process by rushing to issue new building permits for settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem in an attempt to establish new facts on the ground prior to negotiations. These are typical Israeli delaying tactics: to sow new obstacles that shift the focus and derail the process so that it can then restart from an off-field square, obviating the key peace issues and playing for time. The new step, advocated by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to placate his settler- colonialist partners in the Likud-led coalition has been rejected by US President Barack Obama, the Palestinian Authority, the European Union and Arab politicians of all shades. It reconfirms that Israel is not, and never has been, serious about a final peace settlement with the Palestinians. The peace process needs to be recast and rescued from Israel's Machiavellian designs.

The Arabs are in a bind. They dare not withdraw or freeze their 2002 collective peace overture to Israel. That would upset the US and the EU and play into the hands of a belligerent Israel. Infighting among the Palestinians, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's crackdown on Palestinian guerrilla fighters, is aborting any serious pressure against Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the atrocities committed against the population. Additionally, pro-American Arab regimes are playing the Israeli game of focussing on the Iranian ascendancy as a threat to their survival while honouring the Palestinian cause with lip-service and circuitous consultations and conferences. In return, Israel is fomenting trouble in Egypt's most sensitive backyard -- African countries from which the water resources feeding the River Nile flow, a distracting source of worry for Egypt. President Obama's administration is trying to gently persuade a wild-eyed Israeli premier to engage in peace negotiations, keeping a wary eye on Congress and the Jewish lobby. It is a bleak picture.

Whatever hard-core Israeli chauvinists might suppose there is little doubt in the mind of the world's public that Israeli policies are confusing the quest for peace with territorial expansion and the persecution of Jews in Europe at the hands of Europeans. Israel is bent on expansion, annexing more Palestinian territory to create irreversible new realities that, when negotiated under the weight of occupation, will ensure Israel retains the lion's share of the Arab territories it occupies. Israel, backed by various US administrations, has flouted every international law, killed any number of Palestinians and transferred more than 260,000, seizing houses and land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem under military laws of occupation that are no different from those of the Nazi occupation in Poland or Czechoslovakia during World War II. The Israeli wall of shame that runs for 386 kilometres on Palestinian territories and is 80- 100 metres wide was built in the name of security. It divided Palestinian families, separated farmers from their land to which they cannot cross, and locks nearly 100,000 inhabitants of East Jerusalem out of their city, which they can visit only if they possess a special permit issued by the occupation authorities. Needless to say, such permits are more often refused than issued. Israel is laying a choking siege to Gaza, starving its population and meting out a death sentence to the sick and the old. The Palestinian-Israeli peace process, of which the Oslo Accords signed in September 1993 represent an unprecedented capitulation on the part of the late Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat, has clearly reached a dead-end.

In the 18 years since the multilateral Madrid conference the Arab- Israeli conflict has been negotiated in a closed circle between the Arabs and the Israelis under US sponsorship. So-called peace efforts in the form of initiatives, shuttle diplomacy, the Quartet, the make-believe 2007 Annapolis conference, the much-touted two-state solution plan as well as the George Mitchell and Hillary Clinton rounds of negotiations have all come to naught. Israel continues to change tactics and shift the focus. It is time the whole package went to the international forum where it started -- to the United Nations.

The UN is notorious for adopting resolutions that sit dead on its books. The General Assembly and the Security Council have issued 19 resolutions on the status of Jerusalem and the responsibilities of the occupying power, each of which has been brushed aside by Israel. As far back as 1980 the UN Security Council adopted a landmark resolution (S/465) in which it determined "all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East". The US, then under the leadership of president Jimmy Carter, happily voted for the resolution, not least because it did not invoke Chapter VII of the UN Charter that carries the power of punitive measures. It met the same fate of dozens of other General Assembly and Security Council resolutions on Palestine.

Israel hates to participate in international conferences on the Arab- Israeli conflict without the guaranteed protection of the US for fear of facing myriad resolutions defending the Palestinians. It prefers limited, backroom negotiations where it can manoeuvre, set conditions, avoid any binding framework, renege on any commitment and, eventually, pick up the ball and go home if it does not like the game, leaving behind hand-wringing Palestinian Arabs. Then the US pressures its Arab allies to offer more concessions. The Arabs agree and Israel comes back with another convoluted scenario. In the meantime, it expropriates more Palestinian land, levels more houses, detains or kicks out more Palestinians, introduces more restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, violates more human rights and builds more settlements for new immigrants to move into.

With the convening of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly, scheduled for 15 September, the ball is now in the court of the Arabs. Will they have the temerity to pronounce the piecemeal process dead, bring the whole issue back to the United Nations and build new momentum behind it? Will they have the nerve to insist on Russian involvement in the face of US objections? Will they have the courage to shift the focus back from the Israeli-instigated Iranian threat to the clear and present Israeli danger to the region?

The Palestinians have been patient enough with the peace process, not least because of their internal strife. But there is no telling the circumstances or the timing of a possible third Intifada, or of the Israeli military setting the whole of the occupied territories aflame in retaliation. As Arab diplomatic and security officials busy themselves with the Gilad Shalit cause, the dangers posed by Iran and how to gain the favour with the Obama administration, Gaza remains under siege, as it has since the Israeli onslaught in December 2008. The Palestinians are in despair. It will not take long, or much, before they explode into another rebellion.

* The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/964/op15.htm

Israel in Africa

2009-09-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

Tel Aviv's promises to African states are the gloss on an exercise in extreme cynicism, writes Galal Nassar

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, at the head of a huge convoy of Israeli political, military and security advisors and a train of merchants and representatives of major Israeli companies, has gone knocking on the doors of five sub-Saharan African nations. Africa's 54 nations have rebuffed Israel's diplomatic overtures for decades. Today the Netanyahu administration obviously believes it stands a chance to breach that wall. After all, some Arab countries now recognise Israel. Not least of these is Egypt, the rock that had long dashed the dream of Golda Meir and her successors to foray into Africa and feed on its abundant sources of wealth.

Now, not only are many African nations prepared to thaw their relations with Israel, some have already begun to explore the possibility of strategic cooperation. Tel Aviv fully appreciates the vast potential Africa offers. In addition to copious natural resources Africa represents strategic depth for the Arab world, for which reason Israel has been instrumental in arming some African regimes and aggravating crises among others, including Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea and South Africa. Israel has also used parts of the continent for its military and scientific experiments, in the course of which it has ruined agricultural land, spread corruption and sown misery.

If people in the countries Lieberman is visiting think he is interested in boosting their economies, enhancing agricultural production, optimising their vast water resources and putting Israeli technological expertise at their disposal they are mistaken. They are even more gravely misled if they believe Israel is concerned about the lives and welfare of the African people, that it is eager to improve their standards of living, rid them of the plagues of poverty, unemployment, disease and draught and to quell the fires of civil war, insurrection and internecine strife. Nor will Israel help them overcome the discrimination and the inferiority complex that it claims the Arabs have perpetuated and nurtured. Whatever Tel Aviv would like them to believe, Israel is not a safe haven for their wealth and future. Israel's concerns are exclusively shaped by its own agenda. It could not care less for the stability, welfare, safety or stability of the African people. Sudan offers the clearest proof of this. Accused by Israeli officials of arming and supporting the Palestinian resistance, Tel Aviv is working assiduously to encircle and isolate Sudan from the outside, and to fuel insurrection inside Sudan.

Israel has long been keen to capitalise on Africa's mineral wealth. It plans to appropriate African diamonds and process them in Israel which is already the world's second largest processor of diamonds. And if the composition of Lieberman's entourage is anything to go by, Israel is also interested in African uranium, thorium and other radioactive elements used to manufacture nuclear fuel. In addition it is looking for new markets for its range of lightweight weapons. It also appears that not a few Israeli military pensioners are on the lookout for job opportunities as trainers of African militias, while other members of Lieberman's delegation are facilitating contracts for Israelis to train various militias. The huge oil reserves in a number of African countries are also high on Israel's agenda, with Tel Aviv seeking a share in exploration, extraction and export operations.

Since the 1950s Israel has sought to compromise Egypt's water security by consolidating its influence over countries straddling the sources of the Nile in the central African great lakes and the Ethiopian highlands. By keeping Egypt preoccupied with its water security Israel imagines that it can diminish Cairo's role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Towards this end Israel's Ministry of Science and Technology conducted extensive experiments and eventually created a type of plant that flourishes on the surface or the banks of the Nile and that absorbs such large quantities of water as to significantly reduce the volume of water that reaches Egypt.

Israeli concerns with Iran also feature high on the agenda of Lieberman's African tour. Israel has been keeping a close eye on the Iranian drive in Africa where Tehran, following Beijing's footsteps, has become involved in a number of major development projects. Tel Aviv is very wary of Tehran's ambitions in a continent so rich in the raw materials for producing nuclear fuel. It hopes to forge a network of strategic relations in order to check the expansion of Iranian influence in Africa. Working to its advantage are its close ties with Washington, which can use its extensive influence in Africa to smooth out many of the bumps that would otherwise hamper Israel's African drive.

Israel's ultra-right foreign minister believes he can sneak into the backyard of the Arab and Islamic world in order to deprive it of strategic depth. It is therefore essential that we expose the true nature of Israeli economic and military plans in Africa and expose their motives. The fact that Israel is physically present in occupied Palestine does not mean that the Zionist peril threatens Palestine and the Palestinians alone. Zionist designs target every corner of the Arab and Islamic world, in which they fuel crises, weave plots, exploit resources, sap expertise and generally conspire against the people. The Zionist hand can be detected behind the conflicts that rage between Arab regimes. Its espionage networks seek to infiltrate Arab and Muslim societies. Israel's scientists and experts steal our subterranean water and its merchants roam the Arab and Islamic world to either purloin or purchase uranium. Now, more than ever, Israel's military, security, economic and political tentacles have reached every corner of Africa, donning many different philanthropic façades in order to exploit Africa's hunger and desperation in order to drive the Arabs and Muslims out of a continent in which they have always been welcome. The Arab and Muslim world must act quickly to keep the doors of Africa open to it. This requires a new strategy that simultaneously stops Israel from encircling the Arab world and gaining control over its sources of prosperity and well-being.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/964/op2.htm

An end to war?

2009-09-17T10:01:00.001-07:00

Al-Ahram
Sept 17, 2009

Left out of the options under consideration in "Obama's war" is the only one with any chance of success, argues Ramzy Baroud*

Click to view caption
Karzai

Despite assurances to the contrary in Washington and a major policy speech in London, one need not quibble with the obvious fact that the situation is deteriorating beyond repair in Afghanistan. Although international media is more concerned with what that means politically for United States President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, little attention is given to the browbeaten and war-weary people of that country.

One should know that public support for the war has greatly diminished, when conservative commentators like The Washington Post columnist George Will write: "US forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy. America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent Special Forces units."

Okay, so his narrative is still ultimately violent, but the fact remains that the war mood is changing. After all, Will's 1 September article was entitled, "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan."

Dan Senor and Peter Wehner responded with a peculiar diatribe in the New York Times, accusing Will of allowing his party allegiance to influence his views on the war. The two authors, senior fellows at major US think tanks, offered a bloody rationale wrapped in deceptive wording. They argued that historically Democrats opposed Republican wars and Republicans have done the same, and that must change. It was implied that pretty much every major war in recent decades was a war that served US national security interests; therefore, "Republicans should resist the reflex that all opposition parties have, which is to oppose the stands of a president of the other party because he is a member of the other party." In other words, yes to war, whether by Democrats or Republicans.

The intellectual wrangling, of course, is not happening in a vacuum; it almost never does. Indeed, there is much politicking going on; intense deliberation in Washington, political debates in London; defensive French statements, and more. It seems that the war in Afghanistan is reaching a decisive point, militarily in Afghanistan itself, and politically in major Western capitals.

But why the sudden hoopla over Afghanistan? For after all, the bloody war has been grinding on for eight long years.

The Taliban and various groups opposing the Kabul government and their Western benefactors are gaining ground, not just in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan. Daring Taliban attacks are now taking place in the north as well, long seen as peaceful, thus requiring little attention. On 26 August a roadside bomb hit the car of the chief of the provincial Justice Department in the northern Kunduz province, killing him, and sending shock waves through Kabul. The bloody message was meant to echo as a political one: no one is safe, nowhere is safe. Another attack was reported in the province of Laghman, in the east, where 22 people, mostly civilians were killed. Among the dead were four Afghan officials including the deputy chief of the National Directorate of Security, Abdullah Laghmani. The irony is too obvious to state.

In Washington, London and Paris politicians wish us to believe that they are not unnerved by all of this. They exaggerated the significance of the recent Afghani elections, attempting to once again underscore that the "crucial" elections placed Afghanistan on a crossroads. Crossroads? What does that even mean, in any practical terms? George Will, although selective in his logic, was honest enough to mention that President Hamid Karzai's "vice-presidential running mate is a drug trafficker." Even US officials admit that the government they've created following the war is corrupt, to say the least.

Richard Holbrooke, among other foreign envoys "responsible for Afghanistan", told reporters in Paris on 2 September that US officials have no preference among the candidates, nor are they particularly interested in runoff elections, but they wished to see a government that appoints "more efficient, less corrupt ministers". It behooves those "responsible for Afghanistan" to remember that inefficiency and corruption were the outcome of the very policies they have so eagerly adopted in the country. No sympathy for Karzai here, but it's unfair to point the finger at a feeble leader whenever a Western strategy fumbles, as it has repeatedly.

Speaking of strategies, what is the plan ahead? French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner promised that foreign troops will stay put in Afghanistan unless the country's security was ensured, reported Xinhua. In practical terms, this means never, for how could security ever visit that region as long as the strategy is hostage to two equally destructive narratives -- the Senor/Wehner troop surges vs Will's "offshore" strategy?

Hubris aside, Washington and London are facing some difficult political and military decisions ahead. Top officials in both capitals are using grim and somber language. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, responding to a call by the top US general in Afghanistan for a fresh approach to the conflict, is considering yet another troop increase as part of Obama's new Afghan strategy.

The sense of urgency was invited by the detailed report of the newly appointed General Stanley McChrystal, who maintains that "success" was still possible, but a change of strategy is needed. The report resulted in intense deliberation in Washington, highlighted by grim press conferences involving the Pentagon's heavyweights, including Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over what to do about "Obama's war".

Speaking at the Pentagon, Gates equivocated: "I don't believe that the war is slipping through the administration's fingers. I absolutely do not think it is time to get out of Afghanistan (but there remains) limited time for us to show that this approach is working."

The details of the new Obama strategy are still not very clear, but the commitment to the war is still unquestionable, as expressed in a "major" 4 September speech by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. "When the security of our country is at stake we cannot walk away," said Brown, according to the BBC.

As Brown was solemnly speaking about British security, NATO air strikes on a pair of fuel tankers killed up to 90 people, according to Afghan authorities.

Indeed, the situation in Afghanistan requires a fresh approach, although not the one George Will had in mind.

* The writer is editor of PalestineChronicle.com.

Karzai is under a cloud

2009-09-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

Al-Ahram
Sept 17, 2009

'Widespread vote rigging, a beleaguered incumbent president and a mounting death toll because of NATO atrocities and the Taliban resurgence hamstring Afghanistan, writes Gamal Nkrumah

Click to view caption

Two people were killed and 10 wounded including four NATO soldiers in a suicide bomb attack outside a NATO military airport in Kabul

Dealmaking is the new buzzword among Afghanistan watchers even as peacemaking is a formidable feat facing the country, considering the fact that the already deplorable security situation in the war-battered country is fast deteriorating. The G20 leaders, scheduled to meet in two weeks time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are determined to put Afghanistan atop their agenda.

The crisis in Afghanistan is the most intractable ever handled by NATO and the post-World War II Western powers. A conference is hurriedly being set up to bring together NATO, the United Nations and the newly-elected Afghan government -- if and when the election results are announced and acknowledged. Despite the warm words about the forthcoming conference, there is little evidence that the big powers, and particularly the United States, have yet taken steps to understand what is going on in Afghanistan. Washington claims that it desires peace in Afghanistan, but it has come under increasing pressure to outline how it intends to reach its stated objective.

Why did Washington embark on a course that was bound to lead to disgrace? Because of the policy blunders of ex- president George W Bush who had, after all, his head in the clouds. So what about the current US President Barack Obama? Unlike Bush, Obama does not live in cloud- cuckooland. He is savvy and articulate, but he does have his hands tied. If Taliban doesn't actually throw the NATO forces out of Afghanistan, they are most certainly going to clout them. They already are doing just that.

In a flurry of diplomatic activity to salvage the wreckage that has become of Afghanistan, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel unveiled plans for the conference on Afghanistan. Speaking at a joint press conference in Berlin, Merkel said that she favoured a "thorough and quick" NATO investigation into the German-ordered air strike in northern Afghanistan.

"Any innocent person killed or hurt, including through German actions, I deeply regret," Merkel confessed.

In April, Merkel toured the military bases of Mazer-I- Sherif, Kunduz and Feyzabad in Afghanistan and reiterated that German troops would stay in Afghanistan until their goals were achieved.

"The goal is to hand over full control of the country as soon as possible to a democratically-elected government," said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "We have a goal, and that is self-sustaining security in Afghanistan," Merkel told the German Parliament, the Bundestag. Germany currently has 4,050 troops in the NATO- led stabilisation force in Afghanistan. But what would be extremely foolish is for Washington and its allies to start imposing decrees on a puppet Afghan government.

Indeed, not all the German politicians are as penitent as Merkel. The German Defence Secretary Frank Josef Jung refused to resign over the recent incident where the Germans order the bombing of two fuel trucks, killing 107, almost all civilians, according to Abdel-Wahid Omarkhel, the Chardarah district governor in Kunduz province. Jung insisted the German air strike was "militarily necessary and correct."

The Chief of the International Forces in Afghanistan United States General Stanley McChrystal was equally uncompromising. Be that as it may, Brown and Merkel are to write, together with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon outlining their outlook on security, government and development in Afghanistan. Gregor Gysi, the parliamentary head of the radical left party called the slaughter "unjustified and inexcusable", reflecting broad public opinion.

And this raises the most shaming question of all: where were the Afghan authorities in this entire trauma? "What an error of judgement. More than 90 dead all because of a simple lorry that was moreover, immobilised in a riverbed. Why didn't they send in ground troops to recover the fuel tank," President Hamid Karzai was quoted as saying in the French daily Le Figaro. He did not even bother to embark on the most elementary probing of the disaster. He was, as always, ignored.

The West sees the problem in Afghanistan as one of Afghan incompetence. They blame all the troubles of the country on the weak and ineffectual government they hastily installed. Brown, this week for instance, urged the Germans to keep training the Afghan army. He wants to see a larger and better-trained Afghan army that could overpower Taliban forces.

So where does this leave the Afghan election results? In limbo, of course, is the concise answer. Karzai is a write off. Abdallah Abdallah is a borderline candidate for the presidency of a defunct nation-state. So the G20 might as well hold their collective breath, and yet another conference will solve nothing. Such forums dealing with Afghanistan are invariably ahistorical, ignoring Afghanistan's uniqueness and its current role as a pawn in a cynical international power game.

Mocking Obama

2009-09-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

Sept 19, 2009
Al-Ahram

While the world thought Obama would champion justice, Israel has proven that his words are meaningless, writes Khaled Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

Despite American and international calls for freezing Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, the Israeli government this week authorised the building of hundreds of additional settler units on occupied Palestinian land. The decision, taken by Defence Minister Ehud Barak, represents a direct challenge to the Obama administration that has been urging Israel to freeze settlement building but to no avail.

The decision also seems to underscore Israel's undeclared resolve to prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state despite ostensibly insincere statements to the contrary by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The planned settler units will be built across the West Bank, including in the "Gush Etzion" area, north of Hebron and Maali Adomim east of Jerusalem.

More settler units will also be built in East Jerusalem, killing Palestinian hopes for making the city the future capital of a sovereign Palestinian state. Netanyahu has been saying that the planned settlement expansion is being pursued in tacit understanding with the Americans, a claim the Obama administration has denied.

Earlier, the White House said it "regreted" reports that Netanyahu planned to approve the construction of hundreds of additional settler units in the West Bank. "Continued settlement activity is inconsistent with Israel's commitment under the roadmap," a White House statement said. The statement went on: "President Obama doesn't accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop. We are working to create a climate in which negotiations can take place, and such actions make it harder to create such a climate."

However, verbal condemnations from Washington criticising settlement expansion have obviously had little or no impact on Israeli government thinking. One Israeli official was recently quoted as saying, "We do the work, and the Americans will do the talking." Another official advised Netanyahu that there is no reason for Israel to freeze settlement building in the West Bank, as long as the US doesn't take "tangible and proactive measures against us".

The Israeli interpretation of the American stand, as mere verbal opposition intended to appease Arabs, seems plausible. The White House has refused to take any practical measures to force Israel to stop undermining whatever prospects still remain for the two- state solution to be realised, merely reiterating old platitudes that building more settlements is contrary to the spirit of negotiations.

Moreover, the overall stand of the Obama administration seems to have shifted lately from concentration on the settlement issue to lukewarm calls for the resumption of peace talks between the Netanyahu government and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The new settlement expansion plans have drawn angry but helpless reactions from PA officials, with Saeb Erekat, the erstwhile chief Palestinian negotiator, accusing Israel of seeking to predetermine the outcome of the peace process even before the beginning of negotiations. "Israel's decision to approve the construction of over 450 settler units nullifies any effect that the settlement freeze, when and if announced, will have."

Another Palestinian official, Nabil Abu Rudeina, reiterated the official Palestinian stand, saying, "we will not go back to the negotiating table before a halt to settlement building."

Similarly, Hamas castigated the "travesty otherwise known as the peace process," saying that the new settlement expansion plan proved that President Obama was losing his credibility in failing to get Israel to take the path of peace. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement to the press this week that, "the peace process is a term that only exists in the minds of those who wager on it while Israel continues to steal Palestinian land."

The Israeli government has been saying that it will initiate a freeze on settlement expansion, while continuing work on some 2,500 settler units all over the West Bank. This is in addition to the 450-500 new settler units approved by Barak over the weekend. The Israeli government has also failed to remove dozens of settler outposts in the West Bank, which Barak had pledged to the Americans to dismantle.

Building thousands of new settler units to compensate for outposts that have not been removed is simple subterfuge, cheating, trickery and prevarication, and shows that Israel is not only insincere about pursuing a serious peace process with the Palestinians but is also disingenuous about living side- by-side in peace with the Palestinians.

This week, former US president Jimmy Carter alluded to this, saying that Palestinian leaders were seriously considering a one-state solution with Israel as the latter continued to make the prospect of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank unrealistic through relentless expansion activities. "By renouncing the dream of an independent Palestine, they would become fellow citizens with their Jewish neighbours and then demand equal rights within a democracy," Carter wrote in the Washington Post Sunday.

Carter, who has made several tours in the Middle East, said Palestinian frustration and disillusionment couldn't last indefinitely. "Increasingly desperate Palestinians see little prospect of their plight being alleviated. Political, business and academic leaders are making contingency plans should President Obama's efforts fail."

Al-Ahram Weekly asked Hani Al-Masri, a prominent political analyst, if he thought the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah had any alternative course of action in the event that Obama's strategy in the Middle East collapses. He suggested that PA President Mahmoud Abbas was betting too much on Obama: "Abbas believes that the alternative to failed negotiations is more negotiations. However, this position is untenable and could only boomerang on Abbas and create a sort of implosion within the Fatah organisation."

Al-Masri also said he didn't believe the PA would continue to refuse the resumption of talks with the Netanyahu government, as Abbas has been vowing. "They were negotiating with the previous Olmert government when settlement expansion was going at full speed. Besides, they are in no position to say no to the Obama administration."

Ziomania

Posts for April 13, 2011

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The New Colonialism: Washington’s Pursuit of World Hegemony

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Economic and social problems

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How the so-called guardians of free speech are silencing the messenger

10 March 2011

By John Pilger

Good-bye despotism

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US Diplomatic cable #07TRIPOLI972

US Diplomatic #cable 06CAIRO941.

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