Bush to Nasrallah:

An Offer Hezbollah cannot refuse?

Part IV: Bait, Hook and Switch: the US offer and the quid pro quo

Franklin Lamb
Dahiyeh

“Absolutely not! Without a credible deterrent force, there is no real Lebanese sovereignty. Israel came very close to getting nearly all it wanted with the 1983 May 17th agreement. Had Hezbollah not prevented this, Lebanon today would be colonized with near confederation status with Israel. The Bush administrations democracy and ’save the Christians’ crusade back-fired when each election resulted in Islamist victories while his war in Iraq and support for Israel is making refugees of a high percentage of Christians. It is now Hezbollah and its allies who are protecting the Christians and want free elections in the Middle East, not the Bush administration”.

– American student interviewed as part of a survey of 27 Lebanese institutions of higher education on whether Hezbollah should immediately disarm

Disarming Hezbollah: the Bush administration will not insist

As noted previously, the US government is not obsessed by Hezbollah’s deterrent capability. It appears prepared to back off from this issue and signal to Hezbollah that it can keep its weapons if they use them only in legitimate self defense against a foreign attack. Read the rest of this entry »

In response to PM Rudd’s Motion on Israel’s 60th Anniversary year, many Australians, including this blogger, supported and signed an advertisement that appeared prominently on page 7 of The Australian national broadsheet on Wednesday 12 March. The statement reads:

Not in Our Name

We, as informed and concerned Australians, choose to disassociate ourselves from a celebration of the triumph of racism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the al-Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948. As we write, Israel continues to expand illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank including Arab East Jerusalem.

Australia and Australians should not give the Israeli people and its leaders the impression that Australia supports them in their dispossession of the Palestinian people. Israel has poisoned our (the West’s) relations with the whole of the Arab and Muslim world. Rather than celebrating the creation of the State of Israel, we should be recognising the people of Palestine, those who were dispossessed, those who lived and died as refugees, those who continue to live and die and suffer at the hands of the State of Israel, and those who will continue to suffer and die in the future until justice is done. Read the rest of this entry »

Having first indicated Egypt as their choice, organisers of the Turin Book Fair in Italy postponed having Egypt as their international Guest of Honour for 2009. One would consider that in 2008, inviting Egypt’s neighbour Palestine as the Guest of Honour would have been inspired in this 60th anniversary of the Nakba, a powerful symbolic gesture to a peoples who have not experienced any let-up in blocked efforts towards justice.

Instead, the organisers chose Israel as book fair guest for this year. This decision is coupled with the choice of Israel as guest of honour for the Paris Book Fair and is ill-considered, coinciding as it does with the 60th Anniversary of the Naqba and the founding of the state of Israel, and at a time when the Israeli military occupation has only worsened.

Italian and international protests and calls for boycott have ensued, protesting the organisers decision that would serve to “commemorate” the Israeli occupation state and and its repressive policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The protest organisers are “appalled to see the world of culture take the side of those who methodically operate to annihilate Palestine and the Palestinians”.

One of the invited Israeli writers, poet Aaron Shabtai, applied his conscience when he rsvp’ed the organisers. Here is his note to Edna Degon of the organising committee (from Tlaxcala):

Dear Edna,
Thank you for your letter.
I do not believe that a State that maintains an occupation, committing on a daily basis crimes against civilians, deserves to be invited to any kind of cultural week. That is, it is anti-cultural; it is a barbarian act masked as culture in the most cynical way. It manifests support for Israel, and even to France that sustains the occupation. And I do not want to participate.
Kind regards,
Aharon Shabtai
7 December, 2007

Born in 1939  in Tel Aviv, Aharon Shabtai’s life has been longer than the state of Israel. It is fitting that this elder statesman and poet should be one of its few voices of conscience. Read the rest of this entry »

What really leapt out in this Guardian piece from Geoffrey Robertson is that the English Fabian Socialists, almost always looked up to by many of us in the labour movement and culturally lionised, were eugenicists who advocated the assimilation or “humane eradication” of what they saw as “lesser races”. It is surprising that George Bernard Shaw, who I otherwise quite like as a playwright and political commentator from that era, is among this group that includes Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Virginia Woolf, DH Lawrence and others. Even making allowances for the prevalent modes of thought of the time in which they lived, this is a revelation. As late as 1934, a British Department of Health report recommended compulsory sterilisation of the “feeble-minded’, as Robertson points out. Ironically, he adds that it was opposition from Labour MPs that quashed the recommendation, “who feared that working-class people would be the real victims of the Fabian intelligentsia.” Read the rest of this entry »

On the 13th of March, at 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST), Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivers the long awaited public apology to our indigenous Australians, and in particular the Stolen Generation as a central part of reconciliation with Australia’s past. This welcome landmark comes after his Prime Ministerial predecessor, John Howard, expressed regret but refused to say the word sorry. This simple yet powerful act means so much to indigenous Australians, traumatised by being stolen from their parents and for a whole raft of historical injustices. While there is a long way to go, with possible compensation, social indicators and federal intervention in remote central Australian Aboriginal communities still weighty issues, this is a good start.

It is fitting that the famous “If you have come to help me …” quote highlighted below is from an Australian Aboriginal woman, Lila Watson, who wishes it to be attributed collectively.

The PM tabled and subsequently delivered the following text of the apology in Parliament.

RESOURCES: Audio, video and transcript (.pdf here) of speech (just after the fold) Read the rest of this entry »

While the introduction and conclusion of the narration leaves something to be desired (it is not “democracy” that is being installed in the Middle East, it is being actively subverted and sabotaged in the OPT, for a start), this eight minute ChromoVision video is a very worthwhile production overall: it is a very good overview of what the illegal separation wall in Israel means in terms of partitioning off from Palestinians the most fertile agricultural land and water supplies for use by Israel.

The narration also is correct in noting that all the wall is not in fact along the 1967 Green Line: 157,800 acres2 - or about 11.5 percent - of West Bank land (excluding East Jerusalem) will actually lie between the Barrier and the Green Line, according to the revised route announced in 2004. Read the rest of this entry »

A short and succinct letter to the editor in today’s Sydney Morning Herald from Zaid Khan puts things into perspective:

Nearly 70 years ago, in a small eastern European city, an oppressed and occupied people were under siege, living under atrocious and brutal conditions, lacking food, medicine, electricity, water, and slowly being strangled in the hope they would just disappear.

Warsaw Ghetto 1941 - Gaza 2008. Israel, you are a disgrace.

Zaid Khan

What is to be done? Chances are that if you reading this, you already have a good grasp of what is happening. Also avail yourself to first hand accounts from residents in Gaza, such as Tabula Gaza, Raising Yousef–A Mother From Gaza and Dr Mona El Farra’s blog. Spread the word and discuss it with people who may not even know all this is happening or who may uncritically accept the Israeli neocon worldview propagated in some of the major media outlets. Israel is committing slow genocide and ethnic cleansing. A simple yet powerful letter like the one above can ricochet around the world.

Here are some other ways you can help: Read the rest of this entry »

Yossi Wolfson’s clear-eyed description of the hafrada regime’s policies in the siege of Gaza and the too-little mentioned exploitation of Gaza’s gas reserves: recommended read. Boldface emphasis is editorial. This article appears in the very worthwhile Challenge magazine, Issue 107, January/February 2008

Gaza City, January 8, 2008. Empty coffins symbolize 62 patients who have died since June because Israel denied them access to medical treatment outside Gaza. Photo by Wissam Nassar

Yossi Wolfson, Economic Warfare in Gaza

NO MORE LIES or twisted tongues. Israel is saying at last what, in the past, it always refused to acknowledge: its war is against the Palestinian population.Until now, in discussions about the separation wall, closures, blockades, house demolition, and other sorts of collective punishment, the State Attorney’s Office lacked the gumption to admit in court that the aim of such measures is to harm civilians. It always came up with convoluted security claims in order to present some vital military necessity for the sake of the War against Terror. Harm to the population was described as a regrettable side effect.

But now a Rubicon has been crossed. Read the rest of this entry »

It was JFK who said that “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Our thoughts are with Gaza, where GWB’s recent visit to the region has seen Israel only ratchet up its violence and airstrikes upon a territory from which it only nominally withdrew and in fact continues to choke, killing dozens of people in the space of a few days.

Let us recall that after maintaining a ceasefire or hudna for eighteen months, the democratically elected government of Hamas was subject to nothing but economic siege, divide and rule, sabotage and targeted killings. Let us also recall that Israel rejected the offer of a truce, instead continuing its collective punishment of a whole population already brutally repressed and assassinating leaders and civilians alike, including the son of Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.

The criminal strangulation of a whole population of a million and a half people in one of the most densely populated places on the planet is being committed on the pretext of rocket attacks on Israel using primitive weapons like Qassams; with pretext being the operative word. As Uri Avnery recently observed in Help! A Ceasefire: “If the Qassams were really bothering our political and military leaders, they would have jumped at the cease-fire offer. But the leaders don’t really care … [it] has an important positive side: it provides an ideal pretext for the actions of the army. The Israeli strategic aim in Gaza is not to put an end to the Qassams. It would still be the same if not a single Qassam fell on Israel.” Israel’s policy is to deliberately destroy Gaza. Read the rest of this entry »

Benjamin Heine

An assortment of I-P reading in your virtual Christmas stocking. The Qumsiyeh, Levy, Amayreh and Avnery articles are particularly highlighted:

• Mazin Qumsiyeh, Christmas 2007: Even as Shepherds got displaced, Santa attacked, Christmas pilgrims denied, Bethlehem land stolen; yet HOPE GROWS (27 Dec): The spirit of Palestine and its native people remain strong despite the intensified effort to erase its history and its culture. Thus, even under brutal occupation, Palestinian Christians and Muslims took to the streets to observe the traditional Christmas match in manger’s square. And the Christmas message from the highest Catholic representative in the Holy Land, a Palestinian Christian, is truly inspiring. And last Saturday, activists took to the streets of Manhattan in front of Leviev Jewelry store where they sung Christmas carols with new lyrics that expose the store for its support of colonization and ethnic cleansing.
• Maan News Agency, Israel Steals Christmas: Clergy Denied Entry to Occupied Territories, IMEU (27 Dec)
• AFP, ‘Father Christmas’ beaten in West Bank demo: organisers (21 Dec)
• Uri Avnery, Help! A Ceasefire, Gush Shalom (22 Dec): If the Qassams were really bothering our political and military leaders, they would have jumped at the cease-fire offer. But the leaders don’t really care about what’s happening to the Sderot population, out on the geographical and political “periphery”, far from the center of the country. It carries no political or economic weight. In the eyes of the leadership, its suffering is, all in all, tolerable. It also has an important positive side: it provides an ideal pretext for the actions of the army. The Israeli strategic aim in Gaza is not to put an end to the Qassams. It would still be the same if not a single Qassam fell on Israel. Read the rest of this entry »

Thank you, Matt Howard, for courageously speaking up and speaking out against abuses in Iraq. Matt attained the rank of corporal in the United States Marine Corps and is head of the Vermont chapter for Iraq Veterans Against the War. He gave this statement at a recent protest at the Statehouse. The International Red Cross has just released a report entitled Humanitarian Tragedy In Iraq, detailing how at least 375,000 people have gone missing: the tip of the human rights crisis iceberg.

Iraq war is a betrayal of American democracy | Rutland Herald | November 11, 2007

In 2003 I illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with 1st Tank battalion 1st Marine Division. My commander in chief unleashed the world’s fiercest fighting force upon the country and people of Iraq, and now those of us used and betrayed by him are demanding justice.

Four and a half years after our opening “shock and awe” Bush’s lies are known throughout the world, and yet he continues to act with impunity. Four and a half years later the Bush regime has unleashed a hell upon the country of Iraq that only those who have been there can truly understand.

As a two-tour combat veteran of this brutal war, I have a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about what has been done and what continues to be done in our name. We veterans know that this war is not the one being sanitized on the nightly news. It has nothing to do with the liberation of the people of Iraq; instead it has everything to do with the subjugation and domination of these people in the name of U.S. imperial economic and strategic interests.

We did not go to war with the country of Iraq, we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.

Let me say again so that there is no misunderstanding. I stand here today as a former U.S. Marine saying we are killing women and children in Iraq. This is the true nature of war. War lends itself to atrocities. Don’t think you can use an organization designed to kill other human beings for anything humanitarian. That has never been our mission. That was crystal clear from the moment I was forced to bury the crate of humanitarian food given to me in Kuwait. Read the rest of this entry »

Even before “the Darkening” proposed by Ehud Barak in the Israeli regime’s criminal actions in Gaza, acute shortages of power—wilfully denied as a matter of occupation policy—are affecting not only electricity provision but also water and sewage treatment and creating a public health catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.  Israeli journalistic voice of conscience Amira Hass again relates how this affecting long-suffering Gaza residents, and this piece is important enough to reproduce in entirety. Another worthwhile glimpse is provided by this current UN report on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza (4pp, opens in a new window).

For whatever its worth, I can only impress upon people who care to contact their local representatives and register this as something they are concerned about. Blog, write letters to papers, make some noise where you can. 

Just a short note too that as I am currently travelling in the Middle East; posts and PG Picks links may be more irregular depending upon internet access. I hope to have some photos in the coming days.

Amira Hass: A moment before the lights go out 

Ha’aretz | 07 Nov 2007

Alan Johnston, the BBC corresponded kidnapped in Gaza, related in an interview that at a relatively early stage, he started suffering from all kinds of aches because of the water he drank. This was the same water that the kidnappers drank, but Johnston’s unaccustomed body sent warning signals: This is not water that is fit for drinking. And this is the water that reaches most of the taps in the Gaza Strip. Salty, in a few places brackish to contaminated, with an oily consistency. That is clearly felt when bathing.

The reason is an ancient one: overpumping because Gaza must make do with the waters from its aquifer alone. It is as if we were to say to the residents of Be’er Sheva: make do with the water that flows nearby. The water sources in the rest of the country are not for you.

Over the last few years, there have been some improvised private and public solutions. Private water purification plants in homes and commercial companies that sell purified water.

The municipalities, for their part, set up large brackish water desalination facilities and several central taps. Thousands of people go there daily to fill up jerry-cans with water that will not taste like it came from a puddle and will not cause diarrhea, infections, kidney problems and who knows what else.

The electricity and fuel supply to Gaza has already been reduced to below the level of basic human needs. An additional reduction will affect the above solutions to the water problem, and beyond. “To darken Gaza,” as some of the security experts among us have recently proposed, does not end merely with darkened homes at night. You don’t have to be an expert in public health to realize that it would create an endless chain reaction of public health problems and environmental blights.

Today, around a year and a half after Israel bombed the transformer station in Gaza, only 193 megawatts out of the 240 or so it needs is supplied to the Strip. Read the rest of this entry »

A short clip from ITV in the UK on Palestinian child prisoners deplorably held in and by Israel (4.31), which involves the regular flouting of international law.

**See also Lisa Hajjar, The First Nation to Legalize Torture: Inside Israel’s Military Court (Counterpunch), Seamus Milne, The siege of Gaza is going to lead to a violent escalation (Guardian) and Haitham has posted the full video of Occupation 101 at his blog Sabbah (thanks Kilroy).

UPDATED LINKS 

A compelling video reportedly from the Iraqi Resistance group 1920, inasmuch as anyone can vouch for the veracity of its provenance.

Entitled Hidden Facts, it is produced by the Media Bureau of the 1920 Revolution Brigades كتائب ثورة العشرين, the narration is in English and it runs for 16 minutes.

The video transcript follows after the fold (available here in English and Arabic). Video also available at YouTube: Part 1 and Part 2.

Read the rest of this entry »