Graphic: Carlos Latuff.

That, of course, is the idea, the result of a deliberate strategy and as a direct consequence of Israel’s prevailing self-definition and worldview. As surely as our cosmology informs our sociology, the abhorrent siege of the Gaza Ghetto continues, the result of the internal logic of Israel’s continued existence as an apartheid expansionist state, producing policies of continued ‘low-intensity’ ethnic cleansing, divide and rule and genocide as Ilan Pappe and others have described. Zaid Khan’s words are worth quoting again:

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mazin Qumsiyeh of the excellent Wheels of Justice peace initiative has drafted this list furnishing facts about why good people of conscience everywhere will not be celebrating Israel at its 60th anniversary this month, just as apartheid-era South Africa was not accepted or celebrated. There are many more reasons, and he invites people to add to it.

Israeli psychologist and exile Avigail Abarbanel notes, “If a day comes, and I hope it does, when Israelis decide to stop living in denial, they will have to realise that real peace will only come through justice. Justice in this context means one thing, that the ideal of an exclusively Jewish state at the cost of an entire people might have to be abandoned. Only a bi-national state and a right of return for the Palestinian refugees will come close enough to rectifying some of the injustices committed in 1948 and since. Having been ethnically cleansed, this is also what the Palestinians are entitled to under international law and common human decency.“

• Ethnic cleaning and ongoing genocide: Between December 1947 and December 1950, over 530 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed. Half of the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by underground Zionist forces even before Israel was unilaterally declared a state. Palestinians call these events of the late 1940s the Nakba (Catastrophe).

• The Palestinian refugees are the largest remaining refugee population in the world. Seven million of the ten million Palestinians are refugees or displaced people. They are prevented from returning to their homes and lands even though International law and UN resolutions demand it. Read the rest of this entry »

Bush to Nasrallah:

An Offer Hezbollah Cannot Refuse?

Part V: Hezbollah’s part of the bargain

Franklin Lamb,
Dahiyeh

“Nobody can impose terms on us, or commit us to anything we do not believe in. Let me be clear: Israel won’t get through politics what it didn’t get through war, even if the UN resolu­tion gave this to Israel. What they couldn’t do through war, they want to do by peaceful means? It doesn’t work like that.”

—Hezbollah deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem, Al-Manar television, 15 August 2006

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr (”just call me Joe–anything but Sue” as he does his Johnny Cash imitation) Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and twice Presidential Candidate, is a friendly, loquacious, decent and knowledgeable fellow. Having served on that Committee for nearly a quarter century and traveled widely, Biden thinks of himself as someone who can be confronted with ‘deal breakers’ at the negotiation table and work out mutually acceptable solutions. “I’m the real deal bridge builder!”, he sometimes kids with his devoted staff, as he shadow boxes and mimics his favorite boxer, Evander “the real deal” Holyfield. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Bush to Nasrallah:

An Offer Hezbollah cannot refuse?

Part III: the CIA and the Pentagon weigh in

Franklin Lamb,

Dahiyeh

“Those bastards [the Israeli military] know the rules and what the US Arms Export Control Act requires! The CBU 58’s are decades out of date! We [the US] have not even had them in our weapons inventory since we last used them in 1991 during Desert Storm. They are now complete junk and I am amazed that any of them after 35 years even detonated. By using them this time in Lebanon, Israel was illegally dropping landmines.”

–Pentagon official commenting on Israel’s use of American weapons against civilians in Lebanon during the July 2006 war (chap. II, The Price We Pay)

Ridicule of Israel’s 2006 performance by US Intelligence and Military agencies creates pressure for the White House to engage with Hezbollah

It has been a fact that, since at least 1982, perhaps the harshest and most frustrated American critics of Israel are those who work in Langley, Virginia, at CIA Headquarters and especially those across the 14th Street Bridge from the White House, on the banks of the Potomac River, who work at the Pentagon. Read the rest of this entry »

————————————–

Bush to Nasrallah:

An Offer Hezbollah cannot refuse?

Part I: Historical context and current posturing

Franklin Lamb,

Dahiyeh

“The Bush administration parking a flotilla from its US 6th fleet off the coast of Lebanon was made necessary, it claims, to demonstrate Washington’s ‘commitment to stability in the region’. This provocation, aimed at Hezbollah and also Syria, is the equivalent of a Sicilian fish wrapped in newspaper with a white rose—left on a doorstep: “This is business. It is not personal. Here is an offer you cannot refuse“.

– Italian officer seconded to UNIFIL outside his Tebnine HQ, South Lebanon

Background to the Offer: the writing on the wall

Recent US back channel feelers to Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah’s decision makers are sometimes present, reflect US calculations that given current trends in the Middle East, Hezbollah will play a major regional role.

According to US Senate Intelligence Committee sources, the efforts to date have run tepid and less ‘qualitative’ than informal Iran-USA contacts. US diplomat Thomas Pickering has revealed that he has been a participant in secret Iran-US ‘back channel’ discussions for the past five years. The subjects discussed include Iran’s nuclear program, the broader relationship between the two and US relations with Hezbollah. Other participants include former US diplomat William Luers and MIT nuclear expert Jim Walsh. While “unofficial”, the discussions, organized by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the UN Association of the USA, are thought to be useful.

Dismissive of Republican Presidential candidate John McCain’s pledge to “drive Hezbollah out of Lebanon”, serious US officials want to engage the Lebanese Resistance partly because they are concerned with Israel remaining a Jewish state in the region. Read the rest of this entry »

Two excellent videos. The first offers an on-the-ground look at what is going on in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, militarily occupied by Israel: youngsters and civilians being terrorised and several foreigners being deliberately targeted and killed to discourage the outside world scrutinizing the Israeli regime’s actions. This is an eyewitness report from Dispatchers Reporter Sandra Jordan on the unconscionable Israeli violence in Gaza directed both at Palestinian civilians as well as international aid volunteers and foreign reporters.

Produced by Rodrigo Vasquez and broadcast by Channel 4 in the UK (one could not imagine its equivalent broadcast in the USA, not even PBS), this 2006 report is, sadly, one of the best I have seen in terms of showing the daily impact of shocking Israeli violence on Palestinians, at a human level.

Within hours of arriving Sandra and Rodrigo are shot at and tear-gassed by Israeli troops breaking up a memorial service for Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist crushed by an Israeli Army bulldozer two days before—deliberately. Tom Hurndall and James Miller, a British peace protester and British cameraman were also both shot by the IDF, leaving one in a coma,and the other shot dead. While this is disturbing, it is a raw and important window into the levels of violence to which Palestinians are daily subject, particularly in but not limited to Gaza.

Following this, having just passed the sixtieth anniversary of the Deir Yassin massacre, a timely reflection from Deir Yassin Remembered on the pivotal event of the Nakba and what it means for Israelis and Palestinians today.

Dispatches: The Killing Zone (49 minutes)
Read the rest of this entry »

Some time-pressed picks and recommended reads on this reprehensible fifth anniversary of the US neocon-led invasion. Cartoon credit: Carlos Latuff, Iraq war: Five Years

• Salon Iraq Roundtable, Robbing the cradle of civilization, five years later

• Jim Lobe, Reasons Revisited: Why Did the U.S. Invade Iraq?

• Dahr Jamail, Five Years, And Counting

• Patrick Cockburn, This is the war that started with lies, and continues with lie after lie after lie

• DN!, Half a Decade of War: Five Years After Iraq Invasion, Soldiers Testify at Winter Soldier Hearings

• Juan Cole, Five years of Iraq lies

• John Ross, What Do We Owe Iraq?

• Seamus Milne, There must be a reckoning for this day of infamy

• Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, ‘We live in a nightmare. Death and carnage is everywhere’ Ali, Baghdad resident Read the rest of this entry »

More visuals added

Courtesy Carlos Latuff, Mr. Fish, David Baldinger, Benjamin Heine, Michael Leunig, Derkaoui Abdellah, Clay Bennett, Egyptian football player Mohamed Aboutrika, Khalil Bendib, T. @ Boomerang, Za3tar.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Sgt Don L Maes/AFP/Getty Images)

The Welch Club ups the ante in Lebanon

Bush dispatches a flotilla to the Eastern Mediterranean

by Franklin Lamb

Ein el Helwe Palestinian Refugee Camp
Sidon, Lebanon

By this observer’s count there are no fewer than 8, and perhaps half again that number, of Al-Qaeda inspired, Salafist orientated groups now organizing and operating in Lebanon. Most are represented in one form or another in Ein el Helwe, the largest of Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian Refugee Camps. Teenagers appear to be among their most ardent supporters.

These Islamist groups secretly organize and operate in this and other camps, for the same reason Bill Clinton messed with Ms. Monica Lewinsky: “Because I could”, as Bill finally owned up, when his denials fueled comedy on late night TV. Read the rest of this entry »

After murdering 33 over 60 78 112 (as at 3 March) Palestinians since Tuesday (whose names and family status are rarely mentioned like the Israeli “father of four”, and two others, combatants), the Israeli regime and blight unto nations has now confirmed to the world its genocidal intent against the indigenous Palestinian population: the Deputy Israeli Defense Minister Matan Vilnai has threatened a shoah (holocaust, disaster) against Gazans, telling Israeli Army Radio:

“The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.”

This is not about “defence”, of course. Stopping the rockets — which are a response to the occupation, control and strangulation of the Palestinians — could be achieved by talking to the elected government of Gaza, and ending the longest-running military occupation in modern history, and one of the most brutal. Read the rest of this entry »

Ten minute segment from Roy’s documentary ‘We’, in which Roy’s reading of her text is set to video footage.

Quotables from the Israeli government’s current (c)harm offensive

While you may have read about the first, Israeli Minister Sheetrit’s revealing outburst was by no means the only recent one. These are just a few picked up from a couple of news pieces, and seem unfortunately indicative of how the Israeli government public discourse has further degenerated, reflecting its actions on the ground.

• Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit: “We must take a neighborhood in Gaza and wipe it off the map“ (see also here; here and here)

• ”We need to topple the Hamas regime,” Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, told Israel Radio ahead of Barak’s briefing. ”We need to assassinate its leaders without any artificial differentiation between those who wear explosive vests and those who wear diplomatic vests.“

• Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters after the cabinet meeting, “There is no hope for the Palestinian people with Hamas. There is no hope for any kind of peace or the vision of a Palestinian state which includes the Gaza Strip without a real change on the ground.” (read: usual ‘never a partner for peace’ and attempting to dictate who governs and the shape of a future Palestinian state, which is to say, actively preventing one)

• Olmert’s Deputy, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, said he expected Hamas, which seized control in June, to be forced out within the year. “I believe a combination of steps against Hamas in Gaza will bring an end to the Hamas regime in Gaza,” Ramon said. “It will take a few months, maybe it will take a year.” Hamas sources said Hamas leaders were keeping a low profile, apparently to avoid assassination attempts. Asked who Israel could be targeting, minister Shaul Mofaz said: “Everyone, without exception.” 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 »