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Archive for March, 2008
“Advancing the Cause of Peace”
March 4, 2008
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Print this article“What Can He Change?”
March 4, 2008Immanuel Wallerstein | Commentary No. 228, Mar. 1, 2008
It now seems highly probable, although not yet certain, that Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president. And it seems highly probable that he would win a contest with John McCain. It also seems almost certain that the Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives will be enlarged. Thus, it seems that Obama would enter office with a relatively strong mandate from the voters.
If one asks how Obama, who entered the race some six months ago as a young and unlikely victor, has been able to achieve this, the answer seems clear. He has emphasized the theme of “change” and this theme seems to have resonated with the voters, including many who have not voted before. Of course, change is an ambiguous term, and its meaning varies according to those who embrace it. But it seems that the theme of “change” responds to a high degree of discomfort in the United States with the present overall situation in the country and the world. The two zones of maximum discomfort are the war in Iraq and the state of the economy.
What a majority of voters seems to be saying is that they think the war in Iraq is a quagmire, and that it was a mistake to have invaded the country. As for the economy, the voters seem to be saying that their actual standard of living has been going down and they are very afraid that it will go down still further. So, basically, they are rejecting the main lines of argument of the Bush regime, and are blaming it in large part for their discomforts. What specific changes the voters want seems less clear, but they want something.
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims?
March 4, 2008Analyzing the Gallup World Poll with John Esposito
By WAJAHAT ALI
While speaking authoritatively about Islam and the “psychology” of the Muslim mind, the talking heads on television screens, the experts sitting in prestigious think tanks, the policy analysts strategizing in D.C., and the often loud and bombastic voices heard on the airwaves are rarely, if ever, Muslims.
To many concerned and prescient minds, this reality is often baffling and troubling. One such individual, Jim Clifton, Gallup’s Chairman and CEO, remarked, “no one in Washington had any idea what 1.3 billion Muslims were thinking, and yet we were working on intricate strategies that were going to change the world for all time.”
In order to discover what Muslims truly think, Gallup spent 6 years interviewing nearly 50,000 Muslims from 35 countries representing the most comprehensive analysis of the wishes, desires, grievances, complaints, and opinions of nearly 1.3 billion Muslims. The results are illuminating to say the least.
The results were collected and analyzed by John L. Esposito, a leading American expert on Islam and University Professor at Georgetown, and Dalia Mogahed, a senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, in their new, groundbreaking work: “Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think.”
Israeli Barak: counter-terror operations to continue
March 4, 2008China View, March 4, 2008
JERUSALEM, March 3 (Xinhua) — Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Monday that counter-terror operations in Gaza would continue, local media reported.
Barak made the remarks during a meeting with European Union’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana, according to the website of local daily Jerusalem Post.
Hamas was dealt “a heavy blow” in the recent Israeli army’s activity, he added.
The defense minister stressed that the ultimate goal of the operation was to restore calm to the residents of southern Israel. “We will achieve this,” he pledged, and added that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would come out on top in the continuing military campaign.
Solana said that the political process was “essential,” and expressed hope for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Early Monday morning, IDF withdrew its ground troops from the Gaza Strip, completing a five-day-long offensive in which more than 100 Palestinians were killed.
Solana called for Israel to leave a window of opportunity open for the peace process.”
“I know this sounds a bit optimistic considering the events of the past few days,” he said after his meeting with senior Israel officials.
The Gaza Bombshell
March 4, 2008by David Rose | Vanity Fair, April 2008
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush, whose secret Palestinian intervention backfired in a big way.
“A Dirty War”The Al Deira Hotel, in Gaza City, is a haven of calm in a land beset by poverty, fear, and violence. In the middle of December 2007, I sit in the hotel’s airy restaurant, its windows open to the Mediterranean, and listen to a slight, bearded man named Mazen Asad abu Dan describe the suffering he endured 11 months before at the hands of his fellow Palestinians. Abu Dan, 28, is a member of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, but I have a good reason for taking him at his word: I’ve seen the video.
Colonial realities
March 4, 2008War In Iraq
By: atheo on: 04.03.2008
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by Nimer Sultany
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Once again Israel defies an impotent international community which offers nothing but timid calls for ceasefire on “both sides.” And once again Palestinian suffering and death tolls continue to break records in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967.
Perhaps it is easy to dismiss this suffering by blaming the victims and resorting to ready cliches. Indeed, Israeli propagandists go out of their way to repeat the sound bite: we withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and since then the Palestinians have been firing rockets on our southern towns. This sound bite might fly in the western media; after all it resonates with a simplistic world view that ignites stereotypes which have been in the making for centuries, producing demonic and degrading representations of Muslims and Arabs. It becomes easy to describe the Palestinians in this context as the carriers of incomprehensible and irrational rage. This kind of representation has intensified since September 2001 with the “rediscovery” of Israel, and its supreme court, as a western lighthouse amid the darkness of the Middle East.
When examined closely, however, reality rules out crude explanations of “violence without reason” and “terrorism without context.” It becomes apparent that one cannot seriously discuss a legitimate resistance to a prolonged and horrendous military occupation within the context of the “war on terrorism.” Moreover, even if one finds a place to critique some practices of the oppressed one should keep in mind the root of the problem: it is the occupation, not the resistance. No rhetorical device can conceal the reality of colonialism by transforming it either to a mere “conflict” between equally culpable sides or to portray the occupier as the retaliating victim.
Einstein Letter Warning Of Zionist Fascism In Israel
March 3, 2008– Letter That Albert Einstein Sent to the New York Times
1948, Protesting the Visit of Menachem Begin –
– http://pulpnonfiction.blogspot.com
Letters to the Editor
New York Times
December 4, 1948
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several
Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin’s political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.
Palestinian death toll climbs to 118 as popular protests held in West Bank
March 3, 2008Al Bawaba, Monday, 3 March 2008
Israeli forces on Monday killed seven Palestinians and wounded dozens in al-Shijaeya neighborhood, al-Nusaerat refugee camp and Jabalya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip. Palestinian security sources said that Israeli warplanes fired a missile against a group of Hamas activists in Baghdad street, eastern al-Shijaeya neighborhood, killing one and wounding others, some critically.
Medics affirmed to WAFA that Ramzi Khwayter was killed. His dead body was shattered into pieces, reports said. Shortly later, Israeli warplanes targeted another group of activists at al-Sika street in the neighbourhood, killing three.
Also in the Gaza Strip, another military raid was launched in al-Tufah neighborhood, killing twoPalestinians and wounding two others, one critically. In al-Nusaerat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, an Israeli raid was launched killing a man and wounding three others, one critically.
In Jabalya refugee camp, after Israeli ground forces withdrew from the area, rescue teams managed to get three dead bodies from under the wreckage. Later, medics declared that a man died of wounds he sustained during the recent Israeli assault against Jabalya refugee camp.
Thus, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH) the death toll following the Israeli assault against Gaza Strip since last Wednesday has mounted to 118, a third of which are children while more than 350 were wounded.
In the West Bank, Israeli occupation troops on Monday shot dead a Palestinian teenager north of Ramallah during a demonstration protesting the killings in the Gaza Strip. Local sources said that students of the Mazra Al-Gharbia village organized a protest rally that headed towards a nearby settlement but were met with live bullets by soldiers and guards of that settlement.
The demonstrators threw stones at the soldiers and the Israelis retaliated by firing bullets that hit and killed Mohammed Saleh Shreiteh, 18.
Similar demonstrations were organized in Hebron city.
© 2008 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
Leading article: Only a new President can end Gaza’s nightmare
March 3, 2008The Independent, UK, March 3, 2008
Almost ten years ago, Serbia’s bloody reprisals against the Albanian rebels in the then province of Kosovo roused the world to indignation. There was angry talk of hammers being taken to nuts, and as the conflict escalated and villages burned, for all their deep misgivings, the big powers resolved to do something.
What a contrast there is between the frantic activity undertaken then to halt the killings of civilians in Kosovo and the almost nonchalant attitude of the West towards the carnage unfolding in Gaza.
No one can claim not to know what is going on there, even if the bald statistics of this uneven struggle invite a certain disbelief: between 54 and 61 killed on the Palestinian side in a single day. On the other side, two dead, both soldiers. Can this be termed a fight? Given that half the dead Palestinians were incontrovertibly civilians and included several children, and that of the other half only their age and sex even allows us to conveniently write them off as “militants”, it might be thought Saturday’s events in Gaza deserved to be termed a massacre. Yet there is no sense of real urgency in Western capitals about Gaza, nor contrition on the part of Israel over what its forces are doing. On the contrary, the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, yesterday declared that military operations will not only continue but grow in scale in pursuit of the goal of “bringing down” the Hamas-led government in the strip. Fresh bombing raids, targeting the offices of Hamas leaders, showed those were not idle words. This is the counsel of madness and despair, a kind of desperate macho politics that must end in more killings on the same monstrous scale as Saturday’s.
Israel defiant as Gaza toll rises
March 3, 2008- The Guardian,
- Monday March 3, 2008
Palestinians in Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza carry the body of a 21-month-old girl killed in an Israeli airstrike. Photograph: Eyad Baba/AP
Israel was facing widespread international condemnation yesterday for its onslaught in Gaza, as the UN and EU demanded an end to a “disproportionate” response to Palestinian rocket attacks, which were also denounced. Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, rejected the criticism and vowed to press on with the offensive, which has claimed an estimated 100 Palestinian lives in the past five days.
Early today, after clashing with militants and making arrests yesterday, Israel moved more troops into northern Gaza and five Hamas militants were killed in nine airstrikes.
On Saturday alone, some 60 people were killed, the biggest Palestinian casualty toll since the second intifada broke out more than seven years ago. “Nothing will prevent us from continuing operations to protect our citizens,” Olmert said. Two Israeli soldiers and one civilian have also been killed in the violence.
Peace and Justice Post 