Peace and Justice Post

The Washington Post, May 8, 2008

By Willim M. Arkin

Those predicting war with Iran or some Bush-Cheney October surprise attack on Tehran are constantly looking for signs of military preparations: a B-52 bomber that mistakenly takes off from North Dakota with nuclear-armed cruise missiles; a second or third aircraft carrier entering the Persian Gulf; a B-1 crashing in Qatar.

Since the most likely path to war with Iran is not Marines storming the beach but a strike on nuclear facilities and “regime” targets, signs such as these can often just be mirages. The true strike is not necessarily going to come with any warning, and the U.S. military has developed an entire system called “global strike” to implement such a preemptive strike.

A secret mission conducted last August over Afghanistan caught my eye because it tells us everything we need to know about the ability of the U.S. military to conduct a bolt-out-of-the-blue attack in Iran. It also tells us how useless such a strike might be.

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All Roads Lead to the Establishment

By LIAQUAT ALI KHAN, Counterpunch May 8, 2008

Pakistan’s constitutional shenanigans permit the fox to eat the lion. Invoking the non-existent powers of the Army Chief last November under a declaration of emergency rule, Pervez Musharraf dismissed sixty high court judges and implanted the dismissal order in the Constitution as an amendment. The order/amendment reads: “A Judge including the Chief Justice, of the Supreme Court, a High Court or Federal Shariat Court who had, not been given or taken oath under the Oath of Office (Judges) Order, 2007, had ceased to hold office on and with effect from the 3rd day of November, 2007.” That a single person can amend the Constitution is egregious. Even more egregious is the demand that the democratically elected Parliament, if it wishes to restore the sacked judges, must repeal the order/amendment with the constitutionally required “votes of not less than two-thirds of the total membership of (each) House.”

Furthermore, the President is armed with the disreputable 58 (2) (b) constitutional power – a provision that General Zial ul Haq inserted in the Constitution – to dissolve the National Assembly if in his opinion a situation has arisen in which the Government of the Federation cannot be carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and an appeal to the electorate is necessary. Even though Musharraf, who occupies the Presidency through constitutional manipulations, is unlikely to dissolve the newly elected National Assembly in the near future, the new Coalition government which has taken office is frightened by what it calls “the Establishment.”

Continued . . .

By Linda Mamoun, AlterNet. Posted May 8, 2008.

The frenzy around Israel Independence Day is an attempt to freeze history in 1948 when public support of Israel was unequivocal.

Two weeks before Israel’s 60th anniversary the House and Senate voted unanimously to pass resolutions honoring “the founding of the modern State of Israel.” Before the House vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in on the deliberations saying, “I urge our colleagues to speak with one voice, and support this resolution recognizing the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel. In doing so, we not only commend Israel, we also bring luster to this House by associating ourselves with that great state of Israel.” To further commemorate Israeli independence, Pelosi reserved time through the month of June for a weekly series of floor speeches.

Israel Independence Day has been celebrated within Jewish communities in the United States since Israel was founded. Traditionally the celebrations were organized by synagogues or Hebrew schools. Children would sing Ha’Tikvah, the Israeli national anthem, and read scriptures on the Promised Land. But these days the anniversaries are geared toward the broader public, making headlines in places where there are large Jewish communities, but also in areas where one would be hard-pressed to find a single person identifying as Jewish. Not only are the anniversaries endorsed by celebrities and political committees (this year’s “National Committee” includes former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the three presidential frontrunners, and all living secretaries of state), but the organizers offer a dizzying array of festivities, requiring careful planning by those hoping to partake in all the revelry.

Continued . . .

Omar Barghouti, The Electronic Intifada, 8 May 2008

(Nidal El-Khairy)

In 1965, the American Committee on Africa, following the lead of prominent British arts associations, sponsored a historic declaration against South African apartheid, signed by more than 60 cultural personalities. It read: “We say no to apartheid. We take this pledge in solemn resolve to refuse any encouragement of, or indeed, any professional association with the present Republic of South Africa, this until the day when all its people shall equally enjoy the educational and cultural advantages of that rich and beautiful land.”

If one were to replace “Republic of South Africa” with the “State of Israel,” the rest should apply just as strongly. Israel today — 60 years after its establishment through a deliberate and systemic process of ethnic cleansing of a large majority of the indigenous Palestinian population (for an authoritative historical account of the “birth” of Israel, refer to Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) — still practices racial discrimination against its own “non-Jewish” citizens; it still maintains the longest military occupation in modern history; it still denies Palestinian refugees — uprooted, dispossessed and expelled by Zionists over the last six decades — their internationally-recognized right to return to their homes and properties; and it still commits war crimes and violates basic human rights and tenets of international humanitarian law with utter impunity.

Israel at 60 is a more sophisticated, evolved and brutal form of apartheid than its South African predecessor, according to authoritative statements by South African anti-apartheid leaders, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the country’s current government minister Ronnie Kasrils, who is Jewish. It therefore deserves from all people of conscience around the world, particularly those who opposed South African apartheid, the same measures of solidarity and human compassion, through an effective application of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it abides by international law and respects basic human rights.

The world must stop standing idle while the people of Gaza are treated with such cruelty

Former President Jimmy Carter, The Guardian, Thursday May 8 2008

The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world. An entire population is being brutally punished.

This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers.

Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the West Bank have been imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional 10 who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition cabinet.

Regardless of one’s choice in the partisan struggle between Fatah and Hamas within occupied Palestine, we must remember that economic sanctions and restrictions on the supply of water, food, electricity and fuel are causing extreme hardship among the innocent people in Gaza, about one million of whom are refugees.

Israeli bombs and missiles periodically strike the area, causing high casualties among both militants and innocent women and children. Prior to the highly publicised killing of a woman and her four children last week, this pattern had been illustrated by a report from B’Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights organisation, which stated that 106 Palestinians were killed between February 27 and March 3. Fifty-four of them were civilians, and 25 were under 18 years of age.

On a recent trip through the Middle East, I attempted to gain a better understanding of the crisis. One of my visits was to Sderot, a community of about 20,000 in southern Israel that is frequently struck by rockets fired from nearby Gaza. I condemned these attacks as abominable acts of terrorism, since most of the 13 victims during the past seven years have been non-combatants.

Subsequently, I met with leaders of Hamas – a delegation from Gaza and the top officials in Damascus. I made the same condemnation to them, and urged that they declare a unilateral ceasefire or orchestrate with Israel a mutual agreement to terminate all military action in and around Gaza for an extended period.

They responded that such action by them in the past had not been reciprocated, and they reminded me that Hamas had previously insisted on a ceasefire throughout Palestine, including Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel had refused. Hamas then made a public proposal of a mutual ceasefire restricted to Gaza, which the Israelis also rejected.

There are fervent arguments heard on both sides concerning blame for a lack of peace in the Holy Land. Israel has occupied and colonised the Palestinian West Bank, which is approximately a quarter the size of the nation of Israel as recognised by the international community. Some Israeli religious factions claim a right to the land on both sides of the Jordan river, others that their 205 settlements of some 500,000 people are necessary for “security”.

All Arab nations have agreed to recognise Israel fully if it will comply with key United Nations resolutions. Hamas has agreed to accept any negotiated peace settlement between the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, provided it is approved in a referendum of the Palestinian people.

This holds promise of progress, but despite the brief fanfare and positive statements at the peace conference last November in Annapolis, the process has gone backwards. Nine thousand new Israeli housing units have been announced in Palestine; the number of roadblocks within the West Bank has increased; and the stranglehold on Gaza has been tightened.

It is one thing for other leaders to defer to the US in the crucial peace negotiations, but the world must not stand idle while innocent people are treated cruelly. It is time for strong voices in Europe, the US, Israel and elsewhere to speak out and condemn the human rights tragedy that has befallen the Palestinian people.

· Jimmy Carter, a former president of the United States, is founder of The Carter Center project-syndicate.org

Khalid Amayreh |Uruknet, May 7, 2008

Does Shimon Peres carry the genes of a pathological liar?

The question may sound facetious to many, but Peres’s apparent inability to distinguish between truth and falsehood makes the question quite valid.

At 84, Peres continues to dish out a daily staple of lies, including obscene lies.

This week, the “hero” of the Qana-1 massacre, told foreign correspondents based in Israel that “Hamas was standing in the way of Palestinian statehood.”

Well, this is, of course, a blatant lie, to say the least, because every honest person under the sun, Jew or gentile, knows well that the main obstacle impeding the realization of peace in the Middle East has been the intensive colonization of Palestinian land and unending expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied territories that belong to another people.

So how can we possibly buy the argument that Hamas is responsible for the building on the West Bank of hundreds of Jewish settlements, inhabited by hundreds of thousands of fascist-minded “settlers” who view non-Jews as animals in the shape of humans who should be enslaved by the “master race” as water carriers and wood hewers?

To be sure, Hamas is not an organization of angels. However, blaming the Islamic movement for the liquidation of the two-state solution is noting short of a pornographic lie.

Indeed, from its very inception, Hamas entrusted “peace negotiations” to the PLO, and said on numerous occasions that it would live with a Palestinian state covering the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Continued . . .

Middle East Online | First Published 2008-05-07

US lawmakers accuse Veterans’ office of covering up American soldier suicides post Iraq invasion.

By Karin Zeitvogel – WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON – US lawmakers accused the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Tuesday of being out of control and of covering up the high suicide rate among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

“The VA healthcare system has been pushed to the edge in dealing with the mental health care needs of our veterans,” Bob Filner, chairman of the House of Representatives’ Committee of Veterans’ Affairs, told a packed congressional hearing about the issue of suicides among veterans.

The hearing came five months after a first round of testimonials on the same topic, and weeks after a series of internal VA emails about suicides among veterans were brought to light by a documentary on US network television.

In one of the emails, sent in February, Dr Ira Katz, deputy chief patient care services officer for mental health at the VA, wrote: “Shh! Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see.”

He added: “Is this something we should address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”

The figure was at odds with the 144 known suicides among veterans from 2001, when the US launched its war against terror by bombing Afghanistan, through the end of 2005, which Katz had cited in his December testimony, Filner said.

“The emails … seem to indicate they were trying to manipulate the data instead of sharing the data,” Filner said. “If we hadn’t called this hearing, we probably still wouldn’t know the figures.”
“What we see is a pattern that reveals a culture of bureaucracy,” he told the VA officials at the hearing.

“The pattern is deny, deny, deny and when that fails, it’s cover up, cover up, cover up — there is clear evidence of a bureaucratic cover-up here.”

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Palestinian Information Center, May 6, 2008

GAZA, (PIC)– The Hamas Movement stated Tuesday that the talk about progress in PA-Israeli negotiations is a new trick to mislead the Palestinian and international public opinion, adding that such rumors were issued at the request of US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to serve as face saving for the American Administration.

In a press statement received by the PIC, Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, explained that this trick is used after the disclosure of the false promises made by US president George Bush to PA chief Mahmoud Abbas in Annapolis and during their last meeting.

Barhoum said that the talk about such progress is also aimed to cover up for the state of bankruptcy that afflicted Abbas and his negotiators after thirty negotiation sessions without being able to convince Israelis to remove one barrier hindering the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank.

Continued . . .