Peace and Justice Post

In Sderot, sighs of relief. Children venture out. But the people of the town are angry.

By Uri Avnery | The Palestine Chronicle, June 23,  2008

And suddenly: quiet. No Qassams. No mortar shells. The tanks are not rolling. The aircraft are not bombing.

In Sderot, sighs of relief. Children venture out. Inhabitants who have exiled themselves to other towns return home.

And the reaction? An outburst of jubilation? Dancing in the streets? Applause for the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense, who at long last have come to their senses?

Not at all. The expression on the nation’s face is a grimace of disgust. What kind of thing is that? Where is our victorious army?

The people of Sderot are really angry. OK, so there are no Qassams, but this was supposed to happen only after the army had entered Gaza and wiped it out.

Haaretz headed its front page with the mendacious headline: “Israel pays with deeds – and gets promises”.

“It’s fragile,” Ehud Olmert soothes us, it can come to an end any minute. And the other Ehud, Barak, who pushed for the cease-fire, has an excuse: we have to go through the motions before starting the Big Operation in Gaza. For the sake of Israeli and international public opinion.

And nobody says: Thank God, the killing has stopped!

Why? What causes this almost unanimous reaction of disappointment? Why is there a general feeling of humiliation, almost of defeat?

It’s because the national ego is hurt. How wonderful it would have been to see the Israeli army in Gaza destroying Hamas, together with the entire city. But, instead of the crushing victory, we have something that smacks of a rout. And that in spite of the assertions of those now rooting for re-occupying the Gaza Strip: that at any minute, with just a little more starvation and closure, the population would have broken and rebelled against Hamas.

From the military point of view, a year of war in the Gaza Strip has ended in a draw. IDF-Hamas 1:1. But the IDF and Hamas are not two football teams of equal standing. Hamas is an armed political-religious movement, what is termed in current Western parlance “a terrorist organization”. When such an organization achieves a draw with one of the mightiest armies in the world, it can justifiably claim victory.

The aim of Olmert’s war was to topple the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and to destroy the organization itself. This has not been attained. On the contrary, according to all reports, Hamas is stronger than ever, and its hold on the Strip is solid. Even in Israel that is not questioned.

For a year, the Israeli government has maintained a total blockade of the Strip – on land, at sea and in the air. It has enjoyed the unqualified support of Europe, which assisted in starving a population of one and a half million men and women, children and old people. The US was, of course, a full partner in this glorious enterprise. Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, dependent on the US, collaborated, if unwillingly.

Continued . . .

By Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail | Inter Press Service, June 24, 2008

BAQUBA,- Iraqis seem divided on who they would like to see as the next U.S. president, but few believe that either will end the occupation.

“The U.S administration has committed a big mistake in Iraq,” Adil Ibrahim, a local physician in Baquba, capital city of Diyala province, located 40 km northeast of Bagdhdad, told IPS. “We hope that whoever wins the election, the new administration can mend the huge mistakes of this one.”

Some wish for Barack Obama to win because he claims to represent a great change in the history of the United States.

“Being a black man, he definitely carries different thoughts about the world,” Ali Hussein, a city employee, told IPS. “We sympathise with him since he has some kind of Muslim origins. He may view Arabs in a new and different way.”

Adding to this view, Naser Mahdi, a secondary school teacher, told IPS, “I feel he is totally different. The world needs new blood in rulers, and we hope that he might decrease the dominating authority of the United States.”

“Because the result of the race affects the lives of Iraqis, I wish that a Democrat could win the round in order to give Iraqis a better future,” schoolteacher Khalid Abid told IPS. “We still hope to be viewed with care and consideration. Things surely must change in Iraq after the elections.”

But Abdulla Hamid, a city resident, expressed deep concern over Obama’s recent speech at the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S.

“What hope is there in a man who wears the Israeli flag and calls for a Jewish state with a unified Jerusalem,” Hamid told IPS. ” Obama clearly couldn’t care less about the Palestinians and the Arabs.”

Hamid referred to the fact that Obama appeared at the speech with a lapel pin comprised of both the U.S. and Israeli flags. In his speech, Obama’s call for a unified Jerusalem omitted Palestinians’ demands for their share of Jerusalem, which is a sacred city for them too.

Like most U.S. citizens, most Iraqis are not familiar with U.S. foreign policy. While Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful, calls for a shift in the U.S. policy in Iraq, neither he nor his Republican rival, John McCain, talk about changing the National Security Strategy of the U.S., or the military document Joint Vision 2020, which calls for “full spectrum dominance” of the world by the U.S. military by the year 2020.

‘Full spectrum dominance’ means not just total control of land, air, and sea, but also of information and of space.

“The U.S. strategy is firm and unchanging,” a political analyst at Diyala University told IPS on condition of anonymity, given widespread fear of U.S. forces. “It makes no difference whether one wins or the other. The general strategy is well established, and is never affected by the changing of the president.”

“I do agree with this point of view,” local merchant Abdul-Rahman told IPS. “During the nineties we wished that Bill Clinton would win in order to stop the economic sanctions that caused us so much suffering. When Clinton became president, sanctions remained as they were, and even worsened.”

At that time, the majority of Iraqis had wished for Clinton to be president, but year after year of sanctions left them embittered.

Barak Obama has made public statements that he will withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. But his advisors speak of plans to keep at least 60,000-90,000 troops in Iraq, and at least until 2013, the year his first term in office would end if he is elected.

Many Iraqis appear to be skeptical of the promises made by Obama.

“I’ll believe the troops are gone from Iraq when they are no longer on our streets and their warplanes no longer bomb our homes,” a local merchant told IPS. ” All politicians are liars, even school children know this.”

(Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq’s Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East).

BBC News, June 22, 2008

Israel says it complies with laws governing the treatment of detainees

An Israeli human rights group has accused Israeli soldiers of routinely abusing bound Palestinian prisoners.

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) said the army was indifferent to such mistreatment.

The organisation said its findings were based on 90 detailed accounts from Palestinians and soldiers who say they witnessed the abuse.

A military spokesman said the army viewed any violation of its ethical code with great concern.

The army says it set up a special unit to look into complaints of abuse in 1996, and since then there had been a rise in the number of soldiers reporting violence against detainees.

A military spokesman, quoted by AFP news agency, insisted that the armed forces “act in line with international and Israeli laws regarding the arrest of terrorist suspects”.

‘Serious injuries’

Israeli troops frequently round up prisoners during raids in Palestinian areas. They say their actions are aimed at preventing attacks on Israeli civilians by militants.

But the human rights group says that soldiers are often violent towards prisoners – even after they have been handcuffed and no longer pose a threat.

“On certain occasions, the ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees is highly violent, resulting in serious injuries,” said the report, which covers the period from June 2006 to October 2007.

“Minors, who must be granted special protection under both Israeli and international law, are also victims of abuse,” the report said.

Earlier this year, the PCATI accused Israeli officials of using psychological torture against some Palestinian detainees by threatening action against their families if they did not co-operate.

The Israeli government has already said such interrogation tactics are illegal, and the internal security organisation, Shin Bet , denied the claims.

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The Iraqi refugee crisis

© Amnesty International, June 15, 2008

© UNHCR/P.Sands”>

Iraqi woman sells cigarettes on the streets of downtown Amman in Jordan to make ends meet

© UNHCR/P.Sands

Young Iraqis play football in a Damascus quarter

© UNHCR/J.Wreford

Iraq remains one of the most dangerous places in the world. Its refugee crisis is worsening. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, an estimated 4.7 million have been displaced both within and outside Iraq and for many the situation is desperate.

A new report by Amnesty International, Rhetoric and reality: the Iraqi refugee crisis, says that the international community continues to fail to respond to the crisis in a meaningful way. Countries like Jordan and Syria host most of the refugees but are simply not equipped to meet the needs of all those arriving.

Syria alone may be hosting more than a million refugees. As of 2007, only 1 percent of the total Iraqi displaced population was estimated to be in the industrialized world.

To mark World Refugee Day, Amnesty International has called on the international community and, in particular, those states who participated in the US-led invasion of Iraq, to take real steps to alleviate the suffering of those displaced. The organization said these countries must urgently act on their responsibility to assist the host nations and humanitarian organizations operating in the region to support the large numbers of refugees.

“Many refugees are finding it difficult to survive,” said Philip Luther, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. “They are banned from working and unable to pay rents, buy adequate food for themselves and their families, or obtain medical treatment. Those lucky enough to escape Iraq rely on savings which, for many, are rapidly running out.”

Continued . . .

The Sunday Times, June 22, 2008

British forces in Afghanistan have used one of the world’s most deadly and controversial missiles to fight the Taliban.

Apache attack helicopters have fired the thermobaric weapons against fighters in buildings and caves, to create a pressure wave which sucks the air out of victims, shreds their internal organs and crushes their bodies.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted to the use of the weapons, condemned by human rights groups as “brutal”, on several occasions, including against a cave complex.

The use of the Hellfire AGM-114N weapons has been deemed so successful they will now be fired from RAF Reaper unmanned drones controlled by “pilots” at Creech air force base in Nevada, an MoD spokesman added.

Thermobaric weapons, or vacuum bombs, were first combat-tested by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s and their use by Russia against civilians in Chechnya in the 1990s was condemned worldwide.

The secret decision to buy the Hellfire AGM-114N missiles was made earlier this year following problems attacking Taliban fortified positions.

British Apache pilots complained that standard Hellfire antitank missiles were going straight through buildings and out of the other side. Even when they did explode, there were limited casualties among the Taliban inside, particularly when a building contained a number of rooms.

American Apache pilots overcame the problem in Iraq with the thermobaric Hellfire.

The weapons are so controversial that MoD weapons and legal experts spent 18 months debating whether British troops could use them without breaking international law.

Eventually, they decided to get round the ethical problems by redefining the weapons.

“We no longer accept the term thermobaric [for the AGM-114N] as there is no internationally agreed definition,” said an MoD spokesman. “We call it an enhanced blast weapon.”

The redefinition has allowed British forces to use the weapons legally, but is undermined by the publicity of their manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, which markets them as thermobaric.

When the American military bought them in 2005, President George W Bush said: “There are going to be some awfully surprised terrorists when the thermobaric Hellfire comes knocking.”

Despite the Bush rhetoric, it is unlikely anyone targeted by the missile would know much about it. The laser-guided missile has a warhead packed with fluorinated aluminium powder surrounding a small charge.

Continued . . .

By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers, June 20, 2008

Jurist, June 22, 2008
Bernard Hibbitts at 1:31 PM ET

[JURIST] Israeli soldiers regularly beat and abuse Palestinian detainees even after they have been arrested and no longer pose a threat, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) alleged in a report [press release; PDF text, in Hebrew] published Sunday. The group based its finding on testimony it obtained from some 90 detainees covering the period June 2006 and October 2007:

Abuse occurs at various junctions – immediately following arrest, in the vehicle transporting the detainees, and during the time they are held in IDF military camps prior to their transfer to interrogation and detention facilities. At times abusive practices involve dogs that are employed by the military forces during arrest operations and transported in vehicles along with Palestinian detainees. On certain occasions, the ill treatment of Palestinian detainees is highly violent resulting in serious injury. At other times, abuse manifests itself in a routine of beating, degradation and additional abuse. Minors, who must be granted special protection under both Israeli and International Law, are also victims of abuse. The soldiers who carry out arrests do not treat minors with special care and at times – as revealed by various testimonies – exploit their weakness.

PCATI said military violence against detainees is “reinforced by a weak legal system which conducts only a small number of investigations and legal proceedings that concern cases of abuse by soldiers.” The Israeli military has denied treating prisoners in any way prohibited by national or international law. PCATI released its report in the run-up to the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture [backgrounder] on June 26. AFP has more.

Earlier this month the Supreme Court of Israel upheld a law [JURIST report] allowing the Israeli government to indefinitely detain “unlawful combatants” suspected of belonging to terrorist groups. PCATI is opposed to that law and has argued against any attempt to broaden it [press release].

Afghan-US relations hit by ‘climate of distrust’

KABUL – A US military spokeswoman has dismissed suggestions that a new prison planned for Afghanistan is intended to receive prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, the detention centre in Cuba that is facing increasing criticism in America.

“This is not going to be Guantanamo Two,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Rumi Nielson-Green, spokeswoman for Combined Joint Task Force 101 based at Bagram Airfield, north of the Afghan capital Kabul. “That is absolutely false.”

Nielsen-Green also rejected reports by Afghan and US human rights groups that children as young as nine were being held at the existing detention facility. “That is absolutely false. We have no children at Bagram,” she said.

According to Nielson-Green, the new prison will receive only “unlawful enemy combatants, approximately 16 or older, apprehended by OEF Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan”.

Last month, the Pentagon announced plans for a 40-acre, $60 million detention centre to replace the ageing facility at Bagram airfield, a base originally built and used by the Soviet Union during its war in Afghanistan in 1979-89.

The new centre will be a big improvement on the present one, according to Nielson-Green, with more room for communal activities, educational and recreational facilities and areas where detainees can meet their families.

The present facility, which houses around 625 prisoners in wire mesh cages, was always intended to be temporary, she explained.

The capacity of the new prison will be roughly equivalent to that of the old one. According to a New York Times report, however, it will be able to accommodate up to 1100 prisoners “in a surge”.

News of the proposed new facility has made Afghans uneasy. For many, Bagram conjures up images of arrest, torture and humiliation.

In 2002, two men died in US custody at Bagram. One of them, called Dilawar, became the subject of an acclaimed documentary titled Taxi To The Dark Side. Arrested on a tip-off from a man later proved to be a Taliban supporter, he was repeatedly beaten and died after two days in detention. Since then, dozens, if not hundreds, of prisoners have passed through Bagram on their way to Guantanamo Bay. Many say Bagram is worse than the prison in Cuba.

Continued . . .

By Dr PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | Counterpuch June 21 7 22, 2008

Think about this question: In the 21st century what regime is more lawless than the Bush Regime?

Everyone is entitled to his own answer. The only answer I can come up with is the Zimbabwe regime of Robert Mugabe. Voted out of power in the last election, the great man hasn’t left. Zimbabweans are going to have to vote again, and the great man has said that any vote that is not for him will be cancelled by a bullet.

Does anyone remember how determined the British and the Americans and everyone else was to turn Rhodesia over to Mugabe in order to save Rhodesia from the evil Ian Smith? What a fool everyone was.

But before we laugh at those fools, we had best laugh at ourselves, or cry.

It is now an incontrovertible fact, known all over the world, that George W. Bush and his regime lied through their teeth in order to launch wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the Bush regime is doing the same thing again in hopes of launching an attack on Iran.

There have been a number of memoirs from high ranking Bush appointees who cannot stand all the lies. Bush’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill, told us that an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda prior to 9/11. There is the leaked Downing Street Memo in which the head of British Intelligence told the British Prime Minister and his cabinet that the Americans have decided to attack Iraq and are creating the “intelligence” to justify the attack.

And now we have the White House’s own spokesman from 2003-2006, Scot McClellen, ratifying what we all already knew, that President Bush deceived us and led us into war based entirely on lies and fabrications, and that he, Scott McClellen, was deceived into issuing a false public denial that top Cheney aide Scooter Libby and White House operative Karl Rove were involved in committing a felony under US law by revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame.

As a consequence of Bush’s lies, there are a million dead Iraqis, mostly women and children, and four million displaced Iraqis, 4,100 dead American soldiers and tens of thousands of seriously wounded. No one knows how many dead in Afghanistan. And there is the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese that has fallen under the rubric of the “war on terror.”

The only ones pleased with these wars are the American neoconservatives, the Israeli right-wing, the US corporate military-security complex, and Osama bin Laden.

The Bush regime has created enormous hatred and disrespect for the United States. A recent world wide poll found that George W. Bush ranks at the bottom of world leaders as one of the least trusted along with US Pakistani puppet Musharraf and the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, who has the disadvantage of being the victim of demonization by the US and European corporate-controlled media, which serves as ministries of propaganda for the governments that control their broadcast licenses. The American and European media lie for their living.

The two leaders with the highest approval rating are UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

So, the old adversary, Russia, now has a more respected leader than the “leader” of the Great Free Nation, a Great Free Nation that has sat on its hands while its “leader” destroyed America’s civil liberties, America’s reputation, the jobs of Americans, and committed the US to a course of war crimes punishable by the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

Continued . . .