Peace and Justice Post

by: Jonathan Cook, AMEU.org,
November – December  2010
The Link – Volume 43, Issue 5

In the mid-1990s, I arrived in Jerusalem for the first time–then as a tourist–with the potent Western myth at the front of my consciousness: that of Israel as “a light unto the nations,” the plucky underdog facing a menacing Arab world. A series of later professional shocks as a freelance journalist reporting on Israel would shatter those assumptions.

These disillusioning experiences came in the early stages of the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began in late 2000. At the time I was often writing for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, first as a staff member based in the foreign department at its head office in London, then later as a freelance journalist in Nazareth. The Guardian has earned an international reputation—including in Israel—as the Western newspaper most critical of Israel’s actions. That may be true, but I quickly found that there were still very clear, and highly unusual, limitations on what could be written about Israel.

Particularly problematic for the Guardian—as with other news media —was anything that questioned Israel’s claim to being a democracy or highlighted the contradictions between that claim and Israel’s Jewish self-definition. The Guardian’s most famous editor, C P Scott, was a high-profile lobbyist for Jewish rights in what was then Palestine. He was also instrumental in bringing about the Balfour Declaration—the British government’s commitment to the Zionist movement in 1917 to create a “national home” in Palestine for Jews.

Thus, I was not entirely surprised that an account I submitted based on my investigations of an apparent shoot-to-kill policy by the Israeli police against its own Palestinian citizens at the start of the second intifada was sat on for months by the paper. After I made repeated queries, the features editor informed me that he could not run it because it was no longer “fresh.”

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The Israeli peace movement is coming back to life, supporting the Palestinian nonviolent resistance to the occupation. And the Israelis are proving themselves just as nonviolent. In fact, they’re becoming exceedingly polite and courteous.

The other day they found a bunch of things marked “Made in USA” lying on the ground. They figured some Americans must have lost them. To make sure those things got returned, the peace activists delivered them directly to James Cunningham, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, at his own residence, in the middle of the night, when they were sure to find him at home.

Apparently the ambassador did not appreciate the courteous gesture. The police quickly arrived, broke up the action, arrested eleven people, and found a way to keep them jailed on trumped up charges.

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by: Noam Chomsky, Op-Ed, TruthOut, January 3, 2011

Palestinian Abu Ayaesh picks his grape harvest downhill from the homes of the Karmi Zur settlement. (Photo: michaelramallah)

While intensively engaged in illegal settlement expansion, the government of Israel is also seeking to deal with two problems: a global campaign of what it perceives as “delegitimation” – that is, objections to its crimes and withdrawal of participation in them – and a parallel campaign of legitimation of Palestine.

The “delegitimation,” which is progressing rapidly, was carried forward in December by a Human Rights Watch call on the U.S. “to suspend financing to Israel in an amount equivalent to the costs of Israel’s spending in support of settlements,” and to monitor contributions to Israel from tax-exempt U.S. organizations that violate international law, “including prohibitions against discrimination” – which would cast a wide net. Amnesty International had already called for an arms embargo on Israel. The legitimation process also took a long step forward in December, when Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil recognized the State of Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank), bringing the number of supporting nations to more than 100.

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Les også:

Nye jagerfly vil koste 12 milliarder mer

Wikileaks: Israel har 100 bunkerknusere

En langdistanserakett av typen Shibab avfyrt under en øvelse på ukjent sted i Iran høsten 2009. To måneder senere uttrykte en israelsk general bekyming overfor en amerikansk kongressdelegasjon om at Iran har 300 slike raketter som kan nå Israel. 

Den 15. november 2009 hadde en amerikansk kongressdelegasjon under ledelse av demokraten Ike Skelton et møte med sjefen for den israelske generalstaben, Gabi Ashkenazi. Under møtet fastslo den israelske toppgeneralen at Iran har 300 Shihab-raketter som kan nå Israel.

Varslingstiden ved et iransk angrep vil ikke være mer enn 10-12 minutter.

– Rakettrusselen mot Israel er mer alvorlig enn noensinne. Derfor legger Israel så sterk vekt på rakettforsvar, sa Ashkenazi ifølge et hemmeligstemplet notat fra den amerikanske ambassaden i Tel Aviv til det amerikanske utenriksdepartementet.

Dokumentet fra samtalene mellom Ashkenazi og Skelton, samt et stort antall andre dokumenter fra samme tidsperiode som Aftenposten har fått tilgang til, etterlater ett klart budskap: Det israelske forsvaret er i full gang med å forberede seg på en ny krig i Midtøsten. Overfor amerikanske representanter slår toppledere innen Israels forsvar og etterretningsvesen fast at selv om trusselen fra Iran er alvorlig, er trusselen fra de iranskstøttede islamistgruppene Hamas og Hizbollah, henholdsvis på Gazastripen og i Libanon, den mest akutte. Rakettene fra de to islamistgruppene har langt større nøyaktighet enn det iranske ballistiske raketter vil ha, fremgår det.

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Keith Jones, wsws.org, January 3, 2011

The World Socialist Web Site today begins serialization of a statement issued by Marxist Voice, a Pakistani group that has expressed political agreement with the perspectives of the International Committee of the Fourth International and has undertaken to work with the ICFI to build it as the World Party of Socialist Revolution.

We very much welcome this statement. It represents an important advance in the elaboration of a revolutionary perspective and indicates a political development within the working class in Pakistan.

The utter incompatibility of bourgeois rule with the democratic and social aspirations of the workers and toilers of South Asia is ever more manifest. Six decades after the aspiring national bourgeoisies of India and Pakistan joined hands with British imperialism to suppress the anti-imperialist revolution and partition the subcontinent along communal lines, South Asia is home to the world’s largest concentration of malnourished and impoverished people.

Like the US-backed dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf that preceded it, Pakistan’s current Pakistan Peoples Party-led government is imposing brutal austerity measures at the behest of the US- and Western-dominated International Monetary Fund. As for India’s much touted rise, the emergence of Indian-based transnationals and a small cluster of Indian billionaires has been propelled by the immiseration of much of the rural population and the emergence of a savagely exploited working class.

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A new report from the Conflict Monitoring Centre (CMC) has reported that 2,043 Pakistanis have been slain in CIA drone strikes in the past 5 years, with the vast majority of them innocent civilians.

The report notes that the attacks target Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas where “people usually carry guns and ammunition as a tradition. US drones will identify anyone carrying a gun as a militant and subsequently he will be killed.” Pakistan’s government, which has only a nominal presence in the region, traditionally brands anyone killed by the US a “suspect.”

And while 2,043 is a lot of people to kill in the past five years, over 75% of them were actually killed in the past two years since President Obama took office. 2009 saw over 700 people killed in the CIA drone strikes, and the report shows 929 more killed in 2010.

Drone strikes were a comparative rarity when President Bush was in office, but have been dramatically and repeatedly escalated by President Obama, usually in retaliation for attacks by militant groups. This has led CMC to term the program an “assassination campaign turning out to be a revenge campaign.”

The enormous number of civilian deaths goes largely ignored by officials, who insist, on those rare occasions when they will even cop to the programs at all, that they are “very accurate.” The identities of the victims is rarely apparent at the time of the attacks, of course, and it seems there is very little interest in following up with them after the fact, except on the occasions when NGOs point out how many of the victims are just random tribesmen.

Running Cover for Israel

By FRANKLIN LAMB, Counterpunch, January 3, 2011

Beirut

This week marks the second anniversary of among the most savage criminal slaughters of human life in long memory. The 522 hour indiscriminate carnage, “Cast Lead”  that killed 1,417 Palestinians, mostly civilians, 352 of them children, injuring for life more than 5,300 , indicts  Israel as well as those countries that continue to supply it weapons, diplomatic cover and to enforce Israel’s  illegal siege on sealed Gaza.

The US administration, as revealed in a State Department cable posted by Wikileaks, has been working overtime with Israel to parry further The U.S.condemnation of Israeli crimes documented in the Richard Goldstone and Richard Falk Reports, among others. These investigations established massive violations of human rights and international law, war crimes, and possible crimes against humanity while refuting claims by Israel that it acted according to the limited international right of self-defense. Goldstone, Falk and others have demonstrated that it was both the victims of Cast Lead and the Mavi Marmara who alone possessed the right of self defense in light of Israel’s agressions, not Israel.

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The following is a personal appeal from Ron Kovic, Vietnam War veteran and author of “Born on the Fourth of July,” to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans and active-duty service members. Kovic issued the appeal on Dec. 12, 2010, to bring more veterans and GIs into the anti-war struggle and to support the work of March Forward! To learn more about March Forward! visit their website here.

As a former United States Marine Corps infantry sergeant who was shot and paralyzed from the mid-chest down on Jan. 20, 1968, during my second tour of duty in Vietnam, and as someone who has lived with the wounds of that war for over 40 years, I am writing this letter to ask you to join me as we begin a critical new phase in the growing anti-war movement.

Many of you have already served multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. You have been coming home now for almost 10 years. Many have begun to question, to doubt these wars and our leaders. More than 2 million of you have served honorably in both theaters of conflict. Though many years separate us, we are brothers and sisters.

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Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, January 3, 2010

As unfulfilled hopes of peace in the Middle East in 2010 fade from memory, the spectre of war in 2011 looms large. The collapse of Barack Obama’s attempt to broker direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians has created a dangerous vacuum. Men of violence vie to fill it.

There is another way. It could prevent renewed bloodletting, would potentially provide relief and justice for both sides, would likely be supported by most Israelis and Palestinians, and would help clear the path to a wider Arab-Israeli settlement. It is the immediate declaration of an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, recognised by the US and UN. It is an idea whose time has come.

The current situation, dissected by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley in this site last month, is not tenable. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president who pinned his policy on talks, is critically wounded by their failure. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, having rebuffed Obama’s centrist approach, has rendered himself hostage to Israel’s more assertive hard right.

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By Badri Raina, ZNet, January 2, 2011

I

A Sessions Court judge in Raipur, capital of the BJP-ruled state of Chattisgarh, has pronounced Binayak Sen guilty of sedition and conspiracy against the State, and sentenced the good doctor to a life term in prison.

So who is Binayak Sen?

An alumni of the prestigious Christian Medical College in Vellore, who had the foolhardiness to turn his back on career both there and in the equally prestigious Jawahar Lal Nehru university in Delhi, follow the lead of the late and legendary Shankar Guha Niyogi—who was murdered some years ago by paid assassins of industrial interests for his dogged and path-breaking, hence  dangerous, labours among the unorganized adivasis, dalits, women, and other  voiceless denizens of the backwaters of Chattisgarh against some of the most gruesome exploitation that free Indians have known—and devote the last three or so decades of his still young life to serving among the poorest of the poor.

For decades now, this selfless and saintly man has run a weekly clinic deep in the Sal forests of the region that has drawn tribals from as far away as 30 kilometers for healing.  Their only other option a two-day walk through the jungles.  Sen trained hundreds of tribals to become healthcare workers,  an effort whose sterling success found it acceptance as state policy, christened  Mitanin  Swasthya Yojna (volunteer health programme).

Inspired by Niyogi, Sen also helped set up the Shaheed (martyr) hospital, one that still operates with donations from coal miners.

Indeed much of his work parallels the sort of immersion in ministering to the  wretched of the earth  that the world associates with  the Nobel prize winner, Mother Teresa.

With one all-important difference. Binayak, unlike the good Mother, did not think there was any great purchase in being meek.  Thus it is that he made the grievous mistake of standing up and speaking for the “human rights” of  god-fatherless forest dwellers in the face of the cruelties and denials vented upon them by the State, by its vigilante agency of goons named  “Salwa Judum,” and, if only the  judge who sentenced him had listened, by the  insurgent Maoists as well.

In particular, Sen’s opposition to the displacement of a hundred thousand tribals from their homes and hearths by vigilante goons of the State  made the latter saw red.  Ostensibly done to facilitate police operations against the Moaist insurgents and for their own safety (sic) such displacement and any resistance to it by innocent tribals  has  caused  unconscionable brutalities to be  inflicted upon them, often on the charge that they were informants to the insurgents, and guilty of sheltering them.

As to Sen himself,   does it matter that in  repeatedly asking for “equity and peace”  whenever querried by the media, he rarely balked from condemning the atrocities perpetrated by the armed Naxalites on innocent men, women, and children.

But in an era of McCarthyism that now seems to accompany the murderous impatience of India’s State and Corporate combine to enhance private wealth, Binayak’s  infuriating doggedness of purpose in staying his course in the hinterland among the victims on the ground  (had he been, like so many of us, content to combine a lucrative  metropolitan career with urbanite activism, things may not have been so dire, either for him or for the State), finally broke the camel’s back, as it were.

The official finger went up, declaring the doctor public enemy number one.

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