Israel may face war crimes trials over Gaza

March 2, 2009

• International pressure grows over conflict

• Court looks at whether Palestinians can bring case

An injured Palestinian boy

A Palestinian man carries an injured boy into Shifa hospital in Gaza City during an Israeli attack on Gaza in January. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP

The international criminal court is considering whether the Palestinian Authority is “enough like a state” for it to bring a case alleging that Israeli troops committed war crimes in the recent assault on Gaza.

The deliberations would potentially open the way to putting Israeli military commanders in the dock at The Hague over the campaign, which claimed more than 1,300 lives, and set an important precedent for the court over what cases it can hear.

As part of the process the court’s head of jurisdictions, part of the office of the prosecutor, is examining every international agreement signed by the PA to decide whether it behaves – and is regarded by others – as operating like a state.

Following talks with the Arab League’s head, Amr Moussa, and senior PA officials, moves have accelerated inside the court to deliver a ruling on whether it may be able to insist on jurisdiction over alleged war crimes perpetrated in Gaza, with a decision from the prosecutor’s office expected within “months, not years”.

The issue arises because although the ICC potentially has “global jurisdiction” to investigate crimes which fall into its remit no matter where they were committed, Israel – despite having signed the Rome statute that founded the court and having expressed “deep sympathy” with the court’s goals – is not a party.

The ICC, which has 108 member states, has not so far recognised Palestine as a sovereign state or as a member.

The latest moves in The Hague come amid mounting international pressure on Israel and a growing recognition in Israeli government circles that it may eventually have to defend itself against war crimes allegations. The Guardian has also learned that a confidential inquiry by the International Committee of the Red Cross into the actions of Israel and Hamas during the recent conflict in Gaza is expected to accuse Israel of using “excessive force” – prohibited under the fourth Geneva convention.

The Red Cross has been collecting information for two parallel inquiries, one into the conduct of Israel and a second into Hamas, both of which will be presented in private to the parties involved.

In the case of Israel, the Red Cross is expected to highlight three areas of concern: the Israeli Defence Forces’ “use and choice of weapons in a complex and densely populated environment”; the issue of “proportionality”; and concerns over the IDF’s lack of distinction between combatants and non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead. Hamas is likely to be challenged over its use of civilian facilities as cover for its fighters; its summary executions and kneecappings of Palestinians during the campaign; and its indiscriminate firing of rockets into civilian areas.

Meanwhile, sources at the ICC say it is considering two potential tracks that would permit it to investigate what happened in Gaza. As well as determining whether the PA is recognised internationally as a sufficiently state-like entity, the head of jurisdictions in the office of the international criminal court’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is looking at whether the court can consider war crimes allegations on the basis of the dual nationality of either victims or alleged perpetrators whose second passport is with a country party to the court.

The court’s deliberations follow more than 220 complaints about Israel’s actions in Gaza. “It does not matter necessarily whether the Palestinian National Authority is in charge of its own borders,” said a source at the court. “Right now the court is looking at everything from agreements it has signed on education to the constitution of its legal system.”

Yesterday, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, warned Palestinian militants their continuing rocket attacks on Israel would not go unpunished. He said further strikes would “be answered with a painful, harsh, strong and uncompromising response from the security forces”. More than 100 rockets and mortars have exploded in Israel in the six weeks since it ended its air and ground assault on Gaza, to which the government has responded with airstrikes.

Olmert’s warning came as Israel’s attorney general notified the prime minister that he was considering indicting him on charges of allegedly taking cash-stuffed envelopes from a Jewish-American businessman. Five corruption cases are pending against Olmert, although he has denied all wrongdoing. His spokesman said yesterday the charges against the prime minister would “disappear in the end”.

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Political prisoners in Mexico

March 1, 2009
Lourdes Garcia Larque | Green Left, 28 February 2009

After seven-and-a-half years of unjust imprisonment, on February 16, the brothers Hector and Antonio Cerezo were released.

Together with their younger brother Alejandro Cerezo (released in 2005) and two other men, they were detained in August 2001, under the false accusations of being responsible for placing explosive artefacts in three branches of a bank and of being members of the People´s Revolutionary Armed Forces.

They were charged with “organised crime”, and “possession of weapons, ammunition and explosives”.

The Cerezo brothers were detained with no search or arrest warrant. During the detention they were tortured for 12 hours.

For over a year they were held in high security prisons without being charged. One of their lawyers, the human rights activist Digna Ochoa, was assassinated while representing them.

The detainees have suffered continuous harassment during their time in prison, including constant psychological torture, and long periods of isolation. In addition, their siblings outside jail and members of the human rights organisation Comite Cerezo have been constantly harassed and persecuted.

The case of the Cerezo brothers is not an isolated case of unjust imprisonment for political reasons. There are more than 500 political prisoners in Mexico today, the highest number since the “dirty war” of the ’60s and ’70s.

Since 2000, when the conservative National Action Party took office, a total of 900 people have been detained or persecuted for political reasons.

As was the case during the ’70s, the police and military have taken measures to stop and dissolve any political opposition. The dirty war of the ’60s and ’70s left us the inheritance of more than 500 disappeared, and several accounts of assassinations, torture and imprisonment.

Many of the prisoners in Mexico are indigenous people who were not even given an interpreter for their defence. Many are environmental activists who oppose transnational corporations stealing the natural wealth, or defend forests from being destroyed.

Many of them had been captured in frame-ups and massive police operations to stop social mobilisations, as was the case during the 2006 uprising in the state of Oaxaca.

In the Mexican jails there are several Zapatista supporters, students, and people defending their right to the land, human rights activists and sacked workers demanding the right to work.

There are prisoners of the insurgent groups the Popular Revolutionary Army and the Insurgent People’s Revolutionary Army.

Some famous cases include the Atenco leaders of the People´s Front in Defence of the Land, Ignacio del Valle and others, condemned to more than 67 years in prison — an exaggerated sentence that not even the most infamous professional and cruel kidnappers would face.

The military personnel and police officers who take part in the illegal detentions, physical aggression and sexual abuse of the victims, walk free on the streets and get promoted.

On the afternoon of February 16, Antonio Cerezo, now free, shouted to the crowd of activists waiting outside the jail: “Now we will keep fighting to release all the political prisoners in Mexico, and for all the disappeared from the past and the present”.

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The High-Minded Illiteracy Of the Indian Elite

March 1, 2009

By Badri Raina | ZNet, Feb 29, 2009

“No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law”

(Article 21, Constitution of India)

I

The atavistic blood-lust of India’s corporate-media elite has again been to the fore.

Same “premier” English channel; same “top-billed” programme (viz., Face the Nation), same uninterruptibly high-pitched compere, shriekingly anguished about the State’s less-than-murderous response to terrorist crimes.

Question posed for the day: should the lone Pakistani terrorist, Ajmal Kasab, now in Indian custody and duly chargesheeted, be given a fair trial? To wit, does he deserve to be so given etc.,

Argument: since everyone saw the chap on video going about his terrorist business, do we not need only to find the most convenient lamp-post to hang him by?

Indeed, does it matter what the Constitution of the Republic of India stipulates in matters of life, liberty, or death? And, in any case, should not an elite mob have the privilege to consider the Constitution amended through high-minded soundbyte? A self-evidently patriotic procedure that would save the state much money, and peremptorily assuage the damaged prestige of the wounded clan of celebrities who, after all, speak for the whole nation—slumdog and all; at the least those slumdogs who have now become celebrities.

Interestingly, we have not heard such lawless bloodthirstiness expressed in relation to the accused in the Malegaon terrorist blast case. Recall that those accused are also in custody, and have equally made admissible confessions with regard to their guilt. Indeed, in the latest of those confessions, Dayanand Pandey has averred that the money for the Malegaon terrorist act came from the ISI of Pakistan (no less), and through the agency of two senior leaders of the RSS, under the patronage and protection of the top man himself, namely, Shri Mohan Bhagwat.

A senior advocate on the programme clearly had a hard time balancing his soundbyte on the question posed about Ajmal Kasab, since he happens to be defending the accused in the Malegaon case.

Much as he would have liked to concur with the compere, he must have known how indefensible his defence of Sadhvi Pragya Thakur— allegedly, one of the chief perpetrators of the Malegaon blast—would have instantly become had he been tempted by the force of his cultural sympathies to argue that the Constitutional provisions of due process and fair trial need not apply to Kasab. After all, what is sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander as well—at least for a practicing lawyer!


II

The instructive inference from all this is the following: India’s fattened, free-market elite never tire of singing praises of India’s democratic system, and of cocking a snook at the poor relations next door in Pakistan and Bangladesh where democracy never seems to take root.

But to this day, some sixty years after the Republic came into existence via the adoption of the Constitution, the further thought that its founding stipulations with regard to freedom and equality are compellingly grounded in the rule of laws and in their impartial and non-partisan application has not sunk in.

Or the fact that even when the rights of people are circumscribed, that too must happen through the enactment of legislative procedures. Something that Indira Gandhi did during the infamous Internal Emergency of the seventies.

And remember what howls that raised among precisely the sorts of people compering the programme I have talked about!

So that when our no-nonsense elite laud the no-nonsense confinement of “vicious” people in Guantanamo, they do not stop to think why the now thankfully bygone Bush had to find a place for them outside the juridical limits of them United States of America.

Because had they been confined within the territory of the State, they would have automatically, as per American law, become eligible to all the procedures and privileges that American laws furnish to its own citizens.

And that circumstance would have disallowed both torture and kangaroo justice of the kind that our own madam compere seemed to think warranted in the case of Kasab.


III

Indeed, a further compliment is due to American democracy.

Study any American election post the dismantling of racist discrimination and segregation, and you will find that it is never a matter of debate whether laws should apply differently to different people. What those laws should be invariably is the crux of the contentions, in relation either to domestic or foreign concerns.

Alas, we are not there yet.

Thus, in law, white-skinned Americans or Britons or others who have gone over to the Al Qaeda are as much terrorists as those whose skin colour is different, or who espouse a different faith. Those that did the Oklahoma killings found few voices that claimed that they could not be terrorists because they were white and Christian-born. Certainly, no TV channel spoke for them.

India is a different matter altogether: do we not hear from honourable right-wing leaders who aspire to lead the governance of the Republic that Hindus cannot be terrorists, because, being Hindus they must ipso facto be regarded as “nationalists”?

The sort of reason, after all, why no mention of the Malegaon accused—all Hindus—came up at all in the programme I have alluded to.

Or why the killers of the Bombay pogrom of 1992-93 or of Gujarat, 2002 are sought to be viewed through glasses of another make.

Imagine that even after the Special Investigation Team (SIT) mandated by the Supreme Court of India to reinvestigate some of the more unconscionably gruesome episodes of the Gujarat pogrom has reported on affidavit how the state machinery upto its eyebrows was complicit in the pogrom, how a senior minister of Modi’s cabinet, one thought especially close to him, was on the scene of the carnage, distributing swords to the mob and firing from her own pistol, how two of the most upright police officers swore to being asked by Modi personally to lay off the Hindu leaders of the pogrom, none of India’s premier channels has squeaked even to ask for the concerned minister to resign, not to speak of Modi to be indicted! Do recall that during the Gujarat pogrom, among the rapes and hackings, a woman’s womb was cut up and the foetus flung from the point of a sword.

To this day, no one, least of all Modi, has expressed regret, not to speak of owning up responsibility. Even as the chief perpetrators continue to roam free, the state has sought at every step to subvert the procedures and reach of the law—all that testified to by the SIT.

If anything, don’t you know, the same Modi is the cynosure today of some of India’s leading industrialists, and of TV channels busily projecting him as the most desirable candidate to be India’s Prime Minister.

Let it be said that even under the Bush regime, this would never have happened in America.


IV

The Hindu-elite-Indian’s take on the regime of laws and jurisprudence is illustrated literally everyday, of course, in one circumstance or the other But here is another notable instance, also pertaining to Gujarat.

Some months ago, the POTA Review Committee examining the cases of some 135 Muslims who have been rotting in Gujarat’s jails for seven long years as persons allegedly culpable in the Godhra train-burning episode under provisions of that draconian Act (since repealed by the current Indian government), determined that the Act did not apply to these persons, since the train-burning event did not qualify as a “terrorist” Act in the first place! The Committee held that the violence ensued as a consequence of an altercation between the karsevaks (the goons who were returning home after demolishing the Babri mosque, and traveling ticketless as well), and the vendors on the railway station at Godhra.

A finding that has since been upheld first by the Gujarat High Court, and now by the Supreme Court.

Any Gujarat heads rolled for this perfidy? Not a one. Any TV channel ask for such a head or two to roll? Forget it. They are all Muslims, after all! And Modi is the engine of a projected Hindu Rashtra (Theocratic Hindu State), one that promises much to billionaire fat-cats out to make further killings in socially neutered conditions.

Futile to recount what screams go up among the channels here when some elite suspect is held by the police just overnight in confinement, provided of course he is not Muslim.

V

India thus, in truth, is a democracy-in-the-making. Thankfully, a vast enough civil society remains fully engaged in ensuring that in addition to voting every five years, this democracy learns to recognize and accept that unless Indian democracy is also to descend to the arbitrary cronyisms of those that it fatuously derides, it must learn to embrace without question the tenets of citizenship, of universal human rights, and the dispassionate and egalitarian principles of equality before the laws, regardless of caste, creed, gender, language, or class which the Constitution mandates.

All this while many well-to-do Indians who have milked Indian democracy to the hilt thus far seem hell-bent to make of it a handmaiden to hate-filled, sectarian agendas, in addition to the interests of the class they represent and speak for.

Consider that everyday some right-winger or other is heard to scream why Afzal Guru, sentenced to death in the Parliament attack case, is still alive; but never asks the same question about Murugan, sentenced to death for the Rajiv Gandhi murder several years prior to the Parliament attack!

Simple enough reason: the one raises the possibility of causing an electorally fruitful sectarian divide among the polity, the other does not. So much for justice. And so much also for the corporate channels who never mention Murugan, even as Afzal is pressed into the service of talk shows and such-like intended to favour the communalists.

That the NDA government, led by the Hindu right-wind BJP (1998-2004) never did anything to carry out the Afzal or the Murugan sentences is of course another matter that concerns the media but scantily.

The fact is that even some Rajas and Mughal Kings of old had a more non-partisan devotion to the dispensation of justice than many of those who fulminate on behalf of Indian democracy in our day. Who more memorable than Jehangir as a dispenser of impartial justice?

________________________________________________________________
badri.raina@gmail.com

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Invaders of the mind

February 28, 2009
James Buchan on how an intellectual infiltration helped to civilise us

The theory of permanent Muslim-Christian enmity, though it flourishes in the caves of Tora Bora and parts of the American academy, was long ago exploded by the historians. In this clear and well-written book, Jonathan Lyons delves into all sorts of musty corners to show how Arabic science percolated into the Latin world in the middle ages and helped civilise a rude society.

  1. The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization
  2. by Jonathan Lyons
  3. 248pp,
  4. Bloomsbury,
  5. £20
  1. Buy at the Guardian bookshop

He tells how Arab advances in astronomy, mathematics, engineering, navigation, geography, medicine, architecture, chemistry, gardening, finance and verse passed into Europe by way of the Crusader kingdoms, Sicily and Spain and prepared the ground for both the Renaissance and the scientific advances of the 16th and 17th centuries. This infiltration of ideas has left traces in our language, from alcohol, algebra and algorithm to the Arabic names of the bright stars Betelgeuse and Aldebaran.

With the fall of the Roman empire in the west, Europe lost touch with much of its classical inheritance and was isolated by the Arab invasions from the Byzantine empire where some ancient learning survived. Lyons recounts how early medieval Christendom was unable accurately to measure the time of day for monastic offices, or fix the date of Easter, while dogmatic schemes of scripture and hierarchy left little scope for natural science. Aristotle’s influence was confined to the logic and rhetoric of the schools. Bishop Isidore of Seville promulgated the idea that the Earth was flat.

In contrast, when the Arabs conquered Iraq in the first half of the seventh century AD, they came upon living schools of Hellenistic learning in natural science and medicine, along with Indian mathematics and astronomy that had come by way of Iran. Systematic reasoning, driven out of Muslim jurisprudence in favour of precedents from the Prophet’s life and conduct, found a new field of inquiry in ancient geography and cosmology. After the founding of Baghdad in AD762, the Abbasid caliphs established a library and a team of translators at the Beit al-Hikma, the “House of Wisdom” of Lyons’s title.

A famous early catalogue of Arabic books known as the Fihrist lists as many as 80 Greek authors in Arabic translation, chief among them Aristotle, the mathematician Euclid and the medical philosophers Hippocrates and Galen. For this natural philosophy, the Arabs coined the word falsafa, and called its practitioners falasifa. The great Arabic philosophers such as Ibn Sina in Iran (known in Latin Europe as Avicenna, who died in 1037) and Ibn Rushd in Spain (Averroes, who died in 1198) found ways of inserting Aristotelian natural philosophy and Ptolemaic cosmology into a scriptural monotheism, which was precisely what the Latins needed. As Lyons writes, “Arabic replaced Greek as the universal language of scientific inquiry”.

He begins with a vivid contrast. In 1109, 10 years after the Crusaders sacked Jerusalem and put Muslims, Jews and eastern Christians to the sword, Adelard of Bath, a well-born scholar, set off for Antioch not to kill Muslims but, as he put it, “to investigate the studies of the Arabs” (studia arabum). As so often in medieval biography, a few “facts” are made to work hard, and some scholars (though not Lyons) doubt Adelard ever mastered Arabic. Nonetheless, he is thought to have taken part in translations from Arabic of Euclid’s geometric system, the elements, and the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi, and composed such original works as On the Use of the Astrolabe. For Lyons, Adelard is the “first man of science”. Such was the prestige of Arabic learning in England, according to a startling passage here, that partisans of King Henry II, during the quarrel with Rome over Thomas Becket, threatened the king would convert to Islam.

The new learning spread. By the middle of the 12th century, Euclid and Pythagoras are arrayed with the Virgin on the west front of Chartres cathedral. Lyons summons up a world of itinerant scholars such as Michael Scot, who (in the words of one monk) “in Paris seek liberal arts, in Orléans classics, at Salerno medicine, at Toledo magic, but nowhere manners and morals”. Scot found his way to the Arabising court of one of the “baptised Sultans”, the Emperor Frederick II, where he translated Arabic commentaries on Aristotle and helped promote the great mathematician Leonardo of Pisa. Leonardo, generally known as Fibonacci, gave a systematic account of the Arab/Indian numerical system and “the sign 0, which the Arabs call zephyr”, or rather sifr – and which we call the zero.

For the orthodox, these men reeked of brimstone, and Dante placed Michael with the wizards in the eighth circle of hell. St Thomas Aquinas brought a measure of peace to the church, but the systems of Aristotle and Ptolemy became rigid and brittle till they shattered in the Copernican revolution of the 16th century.

Why Muslim science and medicine remained in their medieval state in certain regions well into our lifetimes belongs to another book. For all Lyons’s wonder and admiration, the falasifa were always out of the mainstream of Muslim thought; they are best understood as a sort of sect, like the Shia, and were just as vulnerable to charges of heresy. The only small blemish in this fine book is that Lyons has printed a beautiful page of al-Biruni’s Arabic treatise on mathematics back to front, so the text can only be read in a mirror.

• James Buchan’s latest novel is The Gate of Air, published by Maclehose Press.

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Settlement expansion plans

February 28, 2009

B’Tselem.org, Feb 27, 2009

Following the Oslo agreement, Israel made a commitment to the United States that it would not build new settlements or expand existing ones, except to meet “natural growth.” This narrow allowance, never defined, was utilized by Israel to greatly expand settlements and build new settlements, such as Modi’in Ilit.

In April 2003, Israel for the first time undertook to freeze settlement activity, including natural growth. The commitment was made in the framework of the “road map” agreed to by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the Quartet (the US, the European Union, the UN, and Russia), which provides an outline for achieving a two-state permanent resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In November 2007, at the joint declaration made at the Annapolis Conference, in which Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the Quartet, and Arab League states took part, Israel confirmed its commitment to the road map’s principles.

Despite its commitment to freeze building in settlements, protocols of the Supreme Planning Committee, in the Civil Administration, reveal plans for substantial expansion of settlements. The relevant protocols, of the Supreme Planning Committee’s Environment Subcommittee, were made in 2007 and 2008 and dealt with the treatment of sewage of settlements. B’Tselem received these protocols under the Freedom of Information Act. The plans uncovered also relate to anticipated expansion of settlements lying east of the route of the Separation Barrier, which some, most Israeli politicians present as Israel’s future border. These plans are in their initial planning stage, and none have been approved by the political echelon. However, the fact that the primary planning body in the West Bank considered plans to build thousands of housing units in settlements indicates that the West Bank’s planning bodies flout the official Israeli commitment not to expand settlements in the coming years.

The settlement of Gevaot. Photo: Eyal Reuveni, B'Tselem.
The settlement of Gevaot. Photo: Eyal Reuveni, B’Tselem.

Examples of settlement-expansion planning follow.

  • In the Eztion Bloc, a neighborhood, containing 550 apartments, is planned for the Gevaot area of the Alon Shvut settlement. Plans for building in this area, which currently is home to only twelve families, call for the building of 4,450 apartments. The construction has not yet been approved by the Defense Ministry, but the Environmental Subcommittee approved construction of a sewage-treatment facility, intended for 800 to 1,000 apartments, for the new neighborhood. At the hearing, it was also decided that the facility would treat the sewage from the adjacent Beit Ayin settlement. According to the protocol, 2,000 new apartments are planned for construction in Beit Ayin, which currently has some 120 families.
  • In the RimonimandEinav settlements, which lie east of the Separation Barrier, sewage treatment has been arranged as a first stage in advancing building plans. In Rimonim, 254 new apartments are planned, and in Einav, two plans for additional construction The jurisdiction area of the settlement Mevo Dotan which is also east of the barrier, is expected to expand.
  • The Ma’aleh Adumim municipality prepared a sewage-treatment plan for the settlement, including the planned construction of 3,500 apartments in E-1, in the framework of treatment of the sewage from SHAI [Samaria and Judea] Police Headquarters, which was moved to E-1.
  • In Kfar Adumim, the Subcommittee approved a sewage-treatment plan based on a projected doubling in size of the settlement, to 5,600 residents, in “the coming years.”
  • The Civil Administration’s planning office instructed the Eshkolot settlement to treat its sewage in accordance with the “full occupancy” plans of the settlement, which are expected to quintuple the settlement’s population.

Building of settlements breaches international humanitarian law, which prohibits the occupying power to transfer its population to occupied territory and to make permanent changes there.

Establishment and expansion of the settlements result in continuous and extensive infringement of Palestinian rights, among them the right to self-determination, the right to equality, the right of property, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to water, the right to sanitation and the right to freedom of movement.

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Return of the War Party

February 28, 2009
Patrick J. Buchanan
by  Patrick J. Buchanan
Human Events.com, Feb 27, 2009

“Real men go to Tehran!” brayed the neoconservatives, after the success of their propaganda campaign to have America march on Baghdad and into an unnecessary war that has forfeited all the fruits of our Cold War victory.

Now they are back, in pursuit of what has always been their great goal: an American war on Iran. It would be a mistake to believe they and their collaborators cannot succeed a second time. Consider:

On being chosen by Israel’s President Shimon Peres to form the new regime, Likud’s “Bibi” Netanyahu declared, “Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence.”

Echoing Netanyahu, headlines last week screamed of a startling new nuclear breakthrough by the mullahs. “Iran ready to build nuclear weapon, analysts say,” said CNN. “Iran has enough uranium to make a bomb,” said the Los Angeles Times. Armageddon appeared imminent.

Asked about Iran’s nukes in his confirmation testimony, CIA Director Leon Panetta blurted, “From all the information I’ve seen, I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability.”

Tuesday, Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a front spawned by the Israeli lobby AIPAC, was given the Iranian portfolio. AIPAC’s top agenda item? A U.S. collision with Iran.

In the neocon Weekly Standard, Elliot Abrams of the Bush White House parrots Netanyahu, urging Obama to put any land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians on a back burner. Why?

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now part of a broader struggle in the region over Iranian extremism and power. Israeli withdrawals now risk opening the door not only to Palestinian terrorists but to Iranian proxies.”

The campaign to conflate Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria as a new axis of evil, a terrorist cartel led by Iranian mullahs hell-bent on building a nuclear bomb and using it on Israel and America, has begun. The full-page ads and syndicated columns calling on Obama to eradicate this mortal peril before it destroys us all cannot be far off.

But before we let ourselves be stampeded into another unnecessary war, let us review a few facts that seem to contradict the war propaganda.

First, last week’s acknowledgement that Iran has enough enriched uranium for one atom bomb does not mean Iran is building an atom bomb.

To construct a nuclear device, the ton of low-enriched uranium at Natanz would have to be run through a second cascade of high-speed centrifuges to produce 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium (HUE).

There is no evidence Iran has either created the cascade of high-speed centrifuges necessary to produce HUE or that Iran has diverted any of the low-enriched uranium from Natanz. And the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors retain full access to Natanz.

And rather than accelerating production of low-enriched uranium, only 4,000 of the Natanz centrifuges are operating. Some 1,000 are idle. Why?

Dr. Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the IAEA, believes this is a signal that Tehran wishes to negotiate with the United States, but without yielding any of its rights to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants.

For, unlike Israel, Pakistan and India, none of which signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and all of which ran clandestine programs and built atom bombs, Iran signed the NPT and has abided by its Safeguards Agreement. What it refuses to accept are the broader demands of the U.N. Security Council because these go beyond the NPT and sanction Iran for doing what it has a legal right to do.

Moreover, Adm. Dennis Blair, who heads U.S. intelligence, has just restated the consensus of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran does not now possess and is not now pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Bottom line: Neither the United States nor the IAEA has conclusive evidence that Iran either has the fissile material for a bomb or an active program to build a bomb. It has never tested a nuclear device and has never demonstrated a capacity to weaponize a nuclear device, if it had one.

Why, then, the hype, the hysteria, the clamor for “Action This Day!”? It is to divert America from her true national interests and stampede her into embracing as her own the alien agenda of a renascent War Party.

None of this is to suggest the Iranians are saintly souls seeking only peace and progress. Like South Korea, Japan and other nations with nuclear power plants, they may well want the ability to break out of the NPT, should it be necessary to deter, defend against or defeat enemies.

But that is no threat to us to justify war. For decades, we lived under the threat that hundreds of Russian warheads could rain down upon us in hours, ending our national existence. If deterrence worked with Stalin and Mao, it can work with an Iran that has not launched an offensive war against any nation within the memory of any living American.

Can we Americans say the same?

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, “The Death of the West,”, “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire” and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”

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Obama announces plan to continue US military occupation of Iraq

February 28, 2009
By Joseph Kishore | WSWS,  28 February 2009

President Obama formally announced his administration’s plans for the continued US military occupation of Iraq on Friday, in remarks delivered at the Camp Lejeune marine base in North Carolina. Far from bringing the war to an end, the plans will maintain present troop levels for one year and ensure a substantial military presence for at least three years, through the end of 2011.

As leaked to the press earlier this week, Obama’s plan calls for the withdrawal of all “combat troops” by August 31, 2010, 19 months after his inauguration. This means that the US military presence will continue at present levels through the Iraqi elections scheduled in the fall, ensuring that the occupying forces can maintain a watchful eye over the “democratic” process.

Beginning next year, troops are scheduled to be gradually transferred out of Iraq, leaving a “residual force” of up to 50,000 soldiers after August 2010. Although referred to by the administration as “non-combat troops,” this is a verbal sleight-of-hand, as they will continue to be involved in combat activities. Obama said that these soldiers will be involved in “training, equipping, and advising Iraqi Security Forces as long as they remain non-sectarian; conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq.”

Obama also said that all US soldiers would be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, as required by the Status of Forces Agreement reached by the Bush administration and the Iraqi government in 2008. In a press conference call on Friday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates indicated that this deadline is largely a diplomatic fiction that could be altered. “My own view would be that we should be prepared to have some very modest-sized presence for training and helping them with their new equipment and providing, perhaps, intelligence support and so on,” past 2011, he said. “The Iraqis have not said anything about that at this point, so it remains to be seen whether they will take the initiative.”

The central aim in drawing down US forces in Iraq is to free up military resources for a surge in Central and South Asia, a priority of the Obama administration. “America can no longer afford to see Iraq in isolation from other priorities,” Obama said. “We face the challenge of refocusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan; of relieving the burden on our military; and of rebuilding our struggling economy.”

Last week, Obama announced that he was deploying an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, including 8,000 marines from Camp Lejeune, and the new government has already significantly escalated air attacks on Pakistani soil. Some 15,000 more soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan in the coming months. In his remarks on Friday, Obama said he was also planning a significant increase in the size of the military to facilitate future actions.

Even as he announced the drawdown of “combat” troops over the next 18 months—three months longer than he pledged during his election campaign—Obama made clear his deference to the military. “We will proceed carefully, and I will consult closely with my military commanders on the ground and with the Iraqi government,” he said, making clear that changes to the schedule are quite possible. “There will surely be difficult periods and tactical adjustments. But our enemies should be left with no doubt: this plan gives our military the forces and the flexibility they need to support our Iraqi partners, and to succeed.”

The Obama administration plan conforms to the demands of the military brass, including General Raymond Odierno, the commanding general in Iraq, and General David Petraeus, head of central command and the architect of the Iraq “surge” implemented in 2007. Both Odierno and Petraeus, along with Defense Secretary Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, are holdovers from the Bush administration, ensuring essential continuity with the policy of the previous government.

While some Democrats voiced mild concerns that the 50,000-strong residual force was too high a figure, the plan also won the quick support of major figures in the Republican Party, including former presidential candidate John McCain, who said on Friday that the plan was “reasonable.” He commented, “Given the gains in Iraq and the requirements to send additional troops to Afghanistan, together with the significant number of troops that will remain in Iraq and the president’s willingness to reassess based on conditions on the ground, I am cautiously optimistic that the plan as laid out by the president can lead to success.” House Republican leader John Boehner also endorsed the plan.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Gordon Johndroe, the last national security spokesman for Bush, saying that Obama’s plan was not in conflict with that of his former boss. “The specific timing is only slightly different but consistent with the goal of helping Iraq become self-sufficient in providing its own security,” he said. “This is possibly because of the success of the surge.”

According to media reports, Obama telephoned Bush immediately before beginning his speech at Camp Lejeune, though there was no indication as to what the two discussed.

The main concern of the military was to ensure that any partial drawdown was delayed until after the Iraqi elections, and Obama’s plan was adapted to meet these concerns. In his remarks on Friday, Gates said that it was critical to “get through this year and all of the elections that will take place” and “have a period of adjustment after those national elections to make sure people are accepting the results.”

Obama’s speech was replete with obsequious praise for the military, an implicit endorsement of the “surge” policy of the Bush administration, and an acceptance of the lies employed to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The US military had fought “against tyranny and disorder,” he claimed. “You have borne an enormous burden for your fellow citizens, while extending a precious opportunity to the people of Iraq.” The military had “served with honor, and succeeded beyond any expectation.”

Hammering home his acceptance of the lies used to justify the 2003 invasion, Obama declared to his military audience, “And so I want to be very clear: We sent our troops to Iraq to do away with Saddam Hussein’s regime—and you got the job done. We kept our troops in Iraq to help establish a sovereign government—and you got the job done. And we will leave the Iraqi people with a hard-earned opportunity to live a better life—that is your achievement; that is the prospect that you have made possible.”

In a particularly loathsome passage directed at the Iraqi people, Obama declared, “We Americans have offered our most precious resource—our young men and women—to work with you to rebuild what was destroyed by despotism; to root out our common enemies; and to seek peace and prosperity for our children and grandchildren, and for yours.”

In fact, the principal force of destruction in Iraq has been the American military itself. More than a million people have died as a result of the war and occupation, and millions more turned into refugees. The economy of the country has been shattered by two wars and a decade-long sanctions regime.

All the lies used to justify this crime—lies facilitated by the Democrats and explicitly endorsed by Obama—were intended to cover for a policy aimed at securing the geo-strategic interests of American imperialism, above all the control of Iraq’s oil resources. More than 4,500 US and coalition soldiers have been killed in the process.

Millions of people in the United States voted for Obama because they wanted change in government policy, in particular an end to the war in Iraq. These voters have been disenfranchised, as Obama continues the Iraq occupation and extends military aggression in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In line with his economic program, his military policies are dictated by the interests of the corporate and financial elite.

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The new movement against Israel’s apartheid

February 28, 2009

Eric Ruder looks at the new movement taking shape in this country and around the world–for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and its oppression of the Palestinian people.

Socialist Worker, February 27, 2009

Some 5,000 people turned out in Los Angeles to demonstrate against Israel's war (David Rapkin | SW)

THE RUTHLESS assault on the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza marked a decisive turning point in Israel’s six-decade war of conquest.

In the course of 22 days, Israeli air strikes, artillery shells and invasion forces killed 1,400 Palestinians, injured 5,000 and devastated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. The onslaught also shattered the illusion that–after more than a decade of a “peace process” that was supposed to establish a Palestinian state–Israel has any intention of letting Palestinians realize their aspirations for self-determination.

The ferocity of Israel’s offensive, the enormous loss of civilian life (more than 90 percent of those killed and wounded were civilians) and the unanimous support for the carnage across the Israeli political spectrum shocked the world. Hundreds of millions of people watched in horror as the images of devastation and reports of civilians burned by white phosphorous bombs or buried in the rubble of their former homes filled evening news broadcasts.

But the assault on Gaza has also brought a change of another sort. It stirred a commitment among people around the world that the time has come to do something about the intolerable conditions facing Palestinians.

Labor unions, student groups and other organizations have responded to the renewed calls from Palestinians for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) to put pressure on Israel to end its apartheid policies toward the Palestinian population, both within the state of Israel itself and under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

What you can do

If you want to learn more about the growing struggle against Israeli apartheid, see the Global BDS Movement Web site and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott Web site.

Union activists considering ways to bring up the issue in their own locals will find handy materials at the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario Web site.

Haidar Eid has written an article titled “Sharpeville 1960, Gaza 2009” that recounts his experiences during Israel’s war and adds his voice to call for an international movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, modeled on the anti-apartheid movement.

The One Democratic State Group has issued “A Call from Gaza” that asks activists and organizations to demand that their governments sever ties with Israel, and calls for Israel’s war criminals to be brought to justice.

In Britain, student groups at two dozen universities organized sit-ins and building occupations to demand that their educational institutions condemn Israel’s war crimes, cancel speaking events or honorary titles for Israeli officials, donate surplus supplies such as computers and books to Palestinian schools, and grant scholarships to students from Gaza.

In South Africa, dockworkers refused to unload a ship carrying Israeli goods. The action had a special symbolic significance, given the inspiring example of the South African struggle that overturned apartheid in 1994. As the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) stated in a February 4 press release:

Coming weeks after the massive Israeli massacre in Gaza, this distinguished expression by SATAWU [the union of South Africa’s dockworkers] of effective solidarity with the Palestinian people in general, and with Gaza in particular, sets a historic precedent that reminds us of the first such action during the apartheid era taken by Danish dock workers in 1963, when they decided not to offload ships carrying South African products, triggering a similar boycott in Sweden, England and elsewhere.”

Dockworkers in Greece threatened to block a ship carrying weapons to Israel during the Gaza offensive, and in late January, the Maritime Union of Australia endorsed the call for a BDS campaign, and pledged to boycott all Israeli vessels, as well as all vessels bearing goods arriving from or going to Israel.

In the U.S., a wave of student occupations is taking shape, starting with the University of Rochester and New York University, and others in the planning stages.

In Canada, the Ontario division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents some 200,000 government and other public-sector workers, passed a motion calling for an academic boycott of Israel and an end to any research or investments that could benefit the Israeli army. British and French academics have likewise issued statements calling for a boycott of Israel.

Thus, despite the trauma inflicted during the Gaza offensive, the emerging BDS movement has given a renewed sense of optimism to millions of Palestinians who have felt for years that the world shrugged as they faced daily threats to their existence. As the BNC continued:

If Gaza today has become the test of our universal morality and our common humanity, the fast-spreading BDS movement around the world has passed the test with flying colors. In fact, worldwide support for BDS against Israel in reaction to its war crimes…has shown that international civil society fully recognizes that Israel must be held accountable before international law and must pay a heavy price for its atrocities and ongoing willful destruction of Palestinian society.

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NEVERTHELESS, SOME people raise objections about whether a BDS campaign is justified or effective–or both. Does it make sense to describe Israel as an apartheid state, they ask–and in any case, will a BDS campaign have the desired effect?

While some who raise such considerations would defend Israel no matter how blatant its injustices, others have honest questions about such issues, which deserve careful answers, especially considering that so many people are just learning about the Palestinian struggle.

Though Israelis generally recoil at any comparison of Israel and South Africa, the shared pattern of racist discrimination and control is unmistakable.

“Apartheid was an extension of the colonial project to dispossess people of their land,” said South African cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils during a visit to Jerusalem. “That is exactly what has happened in Israel and the Occupied Territories–the use of force and the law to take the land. That is what apartheid and Israel have in common.”

Kasrils should know what he is talking about. He is one of a handful of Jews who was active as guerilla fighters in the African National Congress during the anti-apartheid struggle.

Even a few prominent Israeli politicians draw the connection between Israeli and South African apartheid.

“The Intifada is the Palestinian people’s war of national liberation,” wrote former Israeli Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair in 2002 in Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, referring to the Palestinian uprising of that year. “We enthusiastically chose to become a colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the Occupied Territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities…We established an apartheid regime.”

Indeed, Palestinians today endure the Israeli equivalent of the pass laws of South Africa’s white minority regime. In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians must spend hours waiting to pass through checkpoints to travel distances that should take minutes–all while suffering humiliation and abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers. Then there are the house demolitions, the strangulation of the economy and the constant threat of worse, in the form of targeted assassinations or violence from Jewish settlers.

“The similarities between the situation of East Jerusalemites and Black South Africans is very great in respect of their residency rights,” says John Dugard, a professor of international law who helped construct South Africa’s human rights law in the post-apartheid era, and now serves as the UN’s chief human rights monitor in the West Bank and Gaza. “East Jerusalem has territorial classification that has the same sort of consequences as race classification had in South Africa in respect of who you can marry, where you can live, where you can go to school or hospital.”

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BUT EVEN if Israel can be accurately called an apartheid state, won’t a BDS campaign–and especially a cultural, academic and sports boycott–make impossible precisely the kind of exchange necessary to end Israeli apartheid?

As Haider Eid, a resident of Gaza, a professor of English literature, and a member of the steering committee of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, explains:

The same argument was used against the academic, cultural and sports boycott of South Africa.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan talked about ‘constructive engagement’ as a way to defend their diplomatic ties with South Africa. Some academics and athletes echoed these same arguments. But they forget that they are making an abnormal situation into a normal one. The international community had to make it clear to the white racists of South Africa that what they were doing was unacceptable.

I have no problem with the exchange of academic ideas. But I myself am an academic. I have been invited to five conferences over the last year, but I have not been allowed by the Israelis to leave Gaza. Why should there be such preoccupation about the freedom of exchange of ideas with Israeli institutions when Israel itself denies such exchange to Palestinians in all spheres of life?

Also, it’s important to point out that we are only talking here of boycotting institutions, not individual academics, and we are in favor of exchange with Israeli academics who object to Israel’s occupation, who support the right of return of the more than 6 million Palestinian refugees scattered throughout the region and so on. Israeli academic institutions, on the other hand, have unfortunately supported the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, supported the dispossession of Palestinian refugees since 1948, and have not raised their voices against the latest massacre in Gaza.

An international campaign of the sort that was essential to the eventual victory of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa is just as essential–if not more so–in the case of Israel because of the blanket support Israel receives from the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations Security Council.

The U.S., for example, gives billions of dollars annually–in the form of both military and economic aid–to Israel, and this support is crucial to Israel’s ability to continue its policy of territorial expansion and repression of Palestinians.

Likewise, the European Union in recent years has expanded, rather than reduced, its economic ties with Israel, a development that no doubt encouraged Israeli leaders to carry out the recent Gaza massacre without fear that such conduct might jeopardize their economic and political standing in the world.

The United Nations regularly reaffirms resolutions stipulating that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and calling on Israel to accept the return of Palestinian refugees. But when it comes to enforcing its resolutions, the UN, which is beholden to world powers such as the U.S., won’t take any action to compel Israel to live up to its obligations under international law. As Eid explains:

We’ve lost faith in governments, in the United Nations, and the rest of the so-called international community. We’ve said our only hope is with civil society organizations, unions and solidarity movements–and this is what is happening right now.

We don’t want people just to react to the Gaza massacre for a couple of months, and then forget about it. We want this to continue. Israel is under fire now from civil society organizations. This is a historical moment, and we must seize it.

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SRI LANKA: U.N. Urged to Intervene to Protect Civilians

February 28, 2009

By Haider Rizvi | Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 (IPS) – The fast deteriorating humanitarian situation in Sri Lanka – caused by the lingering armed conflict between the government and rebel forces – demands immediate action on the part of the U.N., a leading international human rights organisation said Friday.

The call for U.N. help comes as tens of thousands of civilians in Sri Lanka’s northern region have been caught up in a fresh round of fighting between Sinhalese majority-led armed forces and minority Tamil militants seeking freedom from the centre.

“The escalating humanitarian situation there needs an urgent Security Council response,” said Anna Neistat of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, which works closely with U.N. rights bodies.

During a recent two-week trip to the conflict zone in the north of Sri Lanka, Neistat observed that many civilians were forced to flee areas controlled by Tamil fighters, only to get trapped in military camps run by the government.

Her statement came just a few hours after the top U.N. humanitarian official, John Holmes, briefed the 15-member U.N. Security Council about how much pain and suffering the Sri Lankan civilians were enduring as a result of the armed conflict.

In his visit to the north, Holmes urged combatants on both sides to make greater efforts to stop the rising toll of civilian casualties and to protect the people trapped in areas held by rebel fighters.

According to U.N. reports, thousands of Sri Lankans are fleeing Vanni, where government forces are in the midst of a fierce armed offensive against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The U.N. emergency relief fund has targeted 10 million dollars to assist civilians who have fallen victim to the fresh round of fighting between the army and the LTTE militants.

“I am desperately concerned about this humanitarian situation,” said Holmes at the end of his three-day visit to Sri Lanka to assess the humanitarian situation.

According to the U.N., due to the conflict tens of thousands of people in the north have been deprived of food and medical assistance. During his visit, Holmes urged rebels to let civilians move freely and pressed the government to ensure a “peaceful, orderly and humane end” to the conflict.

Sri Lanka has been mired in ethnic violence between the Sinhalese-dominated national army and the LTTE rebels for more than three decades. The armed conflict has taken tens of thousands of lives, and is considered one of the deadliest in the world.

Last month, government forces captured a major stronghold of the Tamil rebels. President Mahinda Rajapakse called it an unparalleled victory and said he wanted the rebels to surrender.

A ceasefire between the government and the rebel forces in late 2002 raised hopes for a lasting settlement. But peace talks stalled and monitors reported open violations of the truce by the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.

The current round of fighting, which started last December, has trapped some 250,000 civilians in the conflict zone, with more than 30,000 already seeking shelter outside their native towns and villages.

Holmes said during his visit he found that most of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) were mentally and physically exhausted after weeks of sheltering in makeshift bunkers, but that their basic needs were met.

HRW and other human rights organisations say they want the U.N. Security Council to address the situation in Sri Lanka in accordance with international humanitarian law “without any delay.”

“People who flee abuses by the Tamil Tigers should not have to fear abuses by the government forces,” said Neistat. “But so long as international agencies are kept away from the screening process, they will have reason to be afraid.”

Considering the fact that a number of journalists have been killed in recent weeks and months, she may be right. The London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International claims that at least 10 media workers have been killed in Sri Lanka since 2006. Many of the killings have been linked by observers to the military and other law-enforcement agencies in Colombo.

In its annual press freedom index last year, the media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters without Borders) ranked Sri Lanka 165 out of 173 countries.

Some reports from the region suggest that the Indian government is trying to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to end its military operations in Tamil-dominated area, but whether it will be successful remains unclear.

Diplomatic observers who are knowledgeable about Sri Lanka’s internal conflict say that, at the moment, they do not expect that the U.N. Security Council is ready to send a peacekeeping force to that country.

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NATO mosque attack sparks Afghan riot

February 28, 2009

Morning Star Online

(Friday 27 February 2009)
ENOUGH ALREADY: Afghan demonstrators shouting anti-US slogans during a demonstration against the alleged shooting.

ENOUGH ALREADY: Afghan demonstrators shouting anti-US slogans during a demonstration against the alleged shooting.

OVER 500 Afghan protesters blocked roads and fought police on Friday after NATO occupation forces fired gunshots in a village mosque.

In the latest in a series of outrages against the civilian population of the US and NATO-occupied country, Polish forces fired their guns in a mosque in the village of Dhi Khodaidad in Ghazni province.

The crowd threw stones at police and at least three demonstrators were wounded by gunfire before the violence subsided.

An eyewitness said that he had been in the mosque when the troops raided it. He said that the bullets had hit a wall but had not injured anyone.

Deputy Governor Kazim Allayar, who led a delegation that visited the mosque on Friday, said that at least two bullets had hit the door of the building. He added that government officials were due to meet Polish forces to find out if they were involved.

NATO forces said that an initial inquiry had failed to produce reports of troops in Dhi Khodaidad, but they were continuing their investigation.

“We don’t believe there were any forces in the area yesterday,” said a spokesman.

Polish Defence Ministry spokesman Robert Rochowicz claimed that he had “no information at all about any kind of incident concerning Polish troops in Afghanistan.”

He said that he would have been informed if anything had happened.

Amnesty International warned on Thursday that Afghanistan was at a “tipping point” as civilian deaths mount in the country.

A new report by the human rights organisation focused on the case of two brothers who were shot dead in a night-time raid by occupation forces in their home in Kandahar in January 2008.

Amnesty’s report stressed that their killing is a notable example of the lack of accountability of international forces.

The two men, Abdul Habib, a father of six, and Mohammed Ali, a father of five, were shot in their homes at point-blank range in front of their families by occupation forces in camouflage uniforms.

The men were both unarmed. More than a year later, no-one has admitted responsibility despite inquiries by Amnesty International, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston.

NATO and the Romanian Defence Ministry announced the death on Thursday of a Romanian soldier in a roadside bomb in the southern province of Zabul.

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