Does Zionism legitimize every act of violence?

February 16, 2009

By Gideon Levy | Haaretz, Israel,

February 16, 2009

The Israeli left died in 2000. Since then its corpse has been lying around unburied until finally its death certificate was issued, signed, sealed and delivered on Tuesday. The hangman of 2000 was also the gravedigger of 2009: Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The man who succeeded in spreading the lie about there being no partner has reaped the fruit of his deeds in this election. The funeral was held two days ago.

The Israeli left is dead. For the past nine years it took the name of the peace camp in vain. The Labor Party, Meretz and Kadima had pretensions of speaking in its name, but that was trickery and deceit. Labor and Kadima made two wars and continued to build Jewish settlements in the West Bank; Meretz supported both wars. Peace has been left an orphan. The Israeli voters, who have been misled into thinking that there is no one to talk to and that the only answer to this is force – wars, targeted killings and settlements – have had their say clearly in the election: a closing sale for Labor and Meretz. It was only the force of inertia that gave these parties the few votes they won.

There was no reason for it to be otherwise. After many long years when hardly any protest came from the left, and the city square, the same square that raged after Sabra and Chatila, was silent, this lack of protest has been reflected at the ballot box as well. Lebanon, Gaza, the killed children, cluster bombs, white phosphorus and all the atrocities of occupation – none of this drove the indifferent, cowardly left onto the street. Though ideas of the left have found a toehold in the center and sometimes even on the right, everyone from former prime minister Ariel Sharon to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has spoken in a language that once was considered radical. But the voice was the voice of the left while the hands were the hands of the right.

On the fringes of this masked ball existed another left, the marginal left – determined and courageous, but minuscule and not legitimate. The gap between it and the left was supposedly Zionism. Hadash, Gush Shalom and others like them are outside the camp. Why? Because they are “not Zionist.”

And what is Zionism nowadays? An archaic and outdated concept born in a different reality, a vague and delusive concept marking the difference between the permitted and the proscribed. Does Zionism mean settlement in the territories? Occupation? The legitimization of every act of violence and injustice? The left stammered. Any statement critical of Zionism, even the Zionism of the occupation, was considered a taboo that the left did not dare break. The right grabbed a monopoly on Zionism, leaving the left with its self-righteousness.

A Jewish and democratic state? The Zionist left said yes automatically, fudging the difference between the two and not daring to give either priority. Legitimization for every war? The Zionist left stammered again – yes to the beginning and no to the continuation, or something like that. Solving the refugee problem and the right of return? Acknowledgment of the wrongdoing of 1948? Unmentionable. This left has now, rightly, reached the end of its road.

Anyone who wants a meaningful left must first air out Zionism in the attic. Until a movement that courageously redefines Zionism arises from the mainstream, there will be no broad left here. It is not possible to be both leftist and Zionist only in accordance with the right’s definition. Who has decided that the settlements are Zionist and legitimate, and the struggle against them is neither?

This taboo must be broken. It is permissible not to be a Zionist, as commonly defined today. It is permissible to believe in the Jews’ right to a state and yet come out against the Zionism that engages in occupation. It is permissible to believe that what happened in 1948 should be put on the agenda, to apologize for the injustice and act to rehabilitate the victims. It is permissible to oppose an unnecessary war from its very first day. It is permissible to think that the Arabs of Israel deserve the same rights – culturally, socially and nationally – as Jews. It is permissible to raise disturbing questions about the image of the Israel Defense Forces as an army of occupation, and it is even permissible to want to talk to Hamas.

If you prefer, this is Zionism, and if you prefer, this is anti-Zionism. In any case, it is legitimate and essential for those who do not want to see Israel fall victim to the insanities of the right for many more years. Anyone who wants an Israeli left must say “enough” to Zionism, the Zionism of which the right has taken complete control.

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Miliband faces new ‘torture cover-up’ storm

February 16, 2009

Richard Norton-Taylor | The Guardian, Monday 16 February 2009

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, was last night facing fresh pressure over torture allegations after it was revealed that his officials asked the US for help in suppressing crucial evidence.

The Foreign Office solicited a letter from the US to back up its claim that if the evidence was disclosed, Washington could stop sharing intelligence with Britain. The claim persuaded two high court judges earlier this month to suppress what they called “powerful evidence” relating to the ill treatment of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident being held in Guantánamo Bay.

In response to the British request, John Bellinger, the state department’s chief legal adviser, said in a letter to the Foreign Office last August: “We want to affirm the public disclosure of these documents is likely to result in serious damage to US national security and could harm existing intelligence information-sharing arrangements between our two governments”.

In their judgment, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones made it clear that without Miliband’s claim about what they called the “gravity of the threat” from the US, they would have ordered the evidence to be revealed. Though the judges repeatedly used the word “threat”, Miliband subsequently denied the US had threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Britain.

Miliband’s denial last week led lawyers for Mohamed and the media, including the Guardian, to ask the judges to reopen the case on the grounds that the foreign secretary had fundamentally undermined his case. The judges agreed, against Foreign Office opposition, to reopen the case next month.

Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, the legal charity which represents Mohamed, said yesterday: “This just isn’t going to go away unless both the US and the UK stop trying to suppress evidence of torture”.

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“The Lancet” reveals horrendous Israeli war crimes

February 16, 2009

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Dr Gideon Polya | uruknet.info, Feb 14, 2009

The horrendous mortality and morbidity statistics revealed by the paper “The Wounds of Gaza“, just published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet  are truly shocking – 1,350 killed (60% children) and 5,450 severely wounded (40% children) in reprisals for zero (0) Israeli deaths from Gaza rockets in the preceding year. This demands International Criminal Court and intra-national prosecutions (e.g. in major Israeli military R & R destination countries Australia, the US, the UK and India) and Sanctions and Boycotts against Apartheid Israel by all decent Australians and indeed all decent people around the world.

The Gaza Strip is a self-governing Apartheid Israeli Concentration Camp ruled by the Hamas Government which won 76 out of 132 seats in the Occupied Palestinian Parliamentary elections held under Israeli guns in 2006 (Fatah won 43 seats) (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas ). The Israelis responded by arresting as many Hamas MPs as they could find, the remainder fleeing to Gaza. In the current Israeli Gaza Massacre, the Israelis are evidently bent on “finishing the job” (they have already destroyed the Gaza Parliament House). The war criminal, pro-Zionist Western backers of Apartheid Israel followed suit by declaring the democratically elected Hamas MPs to be “terrorists” and only dealing with the Fatah.

Under the loathed, Nazi-style, racist Apartheid régime in South Africa its Bantustans were policed by police and the worst atrocity was the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in which South African police killed 69 African protesters (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre ) – “The official figure is that 69 people were killed, including 8 women and 10 children, and over 180 injured, including 31 women and 19 children”.

Gaza – what the Catholic Church via Vatican justice and peace minister Cardinal Renato Martino and leading US conservative Pat Buchanan both call an Israeli-guarded Gaza Concentration Camp (see:  http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24888817-15084,00.html and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em8tREX9L8o )  – remains under blockade and under dire threat of further Israeli atrocities, this latest atrocity involving 1,350 Palestinians killed in asserted reprisals for zero (0)  Israeli deaths from Gaza rockets in the preceding year and 28 Israeli deaths from Gaza missiles in the preceding 8.25 years, this latter statistic yielding an “annual homicide rate” in “persons killed per million of population” of 0.5 (Israelis killed by Gaza missiles) – as compared to 0.5 (rapist husbands killed by raped wives), 1.0 (violent husbands killed by battered wives), 15 (Israelis by Israelis), 56 (Americans), 100 (Americans by guns), 164 (Palestinians killed violently by Israelis), 200 (African-Americans), 473 (citizens of Detroit, Michigan, USA) and 902 per million per year  (annual Palestinian non-violent deaths through war criminal, Geneva Convention-violating Israeli-imposed deprivation) (see Dr Gideon Polya, “Palestinian-Israeli Death Ratios . Nazi-style Israeli Gaza War Crimes”:  http://mwcnews.net/content/view/27795/42/ ).

However the numerically vastly greater Israel atrocity lies in the avoidable deaths (excess deaths) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory  due to Occupier refusal to supply life-sustaining food, medicine and medical services to its conquered subjects “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”, as unequivocally demanded by Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (see: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm ).

3,000 under-5 year old Occupied Palestinian infants die every year (about 80% avoidably), this corresponding to 3,000/ 0.7 = 4,286 total avoidable deaths annually (see “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/ ), and 4,286 x 8.25 = 35,360 non-violent Occupied Palestinian deaths since September 2000, in addition to the 6,200 violent Occupied Palestinian deaths at the hands of Apartheid Israelis in this period.

In the period 1967-2009 in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, post-invasion non-violent excess deaths totalled 0.3 million; post-invasion violent deaths at the hands of Israelis totalled about 10,000; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths totalled about 0.2 million; there are over 7 million Palestinian refugees (4.3 million registered with the UN) – a Palestinian Holocaust and a Palestinian Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ).

Here are some shocking statistics from this report published in one of the World’s top medical journals, The Lancet (see: http://www.thelancetglobalhealthnetwork.com/archives/608 ), quote: “The wounds of Gaza are deep and multi-layered. Are we talking about the Khan Younis massacre of 5,000  in 1956 or the execution  of 35,000 prisoners of war by Israel in 1967? Yet more wounds of the First Intifada, when civil disobedience by an occupied people against the occupiers resulted in massive wounded and hundreds dead?  We also cannot discount the 5,420 wounded in southern Gaza alone since 2000. Hence what we are referring to below are only that of the invasion as of 27 December 2008.

Over the period of 27 December 2008 to the ceasefire of 18 Jan 2009, it was estimated that a million and a half tons of explosives were dropped on Gaza Strip. Gaza is 25 miles by 5 miles and home to 1.5 million people. This makes it the most crowded area in the whole world. Prior to this Gaza has been completely blockaded and starved for 50 days.  In fact since the Palestinian election Gaza has been under total or partial blockade for several years….

Death toll

As of 25 January 2009, the death toll was estimated at 1,350 with the numbers increasing daily. This is due to the severely wounded continuing to die in hospitals. 60% of those killed were children.

Severe injuries

The severely injured numbered 5,450, with 40% being children. These are mainly large burns and polytrauma patients.” End quote.

While in the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre the South African police used handguns, the weapons used by Israelis on its Gaza Concentration Camp in 2008-2009 included phosphorus bombs (inflicts horrendous burns), heavy bombs including depleted uranium and DIME bombs (limb-slicing dense inert material explosives), fuel air explosives (bunker busters and implosion bombs),  silent bombs (a new particle weapon?) and “conventional” automatic handguns (that were also used in documented executions of Gaza civilians ordered out of their homes by Israeli troops).

These atrocities demand (1) direct UN military intervention armed with already-passed UN General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions; (2) intra-national and inter-national Sanctions and Boycotts against Israel, its Zionist or pro-Zionist backers in the US, Canada, the UK, the EU and Australia and indeed against all the countries backing Israel; and (3) arrest and trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC) of all complicit Israeli politicians, officials and military wherever they can be apprehended throughout the world.

One of the best-known Jewish scholars in the world today, Professor Jared Diamond, in his best-selling book “Collapse (Prologue, p10, Penguin edition) enunciated the “moral principle, namely that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate, or exterminate another people” – an injunction grossly violated by Israel.

Further, “zero tolerance for racism”, “never again to anyone” and “bear witness” are the fundamental, moral messages from the Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation), the World War 2 Holocaust in general (30 million Slav, Jewish and Roma dead) and the World War 2 Eastern Theatre Holocaust (35 million Chinese dead under Japanese occupation and 6-7 million Indians starved to death by the British in the man-made 1943-1945 Bengal Famine – for details of the latter “forgotten” Bengali Holocaust see the BBC broadcast in which I participated together with 1998 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen, Harvard University, medical historian Dr Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Wellcome Institute, University College London, and other scholars: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html ; see also “Media lying over Churchill’s crimes. British-Indian Holocaust”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/26713/42/ ).

These fundamental moral injunctions from the Jewish Holocaust and the World War 2 Holocaust in general of “zero tolerance for racism”, “never again to anyone” and “bear witness” are also being grossly violated by the Zionists running Israel and their racist, genocidal US Alliance backers..

If the World unjustly continues to accept that after 40 years of  Israeli Occupation it is “right” for 4 million Occupied Palestinians (50% children, 75% women and children)  to continue to be subject to highly abusive, race-based mass imprisonment without charge or trial then it should at least urgently insist  that they should be Occupied immediately by a Civilized  Country e.g. by  a peace-keeping force from a Civilized Country such as Costa Rica (no army), Switzerland (neutral country) or Fiji (distinguished record of participation in peace-keeping) with International and US Guarantees of territorial integrity and total airport level security for Nazi-style, Zionist, Apartheid Israel.

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Why Obama Should Reconsider His Afghanistan Pledge

February 16, 2009

Col. Daniel Smith | Foreign Policy In Focus, February 16, 2009

Last week Secretary of Defense Robert Gates briefed President Barack Obama on Afghanistan and the Pentagon’s proposal to send 15,000 more troops there by late spring. Obama is expected to accept the plan as a “down payment” on his pledge during the campaign to put more troops into the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban insurgents. These troops are only about half the number requested by the field commanders, and Gates will return with a new request soon.

This decision — and the original campaign pledge — gave many pause about supporting Obama. It doesn’t serve the interests of either the United States or Afghanistan. After all, no U.S. “vital national interest” is involved. President George W. Bush chose to use military force as a form of retribution for September 11, 2001. And as long as foreign military forces are in Afghanistan, the Afghan people and government can’t exercise full sovereignty in accord with their traditions.

Nor is this decision a positive development for the U.S. soldiers and Marines expected to pick up the pace of operations in Afghanistan. With the “insurgents” adopting tactics from their Iraqi counterparts, the terrible toll of Iraq will be repeated, indeed compounded, in Afghanistan.

The units to be sent as “down payment” will be two Army Brigade Combat Teams and one of Marines. Originally slated for Iraq, they’re going to Afghanistan because security in Iraq has “improved” to the point that fewer U.S. troops are needed there. One unit that had undergone training for deployment to Iraq is already in the process of establishing its base camp in southern Afghanistan.

The Wrong War

Afghanistan isn’t the “good war.” It’s wrong not only for Afghanistan but for U.S. soldiers. Before he agreed to Gates’ request, Obama should have paid close attention to three recent developments.

The first was the Army’s announcement that once again in 2008, a record number of service members — 128 — committed suicide. No Pentagon official was prepared to go on record to discuss the causes of this annual record-setting death toll. Even off-record murmurings were generally confined to the usual financial, personal, legal, and work-related factors. But if one examines the records, what jumps out is the correlation between multiple combat tours (until recently 15 months’ duration), the number of cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and suicides. Over the last four years, 30% of suicides occurred during deployment and 35% after completing a deployment. As for PTSD among soldiers with multiple tours, the rates of occurrence continue to be substantially higher than among soldiers on their first deployment.

There has also been an increase in instances of domestic violence and an accelerating divorce rate for returning troops. For some months, the Pentagon has known that one-third of women serving in the military claimed they were victims of sexual harassment. Last week, CBS News, in a two-part report, said that nationwide police statistics reveal that in 50% of domestic violence cases, at least one person involved was in the military. Over the last 10 years, almost 90 women have been killed.

High-Altitude Assignment

The third development involves the particular geography of Afghanistan. The United States plans to base its reinforcements in an extremely rugged and high-altitude part of Afghanistan. Despite these conditions, the weight of equipment and protective personal armor the individual soldier is expected to carry has gone from a maximum of 65-80 pounds — even as an infantry platoon leader I never came close to carrying such a load on a “forced march” during training — to 130-150 pounds for a typical three-day mission. That’s as much as three times the recommended weight load of 50 pounds per Marine in a 2007 Department of the Navy study. The combination of high altitudes with thinner oxygen, rugged terrain that limits vehicle usage, and the weight of equipment deemed essential is causing a new kind of stress that is putting more troops out of commission. The Army lists 257,000 acute orthopedic injuries (muscular or skeletal stress or fractures) for 2007, up by 10,000 from 2006.

The increased number of troops Obama plans to send to Afghanistan — together with the growing number of temporary and, more seriously, “permanent non-deployables” from physical and psychological stress — could leave the Army once again resorting to enlist anyone who can walk and carry a weapon. That will include many who suffer from PTSD but who, being part of the “warrior culture,” are reluctant to seek help.

Obama was elected in part because the American public was tired of more and more veterans returning home mentally and physically damaged by experiences they didn’t need to endure. Obama may find that, if he continues down this path, “the war Bush forgot” will all too soon turn into “Obama’s war.” And he’ll have to shoulder the responsibility for all the damage done to Afghan civilians and U.S. soldiers alike.

Daniel Smith is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. You can contact Dan at dan (at) fcnl (dot) org or reach him at his blog The Quakers’ Colonel.

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Israel now India’s top defense supplier

February 16, 2009

By Yaakov Katz | The Jerusalem Post, Feb 15, 2009

Israel has overtaken Russia as the main defense supplier to India after breaking the $1 billion mark in new contracts signed annually over the past two years. According to news reports, Russia had averaged sales of $875 million annually to India for the past 40 years.

The Spyder air defense system...

The Spyder air defense system at an exhibition.

In August, India’s defense ministry approved a $2.5b. joint IAI-Rafael deal to develop a new and advanced version of the Spyder surface-to-air missile system. In March, India is scheduled to receive the first of three new Phalcon Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) developed for the Indian Air Force by Israel Aerospace Industries. The sides are in talks for the possible purchase of another three AWACS.

The Phalcon (phased array L-band conformal radar) was designed and manufactured by Elta. It includes radar, electronic intelligence systems, and communication equipment. It has already sold a similar system to the Chilean air force. IAI last week displayed at the Aero India defense expo its new third-generation AWACS based inside a small G550 Gulfstream business jet.

“We have a very special defense relationship with India. It’s now moving toward joint development of equipment. There are several new projects in the pipeline,” Maj.-Gen. (res.) Udi Shani, head of the Defense Ministry’s SIBAT Defense Export and Cooperation Agency said in an interview with the Indian press last week.

Israeli defense officials said that in the past decade, the countries have signed deals reaching a whopping $9b. “There is close cooperation and the Indians respect Israeli systems and our experience in fighting terror,” one official said.

Another system India recently purchased from Israel is the aerostat radar to help defend the country against attacks like the ones in Mumbai in November in which the attackers infiltrated the city by sea. The radars will be deployed in strategic points to provide advance warning against incoming enemy aircraft and missiles. The deal is valued at $600m.

The EL/M-2083 Aerostat radars are a simpler version of the Green Pine radar, made by Israel Aerospace Industries, and used by the Arrow missile defense system. The phased-array radars are mounted on blimp-like balloons tethered to the ground and capable of detecting intrusions earlier than ground-based radar systems.

Following the Mumbai attacks, Israel and India also agreed upon the joint development of medium-range surface-to-air missiles (MRSAM) for the air force.

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Pakistan Seethes After Killer Drone Disclosure

February 16, 2009
By Noah Shachtman | wired.com,February 15, 2009

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U.S. drones unleashed another attack on Pakistani militants Saturday — reportedly killing more than 30 people in the process. It’s the fifth attack this year and the second since Barack Obama took office, less than a month ago. But what everyone in Pakistan wants to know is: Was the attack launched from inside Pakistan itself?

On Thursday, U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein caused an international uproar, when she told an intelligence committee hearing that “as I understand it, these [drones] are flown out of a Pakistani base.”

Up until then, Islamabad had allegedly kept up a kind of  “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy towards the robotic strikes, which are deeply unpopular among the Pakistani public. Officials would denounce the drones in the press — and then sneak peeks at the robo-planes’ video feeds.

So the Pakistani government went into damage-control overdrive, after the Senator’s little comment. “It was an off-the-cuff remark and not a revelation as some media reports have made it out to be,” said Pakistani embassy spokesman Nadeem Kiani. “There are no foreign bases in Pakistan.”

“We do have the facilities from where they can fly, but they are not being flown from Pakistani territory. They are being flown from Afghanistan,” Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar added. “I do not know on what she based all this.”

The Pentagon, meanwhile, seemed caught off-guard by the whole thing. “The first I have heard of it. I know nothing of it. I — I’d, frankly, follow it up with her. I know nothing of it,” Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

But Pakistan’s press isn’t buying it. “Official sources have lost all credibility. After all, we have been officially briefed on more than one occasion that no drone flew without the knowledge of the Pakistani military,” says The News. “The brazenness with which the government has chosen to lie not only to its people but to Parliament shows how little it cares for either.”

Islamabad “has remained stuck to its policy of denial for too long and this will, precisely for that reason, hurt more than anyone might have thought in Washington,” the Daily Times says. “But the bow is already bent and drawn. The government will have to show some slick footwork to get out of this mess.”

On Tuesday, counterinsurgency guru Dr. David Kilcullen told Danger Room that “if we want to strengthen our friends and weaken our enemies in Pakistan, bombing Pakistani villages with unmanned drones is totally counterproductive.” That was two days before Feinstein’s disclosure.

[Photo: USAF]

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Pakistani government must protect Swat valley civilians

February 16, 2009

Amnesty International, 12 February 2009

According to official estimates, over the past year more than 1,200 people have been killed and between 200,000 and 500,000 have been displaced in the Swat valley as a result of fighting between Pakistani Taleban groups and the military.

The Pakistani government is being urged to act immediately to protect hundreds of thousands of people from insurgents in the Swat valley and elsewhere in the country.

“For the past five years the government’s response to the rise of insurgents in Swat and the Tribal Areas has vacillated between launching often indiscriminate and disproportionate military operations that mostly harm civilians and abandoning Pakistani citizens to abusive insurgent groups,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director.

Since 2007, a local armed group ideologically affiliated with Afghanistan’s Taleban movement has managed to take effective control of nearly 80 percent of the Swat valley territory. The area was once a tourist destination just 100 miles from Islamabad and is normally home to around 1.5 million people.

Over the past two years, radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah and his followers have increasingly established control over the Swat Valley, imposing a de-facto administration. The group has consolidated its control by setting up a parallel justice system with over 70 “courts” to administer “speedy and easy justice”. This means meting out punishments that amount to cruel, degrading, or inhumane treatment. The Pakistani Taleban recently threatened to kill all lawyers and judges if they failed to stop working with the state judicial system.

In Swat, the Pakistani Taleban have committed serious human rights abuses, including the unlawful killing of scores of government workers as well as those whom they view as violating their edicts. The Taleban have publicly whipped men for shaving their beards, destroyed shops for selling music and forcibly prohibited women from leaving their houses unless escorted by a male relative.

The main square of Mingora, the area’s largest city, has been locally dubbed Khooni Chowk, or “bloody square”, in reference to the more than two dozen bodies the Pakistani Taleban have publicly displayed there.

“The Pakistani Taleban have shown their contempt for the lives and rights of the people of the Swat valley, whilst Pakistani military forces have often violated the human rights and safety of the people that they are ostensibly trying to protect,” said Sam Zarifi.

There are an estimated 3,000 Taleban insurgents located in the Swat Valley. They often endanger civilians by seeking shelter in villages, knowing that this might provoke military reaction.

Up to 15,000 government troops are deployed in Swat to root out insurgents. They have used helicopter gunships and heavy artillery in their operations, often in an indiscriminate way, harming civilians as they do so. Tens of thousands of people who have fled the area have cited their fear of government military operations, rather than the Taleban.

“The Pakistani government needs to implement a strategy that focuses on respecting the rights and the well-being of its citizens and refrains from heavy-handed military operations which put civilians at risk. The government should also ensure it does not leave its citizens at the mercy of the Taleban.”

Amnesty International has condemned the Pakistani Taleban’s campaign against education, especially for girls. Over the past 18 months, the Taleban have destroyed more than 170 schools in Swat, including more than 100 girls’ schools. These attacks have disrupted the education of more than 50,000 pupils, from primary to college level, according to official estimates.

The organization urged the government to take protective measures to guarantee that pupils of both genders, including those who have fled their homes, have access to education when schools reopen on 1 March.

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Amira Hass: Palestinian doctor killed by IDF while treating Gaza wounded

February 15, 2009

Amira Haas | Haaretz, Israel,

Click here for more articles by Amira Hass

A 28-year-old Palestinian doctor in the Gaza refugee camp of Jabalya was killed by Israel Defense Forces fire this week while on his way to remove casualties from a building being targeted by Israeli missiles, according to the Mizan human rights group in Gaza.

His death raises the death toll of medical personnel killed by the IDF to seven since December 27, human rights groups said. In addition, three hospitals and four health clinics were damaged by gunfire in the last few days, Palestinian sources said.

Dr. Issa Salah, a member of the Palestinian civil defense services, and his team reached the building where the casualties were located around 4:30 P.M. Monday, a few minutes after it was hit by a missile fired by an Israeli helicopter.

The residents ran out, having learned that the first such missile is a warning to residents to evacuate the building, before additional missiles demolish it.

But not everyone made it in time; an 18-year-old girl was killed and four residents, including two children, were wounded in the second missile strike.

Salah was killed, and one of his colleagues wounded, in the third missile strike, while on their way to remove the woman and the four residents from the site and get them medical treatment.

Meanwhile, the dead woman’s 23-year-old sister and another woman, 20, were killed in continued Israeli shelling of the building.

Five others were wounded.

Salah’s death underscores the difficulty Palestinians face in removing casualties from the scene.

As of last night, Palestinian sources said, Palestinian rescue forces have so far been unable to coordinate the evacuation of casualties with the IDF in at least four locations, where the IDF has encountered resistance: Jabalya and the Gaza City neighborhoods of Sajaiyeh, Tufah and Zeitun.

Related articles:

· Amira Hass / Gazans doing their best to avoid becoming death statistics

· Human Rights Watch: IDF phosphorous bombs in Gaza violate int’l law

· Life in the Gaza war zone

· Hamas executes collaborators and restricts Fatah movement

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Genocide in Sri Lanka

February 15, 2009

By Bruce Fein | The Boston Globe, February 15, 2009

THE BARRAGE of media reporting of the grim conflict in Sri Lanka has captured popular imagination, but has overlooked the grisly Sinhalese Buddhist genocide of innocent Hindu or Christian Tamil civilians by a US dual citizen and US green card holder. The two should be investigated and prosecuted in the United States.

Acting on behalf of Tamils Against Genocide, I recently delivered to US Attorney General Eric H. Holder a three-volume, 1,000 page model 12-count genocide indictment against Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka charging violations of the Genocide Accountability Act of 2007. Derived from affidavits, court documents, and contemporaneous media reporting, the indictment chronicles a grisly 61-year tale of Sinhalese Buddhists attempting to make Sri Lanka “Tamil free.”

Rajapaksa and Fonseka assumed their current offices in December 2005. They exercise command responsibility over Sri Lanka’s mono-ethnic Sinhalese security forces. On their watch, they have attempted to physically destroy Tamils in whole or in substantial part through more than 3,800 extrajudicial killings or disappearances; the infliction of serious bodily injury on tens of thousands; the creation of punishing conditions of life, including starvation, withholding medicines and hospital care, humanitarian aid embargoes, bombing and artillery shelling of schools, hospitals, churches, temples; and the displacements of more than 1.3 million civilians into camps, which were then bombed and shelled. This degree of mayhem inflicted on the Tamil civilian population because of ethnicity or religion ranks with the atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo that occasioned genocide indictments against Serbs by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

During the past month, a virtual reenactment of the Bosnian Srebrenica genocide of more than 7,000 Muslims has unfolded. Sri Lanka’s armed forces employed indiscriminate bombing and shelling to herd 350,000 Tamil civilians into a government-prescribed “safety zone,” a euphemism for Tamil killing fields. There, more than 1,000 have been slaughtered and more than 2,500 have been injured by continued bombing and shelling.

As a preliminary to the horror, roads and medical aid were blocked, and humanitarian workers and all media were expelled. During a BBC radio interview on Feb. 2, Rajapaksa declared that outside the “safety zone” nothing should “exist.” Accordingly, a hospital has been repeatedly bombed, killing scores of patients. Rajapaksa further proclaimed that in Sri Lanka, any person not involved in fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is a terrorist.

The United States assailed and sanctioned Serbia for noncooperation in apprehending genocide defendants Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, and Ratko Mladic. The United States should be no less scrupulous in prosecuting suspected genocide by its own citizens or permanent residents. Further, under Article 5 of the Genocide Convention of 1948, ratified by the United States Senate in 1986, the United States is obligated to provide “effective penalties” for genocide. That imposes an obligation on signatory parties to investigate and to prosecute credible charges – a benchmark that has been satisfied by TAG’s 1,000-page model 12-count indictment of Rajapaksa and Fonseka.

The predictable defense of counter-terrorism will not wash. Not a single Tamil victim identified in the model indictment was involved in the war between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The lame excuse of defeating terrorism was advanced by Sudanese President Omar Bashir to a genocide arrest warrant over Darfur issued by chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the International Criminal Court. The chief prosecutor retorted that although Bashir’s pretense was counterterrorism, his intent was genocide.

The State Department lists Sri Lanka as an investigatory target in the Office of War Crimes. The New York-based Genocide Prevention Project last December labeled Sri Lanka as a country of “highest concern.” President Barack Obama has made the case for military intervention in Sudan or elsewhere to stop genocide. All the more justification for the United States to open an investigation of the voluminous and credible 12 counts of genocide against a United States citizen and permanent resident alien assembled by Tamils Against Genocide.

A genocide indictment would probably deter Rajapaksa and Fonseka from their ongoing atrocities against Tamil civilians. There is no time to tarry.

Bruce Fein is counsel for Tamils Against Genocide and former associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan. http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/File-Based_Image_Resource/dingbat_story_end_icon.gif

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US Drone Strike Kills At Least 30 in South Waziristan

February 15, 2009

Official Says More Buried Under Rubble of Destroyed House

Antiwar.com

Posted February 14, 2009

A US drone launched two missiles at a large house in South Waziristan this morning, killing at least 30 and wounding seven others. A Pakistani intelligence official is quoted as saying more people are believed to be buried under the rubble.

At least 50 people were in the house at the time of the attacks, mostly Uzbeks and Arabs believed to be fighters for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The compound reportedly was frequented by Baitullah Mehsud, a top Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader, though he does not appear to have been present during the attack.

The timing of the attack sends a clear message to the Pakistani government, which had been hoping yesterday that President Obama would reveal his “new strategy” with respect to the drones soon.

The large death toll will likely also bring uncomfortable attention to the comments by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who claimed that the drones were being “flown out of a Pakistani base”. With the Pakistani government officially complaining about the attacks amid public outrage, such a revelation would likely further destabilize an already floundering Pakistani government.

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compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

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