Gaza: the world looks away

February 12, 2009

If the IDF and Hamas have breached the laws of war, they must be held to account, to set down a marker for future conflicts

On top of the dreadful casualties from Israel’s 22-day war in Gaza, we should add a further serious injury. It is longer-lasting and threatens the lives and wellbeing of very many people in the future. In the Israel/Palestine conflict, we are seeing a terrible undermining of international law and the principle that armies should adhere to minimum standards of humane behaviour, even during the heat of battle.

If they fall below this minimum, they should, according to the laws of war, be held responsible for their war crimes – first, by their own superiors or courts, but, if necessary, by other nations or international courts. This principle – of accountability, even in war – is now in a critical condition as the standards are being ignored by Gaza’s warring parties. Then, it’s being assailed afresh by pugnacious and irresponsible remarks from leaders in the region.

Both sides endangered civilian lives during the conflict, but obviously the behaviour of Israel was massively more destructive. There were reports from Amnesty International of Israeli Defence Forces units commandeering Palestinian homes, forcing families to remain in a ground-floor room while then using the property as a military operations point. In other words, Palestinian families were used as human shields or, at the very least, were exposed to quite unacceptable risk.

Hamas is also accused of using local civilians as human shields, but since this excuse was used for every Israeli attack on civilian targets, we must await objective reports on whether this allegation is true. Even more shockingly, evidence has been growing of the IDF’s use of white phosphorous shells in residential areas – a clear war crime in exposing civilians to horrendous deep-burn injuries that have shocked and bewildered burns unit doctors in Gaza’s overrun hospital wards. Moreover, as the new BBC Panorama programme on Gaza asks, was the colossal destruction of roads, houses, factories, farms and ordinary civilian infrastructure right across the Gaza Strip (creating what an Amnesty researcher called “total devastation“) an act of “wanton destruction” and therefore itself a war crime.

It is true that virtually every conflict has involved atrocious deeds and virtually every armed force, however professional, has lapsed into barbarity. Senior military figures and their apologists will regularly seek to excuse these actions as occurring in the “heat of the moment” or because of the “tremendous pressure of conflict”, but it is notable in the House of Commons that it was MPs with a military background who were most shocked by the use of white phosphorus.

It’s depressing but predictable that, as things stand, with little word from the UN security council, no one looks likely to be held responsible for the wiping out of hundreds of civilian lives in the three-week Gaza war. This abrogation of responsibility doesn’t just let down civilians in Israel and Palestine; it lets down people all over the world. And it is not just the Bush administration that won’t apply the Geneva convention in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The UK and the EU are equally collusive in Israel’s grave breaches of international law and, as human rights lawyer Phil Shiner has pointed out, have taken no action to uphold the opinion of the International Court of Justice that held the route of the wall and the settlements a complete breach of the Geneva convention. The convention requires all high contracting parties (those who have signed and ratified it) to take action to enforce it. The UK and the EU have taken no such action and, instead, plan to upgrade the EU relationship with Israel, which already extends privileged trade access in a treaty containing conditionalities on human rights which are not invoked. By failing to uphold these standards in the occupied territories, our governments are undermining the whole structure of international law.

Adding further insult to international law in the aftermath of Israel’s massive military campaign is the strident post-conflict tone. Prime minister Ehud Olmert has recently threatened a “disproportionate” response to continuing Palestinian rocket attacks – precisely what international humanitarian law forbids and what Israel already stands accused of having engaged in.

The international criminal court’s prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo recently confirmed that he is assessing whether the court has jurisdiction over war crimes committed in Gaza. But, in fact, the right way forward is for the security council to fulfil the role envisaged for it when the international criminal court was set up. It was anticipated that some international crimes would not be dealt with when the suspects were from states not party to the Rome Statute.

Instead of establishing ad hoc tribunals, as in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, it was provided that the security council should have power to refer cases to the ICC. This was done in the case of Darfur and surely should be done in the case of Gaza.

Last November, I saw for myself the damage wrought by Israel’s 19-month blockade of Gaza, and with this battered territory now a scene of almost biblical destruction, of course I understand that humanitarian aid and reconstruction are a priority.

However, the UN security council shouldn’t turn a blind eye to wanton destruction and war crimes either. ICC cases against Israel and Hamas will prove explosive, but it’s my firm belief that it will also set down a marker for future conflict in the Middle East, as well as more widely in the world – from Sri Lanka to Burma to Zimbabwe.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Palestine, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Imperialist antagonisms, American Military Bases and the Movement Against Them

February 11, 2009

International League of Peoples’ Struggle

by Manolis Arkolakis
Deputy Chairperson, ILPS

In September 2003, at the International Meeting Against Military Bases, organized in the island of Crete in Greece by ILPS, the participants concluded that peoples’ struggle against imperialism and military bases is necessary as part of the general strategy of the international people’s movement. It is evidence today that the global crisis is deepening and together with the intensification of antagonisms between imperialists contribute in the further exploitation and oppression of the toiling masses. State terrorism as well as police and army suppression have become the only way for the various governments to control peoples’ discontent.

Although the big anti-war demonstrations in Europe and North America against the American aggression in Iraq have stopped, we see that people’s resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan continues and is growing exposing the limits of the biggest military machinery ever seen in the world. Despite the imperialists plans and roadmaps, Iraq is as far from pacification as ever while the escalation of war in Afghanistan cannot be kept secret any more. Recently, in NATO Summit in Bucharest, Americans insisted in NATO expansion eastwards, accepting Croatia and Albania as members and promoting Ukraine and Georgia as part of the next wave. The determined French and German reaction against that plan shows the open antagonism inside NATO alliance. It is obvious that the formation of the protectorate of Kosovo, supposedly as a new independent state, will make the Balkans again a field of imperialist rivalries.

More than four thousands American soldiers dead in Iraq is an indication of the US failure to impose their hegemony. Therefore American imperialists adopt new policies, more dangerous, to bring catastrophe to peoples.

Let’s see the main points of this imperialist aggression and how leads humanity to new adventures:

The USA announced the necessity of antimissile shield in Eastern Europe, supposedly to prevent an Iranian attack. Immediately, Poland and Czech Republic accepted and offered the necessary facilities for the new military bases. It is more than obvious that Russia could not accept it without reaction. Putin made it clear that new missiles systems will be developed regarding the new NATO bases as the main threat. The new Russian bourgeoisie feel politically and economically strong enough to face the scenario of a Cold War. As if it had ever ended.

The intensification of imperialist antagonisms in Europe, for example NATO expansion eastwards, new statelets-protectorates prove that the USA want to stabilize their hegemony in the Western Block. Some European states though are not willing to give up their own interests and react against such a development.

Russia use the gas pipelines, its huge resources and adopts a more dynamic strategy, not only on economic level, in order to change correlations and control again its backyard.

Imperialists and Zionists carry on the genocide of the Palestinian people. Palestinian liberation struggle as well as the tensions in other Arab countries create an explosive situation in the Middle East.

In Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, imperialists manipulate nationalism, real or unreal differences between ethnic groups, the phantom of terrorism, on behalf of democratic rights, even in defence of environment in order to protect their own interests. Without hesitation they invade countries, redraw borders, create new statelets controlled easily economically and militarily and finally drive millions of desperate people to immigration.

The US imperialists try to keep Russia confined inside its borders and want to control the pipelines in Black Sea. For that reason, they have imposed their political will and military presence in Central Europe and the Balkans. According to this policy, the Balkans are spread with protectorates like Kosovo and Republic of Macedonia, full of military troops. Keep in mind please that the French chief general of Euro-army expressed the EU indention to send also European troops in the region, while Russians signed new contracts with Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece. In other words, imperialist antagonisms in full development.

New military bases spread around the world

According to above geopolitical situation, the strategic target of US imperialism is the global domination (or just hegemony, as some put it after US failure in Iraq). Therefore the US Army has to reconsider the new priorities for military presence in particular countries all over the world. According to media reports, American military premises are over 580,000 on a land of 120,000 km². There are 823 important military bases outside USA, most of them in Germany (287), Japan (130) and South Korea (106).

Military bases have played decisive role in US-NATO expansion, the control and submission of countries and peoples, imposing hegemonic position amongst imperialists. Especially in Europe, during the war which split up Yugoslavia, imperialists used mainly their military bases in Italy and Greece. After the war, the first concern for Americans was the creation of a new base for their own troops. In the borders of Kosovo and Republic of Macedonia 10,000 arcs have been occupied for the creation of the biggest US military base, called Boldsteel. According to various reports, the specific base will control 350 km and 75 bridges. Spread rumours say that Americans call it Little Guadànamo.

Another strategic plan demands the move of various bases from Germany and Italy to Eastern European countries as an apparent indication of NATO expansion. Bulgarian government accepted the presence of 5,000 American soldiers on Bulgarian soil. They’ll move there no later than October 2008. Czech Republic and Poland gave permission for the installation of the new anti-missile system. Romania, as a new NATO member, offered its ports for the further control of Black Sea, while the air-base Papa in Hungary will be centre of the new NATO organization responsible for aviation transportation.

Americans came to stay in the Balkans and the Black Sea region. Boldsteel camp in Kosovo will be also the guardian of the new American pipeline AMBO (from Bulgaria to Adriatic Sea). For the US government, military bases guarantee hegemonic position amongst imperialists, try to prevent people’s struggles for national liberation and democratic rights.

Black Sea is the new field of antagonism for imperialists: for strategic reasons as well as for the control of pipelines and gas production. US and NATO want to set up a new base in Crimea, in order to prevent any deployment of the Russian Navy. Except the Russian reaction, it is the struggle of the Ukrainian people that prevents such an escalation.

US-NATO military bases in Greece, a typical case

It is like a ritual, every new US ambassador appointed in Athens, before anything else, has to visit the Souda Bay US military base in Crete, the biggest Greek island in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. It is a gesture to express how significance is the specific port and military base for the US interests in Middle East and Eastern Europe. At the same time, he provocatively demands the local authorities to show openly their complete subjugation. The final goal is obviously to eliminate people’s determination and stop protesting against the continuation of the US military presence. Local authorities would be the agent-provocateur who argue that local prosperity and development depends on the presence of thousands of soldiers while the anti-war, anti-bases movement is responsible for the increasing poverty.

Isn’t that telling that Stekheart, the new US ambassador in Greece, served before in Iraq? With such an experience, in January 2008 he went to Crete and arrogantly in front of local politicians and entrepreneurs demanded their help for changing people’s anti-imperialist sentiments, smashing the organized resistance of the movement. In his own words, Cretans have to welcome the US troops because they spend money. In other words, the biggest Greek island has to become a huge brothel and this is called economic perspective against crisis and unemployment. Perhaps it is needless to say the bases are responsible for the actual environmental destruction of the region, mainly and most criminally by nuclear pollution. Eastern Crete is the region with the highest percentage of cancers related to nuclear contamination.

You must keep in mind also, that the Greek territories are very important for US and NATO military operations in the Balkans, Palestine and Lebanon as well as in Iraq and Red Sea. There are at least five known US and NATO military bases and camps and their role in the invasion on Iraq are well known, while recently it came out the unanswered question about their use for torture of prisoners from Iraq and Afghanistan and as intermediate stations for transfers to Guadànamo.

Global anti-bases, anti-imperialist movement

The anti-bases, anti-imperialist movement, all these years has given small and big battles against imperialist raids, against the use of various regions as military bases. It is true that after the mass movement in 2003, against the US invasion in Iraq, the situation looks like a retreat, mainly in Europe. Besides the weakness of the real left organized forces that would give to the anti-war movement refreshing perspective and enduring activities, we cannot underestimate the dominant concept within the anti-global movement trying to beautify the European Union and its supposed role as a “peace force”. A fallacy exposed by the European troops themselves involved in the occupation of Afghanistan. However, a new development seems to take place in the former Eastern European countries. New, though weak at the moment, movements appeared against the installation of US-NATO military bases, despite the fact that their governments are competing each other in obedience and subjugation. These movements are facing fierce state repression like in Crimea, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and Rumania (during the recent NATO summit in Bucharest, the basic democratic rights of speech and protest disappeared).

From Eastern Europe to South Korea, from the Philippines to Latin America, peoples either spontaneously or organised, resist against war and military occupation as imposed by the presence of US-NATO military bases. The struggle against them, against imperialism and war is a life or death struggle for the peoples and that’s why the progressive, left, and revolutionary forces must lead this struggle. They must relate this struggle with the struggle for the defence of labour and democratic rights. They must hold the fierce attacks of the capitalist-imperialist system. The aggravation of the inter-imperialist rivalries, particularly in the Balkans, brings new dangers for the peoples in the region. In order to impose their domination, imperialists use and spread among the peoples the viral ideology of chauvinism and racism. In contrast, we should develop a broad movement against imperialism and war, against further installation of US-NATO military bases fighting for their closure. Imperialists are redrawing borders with peoples’ blood and the peoples have no other option than paving the way of mass struggle.

June 2008

Paper presented in Third International Assembly of ILPS in Hong Kong.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, Uncategorized, US policy | Leave a Comment »

Gilad Shalit: The Grand Illusion

February 11, 2009

Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Think Tank

Feb 10, 2009

A Discourse Analysis

A few days ago, Noam Shalit, the ‘father of’ slammed the Hamas for holding his son for no real reason. Miraculously, he managed to forget the fact that his son Gilad was actually a combatant soldier who served as a post guard in a concentration camp and was captured in a fortress bunker overlooking Gaza.

Father Shalit called upon Hamas to: “stop holding us as hostages of the symbols of yesterday’s wars”. He also claimed that the Hamas is engaged in no less than ‘imaginary resistance’. Seemingly, these are some very bold statements from a father who is supposed to be very concerned with his son’s fate.

Gilad Shalit saga is no doubt an exemplary case-study of Israeli identity. In spite of the fact that Gilad Shailt is a soldier who was directly involved in the Israeli military crime against a civilian population, the Israelis and Jewish lobbies around the world insist upon presenting him as an ‘innocent victim’. The leading slogan of the Shalit campaign reads ‘Gilad Shalit, Human being, JEW’. And I ask myself is he really just an ordinary a ‘human being’ as the slogan suggests or rather a chosen one as implied by the ‘Jew’ predicate? And if he is just a human being, why exactly did they add the ‘Jew’ in? What is there in the ‘Jew’ title that serves the Free Shalit campaign?

Apparently the usage of the predicates ‘Human being’ and ‘Jew’ in such a proximity is rather informative and meaningful. Within the post-holocaust Jewish and liberal discourses ‘human being’ stands for ‘innocence’ and ‘Jew’ stands for ‘victim’. Accordingly, the Shalit’ campaign slogan should be grasped as ‘FREE Gilad Shalit the innocent victim’.

One may wonder at this stage, what does it take for a combatant soldier serving as a post guard in a concentration camp to become an ‘innocent victim’? Apparently, as far as Israeli discourse is concerned, not a lot. It is really just a matter of rhetoric.

It is rather notable that within the Israeli militarized society, the soldier is elevated, his blood is precious in comparison to ordinary Jewish citizens. Israelis adore their military men and grieve every loss of their armed forces with spectacular laments. Considering the IDF being a popular army, the Israeli love of their soldiers can be realized as just another fashion of their inherent self-loving. The Israelis simply love themselves almost as much as they hate their neighbors. In Israel a death in action of an IDF combatant would receive far more attention than a death of a civilian who was subject of so called ‘terror’. Similarly, in Israel an IDF POW would gather the ultimate media attention. Ron Arad, Ehud Goldwasser and Gilad Shalit are household names in Israel, the names and faces are familiar to all Israelis and others who are interested in the conflict. Considering Israel being in a constant state of war, the collective-over caring concern for the military man is rather enigmatic or even peculiar.

Within the Israeli narrative, the soldier is grasped as an innocent being that is ‘caught’ in a war which he is doomed to fight against his will. The Israeli combatant ‘shoots and sobs’. Within the Israeli deluded mindset and historical narrative, the Israelis ‘seek peace’ and it is somehow always the ‘others’ who bring hostility and violence about. This outright self-deception is so imbued within the Israeli self image, something that allows the Israelis to launch and initiate one war after another while being totally convinced that it is always the ‘Arabs’ who attempt to throw the Israeli into the sea.

In that sense, the Israeli ‘War Against Terror’ should be realized as a battle against the terror within. The constant battle against the ‘Arabs’ is an outlet that resolves the Hebraic self-imposed anxiety which the Israeli cannot handle or even confront. In that very sense throwing white phosphorous on women, the elderly and children acts as a collective Valium pill, it brings peace to the Israeli mind, it smoothes the terror within. Killing en masse resolves the insular Israeli collective state of fear. This explains how come 94% http://news.hosuronline.com/NewsD.asp?DAT_ID=722 of the Israeli Jewish population supported the last genocide in Gaza. The consequences are devastating. The total majority of the Israeli Jews not only say NO to ‘love thy neighbor’, they actually say YES to murder in broad daylight.

In their deluded mindset the Israelis are pushed into ‘no choice’ wars ‘against their will’ in spite of the fact that they are ‘innocent victims’. In fact, this delusion or rather cognitive dissonance stands at the very core of the Israeli unethical existence. The Israeli is submerged in a self-notion of blamelessness, it is somehow always the other who carries the guilt and the fault (i). This total discrepancy between Israeli self-perception i.e., ‘innocence’ and Israeli manifested practice i.e., barbarism beyond comparison, can be realized as a severe form of detachment on the verge of collective psychosis.

The case of Shalit embodies this discrepancy very well. Time after time we are asked by Israeli officials and Jewish lobbies to show our compassion to a combatant soldier that was serving as post guard in the biggest jail in history. An American right-winger, for instance, would probably have enough decency in him not to demand our compassionate empathy towards a USA marine that was injured while serving as a post guard in Guantànamo Bay. Similarly, not many would dare demand our compassionate empathy towards a German platoon who performed a role similar to Gilad Shalit’s in an East European concentration camp in the early 1940’s. Moreover, could anyone imagine the kind of Jewish outrage that would be evoked by an imaginary campaign by a right-wing, white supremacist slogan that reads “Free Wolfgang Heim, Human Being, Aryan”?

As much as I understand Noam Shalit’s deep concerns regarding the fate of his son, I must advise him with the hope that he takes it into consideration. His son Gilad is not exactly an innocent angel. If anything, like the rest of the Israelis, he is an integral part of the Israeli continuous sin. He was a soldier in a criminal army that serves a criminal cause that launches criminal wars. I honestly suggest to Mr. Noam Shalit to consider changing his rhetoric. He should drop his righteous preaching voice and replace it with either dignity or a desperate call for Hamas’ mercy. You either acknowledge your son’s deeds and be proud of it as a nationalist militant Jew, alternatively, you may beg for Hamas’ kindness. If I were in his place, I would probably go for the second option. Noam Shalit better drop the word hostage of his vocabulary. Neither he nor his son are Hamas’ hostages. If anything they are both held hostage by a Jewish nationalist project that is going to bring the gravest disaster on the Jewish people. They are both prisoners of a criminal war against ‘thy neighbors’, the Palestinian civilian population.

Considering the crimes against humanity repeatedly committed by Israel, all that is left for the Jewish state is just rhetorical spin that indeed becomes more and more delusional and ineffective. Thus, it didn’t really take me by surprise to find out that Noam Shalit is not just a concerned parent, he is also a profound post-modernist polemicist . “Resistance against what? Against whom? ” wonders father Shalit, trying to dismiss the Palestinian cause altogether. You Hamas are taking us “hostages of symbols that at best belong to yesterday’s wars, to yesterday’s world, which has since changed beyond recognition.”

Mr. Shalit, I would like you to tell us all what has changed ‘beyond recognition’ (except the landscape of Gaza)? Please enlighten us all because as far as we can see, you yourself still live on stolen Palestinian land, making the Biblical call for plunder into a contemporary devastating reality. As far as we can see, your sons and daughters are still engaged in murderous genocidal practices as they have been for the last six decades.

Mr. Shalit, I suggest that you wake up and the sooner the better. Nothing really changed, at least not in the Israeli side. The only change I may discern is the cheering fact that you and your people do not win anymore. Yes, you manage to kill children, women and old people, yes, you have managed to drop unconventional weapons on civilians dwelling in the most populated area on this planet and yet, you fail to win the war. Your military campaigns achieve nothing except death and carnage. Your murderous genocidal actions attained nothing but exposing what the National Jewish project is all about and what the Israeli is capable of. Your imaginary power of deterrence is melting down as I write these words and Hamas rockets keep pounding Southern Israel. Yet, the Jewish state has secured itself a prominent position as the embodiment of evil. If there is a ‘change beyond recognition’ to be detected is the fact that after Gaza we all know who you are and what you stand for.

[i] Amalek, Spanish Inquisition, Nazis, Poles, Communists, Arabs, PLO, Hamas, Venezuela, Iran and now Turkey


Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Palestine, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

A Call to End All Renditions

February 11, 2009

JURIST –  Forum

JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law says that instead of leaving the door open for the CIA to continue to engage in the rendition of terrorism suspects to other countries so long as the process is somehow handled “humanely”, the Obama administration should end renditions altogether and prosecute those who have ordered renditions since 2001…

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian residing in Britain, said he was tortured after being sent to Morocco and Afghanistan in 2002 by the U.S. government. Mohamed was transferred to Guantánamo in 2004 and all terrorism charges against him were dismissed last year. Mohamed was a victim of extraordinary rendition, in which a person is abducted without any legal proceedings and transferred to a foreign country for detention and interrogation, often tortured.

Mohamed and four other plaintiffs are accusing Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. of flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured. In Mohamed’s case, two British justices accused the Bush administration of pressuring the British government to block the release of evidence that was “relevant to allegations of torture” of Mohamed.

Twenty-five lines edited out of the court documents included details about how Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel as well as other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding “is very far down the list of things they did,” according to a British official quoted by the Telegraph (UK).

The plaintiffs’ complaint quotes a former Jeppesen employee as saying, “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights – you know, the torture flights.” A senior company official also apparently admitted the company transported people to countries where they would be tortured.

Obama’s Justice Department appeared before a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday in the Jeppesen lawsuit. But instead of making a clean break with the dark policies of the Bush years, the Obama administration claimed the same “state secrets” privilege that Bush used to block inquiry into his policies of torture and illegal surveillance. Claiming that the extraordinary rendition program is a state secret is disingenuous since it is has been extensively documented in the media.

“This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course,” said the ACLU’s Ben Wizner, counsel for the five men.

If the judges accept Obama’s state secrets claim, these men will be denied their day in court and precluded from any recovery for the damages they suffered as a result of extraordinary rendition.

Two and a half weeks before Obama’s representative appeared in the Jeppesen case, the new President had signed Executive Order 13491. It established a special task force “to study and evaluate the practices of transferring individuals to other nations in order to ensure that such practices comply with the domestic laws, international obligations, and policies of the United States and do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture or otherwise for the purpose, or with the effect, of undermining or circumventing the commitments or obligations of the United States to ensure the humane treatment of individuals in its custody or control.”

This order prohibits extraordinary rendition. It also ensures humane treatment of persons in U.S. custody or control. But it doesn’t specifically guarantee that prisoners the United States renders to other countries will be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that doesn’t amount to torture. It does, however, aim to ensure that our government’s practices of transferring people to other countries complies with U.S. laws and policies, including our obligations under international law.

One of those laws is the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights (ICCPR), a treaty the United States ratified in 1992. Article 7 of the ICCPR prohibits the States Parties from subjecting persons “to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” The UN Human Rights Committee, which is the body that monitors the ICCPR, has interpreted that prohibition to forbid States Parties from exposing “individuals to the danger of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment upon return to another country by way of their extradition, expulsion or refoulement.”

Order 13491 also mandates, “The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.” The order does not define “expeditiously” and the definitional section of the order says that the terms ‘detention facilities’ and ‘detention facility’ “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.” Once again, “short term” and “transitory” are not defined.

In his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Eric Holder categorically stated that the United States should not turn over an individual to a country where we have reason to believe he will be tortured. Leon Panetta, nominee for CIA director, went further last week and interpreted Order 13491 as forbidding “that kind of extraordinary rendition, where we send someone for the purposes of torture or for actions by another country that violate our human values.”

But alarmingly, Panetta appeared to champion the same standard used by the Bush administration, which reportedly engaged in extraordinary rendition 100 to 150 times as of March 2005. After September 11, 2001, President Bush issued a classified directive that expanded the CIA’s authority to render terrorist suspects to other States. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the CIA and the State Department received assurances that prisoners will be treated humanely. “I will seek the same kinds of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely,” Panetta told the senators.

Gonzales had admitted, however, “We can’t fully control what that country might do. We obviously expect a country to whom we have rendered a detainee to comply with their representations to us . . . If you’re asking me, ‘Does a country always comply?’ I don’t have an answer to that.”

The answer is no. Binyam Mohamed’s case is apparently the tip of the iceberg. Maher Arar, a Canadian born in Syria, was apprehended by U.S. authorities in New York on September 26, 2002, and transported to Syria, where he was brutally tortured for months. Arar used an Arabic expression to describe the pain he experienced: “you forget the milk that you have been fed from the breast of your mother.” The Canadian government later exonerated Arar of any terrorist ties. In another instance, thirteen CIA operatives were arrested in Italy for kidnapping an Egyptian, Abu Omar, in Milan and transporting him to Cairo where he was tortured.

Panetta made clear that the CIA will continue to engage in rendition to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects and transfer them to other countries. “If we capture a high-value prisoner,” he said, “I believe we have the right to hold that individual temporarily to be able to debrief that individual and make sure that individual is properly incarcerated.” No clarification of how long is “temporarily” or what “debrief” would mean.

When Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) asked about the Clinton administration’s use of the CIA to transfer prisoners to countries where they were later executed, Panetta replied, “I think that is an appropriate use of rendition.” Jane Mayer, columnist for the New Yorker, has documented numerous instances of extraordinary rendition during the Clinton administration, including cases in which suspects were executed in the country to which the United States had rendered them. Once when Richard Clarke, President Clinton’s chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council, “proposed a snatch,” Vice-President Al Gore said, “That’s a no-brainer. Of course it’s a violation of international law, that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.”

There is a slippery slope between ordinary rendition and extraordinary rendition. “Rendition has to end,” Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, recently told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!: “Rendition is a violation of sovereignty. It’s a kidnapping. It’s force and violence.” Ratner queried whether Cuba could enter the United States and take Luis Posada, the man responsible for blowing up a commercial Cuban airline in 1976 and killing 73 people. Or whether the United States could go down to Cuba and kidnap Assata Shakur, who escaped a murder charge in New Jersey.

Moreover, “renditions for the most part weren’t very productive,” a former CIA official told the Los Angeles Times. After a prisoner was turned over to authorities in Egypt, Jordan or another country, the CIA had very little influence over how prisoners were treated and whether they were ultimately released.

The U.S. government should disclose the identities, fate, and current whereabouts of all persons detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody by the CIA since 2001. Those who ordered renditions should be prosecuted. And the special task force should recommend, and Obama should agree to, an end to all renditions.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. Her new book, Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd), will be published in April 2009. Her articles are archived at http://www.marjoriecohn.com.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Uncategorized, US policy, War Criminals | Leave a Comment »

What do we do if the “two-state” solution collapses?

February 11, 2009

Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy

Tue, 02/10/2009 – 4:50pm

Lots of smart people have been focusing on the Israeli elections and trying to make sense of their immediate implications for the peace process. I can’t improve on the analyses provided by Glenn Greenwald, Yossi Alpher, Bernard Avishai, or Uri Avnery, who explain why there is little reason to be optimistic and many reasons to be worried.

I want to focus on a different issue, which is likely to be more important in the long run.

It’s this: What do we do if a “two-state solution” becomes impossible?

During the past 10 years, the “two-state solution” has been the mantra of most moderates involved in the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni say they want it, and so does Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The 2007 Arab League peace plan envisions two states living side by side, and George W. Bush and Condi Rice repeatedly said that a two-state solution was their goal too (although they did precious little to achieve it). Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton all say they are going to push hard for it now. I might add that the two-state solution is also my preferred option.

Interestingly, this moderate consensus in favor of two states is itself a fairly new development. The 1993 Oslo Accords do not talk explicitly about a Palestinian state, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the agreement, never endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state in public. And when First Lady Hillary Clinton spoke about the need for a Palestinian state back in 1998, she was roundly criticized, and the White House promptly distanced itself from her remarks. In fact, Bill Clinton didn’t endorse the idea of a Palestinian state until his last month in office. The mainstream “consensus” behind this solution is in fact a relatively recent creation.

Today, invoking the “two-state” mantra allows moderates to sound reasonable and true to the ideals of democracy and self-determination; but it doesn’t force them to actually do anything to bring that goal about. Indeed, defending the two-state solution has become a recipe for inaction, a fig leaf that leaders can utter at press conferences while ignoring the expanding settlements and road networks on the West Bank that are rendering it impossible. Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is a perfect illustration: He has lately become an eloquent voice in favor of two states, warning of the perils that Israel will face if the two-state option is not adopted. Yet his own government continued to expand the settlements and undermine Palestinian moderates, thereby putting the solution Olmert supposedly favors further away than ever, and maybe even making it unworkable.

There are two trends at play that threaten to undermine the two-state option. The first is the continued expansion of Israel settlements in the land that is supposed to be reserved for the Palestinians. There are now about 290,000 settlers living in the West Bank. There are another 185,000 settlers in East Jerusalem. Most of the settlers are subsidized directly or indirectly by the Israeli government. It is increasingly hard to imagine Israel evicting nearly half a million people (about 7 percent of its population) from their homes. Although in theory one can imagine a peace deal that keeps most of the settlers within Israel’s final borders (with the new Palestinian state receiving land of equal value as compensation), at some point the settlers’ efforts to “create facts” will make it practically impossible to establish a viable Palestinian state.

The second trend is the growing extremism on both sides. Time is running out on a two-state solution, and its main opponents — the Likud Party and its allies in Israel, and Hamas among the Palestinians — are becoming more popular. The rising popularity of Avigdor Lieberman’s overtly racist Yisrael Beiteinu party is ample evidence of this trend. And it’s not as though Kadima or Labor have been pushing hard to bring it about. According to Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times:

The result is that the next Israeli government, left to its own devices, is likely to opt for the status quo with the Palestinians – continued occupation of the West Bank, desultory peace talks, steadily expanding settlements and military force in response to Palestinian rockets or bombs. The long-term pursuit of a two-state solution will be brushed aside, with the argument that the Palestinians are too divided and dangerous to be negotiating partners.”

One does not need to look far down the road to see the point where a two-state solution will no longer be a practical possibility. What will the United States do then? What will American policy be when it makes no sense to talk about a two-state solution, because Israel effectively controls all of what we used to call Mandate Palestine? What vision will President Obama and Secretary Clinton have for the Palestinians and for Israel when they can no longer invoke the two-state mantra?

There are only three alternative options at that point. First, Israel could drive most or all of the 2.5 million Palestinians out of the West Bank by force, thereby preserving “greater Israel” as a Jewish state through an overt act of ethnic cleansing. The Palestinians would surely resist, and it would be a crime against humanity, conducted in full view of a horrified world. No American government could support such a step, and no true friend of Israel could endorse that solution.

Second, Israel could retain control of the West Bank but allow the Palestinians limited autonomy in a set of disconnected enclaves, while it controlled access in and out, their water supplies, and the airspace above them. This appears to have been Ariel Sharon’s strategy before he was incapacitated, and Bibi Netanyahu’s proposal for “economic peace” without a Palestinian state seems to envision a similar outcome. In short, the Palestinians would not get a viable state of their own and would not enjoy full political rights. This is the solution that many people — including Prime Minister Olmert — compare to the apartheid regime in South Africa. It is hard to imagine the United States supporting this outcome over the long term, and Olmert has said as much. Denying the Palestinians’ their own national aspirations is also not going to end the conflict.

Which brings me to the third option. The Israeli government could maintain its physical control over “greater Israel” and grant the Palestinians full democratic rights within this territory. This option has been proposed by a handful of Israeli Jews and a growing number of Palestinians. But there are formidable objections to this outcome: It would mean abandoning the Zionist dream of an independent Jewish state, and binational states of this sort do not have an encouraging track record, especially when the two parties have waged a bitter conflict across several generations. This is why I prefer the two-state alternative.

But if a two-state option is no longer feasible, it seems likely that the United States would come to favor this third choice. After all, supporting option 2 — an apartheid state — is contrary to the core American values of freedom and democracy and would make the United States look especially hypocritical whenever it tried to present itself as a model for the rest of the world. Openly endorsing apartheid would also demolish any hope we might have of improving our image in the Arab and Islamic world. Lord knows I have plenty of respect for the Israel lobby’s ability to shape U.S. foreign policy, but even AIPAC and the other heavyweight institutions in the lobby would have great difficulty maintaining the “special relationship” if Israel was an apartheid state. By contrast, option 3 — a binational state that provided full democratic rights for citizens of all ethnic and religious backgrounds — is easy to reconcile with America’s own “melting pot” traditions and liberal political values. American politicians would find it a hard option to argue against.

Bottom line: If the two-state solution dies, as seems increasingly likely, the United States is going to face a very awkward set of choices. That’s one reason why Obama and his team — as well as Israel’s friends in the United States — should move beyond paying lip-service to the idea of creating a Palestinian state and actually do something about it. But it’s hard to be optimistic that they will.

And while I’m at it, here’s one more heretical thought. Shouldn’t someone in the U.S. government start thinking about what our policy should be in the event that the two-state solution collapses? Starting to contemplate this possibility is risky, of course, because it might undermine our efforts to create two states if it became known that we were beginning to plan for an alternative future. But the fact is that we may face that future before too much longer. If so, then it might be a good idea if somebody began thinking about how to deal with it now, so that we don’t have to invent a new approach on the fly.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Palestine, Uncategorized, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Palestinians Press for War Crimes Inquiry on Gaza

February 11, 2009
By MARLISE SIMONS |The  New York Times
Published: February 10, 2009

THE HAGUE — The Palestinian Authority is pressing the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate accusations of war crimes committed by Israeli commanders during the recent war in Gaza.

Skip to next paragraph

Enlarge This Image

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A mosque in El Atatra, Gaza, that was destroyed by the Israeli military. Israel said the mosque had been used by militants.

The Palestinian minister of justice, Ali Kashan, first raised the issue during a visit to the court’s chief prosecutor late last month, and he and other officials are due back again in The Hague this week, court officials said.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor, had initially said he lacked the legal basis to examine the case. But since the Palestinian Authority signed a commitment on Jan. 22 recognizing the court’s authority, the prosecutor has appeared more open to studying the Palestinian claim.

“The prosecutor has agreed to explore if he could have jurisdiction in the case,” said Béatrice Le Fraper, the director of jurisdiction for the prosecution. She cautioned that accepting jurisdiction would not automatically set off a criminal investigation. “We are still very far from any decision; this is just the beginning of a long process,” she said.

The prosecutor has received more than 200 requests to look into allegations of war crimes during the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas militants. They include accusations from individuals and organizations that Israel violated the rules of war by singling out civilians and nonmilitary buildings, and by using weapons like white phosphorus illegally.

“Quite a few groups have sent experts to the region, people doing forensic work, studying explosives and other weapons,” she said. “The prosecutor can look at all open sources at this stage.”

Should a criminal investigation begin, the prosecution would send its own investigators, who would look into possible violations by both sides. Hamas’s practice of sending rockets into southern Israel, which often landed in civilian areas, might be viewed as a violation. Israeli officials justified their offensive by saying they were trying to stop the rocket attacks.

But even as envisioned by the Palestinian Authority, the case faces numerous hurdles, specialists say.

The court here is the world’s first permanent international criminal court, created to examine war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It can prosecute any citizen from the 108 countries that are currently members of the court. Individuals, governments, the United Nations Security Council or the prosecutor can initiate cases.

Israel is not a member of the court, and the Palestinian territories, not being recognized as a sovereign nation, appear not to fulfill the requirements. But as a remedy, the Palestinian Authority has taken a first step by presenting a declaration to the court, formally accepting jurisdiction for “an indeterminate duration” over acts “committed on the territory of Palestine” since July 1, 2002, when the court’s authority began.

Lawyers say such a declaration allows for joining the court on an ad hoc basis, and has been allowed before, in the case of Sierra Leone, which is not a member. But while the Palestinian declaration has been recorded at the court, its validity is far from settled. The big question, lawyers at the court say, is whether the Palestinian Authority can grant jurisdiction in any form, and if so, how that will be defined.

The issue has raised the question of whether Palestinian officials hope to obtain an implicit recognition of statehood through the court.

The court “will not use the term statehood,” said a legal expert close to the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue was still being decided. “The court will avoid defining whether Palestine is a state. The decision will be only if Palestine can be admitted for the purposes of the court statute.”

The Palestinian officials visiting The Hague in the coming days are expected to try to demonstrate that they have been allowed to sign other international treaties and conventions, and can therefore be accepted as a party to the 1998 Rome treaty that founded the court.

Ms. Le Fraper, the director of jurisdiction, said her office would call on international experts to help settle such questions.

Another unknown is whether the Palestinian Authority can bring a case involving jurisdiction in Gaza. The authority is run by Fatah, but its rival faction, Hamas, has declared itself the only authority in Gaza and ousted Fatah from the territory.

More than 1,300 Palestinians died in the recent war in Gaza, many of them women and children. Israeli officials have insisted that Israel respected international law during the fighting. Israel has also said that it will investigate its attacks on United Nations schools and headquarters and the use of unlawful weapons in urban areas, including the use of white phosphorus.

Human rights groups and a number of United Nations officials have called for an independent international inquiry into actions by both sides. Human Rights Watch said such an independent effort was essential because of “Israel’s poor record of investigating and prosecuting serious violations by its forces, and the absence of any such effort by Hamas or other Palestinian groups.”

Western politicians and other critics of Israel’s recent conduct in Gaza have also said that Hamas has violated the rules of war and committed war crimes with indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and the use of its own civilians as human shields.

Depending on what happens at the court, Hamas’s rocket attacks and other acts viewed by some as crimes could also become part of any criminal investigation. By accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court on its territory, the Palestinian Authority has also accepted jurisdiction over any war crimes by its own residents.

“That’s the way jurisdiction works,” said a court lawyer. “The Palestinians know that and have taken that risk.”

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Palestine, Uncategorized, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

How Do People Keep Going in Gaza?

February 10, 2009

What Americans Can’t See About Gaza

Kathy Kelly | Counterpunch, Feb 10, 2009

People have asked me, since I returned from Gaza, how people manage? How do they keep going after being traumatized by bombing and punished by a comprehensive state of siege? I wonder myself. I know that whether the loss of life is on the Gazan or the Israeli side of the border, bereaved survivors feel the same pain and misery. On both sides of the border, I think children pull people through horrendous and horrifying nightmares. Adults squelch their panic, cry in private, and strive to regain semblances of normal life, wanting to carry their children through a precarious ordeal.

And the children want to help their parents. In Rafah, the morning of January 18th, when it appeared there would be at least a lull in the bombing, I watched children heap pieces of wood on plastic tarps and then haul their piles toward their homes. The little ones seemed proud to be helping their parents recover from the bombing. I’d seen just this happy resilience among Iraqi children, after the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing, as they found bricks for their parents to use for a makeshift shelter in a bombed military base.

Children who survive bombing are eager to rebuild. They don’t know how jeopardized their lives are, how ready adults are to bomb them again.

In Rafah, that morning, an older man stood next to me, watching the children at work. “You see,” he said, looking upward as an Israeli military surveillance drone flew past, “if I pick up a piece of wood, if they see me carrying just a piece of wood, they might mistake it for a weapon, and I will be a target. So these children collect the wood.”

While the high-tech drone collected information,– “intelligence” that helps determine targets for more bombing, –toddlers collected wood. Their parents, whose homes were partially destroyed, needed the wood for warmth at night and for cooking. Because of the Israeli blockade against Gaza, there wasn’t any gas.

With the border crossing at Rafah now sealed again, people who want to obtain food, fuel, water, construction supplies and goods needed for everyday life will have to rely, increasingly, on the damaged tunnel industry to import these items from the Egyptian side of the border. Israel’s government says that Hamas could use the tunnels to import weapons, and weapons could kill innocent civilians, so the Israeli military has no choice but to bomb the neighborhood built up along the border, as they have been doing.

Suppose that the U.S. weapon makers had to use a tunnel to deliver weapons to Israel. The U.S. would have to build a mighty big tunnel to accommodate the weapons that Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar have supplied to Israel. The size of such a tunnel would be an eighth wonder of the world, a Grand Canyon of a tunnel, an engineering feat of the ages.

Think of what would have to come through.

Imagine Boeing’s shipments to Israel traveling through an enormous underground tunnel, large enough to accommodate the wingspans of planes, sturdy enough to allow passage of trucks laden with missiles. According to UK’s Indymedia Corporate Watch, 2009, Boeing has sent Israel 18 AH-64D Apache Longbow fighter helicopters, 63 Boeing F15 Eagle fighter planes, 102 Boeing F16 Eagle fighter planes, 42 Boeing AH-64 Apache fighter helicopters, F-16 Peace Marble II & III Aircraft, 4 Boeing 777s, and Arrow II interceptors, plus IAI-developed arrow missiles, and Boeing AGM-114 D Longbow Hellfire missiles,

In September of last year, the U.S. government approved the sale of 1,000 Boeing GBU-9 small diameter bombs to Israel, in a deal valued at up to 77 million.

Now that Israel has dropped so many of those bombs on Gaza, Boeing shareholders can count on more sales, more profits, if Israel buys new bombs from them from them. Perhaps there are more massacres in store. It would be important to maintain the tunnel carefully.

Raytheon, one of the largest U.S. arms manufacturers, with annual revenues of around $20 billion, is one of Israel’s main suppliers of weapons. In September last year, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency approved the sale of Raytheon kits to upgrade Israel’s Patriot missile system at a cost of $164 million. Raytheon would also use the tunnel to bring in Bunker Buster bombs as well as Tomahawk and Patriot missiles.

Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest defense contractor by revenue, with reported sales, in 2008, of $42.7 billion. Lockheed Martin’s products include the Hellfire precision-guided missile system, which has reportedly been used in the recent Gaza attacks. Israel also possesses 350 F-16 jets, some purchased from Lockheed Martin.

Think of them coming through the largest tunnel in the world.

Maybe Caterpillar Inc. could help build such a tunnel. Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of construction (and destruction) equipment, with more than $30 billion in assets, holds Israel’s sole contract for the production of the D9 military bulldozer, specifically designed for use in invasions of built-up areas. The U.S. government buys Caterpillar bulldozers and sends them to the Israeli army as part of its annual foreign military assistance package. Such sales are governed by the US Arms Export Control Act, which limits the use of U.S. military aid to “internal security” and “legitimate self defense” and prohibits its use against civilians.

Israel topples family houses with these bulldozers to make room for settlements. All too often, they topple them on the families inside. American peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death standing between one of these bulldozers and a Palestinian doctor’s house.

In truth, there’s no actual tunnel bringing U.S. made weapons to Israel. But the transfers of weapons and the U.S. complicity in Israel’s war crimes are completely invisible to many U.S. people.

The United States is the primary source of Israel’s arsenal. For more than 30 years, Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance and since 1985 Israel has received about 3 billion dollars, each year, in military and economic aid from the U.S. (“U.S. and Israel Up in Arms,” Frida Berrigan, Foreign Policy in Focus, January 17, 2009)

So many Americans can’t even see this flood of weapons, and what it means, for us, for Gaza’s and Israel’s children, for the world’s children.

And so, people in Gaza have a right to ask us, how do you manage? How do you keep going? How can you sit back and watch while your taxes pay to massacre us? If it would be wrong to send rifles and bullets and primitive rockets into Gaza, weapons that could kill innocent Israelis, then isn’t it also wrong to send Israelis the massive arsenal that has been used against us, killing over 400 of our children, in the past six weeks, maiming and wounding thousands more?

But, standing over the tunnels in Rafah, that morning, under a sunny Gazan sky, hearing the constant droning buzz of mechanical spies waiting to call in an aerial bombardment, no one asked me, an American, those hard questions. The man standing next to me pointed to a small shed where he and others had built a fire in an ash can. They wanted me to come inside, warm up, and receive a cup of tea.

Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, is writing from Arish, a town near the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza. Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola New Orleans and Audrey Stewart are also in Egypt and contributed to this article. Kathy Kelly is the author of Other Lands Have Dreams (published by CounterPunch/AK Press). Her email is kathy@vcnv.org

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Palestine, Uncategorized, USA, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

US Senator Leahy Seeks Bush-Era ‘Truth Commission’

February 10, 2009

Published on Monday, February 9, 2009 by Reuters

by Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON – A U.S. “truth commission” should investigate Bush administration policies including the promotion of war in Iraq, detainee treatment and wiretapping without a warrant, an influential senator proposed on Monday.

[US President Barack Obama gave a cool welcome to a proposal from Democratic Senator Pat Leahy, seen here at the US Capitol, for a "truth commission" to probe alleged abuses under George W. Bush -- but did not rule out possible prosecutions for wrongdoing. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Alex Wong)]US President Barack Obama gave a cool welcome to a proposal from Democratic Senator Pat Leahy, seen here at the US Capitol, for a “truth commission” to probe alleged abuses under George W. Bush — but did not rule out possible prosecutions for wrongdoing. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Alex Wong)

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, urged a commission as a way to heal what he called sharp political divides under former President George W. Bush and to prevent future abuses.He compared it to other truth commissions, such as one in South Africa that investigated the apartheid era.

“We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past,” Leahy said in a speech at Georgetown University.

“Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened,” he said. “And we do that to make sure it never happens again.”

Some Republicans and intelligence officials have resisted any suggestion of broad inquiries into accusations against the Bush administration, saying it would be a distraction or weaken morale in the fight against terrorism.

“If every administration started to reexamine what every prior administration did, there would be no end to it. This is not Latin America,” the Judiciary committee’s top-ranking Republican, Senator Arlen Specter, told reporters last month.

President Barack Obama suggested shortly before he took office in January that he did not favor prosecuting Bush administration officials over their counterterrorism policies, but said he would look into “past practices.”

“What we have to focus on is getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past,” he said.

Leahy said he had not begun to promote the truth commission idea with the Obama administration or with the Democratically controlled Congress. But he suggested it could be formed by both Congress and the White House, and said the panel must have credibility across the political spectrum.

Issues to investigate would include the Justice Department’s firings of several U.S. attorneys, which Leahy said may have been motivated by a White House aim to influence elections, policies on the treatment of terrorism suspects and other areas “where (congressional) committees were lied to.”

This included the war in Iraq, he said. “There were lies told to the American people all the way through.”

Bush has acknowledged that intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was wrong, but said he never lied to the public about the war.

Leahy said he wanted the Defense Department investigated for filming Iraq-war protesters, which he said came “shockingly close” to the FBI’s Vietnam War-era Cointelpro operation to investigate domestic war protesters. “We fought a revolution in this country so we could protest the actions of our government,” he said.

(Editing by David Storey)

© 2009 Reuters

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Human rights, US policy, War Criminals | Leave a Comment »

Israel: It won’t be a vote for peace

February 9, 2009
Editorial

Arab News, 9 February 2009
Israel will elect a new prime minister tomorrow, either a very new one or one who has been there before. But regardless of who wins, few people in Israel or beyond are predicting significant diplomatic shifts any time soon. If anything, the situation with regards to the peace process could get worse — if that is at all possible.

The latest polls predict that Benjamin Netanyahu, a former premier, will recapture his post and will lead his right-wing Likud party to victory. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the centrist Kadima party is a close second. Perhaps the most striking poll result indicates that Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s Labor party, which has long dominated Israeli politics, has been pushed out of third place by hard-liner Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party. That sets Lieberman up as a kingmaker, holding the crucial swing votes that any winner will need to form a government. And Lieberman is as anti-Arab as it gets.

Polling organizations are warning that unusually large numbers of Israelis, estimated at 15-20 percent, say they are undecided, which could make the result difficult to predict. Yet, running across Israel is a sense of inevitability that the right will win this election. All the signs are that Israel has shifted to the right, in large part because many Israelis no longer believe further peace agreements are a serious prospect. The war in Gaza has boosted Netanyahu and other hard-line candidates as Israelis prepare to choose not only their new leader but a new 120-member Parliament.

After last month’s devastating Israeli offensive, Gaza and Hamas are at the top of the agenda in the Israeli campaign, and each candidate seems to be trying to outdo the next with a harsher stand against the group. While all the top candidates promise to be tough with Hamas, Netanyahu takes the hardest line. He has called for Hamas to be uprooted from Gaza and says the Gaza campaign was ended too soon. Lest this give any joy to President Mahmoud Abbas and his “moderate” Fatah party, Netanyahu says he will allow existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank to expand. He claims any territory Israel relinquishes to the Palestinians as part of a peace deal would be “grabbed by extremists.” He contends peace efforts should focus on anything other than creating an independent state.

Those views will put Netanyahu at odds with the Palestinians, all other Arabs and most of the international community, whose most important member as far as Israel is concerned, is the US. President Barack Obama has been attempting to reach out to Arabs and promising fresh approaches to deal with the Middle East, including moving forward vigorously with the vision of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Apparently, however, Netanyahu and the majority of Israelis are unwilling to make any concessions for peace even if it stands in the way of Obama’s softer overtures. Popular with Israelis, the military action in Gaza swung voter concerns away from peace talks, and back to conflict, boosting the likes of Netanyahu, Barak and Lieberman.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Palestine, Peace Movement | Leave a Comment »

Israel holding 42 Palestinians in administrative detention for over two years

February 9, 2009

B’Tselem – Press Releases, 5 Feb. ’09

B’Tselem releases 2008 annual report – among the findings:

Of the 548 Palestinians Israel is detaining without trial, 42 have been held for over two years, according to figures appearing in B’Tselem’s annual report, published today. Twenty-three have been administratively detained for over two and a half years, including three who have been detained between three and four and a half years, and two over four and a half consecutive years. In fact, the vast majority of administrative detainees (372) have been held without charge or trial for at least two consecutive periods.

In 2008, the number of administrative detainees dropped gradually: from 813 in January to 546 in December. Six of the detainees in December were minors. For the first time, Israel held two female minors in administrative detention; both had their detention period extended for a second period. B’Tselem demands that Israel immediately release all administrative detainees, or try them for the offences they are alleged to have committed. The total number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli custody at the end of December was 7,904.

Casualties

B’Tselem’s annual report also includes figures on the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed during the course of the year (not including in Operation Cast Lead). Up until December 26, Israeli security forces killed 455 Palestinians (including eighty-seven minors). At least 175 of those killed (38 percent) did not take part in the hostilities.

18 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians inside Israel. Eight of them (four minors), were killed in the attack at the Merkaz Harav yeshiva, in Jerusalem and Four were killed by rocket attacks and mortar fire. Three Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinias in the Terrritories. Palestinians killed ten members of the Israeli security forces.

Restrictions on movement

In contrast to official Israeli claims, Palestinian freedom of movement did not improve significantly in 2008. There are sixty-three permanent staffed checkpoints inside the West Bank, eighteen of them in the city of Hebron. In addition, the army restricts Palestinian movement on 430 kilometers of roads, on which Israelis are allowed free use. On 137 kilometers of these roads, Palestinian travel is completely prohibited. Forty checkpoints serve as crossing points into Israel, although most are them are located a few kilometers inside the West Bank, and not along the Israeli border. The number of physical obstructions Israel maintained in the West Bank actually increased in 2008. In the first nine months of 2008, the average number of such obstructions was 537, compared with a monthly average of 459 in 2007.

B’Tselem’s annual report surveys many additional violations of human rights in the Occupied Territories during 2008. Among them: house demolition, the continued construction of the separation barrier within the West Bank, settlement expansion and the lack of law enforcement on violent settlers. The report also addresses the systematic lack of accountability for harm caused to Palestinians by Israeli security forces.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »