Peace and Justice Post

China View, December 25, 2007

JERUSALEM, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) — Israel’s use of cluster bombs during the Second Lebanon War was in accordance with international law, Israeli army’s Advocate General Avichai Mendelblit said in a ruling published on Monday.

Accordingly, army officers who ordered the use of the cluster bombs will not face disciplinary or legal action, local Ha’aretz reported on its website.

Israeli artillery corps reportedly fired some 2,400 cluster bombs at Lebanon during the fighting with Hezbollah gunmen. Several months after the war, Israeli army launched an investigation aimed at examining whether cluster bombs were used against procedure.

In a statement, the army said that its chief investigator Maj. Gen. Gershon HaCohen determined it was clear that the majority of the cluster munitions were fired at open and uninhabited areas, where Hezbollah forces operated and no civilians were present.

It also said that cluster bombs were fired at residential areas only as an immediate defense response to rocket attacks by Hezbollah and that Israeli troops did everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.

The conclusions were passed on to Mendelblit, who accepted the recommendation and decided not to press charges.

A cluster bomb is a bomb that ejects a number of smaller bomblets during explosion. Theses bomblets usually go off shortly after the launch.

The United Nations and human rights groups accused Israel of dropping about four million cluster bomblets during the war. Up to one million failed to explode and now endanger civilians in the area.

More than 30 people have been killed by cluster bomb and landmine explosions in Lebanon since the summer war of 2006 between Hezbollah and Israel, the report said.

uruknet.info, December 24, 2007

Saed Bannoura – IMEMC

Days after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Israel for approving the expansion of settlements on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank, she abruptly changed her position when Israel refused to back down. Now, as Israeli authorities announce further expansion of settlements than what was originally criticized, Rice compliantly responded that ‘she understands’ Israel’s position now, adding that Israeli officials have shown her that they are serious about their responsibilities in the so-called ‘peace process’.

The Israeli government has approved the proposed Housing Ministry’s budget for the year 2008, which includes 500 new units in the ‘Har Homa’ settlement built on Palestinian land near Bethlehem, and 240 new units in the ‘Ma’ale Adumim’ settlement east of Jerusalem.

Israeli forces have occupied all Palestinian land since 1967, and have transferred over 500,000 civilians to live in that land, in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory.

Keep reading . . .

AlterNet.org

By Amy Goodman, King Features Syndicate. Posted December 19, 2007.

One victim shares his experience with the CIA’s torture tactics.

The kidnap and torture program of the Bush administration, with its secret CIA “black site” prisons and “torture taxi” flights on private jets, saw a little light of day this week. I spoke to Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah in his first broadcast interview. Bashmilah was a victim of the CIA’s so-called extraordinary rendition program, in which people are grabbed from their homes, out of airports, off the streets, and are whisked away, far from the prying eyes of the U.S. Congress, the press, far from the reach of the courts, to countries where cruelty and torture are routine.

Bashmilah is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and by the New York University School of Law International Human Rights Clinic in a lawsuit with four other victims of CIA rendition. They are suing not the U.S. government, not the CIA, but a company called Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing Corp. A former Jeppesen employee, Sean Belcher, entered an affidavit in support of Bashmilah, reporting that Jeppesen executive Bob Overby bragged, “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights,” further explaining to staff that he was speaking of “the torture flights,” and that they paid very well.

Keep reading . . .

American Free Press

By Mark Glenn

Some 200 Christian Zionist leaders, representing churches spread throughout America, Europe, Africa and Asia, gathered in Israelís Knesset to “beg forgiveness” for 2,000 years of “Christian persecution” of Jews.

The well publicized ceremony took place under the auspices of the “Knesset Christian Allies Caucus,” just one of a growing number of partnerships springing up in recent years between organized Jewish and Christian Zionist groups for the purpose of funneling Christian money and political support toward Israel. Part of the statement reads as follows:

Continued . . .

War In Iraq, December 25, 2007

By JOSCHKA FISCHER

Things aren’t going well in Afghanistan. Sometime at the turn of 2001-2002, the Bush administration concluded that the stabilization and reconstruction of Afghanistan was no longer its top priority and decided to bet instead on military-led regime change in Iraq.

Afghanistan can thus rightly be seen as the first victim of the administration’s misguided strategy. But the Bush administration is not the sole culprit for the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. It was NATO’s job to ensure the country’s stability and security, and thus NATO’s weak general secretary and the European allies, especially Germany and France, share the responsibility for the worsening situation. Yet, despite all the difficulties, the situation in Afghanistan, unlike that in Iraq, is not hopeless. There was a good reason for going to war in Afghanistan in the first place, because the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, originated there.

Keep reading . . .

To all our readers, peace activists and

defenders of human rights

Season’s Greetings, Eid Mubarak

and a Merry Christmas.

War In Iraq, December 19, 2007

by Bahlol Lohdi

Hamid Karzai is the grandson of Khair Mohammed of the village of Karz, not far from Kandahar. He was an indigent member of the Popalzai tribe with a large family who migrated to Kandahar seeking a better life. Normally, when a Pashtun is of noble stock he’s known by a patronym, but more humble tribal members do not have that privilege. Therefore, perforce they resort to descriptive names like Karzai, Pashto for “born in Karz.”

Not finding adequate employment opportunities in Kandahar, Khair Mohammed moved his family to Kabul. There he prospered because Kabul lacked hotels, so the nobility of Kandahar visiting Kabul were invited to stay at Khair Mohammed’s modest home. They provided him with money to buy provisions for their stay with him, and Karzai’s grandmother cooked their food and took care of their laundry.

Soon, Khair Mohammed came to the attention of the government as an ideal source of intelligence about the situation in Kandahar, garnered from the conversations of his paying Kandahari guests. His loyal service to the government resulted in his being given a deputy-head post in one of the government departments. He became known as “Mueen Khairo Jan,” a term of contempt, for the Kandaharis had realized the extent of his perfidy.

Karzai’s father, Ahad Karzai, benefited from Mueen Khairo Jan’s connections and was admitted to the lower social circles of the Afghan royal family. He became one of the numerous court jesters. However, Ahad was dimwitted and insolent enough once to crack a joke at the expense of a minor royal family member. He was rewarded by being crowned with a crystal ashtray and, bleeding profusely, dismissed – obviously Ahad Karzai did not appreciate the fact that a royal appointment to the Afghan parliament didn’t raise him to the status of someone who could poke fun at even minor royalty. His son, the British-ennobled Sir Hamid Karzai, seems to suffer from the same predilection to the folie de grandeur that afflicts parvenus and predisposes them to inappropriate behavior and comments. His public clash with U.S. President George Bush regarding Iran is just one of the more well-known examples of Hamid “Jan” Karzai’s public faux pas.

During the Soviet occupation, Ahad Karzai joined “the usual suspects” in Peshawar. Where there was money to be made, the Karzais were bound to congregate.

Keep reading . . .

Foster’s Daily Democrat (New Hampshire)

By GRETYL MACALASTER

Article Date: Friday, December 21, 2007

Veteran CIA analyst and daily presidential briefer Ray McGovern discusses “Inside INTELLIGENCE: Behind the headlines on the Iran ‘Threat’, our Constitutional Crisis, Prisoner Treatment and September 11th” Monday night at the Portsmouth Public Library. (Aaron Leclerc/Staff photographer)

PORTSMOUTH — The evidence for impeachment of the president and vice president is overwhelming, former CIA analyst and daily presidential briefer Ray McGovern told a room full of people at the Portsmouth Public Library Monday night.

McGovern, who provided daily briefings for former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as well as other high ranking officials during his 27 year CIA career, said he has witnessed a “prostitution of his profession” as the Bush administration lied to the American people about the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“Don’t let anyone tell you the President was deceived by false intelligence … they knew,” McGovern said.

For the next 40 minutes, he relayed a series of events leading up to 9/11 which illustrate the President’s desire to go to war with Iraq well before 9-11, that reliable CIA evidence showed that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and was presented to the administration and the “facts were fixed” in order to legitimize the invasion.

Keep reading . . .

truthout.org , December 18, 2007

By Pierre Haski
Rue89

At a different time, we could have considered the results of the Conference of Paris on Palestine as excellent news. Over $7 billion was committed to the Palestinians, when less than $6 billion was expected. So the international community has pledged itself to action to allow this Palestinian state – the name of which is pronounced before it has even emerged – to be born.

And yet, this international consensus is dictated less by optimism than by fear. The fear of seeing the Middle East sink inexorably into crisis once again and of seeing despair push Palestinians into the arms of the most extremist movements. If money donors meeting in Paris needed a booster shot, the photos of Gaza Saturday, where more than 300,000 Palestinians demonstrated to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the birth of the Islamist movement Hamas, should have sufficed.

This show of force by Hamas haunted the minds of those attending the Conference of Paris: it is the symbol of the failure over the last fifteen years to find a peaceful negotiated arrangement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The belated reawakening of diplomacy, and particularly that of a United States stuck in its war in Iraq, finds a changed Middle East.

Yesterday, Paris celebrated President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. But last summer, the PA was driven out of the Gaza strip manu militari by Hamas’s men, and about a third of the Palestinian population today escapes its control and is not ready to come back to it either. So there we see the limitations on the aid promised in Paris yesterday.

Three weeks ago, in Annapolis in the United States, Palestinians and Israelis committed to negotiate the modalities of the birth of a Palestinian state before the end of 2008. But for that to happen, interlocutors able to implement the decisions taken are required. That point is valid for the Israeli side, where Ehud Olmert’s fragile government must show itself capable of evacuating the Jewish settlements on the West Bank and of lifting the hundreds of military road blocks that thwart a viable state.

And, in spite of the significant sums announced yesterday, it’s true on the Palestinian side. The goal of the international community’s money is to strengthen the stature of a Palestinian Authority largely discredited at home. And the PA will have to demonstrate its ability to act more effectively than in the past. But even that will not suffice to change the context in the Gaza Strip, where one and a half million inhabitants are sunk in poverty and imprisonment under the impact of the Israeli blockade – and of a war that threatens to flare up at any moment.

It’s a vicious circle: no development without peace and no peace without a political agreement. The Conference of Paris billions may help, but they are not sufficient in themselves to guarantee a positive outcome in this last-chance salvage effort.