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Aid groups: Tony Blair faces imminent failure in Middle East

September 25, 2008

Tony Blair

(Justin Lane)

The Middle East Quartet, of which Tony Blair has been the representative for the past year, is accused of “losing its grip” on the peace process

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James Hider in Jerusalem

International efforts to advance the Middle East peace process are facing imminent failure under Tony Blair’s leadership, aid groups operating in the region say in a report released today.The report says that the international community Mr Blair represents suffers from a “vacuum of leadership” and has failed to curb the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank or tackle the worsening living conditions of Palestinians, despite pledges made at a US peace summit almost a year ago.In a damning report, the Middle East Quartet, of which Mr Blair has been the representative for the past year, is accused of “losing its grip” on the peace process. Aid officials also said that its failings could have serious ramifications for implementing international law around the globe.

The Quartet — the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia — has “fundamentally failed to improve the situation on the ground,” David Mepham, the director of policy for Save the Children UK, said. “Unless the Quartet’s words are matched by more sustained pressure and decisive action, the situation will deteriorate still further.

“Time is fast running out. The Quartet needs to radically revise its existing approach and show the people of the region that it can help make a difference.”

The report, released as the Quartet meets in New York to review progress, said that despite repeated calls from the international community to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank — considered illegal under international law and seen as a major obstacle to any peace agreement — there has been a “marked acceleration in construction, and no serious attempts by the Israeli authorities to dismantle outposts”.

The role of Mr Blair and the Quartet were limited by President Bush, who gave his British ally the task of reviving the Palestinian economy to make it ready for future statehood, leaving the political process in the hands of Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State.

Mr Bush promised a deal by the end of this year. Most politicians in the region see that as unlikely.

“We are facing a vacuum in leadership,” said Martha Myers, CARE International’s director for the Palestinian territories. “The Quartet has been unable to hold parties to their obligations. The Quartet’s credibility is on the line and we hope it will use this meeting to show it is able to make a real difference to the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.”

While it credits Mr Blair with securing donor funding and encouraging private investment in the Palestinian territories, the report noted that his project unveiled last May to focus on rejuvenating the economy in specific areas such as Jenin and Jericho had made only a localised impact.

A spokesman for Mr Blair denied that he was stretching himself too thinly with his other projects. These include tackling climate change, poverty in Africa, a Faith Foundation to bridge the gaps between world religions, lectures at Yale University and lucrative posts as an adviser to JP Morgan and Zurich Financial Services.

Peace barriers

Settlements The peace “Road map” called for the dismantling of Jewish settlements built since 2001 and freezing all settlement growth

Palestinian security “Road map” called for a rebuilt Palestinian Authority security apparatus to confront terrorism. An EU-trained police force has been introduced in the West Bank but Palestinians are still afraid for their security

Source: US State Department, Middle East Quartet

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MIDEAST: Everyone Loses in the War of Silencing

September 24, 2008

By Mohammed Omer | Inter-Press Service


GAZA CITY, Sep 23, – So much is missing as you walk down the street along the shops of Gaza. Food and medicines kept out by the blockade enforced by Israel; but also newspapers once a part of the street landscape.

Al-Hayat-Al-Jadeeda and Al-Ayyam, two newspapers loyal to Fatah, are not around any more. And for once, you couldn’t blame the Israelis for censorship.

Of the two big Palestinian territories, Gaza is ruled by Hamas, and the West Bank by Fatah. Fighting between the two groups has led to a silencing of voices on both sides.

Hamas affiliated police forces banned three newspapers in Gaza Jul. 28 this year; of them Al-Quds has now been allowed in. Earlier in June the West Bank authorities banned Falsteen and Al-Risalah, two newspapers affiliated with Hamas.

“We have given them some guidelines to report more professionally, but they have refused to deal with us,” Hamas spokesman Taher Al-Nounno told IPS, speaking of the Fatah publications. “The newspapers have been publishing lies and instigating unrest.”

In the West Bank, Nimir Hamad, political advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said “Al-Rasalah and Falasteen are both propagandist papers calling for strife, they are publishing extremist and fundamentalist thinking.”

Journalists and camera crews working for a Hamas-owned television station in the West Bank were arrested. So were journalists working for Fatah-supporting media in Gaza. Both sides have closed radio stations, and both have confiscated media equipment.

The international watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF, Reporters Without Borders) has said that at least nine media outlets have ceased operating in Gaza since July 2007, when Hamas took control of Gaza after a landslide win in elections in January 2006. Of these outlets, three were state-owned, and six privately owned.

The Basic Law of the Palestine Authority (PA) declares that every person has the right to freedom of thought and expression. But in 1995 the PA passed a law against criticism of the Palestinian Authority or its president. That law is now being implemented in the attacks on newspaper offices and journalists.

The law does not apply to foreign media. But Human Rights Watch has noted that an increasing number of independent journalists are opting out of the region because the risks are too many.

And far too often now, nobody is around to report the many abuses that take place. “Over the past 12 months, Palestinians in both places (the West Bank and Gaza) have suffered serious abuses at the hands of their own security forces, in addition to persistent abuses by the occupying power, Israel,” HRW has stated.

The HRW report says that since taking control of Gaza last year, Hamas has tortured detainees, carried out arbitrary arrests of political opponents, and clamped down on freedom of expression and assembly. And that Fatah has done exactly the same.

Israel brought censorship to this Promised Land long back. In 1971 then Israeli prime minister Golda Meir wiped the name of Palestine off all maps produced in Israel. Israeli occupation forces declared all Palestinian symbols like flags and posters illegal.

During the first Intifadah (1987-1992), the name given to the Palestinian uprising, and again in the second (since September 2000), Israeli authorities have closely censored Palestinian publications, ordering removal of ‘security’ related information.

Israeli authorities have arrested media personnel, beaten them up and denied them press cards. RSF says Israeli soldiers have shot at least nine Palestinian journalists.

But beyond Israel and the Palestinian factions, the blame for censorship lies with those champions of freedom, the European Union and the United States, HRW says. That arises from the funding and the political protection they have given to security forces, it says. (END/2008)

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Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: The Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

September 22, 2008

Robert Weitzel, Sep 21, 2008

Mention 9/11 to most Americans and the two numbers are considered sufficient to give meaning to that day. But mention 9/12, the day after when “terror” became our national mantra and the “smoking gun” brandished by a neocon-infested administration for its devilish designs in the Middle East and the numbers are meaningless beyond the platitudinous, “they hate our freedoms” and “God Bless America.”

Such platitudes, hawked ad nauseam by TV “faith-healers” and political snake oil peddlers, may act as a balm to soothe a body politic traumatized by the attacks on 9/11, but they do not explain—only obfuscate—the real causes that brought terror to our “blessed shores.”

Like many Americans on the seventh anniversary of 9/11, I turned to the Bible for an answer, a problematic move for an atheist such as myself. Predictably, I went straight to verse 9:11 in the Book of Revelation—the Bible’s most terror filled text—and found a short blurb about Abaddon the Destroyer; admittedly, an interesting coincidence, but not a “big picture” explanation.

However, thanks to Providence or serendipity, the very next verse, 9:12, was a godsend: “One terror now ends, but there are two more coming.”

Considering the last seven years, plagued to biblical proportion as they have been by the Bush administration’s criminal domestic and international response to 9/11, no prophet is needed to give meaning to the first half of Rev 9:12, while only a cursory vita review of the Republican and Democratic vice presidential candidates is needed to illuminate the rest of the verse.

John McCain will be the oldest man ever elected as a first-term president. He is also the fellow who made an enemy of the religious right in 2000 when he blasted them for “the evil influence that they exercise over the Republican Party.” McCain needs youth and sex appeal and religious right muscle to prevail. He needs Sarah Palin . . . who happens to be an “end times” fundamentalist.

Barack Obama will be the first “black” man ever elected president. He is young and inexperienced in foreign affairs. He is also not polling well among influential older white voters. Obama needs age and white hair and foreign policy muscle to prevail. He needs Joseph Biden . . . who happens to be a self-professed Zionist.

Behold the twin “terrors” of the Holy Land: a sexy fundamentalist and a white-haired Zionist.

Introducing Governor Palin to Master’s Commission graduates, a youth ministry whose vision is to “see young men and women who are not afraid to lead and are violent in their pursuit of righteous,” Ed Kalnins, pastor of the Wasilla Assembly of God church where Palin was baptized, told the audience that she is the “real deal.”

Pastor Kalnins is the same guy who believes that certain parts of the world are controlled by demons—guess which parts—and preaches an “end times” theology, the radical fundamentalist belief that the corruption of the Holy Land, that would be Muslims, Jews, sundry heretics and unbelievers, must be purified by God’s cleansing fire before the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ can occur.

Knowing Palin is the “real deal” and that several of the churches she’s attended are associated with the likes of Christians United for Israel, a right-wing “end times” organization dedicated to leading the charge to Armageddon (beginning with the nuking of Iran), odds are good Palin embraces this apocalyptic vision.

Frederick Clarkson, author of “Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy” recently told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, “[Palin’s] well-documented belief that she’s living in the “end time” . . . and her interpretation of the Book of Revelation may be driving her public policy and particularly her foreign and military policy views.”

Palin clarified one of her foreign and military policy views for the Master’s Commission graduates by assuring them that the invasion of Iraq was “a task from God.” For a would-be vice president this policy view, one first held by medieval Crusaders as they whacked off Muslim heads, is a real diplomatic nonstarter for the 325 million Arabs living in the Middle East, not to mention the billion-plus Muslims worldwide.

But the mother of all diplomatic nonstarters among Middle East Arabs is a comment Joseph Biden, the current chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Obama’s would-be foreign policy advisor, made during an interview with the Jewish-American cable network, Shalom TV, “I am a Zionist.”

Having a declared Zionist as the vice president of Israel’s most ardent—to the point of irrational—ally waves a shoe in the face of Arabs who are convinced (rightly or wrongly) that Zionism’s ultimate goal is to fulfill the 3000-year-old biblical mandate in Genesis 15:18 to reclaim the land between the Nile and Euphrates rivers as Eretz Yisrael, a territory that includes all or part of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, a slice of Turkey and upwards of 160 million Arabs.

Considering the brutal tactics used by a succession of right-wing Israeli governments—backed by U.S. dollars and military hardware—to secure the Vermont-sized “Eretz Yisrael-lite,” it’s little wonder that Arabs living within the biblical boundaries of Eretz Yisrael feel terrorized by Israel’s chutzpa and its 200 nuclear warheads and have long since elevated their terror alert to blood red.

Keep in mind that when a terrorized people lack a superpower ally and more sophisticated means, their only recourse is to throw stones or strap explosives to their backs or pack suitcases with mini-nukes and deadly microbes or hijack airliners with box cutters and visit their enemy’s “blessed shores” This is not to excuse it. This is not to condone it. This is to explain it.

Come November Americans will choose one of two “terrors” (since our political system allows only two choices): the Middle East in flames to fulfill a biblical “end times” prophecy or the Middle East in flames to secure a biblical Eretz Yisrael. Either way, 325 million Arabs will have an answer that will undoubtedly send a twinge of terror, and most likely rage, down many a “radicalized” spine.

If the Bible or patriotic platitudes or political snake oil continue to be the extent—or sincerity—of our search for understanding the cause of 9/11, we will sooner than later have two more numbers of national significance and another annual occasion for remembering and mourning.


Biography: Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com

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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: We Muslims who despair of terrorism

September 22, 2008

The Independent, Monday Sep 22, 2008

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The admired Scots-Pakistani novelist Suhayl Saadi and his wife, Alina Mirza, who runs a Pakistani film festival in Glasgow, are dear friends. They got married at the Marriot in Islamabad, just bombed by Islamicist murderers who sent in a delivery of lethal explosives in a lorry, during Ramadan. Nice work, guys. Allah will surely reward you aplenty for the slaughter of the blameless, sent off with less ceremony than goats and chickens who, at least, are prayed for as their throats are cut. Ah but they only razed a temple of Western decadence, and many Muslims who worked or went there weren’t “real” Muslims, only Shias and disobedient women, reprobates and sinners for sure.

The couple are devastated, rendered hopeless – for the first time that I can remember. For years, in spite of Pakistan’s many failures, they have kept up a fierce optimism, as if heartfelt belief would, one day, drive away the evil forces that circulate and in parts overrun their ancestral homeland.

There are many more like them, Pakistani-Britons who are proud of the culture of Pakistan, its creative movers and shakers, and millions of extraordinary, generous people. But their pride and idealism are fast draining away.

My father came from Karachi. He fled the place in the 1920s and went back only once, a fortnight before he died in 1970. He never recovered from the experience. It was as if his heart gave up. The country was in the grip of the military again and savagery ruled. It still does. I have never felt the desire to go look for cousins, aunts and uncles.

The newly elected President, Asif Zardari, husband of Benazir Bhutto, new best friend of the United States, is one of that nation’s dodgiest characters. He replaced a military dictator, who replaced another allegedly corrupt politician, Nawaz Sharif, now a big player in the latest political configuration.

Armageddon is on its way as Pakistan dissolves at its north-western borders into that lawless territory that is Afghanistan. American interventions, demands and military incontinence in the region bolster Islamic reactionaries and guerrillas.

India meanwhile, with many similar endemic problems and ruthless governance in Kashmir, nevertheless flowers economically and still holds on to democracy and fundamental freedoms. Sadly Pakistan “proves” what the rest of the world believes, and not without reason, that Muslims are incapable of decent leadership or progressive politics and move instinctively to political and personal tyranny.

Look around and the evidence punches you in both eyes. Saudi Arabia, Iran and various nations in the Middle East and most “Islamic” states elsewhere are failing entities where the people are either afraid or oppressing others. I, a Muslim who fights daily against the unjust treatment of Muslims in the West, have to face the blinding truth that although we have serious external enemies, more Muslims are hurt, wounded, killed and denied by other Muslims who feel themselves to be virtuous.

Lest our detractors rub their hands with satisfaction, I tell them loud and clear, this is not exoneration of Guantanamo Bay, the destruction of Iraq, Belmarsh, Israel’s criminal treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, the fascists in Cologne who tried this week to run an anti-Islam rally, the viciously anti-Muslim BNP and the many ways Europe humiliates us Muslims.

But I am saying that Muslims enthusiastically participate in “rendition”, torture co-religionists in prisons, bomb fellow-worshippers from Iraq to Pakistan and beyond, subjugate their women, cut off hands and necks, keep their young cowering or brainwash them to the point when they are unfit to inhabit this century. If we respect and care for our own so little why should the rest of the world give a damn?

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Exposing the fallacy of anti-Zionism equaling anti-Semitism

September 21, 2008

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Khaled Amayreh | Uruknet.info, Sep 21, 2008

Influential Zionist circles around the world have been bullying western governments to promulgate legislations that would incriminate critics of Israel on the ground that anti-Zionism is actually anti-Semitism in disguise.

The Zionist efforts have not been a complete failure as some western politicians and lawmakers are shamelessly parroting the Zionist canard, ignoring the huge chasm between the pathological hatred of Jews, commonly known as anti-Semitism or Judeophobia, and the moral rejection of Israel’s manifestly criminal policies toward the Palestinian people.

In recent years, a famous French author was found guilty of displaying “anti-Semitism” for writing a book on Zionist mythology with regard to Palestine.

In Austria, a British historian was dumped in jail for questioning the Israeli-Zionist narrative regarding the holocaust.

And in the United States, the country of the First Amendment, a major British Publishing House has been “ousted” because it publishes books the world-wide Jewish lobby considers “anti-Israeli.”

Fortunately, there are many conscientious Jews who courageously reject the Zionist claim that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are two sides of the same coin.

The small but increasingly active group, known as Natori Karta (guardians of the City) represents the most pronounced Jewish opposition to Zionism and Israel.

The group believes that Zionism is inherently immoral and antithetical to true Judaism.

In light, one is almost innately prompted to ask how can a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews who include Torah sages of impeccable credentials be anti-Semites?

Well, the classical Zionist answer is that Jews who reject Zionism are self-hating Jews!!!

This explanation, however, is as valid as claiming that Germans who rejected the Third Reich were self-hating or incomplete Germans.

I am making this analogy because there is really more commonality between Zionism and Nazism than there is between Zionism and Judaism.

What do they want?

But what do the Zionists hope to achieve by trying to outlaw criticisms of and public opposition to Israel and Zionism, especially in the West?

Well, their ultimate goal is clear. They want the rest of the world to recognize and acknowledge that Israel is a special nation since Jews are said to be a special people.

They want the world to acknowledge that the rules and norms that apply to the rest of the world, e.g. the rule of international law, doesn’t apply to Israel.

They want me and you and the entire humanity to acknowledge that while war crimes and crimes against humanity may be condemned when perpetrated by the “goyim” (the non-Jewish world), the same crimes must be tolerated and even accepted as legitimate when perpetrated by Jews.

And when the world speaks up against such crimes when committed by Zionist Jews, the ready-made charge of “anti-Semitism” will be unleashed in the face of Israel critics.

And if the critics happen to be Jewish, the disgusting mantra of “self-hating Jews” will be invoked to silence and intimidate the Jewish critics.

Well, the world must never succumb to Zionist intimidation and bullying. We are supposed to be living in an ethical universe where right is right and wrong is wrong.

And if we allowed these self-worshiping megalomaniacs, God forbid, to have their way, then at one point we would be forced to morph ourselves into robot-like slaves in the service of a universal satanic power that is hell-bent on controlling the peoples of the world by controlling the governments of the world.

Hence, we must never allow ourselves to succumb to this monstrous “Jewish power” that is trying to bastardize universal morality and corrupt human conscience. We must continue to call the spade a spade even if we see it in the hands of the strongest of men.

Israel is not hated because it is Jewish

It is important though to make it abundantly clear that Israel is no more hated for being “Jewish” than Nazi Germany was for being Aryan or German.

Israel is hated because of her evil ideology and equally evil practices. A country whose birth and survival were and continue to be at the expense of another people is an evil country and has no right to exist.

A country that is dedicated to the destruction and obliteration of another people is an evil country regardless of how many admirers its has around the world.

Israel is hated because of its systematic, institutionalized oppression, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, home demolition, apartheid, racism and slow-motion genocide of non-Jews as is the case in the Gaza Strip.

Israel is hated because it oppresses people and discriminates against them in ways reminiscent of the Nazi era because the victims don’t belong to the “holy tribe”!!!

In short, Israel is hated because of its evil acts, not because of its Jewish identity. Claiming that it is hated because of its religion or “race” is a canard amounting to a Big Lie.

Anti-Zionism highest moral obligation

There is no doubt that anti-Semitism, like Islamophobia and other forms of racism, must be fought relentlessly and uprooted, although this may well be an impossible task, given the human nature.

However, anti-Zionism is a different thing, since Zionism represents evil in is ugliest form. Yes, Zionism produced many scientists and made some technological advancements. But so what? Nazi Germany, too, produced many scientists and made technological advancement.

In the final analysis nations, like individuals, are primarily judged according to their moral credentials not scientific achievements, especially if these achievements are utilized to further injustice toward fellow human beings. This is why a given scientist who does and supports evil should be viewed as an evil man no matter how many prestigious awards he has won.

For all these reasons, I believe that standing against Zionism is a high moral obligation upon the entire humanity.

In the final analysis, combating Zionism also serves the best interests of the Jewish people.

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Palestinian Unity: Goal or Mantra?

September 20, 2008

By Ramzy Baroud | Information Clearing House, Sep 18, 2008

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa used exceptionally tough language during a Cairo news conference 9 September, when he lashed out at Palestinian factionalism, saying that the League is going as far as studying the possibility of imposing sanctions on quarrelling Palestinians.

“I am extremely angry with the Palestinian organisations… We are studying the measures to be taken in the face of the current Palestinian chaos,” he said, after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers. He added, “the sanctions would not be against anyone in particular. They would be against the party which obstructs reconciliation and maybe against everyone or against the organisation which obstructs Egyptian efforts.”

Considering Moussa’s devoted efforts in the past aimed at solidifying a Palestinian front and generating a semblance of a Arab unity in its support, one can only sympathise with the head of the League’s frustration and indeed “extreme anger”.

Palestinian disunity, and political — if not, geopolitical — fragmentation is eroding the Palestinian cause more than all Israeli efforts, walls and military incursions combined. The painful-to-watch televised bickering between representatives of various Palestinian factions has led to confusion among traditionally pro-Palestinian groups worldwide. The political objectives — once agreed upon as “constants” — and symbols that once united Palestinians everywhere are now wide open for extreme interpretation.

In fact, “respecting the sanctity of Palestinian blood”, which for long served as the lowest possible denominator agreed on by every Palestinian grouping, has been violated many times in recent months and years; too many times to count. Repeating the slogan is, at this point, an empty mantra, joining the numerous other mantras that have for long served as a sedative for the hapless masses, whether Arabs, Palestinians or both.

That said, a reality check is also in order. It might be easy for the Arab League to pass a measure or two to sanction Palestinian groups who might be perceived as the ones jeopardising the Cairo talks, whether the ones underway or the larger gatherings scheduled for October. Not even Palestinians would dare criticise the League for practising some brotherly tough love for the sake of the cause of Palestine, which is supposedly the main overriding priority for every Arab state — another mantra. Nonetheless, it is incumbent on the Arab League, as it mulls over the issue of sanctions, to consider the role that some of its own members have played in instigating Palestinian infighting.

Continued . . .

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Palestine Today 091808

September 19, 2008
IMEMC News | 18.09.2008 18:09
Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center http://www.imemc.org for Thursday September 18, 2008.

Audio Palestine Today 091808 – mp3 3.2M



Seven Palestinian residents from the West Bank were reportedly kidnapped on Thursday by Israeli soldiers, after as at least two Palestinians were reportedly killed in an underground tunnel collapse in the southern Gaza Strip. These stories and more are coming up, stay tuned.

The News Cast

Israeli soldiers detained at least seven Palestinians from the West Bank cities of Hebron, Bethlehem and Nablus, Palestinian sources and witnesses reported today.

The detentions took place in the form of military invasions into a number of villages. The soldiers also reportedly ransacked houses and forced out those inside, then kidnapped the claimed wanted residents.

In the Gaza Strip, at least two people were killed and several others wounded during a collapse of an underground tunnel in the southern part of the coastal region. On the Gaza-Egypt border, estimates suggest that there are hundreds of such tunnels which the besieged population of Gaza use to bring in essential supplies and commodities, made scarce due to the 15-month-old Israeli blockade.

Commenting on the victory of Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, during the ruling Kadima party elections, Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Fawzi Barhoum, believed that the Palestinians will face increased Israeli aggression with Livni in charge.

At the internal level, the armed wing of the Islamist Hamas party in Gaza, known as Ezzildin Elqassam brigade, called on its West Bank-based members to defy arrest attempts, which the Fatah-allied Palestinian Authority’s security services carry out against Hamas supporters in the area.

Staying in Gaza, Raed Al Harazeen, 31, died of his wounds on Wednesday two hours after being abducted by unknown gunmen who broke into his home and took him to an unknown destination.

Apparently Al Harazeen was tortured before he was dropped at an intersection in Gaza city. Bruises and cuts were obvious on several parts of his body. His family found him alive, but in a serious condition, two hours after he was abducted. Israeli authorities, however, denied him entry to Israel for treatment after also being turned away from the Gaza hospital due to the lack basic medical equipment because of the siege. Al-Harazeen died of his wounds at Erez military crossing to Israel.

Conclusion:
Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem. You have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Media Center, http://www.imemc.org. This report has been brought to you by Rami Al-Meghari and Gorge Rishmawi.

IMEMC News
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Desmond Tutu: Israeli shelling in Gaza may be war crime

September 16, 2008

· Archbishop wants inquiry into Beit Hanoun attack
· 18 family members killed in ‘reckless’ artillery salvo

Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem|The Guardian,Tuesday September 16 2008

Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel laureate, said yesterday there was a “possibility” Israel had committed a war crime when 18 Palestinians from a single family were killed by Israeli artillery shells in Gaza two years ago.

Tutu said the Israeli attack, which hit the Athamna family house, showed “a disproportionate and reckless disregard for Palestinian civilian life”.

The archbishop presented his comments in a final report to the UN Human Rights Council, which had sent him to Gaza to investigate the killings in Beit Hanoun in November 2006. For 18 months Israel did not grant the archbishop or his team a visa. They entered Gaza in May this year on a rare crossing from Egypt.

On the three-day visit, Tutu and his team visited the house, interviewed the survivors and met others in Gaza, including the senior Hamas figure and former prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh. At the time, Tutu said he wanted to travel to Israel to hear the Israeli account of events, but he was not permitted.

“In the absence of a well-founded explanation from the Israeli military – which is in sole possession of the relevant facts – the mission must conclude that there is a possibility that the shelling of Beit Hanoun constituted a war crime,” Tutu said in his report to the 47-member council.

Tutu also said that rockets fired by Palestinian militants into southern Israel should stop and should be investigated. “Those firing rockets on Israeli civilians are no less accountable than the Israeli military for their actions,” he said.

For the past three months a ceasefire between Israel and the militant groups in Gaza has been in place. It has significantly reduced the number of incidents and the death toll from the conflict there. Israel maintains a tough economic blockade on the territory, restricting imports and banning nearly all exports.

“It is not too late for an independent, impartial and transparent investigation of the shelling to be held,” Tutu said.

He said those responsible for firing the shells should be held accountable, whether the cause of the incident was a mistake or wilful.

After the incident, Israel’s military said the shelling into Beit Hanoun that day was a mistake and was the result of a “rare and severe failure in the artillery fire-control system” which created “incorrect range-findings”. It said the shells had been aimed 450 metres away from the edge of town. No legal action was taken against any officer. However, it is unclear why the artillery was fired so close to a residential area that morning and why shells continued to be fired after the first one hit the Athamna house.

Tutu also said he recommended that Israel pay adequate compensation to the victims “without delay”. His report said “reparation” should also be made to the town of Beit Hanoun itself, and suggested a memorial to the victims would also help the survivors. He suggested a physiotheraphy clinic as one possibility.

The survivors in the family remain bitter and most of the large extended family no longer live in the building. Since the shelling they have received no financial help, apart from a monthly stipend from the Palestinian Authority of £50 for each of the 18 dead.

Aharon Leshno-Yaar, Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, where the Human Rights Council was meeting, rejected Tutu’s report as “another regrettable product of the Human Rights Council”.

“It is regrettable that this mission took place at all,” he added.

Leshno-Yaar said the report gave de facto legitimacy to Hamas, the Islamist movement that won elections in 2006 and then seized full control of Gaza last year. “This does not serve the interests of Israel or the Palestinians or the cause of peace,” he said.

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Israeli Army chief in Kashmir?

September 11, 2008
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GK NEWS NETWORK

Srinagar, Sept 10: Israel’s Army chief, Major General Avi Mizrahi has arrived in Kashmir on an unscheduled visit, reports said today. However authorities here are tightlipped about the visit and they neither confirm nor deny the reports.
Maj Gen Avi Mizrahi, the chief of the Israeli ground forces, arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday on a three-day visit. He met the chiefs of India’s army, navy and air force and discussed matters of mutual concern, including joint military training and exercises for the two armed forces.
Israel has offered to train Indian troops in counter-insurgency and anti-militant operations, the reports from New Delhi added.
When contacted by Greater Kashmir, Defense spokesman A K Mathur neither confirmed nor denied reports about the visit.
Gen Mizrahi’s visit comes at a time when Kashmir is engulfed in a massive anti-India uprising. At least 50 Kashmiris have been killed in police and troops firing in the recent uprising that began two months back with the tensions still high.
India and Israel have shared defense co-operation since diplomatic relations between New Delhi and Tel Aviv were established in 1992. The ties have become stronger in recent times with India emerging as the largest purchaser of Israeli arms since the beginning of the 21st century.
India has purchased the Phalcons Airborne Early Warning and Control Systems from Israel that would be fitted onto the Indian Air Force’s three IL-76 heavy-lift transport aircraft.
It has also bought the Green Pine radars that warn of incoming enemy ballistic missiles.
The Indian armed forces also use Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles for intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance. The Indian Army uses Israeli night-vision equipment, particularly in Kashmir.

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Olmert Indicted As Deputy Is Accused of War Crimes

September 11, 2008

JERUSALEM – The Israeli Attorney General has been urged to launch a criminal investigation into whether Shaul Mofaz, a leading prime ministerial candidate, ordered “war crimes” to be committed when he was the military’s chief of staff.

[On August 1 the Independent reported claims made in a book by two Israeli journalists that Shaul Mofaz in 2001 called for a death toll of 70 Palestinians a day. (Getty Images)]

On August 1 the Independent reported claims made in a book by two Israeli journalists that Shaul Mofaz in 2001 called for a death toll of 70 Palestinians a day. (Getty Images)

The Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, is the front-runner in the contest for the leadership of Kadima. Mr Mofaz, the Deputy Prime Minister, is his main rival.

David Kretzmer, emeritus professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that accounts of the briefing by Mr Mofaz give rise “to a grave suspicion” that he “committed serious offences, some of which at least, fall into the category of war crimes”.

The letter to the Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, refers to a book by two Israeli journalists, Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, which says that Mr Mofaz, after ensuring he was not being officially recorded, called for a Palestinian death toll of 70 per day.

Professor Kretzmer tells Mr Mazuz that one lesson of the corruption inquiry into Mr Olmert is that it is best to investigate candidates for high office before they reach it. “Otherwise the public is liable to be exposed once more to the disgrace of having police officers arrive at the Prime Minister’s official residence in order to interrogate him.”

Police have urged Mr Mazuz to indict Mr Olmert on two counts – that he funded personal trips abroad for himself and his family with money secured by the multiple billing of public organisations, and another arising out of claims by a US businessman, Morris Talansky, that he illegally used political donations for personal expenditure. It is up to Mr Mazuz to decide if Mr Olmert should be indicted.

The Shelah/Drucker book, Boomerang: The Failure Of Leadership In The Second Intifada, says that while Mr Mofaz’s alleged instruction caused disquiet among some senior officers, a Hebron district commander said that the subsequent fatal shooting of a Palestinian policeman was in accordance with the briefing.

Professor Kretzmer, who also holds a senior academic post at the University of Ulster, says that an order to kill people “by quota” is “not consistent with the norms of humanitarian law”, and that the test of proportionality is especially relevant in cases of military occupation, in which even the actions of armed groups do not “relieve the Army of its obligations to residents of the territory”.

The letter cites reports in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2001 and 2002 which, he says, raise suspicions that Mr Mofaz ordered officers to shoot at every armed Palestinian regardless of the threat posed to Israeli forces.

It points out that at the start of hostilities in 2000, Palestinian police in particular were armed by agreement with the Israeli government, that the military had insisted the conflict was with armed groups and not against the Palestinian Authority or people, and that the Geneva Conventions prohibited killing people not taking part in hostilities.

Noting that countries are obliged to investigate grave breaches of the conventions, he warns that if the Israeli authorities do not do so, “there is a fear that it may be carried out by the authorities of another country”.

Professor Kretzmer has been told his letter has been passed to “relevant persons” in the justice ministry who will read it. A ministry spokesman said this did not mean that it accepted there was a case against Mr Mofaz, or that an investigation would be launched, and it was normal that “any complaint or letter” was studied before a reply was drafted. There was no response from Mr Mofaz’s office.

In 2002, while Mr Mofaz was visiting Britain, the British lawyer Imran Khan, representing a group of Palestinians, presented the Director of Public Prosecutions with claims of other war crimes by Mr Mofaz, including targeted assassinations and the demolition of Palestinian homes. While Mr Khan claimed the DPP had passed the file to Scotland Yard’s “crimes against humanity” section, no action was taken before Mr Mofaz departed.

© 2008 The Independent

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