Dec

December 26, 2012 • 8:17AM

Saudi Arabia announced during the third week of October, that it would build one of the world’s largest mosques/education centers on a hilltop in Kabul, Afghanistan, at a cost of $100 million, scheduled to open in 2014 or 2015. The Saudi “Islamic complex,” to be named after Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, is intended to contain a mosque and a university center, capable of housing and indoctrinating up to 5,000 Afghani students in jihadi Wahhabism.

2014 is the date that U.S.-ISAF forces are due to depart from Afghanistan, after a 13-year-long ulcerating war, that has sucked out America’s moral and physical capacity, costing thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and the explosion of the Afghan drug trade. There will be an exchange: in reality, as the U.S. limps out of Afghanistan, the British-Saudi monarchies, which induced the U.S. into Afghanistan through the orchestrated September 11, 2001 attack, will take over. America’s occupation is a lost episode.

Catriona Luke, a columnist for the Guardian newspaper, commenting Dec. 13 on the planned Saudi madrassa in Kabul, noted that “The AfPak [Afghanistan-Pakistan] region has been defined by a Saudi proxy war since the 1970s…. Reuters recently produced an excellent report on how banned terrorist outfits in Pakistan are, and have long been, funded from Saudi Arabia. WikiLeaks cables described the Gulf states as a ‘cash-point for [Wahhabi] terrorism’…. A report commissioned by the UN Security Council in 2003 described how in the decade leading to 9/11 Saudi Arabia transferred over 4500 million to al-Qaeda via Islamic charities….” Luke added that the “Bush administration is said to have redacted 28 pages of a Congress report that documented Saudi government ties with the 9/11 hijackers.”

While Luke does not mention that same network as running 9/11/2012, she is otherwise accurate.

Now, as the U.S. has been weakened by its wasting occupation, as in the repeat of the “Great Game” of the past, the British-Saudi empire, if U.S. policy is not changed, is poised to pick up the pieces.

Dec

Bertrand Russell’s Last Message

By Becky | Activism & Human Rights, Featured Posts, Middle East

Bertrand Russell’s Last Message

By Bertrand Russell

This statement on the Middle East was dated 31st January, 1970, and was read on 3rd February, the day after Bertrand Russell’s death, to an International Conference of Parliamentarians meeting in Cairo.
The latest phase of the undeclared war in the Middle East is based upon a profound miscalculation. The bombing raids deep into Egyptian territory will not persuade the civilian population to surrender, but will stiffen their resolve to resist. This is the lesson of all aerial bombardment.

The Vietnamese who have endured years of American heavy bombing have responded not by capitulation but by shooting down more enemy aircraft. In 1940 my own fellow countrymen resisted Hitler’s bombing raids with unprecedented unity and determination. For this reason, the present Israeli attacks will fail in their essential purpose, but at the same time they must be condemned vigorously throughout the world.

The development of the crisis in the Middle East is both dangerous and instructive. For over 20 years Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has appealed to “reason” and has suggested “negotiations”. This is the traditional role of the imperial power, because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression. The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annexe foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate.

The refugees who surround Palestine in their hundreds of thousands were described recently by the Washington journalist I.F. Stone as “the moral millstone around the neck of world Jewry.” Many of the refugees are now well into the third decade of their precarious existence in temporary settlements. The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their number have increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.

We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering. What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number. of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.

All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does not contain the seeds of future conflict. Justice requires that the first step towards a settlement must be an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in June, 1967. A new world campaign is needed to help bring justice to the long-suffering people of the Middle East.

Dec

Syrian Chemical Weapons: Another “Curveball” with Phony Intelligence

By Becky | Featured Posts, Middle East, Politics & Government

December 11-12, 2012 –

A day after WMR reported that there was no truth to Pentagon claims that Syria was deploying chemical weapons, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, on a trip to Kuwait, told reporters that the threat of Syrian chemical weapons has “slowed.” WMR reported that chemical weapons were in Syria but they were in the hands of Syrian rebels who had ontained them from their allies in Libya.

In fact, there was never a threat from Syrian chemical weapons. Syria’s government confirmed that U.S.-backed Syrian rebels had obtained chemical weapons from external sources and that the Bashar al-Assad government was being set up to be blamed for the rebels’ first use of such weapons in the Syrian civil war.

WMR reported that with the Western Syria in Syria came similar con artists like Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in Iraq. WMR reported on the involvement of Farid “Frank” Ghadry, a Washington, DC-area businessman who once headed up a chain of coffee shops called Hannibal’s Coffee Company. Ghadry, like Chalabi, serves the needs of the CIA. Ghadry’s Syria Reform Party is a carbon copy of the INC. And like the INC, the Syria Reform Party is linked to Washington’s most influential neo-cons and their organizations.

And like Chalabi’s infamous “Curveball,” Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, the Iraqi source who was responsible for trafficking in bogus claims that Saddam Hussein possessed biological weapons, the Syrian rebels have their “Curveball” counterpart in retired Syrian Major General Adnan Sillou, who claims he was in charge of chemical weapons defense for Syria’s defense forces. Sillou claims Assad possesses mustard gas, the nerve agents VX and tabun, and sarin. Sillou claims Assad’s forces have dropped white phosphorous and pesticides against rebel-held positions.

According to ABC News, Sillou wants to command his own 2,000-strong Syrian rebel unit, which he calls the “Mountain Heroes,” to secure Syria’s chemical weapons, which he claims total 600 chemical weapons warheads. Sillou is reminiscent of the CIA’s Libyan “general,” Qaddafi regime defector Khalifa Belqasim Hifter, a resident of northern Virginia who showed up in Benghazi during the civil war wearing an American cowboy hat and claiming to be in command of Libyan rebel forces.

Sillou is obviously trying to put a Syrian imprimatur on Syria’s chemical warheads on behalf of the CIA, which is nervous about Saddam’s chemical weapons currently stored in Syrian warehouses. The Iraqi weapons were transported to Syria and securely stored there with the approval of the George W. Bush administration. Many of the Iraqi weapons and precursor chemicals originated with Western firms like the Carlyle Group and were sold to Saddam during his war with Iran.

The State Department’s branding of the Jabhat al-Nusra brigade, the most vicious element within Syrian rebel ranks, is not only an admission that they are composed of “Al Qaeda” and Salafist elements from Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Yemen, and other countries but that it is this group and an affiliated group, Ghuraba al Sham (Strangers of Greater Syria) that have in their possession chemical weapons procured from warehouses in Libya. Before Qaddafi’s fall, the weapons were being secured by Libyan troops under an agreement with the United States and NATO. After Qaddafi declared the weapons to the United States and UN, the Americans and NATO did not have the capability of moving and storing the weapons elsewhere so Qaddafi was requested to maintain security on the stockpiles. The weapons remained secure until Qaddafi’s was overthrown by radical Islamists. Many of the chemical weapons are now in the hands of groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and other Salafists that continue to receive financial assistance from Saudi Arabia and Qatar..

Dec

Former Powell adviser ‘skeptical’ of ‘politicized’ US intelligence on Syria

By Becky | Featured Posts, Middle East, Politics & Government

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell (AFP Photo / Chip Somodevilla)

Syria will never use chemical weapons against its own people, Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army Colonel who was Chief of Staff to Colin Powell told RT. Instead, the reality is that US is “preparing the ground to intervene in Syria.”

An act which would lead to a conflict “that would take at least a decade to settle – and there aren’t going to be too many victors at the end of that decade, just losers,” Wilkerson says, as Washington’s ultimate aim is to overthrow the Iranian leadership.

Simultaneously, some members of Congress are talking about “impeachment” of the US president for not consulting Congress before involving the country in conflicts.

RT:You were Colin Powell’s chief of staff when the decision was made to invade Iraq. In 2003, Powell made a speech that laid out the case for that war. Let’s take a listen to what he said. You helped prepare that speech, and have since described it as the biggest mistake of your life. Why?

Lawrence Wilkerson: Primarily because we – to the American people, to the international community and of course to the members of the US Security Council – presented that speech… it was not accurate, it was not true, it was not valid. We did not know that, but it was not just an intelligence failure. It was also the massive politicization of intelligence by the leadership in Washington.

RT: We’re currently seeing very similar rhetoric in the US in relation to Syria. Will it end in war again?

LW: I would be highly skeptical of any of the intelligence rendered by the $140-billion-plus US intelligence community as to weapons of mass destruction in possession of another country. Period.

RT: Syria is not signed up the chemical weapons convention, one of the seven countries that isn’t. Does that suggest perhaps that it has a reason to get signed up to it, and it does have chemical weapons?

LW: Well I’m not violating any confidence or any great prohibition in the intelligence community to tell you that we have known for years, years that Syria has chemical weapons stockpiles, just like Iraq had chemical weapons stockpiles for a while. But the fact that President Assad will be moving them around and preparing for use against his own citizens within his own territory, I frankly find preposterous.

RT: Why is it then that the US really wants to pursue this, and is using it for various reasons, not just to justify only rhetoric, but perhaps a serious talk of a military invasion?

LW: Well, Syria’s question was just addressed by one of your previous commentators, and that is, why in the world would we put Patriot batteries on the Turkish border adhesively to protect Turkey with the largest and the most powerful army in the region, indeed one of the most powerful in the world? Turkey needs no protection by us against that sort of thing, and it would be utterly stupid for Assad to attack Turkey in that way. So why are we doing those things that look like they’re not connected to the reality, unless the reality is that we’re preparing the ground to intervene in Syria.

RT: What would be the implications if the US were to intervene in Syria? Some are saying that the fallout will be far more dramatic that what we saw in Iraq – would you agree with that?

LW: I think, if we were to intervene in a substantial way, that is to say if we were to put the troops on the ground, marines, soldiers and so forth; and we were to do in Syria what we began to do in 2003 in Iraq, I think those people are absolutely right. I think it will even be even worse than Iraq. I think, again, it will be as a backdoor into Iran, which as you know is the real threat that we have been putting out there for years now.

And I think we’re looking into Syria and Iran being a combination that we would then take on – and you’re talking about a conflict that becomes regional and maybe even wider, because we’ve got Russia, we’ve got China, we’ve got other players; as I’ve just mentioned, the Turks. We’ve got a significant interest in that region if Iran and Syria are seriously threatened by the US invasion. And I think, you’re looking at a configuration that would take at least a decade to settle and there aren’t going to be too many victors at the end of that decade – just losers.

RT: Can it actually afford to get involved, and is there an appetite among the American people for yet another military conflict?

LW: Absolutely not, but I’m meeting with several congressman at the end of the week, and that is next week, and we’re going to talk about this very thing. For example about Libya, the way the Libyan operation was conducted without the consultation with the US Congress at all. There are some congressman that are so concerned about this that they’re mentioning words like impeachment and so worth, because you’re not supposed to take the American country to war without the permission of the Congress, the Constitution pretty much says that.

And yet we’re on this track where executives start wars on their own will, and I think this is the kind of thing that is really dangerous for this republic. Iran will give this a different patina, though, because you have a Congress that is really itching to go to war with Iran. So, I think you’re looking at a combination here – not just Syria, and ultimately the target is Iran.

RT: What is the answer then for Syria? Isn’t some intervention justified on humanitarian grounds? In fact, that justification was given for the intervention in Libya. In fact many say that is what brought the conflict to an end, disposed of colonel Gaddafi and ended the loss of innocent lives. Can you apply the same to Syria?

LW: Well, I would differ with that resolution in Libya. Libya still has enormous problems. We have a disconcerted Mali. We have the government being overthrown in Mali, we have Al -Qaeda operating in the North of Mali – all of that is partially a result of what we did in Libya. So, I would be very hesitant to classify Libya as a success. Syria and Iran would be classified even less as a success in my view. What you would have there, a I said, is a long-term occupation, increasing insurgency, increasing civil war-like fighting and so worth.

The answer in Syria, I think, as lamentable as the casualties are, is to let the Syrians settle the situation for the Syrians. There are a lot of Iranians on the ground fighting with Assad’s forces, advising with Assad’s forces. And since that is taking place, it makes better sense for us to take on Syria because we’re going to encounter the Iranians in Syria if we go into Syria. But this is not the time to be doing this.

RT: Do you think rebels could dispose of Assad?

LW: I think Assad’s days are numbered. I don’t know what those days are, I did not think he would last through 2012, and he is apparently going to do that. He may hang on to several factions in Syria that are powerful and still with him, but I still think the best resolution for Syria is a resolution brought about by the majority of the Syrian people.

If they can get their act together to the point where the opposition, as it were, to Assad is sodded enough, it has enough good leadership to topple him, than that is what should happen. But there should be no outside assistance, and that goes for Iran too. Iran should get its people out of Syria and let Syria handle its problems by itself.

Nov

Noam Chomsky: Israel has made Gaza a giant prison

By Becky | Featured Posts, Israel & Palestine, Middle East

Noam Chomsky: Israel has made Gaza a giant prison

by Noam Chomsky on 11/23/2012

Gaza – The giant concentration camp

Even a single night in jail is enough to give a taste of what it means to be under the total control of some external force. And it hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison, where a million and a half people, in the most densely populated area of the world, are constantly subject to random and often savage terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade, and with the further goal of ensuring that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement that will grant these rights will be nullified.

The intensity of this commitment on the part of the Israeli political leadership has been dramatically illustrated just in the past few days, as they warn that they will “go crazy” if Palestinian rights are given limited recognition at the UN. That is not a new departure. The threat to “go crazy” (“nishtagea”) is deeply rooted, back to the Labor governments of the 1950s, along with the related “Samson Complex”: we will bring down the Temple walls if crossed. It was an idle threat then; not today.

The purposeful humiliation is also not new, though it constantly takes new forms. Thirty years ago political leaders, including some of the most noted hawks, submitted to Prime Minister Begin a shocking and detailed account of how settlers regularly abuse Palestinians in the most depraved manner and with total impunity. The prominent military-political analyst Yoram Peri wrote with disgust that the army’s task is not to defend the state, but “to demolish the rights of innocent people just because they are Araboushim (“niggers,” “kikes”) living in territories that God promised to us.”

Gazans have been selected for particularly cruel punishment. It is almost miraculous that people can sustain such an existence. How they do so was described thirty years ago in an eloquent memoir by Raja Shehadeh (The Third Way), based on his work as a lawyerengaged in the hopeless task of trying to protect elementary rights within a legal system designed to ensure failure, and his personal experience as a Samid, “a steadfast one,” who watches his home turned into a prison by brutal occupiers and can do nothing but somehow “endure.”

Since Shehadeh wrote, the situation has become much worse. The Oslo agreements, celebrated with much pomp in 1993, determined that Gaza and the West Bank are a single territorial entity. By then the US and Israel had already initiated their program of separating them fully from one another, so as to block a diplomatic settlement and punish the Araboushim in both territories.

Punishment of Gazans became still more severe in January 2006, when they committed a major crime: they voted the “wrong way” in the first free election in the Arab world, electing Hamas. Demonstrating their passionate “yearning for democracy,” the US and Israel, backed by the timid European Union, at once imposed a brutal siege, along with intensive military attacks. The US also turned at once to standard operating procedure when some disobedient population elects the wrong government: prepare a military coup to restore order.

Gazans committed a still greater crime a year later by blocking the coup attempt, leading to a sharp escalation of the siege and military attacks. These culminated in winter 2008-9, with Operation Cast Lead, one of the most cowardly and vicious exercises of military force in recent memory, as a defenseless civilian population, trapped with no way to escape, was subjected to relentless attack by one of the world’s most advanced military systems relying on US arms and protected by US diplomacy. An unforgettable eyewitness account of the slaughter — “infanticide” in their words — is given by the two courageous Norwegian doctors who worked at Gaza’s main hospitalduring the merciless assault, Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse, in their remarkable book Eyes in Gaza.

President-elect Obama was unable to say a word, apart from reiterating his heartfelt sympathy for children under attack — in the Israeli town Sderot. The carefully planned assault was brought to an end right before his inauguration, so that he could then say that now is the time to look forward, not backward, the standard refuge of criminals.

Of course, there were pretexts — there always are. The usual one, trotted out when needed, is “security”: in this case, home-made rockets from Gaza. As is commonly the case, the pretext lacked any credibility. In 2008 a truce was established between Israel and Hamas. The Israeli government formally recognizes that Hamas observed it fully. Not a single Hamas rocket was fired until Israel broke the truce under cover of the US election on November 4 2008, invading Gaza on ludicrous grounds and killing half a dozen Hamas members. The Israeli government was advised by its highest intelligence officials that the truce could be renewed by easing the criminal blockade and ending military attacks. But the government of Ehud Olmert, reputedly a dove, chose to reject these options, preferring to resort to its huge comparative advantage in violence: Operation Cast Lead. The basic facts are reviewed once again by foreign policy analyst Jerome Slater in the current issue of the Harvard-MIT journal International Security.

The pattern of bombing under Cast Lead was carefully analyzed by the highly informed and internationally respected Gazan human rights advocate Raji Sourani. He points out that the bombing was concentrated in the north, targeting defenseless civilians in the most densely populated areas, with no possible military pretext. The goal, he suggests, may have been to drive the intimidated population to the south, near the Egyptian border. But the Samidin stayed put, despite the avalanche of US-Israeli terror.

A further goal might have been to drive them beyond. Back to the earliest days of the Zionist colonization it was argued across much of the spectrum that Arabs have no real reason to be in Palestine; they can be just as happy somewhere else, and should leave — politely “transferred,” the doves suggested. This is surely no small concern in Egypt, and perhaps a reason why Egypt does not open the border freely to civilians or even to desperately needed materials

Sourani and other knowledgeable sources observe that the discipline of the Samidin conceals a powder keg, which might explode any time, unexpectedly, as the first Intifada did in Gaza in 1989 after years of miserable repression that elicited no notice or concern,

Merely to mention one of innumerable cases, shortly before the outbreak of the Intifada a Palestinian girl, Intissar al-Atar, was shot and killed in a schoolyard by a resident of a nearby Jewish settlement. He was one of the several thousand Israelis settlers brought to Gaza in violation of international law and protected by a huge army presence, taking over much of the land and scarce water of the Strip and living “lavishly in twenty-two settlements in the midst of 1.4 million destitute Palestinians,” as the crime is described by Israeli scholar Avi Raz. The murderer of the schoolgirl, Shimon Yifrah, was arrested, but quickly released on bail when the Court determined that “the offense is not severe enough” to warrant detention. The judge commented that Yifrah only intended to shock the girl by firing his gun at her in a schoolyard, not to kill her, so “this is not a case of a criminal person who has to be punished, deterred, and taught a lesson by imprisoning him.” Yifrah was given a 7-month suspended sentence, while settlers in the courtroom broke out in song and dance. And the usual silence reigned. After all, it is routine.

And so it is. As Yifrah was freed, the Israeli press reported that an army patrol fired into the yard of a school for boys aged 6 to 12 in a West Bank refugee camp, wounding five children, allegedly intending only “to shock them.” There were no charges, and the event again attracted no attention. It was just another episode in the program of “illiteracy as punishment,” the Israeli press reported, including the closing of schools, use of gas bombs, beating of students with rifle butts, barring of medical aid for victims; and beyond the schools a reign of more severe brutality, becoming even more savage during the Intifada, under the orders of Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, another admired dove.

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Noam Chomsky: Israel has made Gaza a giant prison

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My initial impression, after a visit of several days, was amazement, not only at the ability to go on with life, but also at the vibrancy and vitality among young people, particularly at the university, where I spent much of my time at an international conference. But there too one can detect signs that the pressure may become too hard to bear. Reports indicate that among young men there is simmering frustration, recognition that under the US-Israeli occupation the future holds nothing for them. There is only so much that caged animals can endure, and there may be an eruption, perhaps taking ugly forms — offering an opportunity for Israeli and western apologists to self-righteously condemn the people who are culturally backward, as Mitt Romney insightfully explained.

Gaza has the look of a typical third world society, with pockets of wealth surrounded by hideous poverty. It is not, however, “undeveloped.” Rather it is “de-developed,” and very systematically so, to borrow the terms of Sara Roy, the leading academic specialist on Gaza. The Gaza Strip could have become a prosperous Mediterranean region, with rich agriculture and a flourishing fishing industry, marvelous beaches and, as discovered a decade ago, good prospects for extensive natural gas supplies within its territorial waters.

By coincidence or not, that is when Israel intensified its naval blockade, driving fishing boats toward shore, by now to 3 miles or less.

The favorable prospects were aborted in 1948, when the Strip had to absorb a flood of Palestinian refugees who fled in terror or were forcefully expelled from what became Israel, in some cases expelled months after the formal cease-fire.

Noam Chomsky in Gaza – October 2012

In fact, they were being expelled even four years later, as reported in Ha’aretz (25.12.2008), in a thoughtful study by Beni Tziper on the history of Israeli Ashkelon back to the Canaanites. In 1953, he reports, there was a “cool calculation that it was necessary to cleanse the region of Arabs.” The original name, Majdal, had already been “Judaized” to today’s Ashkelon, regular practice.

That was in 1953, when there was no hint of military necessity. Tziper himself was born in 1953, and while walking in the remnants of the old Arab sector, he reflects that “it is really difficult for me, really difficult, to realize that while my parents were celebrating my birth, other people were being loaded on trucks and expelled from their homes.”

Israel’s 1967 conquests and their aftermath administered further blows. Then came the terrible crimes already mentioned, continuing to the present day.

The signs are easy to see, even on a brief visit. Sitting in a hotel near the shore, one can hear the machine gun fire of Israeli gunboats driving fishermen out of Gaza’s territorial waters and towards shore, so they are compelled to fish in waters that are heavily pollutedbecause of US-Israeli refusal to allow reconstruction of the sewage and power systems that they destroyed.

The Oslo Accords laid plans for two desalination plants, a necessity in this arid region. One, an advanced facility, was built: in Israel. The second one is in Khan Yunis, in the south of Gaza. The engineer in charge of trying to obtain potable water for the population explained that this plant was designed so that it cannot use sea water, but must rely on underground water, a cheaper process, which further degrades the meager aquifer, guaranteeing severe problems in the future. Even with that, water is severely limited. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which cares for refugees (but not other Gazans), recently released a report warning that damage to the aquifer may soon become “irreversible,” and that without remedial action quickly, by 2020 Gaza may not be a “liveable place.”

Israel permits concrete to enter for UNRWA projects, but not for Gazans engaged in the huge reconstruction needs. The limited heavy equipment mostly lies idle, since Israel does not permit materials for repair. All of this is part of the general program described by Israeli official Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, after Palestinians failed to follow orders in the 2006 elections: “The idea,” he said, “is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” That would not look good.

And the plan is being scrupulously followed. Sara Roy has provided extensive evidence in her scholarly studies. Recently, after several years of effort, the Israeli human rights organization Gisha succeeded to obtain a court order for the government to release its records detailing plans for the diet, and how they are executed. Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook summarizes them: “Health officials provided calculations of the minimum number of calories needed by Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants to avoid malnutrition. Those figures were then translated into truckloads of food Israel was supposed to allow in each day … an average of only 67 trucks — much less than half of the minimum requirement — entered Gaza daily. This compared to more than 400 trucks before the blockade began.” And even this estimate is overly generous, UN relief officials report.

The result of imposing the diet, Mideast scholar Juan Cole observes, is that “[a]bout ten percent of Palestinian children in Gaza under 5 have had their growth stunted by malnutrition … in addition, anemia is widespread, affecting over two-thirds of infants, 58.6 percent of schoolchildren, and over a third of pregnant mothers.” The US and Israel want to ensure that nothing more than bare survival is possible.

“What has to be kept in mind,” observes Raji Sourani, “is that the occupation and the absolute closure is an ongoing attack on the human dignity of the people in Gaza in particular and all Palestinians generally. It is systematic degradation, humiliation, isolation and fragmentation of the Palestinian people.” The conclusion is confirmed by many other sources. In one of the world’s leading medical journals, The Lancet, a visiting Stanford physician, appalled by what he witnessed, describes Gaza as “something of a laboratory for observing an absence of dignity,” a condition that has “devastating” effects on physical, mental, and social wellbeing. “The constant surveillance from the sky, collective punishment through blockade and isolation, the intrusion into homes and communications, and restrictions on those trying to travel, or marry, or work make it difficult to live a dignified life in Gaza.” The Araboushim must be taught not to raise their heads.

There were hopes that the new Morsi government in Egypt, less in thrall to Israel than the western-backed Mubarak dictatorship, might open the Rafah crossing, the sole access to the outside for trapped Gazans that is not subject to direct Israeli control. There has been slight opening, but not much. Journalist Laila el-Haddad writes that the re-opening under Morsi, “is simply a return to status quo of years past: only Palestinians carrying an Israeli-approved Gaza ID card can use Rafah Crossing,” excluding a great many Palestinians, including el-Haddad’s family, where only one spouse has a card.

Furthermore, she continues, “the crossing does not lead to the West Bank, nor does it allow for the passage of goods, which are restricted to the Israeli-controlled crossings and subject to prohibitions on construction materials and export.” The restricted Rafah crossing does not change the fact that “Gaza remains under tight maritime and aerial siege, and continues to be closed off to the Palestinians’ cultural, economic, and academic capitals in the rest of the [occupied territories], in violation of US-Israeli obligations under the Oslo Accords.”

The effects are painfully evident. In the Khan Yunis hospital, the director, who is also chief of surgery, describes with anger and passion how even medicines are lacking for relief of suffering patients, as well as simple surgical equipment, leaving doctors helpless and patients in agony. Personal stories add vivid texture to the general disgust one feels at the obscenity of the harsh occupation. One example is the testimony of a young woman who despaired that her father, who would have been proud that she was the first woman in the refugee camp to gain an advanced degree, had “passed away after 6 months of fighting cancer aged 60 years. Israeli occupation denied him a permit to go to Israeli hospitals for treatment. I had to suspend my study, work and life and go to set next to his bed. We all sat including my brother the physician and my sister the pharmacist, all powerless and hopeless watching his suffering. He died during the inhumane blockade of Gaza in summer 2006 with very little access to health service. I think feeling powerless and hopeless is the most killing feeling that human can ever have. It kills the spirit and breaks the heart. You can fight occupation but you cannot fight your feeling of being powerless. You can’t even dissolve that feeling.”

Disgust at the obscenity, compounded with guilt: it is within our power to bring the suffering to an end and allow the Samidin to enjoy the lives of peace and dignity that they deserve.

Noam Chomsky visited the Gaza Strip on October 25-30, 2012.

Oct

Hillary Told the Truth on Benghazi

By Roseanne | Middle East

(CBS News) It was six weeks ago on Tuesday that terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Now, CBS News has obtained email alerts that were put out by the State Department as the attack unfolded. Four Americans were killed in the attack, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

These emails contain the earliest description so far of what happened at Benghazi the night of the attack.

Read the emails (PDF)
Ambassador warned Libya was “volatile and violent”
Why no one has been right about Libya
CIA saw possible terror ties day after Libya hit: AP

At 4:05 p.m. Eastern time, on September 11, an alert from the State Department Operations Center was issued to a number government and intelligence agencies. Included were the White House Situation Room, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the FBI.

“US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” — “approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM (Chief of Mission/embassy) personnel are in the compound safe haven.”

At 4:54 p.m., less than an hour later, another alert: “the firing… in Benghazi…has stopped…A response team is on site attempting to locate COM (embassy) personnel.”

Then, at 6:07 p.m., State sent out another alert saying the embassy in Tripoli reported the Islamic military group “Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibilty for Benghazi Attack”… “on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”

The emails are just a few in what are likely a large number traded throughout the night. They are likely to become part of the ongoing political debate over whether the administration attempted to mislead in saying the assault was an outgrowth of a protest, rather than a planned attack by terrorists.

Fourteen hours after the attack, President Obama sat down with Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” for a previously scheduled interview and said he did not believe it was simply due to mob violence.

“You’re right that this is not a situation that was — exactly the same as what happened in Egypt and my suspicion is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start,” Mr. Obama said.

The White House and State Department declined comment on the email alerts. The House Oversight Committee told CBS News the information in the emails will be part of their ongoing investigation into the Benghazi attack.

May

My response to Dr. Jill Stein’s thesis of the need for new US policy in the Middle East

By Roseanne | Middle East

Dr. Jill Stein demonstrates a firm grasp on the obvious, which is: that her opinions and solutions are based on failed status quo answers, have been in play for decades and do not work, and never will work.

As President, I will have the political wherewithall to actually NAME the problem that needs to be named, identified, and solved there. As a socialist, I say that the problem is Israel’s one percent, which is the exact same problem that we have here in America-they need to be prevented from sitting in seats of power in which they further enrich themselves by war profiteering and passing laws that promote slavery amongst the working classes who serve them in unjust oligarchic woman hating patriarchal systems.
[Read more...]

Jan