Palestinian Pundit

Israel Gaza attack kills 43 : Seven people, including a teenager and five resistance fighters, were killed in the Gaza Strip Saturday as Israel pressed an attack on anti occupation forces that has left 43 Palestinians and one soldier dead in four days.

Palestinians: Saturdays Death toll up to 11; Palestinian sources reported that an additional Palestinian was killed and another wounded from Israeli occupation forces fire near Beit Hanoun in occupied northern Gaza.

Number of dead in occupied Gaza reaching historic levels: - Malki Shahwan silently picks at the peach tissue she's using to dab at the tears in the corners of her opaque eyes, eyes that her family says have gone blind from grief.

Palestinian PM: Israeli operation is massacre: Demands international intervention

Gaza's pain:: Muhammad Zakout’s 14- year-old son, Alaa, leaked blood on to a hospital pillow as his family gathered around the bed, incredulous that after repeated warnings to stay out of trouble he had been shot while throwing stones at Israeli tanks.

Palestinian Cabinet minister warns Israel's offensive in Gaza could kill Israeli soldier held there: Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip could endanger the life of an abducted Israeli soldier and is an impediment to his release, the Palestinian foreign minister told Egypt's state-run news agency on Saturday.

Iraq War Will Cost More-than-$2-Trillion: In January, we estimated that the true cost of the Iraq war could reach $2 trillion, a figure that seemed shockingly high. But since that time, the cost of the war – in both blood and money – has risen even faster than our projections anticipated.

Iraqi police find 56 bodies scattered around occupied Baghdad : Most of the bullet-riddled bodies were bound, blindfolded and showing signs of torture, the source said.

Iraqi police kill 53 "terrorist" suspects in Baghdad : Iraqi security forces killed 53 insurgents and detained 16 others in fierce gunbattle in southeastern Baghdad on Saturday, Iraqi official television reported.

At least 29 killed as brutal U.S. occupation continues: Mortar rounds killed seven people and wounded 20 in Baghdad's western Adhamiya district on Saturday night

Poll: 70% Of Iraqi's Want U.S Occupation Troops Withdrawn Within A Year : 78 percent said the U.S. presence provokes more conflict than it prevents; 84 percent said they had little or no confidence in the U.S military.

Iraq Imposes Curfew in Capital, Four Provinces: Iraqi officials on Saturday announced an all-day Sunday curfew in Baghdad and four provinces, fearing that the expected announcement of a verdict in the trial of former leader Saddam Hussein could inflame nationalist and sectarian passions and escalate the daily deluge of violence.

Verdict in trial of Saddam Hussein due Sunday : Iraqis and human rights advocates have questioned the timing of the verdict in the Dujail case — two days before midterm elections in the United States — and whether it is intended to boost President Bush and his Republican allies.

Juan Cole: Top Ten Ways we know We have Lost in Iraq

Rats Jump Ship: Richard Perle: Iraq War Decision Wrong: Richard Perle, a leading proponent of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, now says devastating dysfunction within the Bush administration has turned U.S. policy there into a disaster.

Rats Jump Ship: Neocons turn on Bush for incompetence over Iraq war: Several prominent neoconservatives have turned on George Bush days before critical midterm elections, lambasting his administration for incompetence in the handling of the Iraq war and questioning the wisdom of the 2003 invasion they were instrumental in promoting.

A Great Editorial (Arabic)
عبد الباري عطوان


04/11/2006

ردت نساء بيت حانون اللواتي انطلقن في مسيرة عفوية الي مسجد المدينة لإنقاذ المحاصرين من المسلحين، والتصدي للقوات الاسرائيلية الغازية، الاعتبار للمرأة العربية، واثبتن انهن اكثر رجولة وشجاعة من كل رؤساء الاركان وقادة الجيوش العربية دون استثناء.
جميل منظر الفتيات والسيدات المؤمنات وهن يهرعن الي المسجد المحاصر وسط الدبابات والمجنزرات الاسرائيلية، غير عابئات بنيران وقذائف مدافعها الحية، يرددن الله اكبر.. الله اكبر مدوية مجلجلة.
لا نعرف ما اذا كان الزعماء العرب قد شاهدوا هبة الكرامة هذه، شاهدوا النساء يتصدين بصدورهن العامرة بالايمان للرصاص الاسرائيلي ويسقطن شهيدات وجريحات دفاعا عن ارض ومقدسات تقاعس هؤلاء الزعماء في الدفاع عنها، وهم الذين يملكون الجيوش وترسانات اسلحة انفقت علي عملية بنائها مئات المليارات من الدولارات.
ولا نعرف ايضا ما اذا كانت السيدات الأوليات كن الي جانب ازواجهن، ونظرن الي شاشات التلفزة وهي تنقل هذه اللقطات المشرفة، وماذا كانت ردة فعلهن، اذا كانت هناك فعلا ردات فعل ترتسم ملامحها علي الوجوه التي هي قطعاً في كامل زينتها.
هذه هي المرأة العربية ـ الفلسطينية، لا تكتفي بإنجاب الشهداء، وانما بالانضمام الي قوافلهم ايضا، والنزول الي ميدان المواجهة.
سياسة التجويع التي تمارسها امريكا وبدعم معظم الأنظمة العربية، في دول المركز والاطراف، فشلت في تركيع الشعب الفلسطيني، اناثا وذكورا، بالغين واحداثاً، اسلاميين او وطنيين، فالمقاومة لم تتوقف مطلقاً، والصواريخ الايمانية استمرت في الوصول الي قلب المستوطنات الاسرائيلية تبث الهلع والرعب في صفوف سكانها.
القيادة السياسية الاسرائيلية تقول ان هذه المجازر لا تعني الاجتياح، ولا اعادة احتلال قطاع غزة، فإذا كان مقتل سبعة وعشرين فلسطينيا، بينهم امرأتان، هو مجرد تسخين ، فكيف ستكون المجزرة الكبري اذا ما بدأت عملية الاجتياح الكامل؟
الحكومات العربية غير عابئة بما يحدث، والجامعة العربية كفت حتي عن القيام بما كنا نستنكره في الماضي، اي الدعوة لانعقاد اجتماع طارئ للجامعة العربية، فالسيد عمرو موسي امينها العام يتواجد في الدوحة لاستعادة الديمقراطيات المغيبة، والرئيس المصري حسني مبارك في اذربيجان في جولة آسيوية وسطي، وخادم الحرمين الشريفين الملك عبد الله بن عبد العزيز يتفقد مدينة جيزان علي الحدود اليمنية.
تونس اغلقت سفارتها في قطر احتجاجاً علي برنامج بثته الجزيرة عن قرار منع الحجاب الطائفي فيها، اما الحكومة الاردنية فسارعت الي سحب سفيرها من الدوحة استياء من برنامج آخر.
الكرامة العربية تنتفض لأن ضيفا في محطة تلفزيونية نطق بآراء لا تعجب الحكومات في برنامج تلفزيوني، ولكنها تغيب تماما عندما تنتهك اسرائيل اعراض المحصنات، وتقتل الابرياء بالعشرات وتنسف المساجد ودور العبادة. فكرامة الأنظمة وأجهزة مخابراتها اكثر اهمية من كرامة أمة ودماء نسائها واطفالها.
مطالبنا باتت متواضعة لدرجة المطالبة بسحب سفير عربي من تل ابيب، وطرد اسرائيلي من القاهرة أو عمان او نواكشوط او الرباط، او اغلاق مكتب تجاري في قطر او تونس. ولكن حتي هذه المطالب علي تواضعها باتت كبيرة الكبائر يتهم من يقترب منها بالتطرف، وربما الانتماء الي تنظيم القاعدة . فاسرائيل لم تعد عدوا عند معظم الأنظمة العربية، ومجازرها في حق الشعبين الفلسطيني واللبناني لا ترتقي الي درجة الاقدام علي اعمال مشروعة في العرف الدبلوماسي مثل سحب السفراء. فالعدو هو المقاومة، اسلامية او وطنية، التي تريد تنغيص حياة الأنظمة واستقرارها وعلاقاتها الطيبة مع الحليف الامريكي، وتكدير محاولاتها الاستمتاع بالعوائد النفطية المتضخمة.
الجيش الاسرائيلي مني بهزيمة مذلة في لبنان فأراد تعويضها في بيت حانون وطولكرم ونابلس، بقتل اكبر عدد من المدنيين الفلسطينيين العزل، وهذا ما يفسر المجازر التي يرتكبها حاليا في قطاع غزة علي وجه الخصوص.
المقاومة الاسلامية التي تصدت ببسالة للجيش الاسرائيلي ومنعت تقدمه، والحقت خسائر كبيرة في صفوف جنوده، وشيدت مقبرة جماعية لدبابات الميركافا ، في جنوب لبنان، كانت وما زالت، افضل حظاً من نظيرتها الفلسطينية لانها وجدت وتجد الدعم من ايران، وتملك حدودا مفتوحة مع سورية، وتجلس علي ترسانة من الاسلحة الحديثة، وعشرين الف صاروخ مثلما اعلن سيدها حسن نصر الله.
ولكن المقاومة الفلسطينية محاطة بأنظمة اكثر حرصا علي امن اسرائيل من امنها الخاص، وتغلق الحدود بإحكام تحسدها عليه الدولة العبرية نفسها.
العراق يتحلل ويتلاشي امام اعيننا، والشعب الفلسطيني يتعرض للذبح، ولبنان ينتظر اجتياحا اسرائيليا آخر تسرح الطائرات الاسرائيلية في سمائه في تحد سافر للشرعية الدولية المزعومة، ودارفور السودانية تنتظر مصيرا اكثر سوءا من مصير العراق، والشعوب والأنظمة العربية تقف في موقف المتفرج.
باكستان تشهد مظاهرات صاخبة احتجاجا علي قصف مدرسة علي الحدود مع افغانستان من قبل القوات الباكستانية ادي الي وقوع مجزرة. وبنغلاديش تشهد مظاهرات ادانة للعدوان الاسرائيلي، حتي في غلاسكو في اسكتلندا يتظاهر الاسكتلنديون لابسو التنانير وزرق العيون ضد فريق مكابي حيفا الذي جاء ليلعب مباراة ضد فريق رينجرز الاسكتلندي في مسابقة اوروبية، يتظاهرون نصرة للعرب ويرفعون اعلام فلسطين.
العواصم العربية في صمت رهيب، لا وجود لأي تحرك عربي. اين البرلمانات العربية؟ اين الاتحادات المهنية؟ اين الطلاب؟ الا توجد نخوة وكرامة عند هؤلاء، ايخافون من قمع الأنظمة؟ وهل قمع الأنظمة اكثر شراسة وفتكا من الرصاص الاسرائيلي الحي الذي واجهته نساء بيت حانون بصدورهن؟
ايران كل يوم تجرب صواريخها البرية والبحرية والجوية، شهاب، الكوثر، نور ونصر، اما الأنظمة العربية فتجرب ماذا؟ اساليب جديدة للفساد ونهب المال العام، ام نظريات احدث حول كيفية تعديل الدساتير وتصدير الديكتاتورية الي روسيا؟
نعتذر لسيدات بيت حانون والشهيدات من بينهن، مثلما نعتذر لأهل العراق، وشهداء المقاومة في لبنان، فلم تعد توجد هناك امة عربية، وانما كتل بشرية مخدرة تحمل هذا الاسم زوراً.

Gush Shalom, November 4, 2006

Urgent appeal to make the month-long campaign a worldwide one

"Yesterday, two Palestinian women, taking part in a non-violent human shield action in Beit Hanoun were shot dead and numerous others wounded. They tried - and partly succeeded - to save the fighters who had sought refuge inside a mosque. The women spontaneously formed a human wall when it became clear that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) intended to destroy the mosque with the men in it. Since we told you of our preparations for tomorrow Nov. 4 "putting Gaza on the agenda of the Rabin Memorial Rally" things only got worse. It is extremely important that our campaign will be taken up also abroad. Hereafter you find some background and the request to help make December 2 the campaign pique - with suggestions how you can relate to it from wherever you are."

A Commentary
By Tony Sayegh

I realize that this is not the best of times to be constructively critical of the Palestinian resistance. However, since Israeli attacks are virtually non-stop now, one cannot wait for the right time.

The spirit of resistance and the expectations of the Palestinians in particular and the Arabs in general were elevated after Hizbullah’s defeat of the Israeli invasion this last summer. This has led to perhaps unrealistic expectations of similar resistance by the Palestinians. Hamas has intimated that any Israeli advance in Gaza would see tougher resistance, new weapons and new tactics.

Let us be clear that Hizbullah’s circumstances and the situation of the Palestinian resistance are very different. None the less, there are principles that apply to all guerrilla resistance and when those principles are not studied and applied, success would be hard to achieve.

Observers trace Hizbullah’s success to many factors, such as:

1) Meticulous planning.
2) Thorough training.
3) Strict discipline combined with local decision making.
4) Intelligence and counter-intelligence.
5) Management of the information war.

And many more.

In the case of the Palestinians, even though Israel has been openly threatening of re-invading Gaza for sometime, the planning from the Palestinian side was not very apparent. It appeared that the resistance was, as usual, in an ad hoc fashion.

In the case of Hizbullah, they knew their limitations; their strengths and weaknesses. They knew that they had no effective defenses against Israeli aircraft. Therefore, their fighters were not exposed to surveillance drones and attack helicopters. In the case of the Palestinians, it still happens daily and with such regularity that it makes you wonder. Fighters (often in uniform!) riding cars or standing on street corners in the middle of the day get killed by Israeli missiles fired from a spotting aircraft. When will the Palestinians learn?

In the case of Hizbullah, their fighters would only emerge (from fortified, dug-in positions) when Israeli tanks were within range of Hizbullah’s anti-tank missiles. Hizbullah lost very few fighters before the ground invasion. In the case of the Palestinians, who do not appear to possess effective anti-tank weapons, guerrilla war fundamentals state that when the enemy advances with massive power, the guerrilla should disappear and melt with the population. The enemy should not be able to tell who are the fighters. This is not cowardice; this is how a guerrilla survives to attack the enemy when it is retreating or at a time of the guerrilla’s choosing. The element of surprise should belong to the guerrilla, not the enemy.

Let us compare two speeches: one made by Nasrallah during the invasion (no one knew his whereabouts) and one by Haniyyah (everyone knows where he lives). Nasrallah said in one of his speeches that while Hizbullah was resisting ferociously (and this was not a boast) it was not holding fixed positions, since it is not a regular army. Contrast this with Haniyyah’s empty boast “Beit Hanoun will not fall!”

In the case of Hizbullah, their forces were organized in very small cells (3, 4 or 5) and were distributed such that a large number can never be surrounded or besieged. Contrast this with up to 73 Palestinian fighters being surrounded in a mosque in Beit Hanoun. It is clear that the Palestinians were fighting with no plan and very little structure.

In the area of intelligence and security, Hizbullah had a tight structure which was very difficult to penetrate. In South Lebanese villages, the entire population was Hizbullah’s eyes and ears. Any stranger entering would be stopped, questioned and reported. This made it hard for Israel to infiltrate spies and agents on special missions. This is definitely not the case with the Palestinians. Even in Gaza, where the Israelis withdrew a year ago, Israel can still send in a special unit, in Arab dress, in a Palestinian car, deep inside Gaza to assassinate resistance members. How could this be allowed? How is it that literally thousands of Israeli agents and spies still roam the streets of Gaza? And why is it that everyone knows who the fighters are and where they live? In many cases their phone numbers are known, for crying out loud! This is no way to fight and win. I think in many cases the Palestinians are more interested in showing off and firing their guns in the air to show how tough they are.

One aspect of Hizbullah’s resistance that won it the support of millions is its credibility in the information war. It disclosed facts that were proven to be facts. It did not use empty boasts and traditional, exaggerated Arabic rhetoric. The roles were reversed: it was Israel that exaggerated and lied. It reached the point that Israelis would rely on Hizbullah’s declarations to find out what was really happening. Now that is information triumph! Unfortunately, this is not the case with the Palestinians. I have noticed the empty rhetoric and exaggerated claims made by Hamas, and that is discouraging. Imaginary successes are announced; statements are made such as,” two rockets were fired in the direction of a concentration of Israeli tanks!” What is this supposed to mean? And is this worthy of an announcement?

The sad part is that the Palestinian resistance predates the Lebanese (and Iraqi) resistance. When the Palestinian resistance was a major force in South Lebanon, Hizbullah did not even exist! One would have expected that Hizbullah would have learned from the Palestinians, not the other way around. It is self evident that the Palestinians have to do a lot of soul-searching and to be hard in their self-criticism. It is obvious that the required learning is not taking place and the resistance is not evolving in a scientific way.

The Power of the Israeli Lobby in the US : An interview with James Petras, author, " The Power of Israel in the United States". Click to listen

Israeli occupation forces kill, 23 Palestinians : Palestinian medics said on Friday that 23 people, including militants, women and children, were killed as the Israeli army ground military operation called "Cloud of Autumn " went on in northern Gaza Strip.

Israel occupation forces kill women at mosque siege: Two Palestinian women have been killed during a stand-off near a Gaza mosque while they were trying to rescue about 60 Palestinian men besieged inside.

Israel kills 25 Palestinian in 72 hours: In the West Bank, Israeli occupation troops also arrested a Palestinian cabinet minister in the internationally boycotted Hamas-led government, shot dead two Palestinian youths and wounded another two people

Israeli sniper shoots dead a 14-year old boy in Balata refugee camp: A teenage Palestinian boy was killed and his older brother injured during an attack by Israeli occupation forces into Balata refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday evening.

4-year-old boy among 9 Palestinians killed in occupied Gaza: A 4-year-old boy and 40-year-old woman were among four Palestinian civilians killed Friday during an Israel Defense Forces operation in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, Palestinian sources said.

Israel occupation forces kill 4 in Gaza missile attack: Four members of Hamas's armed section have been killed by an Israeli missile fired on their car as they were going to pray in the Gaza Strip.

Must listen Democracy Now! Report: Casualties Mount in New Israeli Attack on Gaza: The dead include a 70 year-old Palestinian man who was shot in the head by Israeli troops when he went onto the balcony of his home to take his disabled son inside.

Annan urges Israel to restraint, protect civilians: Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday urged Israel to do their utmost to protect civilians and to refrain from further escalating an already grave situation.

Iraq: More than 83 killed as U.S. occupation continues: Police found 56 bodies and a severed head scattered around occupied Baghdad over the last 24 hours, an Interior Ministry source said

7 U.S. occupation soldiers killed in Iraq: Three U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad and four Marines were killed in "enemy action" in Iraq's western Anbar province on Thursday, the U.S. military said on Friday.

U.N.: Nearly 100,000 Flee Iraq Monthly : The agency says an additional 50,000 Iraqis a month are fleeing their homes but remaining within Iraq, which classifies them as "internally displaced" rather than as refugees who have crossed an international border.

US spy chief on secret Iraq mission: John Negroponte, the US national intelligence director, has made an unannounced visit to Baghdad for talks with Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister.

Election looming, U.S. general urges Iraq patience: A senior U.S. general compared Iraq on Thursday to a work of art in progress and played down incessant violence and friction with Iraqi leaders as "speed bumps" on the road to stability.

Paul Krugman: As Bechtel Goes: Baghdad received less than six hours a day of electricity last month, and much of Iraq’s population lives with untreated sewage and without clean water. But Bechtel, having received $2.3 billion of taxpayers’ money and having lost the lives of 52 employees, has come to the end of its last government contract.

U.S. spending watchdog on Iraq closed down by Republicans: Pink slip for overseer mysteriously added to big spending bill.

Baghdad is Surrounded: “The American Era in the Middle East has ended” :After 3 and a half years of violence and mayhem we still know as little about the Iraqi resistance as we did in March 2003. This is inexcusable. In addition, there’s been no attempt to engage the representatives of the resistance in political dialogue. How can we possibly reach a political solution without dialogue and negotiation?

THIS IS HOW ISRAEL "DEFENDS ITSELF"

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack reiterated the Bush administration's view that "Israel had a right to defend itself"

Dr. Mona Elfarra

"Wednesday 1 November 1.30 am
Khalil Hamad died waiting for a permit to go to the hospital!!!

Israeli occupying forces launched a massive attack against northern Gaza, focused on Beit Hanoun village. At the start of this assault, the village was placed under strict siege. Nobody was allowed in or out of Beit Hanoun.

At AlAwda hospital where 45 injured were admitted for treatment, and 3 dead bodies received, I was told by our Emergency Room staff that one of these dead could have been saved easily.

While bleeding and suffering from multiple injuries Mr. Khalil Hamad had to wait for special arrangements and an army permit to transfer him via the Red Cross from outside the village to the nearest hospital (AlAwda) 5 minutes away from the scene. Mr. Hamad bled to death before he arrived at our hospital.

A few minutes means a lot in the ER room in such cases, not to mention that he
was left to die on purpose.

Speaking of war crimes and Geneva conventions, human rights violations etc. etc., this frank violation of human rights is the normal attitude and practice of the Israeli army in Palestine.

Thursday 2 November

The ambulances were not allowed to enter the village, but they managed to evacuate a few casualities on the outskirts while working under heavy fire. Some cases arrived at the hospital where they were operated upon, others were referred to the Gaza Central Hospital Ashifa.

I was told by the surgeons that the injuries were all serious – to the neck, abdomen, head, and lower extremities – and were caused by large-sized bullets.

Friday 3 November 10 am

Women demonstrating and determined to break the siege ER at AlAwda hospital

The 14 beds in ER were not sufficient to receive the injured.
A protest demonstration by the village women determined to break the siege and free their men who were confined by the army inside one of the village mosques. The women protested and managed to give free passage to the men inside the mosque. At least 15 injured women were received in the AlAwda Hospital, but 2 were shot dead by the Israeli army.

This morning I visited some of the women inside the hospital. They were still in
a state of shock, and deserve love, respect and quality medical care.

This is the Palestinian woman. She has always been an active part of resisting the
occupation, and will continue to pay the price of striving towards freedom.

Death toll 25
Injured 115, many are women and children under 16

The operation is continuing and may extend to different areas. The streets
of Gaza are full of demonstrators."

***

Don't get too upset. These are Condoleezza's "birth pangs" arriving in Beit Hanoun. The good doctor, El-Farra, does not understand these things.

***

AN UPDATE

The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza in less than 3 days is now at least 35.

Two women have been killed as Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd of women gathered to help besieged gunmen flee a Gaza mosque, witnesses and doctors say.

Video from La Republica

Click Here To Watch Video

"The American Era in the Middle East Has Ended"

By MIKE WHITNEY
CounterPunch

"Here again, we see that "overwhelming force" without clearly defined political objectives just generates more violence. It is entirely futile, and yet, the policy remains unchanged.

Rumsfeld flattened Fallujah nearly 2 years ago thinking that the destruction of the city of 300,000 would "send a message" to the Sunnis; convincing them that it was useless to resist. His action, which was enthusiastically applauded by right-wing pundits and politicians in America, produced exactly the opposite response. The resistance is now stronger than ever, the attacks on American troops have increased dramaticaly, and al-Anbar province is no longer under U.S. control.

For American troops in Iraq, there is a worse scenario than chaos; that is defeat. Patrick Cockburn's 11-1-06 article "Baghdad is under Siege" provides the chilling details of an armed Iraqi resistance which has now cut off supply lines to the capital and threatens to make America's ongoing occupation impossible.

Baghdad is surrounded and the predicament for American troops is increasingly tenuous. The battle is being lost on all fronts. So, what is Secretary Rumsfeld's response to these new and urgent developments?

Rumsfeld held a press conference in which he blasted his critics for "focusing too much on the bad news coming out of Iraq" and announced the launching of a new public relations campaign which will attempt to elicit greater support for the ongoing occupation. The Pentagon plans to "develop messages" to respond to the negative news-coverage and, as Rumsfeld said, "correct the record."

"Correct the record"? Is the Pentagon planning to "repackage" the war even while the Resistance is tightening its grip around the capital? What type of madness is this? This is not the behavior of serious men. This is just more of the same "faith-based," public relations hucksterism which leads nowhere. The worsening situation in Iraq will not improve by ramping-up the propaganda-machine, appealing to American chauvinism, or attacking critics of the war.

The media has been a steadfast ally to the Bush troupe and given them a "free pass" throughout the conflict. They successfully drew an Iron Curtain around Iraq and kept the public from knowing about the 650,000 men, women and children were savagely butchered in Bush's Petrol-War. Despite their best-efforts, however, public opinion has shifted away from the present policy and the American people are looking for an end to the fighting.

Rumsfeld's plan for "a new kind of war" that depends on high-tech, laser-guided weaponry, massive counterinsurgency operations, and a submissive "embedded" media has fallen on hard times. The tremors can already be felt from Baghdad to Washington D.C. As Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) said in the November issue of Foreign Affairs, "The American era in the Middle East, the forth in the region's modern history, has ended." All that's left is to sweep up the pieces of a failed policy and head home."

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right of Return Coalition, and Alternate Focus are
dedicated to presenting the unheard voice of the Palestinian people to the
American public.

Last year we were privileged to view video film submissions by videographer
activists exploring the lives of the Palestinian people, their heroism and
their resistance under the Zionist occupation of their land. Three winners
were chosen out of many entries by our panel of judges. The quality of the
submissions was very high, and many of the films have since found their
way around the world.

By popular demand, we are now instituting the second annual call for
submissions.

This is an opportunity for videographer activists to see their work on
television and distributed on DVD's worldwide, while advancing the cause of
Palestinian return and self-determination.

In addition, cash prizes will be awarded to the finalists:
First prize $500.00; Second prize $300.00; Third prize $100.00

A panel of Al-Awda and Alternate Focus judges will view all submissions.

For further information and the video contest submission form please see our
flyer posted at: http://al-awda.org/pdf/videoflyer2.doc

Please detach the form and return it with your video submission to:

Al-Awda and Alternate Focus Video Contest
8439 Paseo Del Ocaso
La Jolla, Ca 92037, U.S.A.

Tape and DVD submissions may be in any format and any length.

Thank you and good luck!

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-685-3243
Fax: 360-933-3568
E-mail: info@al-awda.org
WWW: http://al-awda.org

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC), is a not for profit
educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization committed to comprehensive
public education about the rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to
their homes and lands of origin, and to full restitution for all their
confiscated and destroyed property in accordance with the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, International law and the numerous United
Nations Resolutions upholding these rights.

LATEST FROM DR. MONA EL-FARRA IN GAZA

"I received a question (by the road less traveled) asking for my comment regarding the food distribution in Gaza, here is my comment and I am sorry for the delay, I was highly distressed by the situation and focussed on practical support for my community and that drained a lot of my time and efforts, beside the electricity inconvenience and lastly, my email was not functioning for 10 days, problem with the server, I do apologise again .

There are many aid orgs works in Gaza both local and international, the local and international are working with its high capacity, via different organisations eg, red crescent society , union of health work committees, pader, asalah org,islamic relief, middle east council of churches dove and dolphin, middle east children alliance (MECA), the Unrwa , World Food Programme and some more, those orgs have high level of coordination i mean the highest possible in Gaza under the current circumstances, there are big obstacles that face those orgs, the most important are the borders closure and lack of good storing circumstances on the borders, this affects both the food as well as medications, and makes the food supplies irregular, especially when we are talking about a population of 1.6million, 70% of it depends on aid at the moment. The civil society orgs are working continuously to meet the population needs, and despite the siege and non-stop military actions against Palestinian people , social solidarity proved to be strong way of resisting occupation and sanctions, international solidarity is another way of resisting occupation."

Photos From Beit Hanoon

The scene near a mosque in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after Israeli troops opened fire on a group of Palestinian women, killing one of them and injuring 10 others.

Friday November 3, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

ARAB AND WORLD SILENCE IN FACE OF ISRAELI SLAUGHTER OF PALESTINIANS IN BEIT HANOON

The cartoon that won an Iranian Award about how the Israeli occupation government has employed the Holocaust to build the Auschwitz-painted Land-Grab Wall to steal Palestinian land and isolate occupied Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque from the rest of the Palestinian occupied territories.

A GREAT INTERVIEW

Youssef Aschkar Interviewed By Silvia Cattori

"In this interview recorded by Swiss journalist Silvia Cattori in November 2005 - more than six months before the war launched against Lebanon by Israeli army in summer 2006 – Youssef Aschkar was warning that the destabilization of Lebanon, Syria and Iran was under way, and that Lebanon was the country most threatened and most vulnerable to the Israeli menace. In the light of the recent developments in the region, the accuracy of his analysis appears impressive and almost prophetic. "

They're looking to make a comeback after the elections

By Justin Raimondo

"You have to give the neoconservatives credit for tenacity. Any other political or ideological group saddled with their record would crawl off into the shadows to expire without fanfare. Not the neocons. Vampire-like, they rise from the crypt of Bush's "global democratic revolution," fangs extended and hungry for fresh blood. There isn't enough garlic in the world to deter them – I doubt that even a pointed stake in the heart would suffice. The War Party, it seems, is immortal – like evil itself.

Instead of changing their names and getting as far from the crime scene as possible, the neocons – or, at least, some of them – are not only lingering, they're openly proclaiming their intention to visit fresh disasters on us. The most explicit such statement comes from Joshua Muravchik, a former leader of the Young Peoples Socialist League who now inhabits the heady heights of that neocon Olympus over at the American Enterprise Institute. Muravchik, author of Exporting Democracy, a pre-9/11 polemic in which he outlined what was to become the Bushian policy of "global democratic revolution," is as pure a neocon as exists outside of Michael Ledeen's study. Undaunted by the massive failure of the democratist crusade, he writes in Foreign Policy magazine of "Operation Comeback," in the form of a memo to his partners in crime. The subject line is: "How to Save the Neocons." Which raises the question: save them from what – public obloquy? The penitentiary? A lynching?

Muravchik boasts "our ideas have influenced the policies of President Bush" and avers "that does feel good." I'll bet. As I have pointed out before, the most powerful man in the world is the world's biggest, most fanatical neocon, and that is the ultimate prize in Washington's power game, now isn't it?

Unlike Richard Perle, who now despises George W. Bush for supposedly abandoning the War Party, Muravchik argues that the neocons should stick by the president. Bush is, after all, a politician, and, by the way,

"The administration made its share of mistakes, and so did we. We were glib about how Iraqis would greet liberation. Did we fail to appreciate sufficiently the depth of Arab bitterness over colonial memories? Did we underestimate the human and societal damage wreaked by decades of totalitarian rule in Iraq? Could things have unfolded differently had our occupation force been large enough to provide security?"

The neocons, however, are not really interested in Iraq any longer: that, after all, was yesterday. But tomorrow belongs to them, as a very similar political movement once put it. Iraq is in ruins, the credibility of the U.S. as a force for good in the world is at an all-time low, and the body bags are coming home at an increasing pace – yet Muravchik, willfully blind to all this, is recommending that we:

"Prepare to Bomb Iran. Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office. It is all but inconceivable that Iran will accept any peaceful inducements to abandon its drive for the bomb. Its rulers are religio-ideological fanatics who will not trade what they believe is their birthright to great power status for a mess of pottage. Even if things in Iraq get better, a nuclear-armed Iran will negate any progress there. Nothing will embolden terrorists and jihadists more than a nuclear-armed Iran."

The Israelis are reportedly blackmailing us into a strike by declaring that they'll do it if we don't. And that's what this is all about. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are quite correct in noting that Israel's American lobby is in the forefront of the "let's bomb Iran" contingent, just as they were in the case of Iraq, and Muravchik's analysis perfectly reflects the Israeli perspective. His contention that Iran will "dominate" the Middle East leaves out one important fact: Israel already has nukes, at least 400. An Iranian nuke would end Israeli dominance and strike a balance of power in the region. By eliding this strategic reality – and the fact that Israel is somehow exempted from "the global nonproliferation regime" Muravchik supposedly seeks to uphold – Israel's amen corner in the U.S. hopes to scare us into war. "

· US allies think Washington threat to world peace
· Only Bin Laden feared more in United Kingdom

Julian Glover
Friday November 3, 2006
The Guardian

"America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published today that reveals just how far the country's reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.

Carried out as US voters prepare to go to the polls next week in an election dominated by the war, the research also shows that British voters see George Bush as a greater danger to world peace than either the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, or the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both countries were once cited by the US president as part of an "axis of evil", but it is Mr Bush who now alarms voters in countries with traditionally strong links to the US.

It exposes high levels of distrust. In Britain, 69% of those questioned say they believe US policy has made the world less safe since 2001, with only 7% thinking action in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased global security.

Voters in three of the four countries surveyed also overwhelmingly reject the decision to invade Iraq, with only Israeli voters in favour.

The US leader and close ally of Tony Blair is seen in Britain as a more dangerous man than the president of Iran (62% think he is a danger), the North Korean leader (69%) and the leader of Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah (65%)."

By Steve Bell, The Guardian
(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

Death toll rises to 13 as Israel presses occupied Gaza attack: Israel continued an attack into Gaza which has killed 12 Palestinians and a soldier in little over a day in one of its largest operations since militants seized a soldier in June.

Israeli killings resume in Gaza Strip: Israeli occupation forces are reported to have killed four Palestinians in northern Gaza, two of them civilians including a 75-year-old, in one of its biggest operations in the coastal strip in months.

An international force in Gaza is long overdue: The establishment of such a force has been requested several times by Palestinian leaders in order to protect civilians from various acts of violence carried out by the Israeli military.

U.S. trial: Israeli agent scoffs at Hamas defendant's torture claims: An Israeli security agent scoffed at a Chicago grocer's claim that he was deprived of sleep, forced to wear a foul-smelling hood and otherwise tortured after his arrest on charges of bankrolling terrorists.

Stranger than fiction?: Christians: Here to serve Israel: "We as Christians are living in a time in which we must wake up. We must organize ourselves and become a lobby for these people. That's why we are here," Ellssel added.

Israeli racism?: Ethiopians outraged over blood disposal: Ethiopian communities respond with rage at Channel 2 report that revealed blood donated by Ethiopians is frozen and disposed of.

Bush : U.S. Must Stay In Iraq To Control Oil: During an interview with conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh, US President George Bush expressed deep concerns about the possibility of the United States leaving the Middle East, raising fears that extremists could topple governments to "control oil resources."

Iraq: More than 41 killed in another day of U.S. occupation: A motorcycle bomb killed seven people and wounded 45 when it exploded in a crowded market in Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City district, an interior ministry source said.

Iraqi armed group in missile claim : Iraq's Islamic Army has claimed that it has produced a surface-to-surface missile: "The missile will allow the resistance fighters to perform attacks miles away from the target, which is safer for them.

In case you missed it: John Pilger: Why Bush lies about Iraq: US President George Bush's plans to invade Iraq have nothing to do eliminating “weapons of mass destruction”, preventing terrorism or ending human rights abuses. An attack on Iraq will be the first phase of a pre-existing strategy to increase US control of the world's oil supplies.

With Iraq Driving Election, Voters Want New Approach: A substantial majority of Americans expect Democrats to reduce or end American military involvement in Iraq if they win control of Congress next Tuesda

It's Iraq, Stupid : Johnstown is a small working-class town, not the kind of place you would expect to find an anti-war rally.

Bechtel ends Iraq rebuilding after a rough 3 years: Instead of the nearly $3 billion originally budgeted, Bechtel finally received about $2.3 billion, a figure that includes money the company spent on projects as well as its undisclosed profit.

By Khaled Amayreh
Al-Ahram Weekly

"The real reason for the Israeli incursion, which Israeli leaders, including Olmert himself, make no efforts to conceal, is to topple the Hamas government, and the way to go about doing this from the Israeli perspective is by killing and maiming hundreds and thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians.

During the past few days, Hamas have been appealing to PA President Mahmoud Abbas to stop being at America's beck and call and immediately join talks aimed at forming a government of national unity. Hamas has even signalled a willingness to accept a government of technocrats or experts, provided Abbas and his Fatah organisation display goodwill and national responsibility.

A few days prior to Eid Al-Fitr, which marked the end of the holy month of Ramadan, rumours circulated in the West Bank and Gaza that Fatah was planning a coup to topple Hamas immediately following the Eid holiday. Reports to that effect, which first appeared in the Israeli press and were attributed to "unnamed PA officials", were denied by Abbas and his lieutenants. As nothing of this sort materialised, Fatah and Hamas leaders in Gaza agreed to remove all armed men, save the police, from the streets of Gaza.

Nonetheless, there is still a strong feeling on Hamas's part that Abbas is not really interested in any genuine power-sharing arrangement with the movement and that he wishes to topple Hamas by any means possible, as Haniya has suggested.

Last week, Abbas reportedly requested that Israel and the US allow a few thousand members of the Jordan-based "Palestine Liberation Army" to enter Gaza to bolster Fatah's forces against Hamas, which has created its own 6000-strong armed militia, known as the executive force. Israeli leaders are likely to consent to Abbas's request if they consider that the likelihood of the Jordan-based troops battling Hamas is greater than them playing a role detrimental to Israeli interests.

The US, too, seems disinterested in a government of national unity between Fatah and Hamas. In fact, the US has paid more money to train Abbas's Presidential Guard in order to prepare it for a possible violent confrontation with Hamas. Most of the training, which involves some 400 Force-17 cadres, is taking place in the small town of Jericho and overseen by the American Security Coordinator in the occupied territories, General Keith Dayton.

But popular support may stay with Hamas. This week, as many as 60,000 Palestinians turned out in Hebron to pledge their allegiance to Hamas. The vast multitude showed that Hamas is still a strong movement among Palestinians despite the sanctions and despite all the talk about its dwindling popularity. Such a show of force by Hamas may have contributed to Abbas's reluctance to destroy all the bridges with Hamas, at least for the time being."

On occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Suez and the Sinai

By Gamal Abdel-Nasser (Former Egyptian President)

"The military operations that began in Sinai on the evening of 29 October [1956] have a small prelude which I would like to share with the reader. It was a small prelude, a political prelude that took place at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City, in early October -- the same month that was later to witness the military operations in Sinai.

In October, the Security Council debated the question of the Suez Canal, concluding by adopting six principles towards a peaceful settlement of the issue, and on the basis of which negotiations would be conducted, while guaranteeing free and efficient passage through the Canal.

During and following the Security Council sessions, several meetings took place between UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, Dr Mahmoud Fawzi, the Egyptian minister of foreign affairs and his British and French counterparts, Selwyn Lloyd and Christian Pineau. While these were not the negotiations called for by the Security Council, they were without a doubt the kind of exploratory contracts that by necessity precede any negotiations.

The New York meetings concluded by reaching agreement on certain points, and with the participants agreeing to meet again soon for further discussion of the issues, the time and place of the next meeting to be arranged by Mr Hammarskjold.

A few days later, the UN secretary-general sent the Egyptian government a projected location and date for the upcoming meeting.

The location was Geneva.

The date was Monday, 29 October.

Upon receiving his message, the Egyptian government immediately notified the secretary- general that it would attend the proposed meeting, whereas the British and French governments stalled. Then news came from London and Paris indicating that the matter involved more than playing for time. It soon became evident that London and Paris were attempting to find excuses to evade the scheduled date. The British and French governments had evidently scheduled a different meeting for 29 October. It was to convene in the Sinai Desert -- not in Geneva -- and they did not intend to meet with Egypt, but with Israel.

The aim was not to solve the problem of the Suez Canal. Rather, the new tripartite meeting aimed to annihilate Egypt -- totally.

This is the truth which the parties to the tripartite conspiracy cannot deny... The issue was not about a canal that crosses Egypt. It was about Egypt -- with all that it represents today, with all that it seeks and stands for...

The issue is about a country striving for independence.

The issue is about a country striving for power.

The issue is about a country breaking the arms boycott.

The issue is about a country aspiring to freedom for itself and others.

The issue is about a country wanting to liberate its economy.

The issue is about Arab nationalism, an ideology which has engulfed our entire region.

Imperialism could not let this happen."

Avigdor Lieberman's arrival in the Israeli cabinet is symptomatic of the degradation of the country's political system

By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly

"The desire for a strong man, proposed by parties and the elite as a political solution to instability, does not lead to presidential or parliamentary democracy but to dictatorship. This is more of a danger in presidential systems than parliamentary democracies.

In recent years Israel has been placed in the lowest ranks among parliamentary democracies, its score approaching that of presidential democracies in the Third World. In Israel the parliamentary system is experiencing a real crisis. Governments stay in office for shorter times, parties sprout like wild mushrooms and the mentality of the European vanguard elite that established Israel's democracy has gone to never return. Lieberman's arrival in government is a symptom of the crisis, not a solution.

Lieberman is a militant, ideological rightist, and his project is similar to that of the neo-conservatives in its explicitness and reassessment of values. He is secular to the point of atheism. He is trying to change the balance between religion and the state not to make it more liberal or democratic but more communal and sectarian, though without distinguishing between the two. For Lieberman a Russian need only serve in the army to be treated as a converted Jew. This nationalistic, rather than religious, dimension of conversion is close to the Zionist left -- for example, to Yossi Beilin -- and it constitutes the basis of dialogue between them, but it is not the only common ground. He also shares with the left a concern with "the demographic issue" and the need to get rid of the Palestinians in the framework of an agreement in which they give up all their historic demands with the exception of a political entity, which just happens to be an Israeli demand as well.Like the neo-cons he encourages Israel to come to terms with its power, to be open about it in the region and ready to use it. In Lieberman we have a secular, European militant right-winger who is uninterested in quoting the Torah. He wants to see Israel with a strong capitalist system that imitates the US, and he does not fear the use of naked force.

Lieberman's language is crudely simplistic. Lieberman's constituency of Russian immigrants come from a country in which the resettlement of millions of individuals and the extinction of entire peoples were common in the Stalin era. They are shocked to find Arabs in this country -- no one told them they were there.

It is difficult to listen to a Russian immigrant without intelligence or culture, who still does not speak acceptable Hebrew after 30 years in Israel informing you of the conditions of citizenship in your own country. It is hard to take seriously someone I saw with my own eyes, in the days when we were building the Arab student movement in Israeli universities, as a cowardly student who, immediately upon his arrival from Russia joined the militant, violent right led by Tzachi Hanegbi and began to threaten and take part in the right's violence against us, although we knew of his cowardice from experience. The problem is that he knows that we know; this is the root of his complex.

The far right enters the den of opportunists and appears principled. It enters the Sodom and Gomorrah of politics and deal-making and comes out pious and righteous. Just by entering the circle Lieberman has felled two birds with one stone. First of all he has earned legitimacy; he is no longer merely a foolish immigrant who wants a strong-arm regime. He has set himself up as a national siren, warning people of the Iranian threat, but he has no strategic mind. Of all the targets in the world, in the past he threatened to blow up the Aswan Dam. Secondly, he did not demand ministerial posts for practical purposes, but asked for one tailor-made ministry that embodies the principle he upholds. In so doing he looks like the one person who has come to implement a political platform. The ministry made to order for him is the Ministry of Strategic Threats.

Only in Israel could such a thing be created. This is a country that has not yet appointed a minister of social affairs, but after coalition negotiations now has a Ministry of Strategic Threats. Perhaps in the future we will see the Security Fears Ministry, the Demographic Threat Ministry, the Non-Recognition of Israel Ministry, the World Is Against Us Ministry, the Chosen People Ministry, or the Ministry of Greater Israel. This is a ministry that embodies an ideological position; it says that the gravest danger facing Israel today is the Iranian threat and the Syrian-Iranian alliance with Hizbullah and Hamas. Fine, but standing up to this threat has always been the job of the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry and the intelligence establishment. What need is there for a new ministry run by a man who has no experience in security affairs, unless you count his rumoured links to the Russian mafia, and is not distinguished by his penetrating strategic thought? This is a ministry for incitement, mobilization and conspiracy-mongering. It is a ministry made to win popularity in the Israeli street by beating the war drums against "the enemy.""

قال إنّ "البعض يعمل لإسقاط الحكومة ونحن نعمل لاسقاط الاحتلال والعدوان"

غزة – المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام


تظاهر آلاف المواطنين الفلسطينيين مساء اليوم الخميس (2/11) في مدينة غزة، تنديداً بالمجزرة الصهيونية في بيت حانون والصمت الدولي المطبق إزاءها، وتضامناً مع أهالي البلدة التي تشهد عدواناً شرساً من جيش الاحتلال .

وانطلق بعد صلاة العشاء من ليل الخميس، آلاف المواطنين من مساجد غزة وهم يرفعون الأعلام الفلسطينية والرايات الإسلامية ورايات حركة "حماس" . وجاب المتظاهرون شوارع غزة الرئيسة وهم يرددون هتافات تندد بالجرائم الصهيونية في بيت حانون، مطالبين فصائل المقاومة بالرد على العدوان .

ودعا المشاركون المجتمع الدولي إلى الخروج عن صمته ولجم العدوان الصهيوني وعدم الرضا بأن يكون شاهد زور على قتل الشعب الفلسطيني .

وتجمعت المسيرات من مختلف مناطق غزة في باحة المجلس التشريعي، حيث وصل إلى المكان بصورة مفاجئة رئيس الوزراء إسماعيل هنية الذي استُقبل بالهتافات والترحيب من المواطنين الفلسطينيين .

وألقى هنية كلمة في الجماهير المحتشدة، حيّا فيها باسم الحكومة والشعب الفلسطيني أهالي بيت حانون وشهداءهم الأبرار، والجرحى والنساء اللواتي وقفن في وجه دبابات الاحتلال .

وقال إسماعيل هنية موجهاً كلامه لسكان بيت حانون "تخوضون معركة الدفاع عن العزة والكرامة والمشروع الوطني، وتقفون في وجه المحتل وآلياته وقواته الخاصة وطائراته، تقدمون الشهداء والجرحى والأسرى حتى لا يمرّ الغزاة إلى أرض القطاع" .

وأضاف رئيس الوزراء الفلسطيني قوله "إنّ العدوان جاء بعد فشلهم في إسقاط الحكومة والشعب الفلسطيني رغم الحصار والتضييق والخنق، فقد فشلوا سياسياً واقتصادياً، وفشلوا في إسقاط المشروع وخيار الشعب الفلسطيني، فلجأوا إلى خيار الإرهاب والقتل، زاعمين تارة بوجود أسلحة متطورة في غزة ومدن تحت الأرض وغيرها من أجل تبرير العدوان الشرس الذي يتعرض له أهلنا في بيت حانون وخزاعة ورفح وجنين ونابلس وكل أرض فلسطينية".

وشدّد هنية على أنّ حكومة الاحتلال كما فشلت في تغيير المشهد السياسي الفلسطيني ستفشل في خيارها الإرهابي العسكري .

وقال إسماعيل هنية مضيفاً "أنّ الجرح كبير والعدوان الصهيوني خطير، حيث يستخدمون ضد البلدة الصامدة الطائرات والدبابات الحربية، ويقتلون العشرات ويعتقلون المئات، لكننا على يقين بأنّ بيت حانون ستبقى ثابتة صامدة، وجميع الشعب الفلسطيني سيبقى معهم ولن يتخلى عنهم، ولن يترككم وحدكم في الميدان"، كما خاطب أهالي بيت حانون .

وأوضح رئيس الوزراء أنّ الحكومة الفلسطينية عقدت اجتماعاً طارئاً، وووجهت رسائل متعددة، وجعلت الوزارات على أتم جاهزية لخدمة أبناء شعبنا لمواجهة العدوان، مضيفاً أنه "في الوقت الذي يفكر فيه البعض كيف يسقط الحكومة وتغيير المشهد السياسي في فلسطين؛ نحن نفكر كيف نسقط الاحتلال وعدوانه والمؤامرة على شعبنا الفلسطيني وحماية الشعب ومصالحه".

كما أوضح إسماعيل هنية أنّ "من يريد الدفاع عن مصالح الشعب؛ فعليه مواجهة الاحتلال والعدوان الذي جاء بقرارات من قيادة الحكومة الصهيونة، وبمباركة أمريكية تعتبر ما يقوم به الجيش الصهيوني دفاعاً عن النفس"، مشدداً على أنّ "بيت حانون لن تسقط، ولن تُخترق الحصون، ولن يسلبوا منا المواقف، مهما بلغت التضحيات".

A GOOD PIECE
By Nicola Nasser

"Avigdor Lieberman’s ascent to a strategic executive role in Israel has unmasked the artificial divide between left and right and revealed the mainstream ruling elite as still in consensus on the Zionist goals, a fact that rules out any credible peace process in the foreseeable future and dooms peace and left as wishful thinking as they have been ever since the creation of the Jewish state, until a forcible outside intervention could enforce a de-Zionization of peace-making.

The Jewish state is showing its real direction and unmasking its true identity that has been concealed since its creation with leftist posturing or by seemingly democratic wrangling between left and right.

“The most worrying thing about Lieberman is not that his ideas exist on a plane outside Israel's political continuum but that, in many ways, they are close to its dead centre… Not a single political party took to the streets to protest the very existence of a party based on a racist platform … The political doctrine is identical, and so is the political path.” (Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report, on Wednesday, October 25, 2006)

“Within Israel, there is nothing unprecedented about this (Lieberman’s) platform. In 1948 David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, presided over the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians. The country could not have been created in its current form without their enforced flight and the land seizures that followed. For this reason, denial of a Palestinian's right of return is still seen as a litmus test in mainstream Israeli politics,” said Weinberg.

Lieberman’s ascent seriously raises the question of whether there is still a peace camp, be it leftist or rightist, in the Zionist state, where both Jewish left-wingers and right-wingers are still die-hardly entrenched in their Zionist Ghetto mentality to keep it a racially pure Jewish state in an international era of globalization and democratization.

However camouflaging its extreme right-wing policies by ultra-leftist rhetoric could not conceal its rightist agenda; Israeli left has not in fact failed but unmasked as a propaganda front for the Zionist rightist agenda which nurtured both left and right and on which peace and the peace processes have crashed and doomed to be always evasive and illusive so long as Zionism remains the terms of reference for an Israeli peace-making based on dictating a fait accompli in the name of security.

Separation from the Palestinians geographically and demographically has evolved as the common denominator uniting even the far right and far left. What differences are still there between for instance Yossi Beilin and Lieberman? Separation is promoted by Lieberman with a plan to “transfer” Israeli Arab Palestinians and by Beilin with insistence on establishing the “original transfer” in 1948 as a fait accompli that could not be rectified. Israeli far left is posturing as if acting outside the framework of the Zionist agenda. Judging by the Geneva Accord (Initiative), the jewel of its peace efforts, which Beilin co-authored with the member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Abed Rabbo, Beilin is revealed as an ally of Lieberman by default.

Co-existence with the Arab citizens of Israel remains the test that will determine the peace with their other Arab compatriots and the Jewish state has so far failed this test, downgrading their citizenship to second status and expropriating their land property to less than two percent of its area in a premeditated policy to enforce their migration and “gradual transfer.”

In a globalization era it is very odd to watch Israeli leaders still determined to converge on a ghetto-styled nationalism that espouses racist and religious purity. What makes this nationalism very dangerous is turning it into a warrior’s ghetto mentality where an “army has a state,” in the words of a diplomat I met recently. The peace process has collapsed on this account and taken down with it the Israeli left and its so-called peace camp."

"Hezbollah on Thursday rejected US accusations that it was seeking to topple Beirut's government and accused Washington of using Lebanon to wage "war" against Syria and Iran. "The latest American position is a blatant interference in a Lebanese internal affair concerning the Lebanese people's choices over their government and policies," a Hezbollah statement said. The White House on Wednesday sounded the alarm over what it called "mounting evidence" that Hezbollah was "preparing plans to topple" the Lebanese government in collaboration with Iranian and Syrian allies. Hezbollah said "the American position is meant to obstruct the internal settlement sought by parties attempting to reach a comprehensive national solution." "It is also meant to throw Lebanon into Washington's battle against forces and states that are friendly and brotherly to Lebanon and its people, including Iran and Syria," it said. Hezbollah accused Washington of seeking to "turn Lebanon into a tool of the war of the US President George W. Bush administration against those considered enemies," the statement said. Hezbollah advised Lebanon's government to "listen to the opinion of the Lebanese people, and not to Bush's opinion, and follow the pulse of the Lebanese street and not the pulse of the White House. "This American violation of our national sovereignty will not scare our people or prevent them from practicing all their constitutional rights, including the right to demonstrate, vote and select the government," it said. "

A GOOD PIECE
By Ramzy Baroud

"But the debate can indeed be stretched much further into another, neglected by an utterly pertinent one, that of Palestine as a pressing tragedy seeking urgent remedy versus that of an postponed historic grievance without any realistic diameters, relevance to the real world, or needless, to say, a real plan of action.

Regardless of its many flaws and imperfections, no other national struggle in the world has assimilated itself, or has been inadvertently assimilated, to symbolize so many things to so many different people, as has the Palestinian struggle. And yet, despite the intricate layers of sense and understanding that have sought to encapsulate the Palestinian struggle, Palestine itself lingers in the world’s consciousness merely as a symbol.

Palestine is the last domicile for those seeking deliverance, and the ultimate place next to heaven for those in quest of salvation. There, it has been written that the tireless hunt for spiritual quintessence shall come to an end; the armies shall meet there, once more; they shall fight in the name of God, an Armageddon not like any other, of which victory has already been promised to the righteous.

Palestine has also been a rallying cry for the dispossessed and for the aspiring underdog. Its letters have been inscribed in blood on prison walls throughout Israel and the Arab world as a promise of victory or as a lamentation of defeat.

When anti-globalization activists take on neo-imperialist institutions, they raise a Palestinian flag, and when Venezuela’s poor brought Hugo Chavez back to power in April 2002, a Palestinian flag also wavered in the wind.

Palestine also had its fair share of political exploitation. Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein fought his Iranian foes, in some of the cruelest and most costly wars, in the name of Palestine, and in the name of Palestine Iran fought back. Arab nations have long hidden behind liberation-of-Palestine slogans to excuse their ineptitude and to rationalize their oppression.

And in the United States, Palestine takes on a plethora of unique and often deadly meanings. It’s a prophecy waiting to be fulfilled and a market for politicians wishing to sell their will to the highest bidder. It’s a major and everlasting news headline that, despite its ominous presence, seems to teach and evoke nothing except the intentional misrepresentation of the facts.

As for Palestine the reality — the suffering, the loss, the hopelessness and hurt, the refugee camps, the checkpoints, the expanding settlements, the encroaching Israeli wall, the ruined lives, the packed prisons, the anger and prevailing sense of betrayal, the desperation and human bombs, the shattered economy, the bulldozed orchards, the more than 50 years-long fear of the future — it seems to be the least relevant point.

Symbolic Palestine — Palestine the dream — has for long hijacked Palestine the reality. Thus when Palestine is discussed, examined and scrutinized, the frame of reference is hardly the one invoked when any other similar conflict is discussed. Its resolution is rarely seen pertinent to international law or human rights edicts and is barely understood — as it should be — in terms of power and strategy. Rather it’s a subject of flared imaginations, religious fantasy and fictitious constructs.

One cannot and must not undermine the efforts of the inspiring activists whose awareness of the Palestinian reality on the ground is unmatched and whose sincere efforts to achieve peace with justice in Palestine translate to more than a few heart-rending words and phrases, but steady action and unequaled readiness to labor and even sacrifice for their beliefs. However, it’s this wrestle between the real as opposed to figurative and abstract awareness that shall define the course of action that is likely to follow.

If Palestine continues to be understood — or misunderstood — outside its proper frame as a national struggle for rights within the appropriately corresponding international context, then little can be expected from any attempts to remedy its ailments.

It is time to distance Palestine from further interpretations and understand it as it is. Otherwise, Palestine, its people and conflict shall be confined to the ever-augmented edifices of rhetoric with no connection to the real aspirations of a real people with real demands, awaiting justice and a moment of peace."

From Dr. Mona Elfarra in Gaza

"Gaza 5pm
during its large scale military operation against Gaza , the Israeli occupyiong army continued its attack on Beit Hanoun village in the north of the Gaza strip ,12 people were killed at least 75 were injured many seriuosly injured , at AlAwda hospital,the casualities that were received at the emergency room , were all seriously injured , (gunshots in the chest , abdomen and head ), movement of the ambulances in and outside the village is greatly restricted ,some patients who are inneed for renal dialysis cannot leave their homes for treatment, so other patients inneed for all sorts of treatment , the only hospital inside the village is surrounded by tens of army tanks and military vehicles ,the continous shelling and shooting made people unable to leave their homes , any moving body would be shot at once , all the men over 16 wee asked to gather inside one of the village schools l,while writing this peice the local radio station announced the death of one of the women who were trying to stop the army acts against her family .
as medical teams we are working under great pressure , the sitution have been very bad and it is detriorting day after another ,sanctions , long periods of bores closure , military assualts , we were hoping that the negotiations for the release of the captured soldier will bring some hope for improvement of the situation , but it seems that israel is going ahead with its preplaned agenda against Gaza and Palestinian people
I call upon you to spread the word and to try to shake the silent world

Press Release: 2 November 2006

END THE ASSAULT ON BEIT HANOUN

Yesterday the Israeli Occupation Forces began the grotesquely named “Operation Autumn of Fury” on the Gaza Strip. Beit Hanoun, scene of the continuing massacre by Israel since June 25th, was re-occupied by Israeli tanks. Since yesterday 12 civilians have been shot dead and more than 65 woemn and children have been injured. On the first dayof Eid Ul Fiter, last week, 7 residents of the town were also killed by the IOF.

The town of Beit Hanoun was bombed by Apache helicopters and F16 and V58 fighter planes. All of Beit Hanoun’s residents have no water or electricity today. These air-strikes which damage essential infrastructure and terrify the civilian population are a form of collective punishment against the Palestinian people and are war crimes which are forbidden under international humanitarian law, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prescribes the manner in which armies must treat civilians during times of conflict.

We, therefore, call on the international community to exert pressure on the Israeli Occupation Forces to conduct itself within the boundaries of international humanitarian law and ensure the protection of all Palestinian civilians.

We also demand the immediate halt of the Israeli Occupation Forces’ attacks on the Gaza Strip and an end to the closure and isolation of the Strip, both ofwhich are exacerbating an already desperate humanitarian situation inside the Strip."

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

"If Khatami can be arrested in the UK for torture, how does British Prime Minister Tony Blair escape arrest for the torture of Afghans and Iraqis by coalition forces? Why are not US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Richard Cheney, and President George W. Bush arrested when they visit the UK?

Or are we witnessing the operation of the neoconservative assumption that there is one rule of law for the US and its allies and another rule for countries that do not support the neocon agenda? Neocons maintain that whatever the US and its allies or puppets do in the interest of US hegemony is defensible and permissible but is a crime if any other country does it.

When the president and vice president of the United States publicly defend and advocate torture and ram torture legislation through the US Congress, it is hypocrisy for the US to condemn others for torture.

Perhaps Americans don't notice, but the rest of the world does see the double standard applied when Saddam Hussein is put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, while US, UK, and Israeli government officials commit far greater crimes by illegally invading countries, targeting civilian populations, and torturing detainees.

In Britain it is no longer permissible to hunt foxes, because it is "cruel and inhumane," but it is perfectly alright for private mercenaries and British soldiers to murder Iraqi and Afghan men, women, and children for the sake of Anglo-American-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

Why are not Bush, Cheney and Blair on trial? Their crimes dwarf any that could possibly be attributed to Khatami. The only possible answer is that "might makes right." Yet, Bush, Cheney and Blair parade around draping themselves in moral justifications for their inhumane deeds and despicable acts. The fact that Americans tolerate crimes against humanity by their own leaders is evidence that Americans are exceptional only in their hubris."

A live Interview From Gaza With Jennifer Loewenstein

DemocracyNow!
With Amy Goodman

"We turn now to the Occupied Territories where at least three Palestinians have been killed and more than fifteen wounded in northern Gaza on the second day of a major Israeli offensive. The dead include a 70 year-old Palestinian man who was shot in the head by Israeli troops when he went onto the balcony of his home to take his disabled son inside.
Eight Palestinians and an Israeli soldier died during clashes on Wednesday. The raid is one of Israel’s biggest operations since re-invading Gaza last June. Helicopter gunships fired missiles onto the town of Beit Hanoun, tanks patrolled the streets, snipers took up rooftop positions and troops conducted house-to-house searches.

Both the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the prime minister, Ismail Haniya, have described the Israeli military action as a massacre. Israeli forces have made regular incursions into Gaza over the past four months, following the capture of an Israeli soldier in late June by Palestinian militants. Since then, over 300 Palestinians - the majority of them civilian have been killed. Three Israeli soldiers have also been killed.

We go now to Gaza to speak with Jennifer Loewenstein, a visiting research fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University. She is working on a book about the transformation of the national Palestinian movement. She joins us on the line from Gaza City.

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Gaza to speak to Jennifer Loewenstein, a visiting research fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University. She is working on a book about the transformation of the national Palestinian movement. She joins us on the phone right now from Gaza City. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jennifer.

JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN: Hi. Thanks for having me on.

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer, you last were in Gaza almost two years ago. How has it changed?

JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN: The situation, it’s very interesting. I mean, it's kind of surreal. I was here in January, and it’s always sort of dreary in the wintertime. And I say that because you walk -- you get into Gaza, and it’s this beautiful bright blue cerulean sky and this flowered foliage, and it’s gorgeous. And then, you look beyond that, at the city itself, and it’s absolutely crumbling, and there is trash in the street and destruction everywhere. I mean, buildings that have been bombed or simply falling apart out of disrepair. There are shops that are virtually empty.

There are power cuts every single day. That was common, but not anywhere near as common as it is now. There are places where people have electricity for two or three hours a day only. That’s significant, particularly because you need to have electricity to pump water to the upper floors of these apartment buildings, and so a lot of people end up with absolutely no water for a number of days at a time.

I’ve been here many times. In fact, I lived here in 2002 for almost half a year. And it's never been normal here. It's never been easy. But in all of the times I’ve returned to the Gaza Strip, I have not ever seen it look this collapsed, this exhausted. You see it not only in the buildings and in the appearance, the grayness and the crumbling appearance, but you also see it in the faces of people. And, you know, the Gazans, in my opinion, in any case, have been a very, very strong people and very defiant and persistent people. And yet, person after person that I’ve talked to this time has expressed real despair, real frustration, the belief that things are not going to get better, that this is not going to change. And it’s very discouraging to hear that and to see people with such hopelessness.

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Loewenstein, how did you get into Gaza? How hard is it to be there? You are a visiting research fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University.

JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN: It’s extremely difficult to get into Gaza. I’m sure that the reason is because the Israeli authorities are keenly aware that when people see how it looks here, that it would automatically win sympathy in the outside world. So what’s interesting is that if I trace my ability to get into Gaza back to the year 2001, when I first came, it’s gotten progressively harder and harder and harder to get back in.

In 2004, for example, it took me five days to get a press card from the Israelis, even though I had my own valid press card. But because I was an independent freelance journalist at the time, I was suspicious. And because I wasn’t working for a major Western and, I should say, sympathetic media outlet, I was given a lot of hassle. People from the Beit Agron , a press house in West Jerusalem, even called the Israeli consulate in Chicago, which then called contacts of mine in Madison to find out who I was and whether or not I should be let in. I shouldn’t say “contacts of mine,” but people I know. In that particular situation, I know from one of the rabbis in Madison, who told me sympathetically later on that the executive director of the Madison Jewish Community Center informed the consulate that I was dangerous and should not be allowed in. I was nevertheless given a press card the last two days I was here, so I was able to do something, but it was very little.

Now, it is impossible for freelancers to come in at all. They have prohibitive fees, and basically the only people who can get in from the media are people who are full-time Middle East correspondents for a nationally recognized paper or station, such as the New York Times, the BBC, the London Times. These are the kinds of people who can come in. Other journalists have a great deal of difficulty.

Now, this time, and I think this is also significant, the only way for individuals to come in is to receive some kind of sponsorship from either a United Nations organization or a well-known international human rights organization, such as Save the Children or Amnesty International. They are given clearance. So, for me, I started last April trying to apply to come in, and because I work as a researcher at an international organization, the Refugee Study Centre, UNSCO, the United Nations Special Coordinator’s Office, did agree to sponsor my research. That was in June, and so I came immediately. Nonetheless, when I arrived, it was on June 25th, the same day that Gilad Shalit was kidnapped, and as a result nobody got in, nobody for the entire week, except these quote/unquote “sympathetic” journalists. So I had to return now, because my clearance is up, as of tomorrow.

And so, the hassle, the attempt to come in here is difficult for people to imagine. When I arrived in June at the Tel Aviv airport, I didn't say anything to the woman behind the desk, where they check in all the passengers from the flights. I handed her my passport. She typed the number in my passport into her computer, and within seconds I was surrounded by Israeli security personnel, who said, “Come with us, please.” And at that point, I didn't know if I was even going to be allowed into the country. I was detained, searched and interrogated over a period of six-and-a-half hours and had really no -- nobody told me whether I was going to be let in or not. And at the end, I was simply escorted through the airport and let go, but only after asking questions and being completely given a body search and having every item of my luggage examined meticulously.

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Loewenstein, we have only a minute to go, but this latest news right now out of Gaza, in this raid, one of Israel’s biggest operations since reinvading Gaza last June, at least three Palestinians have been killed, more than fifteen wounded in Gaza in the second day of the offensive. The dead include a 70-year-old man who went out on his balcony to bring in his disabled son. The deaths coming one day after eight Palestinians and an Israeli soldier died in clashes yesterday. Can you describe the situation? Are you able to get around to investigate?

JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN: Only to the extent that I’ve gotten to the hospital. I was in the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City yesterday, deliberately because of this incursion. And by the way, it was nine Palestinians yesterday. They are very careful about documenting things here.

I went around, and with the permission of one of the head doctors at the hospital, photographed the wounded, because I know from being an American citizen that we don't see Palestinian dead and wounded, we only see the Israelis. And so, I was taken to various wards in the hospital, where people were recovering, in particular, the intensive care unit, and photographed people with bullet wounds and with legs and arms bound up in plaster. And in one case, a man was simply bleeding from his belly. I mean it was just -- it was really truly gruesome. And one of the people had died on the operating table that morning and was taken to the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Hanoun, where they take the dead. There were lots of relatives hanging around the hospital, waiting for news on their relatives.

And just as an aside, it was very touching, because, you know, you walk through these hospitals on a very hot and very humid Gaza day, there is no air conditioning, there are no proper bed linens. One father was shouting at one of the nurses that his son had been there a week -- this was in another case -- and had not yet had changed bed linens, and the doctor telling me, “Look, we don't have them. We don't have basic supplies like that. We don’t have dialysis machines for kidney patients. We don’t have cancer drugs. We can't do elective surgeries anymore, such as for hernias or anything like that, because the more crucial or urgent situations have to take precedence.” They don’t have basic medicines for people with the flu and, you know, stomach upset. It’s just -- it’s really a serious and deadly siege that’s been imposed on the Gaza Strip, and it’s having incredibly bad repercussions here among the population.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Jennifer, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz is reporting the Bush administration has undertaken efforts to arm and train the presidential guard of the Palestinian Authority chair, Mahmoud Abbas, in order to prepare it for a potential violent conflict with Hamas. Palestinian sources say the training started in August under the guidance of an American military instructor. Do you have any more information on this?

JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN: Yes, I do. And I think it’s another very important point. There’s no question that this is happening. Nobody is shocked or surprised to hear it. They all know it. They all tell me this has been going on for a long time. There are training camps set up by the U.S. in the West Bank near Jericho, where these security forces are being trained. And there is clearly a circle of people around Abbas, not necessarily Abbas himself, but around Abbas, people such as Muhammad Dahlan, who have never accepted the Hamas government itself in any case and have been provoking skirmishes since January, basically, between the two factions.

What is significant, however, is that this group of people around Abbas has no popular support. In fact, their support has dropped even further, even more below the situation in January, when the election results came in and Hamas had gotten a victory, Fatah, of course, being defeated for the first time in its history. Nobody here wants a civil war. The people are against it. Everybody you talk to says, “No, it’s not going to happen.” But there’s no question that this particular force around Abbas, these people being trained by the Americans, could cause a lot of trouble. It simply won’t be something that reaches into the population, because there is simply no popular support, nor are there the grounds for a real civil war here. Nobody wants it."

IRAQ TODAY

The New York Times

"A substantial majority of Americans expect Democrats to reduce or end American military involvement in Iraq if they win control of Congress next Tuesday and say Republicans will maintain or increase troop levels to try to win the war if they hold on to power on Capitol Hill, according to the final New York Times/CBS News poll before the midterm election.

The poll showed that 29 percent of Americans approve of the way President Bush is managing the war, matching the lowest mark of his presidency. Nearly 70 percent said Mr. Bush did not have a plan to end the war, and 80 percent said Mr. Bush’s latest effort to rally public support for the conflict amounted to a change in language but not policy.

The poll underlined the extent to which the war has framed the midterm elections. Americans cited Iraq as the most important issue affecting their vote, and majorities of Republicans and Democrats said they wanted a change in approach. Twenty percent said they thought the United States was winning in Iraq, down from a high this year of 36 percent in January."

(photo: AP/Carl De Souza, Pool)

The Lovable Man?

By URI AVNERY
CounterPunch

"In its original German form - Liebermann - the name means "lovable man". It is hard to imagine a name less appropriate for the new Deputy Prime Minister of Israel.

He is not lovable, neither in his personality nor in his views - and that is the understatement of the year.

His personal lovability can be judged by the fact that he was once arrested for beating up a boy who had quarreled with his son.

This week, the arrival of Liberman at the center of the political system marks the start of a new chapter in the annals of the State of Israel.The time is not accidental. In all the 56 years of its existence, Israeli democracy has never been at such a low point as it is today.

So he advocates Transfer, the expulsion of the Arab citizens from Israel. He threatened to destroy Egypt by blowing up the Aswan Dam. He demanded the execution of the Israeli Arab Knesset members for meeting with Syrian and Hamas leaders. So what? Rehavam Ze'evi, whose memory was honored this week by a special commemoration session of the Knesset, proposed ethnic cleansing, and General Effi Eytam, the chief of the National Union party, uses similar language.

Such a person should not be allowed to enter the government? Why not? After all, Liberman has already been a member of the government, and so had Ze'evi and Eytam.

The Liberman party is quite different from the fictitious Kadima Party and the decomposing Labor Party. It is organized on military lines, with Liberman as its one, unquestioned leader. It has organized most of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and is expanding into other communities, too. It appeals to the poor and downtrodden. It resembles the Bolshevik party that Liberman knew as a young man in the Soviet Union. (To coin a formula: Bolshevism minus Marxism equals Fascism.)

When the democratic system arouses public contempt, and when the view that "all politicians are crooks" and "the system is rotten to the core" is gaining ground, such a person is a real danger to democracy.

But the general public does not seem shocked, either. Here and there some articles did appear, but they did not point out the existential danger threatening the Israeli republic. Even the Arab public in Israel, whose very existence is menaced by Liberman, has not set in motion a real protest. On the 1976 "Land Day", when the Arab citizens protested against the expropriation of their land, it looked different. As it did in October 2000, when the Israeli Arab public protested against a suspected threat to the al Aqsa mosque.

What is the reason for this weak reaction, which is so like the last days of the Weimar republic?"

By Ehsan Ahrari
Asia Times

"No one should think that just because the US has not invaded North Korea or used its air power to neutralize Kim Jong-il's nuclear facilities in the aftermath of his nuclear explosion of October 9 it would behave as passively toward Iran. While a "nuclear" North Korea gradually became an acceptable reality for the national-security community in Washington over the past few years, the idea of a "nuclear Iran" remains much more problematical, at least for the hawks in and around the Bush administration. They have ensured that the issue of Iran's nuclear program is never far removed from the radar of the American public, as well as the international community.

President George W Bush, frustrated and disappointed at the ever-deteriorating security situation in Iraq, does not miss a chance to blame some of these woes on the Iranians.

The Saudi decision to rely on US forces once again - even though it carries a high risk of escalated resentment among Wahhabi hardliners inside the kingdom - might have been made for contradictory reasons.

First, the Saudi regime is convinced that its fight with al-Qaeda will only be resolved once one of the parties is eliminated. Thus the Saudis brought in the ultimate "big gun" - the US military- to safeguard their oil facilities and, in the process, possibly their own survival.

Al-Qaeda has already declared Saudi oil as a target to bring about the ouster of the regime. Given that the industrial world is seriously dependent on Saudi oil, and given that the US has no intention of witnessing the destabilization of Saudi Arabia, a powerful quid pro quo drives the Arab kingdom and the lone superpower toward each other. For the Saudi government, this might be the beginning of a revival of the US-Saudi friendship that cooled after the Gulf War in 1991.

Second, the Saudi government - along with other Persian Gulf sheikhdoms - doesn't want to see the emergence of a "nuclear Iran" in its neighborhood. These sheikhdoms do not necessarily share the frightening US and Israeli scenarios of Iranian menace. But they are concerned that their region will be further destabilized if the US or Israel were to decide to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.

So the Saudis might be hoping that the presence of US ships in their port will send the "right" signal to Iran that it had better rethink its intransigence regarding its uranium-enrichment program. If Iran does not respond the way the Saudis anticipate, then US-led military exercise might do its share in "persuading Iran".

So the Bush administration is regaining the friendship of the Saudis and busy persuading other Gulf emirates to create some distance from Iran. However, Iran is not without friends, and the US and the Saudis will not have it all their own way."

***

In my opinion the so-called Al-Qa'ida threat is a hoax. The U.S. military presence in the Gulf is strictly aimed at Iran and to minimize risk to Saudi oil installations from Iranian retaliation when (not if) the U.S. attacks Iran.

(Click on slide to enlarge)

EDITORIAL
Asia Times

""If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don't have one. Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, yet they don't have a plan ..."
- US President George W Bush, campaigning for Republicans in next week's congressional elections.

So, does the Bush administration have a plan for Iraq, and if so, is it working? The answer to both questions could well be "yes". But it's not a plan that Bush could publicly boast about, despite the fact that it's working like a charm.
This is how things are shaping up in Iraq (see image below), according to US Central Command itself, which keeps a "chaos gauge" to measure Iraq's progress from chaos to peace.

According to the New York Times, the "gauge" was shown as a slide at a classified briefing on October 18. (Click here to see the full slide, titled "Iraq: Indications and Warnings of Civil Conflict".)

Unfortunately for the benighted Iraqis, the gauge is moving steadily in the "wrong" direction: away from peace and into the "red zone" of chaos. So how is it that the Bush plan can be said to be working? Easy, if the plan is ... chaos.

Asia Times Online columnist Spengler has pointed out that chaos is probably the best option for the Bush administration, not only in Iraq but in the region (see How I learned to stop worrying and love chaos, March 14, 2006, and Mistah Kurtz, he clueless, May 11, 2004). And a strategy of fomenting chaos makes perfect sense in a twisted sort of way: a stable, autonomous Iraq means oil will be pumped, bringing down international crude prices, and that's the last thing the Bush administration's backers want.

Who are the administration's backers, and who has a hotline to the presidency, via Vice President Dick Cheney? Big Oil. Consider these well-known facts:

Cheney was formerly chief executive officer of oil-services company Halliburton, which, incidentally, was found by a 2003 Pentagon audit to have overcharged the US government by US$61 million for delivering gasoline to Iraq.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat on Chevron's board of directors from 1991 to 2001, and Chevron named an oil tanker after her.

James A Baker III, secretary of state for Bush's father and now "fixer" for the Bush family, has been appointed co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, charged with advising Bush Jr on future Iraq policy. His law firm, Baker Botts, was ranked by Who's Who Legal last year as "Global Oil and Gas Law Firm of the Year". His clients include the royal family of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries kingpin Saudi Arabia.

Bush himself was a Texas oilman, though not a very successful one. Ever heard of Bush's company, Arbusto? Probably not. Arbusto was going busto before it eventually ended up in the hands of Harken Energy in 1986. Harken gave Bush a seat on the board, some stock options and a $120,000 consulting contract. The energy industry pumped $2.8 million into Bush's 2000 campaign.

Consider too that oil-industry behemoth ExxonMobil this week announced third-quarter earnings of $10.49 billion, largely on the backs of US consumers paying high prices for oil. This is the second-biggest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded US company.

Better not brag about your plan before the elections, Mr President."

By Steve Bell, The Guardian.
(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

John Kerry has advised students to study and go to college if they do not want to "get stuck in Iraq."

The return to power of Avigdor Lieberman and his anti-Arab racism is a mark of the point Israeli politics has now reached

Jonathan Steele in Jerusalem
Thursday November 2, 2006
The Guardian

"Tibi was furious. In other parts of the world a man like Lieberman - "a very dangerous and sophisticated politician who has won his support through race hatred" - would be shunned, he fulminated. In Israel he was given a top job.

Tibi was not worried that the government "would become more brutal" because of Lieberman's presence in cabinet. After all, the mushrooming of roadblocks in the West Bank, the assassinations in Gaza and the war on Lebanon happened without him. "Our problem is with Israeli society," said Tibi. "The appointment of this racist and fascist sends a message to me as an Arab and a human being."

Sitting in the cafeteria alongside Tibi, Zehava Galon, who leads the parliamentary wing of Meretz, Israel's small leftwing party, was equally appalled. Her anger was directed at the Labour party ministers in Olmert's coalition for failing to resign in protest. This was bound to lower politicians' public respect by several more notches, she said. She had written a letter to the Labour caucus arguing that Lieberman was worse than Austria's Jörg Haider or France's Jean-Marie Le Pen. But only one minister chose to leave the government.

"Lieberman's appointment will influence the whole atmosphere of Israeli society," said Galon. "Ministers are only interested in keeping their chairs ... Politicians are already seen as cynical, with no values, no ideology, no principles. This will make it worse. There is no leftwing camp in Israel now. If the Labour party thinks it's legitimate to be allied with Lieberman, I can no longer consider them left, liberal or democratic. This appointment is a terrorist attack on democracy."

As her gloom and anger mounted, the man himself carried on lunching, pausing only to take a few questions from the Guardian. In a mixture of Russian and English, he told me that his priorities in government would be "to establish a proper process of decision-making" and push through "a strategic vision for the final solution of how Israel will look in 20 or 25 years' time ... It's not only an issue of territory and borders but of the character of the state - will it be a Zionist state, a Jewish state, or a state like others? I want it to be a Jewish state.""

"Bechtel Corp. went to Iraq three years ago to help rebuild a nation torn by war. Since then, 52 of its people have been killed and much of its work sabotaged as Iraq dissolved into insurgency and sectarian violence.

Now Bechtel is leaving."

***

EVEN THE VULTURES ARE LEAVING; THE END CANNOT BE FAR AWAY.

9 Killed as Israel launches major attack on occupied Gaza: Some 60 people were wounded as troops, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, carried out the raid.

Video Shows Unarmed Palestinian Shot By Israeli Occupation Forces: 2 Minute video

Pause for Peace : HERE in Gaza, few dream of peace. For now, most dare only to dream of a lack of war. It is for this reason that Hamas proposes a long-term truce during which the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can try to negotiate a lasting peace.

Zionists seek to silence critics of US policy toward Israel: Prominent Zionist groups and individuals in the US are conducting a campaign of intimidation against liberal and left-wing critics of the Israeli regime and Washington’s policy toward Israel.

Israel's New Arsenal: What bizarre science-fiction horrors have to occur before the American media wakes up to the strange war that Israel is prosecuting against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians?

Baghdad is under siege: Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital.

Saudi study: Iraq a ‘lost battle’: Damning analysis says all indications point to current state of civil war, disintegration of Iraqi state.

Military Charts Movement of Conflict in Iraq Toward Chaos: The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.”

Iraq: More than 20 killed as bloody U.S. occupation continues: The bullet-riddled bodies of three people who had been blindfolded and bound at the wrists were found dumped in eastern Baghdad, and five more bodies were pulled from the Tigris River near Suwayrah, 25 miles south of the capital.

U.S. Soldier Charged With Premeditated Murder of 3 Iraqi Detainees: The case is one of two involving soldiers from the division accused of killing Iraqis during a deployment to Iraq that ended in September.

U.S. deaths in Iraq for October hit 104: The U.S. military reported the death of a soldier in fighting yesterday in volatile Anbar province west of Baghdad, raising to 104 the number of American service members killed in combat in October -- the fourth deadliest month since the war began.

Iraqi Militants score a political victory: Iraqi Shiite militants won a major political victory Tuesday when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered US and Iraqi units to lift a blockade around the flashpoint suburb of Sadr City.

US force storms Allawi's Home: An Iraqi security source disclosed Wednesday that the US forces stormed the home of former Iraqi Premier Iyad Allawi who leads the Iraqi list, one of the biggest Iraqi parliament blocs, and arrested eight of his bodyguards.

Pentagon admits extent of Iraq disorder: The US military has confirmed Iraq is close to chaos, in a classified briefing prepared just two weeks ago, which gives a stark assessment of the country.

U.S. "blunders" in Iraq are staggering : U.S. officials on the bases paid cash to fly-by-night Iraqi agents to cart away new vehicles and spare parts - along with generators - that had been left behind by Saddam's army. The Iraqis then sold the valuable equipment in Syria and Jordan and paid kickbacks to the U.S. officials.

Depleted uranium risk 'ignored' : UK and US forces have continued to use depleted uranium weapons despite warnings they pose a cancer risk, a BBC investigation has found.

Allen L Roland : America's Greatest Crime: Military Use Of DU: American Use Of DU is "A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time." US Iraq Military Vets "are on DU death row, waiting to die."

Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh slams Bush at McGill address

By Martin Lukacs

10/31/06 "The McGill Daily" -- -- “The bad news,” investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told a Montreal audience last Wednesday, “is that there are 816 days left in the reign of King George II of America.”

The good news? “When we wake up tomorrow morning, there will be one less day.”

Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. government for nearly 40 years. Since his 1969 exposé of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, which is widely believed to have helped turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War, he has broken news about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia, covert C.I.A. attempts to overthrow Chilean president Salvador Allende, and, more recently, the first details about American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

During his hour-and-a-half lecture – part of the launch of an interdisciplinary media and communications studies program called Media@McGill – Hersh described video footage depicting U.S. atrocities in Iraq, which he had viewed, but not yet published a story about.

He described one video in which American soldiers massacre a group of people playing soccer.

“Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids,” he began. “Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they’re told to do, which is look for running people.”

“Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control,” Hersh continued. “[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game.”

“About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day,” he said.

If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.

“In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation,” he said. “It isn’t happening now, but I will tell you – there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.”

Hersh came out hard against President Bush for his involvement in the Middle East.

“In Washington, you can’t expect any rationality. I don’t know if he’s in Iraq because God told him to, because his father didn’t do it, or because it’s the next step in his 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program,” he said.

Hersh hinted that the responsibility for the invasion of Iraq lies with eight or nine members of the administration who have a “neo-conservative agenda” and dictate the U.S.’s post-September 11 foreign policy.

“You have a collapsed Congress, you have a collapsed press. The military is going to do what the President wants,” Hersh said. “How fragile is democracy in America, if a president can come in with an agenda controlled by a few cultists?”
Throughout his talk Hersh remained pessimistic, predicting that the U.S. will initiate an attack against Iran, and that the situation in Iraq will deteriorate further.

“There’s no reason to see a change in policy about Iraq. [Bush] thinks that, in twenty years, he’s going to be recognized for the leader he was – the analogy he uses is Churchill,” Hersh said. “If you read the public statements of the leadership, they’re so confident and so calm…. It’s pretty scary.”

Copyright 2006, Daily Publication Society

د.إبراهيم حمّامي

ما أن كتبت الموضوع الأخير المعنون " سيادة الرئيس الكاذب" بتاريخ 17/10/2006 رداً على مؤتمر محمود عبّاس الصحفي ، حتى انهالت عليّ العديد من الرسائل والاتصالات حول ما ذكرته بين مؤيد ومعارض، لكن ما يهمني هنا هو تلك الاعتراضات على وصف محمود عبّاس بالكاذب، وسرد أسباب يراها أصحابها منطقية لرفض ما ذكرت وتكذيبه ومن منطلقات مختلفة، جعلتني أقرأ وأتمعن وأتفحص الردود، ووصلت لنتيجة مفادها أنه يجب حقيقة الاعتذار لمحمود عبّاس عن هذا الوصف، أي "الكاذب"!

تلخصت الاعتراضات على محاور أهمها:

1- أحد النواب العرب في الكنيست طلب ازالته من القائمة البريدية بسبب "انفلات لغة ما أكتب"، على اعتبار أن وصف الكاذب فيه مجافاة للحقيقة، وكان له ذلك

2- أحد الأكاديميين في جامعة فلسطينية عريقة كتب وبكل احترام وجهة نظره، وهو ما يستحق التقدير والشكر، وكانت أهم نقاط اعتراضه الكثيرة " أليس هناك تيارا في الساحة الفلسطينية وبين الشعب الفلسطيني يؤمن ويؤيد الرئيسالمنتخب، أليس الاساءة للرئيس هو اساءة لهذه الشريحة الهامة من الشعب والتي يجب أنيتم كسبها الي جانب مشروع المقاومة؟"

3- لا دليل على ما ذكرت حول وثيقة الوفاق، وهناك من طلب نسخاً من وثيقة البرغوثي (قبل التعديل) ووثيقة الوفاق (بعد التعديل) وكما وعدت القاريء أرسلتها لمن طلب.

رغم توثيقي الكامل للردود على محمود عبّاس، والتي تجاهلها الكثيرون ممن كتبوا، ومن هذه النقاط السابقة تحديداً أنطلق وأقول رداً على كل منها واحقاقاً للحق، وبالاثبات القطعي الموثق ما يلي:

* حول انفلات اللغة، وأيضاً من قال أن هذا الأسلوب عيب أقول: أن العيب ليس في وصف السارق بأنه سارق ولا المجرم بأنه مجرم ولا الكاذب بأنه كاذب، لكن العيب كل العيب أن يقف من يدعي أنه يمثل الشعب الفلسطيني ليكذب على الملأ ليبرر مواقفه المخزية، دون أن يرف له جبن، واللغة المنفلتة التي لم تعجب عضو الكنيست، اعتبرها البعض تهاوناً وكتب يقول وبالحرف: لدي اعتراض على العنوان:الرئيس الكاذب، العنوان يجب أن يكون الرئيس الكذوب أوالكذاب أي كثيرالكذب (صيغة مبالغة)، يبدولي أن لغتك العربية ضعيفة.

العيب كل العيب أن نسكت ونصمت ونحن نسمع عبّاس يتحدث باسم الشعب الفلسطيني ليهين هذا الشعب ويحقره ويرفض لقاء رئيس حكومته، بينما يفتح ذراعيه وأحضانه لقاتل أطفالنا دون قيد أو شرط، والعيب أن تتبجح أبواقه الناعقة بهذا التمنع عن لقاء هنية كما صرح أحد هذه الأبواق، والعيب والعار أن يضع عباس عن يمينه نذير الشؤم الشيء المسمى ياسر عبد ربه والذي لا نسمع نعيقه إلا للتشكيك بأي اتفاق أو وفاق كلما اقتربت الأطراف منه، والعيب والعار أن يطلب منا أحد أن نكون شهود زور على جرائم عبّاس وعصابته وتآمرهم على شعبنا.

* الإساءة للرئيس إساءة لمن انتخبه وخسارة لشريحة يمكن أن يتم كسبها: هذه الشريحة التي تحدث عنها الأخ الكريم قبلت بعباس بناء على برنامج معين طرحه في ظل فراغ سياسي خلقه موت عرفات، هذا البرنامج تخلى عنه عبّاس تماماً، بل تنكر له ولفظه ورماه من وراء ظهره، وللتذكير فإن هذا البرنامج احتوى على 14 نقطة لم يحافظ عبّاس على أي منها اللهم إلا النقطة الرابعة المعنونة: " التمسك بخيار السلام الاستراتيجي"، أما باقي البنود فهي بمنظور عبّاس اليوم لا تليق بنا، واقتبس من هذا البرنامج النقطة السادسة التي تقول:

"سادساً- استنهاض طاقات الشعب الفلسطيني في مقاومة الاحتلال:

إن حق شعبنا في مقاومة الاحتلال حق كفلته المواثيق الدولية، ولن يتنازل عن هذا الحق، وعن حقه في الدفاع عن النفس أمام الاعتداءات الإسرائيلية. ومهمتنا أن نمارس وفي الوقت المناسب أشكال المقاومة المناسبة والمتوافقة مع تقاليدنا وتراثنا الثوري ومع القانون الدولي".

لم تعد حتى كلمة المقاومة وليس فعلها مقبولة من قبل عبّاس، وأذكر أيضاً بما كتبته في هذا السياق:

"لم يكتف بذلك بل أطلقة أكذوبة عجيبة هذه المرة ليقرر نيابة عن العالم أجمع أن " الحكومات في العالم كله لا تتبنى المقاومة" وأن "الحكومة يفترض أن لا تمارسها" وأن "كلمة المقاومة لا تصلح"، هكذا قرر العلامة عبّاس في كذبة جديدة وكأنه مفوض العالم السامي، راجع التاريخ يا عبّاس وراجع برامج كل شعوب الأرض التي كانت ترضخ تحت الاحتلال، وراجع برامج حكوماتها التي كانت إما على جزء محرر من أوطانها أو في المنافي، لتعرف مقدار كذبك وادعائك الباطل"

ترى هل بقيت تلك الشريحة مؤيدة لمن تنصل من برنامجه، بل لمن خدعها وكذب عليها ليصل إلى مبتغاه ثم يحقر الشعب بعد ذلك؟ إن كانت هذه الشريحة التي تحدث عنها الأخ الكريم موجودة ولم تكتشف بعد خداع عبّاس وعصابته، فلا أمل أخي الكريم في أن يتم كسبها مطلقاً، لأنه عمى البصر والبصيرة.

في المجر وبلسبب غلطة تقنية أسمعت الجماهير صوت رئيس الوزراء وهو يعترف أنه خدعها في برنامجه الانتخابي، قامت الدنيا ولم تقعد بعد، وانطلقت المظاهرات وازداد عدد المشاركين بها، معتبرين أنه من العار أن يقودهم كاذب مخادع، أما عندنا فرئيس السلطة يقف مفاخراً مجاهراً بكذبه، ويجمع لذلك الصحفيين والاعلاميين، ثم يحرك أبواقه لتبرير فعلته المشينة، هل شعبنا الفلسطيني البطل أقل من شعوب العالم؟

* وثيقة الوفاق لا تختلف عن وثيقة السجناء (هكذا اسماها امتثالا لتسمية المحتل بدلا من الأسرى)، ورفضها بداية كان مضيعة للوقت، وفي النهاية قبلت كما هي دون تعديل، كان هذا ما ذكره عبّاس في معرض كذبه ليلة 17/10/2006، وفي هذا الشأن أقول إن كان الأمر كذلك فلماذا يرفضها عبّاس اليوم وهو الذي استمات مع عصابته في تمرير الوثيقة غير المعدلة وحدد موعداً للاستفتاء عليها؟ لماذا لا يقبل بها اليوم برنامجاً للحكومة ما دامت هي ذات الوثيقة دون تعديل والتي أراد أن يستفتي عليها الشعب في خطوة غير قانونية وغير دستورية.

لكن يأبى الله إلا أن يفضح أمثال هؤلاء، فقدر سبحانه لي أن أحصل على صورة للتواقيع على وثيقة الوفاق الوطني، وهي بخط اليد وعليها توقيعات ممثلي الأطراف المختلفة من فصائل ومجتمع مدني ومستقلين إضافة إلى ممثل "الرئيس!" روحي فتوح. ويظهر في الورقة بوضوح النقاط التي تم تعديلها من وثيقة الأسرى بعكس ما ادعاه عباس من أن الوثيقة وقعت "كما هي"، أنشرها اليوم لتكون أكبر دليل دامغ على كذب عباس وعصابته:

والآن لكل من اعترض وهاجم وكتب أقول: هذا هو عبّاسكم، وهذه أكاذيبه قد وضحت أكثر، فقد خان عهده امام الناخب من خلال برنامجه، وكذب على الشعب عندما قال أن الوثيقة وقع عليها كما هي، وتآمر على الشعب والحكومة فاحتجز الأموال المثبت وصولها إلى حسابه، وغيرها من الأفعال المشينة المخزية، وأقول هاتوا ردودكم وبرهانكم إن كان لكم ردود.

أما عبّاس فأقول له: عذراً ومعذرة فقد ظلمتك حين وصفتك بالكاذب، فأنت الكذوب المخادع المعادي لشعبك، ولو كان لديك ذرة من عزة نفس أو كرامة لرحلت غير مأسوف عليك وتواريت عن الأنظار وقد انفضحت وتعريت، وأقول أتحداك وكل زمرتك الفاسدة والمفسدة أن تكذبوا حرفاً واحداً مما ذكرت، وأتحداكم في الوقت والزمان والمكان الذي تختارونه لمقارعة الحجة بالحجة، لكن هيهات هيهات فدور عبّاس لم ينته بعد، وعصابته أجبن من أن تواجه الحقيقة بالحقيقة، والحجة بالحجة، لأنهم تربوا في مدرسة الكذب والغش والخداع والتشويه.

A GREAT COMMENTARY
By Khalid Amayreh

"Al-Khalil - As a Palestinian who has been living under the yoke of Israeli military occupation for over 39 years and who lost three innocent uncles to the occupation’s bullets, I should have no problems comparing Israel with Nazi Germany.

It is true that Israel has not introduced gas chambers into Palestinian towns and villages. However, Israel has been killing and tormenting Palestinians nonstop in a variety of ways which, in their brutality and sheer evil, don’t really differ in substance from Nazi behavior.

Moreover, it is paramount to remember that the German holocaust didn’t start with Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, but rather with an idea, with a book and with a Kristalnacht, the sort of things that are so rampant in Israel’s collective thinking these days as the Israeli Jewish society continues to drift toward religious and jingoistic fascism.

This is not liberal Zionism giving way to religious Zionism as some pro-Israeli apologists would argue. There is no such a thing as liberal Zionism or democratic Zionism. These are contradictions in term.

Zionism, we are told, is about “building a national homeland for the Jews.” However, for millions of its victims, Zionism is about the extirpation, expulsion and dispersion of the bulk of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homeland to the four corners of the world by way of organized terror and violence. This is the ugly side of Zionism that much of the West doesn’t want to see.

Indeed, from the very inception, Zionism viewed Palestine as a land without a people for a people without a land. This arrogant denial of my people’s very existence didn’t originate in ignorance of reality. It was rather an expression of virulent and violent racism, very much like those white European barbarians who exterminated six million native American Indians and called the genocide “Manifest Destiny.”

The Zionists did know that Palestine was populated by hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims. In 1898, a Zionist delegation visiting Palestine to assess the feasibility of making it a Jewish state, sent a pithy telegram summing up the situation. “The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man.” Yet, the Zionist movement insisted with unflinching determination on wresting the bride from her lawful husband.

That was a sheer act of rape, it still is an act of rape and will always be an act of rape, no matter how much the mythmakers are celebrated and their myths are glorified.

In fact, despite the passage of fifty years of “Jewish statehood,” Israel’s undeclared but ultimate goal remains the expulsion of most or all of Palestinians from the area extending from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea.

Indeed, any casual observer of the Israeli media these days will be affronted, nearly on a daily basis, by remarks and statements by Israeli officials, including Knesset members and cabinet ministers, calling for “transferring” the Palestinians, not only from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, but also from Israel (Palestinian lands occupied in 1948).

“Transfer” is not an innocent term. It is no less than a euphemism for genocide, at least a partial genocide, since it is almost impossible to effect the wholesale removal and ethnic cleansing of millions of people from their motherland without resorting to mass murder and mass terror.

Well, was not this the method used quite liberally by the legions of Zionism to force the bulk of the Palestinian people to flee their hometowns and villages in 1948? Didn’t Menachem Begin, in his book, The Revolt, refer to the Dir Yasin Massacre as a miracle because it made hundreds of thousands of terror-stricken Palestinians to flee in fear?

It is imperative that we call the spade a spade, especially when in the hands of our grave diggers. The Zionists are comparable to Nazis because their actions and behaviors are comparable and similar to Nazi actions and behaviors.

For as the Nazis sought to obliterate Jews as a people, the Zionists have been seeking to obliterate the Palestinians as a people. This is more than Golda Meir saying dismissively “what Palestinians” or some Israeli officials referring to us contemptuously as “Never-landers.” The systematic destruction of some 460 Palestinian towns and villages by Israel (1948-52) was a Nazi act of the highest order. It embodied total disregard and total denial of “the other” on no ground other than that the victims were non-Jewish (The relics of some of these towns can still be seen even today and are meticulously documented in Walid Khalidi’s monumental work All That Remains.).

Unfortunately, this modus operandi of hateful racism and terror remains Israel’s central policy toward the Palestinian people. There is no clearer proof of Israel’s malicious intent than the intensive building of hundreds of Jewish-only settlements on occupied land. Yes, everything here is “Jewish-only.” Jewish-only settlements, Jewish-only roads, Jewish-only pools, even Jewish-only rights, since non-Jews are viewed by a growing segment of Israeli Jews as children of a lesser God or even outright animals.

And now we have this evil gigantic wall whose stated goal is to prevent Palestinian guerillas from infiltrating into Israel whereas its real purpose is to carve and steal as much Palestinian land as possible.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the Wall was illegal and ought to be dismantled. However, Israel, backed by its guardian-ally, the United States, arrogantly defied the ruling and implicitly accused the court and its judges of anti-Semitism.

In addition to the settlements, inhabited by the most violent and racist-minded Jews anywhere in the world, Israel has always sought to make Palestinian lives so unbearable in order to coerce them to immigrate.

To effect this evil goal, successive Israeli governments (Labor and Likud alike) employed every conceivable legal trick, including the introduction of dual justice systems, a liberal one for Jews and a harsh one for non-Jews.

One expression of this judicial apartheid is the open-ended incarceration of thousands of Palestinian activists, students, professionals and college professors as well as politicians, including lawmakers and cabinet ministers, without charge or trial (since 1967, Israel has arrested over 800,000 Palestinians).

When the notoriously insidious system of institutionalized repression failed to make significant numbers of Palestinians emigrate, Israel resorted to brazen physical harm in the form of terrorizing and killing the Palestinians at the slightest “provocation,” very much like Hitler’s forces did throughout Nazi-occupied Europe more than sixty years ago.

Needless to say, Israeli “pacification” raids and incursions leave many children and women killed, homes destroyed, farms pulverized, furniture vandalized and roads and infrastructure thoroughly bulldozed. In short, everything, every conceivable crime is committed by this Nazi-like entity, all under the rubric of fighting "terror" followed by much of the Western media just parroting the Israeli narrative as if the Israeli army spokesmen were the paragons of veracity and honesty.

In the final analysis, when Jews (or anybody else) behave like Nazis, they should be compared to Nazis. Indeed, a country that sends its F-16 fighter-bombers in the middle of the night to drop one-ton bombs on apartment buildings, where children and women are asleep, is not morally far apart from the Gestapo mentality.

Moreover, an army whose soldiers blithely and gleefully murder children on their way to school and then verify the killing by emptying twenty more bullets into the child’s head, as happened with Iman al Hamas in Rafah nearly three years ago, and then exonerates the soldier and gives him financial compensation, is not really an army of professional soldiers, but an army of thugs, gangsters and common criminals. It is an army that differs very little from the Wehrmacht.

Israel can’t push the Palestinians to the edge of physical extermination and national demise and at the same time shout “Hamas, terror, suicide bombings.”

Israel claims it doesn’t kill Palestinian children and civilians deliberately. This is a cardinal lie. Mistakes happen once, twice, ten times. But when the killing of civilians happens nearly on a daily basis, it means it is policy. In the final analysis, killing knowingly is killing deliberately.

Today, Israel, like the Gestapo did to the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto, is barring millions of Palestinians from accessing food and work. In Gaza, Israel, under the pretext of freeing a captured Israeli soldier, has bombed or destroyed the bulk of civilian infrastructure there, including schools, colleges, streets, bridges, charities as well as thousands of homes. Israel has also destroyed the only power station in Gaza, forcing 1.4 million Gazans to live in total or partial darkness.

This is the same Israel whose army has just destroyed much of Lebanon and dropped 1.5 million cluster bombs throughout southern Lebanon.
Well, 1.5 million bombs can kill at least 1.5 million children.

I know that pro-Israeli apologists, including some who claim to be followers of the lofty leftist traditions of standing up against oppression, are tempted to create a certain moral symmetry between Israel and the Palestinians.

But, in all honesty, one might ask what symmetry is there between the rapist and his victim, between the occupier and the occupied, between the armed fanatical settler and the terrified Palestinian peasant who has to rely on western peace volunteers for protection from settler vandalism and savagery?

Is there hope for a peaceful solution to this enduring bitter conflict? Certainly, there is, and it lies in dismantling Zionism and the creation of a unitary, civic and democratic state in Palestine whereby Jews and Arabs live equally as citizens as many Jews and Arabs are living in Europe today.

I say Zionism ought to be dissolved because the concept of “Jewish state” necessarily implies intrinsic racism against non-Jews. Fortunately, there are Jews of conscience and goodwill who would agree with this solution. These are our natural partners for peace."

"Gaza - Ismail Haneyya, the PA premier, on Wednesday strongly condemned the IOF troops' massacre in Beit Hanun to the north of the Gaza Strip that claimed the lives of six Palestinians and wounded more than 50 others.

Haneyya, speaking to reporters in Gaza city, said that the Israeli military escalation targeted foiling the Palestinian democratic experience that brought Hamas to power.

He charged that the bloodbath was the first fruit of the admission of the Israeli political extremist Avigdor Lieberman to the government, affirming that his admission would lead to escalation in the Israeli aggressions on the Palestinian people.
The IOF incursion in Beit Hanun further fell in line with the campaign of pressures on the Palestinian people and government, Haneyya opined, urging the Palestinians and their political forces to enhance national unity and to cement ranks in face of those dangers.

The premier asked the international community, the Arab League and the legal organizations to immediately intervene to stop the IOF invasion and to put an end to the expected IOF military escalation in the Strip.

He hoped that the escalation would not affect the ongoing talks in Cairo over a prisoners' exchange deal between the Hebrew state and the Palestinian resistance factions capturing the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Meanwhile, the PA health minister, Basel Na'im, warned of a human catastrophe in Beit Hanun in the event the IOF troops' siege of the town persisted.

He denounced, in a press conference on Wednesday, the IOF bloody incursion that killed at least six Palestinians and wounded more than 50 others, seven of whom were in serious conditions.

He denounced the IOF troops for blocking the humanitarian mission of medical teams and even firing at ambulance cars. He said that the soldiers refused to coordinate with the medical teams to enable them evacuate the casualties.

The minister beseeched the Red Cross and concerned international organizations to pressure the IOF command into allowing entry of medicine, medical material and blood donations into Beit Hanun badly needed by the wounded civilians."

"Newly appointed Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested operating in Gaza "like Russia operates in Chechnya." Internal Security Minister Avi Dicter replied by saying that "Gaza is not Chechnya and we are not the Russians. Our tactics are completely different.""

92 percent of Egyptians see Israel as an enemy nation, over 50 percent view Denmark, US in same light. Only 2 percent call Israel friendly nation despite longstanding peace

"It's been 27 years since the Camp David accords were signed, but the vast majority of Egyptians still see Israel as an enemy state. A poll conducted by an Egyptian state institute determined that Israel and Denmark were not only the least poplar foreign countries among the Egyptian public, but that they were also considered enemy nations.

The poll, made public on Wednesday, showed that 92 percent of respondents see Israel as an enemy – despite the lasting peace agreement between the two countries. Only two percent believe that Israel is "a friend to Egypt."

And which countries have been crowned as 'friends' of Egypt? The list is topped by Saudi Arabia, Libya, the Palestinian Authority, Sudan and Syria. "

by Dahr Jamail
With Ali al-Fadhily

"FALLUJAH - Increased violence is being countered by harsh new measures across the Sunni-dominated al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, residents say.

"Thousands have been killed here by the Multinational Forces [MNF] and Iraqi allies, and the situation is getting worse every day," a member of the Fallujah city council speaking on condition of anonymity told IPS. "We have no role to play because the Americans always prefer violent solutions that have led from one disaster to another."

Despite the punishing tactics of the occupation forces, people appear unwilling to cooperate with local officials or the U.S. military against local fighters.

"Iraqis believe firmly that U.S. ambassador [Zalmay] Khalilzad is the actual ruler of the occupied country despite the repeated comedy of transfers of sovereignty to Iyad Allawi, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and now Nouri al-Maliki's governments," a senior leader of the Arab National Movement in Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS.

"Yet, that does not mean that the U.S. embassy has real control, as long as there are resistance fighters who are firmly holding the Iraqi streets in Sunni areas, and militias with their death squads controlling the rest of the country as well as the huge oil market." Resistance fighters recently came out to show their strength in Ramadi, the capital city of al-Anbar province. Dozens of cars loaded with armed men went around the city.

"We are back to point zero," a senior officer in the Ministry of Interior told IPS. "Our forces are either loyal to militias and political parties or too powerless to do their duties."

"Every one who fights the American occupation has our full support," Yassin Hussein, a 30-year-old teacher in Ramadi told IPS. "They lied to us all the time, and it is time for them to admit their terrible failure and leave. Let them go rebuild New Orleans."

Hussein said resistance fighters are the only force able to keep local peace and keep criminal gangs in check. "The Americans are too busy trying to take care of their own security to care about Iraqis." "

A GOOD ANALYSIS
by Michel Chossudovsky

"Ironically, the only real visible WMD activity in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian sea was marked by the massive display of US and coalition naval power including aircraft carriers, submarines, guided missile destroyers and frigates (for further details see Chossudovsky, Oct 2006, Nazemroaya, Oct 2006)

Pretext for Waging War on Iran

Naval deployment under the "global war on terrorism" is occurring on several fronts: in the Eastern Mediterranean (NATO and Israel) along the Syrian-Lebanese coast, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean (US and allies) and Red Sea (Saudi Arabia).

"These armadas are being built-up concurrently. The Eastern Mediterranean build-up is essentially characterized by Israeli and NATO naval and ground forces. In the Persian Gulf, the naval armada is largely American with the participation of the British, Australia, and Canada. In this extensive land mass between the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, various military movements on the ground are occurring, including Northern Iraq and Georgia.

The broader war theater would extend far beyond, northwards to the Caspian Sea Basin and eastwards to Pakistan and China's Western frontier. What we are dealing with is a chessboard for another Middle Eastern war, which could potentially engulf a much broader region." (Nazemroaya, Oct 2006)

These ongoing naval deployments under the "global war on terrorism" seek to create a legitimacy for waging war on Iran and Syria, which are the alleged "state sponsors" of al Qaeda.

According to Debka, the Israeli intelligence think tank, the objective of the deployment of US warships is "to prepare for a US-led military strike against Iran .... [as well as implement] measures to fend off palpable al Qaeda threats to oil targets."

According to Debka, there have been warnings of "impending al Qaeda attacks on the oil fields, oil ports, oil tankers and oil fields of Saudi Arabia and the Arabian oil emirates." These alleged Al Qaeda attacks on oil facilities in the Persian Gulf are part of the disinformation process. Known and documented, Al Qaeda is a US intelligence asset. What the Debka report suggests is that if such a terrorist attack were to occur, this would provide a pretext to the US to wage war on Iran, on the grounds that the Tehran government is allegedly protecting the Al Qaeda network.

Are we to understand that US, British and Israeli military planners are waiting in limbo for "the opportunity" of a terrorist attack, which would then provide "the justification" for the launching of a military operation directed against Syria and Iran? In the words of the Pentagon, quoted verbatim in the Washington Post (23 April 2006):

"Another [terrorist] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets, according to current and former defense officials familiar with the plan." (quoted in the Washington Post, 23 April, 2006, emphasis added) "

Report, Al Mezan, 1 November 2006

"At dawn today the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) started a large incursion in the north Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. So far, six Palestinians have been killed and 20 wounded. The incursion is still underway and Al Mezan has detected serious violations by IOF.

According to Al Mezan's investigations, at approximately 1am Wednesday 1 November 2006, IOF special forces sneaked into the town and took positions on the roofs of several houses in As Sikka neighborhood. Other troops took positions in other neighborhoods under the cover of helicopters. The Centre's fieldworker in the area reported that IOF had besieged the town completely by the morning. Lines of tanks have also moved into the town and occupied it under heavy firing.

Six Palestinians have been killed; mostly by snipers' fire from rooftops: Fayiz Az Zwidy, aged 25; Ahmed Saadat, aged 23; Hussam Abu Harbid, aged 27; Tariq Nasser, aged 24; Muhammad Al Masri, aged 22; and Ahmed Udwan, aged 21. In addition, 20 people have been wounded. Reports have stated that ambulances and medical teams were prevented from accessing the town by the IOF, which in turn prevented the injured from reaching hospitals and added to the number of casualties.

This new escalation comes one day after the Israeli cabinet's approval of a decision to expand IOF's actions in the Gaza Strip and carry out military operations. This incursion, according to the Israeli statements, is only part of the expected military actions in Gaza. Al Mezan has warned about the impact on human life and property should such large operations be executed.

Al Mezan Centre is gravely concerned by the continued and escalated IOF aggression against civilians and their property in the OPT. The Centre emphasizes that IOF have committed grave breaches to international humanitarian law, especially the besieging of towns, restriction of medical teams' movement and the use of excessive, lethal force in civilian areas without necessity.

As such, Al Mezan calls for a prompt response from the international community condemning the violations of human rights in the Gaza Strip and calling for an immediate halt of these violations. The international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, is asked to intervene quickly to ensure the application of the Convention and the protection of human rights in OPT."

HOW FITTING!
(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

Don't Look Too Closely

By SAUL LANDAU
CounterPunch

"President George W. Bush has promoted himself as single-mindedly tough on terrorists and those who protect them. "We make no distinction between those who committed these acts and those who harbor them," he told the nation on September 11, 2001. But Muslims or Arab suspects with no evidence or charges against them generally get "rendered" to other nations or Guantanamo while anti-Castro terrorists who destroyed an airplane with passengers aboard get kid glove treatment.

The most dramatic example of Bush coddling Castro-hating terrorists involves Luis Posada Carriles. On October 6, 1976, agents working for Posada and Orlando Bosch, another hate screaming anti Castroite, planted a bomb on a Cuban commercial plane and blew it up shortly after it took off from Barbados. All 73 passengers and crew members perished. Thirty years later, Posada sits in an El Paso jail cell. Since his airliner "success" he went on to add new notches to his terrorist gun ­ including an attempted assassination of Fidel Castro in Panama in 1999.

When Posada illegally entered the United States last year, Homeland Security agents ignored him until he held a press conference. Then, embarrassed that they had not grabbed him when he entered the country without a visa, they gently arrested him and charged him with "illegal entry." Washington has since refused to answer Venezuela's request to extradite him to the place where he plotted the airliner bombing. The excuse accepted by the El Paso judge for not considering Venezuela was that Venezuela might torture him; ironic in light of Bush authorizing torture for terrorist suspects this October.

Compare the way Homeland Security handled Posada with the case of Maher Arar. In 2002, officials arrested Arar when he landed at JFK airport in New York, to change planes on his way to Canada where he lived. U.S. immigration authorities placed the Syrian-born Canadian citizen and software engineer on a plane. Before boarding the aircraft he had demanded from U.S. authorities his rights to a lawyer, to hear charges against him as established by international law. The official told him: "The INS is not the body or the agency that signed the Geneva Convention against torture." Hearing he was bound for Syria, Arar says he foresaw torture.

Canadian police had previously informed U.S. officials that Arar was "an Islamic extremist suspected of being linked to the al-Qaida terrorist network." U.S. officials didn't ask Canada to verify the data, however. Indeed, a Canadian inquiry completed in September 2006 found that days before the U.S. rendered Arar to Syria, Canadian police had advised the FBI that they possessed no definitive evidence of Arar's links to terrorist groups. Yet, Arar remained in solitary confinement and was tortured at the behest of Washington for almost a year. Flimsy suspicion based on one Canadian report and countered by another provided Homeland Security with sufficient motive to deport Arar and request that Syria torture him."

By Ian Williams

"For once, foreign policy is a major issue in a US election, and not just the Iraq fiasco. Indeed, it is possible that North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong-il may have inadvertently won the US mid-term elections for the Democrats with his nuclear explosion. Until then, there were definite signs that the beleaguered White House was considering military operations against Iran - a new October surprise to concentrate the voters' minds on the "war on terror".

Even this White House crew would have difficulty justifying military action against the ayatollahs - who deny they even want a bomb - while leaving a triumphant Kim boasting and demonstrating that he actually has one.

As a result, the elections could break the long Republican monopoly on federal power, if, as seems possible, President George W Bush's party loses either the Senate or the House of Representatives - or even both.

Of course, the White House has made the major contribution to its own defeat.

North Korean nukes notwithstanding, any White House plan to attack Iran was unlikely to work. Two years ago, the Republicans may have been able to persuade voters that when you are stuck deep in a muddy hole you dig downward to find the exit. Now, despite the best cover that the media moguls can give it, the administration has lost the confidence of the public.

In addition to that domestic distrust, no amount of gloss or conservative talk-show hosts can cover the disaster of the Iraq war, and as the American casualties mount they are becoming less and less easy to hide. Apart from a few neo-conservative ideologues, there is no constituency at all for sending US troops to die in a new Korean war, let alone in Iran. Indeed, the majority of voters think the US should be talking directly to Pyongyang and Tehran on the nuclear issue, which, hidebound by ideology, the White House refuses to do."

Palestinians carry a youth injured during clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops in the West Bank refugee camp of Tulkarem Wednesday Nov. 1, 2006. (AP Photo)

Hospital workers carry the body a Palestinian, name not given, killed during an Israeli army operation in Beit Hanoun at the morgue of Adwan hospital in the town of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday Nov. 1, 2006. (AP Photo)

Palestinians carry a dead body after he was killed by Israeli troops in northern Gaza Strip November 1, 2006. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)


Smoke rises from the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2006. Israeli troops, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, killed at least six Palestinians early Wednesday in one of the military's largest strikes since re-entering the Gaza Strip over the summer. An Israeli soldier also was killed in the operation. (AP Photo)

By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil, Northern Iraq
The Independent

"Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital.

As American and British political leaders argue over responsibility for the crisis in Iraq, the country has taken another lurch towards disintegration.

Well-armed Sunni tribes now largely surround Baghdad and are fighting Shia militias to complete the encirclement. The Sunni insurgents seem to be following a plan to control all the approaches to Baghdad. They have long held the highway leading west to the Jordanian border and east into Diyala province. Now they seem to be systematically taking over routes leading north and south.

The scale of killing is already as bad as Bosnia at the height of the Balkans conflict. An apocalyptic scenario could well emerge - with slaughter on a massive scale. As America prepares its exit strategy, the fear in Iraq is of a genocidal conflict between the Sunni minority and the Shias in which an entire society implodes.

And there is growing confusion over the role of the US military. In Sadr City, the sprawling slum in the east of the capital that is home to 2.5 million people, American soldiers have been setting up barriers of cement blocks and sandbags after a US soldier was abducted, supposedly by the Mehdi Army. The US also closed several of the bridges across the Tigris river making it almost impossible to move between east and west Baghdad. Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, added to the sense of chaos yesterday when he ordered the US army to end its Sadr City siege.

Mr Maliki has recently criticised the US for the failure of its security policy in Iraq and resisted American pressure to eliminate the militias. Although President Bush and Tony Blair publicly handed back sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004, Mr Maliki said: "I am now Prime Minister and overall commander of the armed forces yet I cannot move a single company without Coalition [US and British] approval.""

Last night's vote against an inquiry into the Iraq war underlines parliament's surrender of its democratic function

Simon Jenkins
Wednesday November 1, 2006
The Guardian

"The British parliament is God's gift to dictatorship. If I were an absolute ruler I would get one immediately. Last night Britons were offered the spectacle of their MPs pleading with the government to be allowed an inquiry into the Iraq war. For all the vigour of the debate, they were still humiliated by the government's supporters. While British soldiers ram democracy down others' throats at the point of a gun, their representatives seem incapable of performing democracy's simplest ritual, challenging the executive.

Congress was notoriously slow in scrutinising presidential decisions on this war. A Republican body, it voted the Republican president a licence to invade and, with victory in the air, treated the absence of plans for the occupation tolerantly. But this did not go unnoticed. Senator Robert Byrd remarked that the senate was "ominously, dreadfully silent ... paralysed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events." In his devastating study of the war so far, Fiasco, Thomas Ricks called it "the silence of the lambs".

That facade began to crack after the Abu Ghraib revelations in spring 2004. The Silberman-Robb commission sat on the non-appearance of weapons of mass destruction. Congress's armed services committees began interrogating a parade of administration officials on strategy. While few of these inquisitions changed policy they fed a reviving debate over the wisdom of the war that is now in full flood. Its culmination is the Baker/Hamilton commission.

Britain has seen no indictment of the pre-invasion mendacity or the lack of post-invasion planning. The Commons has not cross-examined returning generals or diplomats with anything but cringing deference. Occasional hearings by the defence and foreign affairs committees have yielded only pat repetitions of the official line.

Parliament at present regards Iraq much as does the cabinet, as an American problem which America must solve before Britain can do so. Blair has merely supplied an army to cover George Bush's diplomatic flank. If the present congressional inquiry can help get Bush off the hook, parliament hopes that it will do the same for Britain. This appears to be its strategy. I repeat, this is humiliating."

The Guardian

"Hamas is urging Britain to back its proposal for a ceasefire of up to 10 years as a way of breaking the impasse over its refusal to recognise the state of Israel.
The most senior delegation from the Hamas government to visit Britain is in London this week to promote its offer to allow a period of "co-existence" with Israel as a way to move to an eventual settlement of the Middle East conflict.

The two-man delegation, representing the Palestinian government, is also urging the British government to lift its ban on contact with Hamas.

"We would welcome talks with Tony Blair," said Ahmad Yousef, senior adviser to the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, in an interview with the Guardian. "We would like to work with him and work with his government to help end the Israeli occupation. We're sending a message to the British government - we're offering a hudna [ceasefire] for 10 years in return for the end of occupation." Hamas wants European governments to accept its ceasefire plan in lieu of the Islamist group formally recognising Israel.

"We hope the Europeans will become aware of the concept of hudna, and that it can become a substitute for recognition of Israel," said Mr Yousef.

"Debate about a political nation's right to exist seems infantile. Israel is a state now, it is part of the UN, it is de facto there, and we deal with it every day."

The Quartet - the US, EU, UN and Russia - have demanded that Hamas formally recognise Israel, renounce violence, and accept previous agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, before the Quartet lifts the economic embargo on the West Bank and Gaza imposed after Hamas won elections in January.

Mr Yousef said that there was no support in Gaza and the West Bank for recognition of Israel, and he could not propose such a change at present.

"If I did, I would end up like Michael Collins," he said, referring to the Irish republican leader assassinated in 1922 for accepting an Irish two-state solution.

"We need to change people's minds on how they look at the conflict, and it will take time. The climate will change if we have a period of peace."

Mr Yousef and Said Abu Musameh, a former Hamas leader and now a member of the Palestinian national assembly, said the ceasefire proposal, first put forward a decade ago by the late Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, would be a de facto recognition of Israel. A period of peace could create the environment for later negotiations on a full Middle East peace deal.

Mr Yousef was pessimistic about the prospect of serious talks with Israel about a peace deal in the next two years, saying such talks would have to await the replacement of the Bush administration with a government that would put pressure on Israel. Israel will reject any such ceasefire proposal unless accompanied by formal recognition. Hamas is planning a conference in Doha, Qatar, next month to discuss the plan with leaders from other Arab and Muslim countries.

The Foreign Office yesterday ruled out any meetings with the Hamas delegation, despite helping to arrange the visas which allowed them to visit the UK. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "They are in the UK to attend a private conference, and it will not be attended by anyone from the government. Our policy has not changed."

***

This Ahmad Yousef who is advising Haniyah is a Palestinian American public relations consultant. He thinks that he can "market" Hamas and the Palestinian cause just like any other product, as if that is what the Palestinians have been lacking. He reminds me so much of similar useless and self-serving advisers to Arafat, such as Saeb Arikat who is still advising the traitor Abbas.

It seems that the Palestinians never learn.

Tony Sayegh

Beit Hanun - Dr. Atef Odwan, the PA minister of refugees' affairs, on Wednesday condemned the Arab and world silence vis-à-vis the daily IOF troops' massacres in lines of the Palestinian people especially in the Gaza Strip.

Commenting on the IOF incursion into Beit Hanun at an early hour Wednesday that killed six Palestinians and wounded more than 50 others, Odwan, who lives in Beit Hanun, said that the town would not submit to the IOF troops.

The minister, one of whose bodyguards was killed in the raid, noted that the new massacre was the second in its kind after the bloodbath on the first day of Eidul Fitr feast last month.

The IOF troops and their government would not succeed in breaking the Palestinian people's resoluteness, Odwan affirmed.

The minister extended condolences, in the name of the PA government, to families of the victims and hoped speedy recovery for the wounded. He highly appreciated the Beit Hanun's residents' steadfastness in face of the "Zionist killers".

Meanwhile, the PA health ministry appealed to citizens to donate blood to save the lives of the wounded Beit Hanun residents who surpassed 50 casualties so far.

U.S. Stokes Palestinian Civil War : U.S. preparing Abbas guard to take on Hamas : The Bush administration has undertaken efforts to arm and train the Presidential Guard of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in order to prepare it for a potential violent confrontation with Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip.

Fatah's US saviour: Poverty and desperation have gripped Palestinians as their economy has been strangled by international sanctions against the Hamas- led government and Israel's decision to withhold, in violation of the Paris Protocol, $54 million in monthly tax revenue owed to the Palestinian Authority. Government employees have gone unpaid for seven months.

At least 29 killed in occupied Iraq: The bodies of eight people were found, bound and gagged, in Baquba, police said. All the victims were shot in the head.

Wedding car bomb kills 15 in Baghdad: An interior ministry official said the blast targeted a wedding convoy at dusk in Ur, a mainly Shia residential district on the outskirts of Sadr city, which one day earlier was also the scene of a deadly bombing.

Two U.S.occupation soldiers killed in Baghdad : Two American soldiers were killed in Baghdad in two attacks on Monday, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

Gunmen kidnap more than 40 in north of Baghdad : Unknown gunmen abducted Tuesday more than 40 people, including tribal leaders and prominent persons from two Shiite towns in north of Baghdad, provincial police said.

Pentagon: US force in Iraq swells to 150,000: Tthe Pentagon said Monday the US force in Iraq has grown to 150,000 troops, the biggest it has been since January.

More Iraqi Security Forces Needed?: President Bush's National Security Adviser showed up unannounced in Baghdad Monday to meet with Iraq's Prime Minister al-Maliki — who, according to U.S. intelligence, is telling his inner circle the situation is "nearly out of control,"

U.S. obeys order to abandon checkpoints: U.S. troops on Tuesday abandoned checkpoints around the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City on orders from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the latest in a series of moves by the Iraqi leader to assert his authority with the U.S. administration.

In Baghdad, a Force Under the Militias' Sway: Infiltration of Iraqi Police Could Delay Handover of Control for Years, U.S. Trainers Suggest

Blair risks humiliating defeat as opponents demand Iraq inquiry : Tony Blair faces the risk of a humiliating Commons defeat today over his refusal to allow a wide-ranging inquiry into the crisis in Iraq. The Tories, Liberal Democrats and as many as 40 Labour rebels are threatening to support a nationalist demand for a parliamentary examination of the war and its aftermath.

George Galloway demands Blair held to account for Iraq: 'It's a very modest motion before the house - a call for a committee of inquiry comprising seven members of the privy council. It therefore speaks volumes that the government is opposing this attempt at the mildest of scrutiny into its conduct up to and including the outbreak of the disastrous war on Iraq.

Fears over huge growth in Iraq's unregulated private armies: There are three British private security guards to every British soldier in Iraq, the charity War on Want said yesterday

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised interview aired Tuesday on Al-Manar TV that the United Nations Forces in Lebanon would not be able to disarm the guerilla group.

"The assembly of UNIFIL forces does not hint to anything that should inspire fear. This is not an ensemble with a goal of disarming us, nor would they be able to do so," he said, in his first appearance since speaking at "victory" rally in south Beirut last month.

Nasrallah said the countries that had sent forces to Lebanon had established contact with the Hezbollah before deciding to deploy their troops. "We told them that we have no problem with them coming to help the [Lebanese] army," he said.

The Hezbollah leader also said that Israel had been defeated in the recent war, and would have to "think a thousand times" before starting another war in Lebanon. He said the guerilla group had well prepared itself over the last six years for a war of seige with Israel. "We had more than 33,000 missiles," he said, adding, "and what we had is still in our possession.

Nasrallah also said that the U.S. has failed in Iraq and that animosity in the Arab world against Washington should not be blamed on Islamic extremism.

"Afghanistan is a failure ... In Iraq, there is clear failure on the security, military and political levels ... Who shoulders responsibility? It's the American administration and the occupation forces in control of the situation," Nasrallah said in a taped interview on Hezbollah's television station Al-Manar.

He said America's plans in the Middle East face "failure, frustration and a state of collapse," and predicted the U.S. would be forced to leave the region in the future - just like it left Vietnam after the war there three decades ago.

The U.S. has "no future" in the region, Nasrallah said. "They will leave the Mideast, Arab and Islamic worlds just as they left Vietnam, and I advise those who are counting on them to draw conclusion from the Vietnam experience."

This would happen "within years, not months," he added.

Would dividing the country decrease ethnic infighting or lead to more fighting and inflame the Middle East?

By Juan Cole

Oct. 30, 2006 | The possibility that ethnic rivalries may break Iraq into three pieces has emerged as an election issue in U.S. politics. Last week, Bush administration spokesman Tony Snow branded any plan for partition a "nonstarter." Other politicians, however, are not so sure. Both Republicans and Democrats have endorsed a loose Iraqi federation of three equal parts, and some are even campaigning on the idea. Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford of Tennessee and Democratic House candidate Ted Ankrum of Texas are among those who have touted versions of partition on the stump. What are the pros and cons here, and what explains George Bush’s die-hard opposition?

The most determined opponents of the creation of regional confederacies in Iraq are Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The Turks fear that if there is an independent Kurdistan in Iraq's north, it will become a magnet for Turkey's own substantial and fractious minority of Kurds. Saudi Arabia, which adheres to the ultra-strict Wahhabi Sunni school of Islam, has poor relations with Shiite Iran, and traditionally had severe tensions even with its own Shiites, who form perhaps 10 percent of the Saudi population. It objects to a Shiite super-province right next door in Iraq's south.

It is likely in order not to ruffle Turkish and Saudi feathers that the Bush administration so firmly opposes all partition plans. Turkey, a NATO ally of Washington, has been even more vocal and critical than Saudi Arabia about the Iraq imbroglio. But Bush and Cheney are especially attentive to Saudi concerns. Like Riyadh, they would view an autonomous Shiite super-province, which could easily fall under the gravitational pull of Iran, as highly undesirable.

Within Congress, however, the temptation to indulge Iraq's warring factions in their desire to divide the country has grown. The most prominent proponent of carving Iraq into three major ethnically based provinces, with regions for the Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites under a weak federal umbrella, is Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. The idea has now been adopted by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. She told the Texas press last week, "Yes, it would be hard to do, but it would be worth trying ... People say, 'Well, that would balkanize the country.' Well, things are pretty stable in the Balkans right now. It's looking better than Iraq."

The senators believe that as the conflict in Iraq continues and sectarian violence mounts, trying to make Iraq’s battling ethnic groups cooperate with one another in multiethnic provinces has begun to look like a mistake. But surely it is the souring of the U.S. electorate on the war and the need of election campaigns to sketch out distinctive positions and realistic solutions to the crisis that in some part impels U.S. politicians to turn to this desperate expedient.

Within Iraq, Biden and Hutchison are echoed by the Kurds and by Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). In a public sermon on Tuesday, al-Hakim, the head of the largest bloc in Parliament, advocated a Shiite provincial confederacy in the south that would unite eight or nine largely Shiite provinces into a federal region. He said that such loose federalism "does not spell partition." Addressing his followers at a mosque in Baghdad on the Eid al-Fitr, the celebration of the breaking of the Ramadan fast, al-Hakim said, "everyone should be reassured that we are supporters of the unity of Iraq and will stand against any plan for partition."

Al-Hakim went on, however, to condemn a strong central government as inherently tyrannical. He also pointed to history as support for his plan. He said that under the Ottoman Empire, Iraq had consisted of three big provinces, Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. What he did not say was that what is now Iraq was not a nation-state then but part of a large empire, and that even the Ottomans ruled Mosul and Basra through Baghdad. The three were not equal as provinces.

Al-Hakim’s scheme for a southern Iraqi super-province, which some have called "Sumer," after the ancient civilization of southern Iraq, is vehemently opposed by the Sunni Arab minority, the recruitment pool for the former ruling elite. Sunni Arabs lack much in the way of petroleum or gas in the areas where they predominate, and they fear that the Shiites will monopolize the vast Rumaylah oil field and other fields yet to be discovered if they have their own semiautonomous region.

The young nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also rejects this plan in favor of a relatively strong central government. The wily al-Hakim, however, outmaneuvered both al-Sadr and the Sunnis in early October and rammed through Parliament a law authorizing the formation of the southern regional government. He scraped together a coalition of members of his own party, weaker factions of other Shiite parties, independents and Kurds to gain a bare majority of 140 out of 275 votes.

The Kurds supported al-Hakim, presumably because the creation of a Shiite regional government modeled on their Kurdistan (which groups Irbil, Dohuk and Sulaymaniyah) helps legitimate the idea of regional confederacies and protects Kurdish gains in greater self-determination. The Kurds have been a prime mover in Iraq’s march toward decentralization, and they probably would not mind much if the Sunnis and the Shiites did establish their own regions.

The biggest foreign backer of al-Hakim’s scheme, meanwhile, is the Iranian regime. A southern Shiite "Sumer" region with partial or complete autonomy would inevitably, Iranian leaders believe, fall into the orbit of Shiite Iran. And that prospect is particularly alarming to the Saudis and the United States.

Last year, the New York Times quoted Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, saying that ‘"the main worry of all the neighbors" was that the potential disintegration of Iraq into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish states would "bring other countries in the region into the conflict." In particular, he worries about Iran. He told the Council on Foreign Relations last fall, "We fought a war together to keep Iran out of Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait. Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason." He was referring to the domination of Parliament and 11 of the country’s provinces by Shiite fundamentalist parties, especially the Iran-backed SCIRI.

Last week, with the possibility of partition becoming more likely, the Saudis attempted for the first time to intervene in the Iraq crisis in a major way. They hosted a conference in Mecca of Sunni and Shiite clergymen from Iraq. In a historic achievement, the Saudis persuaded their guests to issue a joint fatwa, or religious legal ruling, that it is impermissible for a Muslim to shed the blood of another Muslim. They declared that the difference between Shiites and Sunnis was merely a matter of personal opinion and did not rise to the level of a dispute about first principles.

The Saudis hoped that, through this conference, they could begin a process whereby Sunni and Shiite reprisal killings in Iraq could be halted. The tit-for-tat sectarian violence is the main reason many Iraqis have begun taking the idea of partition seriously.

But aside from the selfish interests of all the political actors inside and outside Iraq, as a practical policy, partitioning Iraq is too risky. It would probably not reduce ethnic infighting. It might produce more. The mini-states that emerge from a partition will have plenty of reason to fight wars with one another, as India did with Pakistan in the 1940s and has done virtually ever since. Worse, it is likely that if the Sunni Arab mini-state commits an atrocity against the Shiites, it might well bring in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They in turn would be targetedby Saudi and Jordanian jihadi volunteers.

A break-up of Iraq might not stop at Iraq’s borders. The Sunni Arabs could be picked up by Syria, thus greatly increasing Syria’s fighting power. Or they could become a revolutionary force in Jordan. A wholesale renegotiation of national borders may ensue, according to some thinkers. Such profound changes in such a volatile part of the world cannot be depended on to occur without bloodshed. The region is already racked by the Arab-Israeli conflict and the struggle between secular and religious politics.

If Iraq does sink into long-term instability, it will not hold the world harmless. With two-thirds of the globe’s proven petroleum reserves and 45 percent of its natural gas, the Persian Gulf hinterland of Iraq is key to the well-being of an industrialized or industrializing world. Long-term political instability in this region could drive petroleum prices so high as to endanger the world economy.

Ironically, those who plotted the Iraq war as a guarantee that the new century would also be an American one may well have put U.S. energy security in such question, and so weakened the dollar, as to raise the question of whether U.S. power has been dealt a permanent setback. Americans should pray that Iraqis heed the fatwa issued in Saudi Arabia late last week, forbidding inter-Muslim bloodshed.

The July-August 2006 conflagration between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite Islamist Hezbollah movement defies the common presumption that the Arab-Israeli conflict is inherently zero sum - that Israel's loss is always a commensurate gain for its adversaries, and vice versa. As UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown remarked during the fourth week of fighting, this was an "odd war" in which "both sides think they're winning."[1]

In fact, both sides achieved significant gains that may ultimately outweigh their losses and shift the dynamics of the conflict into a stable equilibrium. Israel made concrete strategic and diplomatic gains in its decades-long quest to pacify its northern border, while failing spectacularly to achieve rather fanciful declared objectives and tarnishing its image of military invincibility (a disastrous combination in Israeli politics, but hardly a crushing national setback). Hezbollah won a resounding political victory at home, at the expense of constrained freedom of action to fight Israelis abroad, a state-sanctioned indulgence that most Lebanese Shiites would just as soon the group give up (while remaining armed).

The war was less favorable to non-participants. The Israeli onslaught appears to have eroded public confidence in Lebanon's ruling March 14 coalition by demonstrating that its most attractive perceived virtue (American backing) was largely a mirage and exposing the political paralysis and corruption of the state. The Bush administration gained some strategic leverage over Iran, but its unswerving support for the Israeli campaign fueled a spike in anti-American sentiments in Lebanon and the region, while Arab governments that tacitly followed its lead suffered a major public relations setback. While Iran and Syria loudly rejoiced at seeing their Lebanese ally take to the battlefield against Israel, the political payoffs accrue mainly to Hezbollah alone and will militate against future outside efforts to incite anti-Israeli violence from Lebanese soil.

Click Title for the Rest

By Jim Miles
Palestine Chronicle Review

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Geoff Simons. London: The Palestinian Return Center. 2006.

Reading about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from this work is intense and relentless. Geoff Simons’ look at the problem in Palestine of the Israeli onslaught against the indigenous population keeps coming at the reader, insistently, imperatively, and almost overwhelming to the point of exhaustion. Story after story, anecdote after anecdote, irrefutable evidence ongoing with excellent source information from personal diaries of those involved on both sides, government records, and NGO records all contribute to this seemingly never-ending compendium of information. As a reader I ran through a full range of emotions: anger, frustration, hopelessness, rage, sadness, and the unsettling sense in both mind and heart that the cause of these feelings is the brutality and savageness of a society that is – that has – descended into a state of blind immorality.

For all the wonderful words about ‘peace’ and ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ and ‘advancement’, the actions of the Israelis speak hundreds, thousands of times stronger about terror, murder, massacres, torture, racism, genocide – about the removal of a people from their indigenous land. From the early 19th Century statements about the need to displace Arabs, supported by biblical quotations and interpretations that the difference in the souls of non-Jews are different than those of the Jews is “deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle” (although this is a 20th Century reference); that the “souls of non-Jews come entirely from the female satanic sphere...created without [divine] knowledge...an earthly embodiment of Satan;” to the modern development of genetically engineered chemical warfare, searching for a particular ‘Arab’ gene (but unfortunately for the Israelis the Palestinians are also a Semitic people): Zionists have consistently displayed a full contempt and racist hatred of the ‘other’ that translates into the murder and maiming of children, the constant harassment and torture of the Palestinians, the constant drive to confiscate land by many means – the military, the wall, settlements – and the virtual imprisonment of a whole population in prison-based Bantustans in which the occupants have absolutely no rights.

From these religious rationalizations, from the self-serving belief that they are god’s chosen people, the “bland assumption of a divine promise ‘breeds an arrogance which institutionalizes the inferiority of other peoples and generates atrocities against them with alarming regularity.” Regular they are. Even before the Jewish people suffered their own holocaust, before they had started emigrating, they were working on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. In 1895 Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism said, “the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” Discretion is certainly not in the current Israeli repertoire, as backed by the American empire’s power, the actions taken are blatantly obvious and criminal. The old propaganda idea of “a land without people for a people without land” also started early but Palestine in the 1880s “had a population density significantly higher than in Syria, the Lebanon and Asiatic Turkey.” The early Jewish settlers knew this but as a more ‘civilized’ race, they “embodied a chauvinistic nationalism of racial superiority and imperialistic ambition.” The records that Simons accesses indicate that “the doctrine of ethnic cleansing has been central to Zionist thinking since the end of the 19th Century….the doctrine received substantial British and other international approval.”

The first part of Simons work provides this overview of the policy of expulsion, of ethnic cleansing base on racist and prophetic beliefs, supported at first by the British, but not long afterwards by the Americans. There is a daunting supply of references, most drawn from Jewish sources, to indicate that ethnic cleansing by coercion or force is a “persistent doctrine” within the Jewish state.

He continues with a look at the concept of terrorism and how it has been applied by the Jewish state, recognizing that “while terrorism in the modern world is of concern in Jewish discourse….There is a violent tradition in Judaism, as there is in Islam and Christianity.” Terror against the Palestinian ‘other’ is supported by Gush Emunim, a messianic school, that delivers rationalizations such that a Jew who kills non-Jews “has not violated the [religious] prohibition against murder,” and for Arabs who throw stones, the death penalty is “not only permitted but mandatory” and even the intent is enough to penalize. This of course can be seen in extension in the disproportionate military responses to Palestinian actions, including the recent Hezbollah attacks, and the combined American-Israeli pre-emptive attitude towards perceived threats and ‘intent’. As for regrets for Israeli massacres both past and present, the Gush Emunim leader said, “I am sorry not only for dead Arabs but also about dead flies.”

Jewish terror started with the Haganah against the British, with attacks on infrastructure, with murder and kidnappings. These territorial ambitions through terror “have been well documented,” and through the pursuit of war, “terrorism would reach its zenith and ethnic cleansing [could] be prosecuted on a massive scale,” explaining in part the perpetual state of war that Israel creates for itself by denying very basic human rights to the Palestinians in defiance of not just human decency but international law. The occupation of the Westbank and Gaza after 1967 brought in a new phase of terrorism and ethnic cleansing. Deportations, especially of societal leaders, became a major component of these actions. Infrastructure destruction continued. Land confiscation under various ruses or outright force continued. Messianic fundamentalists, the core of the settlement policy, seriously aggravated all other actions. There are recognized and verified Jewish terrorist groups and while “the Israeli state has never had a monopoly on….terror…it would be a grave error to deny the historical efficacy of terrorism in furthering Jewish ambitions.”

Simons continues with a look at the militarised state that Israel has created, defined by the large purchase of weapons from other countries, the provisioning of a well armed and well trained army, a highly technological arms industry aided by various other states including France, Britain, the U.S., and South Africa, the acquisition and use of chemical weapons and nerve gases, the denial of international treaties banning the latter, nuclear weapons, increasing American complicity and ongoing direct support. From his discussion on the Israeli use of terror and its massive military infrastructure, Simons says, “Until the character of the Israeli military state and its underlying philosophy are properly understood, there will be no route to peace and justice in the Middle East.”

Unfortunately, with the immense support of the American empire and its military, economic, political and religious back up, Israel will not surrender what has become for it a slow but successful destruction of the Palestinian people. They exist at the moment in a state of terror, enduring ongoing physical and psychological torture, trapped in a series of open-air prisons, fully denied any human rights. The ongoing actions of the terror war in Israel are created to excuse any pretence of looking for a peaceful solution to the situation.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine should serve as an indictment against the Israeli state and the American state that is in a symbiotic relationship with it. This is not a philosophical work as its thesis and summaries are short and succinct, massively supported from a wide variety of sources. It should create outrage at the whole Israeli enterprise of eliminating the Palestinians from their homeland. All the guns, tanks, helicopters, jets, fancy bullets, missiles, and other accoutrements of war do not represent a superior society or people, but one degraded by an immoral militarism to a state of blind obedience to a warped prophetic philosophy and a state of savage primitive cruelty to others.

Geoff Simons' work is an enormous contribution to the knowledge base about the actions perpetrated upon the Palestinian people by the Jewish state. The unanswered question is who will hold them responsible for their actions? When two of the largest military powers in the world deny the usefulness of the UN, deny the testament of many, many other countries who have signed various treaties denouncing warfare, terror, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and deny the notion that international courts can serve any proper function, then who can hold them responsible? I wonder, too, where human compassion has gone in the United States, in Canada (the first to cut off aid to the Palestinians when Hamas won the election), in Britain? No one who has not lived and suffered under conditions as they present themselves in Palestine can truly comprehend the severity and ugliness of life in the occupied land. That compassion, that sense of sharing human emotions, needs to be expressed through local political action, through education, through the awareness of what is happening in the name of violent prophets – and profits. The course of action is much slower than the speed with which military actions can destroy much good, but if the political and moral landscapes can be changed, then in the long perspective, much good can be achieved.

Note: There are two books with this same title, the other one is by Ilan Pappe.

The following is an excerpt from Patrick Cockburn's new book, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (Verso, 2006).

It has been the strangest war. It had hardly begun in 2003 when President George W. Bush announced on May 1 that it was over: the American mission had been accomplished. Months passed before Washington and London realized that the conflict had not finished. In fact, the war was only just beginning. Three years after Bush had spoken the US military had suffered 20,000 dead and injured in Iraq, 95% of the casualties inflicted after the fall of Baghdad.

Almost without thinking, the US put to the test its claim to be the only superpower in the world. It spurned allies inside and outside Iraq; in invading Iraq Tony Blair was Bush's only significant supporter. The first President George Bush led a vast UN-backed coalition to complete victory in the Gulf War in 1991 largely because he fought a conservative war to return the Middle East to the way it was before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. It was a status quo with which the world was familiar, and restoring was therefore supported internationally -- and in the Middle East. The war launched by his son, George W. Bush, twelve years later in 2003 was a far more radical venture. It was nothing less than an attempt to alter the balance of power in the world. The US, acting almost alone, would seize control of a country with vast oil reserves. It would assume quasi-colonial control over a nation which fifteen years previously had been the greatest Arab power. Senior American officials openly threatened to change the governments of states neighboring Iraq.

The debate on why the US invaded Iraq has been over-sophisticated. The main motive for going to war was that the White House thought it could win such a conflict very easily and to its own great advantage. They were heady times in Washington in 2002, as the final decisions were being taken to invade Iraq. It was the high tide of imperial self-confidence. The US had just achieved a swift victory in Afghanistan. The Taliban forces had evaporated after a few weeks of bombing by B-52s and the withdrawal of Pakistani support. Their strongholds in Kabul and Kandahar fell with scarcely a shot fired. To Tony Blair, believing that the US was about to fight another short and victorious war, support for Bush must have looked like a safe bet.

There was no reason why Saddam Hussein should not be defeated with the same ease as the Taliban. His army was a rabble, his heavier weapons, such as tanks and artillery, obsolete and ill-maintained. Iraq was exhausted by its eight-year war with Iran between 1980 and 1988, the humiliating defeat in Kuwait three years later and the thirteen long years of UN sanctions. If Bush and Blair had truly believed the Iraqi leader possessed the military strength sufficient to pose a threat to the Middle East through weapons of mass destruction, they probably would not have attacked him.

They were right to suspect he could not put up much of a fight. A few years earlier I had watched a military parade in Baghdad from a distance. A well-disciplined column of elite infantry marched past Saddam, standing on a raised platform near the Triumphal Arch made of crossed swords that commemorated the victory over Iran. All the soldiers appeared to be wearing smart white gloves. Only when I got closer did I realize that the Iraqi army was short of gloves, as it was of so many other types of equipment, and that the soldiers were wearing white sports socks on their hands.

Few governments can resist the temptation to fight and win a war that will boost their standing at home. It enables them to stand tall as defenders of the homeland. Domestic political opponents can be portrayed as traitors or lacking patriotism. The Bush administration had been particularly successful in wrapping the flag around itself after September 11 and later during the war in Afghanistan. It intended to do the same thing in Iraq in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election.

It was evident to very few in the US or the rest of the world that Bush was engaged in an extraordinary gamble. Even opponents of the war mostly cited moral objections to the invasion. For supporters of the attack on Iraq this was the moment that the US would lay the ghosts of Vietnam and Somalia. But history is full of examples of wars launched by great powers against weaker opponents in the mistaken expectation of an easy victory. The Duke of Wellington, warning hawkish politicians in Britain against ill-considered military intervention abroad, once said: "Great nations do not have small wars." He meant that such supposedly insignificant conflicts can inflict terrible damage on powerful states. Having seen what a small war in Spain had done to Napoleon, he knew what he was talking about.

The US failure in Iraq has been even more damaging than Vietnam because the opponent was punier and the original ambitions were greater. The belief that the US could act alone, almost without allies, was quickly shown to be wholly false. By the summer of 2004 the US military had only islands of control. The failure was all the worse because it was self-inflicted, like the British invasion of Egypt to overthrow Nasser in 1956. But by the time of the Suez crisis the British empire was already on its deathbed. The disaster only represented a final nail in its coffin. Perhaps the better analogy is the Boer War, at the height of the British imperial power, when the inability of its forces to defeat a few thousand Boer farmers damagingly exposed both Britain's real lack of military strength and its diplomatic isolation.

There should be no doubt about the extent of the US failure. General William Odom, the former head of the National Security Agency, the largest US intelligence agency, called it "the greatest strategic disaster in American history." Back in the US it took time for this to sink in. Right-wing commentators claimed that the good news about Iraq was being suppressed. US network news programs were edgy about reporting the bad news because they feared being accused of lack of patriotic zeal. The same inhibition hamstrung the Democrats during the presidential election in 2004.

The sharpest denunciations of the US debacle in Iraq first came from the US Army or its political allies. "Many say the army is broken," said Congressman Murtha, former Marine and veteran of Vietnam, in a stirring philippic on the war in November 2005. "The future of the country is at risk. We cannot continue in our present course. ... It's a flawed policy wrapped in an illusion." He added that the very presence of US soldiers was fueling the uprising and referred to a leaked British Ministry of Defense poll showing that 80% of Iraqis opposed the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.

It was the overwhelming unpopularity of the occupation among the five million Sunni Arabs in Iraq which led to the speedy start of guerilla warfare. The Shia leaders were also hostile to the occupation but were not going to oppose it in arms if they could take power through the elections. But neither Sunni nor Shia were ever going to provide reliable allies for the US. All of this became evident during the first year of the war.

It was not only the poor -- the vast majority of Iraqis -- who were alienated. One friend, a highly educated businessman, described listening to a US officer solemnly lecturing half a dozen Iraqis with PhDs and the command of several languages on the future of their country. One place where the US might have hoped for a sympathetic hearing was among the brokers on the Baghdad stock exchange. But in 2003 control of the exchange was given to a 24-year-old American whose main credential for the job was his family’s contributions to the Republican Party. He allegedly failed to renew the lease on a building housing the exchange, which consequently stayed shut for a year.

After six months the brokers’ frustrated fury at the US occupation made them sound more like Islamic militants from Fallujah than the highly conservative businessmen they were.

11th Hour Election Meddling by the US

By BEN BEACHY
(An educator with Witness for Peace in Nicaragua. Witness for Peace is a politically independent, grassroots organization that educates U.S. citizens on the impacts of U.S. policies and corporate practices in Latin America and the Caribbean)

"Nicaragua is currently gearing up for its national elections on Sunday, November 5. For the last year, Nicaragua's complicated electoral panorama has been further convoluted by a string of U.S. representatives endeavoring to ward off an electoral victory by Sandinista (FSLN) leader and former president Daniel Ortega. U.S. officials have publicly censured Ortega, attempted to unify his opposition, and threatened that an Ortega win would endanger U.S. financial support. The continuous intervention, however, has failed to unite Nicaragua's divided right or significantly detract from Ortega's base. Now U.S. meddlers are flustered and desperate in the face of recent polls revealing that Ortega is within a few percentage points of clinching the presidential office.

In a last-ditch effort to undermine Ortega, U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the House's International Relations Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, sent a letter on Friday, October 27, to Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security. Rohrabacher enjoined Chertoff "to prepare in accordance with U.S. law, contingency plans to block any further money remittances from being sent to Nicaragua in the event that the FSLN enters government." The nearly half million Nicaraguans currently living in the U.S. send around $500 million each year to their family members in Nicaragua, according to Nicaraguan economist Nestor Avendaño.

Nicaraguans have reason to believe Rohrabacher may not be bluffing. In the buildup to Nicaragua's 1990 elections, the United States promised Nicaraguan voters that it would continue fueling the decade-old contra war and maintain its economic embargo on Nicaragua, both of which were wreaking havoc on Nicaragua's economy, if Daniel Ortega were reelected as President. Beleaguered by a crippling war, food rationing, and empty supermarket shelves, Nicaraguans opted for U.S.-backed Violeta Chamorro over Ortega. Satisfied, the U.S. then released its stranglehold on the Nicaraguan economy.

Seeing that the FSLN now has a chance to return to power, Rohrabacher seems eager to once again target Nicaraguans' stomachs with callous pressure. Thousands of Nicaraguan families depend on remittances to augment the meager wages paid for picking coffee, sewing jeans in assembly factories, or selling water at intersections. In an economy sacked with underemployment, stagnant salaries, and rising costs, remittances keep Nicaragua afloat by generating an income equivalent to 70% of the country's total annual exports, according to the most recent estimates. Avendaño projects that a U.S. embargo on remittances would prove as disastrous for Nicaraguans as the U.S.-imposed trade embargo of the 1980's. Once again, the hardest hit would be the impoverished majority.

Nicaraguan voters are not unaware of this reality. Nor is Rohrabacher, no doubt. Nicaraguans' direct dependence on remittances is what makes his open threat particularly potent. In the face of a potential Ortega victory, Rohrabacher is striving to make longstanding U.S. interference more personal by pushing Nicaraguans to see a vote for Ortega as a vote against their own pocketbooks.

Rohrabacher's letter is but one voice in a recent cacophony of U.S. meddling. Headlines of the last week have been laden with unsolicited U.S. opinions on Daniel Ortega and the sort of President Nicaraguans should want. The day after Rohrabacher sent his letter, Florida governor Jeb Bush authored a letter published in a La Prensa paid ad. Bush's letter declares that Nicaraguans must choose between a "tragic step towards the past," which he identifies as the "totalitarianism" of the Sandinistas, and "a vision towards the future." Jeb Bush's own vision for Nicaragua's future is revealed at the bottom of the ad, where the Alianza Liberal Nicaraguense party, which is running the U.S.-preferred presidential candidate Eduardo Montealegre, is named as the ad's sponsor.

Just a few pages away from Bush's ad appears an article in which Adolfo Franco, USAID's Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean, warns that a FSLN victory next week could limit USAID support for Nicaragua, citing worries that Daniel Ortega might significantly alter Nicaragua's current economic model.

On October 29, the day after printing Jeb Bush's letter, La Prensa published an editorial by Otto Reich, former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, in which he accuses the FSLN of maintaining ties with terrorist groups, a claim that Reich does not attempt to substantiate. "

***

STARVING THE PALESTINIANS IS BECOMING THE U.S. MODEL FOR THE WORLD: BREAD OR DEMOCRACY?

A New Situation is Arising and We Must Live With It

By Uri Avnery
CounterPunch

"It seems that we Israelis are always in need of something to be afraid of. When we open our eyes in the morning, we must see the danger-of-the-day. Otherwise, what is there to get up for? Perhaps it's not the public that is to blame, but the politicians who use fear as a means of control.

Not so long ago, it was Hizbullah. Muslim fanatics, crazy Shiites, who want to annihilate Israel. A huge arsenal of rockets. God protect us!

The military and political parrots in the media are fully mobilized. This entire media parrotry is repeating the bloodcurdling message morning, noon and night: Gaza is becoming a second South Lebanon! Something has to be done! We cannot wait! The army must go in, occupy the Strip, or at least parts of it!

If so, why am I not scared?

I live in Israel, and I fully intend to continue living here. Israel is a small country, and a large part of its population lives in Greater Tel-Aviv. I live in the center of the city, in what the Americans would call Ground Zero.

If a small and primitive nuclear weapon of the Hiroshima type falls on the building where I live, a large part of the Israeli population will be annihilated. Two or three such bombs are enough to put an end to Israel (together with the neighboring Palestinian territories).

But I don't believe this will happen. It is much more reasonable to assume that between Iran and Israel a "balance of terror" will be established, like the one that prevented World War III between the US and the Soviet Union, and that is now preventing a renewal of the Indian-Pakistani war.

In order to forestall the danger, the main effort should be to make peace with the Palestinian people, and with the entire Arab world. People like Ehud Olmert may delude themselves that the Palestinian problem can be isolated from global and regional processes. But the problem is influenced by many factors, which are in constant flux.

Anyway, there is no reason for apocalyptic nightmares. Even a nuclear bomb in Tehran's hands is not the end of the world, and not even the end of Israel. A new situation will arise, and we must live with it."

Bread or Democracy

By Daoud Kuttab
(Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah and the founder of the Arab world's first Internet radio station Ammannet)

"In an eight column headline on 18 October the leading Palestinian newspaper "Al Quds" summarized the current position of the Palestinian president.

Abbas: Bread is more important than democracy. Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president, is pointing out that in order to bypass the unjust siege that has been placed on Palestinians he will have to shelve the democratic process.

When looking at regimes that care little for their own people, it is hard to argue with a leader who gives priority to feeding his own people, even at the expense of democracy. But in a region where the only Arab democratic elections were Palestinian, this would be a shame.

The need to suspend the democratic process stems from the deadlock that Palestinians find themselves in eight months after the parliamentary elections that replaced the ruling PLO secular leadership with Islamists from the Hamas movement. Despite being elected president following the death of Yaser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas does not have the power to dissolve the parliament. Ironically, the few powers that the position of president now has is the result of the attempts by the international community to weaken the power or then president Arafat.

After winning the elections, last January, Hamas has been handicapped from ruling. An international siege was placed on Palestinians because Hamas has refused to de facto recognize Israel. Hamas says that they accept the existence of Israel and approve that the office of the President negotiate with them, but that they are not obliged to recognize a power that has been occupied Palestinian lands for 39 years.

While it is reasonable to understand why countries might choose not to financially support this or that government, what is unreasonable is that the international community is not allowing Arab and Muslim countries to transfer any money to Palestinians. Israel has refused to transfer to the Palestinian government taxes that are collected from Palestinians. It is estimated that about $50 million a month are collected in customs, taxes and other fees from Palestinians.

Under pressure from the international community Abbas is tempted to fire the elected government (even using undemocratic methods) and replace it with one that is acceptable by the Americans and the Israelis in order to overcome the dire economic situation which is on the edge of hunger and starvation.

This predicament of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is directly connected to US policy in the region. The Bush administration has made the issue of democracy the center of its policy in the Middle East. If the only truly democratic process will be reversed in order to avoid starvation, what will this do to the plans of democratizing the greater Middle East.

Democracy is defined as the rule of the people by the people. Whether the Americans and their allies like it or not, the Palestinians have taken a page from them and used it to elect a corruption-free government. Democracy is messy and we are witnessing part of this messiness in Palestine. But if we true believe in people we must understand that democracy has within it the mechanism to correct much of the problems that it produces at times.

Choosing between bread and democracy is not a fair choice. Palestinians of all levels are being asked to make an impossible choice. Should undemocratic means be used to dismiss the Hamas-led parliament and government just because it is not to the likings of the leaders of Israel, America and Europe and so that money for salaries will be allowed in and the Palestinian tax money be returned? Or can we dream of the supremacy of democratic process irrespective of whoever the people choose and have the patience to allow this choice to be changed in due time if the people feel it must be changed?"

Exclusively for the Spanish newspaper Diagonal, two heavyweights of pro-Palestine intellectual activism, Khalid Amayreh and Gilad Atzmon, enter the polemic between the Spanish thinkers Santiago Alba-Rico and Raúl Sánchez-Cedillo about the State of Israel’s historical responsibility in the Middle East tragedy
Introduction: Nailing the Nail, by Manuel Talens

As I am one of those who thinks that Zionism is a form of racism and I refuse to accept the false deduction that any attack against the institutional apparatuses of the State of Israel has something to do with anti-Semitism (but with politics indeed), I usually like Alba-Rico’s materialistic texts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and not only due to the limpid and beautiful writing that characterizes his style, but also for ideological correlation. I liked therefore his piece “Israel is the Danger” (Diagonal, N.º 35, 19-07-2006). Several weeks later, I read with uneasiness Raúl Sánchez-Cedillo’s replica, “The danger is infinite war and fanaticism” (Diagonal, N.º 38, 14-09-2006), a compendium of crypto-Zionist same-old-stories usually repeated by decaffeinated left-wingers to turn things to their sophisms’ advantage. The dialectical confrontation of both thinkers deserved a dignified debate, I told to myself, and without thinking twice I requested the collaboration of two important writers of the Palestinian resistance’s theoretical environment: one of them is Gilad Atzmon –– an ex-Jew, a musician, a novelist and a ferocious enemy of Zionism from a non-Marxist stand –– and the other is Khalid Amayreh, a respected Palestinian writer and journalist who regularly collaborates with Middle East International and Al-Ahram. Both gladly accepted the challenge so I started the motor of Tlaxcala –– the network of translators for linguistic diversity, to which I belong –– and translated both Alba-Rico’s and Sánchez-Cedillo’s texts into English in order to make them accessible to my guests. Later I translated into Spanish for Diagonal the reflections they remitted me. As well, other Tlaxcalans are translating the whole group of essays into French, Italian and German (other languages will follow) so that in a few days the multilingual versions can be consulted on www.tlaxcala.es as well as on other alternative websites. Readers can find below “Israel is the Danger” and “The danger is infinite war and fanaticism”. Afterwards I give the floor to Khalid Amayreh’s “Zionism must be Dissolved for Peace” and to Gilad Atzmon’s “Spin is the Danger” so that both authors keep nailing the nail of an unconditional and necessary defence of Palestinians totally devoid of any Zionist (i.e. racist) obstacles. The debate is served. Come and inform yourself, friendly reader, and participate in it if you wish.

A GOOD ARTICLE
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Asia Times

"The Arab world has been subjected to a whole new campaign of disinformation about Iran's nuclear program. The principal aim is to perpetuate the felt need for US protectorate power against what is billed as Iran's coming nuclear menace. The latest manifestation of this is a multinational naval exercise led by the United States off Iran's west coast.

Thus a prominent article in the New York Times on Sunday titled "Islam, terror and the second nuclear age" claims that the Arab world is today more concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions than Israel's nuclear arsenal. To substantiate this claim, the author, Noah Feldman, writes: "When the Arab League's secretary general, Amr Moussa, called for 'a Middle East free of nuclear weapons' this past May, it wasn't Israel that prompted his remarks. He was worried about Iran, whose self-declared ambition to become a nuclear power has been steadily approaching realization."

A careful scrutiny of Moussa's statements reveals a completely different picture. In May, in an interview with China's official Xinhua News Agency, Moussa clarified that "it is not a nuclear issue of Iran but a nuclear issue of the Middle East". And the Jerusalem Post, dated May 30, quoting Moussa, rightly concluded: "Moussa's remarks appeared to be targeted at Israel, which is widely believed to have nuclear weapons but refuses to acknowledge or deny it."

Thus the New York Times' apparent distortion of Moussa's position on Iran raises a curious question: What exactly is behind such concerted efforts to scare the Arab world away from Iran precisely at a time when the US military is conducting joint maneuvers in the Persian Gulf with the participation of some Arab states, such as Bahrain?

The answer becomes clear when we notice that Israel, along with Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, has been invited as an observer at these maneuvers, imitated under the rubric "Proliferation Security Initiative". This coincides with a four-day international conference in Qatar on "new democracies" to which Israel has also been invited.

Ideally, Israel may wish to complement the United States' protectorate role by offering a conventional and nuclear deterrence to the rich oil sheikhdoms allegedly rattled by Iran's "nuclear ambitions". For some time, Israel has been trying to insert itself into the security calculus of both Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, with its agents playing an increasingly active role in, among other places, Azerbaijan and Iraq.

Israel's much-touted "strategic relations" with Turkey are principally due to Turkey's economic, rather than strategic, interests and are unlikely to be replicated in the Persian Gulf region, no matter how hard Israel, the US and the media blow the horns of Iran's nuclear threat.

It has not escaped the attention of the Arab world that Israel, which has defied repeated UN Security Council resolutions calling for its withdrawal from occupied Arab lands, is now championing the cause of the Security Council. It is pushing vigorously for the implementation of the resolutions on Iran and Lebanon, the latter including Hezbollah's disarmament. Israel's and the United States' selectiveness regarding UN resolutions cannot possibly help their common cause against Iran.

The success of even "mild sanctions" depends to some extent on the cooperation of Iran's neighbors, which might not be forthcoming as long as the US and its European allies fail to convince the world that Iran is proliferating nuclear weapons.

For its part, Iran's public diplomacy - of trying to convince the world that it is being penalized for standing up to US power in the Middle East - has not altogether fallen on deaf ears, as can be seen in recent commentaries in the Arab press. These include an article in Beirut's Daily Star making the case that it is Iran's "growing power" that is behind the present Western hostilities.

As for the implications of Shi'ite-Sunni troubles in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world, contrary to the assertion of certain pundits, the centrality of outside interventionism continues to act as the geopolitical glue transcending sectarian hostilities. "

A COPY OF THE LETTER IN ARABIC
(Click on to enlarge)

Translation:

"To / Gen Ghassan Albaoui-police chief of Diyala
Brigadier Mudhafar and Brigadier General Karim Qassem,

Under the slogan of [the Shiites are the Winners]

In a few days a battalion of [200] fighters from the "Mahdi army" loyal to the Shiites religious authorities, will enter the province of Diyala, to clean it from the Sunni terrorists, especially from these regions [Names of districts in Baquba – Diyala province].

We have prepared a plan and it is ready for the full implementation, our sources collected valuable information from the areas mentioned above, we ask your cooperation with us as much as possible with thanks and appreciation.

Explain the steps below you plan to get rid of the Sunnis:

Our force will come in cars and Humvee’st of the Iraqi Army, ambulances and police vehicles, wearing Iraqi army and police uniforms.

- We will block the mentioned areas to arrest the terrorists and destroy their homes and rape their wives, as Muqtada al-Sadr said in one of his valuable speeches [kill them wherever you find them].

- The duration of the operation is three days after that we will take the detainees into the Army intelligence and integrate them to lose attention from regular citizens and then in the night we will take them to Baghdad "to do the rest".

Thank you
Abu Hussein al-Tamimi
Commander of the Al-Mahdi Army"

Nazareth - The USA has proposed the deployment of the international forces, currently stationed in the Sinai peninsula under American command, along the Egyptian borders with the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli press reports on Tuesday.

They said that the USA would help the Egyptian border guards in monitoring the smuggling of weapons into the Strip.

The reports noted that the request was offered after the American administration sent a military team grouping experts in fighting "terrorism" to the Egyptian borders with Gaza. They claimed that the team presented a negative image on the Egyptian efforts in checking such smuggle operations, which prompted Washington to table its offer.

In a similar step, Washington was also proposing boosting the presidential forces of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli press sources said.

They said that the US administration suggested that military trainers from Egypt, Britain and Jordan could contribute in training those forces, loyal to Abbas, in order to consolidate their power in face of the growing popularity and strength of the Hamas Movement.

By William Lind
(Military historian and author)

"The third and final act in the national tragedy that is the Bush administration may soon play itself out. The Okhrana reports increasing indications of "something big" happening between the election and Christmas. That could be the long-planned attack on Iran.

An attack on Iran will not be an invasion with ground troops. We don't have enough of those left to invade Ruritania. It will be a "package" of air and missile strikes, by U.S. forces or Israel. If Israel does it, there is a possibility of nuclear weapons being employed. But Israel would prefer the U.S. to do the dirty work, and what Israel wants, Israel usually gets, at least in Washington.

That this would constitute folly piled on top of folly is no deterrent to the Bush administration. Like the French Bourbons, it forgets nothing and it learns nothing. It takes pride in not adapting. Or did you somehow miss George W. Bush's declaration of Presidential Infallibility? It followed shortly after the visit to the aircraft carrier with the "Mission Accomplished" sign.

What I fear no one foresees is a substantial danger that we could lose the army now deployed in Iraq. I have mentioned this in previous columns, but I want to go into it here in more detail because the scenario may soon go live.

Well before the second Iraq war started, I warned in a piece in The American Conservative that the structure of our position in Iraq could lead to that greatest of military disasters, encirclement. That is precisely the danger if we go to war with Iran.

The danger arises because almost all of the vast quantities of supplies American armies need come into Iraq from one direction, up from Kuwait and other Gulf ports in the south. If that supply line is cut, our forces may not have enough stuff, especially fuel, to get out of Iraq.

There are two ways our supply lines from the south could be cut if we attack Iran. The first is by Shi'ite militias including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, possibly supported by a general Shi'ite uprising and, of course, Iran's Revolutionary Guards (the same guys who trained Hezbollah so well).

The second danger is that regular Iranian Army divisions will roll into Iraq, cut our supply lines, and attempt to pocket us in and around Baghdad. Washington relies on American air power to prevent this, but bad weather can shut most of that air power down.

Unfortunately, no one in Washington and few people in the U.S. military will even consider this possibility. Why? Because we have fallen victim to our own propaganda. Over and over the U.S. military tells itself, "We're the greatest! We're number one! No one can defeat us. No one can even fight us. We're the greatest military in all of history!"

It's bull. The U.S. armed forces are technically well-trained, lavishly resourced Second Generation militaries. They are being fought and defeated by Fourth Generation opponents in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also be defeated by Third Generation enemies who can observe, orient, decide, and act more quickly than can America's vast, process-ridden, PowerPoint-enslaved military headquarters. They can be defeated by strategy, by stratagem, by surprise, and by preemption. Unbeatable militaries are like unsinkable ships. They are unsinkable until someone or something sinks them. "

HAARETZ

"The Bush administration has undertaken efforts to arm and train the Presidential Guard of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in order to prepare it for a potential violent confrontation with Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip.

According to information received in Jerusalem, the American security coordinator in the territories, General Keith Dayton, appeared before representatives of the Quartet in London last week and presented them with a program for bolstering the Palestinian presidential guard. The program calls for Egyptian, British and perhaps even Jordanian instructors to train the force loyal to Abbas.

However, Palestinian sources say that the training of a "Special Presidential Guard" started already a month ago, under the guidance of an American military instructor.

The training is taking place in Jericho, at a compound near the InterContinental Hotel, and involves men from Force 17, an elite Fatah force traditionally assigned the protection of the Palestinian Authority Chairman.

According to reports, 400 Force 17 troops have been involved in the training since August.

The Palestinian Authority Chairman's office has recently barred the access of reporters to the compound.

According to foreign press reports, the United States would like to see the number of men in Force 17 grow from approximately 3,500 to 6,000. Conscripts in the force range from 18 to 22, and undergo basic training for three months. Some are then selected for the Presidential Guard.

Israeli sources say that the United States is interested in the fall of the Hamas government currently in power in the Palestinian Authority.

During the Quartet meeting in London, the Americans expressed their satisfaction with the results of the boycott of Hamas' government, which has undermined its standing among the Palestinians.

However, the U.S. administration is also certain that the sanctions against Hamas will inevitably result in a violent confrontation between Hamas and Fatah, and in such a scenario, they would prefer to strengthen the "good guys" headed by Abbas.

Senior administration officials David Welch and Elliott Abrams, who participated in the Quartet meeting, will arrive here Monday as part of preparations for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's visit to Washington in two
weeks."

Samia A. Halaby, The Electronic Intifada, 30 October 2006

"Fifty years ago, on October 29, 1956, 49 Palestinian residents of Kafr Qasem were murdered by Israeli border police who at that time were officially attached to the military. Countless more were wounded and left bleeding and unattended. Their families were unable to offer aid because of a 24-hour curfew lasting for some two days and three nights. Violation of the curfew was punishable by death.

In the following two days (while the families were thus imprisoned in their homes) the Israelis unceremoniously buried the victims without permission or the presence of witnesses. On the following morning, the unattended wounded who had helplessly lain in the streets were torn away from their deceased loved ones, thrown into trucks (not ambulances) and hauled off to hospitals. This deliberate massacre had been planned in advance to coincide with the Israeli and Anglo-French attack on the Suez canal.

The townspeople of Kafr Qasem organize an annual memorial event on October 29th which begins with speeches by the town elders followed by a march through the town to additional ceremonies at the martyrs cemetery. Later in the day an open house for the arts is organized at the town council headquarters. Poets, writers, and artists are invited to contribute to these events, thereby aiding the process of healing.

I attended such an event in 1999. I began interviewing survivors and continued the work in subsequent visits. My primary goal was to make a series of documentary drawings. These drawings fill the pages of this web treatise. Some documentary photographs from Kafr Qasem publications are also included."

Enter The Memorial

by Aaron Glantz

"For the first time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, active-duty members of the military are asking members of Congress to end the occupation of Iraq and bring U.S. soldiers home.

More than 100 soldiers announced Wednesday that they are seeking protection under the Military Whistleblower Protection Act (DOD directive 7050.6) to file a protected communication to Congress without fear of reprisal.

Among them is Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto, who had to leave his base in the state of Virginia and change into civilian clothes to take part in a morning teleconference.

"The discussion needs to shift from whether to stay or get out to how best to get out," he told reporters.

"Iraq, just like Vietnam, is a war that's not about a real threat to the security of America," he said. "We say it's time to step out and say that. To our political leaders and policymakers we say the occupation has to come to an end."

The message that Hutto and other troops are sending to their congressional representatives is brief and to the point.

"As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq," it says. "Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home."

The 100 active-duty soldiers who are formally appealing for redress join an increasing number of veterans of the Iraq war calling for a U.S. withdrawal.

"Normally the military and military families lean conservative, especially in a time of war, so to see these kinds of activities is very telling about the situation we're in now," said Tim Goodrich, a former Air Force pilot from Buffalo, New York, who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Goodrich, along with other disenchanted veterans, has formed a political action committee called Iraq Veterans for Progress.

"We support candidates who want to end the war against their opponents who are allied with the [George W.] Bush administration's strategy of 'stay the course' and we help them win," he told IPS. "We help them win by sending them unemployed Iraq veterans to campaign for them. We pay their salary and help get our message out."

One reason for the rise in discontent is the high percentage of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who return from the war with serious injuries. According to documents obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, 25 percent of veterans of the "global war on terror" have filed disability compensation and pension benefit claims with the Veterans Benefits Administration. Of the more than 100,000 claims granted, Veterans Administration records show at least 1,502 veterans have been compensated as 100 percent disabled."

THE FORMER BOUNCER AND FASCIST LEADER LIEBERMAN IS NOW THE "MINISTER FOR STRATEGIC THREATS"

By Anthony Shadid
The Washington Post

"It had been almost a year since I was in the Iraqi capital, where I worked as a reporter in the days of Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and the occupation, guerrilla war and religious resurgence that followed. On my return, it was difficult to grasp how atomized and violent the 1,250-year-old city has become. Even on the worst days, I had always found Baghdad's most redeeming quality to be its resilience, a tenacious refusal among people I met over three years to surrender to the chaos unleashed when the Americans arrived. That resilience is gone, overwhelmed by civil war, anarchy or whatever term could possibly fit. Baghdad now is convulsed by hatred, paralyzed by suspicion; fear has forced many to leave. Carnage its rhythm and despair its mantra, the capital, it seems, no longer embraces life.

"A city of ghosts," a friend told me, her tone almost funereal.

The commotion in the streets -- goods spilling across sidewalks, traffic snarled under a searing sun -- once prompted the uninitiated to conclude that Baghdad was reviving. Of course, they were seeing the city through a windshield, the often angry voices on the streets inaudible. Today, with traffic dwindling, stores shuttered and streets empty by nightfall, that conceit no longer holds.

Even the propaganda, once ubiquitous and often incongruous, is gone. One piece I recalled from two years ago: a map of Iraq divided into three colored bands. In white, it read, "Progress." In red, "Iraq." In white again, "Prosperity." The promises are now more modest: "However strong the wind," reads a new poster of a woman clutching her child, "it will pass." More indicative of the mood, perhaps, was one of the old banners still hanging. Faded and draped over a building scarred with craters from the invasion, it was an ad for the U.S.-funded Iraqi network, al-Iraqiya. In Arabic, its slogan reads, "Prepare your eyes for more.""

By Ray McGovern
(Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from the administrations of John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush. He now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C.)

"The mistaken war and botched aftermath have created such a mess that the only credible course change must be predicated on this painful question: Is there an achievable goal that makes the further sacrifice of American lives worthwhile? With each passing day, that is looking less and less likely. ... What, exactly, is the goal that U.S. forces are fighting and dying for?

Is it to referee a civil war in Iraq?

Is that it? Or is it, as the president let slip, to prevent "terrorists or extremists in Iraq [from gaining] access to vast oil reserves" in Iraq and denying them to the U.S. How often were we told that oil had "nothing to do with it!"?

He owes to people like the family of Jeremy Shank. In a small town in Missouri last month, Rev. Carter Frey eulogized young Shank, who was killed while on patrol in Iraq. Frey stressed that Shank was one of those who "put themselves in harm's way and paid the ultimate sacrifice so that you and I can have freedom to live in this country." Really? Many patrols like the one Shank was on appear to be aimed at stopping Shia and Sunni from killing each other—stopping what the president calls "full-scale civil war."

Time To Bring Them Home

There are basically two choices: (1) "stay the course" (or the same concept with a more felicitous label); or (2) withdraw. Let's look at them both:

(1) Those of us who have "been there, done that" know what is meant by "stay the course"—or whatever updated formulation the Bush administration uses that implies action short of withdrawal. Its name is Vietnam. It means more violence month by month—as we have witnessed recently—until there are 50,000 more of our young troops, and a million more Iraqis, dead. From the president's own words we know his intention is to keep our troops in Iraq until the end of his term. A year or two later, our helicopters will be lifting the remainder of the American presence in Iraq off the rooftops of the billion-dollar embassy we are now building in the Green Zone. The name is Vietnam. It is a no-brainer for anyone who knows the first thing about "insurgency"—or, more properly, resistance to foreign occupation. More and more violence—guaranteed.

(2) Withdrawal: It is more difficult to predict what will happen if we withdraw our troops from Iraq over the next year or so. A lot depends on how we go about it. The steps outlined below, the result of brainstorming with my colleagues with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and others, would in my view hold the promise of much less violence and killing:

(a) Show a modicum of respect for the opinions of the Iraqi people, two-thirds of whom want U.S. forces out of Iraq immediately, according to a recent poll commissioned by our Department of State. It seems the height of hubris and incongruity for U.S. officials to pretend, as they do, that they know far better what would be best for the Iraqis. Another poll had 60 percent of the Iraqi people saying they would shoot an American on sight, if they had the opportunity.

(b) Publicly disavow any intention of having permanent—or as the Pentagon now prefers to say "enduring"—military bases in Iraq.

(c) Publicly disavow any intention of having special rights over the oil under the sands of Iraq. (These last two steps will be difficult for the Bush administration, since those aims formed the bulk of the motivation for attacking and occupying Iraq.)

(d) TALK. Yes, talk. It is bizarre that the Bush administration does not let the State Department talk with "evil" forces—like North Korea, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and (perish the thought) "insurgents" in Iraq. If Ronald Reagan could talk with the Evil Empire, and conclude very important arms control and other agreements, surely the George W. Bush administration can engage resistance forces in Iraq.

Bottom line: It seems virtually certain that there will be more violence in "staying the course." That being the case, it can no longer be a moral decision to say, in effect: Let's let those kids from the inner cities and the farms stay the course for us; who knows, maybe they'll be lucky!

I cannot resist the temptation to recall that all of this was entirely predictable—and predicted. Almost exactly a year ago we took strong issue with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's insistence that the war in Iraq was "winnable." We noted at the time that "most of those with a modicum of experience in guerrilla warfare and the Middle East are persuaded that the war is NOT winnable and that the only thing in doubt is the timing of the U.S. departure."

When will they ever learn; when will they ever learn?"

Making Joerg Haider Look Good

By AKIVA ELDAR
CounterPunch

"The prevalent comparison between Avigdor Lieberman and Joerg Haider does an injustice to the Austrian nationalist whose party joined the government in the winter of 2000. Haider is far from being a righteous man, but even in his most fascist days, he never called on Austria to rid itself of citizens who'd been living in the country for generations. Also, Haider never suggested standing up legislators representing these citizens in front of a firing squad. Natan Meron, at the time Israel's ambassador to Austria, noted that once the leader of the Freedom Party joined politics, he never uttered a single anti-Semitic statement. Meron emphasized that the leader of the Freedom Party "does not threaten the Jews."

With the entry of his party into the coalition, Haider signed a declaration promising to abide by the European principles of democracy and human rights, and to protect the rights of minorities. Prior to that, he apologized to the Jewish people for his statements that downplayed the Nazi horrors.

What about Lieberman, then? Has he accepted the article in the government's basic guidelines that includes the commitment to "respect the civil rights of minorities and not accept any expression of racism in the country"?

Has anyone heard a word of qualification from the leader of Yisrael Beitenu about his party's political ideals, on the eve of joining the government?

He has not apologized to Israeli Arabs, nor disavowed his statements of incitement against Arab MKs. Even after having reached agreement with Ehud Olmert about his inclusion in the government, Lieberman has stuck to his obscene views. The day after the deal, he proudly announced to the press that he had "explained" to Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, that his plans "are more humane and detailed than any other plan on offer in Israel."

There is also no comparison between the response of the Austrian people to the inclusion of the Freedom Party in the coalition, and the tranquility with which the majority of the Israeli public has received Lieberman's appointment as deputy prime minister in charge of the most sensitive strategic issue. It is important to note that Haider himself stayed out of the government. In Israel, "peacemakers" like Amir Peretz, Ephraim Sneh, Eitan Cabel and Yitzhak Herzog went out of their way in their efforts to convince members of their party's central committee to allow them to bring into their home an extreme nationalist.

Shimon Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, warned Austria at the time that the inclusion of Haider in the coalition will "ostracize it from the family of nations." Matan Vilnai, then minister of science, culture and sport, threatened to boycott the Austrian national soccer team. In response to the Freedom Party's inclusion of him in the coalition, then-prime minister Ehud Barak declared that Haider was persona non grata in Israel. Jewish organizations the world over competed over the intensity of their criticism of the Austrian government.

The growth of extremist parties on the right in Europe is worrying to Israel, and justifiably so. The rising popularity of nationalists such as Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, Vadim Tudor in Romania, Anto Djapic in Croatia and Christophe Blocher in Switzerland is disconcerting to world Jewry, and so it should be. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has barred Marine Le Pen, a member of the European Parliament and deputy in her father's National Front party, from entering the country. What will we say if European Union countries announce that the deputy prime minister is an unwanted personality in Europe?

The silence of the leadership of mainstream Jewry in the world, in view of the legitimization of a person such as Lieberman, undermines the moral high ground they hold in the struggle against Israel-haters throughout the world. If a Jewish politician who aspires to transfer an Arab minority across the border can sit in an Israeli cabinet, why should an anti-Semite not sit in an Austrian government? Let's hear it for the Haiders."

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

"CAIRO, 30 Oct 2006 (IRIN) - Hopes that the single border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt would reopen and bring relief to hundreds of Gazan medical patients have been dashed after reports of an imminent Israeli attack on the border were met by the deployment of thousands of Egyptian troops to the area.

Maariv, an Israeli daily newspaper, reported on 27 October that the Israeli government had discovered tunnels allegedly used by Palestinian militants to smuggle weapons from Egypt to the Gaza Strip. It said the Israeli government planned to attack the border region with precision-guided rockets.

In response, Egyptian authorities said they deployed at least 3,000 extra security forces to the border with Gaza on 28 October to protect what they said were up to 20,000 Egyptian civilians under threat if Israel carried out its strikes.

The Rafah Crossing Point between Egypt and Gaza has long been a vital link between the Palestinian territory’s beleaguered public health service and the more advanced facilities available in Cairo.

“We came the first time to the border [from Gaza] by ambulance and the border was closed. Aseel was really sick then,” said Sanaa Wishah, the mother of six-year-old Aseel Jamal Wishah, who suffers severe eczema across her body.

“After four days we went back to the border by ambulance and then [having crossed the border to Egypt in mid-August] we had to take five different buses. Because she was moved from the ambulance to the buses her skin condition got a lot worse.”

The journey from Rafah to Cairo is 350 kilometres. Aseel is a patient in the paediatric ward of the Palestine Hospital in Cairo, which is considered a vital part of the Palestinian health infrastructure.

“There is a great need for Palestinians to have access to Egyptian medical centres for specialities such as oncology, heart surgery, eye treatment and paediatrics,” said Dr Mohammed Zaghloul, director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society branch at the Palestine Hospital.

The Rafah border has been open for only 14 days since 25 June, when an Israeli soldier was captured by Palestinian militants. Israel says the closure is necessary to prevent its captured soldier being taken to Egypt and to prevent militants smuggling arms to carry out terrorist attacks on its citizens.

Since then, the Palestinian Ministry of Health has referred, on average, about 230 patients per month from Gaza for treatment abroad.

According to the Referral Abroad Department in the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health, more than 400 patients approved for treatment outside Gaza since June have not been able to leave the territory at all.

At the Palestine Hospital in Cairo, the border closures are hampering doctors’ efforts to treat new patients because existing patients are staying longer than necessary in wards, according to Zaghloul.

“Last month we had more than 100 people staying in the hospital, not being treated, at a cost of more than 40,000 Egyptian pounds [US$6,900]. We need that money to treat the sick,” said Zaghloul, adding that if the border were functioning normally, the hospital would be treating 60-70 patients at a time.

Until normal conditions resume at the Egypt-Gaza border or the next ‘one-off’ opening, families continue to wait at the Palestine Hospital for a phone-call or radio broadcast to say the crossing will be open the next day, and the chance for an overnight dash to Rafah.

Six-year-old Aseel, her sister, her brother and her mother Sanaa are among those families who wait in Egypt. However, Sanaa said that her children would rather stay in Cairo than return to the violence in Gaza."

(Click on to enlarge)

Collected By Carol Rae Bradford

Quotes from Israeli Prime Ministers David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Yizhak Shamir, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon.

By Mike Luckovich
(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

By Kurt Nimmo

"David Swanson provides us with a glimpse of the stolen election, a mere eight days away. Zooming in on an NPR transcript of a conversation between NPR’s Robert Siegel and a boorish Karl Rove, we learn from the interview that Republicans use a “different math” to count polls, as they use “different math” to count election results at odds with exit polls. In other words, Rove was indicating, once again, Republicans will steal the election and thus retain possession of the House and Senate. "

By Justin Raimondo

"The theme of this forum, "Beyond Ideology," is very appropriate to our present situation, because it is absolutely necessary that we put aside ideology – for just a moment – and confront the emergency that we all face.

"Emergency?" you ask. "What emergency?"

The war in Iraq is now reaching the point where the administration faces a choice: Bush must either escalate or get out. I'd be willing to bet the farm that he'll choose – has already chosen – the former.

There is a whole school of thought, that extends from neoconservative Republicans to supposedly antiwar Democrats, which blames the failure of the occupation to contain the insurgency on the need for more troops. We didn't start out with enough troops, say these critics, and the Bush administration has "mismanaged" the war. The so-called "national security Democrats" have their own plan to "win" the war – with only a minority calling for withdrawing our troops. And even these folks maintain that we will have to maintain a watchful presence elsewhere in the Middle East, in the Gulf emirates perhaps, or bases in East Africa.

We didn't just invade Iraq – we invaded the Middle East, and the war that has engulfed Saddam Hussein's former dominion cannot be contained within its borders. War doesn't respect national boundaries, and tends inevitably to spill over such artificial barriers and spread like wildfire. And that wildfire will eventually consume the entire region – unless we act to stop the next war before it starts.

Get ready for phase two of the Middle Eastern wars.

These arrows in the War Party's quiver are all quite valuable in ensuring that the foreign policy "consensus" remains static in spite of radical shifts in public opinion on the subject. Yet there is one factor that gives them an incalculable advantage, and that is the weakness of their opposition. The Peace Party – for lack of a better designation – is divided, without comparable resources, and lacks the dedicated constituency of its adversary."

The Independent

"The Government has been accused of reneging