The Latest from Mondoweiss for 12/31/2010

 

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Here are the headlines from Mondoweiss for 12/31/2010: Beit Hanoun demonstration commemorates 2 years since the Gaza attacks as victims' families mourn The Phantom Menace: Fantasies, falsehoods, and fear-mongering about Iran's nuclear program Entry 12: For Norman Finkelstein– A conversion story Entry 11: For taking the profit out of occupation– Dalit Baum and Merav Amir Entry 10: For the indomitable people of al-Araqib Entry 9: 'Sabra Song' Entry 8: Gaza, then and now Entry 7: I nominate Adalah-NY Entry 6: The land, the gun, the olive tree Entry 5: Zionism's call to me– and my answer Beit Hanoun demonstration commemorates 2 years since the Gaza attacks as victims' families mourn Dec 31, 2010 01:41 am | International Solidarity Movement Poster at the Beit Hanoun protest featuring Ismail, Haia and Lama Hamdan. (Photo: ISM) A demonstration commemorating the beginning of "Operation Cast Lead" was held Tuesday in the Gazan city of Beit Hanoun. Families of victims were in attendance, as were 5 International Solidarity Movement activists. Two years have passed since the Israeli attacks on Gaza, which killed over 1400 people in just 23 days. The vast majority of victims were civilians, including 350 children, according to the United Nations and other major human rights organizations. The Local Initiative demonstration began at the railway street in Beit Hanoun, near some of the most horrendous attacks which occurred during the land, air and sea bombardment of Gaza. The group of around 40 continued into the 'buffer zone' to within 100m of the Israeli border, holding flags and photos of children killed two years ago. During the 23-day attack, none of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants (including 800,000 children) were safe.   Abed and Lama Hamdan. Beit Hanoun was not spared this horror, and stories from the attacks continue to haunt survivors. Abed Hamdan carried a banner with pictures of his youngest brother and two youngest sisters, Ismail (9), Haia (12) and Lama (4). While marching towards the border, demonstrators stopped at a crossroads with al-Seka Street. At approximately 7:45am on 30 December 2008, Haia, Ismail and Lama were taking rubbish to this intersection when they were hit by two missiles launched from an F16 fighter jet. According to the children's uncle, their bodies were found in three different locations, each about 50 meters away from where the missiles hit. Relatives ran with Lama and Haias' bodies to Beit Hanoun Hospital, but the girls had died at the scene. Ismail sustained shrapnel wounds to his abdomen and chest, and had several broken bones. He died the following day in Al Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City. According to witnesses, the Hamdan children had been directly targeted by the Israeli, US-made F16 jet. The demonstration proceeded past another collapsed building, where a father there described how he was the lone survivor of his family after the building was bombed. The group continued to march into the buffer-zone[1],the area of land near to the Israeli border where attacks have continued, injuring and killing countless farm-workers and rock-collectors since and the threat depriving many of their livelihoods. They gathered under watch from the Erez crossing control towers from where Israel snipers have frequently shot at the demonstrators and Local Initiative coordinator, Saber Al Zaaneen spoke about the devastation still felt by the Israeli army's attacks 2 years before. The demonstration passed a collapsed building, where a father described being the lone survivor from his family after the building was bombed. The group then proceeded into the 'buffer zone', the strip of land along the Israeli border where attacks continue, injuring and killing countless farmers and rubble-collectors and depriving many of their livelihoods. Demonstrators gathered in the 'zone' for speeches, under surveillance from the Erez Crossing watchtowers where Israeli snipers frequently shoot at demonstrators. Local Initiative coordinator Saber Al Zaaneen spoke about the devastation still felt two years after the Israeli military's attacks. "We're here to reject the Israeli-imposed 'buffer-zone' that takes away so much of our farmland, and in defiance of the 23-day Zionist aggression 2 years ago, horrors once again visited upon us the Palestinians of Gaza, told to the world by the United Nations Goldstone Report.[2] The burning and bleeding under the rubble of the killing from the air, land and sea will never beat us. Long live Palestine, our steadfastness is strengthened by the memory or our loved ones, the hundreds of children murdered while the world watched on their television screens. We emphasize our legitimate right to resist occupation, and use all methods of struggle and fight until the end of Israel's inhuman siege and bring our eventual liberation." International Solidarity Movement activist Adie Mormech expressed the urgency required for the international community and solidarity movements to act. "The world is now aware of these well-documented crimes against humanity, the massacres, occupation, ethnic cleansing and siege of the Palestinian territories - all collective punishment[3] and serious violations of the 4th Geneva Convention. We cannot stand for this. We cannot allow Lama, Ismail and Haia to die with no justice to them or their family, or the families of the 1400 others massacred in the Israeli attacks. So where is the action? Where is the compensation? Where are the peacekeepers? Where are the sanctions on Israel? How many will they kill the next time, perhaps soon, if nothing is done about the 4 year medieval siege of Gaza or the murder of hundreds of Palestinian children? It is up to international civil society to do all they can and to boycott, divest and sanction from the Israeli Apartheid regime." The demonstrators returned to Beit Hanoun, with talk of more violence ahead and the prospects of another impending Israeli assault on the Gaza. Israel's blockade of Gaza continues unabated, despite being denounced by the European Union, The Red Cross and all major human rights groups as collective punishment, illegal according to article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention. On 2nd December 2010, 22 international organizations including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid, and Medical Aid for Palestinians produced the report Dashed Hopes, Continuation of the Gaza Blockade[4] stating that there had been no material change to the devastating effects of the siege, and calling for international pressure on Israel to unconditionally lift the blockade. Ismail and Lama Hamdan. The Hamdan family remains in ruins from the loss of their 3 youngest children. When their father, Talal Hamdan, spoke of their deaths in his home, there was still a quiet disbelief in his voice at what had happened to them. The family's sorrow is unending. "We're just a simple Palestinian family", Talal said, sitting in the garden of his home which is two kilometers from the 'buffer zone'. Before the war, he and his wife spent their evenings watching the children playing in the garden, in the spot where he sat. "There is no life anymore. The children are now usually nervous, argue a lot, my eldest son has given up work and my other son Abed has stopped bodybuilding for which he used to train for competitions." The family finds it impossible to deal with the terrible loss. "Haja was such a smart girl," her father remembers. "She was the first in her class, danced dabka, and was able to read the whole Qur'an." For his remaining four daughters and two sons, a small sum of money initially came from the Palestinian government. One of his daughters received psychological help from Doctors without Borders. The help only lasted two months however, and only reached on of an entire community stricken with grief. Talal and his wife continue to sit in front of their house in the evening, watching their garden. However their world is now very different, like many others in Palestine. When asked if he had a message for the world, Talal shook his head. "I just want people to know that they were innocent children being killed, who never did anything wrong in their lives". References: [1] http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_special_focus_2010_08_19_english.pdf [2] http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/12session/A-HRC-12-48.pdf [3] http://gisha.org/UserFiles/File/publications/GazaClosureDefinedEng.pdf [4] http://www.amnesty.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_21083.pdf Comment on this article > The Phantom Menace: Fantasies, falsehoods, and fear-mongering about Iran's nuclear program Dec 31, 2010 01:32 am | Nima Shirazi "To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary." - George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four Facts rarely get in the way of American and Israeli fear-mongering and jingoism, especially when it comes to anti-Iran propaganda. For nearly thirty years now, U.S. and Zionist politicians and analysts, along with some of their European allies, have warned that Iranian nuclear weapons capability is just around the corner and that such a possibility would not only be catastrophic for Israel with its 400 nuclear warheads and state-of-the-art killing power supplied by U.S. taxpayers, but that it would also endanger regional dictatorships, Europe, and even the United States. If these warnings are to be believed, Iran is only a few years away from unveiling a nuclear bomb...and has been for the past three decades. Fittingly, let's begin in 1984. An April 24, 1984 article entitled "'Ayatollah' Bomb in Production for Iran in United Press International referenced a Jane's Intelligence Defense Weekly report warning that Iran was moving "very quickly" towards a nuclear weapon and could have one as early as 1986. Two months later, on June 27, 1984, in an article entitled "Senator says Iran, Iraq seek N-Bomb," Minority Whip of the U.S. Senate Alan Cranston was quoted as claiming Iran was a mere seven years away from being able to build its own nuclear weapon. In April 1987, the Washington Post published an article with the title "Atomic Ayatollahs: Just What the Mideast Needs – an Iranian Bomb," in which reporter David Segal wrote of the imminent threat of such a weapon. The next year, in 1988, Iraq issued warnings that Tehran was at the nuclear threshold. By late 1991, Congressional reports and CIA assessments maintained a "high degree of certainty that the government of Iran has acquired all or virtually all of the components required for the construction of two to three nuclear weapons." In January 1992, Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset that "within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb." Furthermore, a February 1992 report by the U.S. House of Representatives suggested that Iran would have two or three operational nuclear weapons by April 1992. In March 1992, The Arms Control Reporter reported that Iran already had four nuclear weapons, which it had obtained from Russia. That same year, the CIA predicted an Iranian nuclear weapon by 2000, then later changed their estimate to 2003. A May 1992 report in The European claims that "Iran has obtained at least two nuclear warheads out of a batch officially listed as 'missing from the newly independent republic of Kazakhstan.'" Speaking on French television in October 1992, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres warned the international community that Iran would be armed with a nuclear bomb by 1999. The following month, the New York Times reported that Israel was confident Iran would "become a nuclear power in a few years unless stopped." The same year, Robert Gates, then-director of the CIA, addressed the imminent threat of Iranian nuclear weapons. "Is it a problem today?" he asked at the time, "probably not. But three, four, five years from now it could be a serious problem." On January 23, 1993, Gad Yaacobi, Israeli envoy to the UN, was quoted in the Boston Globe, claiming that Iran was devoting $800 million per year to the development of nuclear weapons. Then, on February 24, 1993, CIA director James Woolsey said that although Iran was "still eight to ten years away from being able to produce its own nuclear weapon" the United States was concerned that, with foreign assistance, it could become a nuclear power earlier. That same year, international press went wild with speculation over Iranian nuclear weapons. In the Spring of 1993, U.S. News & World Report, the New York Times, the conservative French weekly Paris Match, and Foreign Report all claimed Iran had struck a deal with North Korea to develop nuclear weapons capability, while U.S. intelligence analysts alleged an Iranian nuclear alliance with Ukraine. Months later, the AFP reported Switzerland was supplying Iran with nuclear weapons technology, while the Intelligence Newsletter claimed that the French firm CKD was delivering nuclear materials to Iran and U.S. News and World Report accused Soviet scientists working in Kazakhstan of selling weapons-grade uranium to Iran. By the end of 1993, Theresa Hitchens and Brendan McNally of Defense News and National Defense University analyst W. Seth Carus had reaffirmed CIA director Woolsey's prediction "that Iran could have nuclear weapons within eight to ten years." In January 1995, John Holum, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, testified before Congress that "Iran could have the bomb by 2003," while Defense Secretary William Perry unveiled a grimmer analysis, stating that "Iran may be less than five years from building an atomic bomb, although how soon...depends how they go about getting it." Perry suggested that Iran could potentially buy or steal a nuclear bomb from one of the former Soviet states in "a week, a month, five years." The New York Times reported that "Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought, and could be less than five years away from having an atomic bomb, several senior American and Israeli officials say," a claim repeated by Greg Gerardi in The Nonproliferation Review (Vol. 2, 1995). Benjamin Netanyahu, in his 1995 book "Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terrorist Network," wrote,"The best estimates at this time place Iran between three and five years away from possessing the prerequisites required for the independent production of nuclear weapons." At the same time, a senior Israeli official declared, "If Iran is not interrupted in this program by some foreign power, it will have the device in more or less five years." After a meeting in Jerusalem between Defense Secretary Perry and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, they announced that Iran would have a nuclear bomb in seven to 15 years. On February 15, 1996, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Ehud Barak told members of the UN Security Council that Iran would be producing nuclear weapons by 2004. On April 29, 1996, Israel's then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres claimed in an interview with ABC that "the Iranians are trying to perfect a nuclear option" and would "reach nuclear weapons" in four years. By 1997 the Israelis confidently predicted an active Iranian nuclear bomb by 2005. In March 1997, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency director John Holum again attested to a House panel that Iran would develop a nuclear weapon sometime between 2005 and 2007. The following month, according to a report in Hamburg's Welt am Sonntag, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) believed Iran had an active nuclear weapons development program and would be able to produce nuclear weapons by 2002, "although that timeframe could be accelerated if Iran acquires weapons-grade fissile material on the black market." Eight days later, in early May 1997, a Los Angeles Times article quoted a senior Israeli intelligence official as stating that Iran would be able to make a nuclear bomb by "the middle of the next decade." On June 26, 1997, the U.S. military commander in the Persian Gulf, General Binford Peay, stated that, were Iran to acquire access to fissile material, it would obtain nuclear weapons "sometime at the turn of the century, the near-end of the turn of the century." In September 1997, Jane's Intelligence Defense Review reported that former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher declared, "we know that since the mid-1980s, Iran has had an organized structure dedicated to acquiring and developing nuclear weapons," as then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the Iranian nuclear technology program "may be the most dangerous development in the 21st century." Writing in the Jerusalem Post on April 9, 1998, Steve Rodan claimed "Documents obtained by the Jerusalem Post show Iran has four nuclear bombs." The next day, U.S. State Department spokesperson James Rubin addressed this allegation, stating, "There was no evidence to substantiate such claims." On October 21, 1998, General Anthony Zinni, head of U.S. Central Command, said Iran could have deliverable nuclear weapons by 2003. "If I were a betting man," he said, "I would say they are on track within five years, they would have the capability." The next year, on November 21, 1999, a senior Israeli military official was quoted by AP reporter Ron Kampeas (who was later hired as Washington bureau chief for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency) saying, "Unless the United States pressures Russia to end its military assistance to Iran, the Islamic republic will possess a nuclear capability within five years." On December 9, 1999, General Zinni reiterated his assessment that Iran "will have nuclear capability in a few years." In a January 2000 New York Times article co-authored by Judith Miller, it was reported that the CIA suggested to the Clinton administration "that Iran might now be able to make a nuclear weapon," even though this assessment was "apparently not based on evidence that Iran's indigenous efforts to build a bomb have achieved a breakthrough," but rather that "the United States cannot track with great certainty increased efforts by Iran to acquire nuclear materials and technology on the international black market." On March 9, 2000, the BBC stated that German intelligence once again believed Iran to be "working to develop missiles and nuclear weapons." The Telegraph reported on September 27, 2000 that the CIA believes Iran's nuclear weapons capability to be progressing rapidly and suggests Iran will develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching London or New York within the next decade. CIA Deputy Director Norman Schindler is quoted as saying, "Iran is attempting to develop the capability to produce both plutonium and highly enriched uranium, and it is actively pursuing the acquisition of fissile material and the expertise and technology necessary to form the material into nuclear weapons." By the summer of 2001, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was warning that Iran could have nuclear weapons by 2005 and that, sometime in the next decade, the Iranian nuclear program would reach a "point of no return," from which time "it would be impossible to stop it from attaining a bomb." By the end of the year, despite an inquiry into the questionable validity of Israeli intelligence regarding the Iranian nuclear program, Mossad head Efraim Halevy repeated the claim that Iran is developing nuclear and other non-conventional weapons. In early 2002, the CIA again issued a report alleging that Iran "remains one of the most active countries seeking to acquire (weapons of mass destruction and advanced conventional weapons) technology from abroad...In doing so, Tehran is attempting to develop a domestic capability to produce various types of weapons — chemical, biological, nuclear — and their delivery systems." Soon thereafter, CIA Director George Tenet testified before a Senate hearing that Iran may be able to "produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon by the end of this decade...Obtaining material from outside could cut years from this estimate." During his "Axis-of-Evil" State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, George W. Bush declared that Iran was "aggressively" pursuing weapons of mass destruction. On July 29, 2002, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Marshall Billingslea testified to the Senate that "Iran is aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons." Three days later, after a meeting with Russian officials on August 1, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham stated that Iran was "aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons as well as [other] weapons of mass destruction." By the end of the year, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was reiterating U.S. concerns about, what he termed, Iran's "across-the-board pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile capabilities." In an interview with CNBC on February 2003, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said that Iran is seeking technological assistance from North Korea and China to enhance its weapons of mass destruction programs. In April 2003, John Wolf, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, accused Iran of having an "alarming, clandestine program." That same month, the Los Angeles Times stated that "there is evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction," in a polling question regarding American attitudes toward Iran. The question followed, "Do you think the U.S. should or should not take military action against Iran if they continue to develop these weapons?" Fifty percent of respondents thought the U.S. should attack Iran. The Telegraph reported on June 1, 2003 that "Senior Pentagon officials are proposing widespread covert operations against the government in Iran, hoping that dissident groups will mount a coup before the regime acquires a nuclear weapon." The report contained a quote from a U.S. "government official with close links to the White House" as saying "There are some who see the overthrow of the regime as the only way to deal with the danger of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon. But there's not going to be another war. The idea is to destabilize from inside. No one's talking about invading anywhere." A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken in late June 2003 asked Americans, "How likely do you think it is that Iran is developing weapons of mass destruction?" 46% of those surveyed said "very likely," while another 38% said "somewhat likely." Only 2% replied "not at all likely." An August 5, 2003 report in the Jerusalem Post stated that "Iran will have the materials needed to make a nuclear bomb by 2004 and will have an operative nuclear weapons program by 2005, a high-ranking military officer told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee." On October 21, 2003, Major General Aharon Ze'evi, Israel's Director of Military Intelligence, declared in Ha'aretz that "by the summer of 2004, Iran will have reached the point of no return in its attempts to develop nuclear weapons." A few weeks later, the CIA released a semi-annual unclassified report to Congress which stated Iran had "vigorously" pursued production of weapons of mass destruction and that the "United States remains convinced that Tehran has been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program." By mid-November 2003, Mossad intelligence service chief Meir Dagan testified for the first time before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and said that Iran was close to the "point of no return" in developing nuclear arms. In early 2004, Ken Brill, U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA, reiterated the American position that Iran's nuclear efforts are "clearly geared to the development of nuclear weapons." One year later, on January 24, 2005, Mossad chief Meir Dagan again claimed that Iran's nuclear program was almost at the "point of no return," adding "the route to building a bomb is a short one" and that Iran could possess a nuclear weapon in less than three years. On January 28, the Guardian quoted Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz stating the same thing. He warned that Iran would reach "the point of no return" within the next twelve months in its covert attempt to secure a nuclear weapons capability. A week later, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on CNN that Iran was "on a path of seeking a nuclear weapon," but admitted that Iran was "years away" from building a nuclear bomb. By August 2005, a "high-ranking IDF officer" told the Jerusalem Post that Israel has revised its earlier estimate that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 2008, now putting the estimate closer to 2012. The same day, a major U.S. intelligence review projected that Iran was approximately ten years away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, doubling its previous estimate. Two weeks later, however, Israeli military chief General Aharon Zeevi contradicted both the new Israeli and U.S. estimates. "Barring an unexpected delay," he said, "Iran is going to become nuclear capable in 2008 and not in 10 years." In November 2005, Mohammad Mohaddessin, chair of the so-called National Council of Resistance of Iran (otherwise known as the Islamist/Marxist terrorist cult Mojahadeen-e Khalq, or MEK, which is currently designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. government) addressed a European Parliament conference and proclaimed that the "Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is determined to pursue and complete Tehran's nuclear weapons program full blast...[and] would have the bomb in two or three years time." On January 18, 2006, Donald Rumsfeld told Fox News that Iran was "acquiring nuclear weapons." A CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey conducted in late January 2006 asked, "Based on what you have heard or read, do you think that the government of Iran is or is not attempting to develop its own nuclear weapons?" 88% of those polled said Iran is. 82% of respondents to a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll taken around the same time believed "Iran wants to use the uranium for military purposes, such as to build a nuclear weapons program." 68% thought "Iran currently has a nuclear weapons program," an increase of 8% from the previous year. CBS News reported on April 26, 2007 that "a new intelligence report says Iran has overcome technical difficulties in enriching uranium and could have enough bomb-grade material for a single nuclear weapon in less than three years." In late May 2007, IAEA head Mohammad El Baradei stated that, even if Iran wanted to build a nuclear weapon (despite all evidence to the contrary), it would not be able to "before the end of this decade or some time in the middle of the next decade. In other words three to eight years from now." On July 11, 2007, Ha'aretz reported that "Iran will cross the 'technological threshold' enabling it to independently manufacture nuclear weapons within six months to a year and attain nuclear capability as early as mid-2009, according to Israel's Military Intelligence." The report also noted that "U.S. intelligence predicts that Iran will attain nuclear capability within three to six years." A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics opinion poll taken in late September 2007 found that 80% of Americans believed Iran's nuclear program was for "military purposes." Israeli President Shimon Peres issued an official statement on October 18, 2007 that claimed "everyone knows [Iran's] true intentions, and many intelligence agencies throughout the world have proof that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons for the purpose of war and death." Less than two months later, the New York Times released "Key Judgments From a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's Nuclear Activity," a consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. The analysis, entitled "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities," concluded with "high confidence" that the Iranian government had "halted its nuclear weapons program" in 2003, "had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007," and admitted that "we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." The NIE also found that "Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon" and that "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005." Also included in the report was the assessment that, if Iran actually had a nuclear weapons program, "the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU [highly enriched uranium] for a weapon is late 2009, but that this is very unlikely," continuing, "Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame," and adding that "All agencies recognize the possibility that this capability may not be attained until after 2015." A report released on February 7, 2008 by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) asserted that Iran had tested a new, and more efficient, centrifuge design to enrich uranium. If 1,200 new centrifuges were operational, the report suggested , Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb in one year. Less than a week later, Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert told reporters, "We are certain that the Iranians are engaged in a serious...clandestine operation to build up a non-conventional capacity." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in a speech at West Point that Spring, claimed that Iran "is hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons." On June 28, 2008, Shabtai Shavit, a former Mossad deputy director and influential adviser to the Israeli Knesset's Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Sunday Telegraph that "worst-case scenario," Iran may have a nuclear weapon in "somewhere around a year." In November 2008, David Sanger and William Broad of The New York Times reported that "Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts." The article quoted nuclar physicist Richard L. Garwin, who helped invent the hydrogen bomb, as saying "They clearly have enough material for a bomb." Siegfried S. Hecker of Stanford University and a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory said in the report that the growing size of the Iranian stockpile "underscored that they are marching down the path to developing the nuclear weapons option," while Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council declared, "They have a weapon's worth." Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former United States government arms scientist, cautioned that Iran was "very close" to nuclear weapons capability. "If it isn't tomorrow, it's soon," he said, indicating the threshold could be reached in a matter of months. David Blair, writing in The Telegraph on January 27, 2009, reported that the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) "has said Iran is months away from crossing a vital threshold which could put it on course to build a weapon," continuing that "Mark Fitzpatrick, the senior fellow for non-proliferation at the IISS, said: 'This year, it's very likely that Iran will have produced enough low-enriched uranium which, if further enriched, could constitute enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon, if that is the route Iran so desires.'" On February 12, 2009, CIA Director-to-be Leon Panetta, told a Capitol Hill hearing, "From all the information I've seen, I think there is no question that [Iran is] seeking [nuclear weapons] capability." Later that month, Benjamin Netanyahu, then a candidate for Israeli Prime Minister, told a Congressional delegation led by Maryland Senator Ben Cardin that "he did not know for certain how close Iran was to developing a nuclear weapons capability, but that 'our experts' say Iran was probably only one or two years away and that was why they wanted open ended negotiations." Soon after that, Israel's top intelligence official Amos Yadlin said Iran had "crossed the technological threshold" and was now capable of making a weapon. In contrast to these allegations, National Intelligence director Dennis Blair told a Senate hearing in early March 2009 that Iran had only low-enriched uranium, which would need further processing to be used for weapons, and continued to explain that Iran had "not yet made that decision" to convert it. "We assess now that Iran does not have any highly enriched uranium," Blair said. Speaking in private with U.S. Congressmembers in late Spring 2009, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak "estimated a window between 6 and 18 months from now in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable." In mid-June 2009, Mossad chief Meir Dagan said, "the Iranians will have by 2014 a bomb ready to be used, which would represent a concrete threat for Israel." On July 8, 2009, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned that the "window is closing" for preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Mullen claimed that Iran was only one to three years away from successfully building a nuclear weapon and "is very focused on developing this capability." A week later, Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency declared Iran was capable of producing and testing an atomic bomb within six months. The following month, on August 3, The Times (UK) reported that Iran had "perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead" and "could feasibly make a bomb within a year" if given the order by head of state Ali Khamenei. Meanwhile, a Newsweek report from September 16, 2009, indicated that the National Intelligence Estimate stood by its 2007 assessment and that "U.S. intelligence agencies have informed policymakers at the White House and other agencies that the status of Iranian work on development and production of a nuclear bomb has not changed." Nevertheless, both ABC News/Washington Post and CNN/Opinion Research Corporation polls taken in mid-October 2009 found that, "Based on what [they]'ve heard or read," between 87% and 88% of respondents believed Iran to be developing nuclear weapons. In November 2009, during a private meeting between U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Alexander Vershbow, and a number of senior Israeli defense officials in Israel, the head of Israel's Defense Ministry Intelligence Analysis Production, Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz, "argued that it would take Iran one year to obtain a nuclear weapon and two and a half years to build an arsenal of three weapons." The Times (UK) reported on January 10, 2010 that retired Israeli brigadier-general and former director-general of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission Uzi Eilam "believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons," despite the dire warnings from Major-General Amos Yadlin, head of Israeli military intelligence, who had recently told the Knesset defense committee that Iran would most likely be able to build a single nuclear device within the year. In an interview with the U.S. military's Voice of America on January 12, 2010, the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, said there was no evidence that Iran has made a final decision to build nuclear weapons and confirmed that the key NIE finding that Iran has not yet committed itself to nuclear weapons was still valid. "The bottom line assessments of the NIE still hold true," he said. "We have not seen indication that the government has made the decision to move ahead with the program." Barack Obama, in his first State of the Union speech on January 27, 2010 claimed that Iran was "violating international agreements in pursuit of nuclear weapons." Speaking in Doha, Qatar on February 14, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed, what she called, "Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons." Although Clinton said that the United States was attempting to "influence the Iranian decision regarding whether or not to pursue a nuclear weapon," she added that "the evidence is accumulating that that's exactly what they are trying to do, which is deeply concerning, because it doesn't directly threaten the United States, but it directly threatens a lot of our friends, allies, and partners here in this region and beyond." A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, taken at the same time as Clinton's Doha visit, revealed that 71% of Americans believed Iran already had nuclear weapons. Of those remaining respondents who didn't think Iran already possessed a nuclear bomb, over 72% thought it either "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that "Iran will have nuclear weapons in the next few years." At an April 14, 2010 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Lieutenant General Burgess, stated that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within a year and in three years build one that could be deployed, despite having judged that Iran didn't even have an active nuclear weapons program a mere four months earlier. Perennial warmongers David Sanger and William Broad of the New York Times reported on May 31, 2010 that "Iran has now produced a stockpile of nuclear fuel that experts say would be enough, with further enrichment, to make two nuclear weapons." On June 11, 2010, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that "Most people believe that the Iranians could not really have any nuclear weapons for at least another year or two. I would say the intelligence estimates range from one to three years." The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on June 24, 2010, introduced by Democratic Congressman Jim Costa of California, that "condemn[ed] the Government of Iran's continued pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability and unconventional weapons and ballistic missile capabilities." CIA Director Leon Panetta said on June 27, 2010, Iran would need two years to prepare two tested and operational nuclear weapons. "We think they have enough low-enriched uranium for two weapons," Panetta told Jake Tapper of ABC News, continuing to explain that Iran would require one year to enrich the material to weapon-grade levels and "another year to develop the kind of weapon delivery system in order to make that viable." On July 22, 2010, nearly a third of House Republicans signed onto a resolution which stated that "Iran continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons" and "express[ed] support for the State of Israel's right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel." On August 19, 2010, the New York Times quoted Gary Samore, President Obama's top adviser on nuclear issues, as saying that the U.S. believes Iran has "roughly a year dash time" before it could convert nuclear material into a working weapon. Following the release of the latest IAEA report on Iran's nuclear facilities, The Telegraph declared that Iran was "on [the] brink of [a] nuclear weapon," had "passed a crucial nuclear threshold," and "could now go on to arm an atomic missile with relative ease." In his attention-grabbing September 2009 cover story for The Atlantic, entitled "The Point of No Return," Israeli establishment mouthpiece Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that, according to Israeli intelligence estimates, "Iran is, at most, one to three years away from having a breakout nuclear capability (often understood to be the capacity to assemble more than one missile-ready nuclear device within about three months of deciding to do so)." Joint Chiefs chairman Mullen, speaking in Bahrain on December 18, 2010, said, "From my perspective I see Iran continuing on this path to develop nuclear weapons, and I believe that that development and achieving that goal would be very destabilizing to the region." A week ago, on December 22, 2010, the great prognosticator Sarah Palin wrote in USA Today that "Iran continues to defy the international community in its drive to acquire nuclear weapons." Two days ago, December 29, 2010, Reuters quoted Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon as claiming Iran would soon have a nuclear weapon. "I don't know if it will happen in 2011 or in 2012, but we are talking in terms of the next three years," he said, adding that in terms of Iran's nuclear time-line, "we cannot talk about a 'point of no return.' Iran does not currently have the ability to make a nuclear bomb on its own." And Just hours after this article was originally posted on December 29, United Press International published the findings of a new public opinion poll conducted by Angus-Reid. The poll found that 70% of respondents believe "the Government of Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons. Only 11 per cent of Americans do not believe that Iran is pursuing a nuclear program, while one-in-five (19%) are not sure." Despite all of these hysterical warnings, no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program has ever been revealed. The IAEA has repeatedly found, through intensive, round-the-clock monitoring and inspection of Iran's nuclear facilities - including numerous surprise visits to Iranian enrichment plants - that all of Iran's centrifuges operate under IAEA safeguards and "continue to be operated as declared." As far back as 1991, then-Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Hans Blix, made it clear that there was "no cause for concern" regarding Iran's attempts to acquire nuclear technology. Twelve years later, in an IAEA report from November 2003, the agency affirmed that "to date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities referred to above were related to a nuclear weapons programme." Furthermore, after extensive inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, the IAEA again concluded in its November 2004 report that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities." During a press conference in Washington D.C. on October 27, 2007, IAEA Director-General El Baradei confirmed, "I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear weapons program going on right now." He continued, "Have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can readily be used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weapons program? No." By May 2008, the IAEA still reported that it had found "no indication" that Iran has or ever did have a nuclear weapons program and affirmed that "The Agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material [to weaponization] in Iran." On February 22, 2009, IAEA spokesperson Melissa Fleming even issued a statement clarifying the IAEA's position regarding the flurry of deliberately misleading articles in the US and European press claiming that Iran had enriched enough uranium "to build a nuclear bomb." The statement, among other things, declared that "No nuclear material could have been removed from the [Nantanz] facility without the Agency's knowledge since the facility is subject to video surveillance and the nuclear material has been kept under seal." This assessment was reaffirmed in September 2009, in response to various media reports over the past few years claiming that Iran's intent to build a nuclear bomb can be proven by information provided from a mysterious stolen laptop and a dubious, undated - and forged - two-page document. The IAEA stated, "With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon programme in Iran." In his Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, delivered on February 2, 2010, National Intelligence director Dennis Blair stated, "We continue to assess [that] Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that bring it closer to being able to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons." In a Spring 2010 Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Related to Weapons of Mass Destruction, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis Peter Lavoy affirmed that "we do not know whether Iran will eventually decide to produce nuclear weapons." Speaking with Charlie Rose in November 2010, Blair once again reiterated that "Iran hasn't made up its mind" whether or not to pursue nuclear weaponry. On November 28, 2010, a diplomatic cable made available by Wikileaks revealed that, in December 2009, senior Israeli Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad told Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher that "he was not sure Tehran had decided it wants a nuclear weapon." Back in October 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted former IAEA weapons inspector David Albright as saying, with regard to new reports about a possible Iranian nuclear weapons program revealed by the MEK, "We should be very suspicious about what our leaders or the exile groups say about Iran's nuclear capacity." Albright continued, "There is a drumbeat of allegations, but there's not a whole lot of solid information. It may be that Iran has not made the decision to build nuclear weapons. We have to be very careful not to overstate the intelligence." It appears that nothing much has changed in the past seven years, let alone the previous three decades. Whereas the new year will surely bring more lies and deception about Iran and its nuclear energy program, more doublespeak and duplicity regarding the threat Iran poses to the United States, to Israel and to U.S.-backed Arab dictatorships, and more warmongering and demonization from Zionist think tanks, right-wing and progressive pundits alike, the 112th Congress and the Obama administration, the truth is not on their side. "Facts are stubborn things," John Adams said in 1770. "And whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Here's hoping that, in 2011, the facts will begin to matter. Happy New Year. A version of this post originally appeared on Nima Shirazi's blog Wide Asleep in America. Comment on this article > Entry 12: For Norman Finkelstein– A conversion story Dec 30, 2010 10:27 pm | occupyresist This is Entry 12 in the Mondo Awards end-of-year Inspire-us contest. A regular commenter at this site, occupyresist, asks that we preserve her anonymity, and she nominates scholar-author Norman G. Finkelstein. I was wrapping up a degree in Chicago. My then-husband had run off back to Saudi Arabia and left me to deal with everything, which was in retrospect to be expected. I don't think I will ever live in a place like Chicago. Don't get me wrong, the city is so easy to fall in love with….but for a 'desert-dweller' like me, the winters are extremely harsh! I was an admirer of Noam Chomsky's work, accidentally introduced to me by my father. And so it has always been perplexing to me how my father is given to a staunch disposition of Saudi (for lack of a better term) exceptionalism and random uncharacteristic outbursts 'we cannot trust THEM' kind of thinking. I sometimes wonder if he says those things just to irk me, or pre-empt the threat he sees from my cosmopolitan-oriented (to him Western-oriented) mentality. He has lived in the US and been exposed to people from different backgrounds, so I don't know where this is coming from. We still argue about these things to this day, and we're either probably going to continue arguing for a very long time or I'm going to have to give it a rest and make babies to distract him. My mother, on the other hand, never ever thought in those terms, which is why I am constantly amazed at the phenomenon that is their marriage. Growing up, I did not have a good, solid education on the Israel/Palestine conflict, or even any real critical history regarding the Middle East or the world that wasn't establishment-approved (yes, thank you Saudi curriculum). We had to memorize the contributions of every Saudi King, and history started with the advent of Islam. For me, nothing else existed outside of the Caliphate, Al Saud, Ummayad, Abassid and Ottoman empires). It's a good thing that I was fortunate enough to read Maria Rosa Menocal's "Ornament of the World" in college, an inflection point, because if I had continued to study in Saudi, I would still be imbibing, regurgitating, and internalizing unprocessed BS. I was on almost 2 packs of Marlboro Lights a day those days, contemplating my future and thinking about what the hell I was going to be doing back in Saudi Arabia when I had so many potential job prospects right here in my other country (cue Dad's voice: You Must Give Back To Your Country – cue Mom's voice: careers are nice, but husband comes first). So it was December 2008 and I found myself watching on Al Jazeera Livestation the military incursion into Gaza. I was alone, in a living room, with a Dell laptop running Ubuntu. It was freezing outside, and the heater was moody that day. I remember clearly my cat was shivering under some covers. I became really angry as I saw the number of dead (300 at the time) and the propagandist outpouring of the mainstream media, I'm not sure why, though. No international happenings really ever evoked that kind of obsession in me, and so I started religiously following events. I called my parents, my husband, my brothers 'Are you seeing what's happening over there?' 'Allah yiseebahum, Allah yihud 7eelahum...shufti? Hadool Al Yahood illi marra 3ajbeenik'. 'Mom, Dad it's ZIONISM. La tigoolu Yahood.' 'Billahi? Tayyib, khalleeki inti wi afkarik hadi. Walla sirna Amreekan'. I used to grit my teeth at that point and think: Yes!!! I, for better or for worse, identify more with this country. At least I am treated like a thinking, feeling, human being here, and not a minor. Sue me! My husband, as was to be expected, was indifferent. But what really got to me was that the world around me was completely oblivious. My neighbors, shop-keepers, … I know that there is constant misery in the world, and I vaguely knew about what was happening in Iraq, but not enough to understand it and more to the point people didn't even know that they were bankrolling this particular slaughter. Here I was, about to leave one country, in which I will eventually start paying taxes as an expat, that will go to the aid of another country, Israel, which has and will use the aid to kill the powerless Palestinians. I didn't even know about the particulars of the Nakba or how it came about, and I was very suspicious of the traditional story: Jews stole the land, Palestinians are powerless, blah blah blah, because a deep aversion and suspicion to everything Saudi [and shamefully, in turn, Arab] at that point had already entrenched itself in me, especially this quagmire of defeat and impotence of the citizenry. But….I voted for Obama. He was supposed to bring something called change, right? OK, he's still president-elect. But why isn't he saying anything?...change for US, not for them….? There it started. I was not an activist, never could be one. But this got me going. Ha'aretz, vicious Digg wars alongside frustrated Palestinians, demonstrations in the freezing cold, meeting activists, hooking up with old Palestinian/Jordanian college mates, Facebook rants, "400 dead not enough? How about 800, 1200? Or are you hoping to wipe them all dead? Maybe Saudi Arabia should do what King Faisal did and turn off the damn tap so people can wake up!!!" thoughts that were satirically depicted in the famed Jon Stewart Strip Maul episode. I had heard about Dr. Finkelstein's tenure-ship issue through a relative studying at DePaul. It didn't register then....but when I saw him on YouTube talking about Hezbollah in a Future TV interview, I thought: Who the hell is this guy? I started looking into him. I ordered all his books in early January 2009, and pored over them, starting with Beyond Chutzpah. In Saudi some people view Palestinians residing there as opportunistic, greedy, etc…they are the Jews of the ME. And yet, many view those residing in the OTs as righteous victims. It confuses the hell out of me sometimes. How can you identify with their collective victimhood and yet lambast them for acting like … a Diaspora? One of my best friends is a Palestinian with a Jordanian citizenship – that's how she identified herself to me when I first met her 4 years ago. To think that her dear family is watching this on TV, in the UAE, … I couldn't bear to call her. I know how she would react. I called another, more sober Palestinian friend, Alia, in the UAE and asked her what she was doing, and told her about what was happening over here. She and I apparently had the same reading list on I/P. To keep ourselves sane, we started doing Digg rounds. To look at the suffering the Palestinians have endured through the eyes of someone who MUST be under enormous pressure to acquiesce to the TRIBE, or else. This struck a DEEP note in me, because it made me realize that people ARE genuinely capable of compassion towards those who not only do not share much by way of background, but also are fighting AGAINST the injustice inflicted by his 'fellow tribesmen', to put it crudely. Yes, sadly, this was a genuinely novel experience for me. This changed my outlook on ... life. It gave me new hope. And yes, my dad was wrong. He might have been right about my ex-husband, but he MUST be wrong about 'us and them'. We are in the end human beings, dad. I wish you can understand that. I'm giving up your 'tribal' loyalty, and your rigid defiance of everything unSaudi, NOT my compassion. I was forwarded this demo/discussion event at UChicago with a panel comprised of John Mearsheimer, Ali Abunimah, and Norman Finkelstein. I called a couple of people from past demos, and we squeezed into my little coupe, and zipped down to Hyde Park. We were late, and it was my fault! There was a line that formed outside waiting for the hall to unpack. I thought, let's wait at Einstein Bros. for a bit. We squeezed in during the Q&A. I walked in with the group, and noticed how there was an ample number of people sporting kippas, some with the Israeli flag on them. Also noticed a larger number of people with checkered keffiyehs wrapped around their necks. It was a curious sight for me, a person coming from a society where everything and everyone (to me at least) was forced to expect conformity and be a conformist. One of my professors, who happens to be Jewish, came up to me in the café, and noticed what I was wearing, and said: I am really sorry about what's happening over there in Gaza, do you have any family there? I said, no, but I have some friends with family in Palestine. Those three are giants. I don't remember exactly what was said, but I remember my emotions. Excitement, worry, agony, elation, …. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions. They were saying what that tiny voice in the back of my head kept trying to tell me. We were listening to a response to a question posed to Ali Abunimah…and all of a sudden someone in the audience shouted what sounded like a threat to him…something along the lines of 'I'll show you...'. As we watched, pro-Israelis and anti-war activists, continued asking questions, and the random heckling started getting worse. Some guy shouted 'WHAT ABOUT ISRAEL?' and everyone shushed him. It was becoming increasingly tense, and the effect that those three panelists had was astounding. It was the first time I saw articulate responses and analysis of the situation that did not involve shouting, apology, or boasting, and it had a profound effect onme, because that last wall of ice and contempt I had finally melted, seeing all those activists from so many different backgrounds raptly listening and nodding in agreement. This was no longer a problem solely concerning the castrated Arab populace. This belongs to humankind, and a burgeoning number of people are heeding the call for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Afterwards, I took everyone home since I was their ride (hope I can use those words again soon). My friend David was hungry, so I offered to buy him dinner at Reza's. We sat down and started talking about what happened. Next thing I knew, a large group of people walk in. Amongst them was Professors Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer. My friend walks up to them after dinner, and says "We just came from UChicago. Thank you for speaking up about this conflict" I was strangely quiet, but I decided to send one person an email. Hello sir, my friend and I passed you at Reza's today and my friend thanked you all for the panel discussion. I have to say, in listening to you and in reading your books, that you have restored my faith in the potential of humanity to exercise a rigorous and unbiased search of the truth. I commend you for doing so, and I hope that you will continue doing so, even if the world stands against you. ….I am going back to Saudi Arabia, a country in which, if I had done one iota of the protesting I had done here, for Gaza, I would be shot at with rubber bullets and jailed for months on end, if not years, of course claming (sic) that I've broken numerous falsely applied and misinterpreted religious laws (i.e. no mahram, inciting fitna, etc). And the media would help in covering such an event up. This genocide in Gaza will either turn KSA upside-down, or will just make the population more desensitized to Palestinians' plight (and I see the second happening all around me, and I'm not so sure that I don't want the first one to happen. The obliviousness is tiring, there as well as here.) [In retrospect my impression was inaccurate, because my social circle was limited to a detached lot]. I was mostly raised there, which means that I was raised with this mostly unspoken but widely accepted "fact" that there is this inherent hate from Jews towards Muslims (I'm sorry, I had to say that) as a child and that we should always be suspicious. My parents never endorsed such ideas [in retrospect my dad did], but our education system was rife with them. I've of course since come to question them, and coming across (sic) your and others' work I've all but dispelled such idiotic notions. Please accept my humblest apologies. Thank you, …. I got a very sincere reply from Dr. Finkelstein, and the rest is history. If I, and so many more Saudis of my generation, can grow like that, I'm sure many who are indoctrinated and brainwashed on the other side of this conflict, and across the Atlantic who have stupid, unfounded fears of all things Muslim or Arab, can do the same. As I now see it, we're all human beings and who gives a flying f***. Just see me, see my best friends Lina and Alia, see them as human beings. They have a poignant longing for a place they cannot see, let alone live in, because their families, their parents and grandparents, were kicked out and scattered the world over. The place that today is supposed to embrace them and their families does not and might never do so, for some incomprehensible reason. Don't be afraid to change your mind. Meet us all the way. Otherwise, you will get my parents' generation, one that is bitter and cynical concerning the ability of humanity to surpass its tribal loyalties and support justice. And, you'll be helping my generation's voice rise, and halt once and for all the blaming of others for many of the woes of our societies. Next year in Jerusalem. [DISCLAIMER TO SAUDI, AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL READERS: All views here should NOT be taken as representative of the diverse viewpoints that do exist in KSA or the reality of life here. These are, or were, solely MY opinions, impressions and perspectives at different points in time. I do not mean to offend anyone or imply that my family or social circle are a concise depiction of the dynamics or perspectives that are mainstream in Saudi regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict. And if I come off as reductive or inaccurate in some places, please feel free to correct me. I have (to this day) not been able to regularly interact and forge lasting bonds with society in Saudi outside of my immediate family and few close friends, except through the internet] Comment on this article > Entry 11: For taking the profit out of occupation– Dalit Baum and Merav Amir Dec 30, 2010 10:16 pm | Nancy Kricorian This is Entry 11 in the Mondo Awards end-of-year contest. As the Campaign Manager for CODEPINK's Stolen Beauty Ahava Boycott Campaign, I had been working with Dalit Baum and Merav Amir, the lead researchers of Who Profits (a project of the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace) for over a year and a half via e-mail when I finally met them in November 2010 at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine London Session, which was focused on corporate complicity in Israel's violations of international law, activists, human rights campaigners, jurists, and attorneys testified about companies profiting from Israel's occupation of the West Bank. On the first day of the Tribunal, Dalit gave an overview of the settlement industry, ranging from the use of the Occupied West Bank as a place to dump Israeli toxic waste, to the expansion of hundreds of new vineyards near settlements as a way to take over Palestinian land. She concluded, "Sustenance for the [illegal] settlements is from the main Israeli economy, not just settlement production." The Israeli economy is so deeply imbricated in the occupation that it is not possible to effectively distinguish between that economy and direct settlement profiteering. The following day Merav presented her thorough and impressive research on Israeli finance companies and their connection to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. She explained that there are almost 600,000 Israeli Jewish settlers in the Occupied West Bank, and they constitute 10% of Jewish Israelis. All the major Israeli banks have branches in the settlements, providing services to the settlers, owning property in the settlements, and paying taxes to the state. They offer mortgages for buying and building houses in the settlements, and they provide loans to the "municipalities" that govern the settlements. She concluded, as had Dalit, that the entire Israeli economy is deeply involved in and entwined with the settlement project. That same day Dalit and Merav together presented an indictment of the British private security firm G4S, but what impressed me even more than their own extremely impressive testimonies was the fact that over the course of the two days as other activists and campaigners rose to speak about the work they were doing in holding accountable international companies—ranging, in alphabetical order, from Ahava, Carmel/Agrexco, Cement Roadstone Holdings, Dexia Bank to Soda Stream and Veolia—each speaker paid homage to Dalit, Merav and Who Profits as having provided the information essential to his or her work. It finally dawned on me that without Dalit, Merav and their impeccably documented research the work done by activists around the world to support the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Movement (BDS) would be a hundred times more difficult if not impossible. In fact, in mid-December, the Palestinian Boycott National Committee (BNC), in a press advisory about the A-1 Train Project (the Tel Aviv to Jerusalem light rail) and the theft of Palestinian land involved in its construction, said, The BNC thanks and warmly salutes the Coalition of Women for Peace and its Who Profits from the Occupation? project, whose valuable and timely research on the A1 train project and complicit companies will facilitate a successful campaign. Dalit and Merav, in addition to being indefatigable researchers, are also wonderful people. They are smart, witty, warm and self-deprecating. I am awed by their bravery in the face of the hostility and harassment they are subjected to because of their principled stand against the Occupation and its toxic effects on their society—although I know they would absolutely object to my using that term, emphasizing their relative privilege as Israeli Jews, and referencing the far worse treatment meted out to their Palestinian partners. There are bills that have passed first reading in the Israeli Knesset (New Knesset Bills Threaten Israeli Civil Society) that would effectively criminalize the work that they do to support the Global BDS Movement. Comment on this article > Entry 10: For the indomitable people of al-Araqib Dec 30, 2010 09:57 pm | Jillian Kestler-D'Amours Entry 10 in the Mondo Awards end-of-year contest are the people of al-Araqib. It was 6 a.m. when the Israeli police invaded al-Araqib for the third time. Still half-asleep, I stood alongside village residents and Israeli and international activists, trying in vain to stop the impending home demolitions. Thin tarps were ripped from wooden beams, water tanks were dragged away and mounds of sand were poured over each article of the families' belongings, making it nearly impossible to salvage any materials. In the end, nothing was left standing. Each time the Palestinian Bedouin village of al-Araqib has been demolished since then – it has been razed to the ground a total of eight times since mid-July – nothing ever is. I have visited al-Araqib, located near Beer Sheva in the Israeli Negev desert, on over a dozen occasions, interviewing residents about their experiences, their fears, and mostly, about why it is so important for them to remain on their ancestral lands. "We need to teach even the smallest children that this is our land, and we can't leave it, no matter what happens," resident Hakima abu Mdeghem told me, one morning in September. The mother of nine children, Hakima regularly welcomes me into her home whenever I visit the village. "The hardest thing here is that you're sleeping in your home and then, suddenly, you have no home. It's the worst thing that can happen to a human being: to destroy his home," she said. "My children are sad and they are afraid. They are angry at the army and the entire country, especially the younger ones." The impact the demolitions have had on Hakima's children, and virtually all the other children in the village, is palpable. Even worse than the demolitions themselves is the constant threat that a demolition is imminent. Speech impediments, bed-wetting and difficulty sleeping are all consequences of living in the near-permanent state of fear that hangs over al-Araqib like an invisible cloak; you can't see it, but you can always feel it. And yet despite all this, visiting al-Araqib and spending time with the families that continue to live there, is a motivator for me as a journalist, a social justice organizer, and a person. Getting to know the families is the experience that has most motivated me since I moved to Palestine/Israel last May; I've been inspired and continue to be inspired by the people of al-Araqib. Their courage and determination in the face of tremendous adversity is admirable, but it is another quality that inspires me the most: the ability of residents to retain their generosity, humility and above all else, their humanity, in the face of ever-present challenges, destruction and hatred. This ability is a testament to their strength of spirit. It is a beacon of hope in the otherwise devastated landscape of Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Indeed, the personal, human moments – not the images of destruction or injustice (and there are many of these horrors seared into my memory to choose from) – are the ones that first come to mind when I think of al-Araqib. They are the ones that make me excited to see the Lehavim Junction taking shape in the distance, knowing I'm only a few minutes away from the village. Being woken up at 2 a.m. to children's laughter, as Hakima's youngest children – Sujud, Ibrahim, Mohammad and Alia – excitedly opened their gifts during Eid al-Adha. Watching Miryam and Zainab expertly prepare bread and trying (read: failing) to do the same. Taking rides with Salim to the nearby town of Rahat to pick up the village children after school. Laughing as I succumb to the fact that my mix of English, broken Arabic and sign-language won't communicate exactly what I want to say, despite furious minutes of trying. How to remain human in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges is something that Hakima, Salim, Samieh, and virtually all the residents of al-Araqib have taught me, time and time again. And for that, I continue to stand in solidarity with them in their tremendous struggle for justice, equality and at the most basic level, the right to live in peace. For that, they are my inspiration. Jillian Kestler-D'Amours blogs here. Comment on this article > Entry 9: 'Sabra Song' Dec 30, 2010 09:20 pm | Dave Lippman Entry 9 in the Mondo Awards end-of-year contest. Sung to the tune, Darling Clementine In a tavern with my companion Excavating for some wine Found my hummus implicated In the suffering in Palestine ... Humiliation of a nation By brigades who have free rein Soldiers supported by Sabra Hummus chant "We are Golani, we are insane" ... We say Sabra is macabre On its war crimes we won't dine Won't let it near our candelabra Cause it's killing Palestine ... None among us wants a hummus If we must cross a picket line When we learned what we'd been buying Dreadful sorry, Palestine ... It's ironic and demonic And it's really not benign Eating Arab food while paying for the murder of Palestine ... O my darling, I'm not quarreling Just don't bring it to my house Tastes like Human rights violations Don't buy anything from Strauss ... And Tribe hummus just among us Donates to the Jewish National Fund Stealing land from indigenous people And that's why Tribe should be shunned ... There is hummus Right among us We can eat, and sleep at night Doesn't kill indigenous people Stealing land and water rights ... So buy local, and be more vocal Ethnic cleansing, don't abide Or make your own, get in the zone Don't despair until you've tried ... Some Garbanzo or either Chick peas Which are actually the same Garlic, salt and olive oil And you're ready now to bring ... Some tahini, it's made from sesame Dash of Lemon juice, you bet Don't like our recipe, look one up yourself, that's why God made the internet ... Sabra hummus, Sabra hummus We won't buy you anymore You are lost and gone forever Dreadful Golani we abhor Comment on this article > Entry 8: Gaza, then and now Dec 30, 2010 09:07 pm | Salena Tramel Entry 8 in the Mondo Awards end-of-year contest. Year before last, I was sitting in the living room of my childhood home sharing a cup of morning coffee with my mother and musing over the holidays. We laughed over kitschy Christmas gifts from well-meaning relatives before deciding to turn on the news for five minutes on the brink of another vacation day. Those five minutes would turn out to be one of those times like 9/11—when you never forget exactly where you were when you found out. "Oh no," gasped my mother, tears welling up immediately in her eyes. "Gaza Explodes..." scrolled across the bottom of the screen, and plumes of smoke hung on the living room wall in high definition. Violence in the Middle East was hardly a surprise. I was living near the West Bank city of Ramallah in 2006, where I began to understand the intricacies of life under occupation—checkpoints, settlement expansion, and raids. That summer, Hamas and Hezbollah abducted three Israeli soldiers, and the Israeli military unleashed a series of attacks that devastated parts of Gaza and Lebanon. I remember sitting on my roof with neighbors sipping local Palestinian beer from a nearby Christian village, and watching macabre lights fill the sky night after night. A former European soldier taught me how to identify the various weapons: a cluster bomb branches out horizontally before hitting its target, while thermobarics fall hard and fast, demolishing entire structures. The warplanes were low, lit up by the moon as they traveled north to Lebanon and south to Gaza. My neighbor finished the last sip of his beer one night and whispered, "It's like fucking Space Invaders up here." But operation Cast Lead put previous attacks to shame. For more than three weeks, the Israeli military assault was the most violent action against the occupied territories since the 1967 war. And for the past two years, I have been breathing in Gaza from the outside, sustained by a few precious journeys into the coastal territory known by many as the world's largest open-air prison. During the war, I spent hours on the phone with people inside Gaza—from the comfort of my eclectic office and heated apartment. Colleagues and friends filled me in from their cell phones while they stood on dangerous street corners watching bombs flatten buildings. We would almost always lose our connection and when I called back, they would apologize for the interruption and describe the scene in detail. One day, a Palestinian man working for the United Nations cried helplessly when white phosphorus danced through the sky like firecrackers. Or like Space Invaders. Israel stopped attacking the Gaza Strip two days before the U.S. presidential inauguration. Many speculate that the Israeli withdrawal was a trade-off with the President-elect for his silence during the military operation. I stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands of people in front of my country's capitol building on what felt then like the first day of a new millennium, Obama's charismatic voice crackling through the freezing air as he took the oath. Hope had taken the nation by storm, Bush was on a helicopter bound for Texas, and the streets of Gaza were silent. Razed, I would soon witness just weeks later, but silent. Getting into Gaza right after the war was nothing short of a miracle. I entered with a delegation through Rafah on the Egyptian side. We passed by Palestinians who had no chance of crossing the gate, and I knew that it was they who should have been granted passage, not me. Bombs fell on the tunnels near the buffer zone, but somehow, being in Gaza made me feel incredibly safe. And the resilience of the people crept to a place deep inside me. It hasn't left since. The Gaza Strip is full of astonishing stories and the people there go to lengths to get them out. Being a visitor in that context is a privilege that comes with considerable responsibility. From speaking with families who lost loved ones to tank fire to spending time with children that trembled from the affects of PTSD, there was consistent desire to be heard. "Now you have seen this with your own eyes," they would say, "so you need to let people outside know what is happening to us here." The second I left, I immediately started planning another trip. And then another. Within a year of the war, I had been back three times. Gaza is the kind of place that melts stereotypes. Let down by the Israelis, the Egyptians, the Americans, and the Palestinian Authority, Gazans continue to organize despite oppressive circumstances. They have burned garbage to fuel cars, built homes from mud, and crushed rubble to pave roads. Women from local community organizations bank seeds in their kitchen sinks and plant gardens in the most unlikely urban settings. Today, the siege on Gaza continues with no end in sight. The United Nations has reported that at least 500 truckloads of wheat sit idle on the Israeli side of the Karni conveyor belt that has acted as a lifeline to a million and a half people. Even though these provisions are critical to survival, Palestinians living in the seaside enclave long for much more than access to food aid, but for freedom of movement, food sovereignty, and self- determination. And now, military violence against Gaza has escalated again. One contact wrote that F16s had bombed several times over the past week, drones buzzing overhead as he sent out the message. Some Palestinians feel that another wide-reaching attack looms. It remains unclear exactly what awaits the people of Gaza two years after the war. What is certain is that we must keep their voices in the debate, and listen when they say enough is enough—especially when so many of us are intrinsically linked to their struggle. Salena Tramel is the program coordinator for the Middle East and Haiti at Grassroots International. Comment on this article > Entry 7: I nominate Adalah-NY Dec 30, 2010 08:59 pm | Rebecca Vilkomerson Entry 7 in the Mondo Awards end-of-year contest. This contest helps us remember how intertwined we all are, all the many pieces and members of the movement that are moving all the time--in Palestine, in Israel, in the U.S., in the rest of the world, and how we are all building it together. And just how much amazing work is being done by so many amazing people! I am in Israel right now, so I am tempted to write about Adnan Gheith, a Palestinian activist in Silwan who was expelled the other day from Jerusalem, his home. Or about Yonatan Pollack, one of the stalwarts of the Israeli left (the real left, that is), whose trial I attended in Tel Aviv, which ended in his sentencing to three months in jail. Or Abdallah Abu Rahme, or "Gaza Mom" Laila El-Haddad, whose writing I love, or, or, or....the possibilities are multitudes. But I do my work now in the U.S. And so I want to nominate a U.S. group: Adalah-NY. Adalah-NY had a major victory this year, after three years of dogged work against the settlement builder and settlement NGO funder Lev Leviev, when one of Leviev's companies, Africa Israel, announced it was suspending construction projects in the West Bank. Like the settlement "freeze," it's a partial, probably temporary, tactical retreat, but nevertheless a meaningful milestone. Adalah-NY has effectively hounded Leviev from all sides since 2007---from caroling at his diamond store, to pressuring celebrities not to let their names be associated with his many dirty practices, to forcing his CEO to resign from the board of CARE, to getting (again--as part of a team, which again makes it a perfect example of how all the pieces have to fit together, across continents) the Norwegian Pension Fund to divest from Leviev holdings. It's an impressive victory, but that isn't really why I wanted to nominate Adalah-NY. There are so many reasons why I do: because they are creative, they are smart, and they are strategic. Because they are unbelievably generous in sharing their accumulated wisdom with the rest of us, because they are excellent allies, and because they have absolutely no ego--it's about justice for Palestinians, full stop. Because they have total respect for Palestinian leadership of the movement but total independence in how they run their campaigns. Because not only is their work on the basis of the most fundamental principles, but they do their work in principled ways. Because as individuals, the members of Adalah-NY are some of the smartest people I know, and because they represent a true rainbow of New Yorkers, including Palestinian Americans, Jewish Americans, and those who are neither but who care very much--to the point of letting the rest of their lives suffer--anyway. Because they spend no time on money or infrastructure, and all their impressive accomplishments to date are from what they manage to do in their free time! And finally, because they are relatively quiet about everything they manage to do, and so very much deserve the recognition. Rebecca Vilkomerson is Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace 718-514-2071 (office) 718.310.8655(cell) NY Office: 147 Prince St | Suite 17 | Brooklyn, NY 11201 California Office: 1611 Telegraph Ave | Suite 550 | Oakland, CA 94612 Comment on this article > Entry 6: The land, the gun, the olive tree Dec 30, 2010 01:46 pm | Sameeha Elwan By Sameeha Elwan In Memory of Nakba He closed his eyes when the smell of the thyme found its way to the deepest memory his mind is still tirelessly clinging to. He opened them with a persistence to inhale as much of the smell as he can. Something that would help him live on the memory a bit longer. Something that would compensate the years of wait. They didn't give him a chance to preserve that smell deep in his heart sixty two years ago; but it has been in his memory locked, never been forgotten since. He, now, couldn't believe his eyes when the smell was combined with the real vision of the field. His field. He wished "Um Salem" would be there to pinch him as she always did when he was trapped between a vision and a reality. She was not there to share him the vision. "It's not the time for mourning", he thought. He was there, at last. For sixty two years, the scene of the olive tree he and his grandfather once planted and he watched growing up never escaped his memory along with the hymn his grandmother used to sing him while baking bread on "Taboun". He remembers some of its lyrics. They were always so patriotic. "The land, the gun, the olive tree". His sons and grandsons have always mocked him for keeping the key of a house that most probably has turned into a military barrack, a prison maybe, or might have been simply inhabited by other people who if were willing to steal the house could never steal the memories the house arouse in him. They never believed him when he said he will return one day. They should see him right now, approaching that olive tree to shelter from the burning rays of the sun. He was burnt out. His old boy was covered with sweat, but he never stopped walking towards it. Towards his olive tree with his voice murmuring the hymn his grand mother was singing to him, "The land, the gun, the olive tree." "Grandpa, it's raining, grandpa. You have to get back into the tent". "Yebna. Yebna. The gun. The Olive tree" "We're not in Yebna, grandpa. Don't you get tired of having the same dream every single day?" It took him a minute as usual to go back to where he really was. It was Not Yebna; he realized when he opened his eyes. It was his little granddaughter who was clinging into his clothes, trying to find shelter from the drops of rain which have now turned the camp into a swamp. "Never. It is that dream of return that keeps us alive. Lobna" he bitterly answered. Elwan posted this story first last August, on her site, "Here, I was born." Comment on this article > Entry 5: Zionism's call to me– and my answer Dec 30, 2010 01:21 pm | David Samel by David Samel In one sense, I owe my life to Zionism. My parents met in a Zionist youth group in New York in 1946. As a boy, I naturally absorbed the prevailing view portraying Israel as a lonely outpost of Jewish modernism heroically fighting for its very existence in a sea of irrational Arab hatred. But like most Jewish families, we also were unabashed liberals who cherished full civil rights for people of all ethnic backgrounds. The inherent contradiction between these two concepts was never apparent in my youth, but over the decades, it became impossible for me to ignore. For the most part, I do not consider my personal journey to be of much significance. However, I will immodestly claim some insight into the views of other American Jews. For every dishonest and/or blatantly racist Jewish pundit -- Dershowitz, Pipes, David Horowitz, Martin Peretz -- there are many thousands of more sincere and decent folks who cling to romantic notions of intimate kinship to a people with a history of noble struggle. Most still believe that resistance to Israel and its occupation stems from irrational hatred of Jews, because they simply cannot perceive any other reason for Palestinian discontent. They don't recognize that the Zionist dream was horribly unfair to the Palestinians, forcing them to endure what no American Jew would find tolerable, either for their own minority community or for any other. However, most Jews consider themselves "liberals," and therefore may be susceptible to the increasing tension between the supposedly inviolable principles of democracy, freedom, and equality, and Israel's daily violations of those principles. Ironically, I see Israel's noticeable rightward shift as a possible ally in this effort. I am loath to applaud any developments that bring more misery to the already miserable, but Israel's racism is becoming so brazen and impossible to ignore that the obvious remedy is not simply smoothing over its rough edges but eliminating it entirely. Time may well be on our side for another reason. As the Holocaust recedes further into history, it becomes more difficult to convince Jews of the potential of an imminent outbreak of virulent worldwide anti-Semitism. For Jews of my generation (mid-fifties) and younger, our heritage has been much more of an asset than a liability. Do we really need Israel as a safe haven, when it has long appeared as the most dangerous place in the world for Jews? Israel and its devoted followers in the U.S. still maintain a grip on mainstream discourse, but that grip may be slipping as their messages appear to emerge from a Bizarro World. They sadistically restrict the access of a million and a half civilians in Gaza to adequate food, water, and fuel, yet howl in indignant protest at the "deprivations" caused by the BDS movement. They have assembled one of the world's strongest militaries with the unlimited assistance of the world's only superpower, yet decry the "illegality" and "smuggling" of a tiny fraction of that firepower to the neighbors they threaten. They insist on the right of the Jewish people worldwide to exercise dominion and control over the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, yet hurl accusations of bigotry against those who prefer full equality for all. They freely kill civilians with absolute impunity, sometimes in horrifying numbers, yet claim the mantle of justified self-defense while accusing children who throw rocks at well-protected soldiers of "terrorism." In the long run, only a solution which grants the same rights and privileges to all regardless of religion or ancestry has any chance of succeeding, and such solution is long overdue in the 21st century. This conviction can be easily grasped by all Americans, Jewish or otherwise, as we have recently undergone a similar struggle to finally achieve a national consensus opposing all forms of bigotry. Any situation in which people with guns tell unarmed people what they can and cannot do is intolerable, and the fact that ethnic ancestry is what divides the rulers from the ruled makes it even worse. I foresee the one-state solution as inevitable, but the prospect of more immediate bloodshed presents a new urgency. Israel once again appears poised to demonstrate who's the boss, insanely threatening war against Iran, Lebanon and/or Gaza for the sin of accumulating arms for protection from Israel's threatened attack. But even at those rare times of relative "calm," when such threats are minimal and there are no reports of violent deaths, the machinery of the occupation grinds on, with millions of people forced to accept whatever is grudgingly granted to them by an antagonistic foreign power. Palestinians' freedom of movement and sometimes their very lives exist at the whim of frightened, bored, and sometimes unapologetically racist youths wielding automatic weapons. There is an added burden on those of us who are Jewish to articulate a coherent position on Israel/Palestine. Whether we like it or not, Israel has conferred upon us certain privileges, and silence implies acquiescence. I think about how generations of white South Africans blithely enjoyed their racial entitlement without troubling themselves to consider the consequences on their victims. We all would like to believe that if we had been born into that environment, we would have refused the undeserved advantages of our skin color. Israel's cordial invitation to me to join their party founded on brute force oppression of another people is something I must not only decline but publicly renounce. Comment on this article > Your donation to Mondoweiss ensures we will continue to cover the most important issues surrounding Israel/Palestine and US foreign policy. Please donate today.   Follow Mondoweiss on Twitter and Facebook   Upcoming Events Thurs, November 11 Church of Gethsemane 1012 Eighth Avenue (bet 10th St. & 11th St.) Brooklyn NY Jewish Perspectives on the BDS Movement A respectful dialogue on BDS—whether you already have a position on it or you want to clarify for yourself the complex issues it raises.  This event will provide an opportunity to hear from people who disagree about whether BDS is an appropriate and effective strategy.

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