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 | Ethnic Cleansing Escalation in Jerusalemaletho | February 8, 2010 at 2:37 pm | Categories: Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | URL: http://wp.me/ |
Aletho News | February 8, 2010
Israeli occupation forces manning a military checkpoint at the Shu'fat refugee camp in Jerusalem set off protests Saturday due to the humiliating conditions inflicted on Palestinians on a daily basis. The residents, whom were displaced from their homes across Jerusalem have been denied access to the city by the apartheid wall as well as various military checkpoints.
There have also been recent protests against home demolitions in the area. Palestine Information Center reports:
In the city's Sheikh Jarrah suburb, an armed Israeli settler wearing military uniform pointed his rifle at Palestinian lady Refqa Al-Kurd, 85, in a bid to frighten her and force her out of what is remained of her house after the settlers occupied most of it.
- Refqa Al-Kurd, age 85
The incident prompted clashes between the Palestinian neighbors, who rushed for the help of the elderly woman, and the settlers.
Another Israeli settler in the same suburb dropped a big stone at Palestinian teenager Murad Ateyyah, 14, prompting angry Palestinian citizens to intervene and clash with the settlers before the Israeli occupation police arrived and broke up the clashes.
Palestinian Jerusalemites asserted that attacks by Israeli settlers against them increased rapidly with the aim to force them out of the city.
Tensions were raised further by army raids on private residences in the Anata camp early on Monday. Packs of soldiers ransacked homes at daybreak in surrounding villages abducting residents for torture interrogations. House to house searches without search warrants resulted in the seizure of one homemade rifle.
File photo
Ma'an reports that over 60 Palestinians were seized in the raids. Young Palestinians confronted the intruding forces by throwing stones. Journalists that attempted to record the clashes were fired upon with tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades. Eyewitnesses also report the use of live ammunition. Several journalists were injured.
Occupation forces then attacked the local clinic and detained the doctors working there, preventing them from attending to the injured. The camp is now under military control, curfew has been imposed.
This from another study group list on Feb. 8, 2010:
Hi,
This piece by one of the most competent authors addressing this subject speaks for itself. With thanks to Tim Llewellyn.
--- Shelby Tucker
+++
From David Hirst
For two decades, the world has been counting on diplomacy to stop Iran's apparent quest for nuclear weapons – a diplomacy shot through, however, with the menace of ultimate recourse to the military alternative. Now, a more serious stage has been reached with the passing of the year-end deadline that President Obama had set for the mullahs to accept his 'proffered hand' – along with the international negotiators' latest compromise proposals for uranium enrichment outside Iran itself. So far they will have none of it, and there is talk, in response, of a drastic intensification of sanctions already long in place. But, even supposing it actually happens, this is widely expected to fail in its turn. All the while, the regime is reportedly getting steadily closer both to bombs and the means to deliver them.
Somewhere, not so far down the line, must surely come the moment of truth when the US resigns itself to a nuclear Iran, or resorts to 'other measures'.
Yet the Obama administration and the US military clearly harbour deep misgivings about that possibility. Already engaged in long, costly and inglorious wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, can they seriously contemplate a third against what would be their most formidable foe yet? Iran repeatedly threatens a 'devastating' response to any assault and, with all the assets and retaliatory options available to it, few can doubt that it would be. "A ball of fire" across the region, said former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed El Baradei, burning Americans, Israelis and Arabs alike.
But is there no diplomatic way out of this Hobson's choice between the putative disaster of a nuclear Iran and the certain one of a military attempt to prevent it? There would certainly be a better chance of it if the West would attempt the kind of approach to this great Middle Eastern nuclear crisis that it would automatically adopt in a comparable situation anywhere else; that is, the simple, obvious act of taking into account all the relevant actors and factors contributing to it. Foremost among them, of course, are some 200 or so already existing Israeli nuclear warheads that are surely no less important than Iran's mere nukes-in-embryo.
Bipolar struggle
However, Western officialdom, it seems, just cannot entertain such an elementary notion. It is apparently incapable of being neutral between Iran and Israel; in fact, it probably does not even occur to Western officials that they might not be neutral, still less that this crisis might offer a striking illustration of their partisanship. Yet partisanship is what the West's exclusive focus on the responsibility (and villainy) of Iran most patently and damagingly is. Morally, it skews its whole approach from the outset. This is at its most flagrant in the way it makes so much of the perils that a nuclear Iran would pose, but so little of what it very well knows to be the case: namely, that the clear and present danger lies not in Iran's aggressing Israel, but Israel Iran.
It is also inept. More and more, these days, the Middle East can be defined as a bipolar struggle between Israel and Iran, and it stands to reason that, in whatever domains these two aspirant hegemons malignantly intersect, the outside world can achieve little if it deals only with one side and not the other.
Not, of course, that Iran is blameless. Its nuclear arming would deal a major blow to an already fraying international non-proliferation regime. And, as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it would indeed be guilty of huge deceit and hypocrisy.
Iran is also a 'rogue state'. True, that is essentially a subjective, US definition, but, given US primacy in nuclear diplomacy, it is inescapably relevant. Though never a very precise concept, a 'rogue state' is likely to be an oppressive dictatorship, anti-American, religiously or nationalistically extreme, and to ally an aggressive nature with disproportionate military power that includes possession, actual or potential, of weapons of mass destruction. As a result, it poses an exceptional, continuous threat to any existing order. So, as America sees it, there could hardly be a greater menace to the Middle Eastern order than nuclear weapons in the hands of such "fanatical, irrational" rulers as President Ahmadinejad, who constantly proclaims his detestation of Israel and his desire that it should "disappear from the pages of time." And even if the mullahs might not be 'mad' enough to bomb Israel outright, they would surely profit from their 'Islamic bomb' to underpin and embolden their hegemonic, Islamist ambitions in the region, and their support for 'resistance' and jihad against Israel.
But is Israel any better? In the nuclear field, it, not Iran, was the original sinner in the Middle East. Never mind how long ago that might have been, it would forever bear a primary responsibility for whatever happened later. For it is axiomatic: non-proliferation must be universal or not at all, in line with the plain, equitable logic that if, in any zone of potential conflict, one party goes nuclear its adversaries can be expected to follow suit. So another Middle Eastern state was eventually bound to do this. But at least as alarming and reprehensible as the emergence of this second culprit would be the original one's insistence on preserving its monopoly at any price. Just imagine if the US, the world's first nuclear power, had announced, urbi et orbi, that it would go to war to ensure that the Soviet Union never became one too.
Outsized military power
Since Iran's deceit is held against it, should there be any statute of limitation on Israel's? True, there was no NPT at the time, and it was only America, strongly opposed to its nuclearisation, that it deceived. But how! Even as its Foreign Minister Golda Meir was proclaiming Israel's "special concern" to "remove the awful dangers [of nuclear weapons] to humanity", it was insisting that its top-secret plant at Dimona was, variously, a textile factory, a pumping station or a desalinisation plant. The CIA warned that, by greatly enhancing its sense of security, nuclear capacity would make Israel less, not more, conciliatory towards the Arabs, as it exploited its new 'psychological advantages' to 'intimidate' them.
And by just about every criterion except one, Israel ranks as the Middle Eastern 'rogue state' par excellence. It came into being as a massive disrupter of the existing order, through war and ethnic cleansing. Subsequently, as the Jewish state, it may not oppress its Jewish citizens, but, as the colonial settler state which it also is, it oppresses the indigenous Arabs it rules over or displaced. To do that, it has become a vastly outsized military power, serial violator of international law and UN resolutions, and permanent source of regional conflict and disorder.
Moreover, ever since it acquired its nukes, it has been exploiting them for just the kind of 'illegitimate'
The one exceptional thing about this Israeli 'rogue state' is that, far from being an adversary of the US, it is its most indulged of friends – something which, of course, only enhances its sense of freedom to do as it pleases, even when that pleases no one else. The CIA foresaw that too. By "pursuing its objectives without regard for the consequences," it reported, Israel was "endangering the strategic interests of the Western powers." Of all the reasons why, in the past 60 years, the US has become ever more unpopular throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, is targeted by their terrorists and flails around in spreading wars and other forms of combat against them, the chief is Israel and the extraordinary, counterproductive influence which it and its 'friends' in the US wield over American Middle East policymaking. It would currently be hard to imagine a greater blow to US 'strategic interests' than an all-out US-Iran war. Yet "triggering" just such a war, as Washington-based Middle East analyst Helena Cobban recently put it, would be the "actual, though never openly stated, main goal" of any Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites.
Dimona for Natanz?
Hardly, then, could the US have a more pressing interest than to forestall it, and to do so through a diplomacy based on the one, essential principle of disarmament which it has so far ignored: reciprocity. It should begin by recognising that, however wicked it finds the Iranian 'rogue state', any nuclear capability it might acquire would be serving exactly the same, defensive purpose as the vastly greater capability of the virtuous, Israeli one; after all, even a well-qualified Israeli (military historian Martin van Creveld) says that Iran would be "crazy" not to go nuclear. Then the US should heed its Arab friends. Saudi Arabia or Egypt may be hardly less disturbed about a nuclear Iran than Israel, but they insist that the only realistic way to disarm it is to disarm Israel too, with the trade-off of 'Dimona for Natanz' becoming the basis of a nuclear-free Middle East. Finally, it should realise that if, for once, it put its own interests ahead of Israel's in a case where the two so massively and manifestly diverge, it would reap gains far beyond the nuclear, and lend real substance to all that Obama meant with his June 2009 Cairo Declaration and the call for a "new beginning between the US and the Muslim world."
None of this, of course, could possibly be described as easy. Iran's renunciation of nuclear ambitions could probably only come as part of a 'grand bargain', in which the US finally acknowledges the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, and it, in return, renounces or modifies hostile activities around the region that have been a staple of the 30-year feud between the two sides. That might seem especially unlikely with the regime's hardliners now so monopolistically in charge. Yet it has long been said in Tehran that if anyone could ever strike a deal with the Great Satan it would be they, not their reformist rivals; and the fact is that, in 2003, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei did authorise what the moderate wing of the Bush administration called an "offer we cannot refuse", so promising was it in various domains, including the nuclear. It was only struck down when Vice-President Cheney, aligned with the administration'
Securing Dimona for a nuclear-free Middle East would be even tougher than securing Natanz. Obama would have to brave Congress and the Israel lobby with much greater resolution than he has shown so far. And then, even if he did manage that, it would only be to increase the risk that Israel, sensing betrayal, inflicts on its greatest benefactor just what analysts like Helena Cobban have warned of.
That would be shocking, perhaps, but not all that surprising. For in a sense Israel's nukes have always been meant for friends as well as enemies. The French, who helped set up Dimona, saw that long ago. "The Israeli bomb," said their top official, "was aimed against America, not to launch against it, but to say 'if you don't want to help us in a critical situation, we'll use our nuclear bomb'." And attacking Iran would also be in perfect accord with Israel's 'going crazy' syndrome, its penchant for wild or irrational violence when politically or militarily crossed. Not that it would need its nukes for this; a single flight of F-16 fighter-bombers would do. Once they were off the ground the only way the US could avoid being dragged into catastrophic war would probably be to shoot them down before they got to Iran. And that, says former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, is what it should do.
 | SHOUTS OF 'HITLER WAS RIGHT' RESOUND |
Elie Wiesel and usual pro-Israel suspects, Dershowitz and Jon Voight (partially obscured in background) protest Ahmadinejad UN speech (AP)
Elie Wiesel's much ballyhooed full page N.Y. Times ad came out today. It offers strong support for the Iranian reform movement and denounces the clerical regime. The only purely political stance it advocates is sanctions. There is no mention of force. As close as the statement gets is:
Concrete measures much be taken to protect this new nation of dissidents so that their sacrifice is not…in vain.
This statement echoes the current Israeli policy which advocates punishing sanctions to be followed, when they fail, presumably by calls for a military attack. I presume that in a few months we'll see another ad by Wiesel with those Nobel laureates foolish enough to sell the spirit of their medal for a mess of porridge and a few bunker bombs.
There is one strange notion in the text of this ad. It calls on Presidents Obama, Sarkozy, Medvedev, and Gordon Brown and Chancellor Merkel to "put an end to this outrage." How are they supposed to do this? And why would Wiesel presume that it would be a good thing for them to do so? This statement could easily be construed as an incipient call for intervention in Iran's internal afffairs. Certainly, the next step would be an ad with such a call for regime change or military attack.
Another element in the rhetoric to which I object: there's a distinct notion of western noblesse obligeabout the whole thing. Iran's regime has "now attained new levels of horrror" with "thousands arrested…tortured, raped, and killed, many by hanging." Sounds pretty bad doesn't it? Till you stop to think, isn't there another country in the region which kills on a far larger scale and with far more technological dexterity? One that is currently under consideration by the UN for a war crimes referral to the International Criminal Court. Hmmm, who could that be? And could it be an accident that Elie Wiesel, friend of Dershowitz and Hagee, might have an ulterior motive in pointing to Iran as the supreme menace to world peace?
To be clear, this post is not a defense of Iran's current regime. Anyone who reads this blog knows that it is not my purpose.
A few interesting notes about the signatories and those who are missing. First, almost all signers are scientists and I'm not sure why we should trust a scientist speaking about Iranian political affairs any more than Iran analysts, academics and Iranian activists, almost all of whom speak of sanctions as counter-productive. Second, Desmond Tutu signed an earlier Wiesel ad which did not call for sanctions. He is missing from this ad. Also missing are Israel's latest laureate, Ada Yonath, who pointedly attacked the Israeli Occupation the very day she won her award. It must've taken some courage for her to resist the urge to sign. Predictably among the signers is perhaps the most extreme right-winger among them, Orthodox pro-settler extremist, Robert Aumann. Other than Betty Williams, Jody Williams and Wole Soyinka, there are no Peace or Literature laureates at all. This includes Al Gore, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama (missing). Missing also is the Iranian Peace Prize laureate, Shirin Abadi. Missing also is Alan Dershowitz, who never won a Nobel. Maybe they'll have to create a new category for pro-Israel propagandist.
Interestingly, Wiesel also spearheaded an earlier letter after the June Iranian elections that was formulated to support Ebadi. That letter too contained 44 signatories. But not the same 44. In fact, 15 of the original signers are missing in the current ad, which leads me to believe that most, if not all, decided not the join this effort because they disagreed with it.
M.J. Rosenberg reports at Huffington Post that the Senate approved an Aipac-inspired Iran sanctions bill with only FIVE MINUTES of debate and only three senators on the floor! How's that for democracy?
Related posts:
If only these bellicose fools would realize that their advocacy of aggression is a waste of time and that their fears are imaginary. Iran has no nuclear bombs and is a long ways off from having them. Why do they persist in perpetuating this phony existential threat?