CNN and the Israel Lobby
August 26, 2006
In the past couple of days on various occasions CNN turned to what it described as “middle-east experts” for their views on the current situation in Iraq and Lebanon. What the experts had in common was that all of them belonged to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, the think-tank established by Haim Saban, the billionaire Israeli media mogul. Each of the individuals interviewed is prominent within the Israeli Lobby, and just to create an illusion of variety, CNN introduced the individuals at times as belonging to the Saban Center and at others as belonging to the Brookings Institution (Saban Center’s parent body).
Let it be noted that CNN alone cannot be blamed for such lapses, however intentional. A short while back the much over-rated Al-Jazeera had an interview posted on its website with one of the same individuals, Martin Indyk, and it failed to mention his Israel Lobby connection.
Martin Indyk is a veteran Israel lobbyist and in 1985 he established the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a spinoff from AIPAC (the main Isareli Lobby in the US) in order to counter the Brookings Institution which was not considered pro-Israel enough. However, with a generous donation of nearly $13 million, this base was also covered in 2002 when the Saban Center for Middle-East Policy was established at the Brookings Institution, effectively changing the Middle-east Policy research orientation of the think-tank overnight. And the new director of the Saban Center is? None other than Martin Indyk.
BBC Still Waging Israel’s Propaganda War III
August 21, 2006
An organization registered as a charity in the UK receives tax-deductable donations which are subsequently used for ethnic cleansing in the Middle-east. The JNF Charitable Trust, as demonstrated by the Israeli legal scholar Uri Davis, has been underwriting Israeli ethnic cleansing operations for many decades, however, when BBC chose to use tax-payer money to investigate a middle-east related charity, it overlooked this obvious candidate and went for Interpal, a low key Palestinian charity. In order to do this, it had to rely on the mudslinging skills of disgraced smearmonger John Ware, whose earlier hatchet job had already earned him much opprobrium. But BBC it seems, is keen to demonstrate that there are no depths it won’t plumb to appease its Zionist patrons. Whereas photographs of the Israeli military in action were a permanent fixture throughout the duration of the Lebanon war, now it is peddling propaganda from Israeli intelligence sources with a generous dose of innuendo to malign a charity engaged in much needed relief work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Here Osama Saeed takes a critical look at the new installment of John Ware’s slimy propaganda.
Comedy of Errors
August 19, 2006
Israel’s latest “daring raid” seems to have an old Arab lady’s purse as its objective, which it seems to have achieved admirably. As’ad Abu Khalil reports:
New TV interviewed a woman in Ba`albak who had to deal with yet another fiasco Israeli “darling commando raid.” She said that Israeli occupying soldiers, would yell: “Iftah `Arab. Iftah `Arab.” (Open Arabs. Open Arabs.) She said that they stole US dollars and some jewelry from her house.
The actual purpose of the raid apparently was the capture of a Hizbullah parliamentary leader. But in Israeli eyes, perhaps an old woman’s purse is just as good a catch.
On a different note, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has published a new report entitled Preliminary “Lessons” of the Israeli-Hezbollah War which relies overwhelmingly on Israeli military sources and reproduces all its fantastic claims. However, there is only one paragraph of some value which Robert Fisk, whose closeness to the Hariri clan seems to have gotten the best of his judgement, would do well to heed:
One key point that should be mentioned more in passing than as a lesson, although it may be a warning about conspiracy theories, is that no serving Israeli official, intelligence officer, or other military officer felt that the Hezbollah acted under the direction of Iran or Syria.
The Truth Behind the UK “Terror Plot”
August 18, 2006
Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan has the following to say on the “terror plot”:
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.
In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.
Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth.
Reconstruction: New Orleans Model vs Hizbullah Model
August 18, 2006
Remember New Orleans? Where many tens of thousand poor black (and some white) people were abandoned to their fate and corpses were decomposing even a week after the catastrophe as the municipal authorities, police, national guard and the state authorities tried to pass responsibility. Remember FEMA?Well, in Lebanon things seem to have turned out much differently. After destruction of a much larger mangnitude, Hizbullah has now returned to the streets in a much different role after having sent Israel’s 6 Billion dollar a year army scurrying back with its tail between its legs. Hizbullah is offering immediate relief in the form of $12,000 to those who lost their homes, and its activisits are already overseeing the reconstruction. This, of course, has left the Americans in something of a quandary. Rueters reports:
“I’ve said we have got to get with this. These guys (Hizbollah) are out there with their own bulldozers and what are we doing? It takes forever for us to start up rebuilding projects,” said the senior official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Any large-scale U.S.-funded rebuilding effort could take months, just as it did in Iraq where the Bush administration’s efforts are still faltering.
American officials worry that that Hizbollah and Iran will take advantage of U.S. bureaucracy surrounding aid efforts and boost their own credibility by getting in first.
The official goes on to add:
“We have been delivering stuff from the beginning (of the conflict) but we need to get something much more substantial on the ground,” said the State Department official.
This statement, however, is not entirely inaccurate as the US rushed shipments of new missiles and bombs to Israel as soon as it started raining them down on the heads of Lebanese civilians.
Hollywood Stars for Terror
August 17, 2006
Hollywood has-beens and aspiring stars have joined Rupert Murdoch and Israeli Lobbyist Chaim Saban to sign a letter in support of Israeli terror in Lebanon. They denounce all resistance to Israel’s frequent rampages in Palestine and Lebanon.
According to the Israel’s YNet news service:
Among the signatories: Sylvester Stallone, James Woods, Bruce Willis, director Ridley Scott, tennis player Serena Williams, Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, William Hurt, Josh Malina, Kelly Preston, Danny DeVito, Don Johnson, and media tycoon Rupert Murdock.
The Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles has been active since the start of fighting with an aim of drafting Hollywood stars to back Israel. During the war, Ehud Danoch, the consul general, initiated a mission aimed at enlisting support for Israel in Hollywood. The team was comprised of Israeli directors and producers in Hollywood: Arnon Milchan, David Matalon, Avi Arad, Danny Dimbort and Avi Lerner…
Consul General Danoch is continuing with his PR activities, and on Wednesday night he briefed the heads of the William Morris agency on the recent events in Lebanon.
Actor Adam Sandler was present at one of the many briefings the consul general gave this week. At the end of the briefing, Sandler announced that he would personally donate USD 100,000 to the children of the north and south, and about 400 Playstation games purchased by the actor are expected to be transferred to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem in the coming days.
CNN Uncovers Sinister Plot
August 16, 2006
After four days of travelling, I finally have access to news at my hotel in Brazil, unfortunately, it is only CNN. Today, it is reporting an ominous new development in Lebanon — as the Israeli troops retreat back behind their border, Hizbullah is already helping people rebuild their homes. To make matters worse, the organization hasn’t even got the consent of the Lebanese government. To impress their point on the audience, CNN correspondents resort to half fact half fantasy until the anchor has to turn to some regional experts. The first choice is the editor of An-Nahar, who is determined to pay homage to his Saudi paymasters by laying the credit for the “ceasefire” on the “international community”, the Lebanese government, and as an afterthought, “the Lebanese people”. Rami Khouri, the editor of the Beirut Daily Star on the other hand is much more succinct, and disappoints his CNN interviewers by suggesting that Hizbullah’s timely assistance and effective resistance could serve as an example for the rest of the governments in the region.
We were, of course, also treated to the Israeli foreign minister’s fantastic version of last month’s history, in which Israel exercised “great restraint” in only bombing all the bridges of Lebanon, and only destroying a few hundred thousand civilian homes, and only killing a thousand civilians and ethnically cleansing all of Lebanon’s south of its civilian population. All this, of course, went unchallenged by the CNN anchor.
Why Hizbullah is Admired
August 11, 2006
Here is Azmi Bishara on the reasons why Hizbullah is so admired in the Arab world:
The Arab people admire Hizbullah for reasons completely different to the ones people in the West and Israel suspect. The Arab public is drawn to Hizbullah precisely because it stands apart from Arab regimes and, simultaneously, from organisations like Al-Qaeda. Hizbullah is not corrupt and impotent like Arab regimes, and it does not cowardly target civilians like terrorist organisations. Rather, it has waged a valiant fight directly against the Israeli army, rejecting the disregard of Arab regimes for their own citizens when Israel attacks or kidnaps them. Hizbullah insists on avenging its dead and demanding the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israel. Hizbullah regards the blood of Lebanese civilians as of no less worth than that of Israeli civilians, and in taking this stance it has revived a sense of Arab dignity not only with respect to Israel but with respect to their own governments.
The Arabs admire Hizbullah not as an Iranian tool but because it is made up of Arab Muslim fighters who are rebuilding people’s confidence in their identity. If these Arabs can take on Israel so can others, once they are free of the fetters of underdevelopment and armed with resolve. The Arabs admire Hizbullah for the same qualities that Americans or Europeans would admire a political party that led them in a struggle against a foreign enemy: valour, courage, persistence, organisational skill, modesty in words, strength in action, a strong grassroots base, a desire to help the needy and other manifestations of a social conscience. They admire Hizbullah because it avoids hollow sloganeering, it is not corrupt and its electoral victories are not the result of nepotism, favoritism or bribes.
Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine: A Letter
August 9, 2006
July 19, 2006
The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner – and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis – there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.
That this “kidnapping” was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources – most particularly that of water – by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land alloted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.
Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly – who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?
Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.
This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted.
John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Harold Pinter
José Saramago
Eduardo Galeano
Arundhati Roy
Naomi Klein
Howard Zinn
Tariq Ali
Charles Glass
W.J.T. Mitchell
Richard Falk
Gore Vidal
Russell Banks
Dual Loyalty
August 9, 2006
Even as two members of the main Israeli lobby AIPAC are being tried on suspicion of espionage, the Jerusalem Post is reporting that for the second time, a member of the US Navy has been caught spying for Israel:
A US Navy sailor, Ariel J. Weinmann, is suspected of spying for Israel and has been held in prison for four months, according to an article published Monday in the Saudi daily Al-Watan. It reported that Weinmann is being held at a military base in Virginia on suspicion of espionage and desertion.
