Another Chorister for Israel
January 9, 2009
Nidal El-Khairy
On February 29 last year the BBC’s website reported deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatening a ‘holocaust’ on Gaza. Headlined “Israel warns of Gaza ‘holocaust’”, the story would undergo nine revisions in the next twelve hours. Before the day was over, the headline would read “Gaza militants ‘risking disaster’“. (The story has since been revised again with an exculpatory note added soft-pedalling Vilnai’s comments). An Israeli threatening ‘holocaust’ may be unpalatable to those who routinely invoke its spectre to deflect criticism from the Jewish state’s criminal behaviour. With the ‘holocaust’ reference redacted, the new headline shifted culpability neatly into the hands of ‘Gaza militants’ instead.
One could argue that the BBC’s radical alteration of the story reflects its susceptibility to the kind of inordinate pressure for which the Israel Lobby’s well-oiled flak machine is notorious. But, as I will show in subsequent examples, this story is exceptional only insofar as it reported accurately in the first place something that could bear negatively on Israel’s image. The norm is reflexive self-censorship. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Pro-Palestinian’ George Advises Obama
August 12, 2008
Don’t write off Hollywood just yet. ‘How Clooney offers good friend Obama advice on issues from body language to Iraq,’ report Caroline Graham and Sharon Churcher.
George Clooney once famously declared he could never run for public office because he’d ‘slept with too many women, done too many drugs and been to too many parties’.
But now the Hollywood heart-throb has entered the political arena at
the highest level – by becoming an unofficial adviser to US Presidential front-runner Barack Obama.Oscar-winner Clooney, 47, is said to be helping the Democratic candidate to polish his image at home and abroad.
But he is also sharing with Obama his strong opinions on Iraq and the Middle East.
America’s Israeli-Occupied Media
August 12, 2008
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi on US media’s platform for Israeli warmongering.
There should be little doubt that the Israeli government is making every effort to jump-start a war against Iran sooner rather than later. Many Israelis not surprisingly believe it is in their interest to convince the United States to attack Iran so that Israel will not have to do it, and they are hell-bent on bringing that about. Unfortunately, their efforts are being aided and abetted by a U.S. mainstream media that is unwilling to ask any hard questions or challenge the assumptions of the Israeli government.
Israeli intellectuals such as Benny Morris have been provided a platform to argue implausibly that a little war is necessary right now to prevent a larger nuclear conflict. The repeated visits to Washington by Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi to pressure Washington to commit to a military option are generally unreported in the U.S. media, and no one is asking why the United States should be involved in what is clearly a “wag the dog” scenario.
Tel Aviv to Tbilisi
August 12, 2008
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| Israelis wave both Georgian and Israeli flags as they chant anti-Russian slogans during a demonstration outside the Russian embassy in Tel Aviv, 11 August. (Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images) |
Ali Abunimah ofThe Electronic Intifada on Israel’s role in the Russia-Georgia war
From the moment Georgia launched a surprise attack on the tiny breakaway region of South Ossetia last week, prompting a fierce Russian counterattack, Israel has been trying to distance itself from the conflict. This is understandable: with Georgian forces on the retreat, large numbers of civilians killed and injured, and Russia’s fury unabated, Israel’s deep involvement is severely embarrassing.
The collapse of the Georgian offensive represents not only a disaster for that country and its US-backed leaders, but another blow to the myth of Israel’s military prestige and prowess. Worse, Israel fears that Russia could retaliate by stepping up its military assistance to Israel’s adversaries including Iran.
“Israel is following with great concern the developments in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and hopes the violence will end,” its foreign ministry said, adding with uncharacteristic doveishness, “Israel recognizes the territorial integrity of Georgia and calls for a peaceful solution.”
The laureate of all Arabs
August 12, 2008
‘Mahmoud Darwish is dead, but the voice of the Palestinian resistance will live on in all of us ‘, writes Ahdaf Soueif.
None of us really thought he’d die. Our loss is great, we tell each other. In our minds we think of Edward Said, of Haider Abdel-Shafi, of Faisal Husseini, and even – yes – of Yasser Arafat. The “big men” of Palestine. And now, Mahmoud Darwish.
He was seven when – in the Nakba of 1948 – he fled from Birweh, his village in the Galilee. At the age of 12, living in Deir el-Asad, in what had become Israel, with a reputation as a precocious child poet, he was asked to compose a poem for a public reading. The occasion was the celebration of Israel’s “Independence Day” and the poem he read described the feelings of a child who returns to his town to find other people sleeping in his bed, tilling his father’s lands. He was summoned to the military governor who told him that if he continued to write subversive material his father’s work permit would be revoked. That incident set the tone, I think, for Darwish’s life.
Cold War returns via Georgia
August 11, 2008
For some time the US has been priming Georgia for a provocative confrontation with Russia. Israeli and US military ‘advisers’ have been training and equipping the Georgian military. The US has been trying to bring it into NATO. Its military expenditures have shot through the roof. It is also the route for the long-in-planning Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. All in all, a useful foothold for the US in the Russian sphere of influence. And then strikes disaster.
Through a miscalculation worthy of Saddam Hussein, Georgia sends troops into the breakaway South Ossetia to reclaim territory. The Russians, who have been waiting for an excuse to dampen Georgian ambitions, send the still formidable remains of the old red army marching in with characteristic brutality. Georgians beat a hasty retreat, and now have Russian tanks advancing on their own territory. Now, Col (ret.) Sam Gardiner reports, tactical nukes have been thrown into the equation. All in all, a situation more explosive than the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gardiner argues.
Besides Gardiner’s report, here are a couple of useful commentaries to bring you up to speed. First is Laura Rozen’s interview with former CIA station chief Milt Bearden:
In Escalating Russian-Georgian Conflict, the Cold War is Back
As Russia stepped up attacks against Georgian moves to reassert control over the breakaway pro-Russian province of South Ossetia, and many civilians were reported killed and thousands displaced, I asked former deputy director of the CIA’s Soviet and East Europe division Milt Bearden why Russia and Georgia had chosen to escalate their long simmering dispute over South Ossetia now.
“As far as Russia goes, it’s easy: They’re baaack!” Bearden said. “And the Russians are doing what comes naturally to them in their new mood. They know the Europeans don’t want a face-off with Russia/Gazprom. They know the U.S. is so preoccupied with its own self inflicted disasters that it can do nothing but wring it hands. So why not now? It also would seem to stop NATO enlargement in its tracks. Just imagine Georgia inside NATO, and protected under Article 5!!”
All Options on the Table?
August 8, 2008
It is likely resolution H. Con. Res. 362, to blockade Iran, was not just ‘supported’ by the Israel Lobby but was written and driven through congress by them too. I’m not convinced it was anti-war pressure that stopped this effort either. Otherwise a good article by Chomsky, although vague as to why the US wants a war on Iran, which only the Israel lobby is driving for.
NUCLEAR threats and counter-threats are a subtext of our times, steadily, it seems, becoming more insistent. The July meeting in Geneva between Iran and six major world powers on Iran’s nuclear programme ended with no progress.
The Bush administration was widely praised for having shifted to a more conciliatory stand — namely, by allowing a US diplomat to attend without participating — while Iran was castigated for failing to negotiate seriously. And the powers warned Iran that it would soon face more severe sanctions unless it terminated its uranium enrichment programs.
Meanwhile India was applauded for agreeing to a nuclear pact with the United States that would effectively authorise its development of nuclear weapons outside the bounds of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), with US assistance in nuclear programmes along with other rewards — in particular, to US firms eager to enter the Indian market for nuclear and weapons development, and ample payoffs to parliamentarians who signed on, a tribute to India’s flourishing democracy.
Olmert’s Exit
August 5, 2008
Uni Avnery on Olmert‘s legacy.
Ehud Olmert’s resignation speech reached us on our way back from a demonstration.
We were protesting the death of Ahmad Moussa, aged 10, who was murdered during a demonstration against the Separation Fence at Na’ilin village – the fence that robs the village of most of its land in order to give it to the nearby settlement. A soldier aimed and shot the child with live ammunition at close range.
The protesters stood under the windows of the Minister of Defense’s apartment in the luxurious Akirov Towers in Tel-Aviv and shouted: “Ehud Barak, Minister of Defense / How many children have you murdered so far?”
A short while later, Olmert spoke about his strenuous efforts to achieve peace, and promised to continue them until his last day in office.
The Trial
August 4, 2008
Alexander Cockburn on the Ongoing Persecution of Sami al-Arian.
Efforts to free Sami al-Arian have now reached the U.S. Supreme Court. On July 30 an appeal was lodged with the Court by his attorneys, led by Professor Jonathan Turley.There are few prospects in the justice system so grimly awful as when the feds decide never to let go. Rebuffed in their persecutions of some target by juries, or by contrary judges, they shift ground, betray solemn agreements, dream up new stratagems to exhaust their victims, drive them into bankruptcy, despair and even suicide. They have all the money and all the time in the world.
Several months ago I wrote here about the appalling vendetta conducted by the US Justice Department against Sami al-Arian, a professor from Florida who had the book thrown at him in 2003 by Attorney General Ashcroft. As I described it back then, Dr al-Arian was charged in a bloated terrorism and conspiracy case and spent two and a half years in prison, in solitary confinement awaiting trial.
In December 2005, a Tampa jury hung 10 to 2 in favor of acquittal on nine charges. In a plea deal, the government dropped eight of them and demanded Al-Arian plead guilty to a watered-down version of one charge. Normally a hung jury with so large a number of the jurors voting for innocence would mean the prosecutors would not demand a retrial. But given the Justice Department’s vindictiveness in this case and that it might insist on just such hugely expensive and protracted proceedings, Al-Arian’s lawyers urged him to accept the offer. Under the plea agreement—which the government betrayed—Dr. Al-Arian pled guilty to one charge of providing nonviolent services to people associated with a designated terrorist organization.
Breaking the Gaza Siege
August 4, 2008
Stuart Littlewood examines whether Israel will allow the Free Gaza boat of humanitarian suppiles to reach its destination.
Will the “Free Gaza” boat, which is about to sail from Cyprus, succeed in running the gauntlet and delivering its desperately needed cargo of medical supplies to the besieged enclave of Gaza?
On board, we are told, will be some 60 Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals from 15 countries, all determined to break the cruel blockade and see a modicum of justice done, albeit in this small way. Those 60 volunteers represent the hopes and good wishes of millions of civilized people who are sick of the despicable conduct of Israel and those cowardly leaders of the Western world who stooge for the lawless regime and bring universal contempt down on their own once-great nations.
Will Israeli gunboats turn back this peaceful, humanitarian mission? Will they board the vessel, beat up the crew, humiliate the passengers and confiscate any “goodies” they find? Will they simply open fire, as they often do on Gazan fishing boats even if they are nowhere near Israeli waters? Israel’s navy thinks nothing of shelling Gaza’s beach where children play.
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