Promised Not Worth the Wind They're Uttered With

Israeli Terror Attacks: Day 7

by Stephen Lendman

When will Israel decide enough's enough? When will enough dead Palestinian men, women, children, infants, and elderly satisfy Netanyahu's blood lust? He'll have to explain.

Death and injury totals keep rising. Perhaps hundreds already perished. Those injured approach 1,000. Many are in serious condition. Some won't survive. Others are maimed for life.

 

 Israel's aggression reflects ruthless state terror. It bears repeating. Civilians are deliberately targeted. It's longstanding Israeli policy. They're treated like combatants. So are women and children.

Rogue governments operate this way. They're contemptuous of humanity. They perpetuate human suffering. They mock fundamental rights they should respect. They kill with impunity. They don't give a damn who lives or dies.

Haaretz columnist Amira Hass once lived in Gaza. She knows firsthand what goes on. She said Gaza's dead include "farmers, water sellers and the girl next door."

Most Gazans killed are civilians. Only six of the 34 Palestinians killed in the past two days were fighters.

Around 80% of Al Shifa Hospital victims are children. On November 19, "the IAF fired warning rockets at an empty home in the Zeitun neighborhood."

"The building exploded about a minute later, trapping members of the neighboring Abu Zur family inside their home and killing a 5-year-old boy, Mahmad Iyad Fuad Abu Zur, along with two men and a woman: Ahad Hamdi Samil Katati, 38; Sahar Fadi Assad Abu Zur, 21; and Nasma Halmi Salam Abu Zur, also 21."

"Twenty-eight family members were injured in the attack and 20 homes were partly damaged."

Hundreds of buildings have been destroyed or damaged. Four Gazan farmers were killed.

 

A 10-year old boy and his father were killed. They "were trying to fix a pipe on the roof of their home…."

Dozens of reports read like this. Everyone in Gaza is at risk. Israel made it a shooting gallery. Palestinians are as vulnerable as fish in a barrel. No one's sure who'll survive another day or perish. Israel doesn't care. Killing is done vengefully and for sport.

On November 20, Israel National News headlined "Report: Cabinet Meets on Egyptian Ceasefire Proposal," saying discussions convened late Monday night. No details were provided. Israel gave Hamas a 36-hour ultimatum.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's rhetoric belies his policy. He's done nothing for beleaguered Gazans. UN Human Rights Council policy shows what side it supports.

Through her spokesperson, Rupert Colville, High Commissioner Navi Pillay contemptuously said she's following the unfolding situation in Gaza and southern Israel "with considerable alarm."

"She is appalled that once again civilians are losing their lives, including three Israeli citizens killed in their apartment by one of the hundreds of rockets fired over the past week, as well as several Palestinian children, including a baby, and also a pregnant woman and some other civilians killed in Gaza."

She equated three Israeli deaths and a handful of injuries with hundreds of affected Palestinians. The great majority are civilians. Most are women and children.

She ignored the appalling reality on the ground. She said nothing about Israeli responsibility or the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against naked aggression.

She shamed herself. She shows who she supports and opposes. She embarrassed herself further through her spokesman, saying:

"The High Commissioner has repeatedly and unequivocally condemned the indiscriminate firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, and is deeply concerned both by the recent major upsurge in the number of rocket attacks, and that they are now being aimed at a major city, such as Tel Aviv."

Self-defense is legitimate. Pillay knows it. She condemns what she should support. She failed to point fingers the right way. She mocks human rights. She disgraces the position she holds.

US media say three Navy amphibious warships were ordered to the Eastern Mediterranean. On board are 2,500 marines. They're positioned near Israel's coast. If needed, they'll evacuate US citizens.

If it occurs, it'll be a first. Marines would come ashore to help. Mossad-connected DEBKAfile (DF) said positioning three US warships suggests Washington isn't sure truce talks will succeed.

It "sees the situation surrounding the Gaza Strip in a far different light, more like a situation holding the threat of a general conflagration beyond the confines of the Israel-Hamas contest in Gaza."

Without elaboration, Voice of Russia quoted Egypt's Masri al-Yaum newspaper saying:

"The aggression against Gaza will end today (Tuesday). With concessions and capitulations." A separate report said resistance groups reject Israeli truce terms.

They want conflict ended and not resumed. They want targeted killings stopped. They also want Israel's blockade lifted. No further information is available so far.

Russia wants Security Council action on Gaza. UN envoy Vitaly Churkin accused Washington of blocking UN action. America won't permit anti-Israeli statements or resolutions. It's longstanding policy.

Meanwhile, bombing and shelling continues. Maan News said another 21 Palestinians died Tuesday. Family homes are targeted. Children and passers by are killed.

Farmer Akram Marouf was on his land working. He posed no threat. A missile struck and killed him.

Gazan civil defense officials appealed to Arab neighbors for urgently needed supplies. Essential ones are being exhausted.

Maan's report said an Egyptian intelligence source said "there is still no breakthrough and Egypt is working to find middle ground."

A later report said both sides agreed to halt hostilities at 10PM GMT. Midnight local time.

Alleged terms include halting assassinations, stopping rocket fire, easing border crossings, and having Egypt act as ceasefire guarantor.

It remains to be seen what follows. Israeli guarantees aren't worth the paper they're written on. Don't expect this time to be different.

Netanyahu's comment revealed Israeli duplicity. He said "we will not hesitate to do what is necessary to defend our people."

In other words, Israel will enforce occupation harshness, continue targeted assassinations after agreeing not to, bomb and shell at will, accost fishermen at sea, kill farmers in their fields, shoot children for target practice, and maintain Gaza's siege.

What Gazans hoped for was lost. It's hard imagining what they'll get in return for giving Israel what it wanted.

Negotiating with Israel is futile. It yields nothing. Hamas failed to hold firm. Fundamental issues were at stake. They're too vital to be sacrificed. Doing so assures continued conflict.

The moment of truth arrived. It was lost. Long-denied justice once again was sacrificed for momentary conflict cessation and terms sure to be violated. Israel will do what it pleases. Gazans will keep suffering. Conflict will continue unresolved.

Late on Tuesday, nine Arab ministers, led by Egypt's foreign minister, came to Gaza. Showing up falls far short of real support. It bears repeating.

Arab leaders won't do what's effective. Israel only responds to smack downs. Diplomatic and economic ones are key. Recall envoys. Expel Israeli ones. Suspend trade. Play the oil card. Stop supplying Israel.

Suspend relations entirely. Act decisively. Words are hollow. These type measures work. Odds are none will be used. Palestinians remain largely isolated on their own. It's been that way for decades. Expect nothing to change now.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) called for an international investigation on escalating Israeli aggression. Evidence shows crimes of war and against humanity are committed daily.

They include:

"the direct targeting of civilians and civilian objects, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, and a failure to take all feasible precautions in attack and in the choice of methods and means of warfare."

"Customary international law clearly requires that these suspected war crimes be investigated and that, if appropriate, individual suspects must be prosecuted."

"It is imperative that suspected violations of international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict) and international human rights law be investigated by an independent and impartial international body of experts."

"This is essential in order to: secure victims legitimate and internationally protected right to a remedy; and to ensure accountability and restore the rule of law."

"For too long, the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory has been characterized by systematic violations of international law, and impunity for those violations. It is innocent civilians who have been forced to pay the horrific price."

What clearer proof than days of relentless Israeli terror-bombing and shelling. Mostly civilians are targeted. Human suffering is extreme. Stopping it and holding those responsible is essential.

"Any investigation must be independent and impartial, and composed of international experts in international humanitarian law, international human rights law, international criminal law, as well as military experts."

"It is essential that this body have the mandate to recommend international criminal prosecutions as appropriate."

It's high time international law was enforced. Otherwise it's mocked and meaningless.

Israel's gotten away with murder far too long. How many more Palestinian deaths are tolerable before authorities able to act say no more?

"The international community must intervene in order to restore the rule of law, and to take active steps to protect the civilian population, the so-called 'protected persons' of international law."

A Final Comment

Naked Israeli aggression shows Israel won't stop unless punished diplomatically and economically. The Global BDS Movement for Freedom, Justice and Equality lists five ways ordinary people can effectively support Gaza.

(1) Boycott Israeli goods and services. Export profits bolster its economy. They also fund its war machine. Tell others what you're doing. Urge retailer support.

(2) Join a BDS campaign or start a new one. Groups and initiatives of any size and type help. US campaigners pressured pension funds effectively to divest from Caterpillar and other companies.

Giant Catepillar bulldozers demolish Palestinian homes. It's complicit in Israeli crimes. So are other Western companies. Act against them effectively. Strike back so it hurts.

(3) Organize BDS protests. "Demonstrations, banner drops, and flash mobs" raise awareness. Target individual products like Ahava cosmetics. It profits by stealing Palestinian resources.

In Occupied Palestine, virtually everything mined helps Israel, its settlements, and predatory companies. Mining fees, levies, royalties, and profits flow straight to Israeli coffers and corporate bottom lines. Palestinians are denied what's rightfully theirs.

(4) Urge organizations with which you're affiliated to boycott Israel.

"Trade unions, student unions, faith groups and other organizations all over the world have passed BDS-related resolutions calling for divesting from companies profiting from Israel’s occupation."

Keep the momentum going. Get others to act responsibly.

(5) Pressure elected officials to impose a weapons and munitions embargo on Israel. Military ties feed its war machine. Occupation harshness and wars continue. Palestinians suffer and die.

Hit Israel where it hurts. Support BDS measures. Act for right over might. It's long past time this pariah state was brought to heel.



Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net . His new book is titled "How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War"

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

 

The Phony Peace: Israeli Drones Buzz, While Bombs Fall on Khan Younis

 

Zionist Drones and Warplanes Pollute Gaza's Skies Immediately After PM "Ceasefire"

by Eva Bartlett - In Gaza

After one week of Israel’s Nov 14th declaration of war on Gaza, a cease-fire was allegedly reached between Hamas and other resistance and Israel.  Yet, 10 minutes after the 9pm cease-fire began, an Israeli warplane bombed a media office in Gaza’s southern Khan Younis city, and drones and Israeli F-16 warplanes continued to fill Gaza’s skies.

Late into the night, 2 am, the drones and warplanes still pollute Gaza’s skies, psychological terror on a terrorized people who had more than 160 killed and over 1000 injured by Israeli bombing in the span of a week, and who know very well that the sound of a drone or an F-16 roaring overhead usually means death.

**This interview was given this afternoon just an hour before going to Deir al Balah's Al Aqsa hospital for the day where the opposite was true: Israeli attacks on civilians and civilian homes ensued throughout the day, inflicting the most horrific injuries and mutilations.

listen here (http://www.cbc.ca/video/watch/AudioMobile/Metro Morning/ID=2307315927)




**drone flying over our area, civilian residential area

Giving Thanks: No Conversational Options Off the Dinner Table

Go ahead, talk religion and politics at the table

by Robert Jensen - Austin American-Statesman

Here’s a peculiarly American paradox: We are the most affluent country in the history of the world, with an elaborate education system and expansive legal guarantees for free expression.

Yet many citizens are afraid of talking. Outside of the political/media circus in which people disagree theatrically, many people — right, left, and center — avoid thoughtful conversation with those who might disagree.

So, for anyone heading to a Thanksgiving gathering where there will be a variety of people, including some you know you disagree with, a bit of advice: Make sure you talk about religion and politics.

This goes against the conventional wisdom, but there are two good reasons, one selfish and the other moral.

The selfish reason: If we don’t talk about religion or politics, what else is there of interest to discuss? Let’s define “religion” broadly, as wrestling with ultimate questions of existence that are wrapped up in the query, “What does it mean to be a human being?” Let’s understand “politics” broadly, to mean the way we answer, “How should power and resources be distributed?” Those questions make life interesting.

Pushed down the wrong path, these conversations can make some people surly, but they can just as easily open up stimulating, honest exchanges. Here are two suggestions for fostering that engagement.

On religion: People will ask, “Do you believe in God?” Instead of taking that as an invitation to a verbal brawl, I respond, “What do you mean by God?” That invites a thoughtful exchange by asking others to expand on what they believe.

On politics: It’s difficult not to take disagreements about sexual behavior personally, but we can cultivate the ability to consider not just our own choices but the social consequences. For example, on the contentious subject of pornography, instead of immediately defending or condemning the use of sexual material, we can ask: “What stories about sex and intimacy does pornography tell, and what is the effect of those stories?” That opens up the conversation.

Onto the moral reason: The conventional wisdom about avoiding religion and politics has not helped us avoid the mess we are in economically and ecologically, politically and socially. The conventional wisdom on most everything hasn’t been particularly wise lately. Rather than opting out of conversations, we have a moral obligation to engage these topics.

So, along with all the food we’ll be putting on the table this Thanksgiving, let’s put religion and politics on the conversational menu. Let’s ask questions about whether our political, economic, and social systems square with our mostly deeply held moral/theological beliefs about dignity, equality, and justice.

If that doesn’t sound like the recipe for a successful holiday meal, remember this: Our affluent society produces an excess of everything except what we most desperately crave: meaning. Not meaning manufactured and sold to us, but meaning we create authentically, through dealing honestly with reality.

Such meaning comes when in our everyday lives we talk with people — those we know and strangers on the bus — about the most basic questions that have unsettled humans forever: What does it mean to be a decent human being? How do we deal with the problem of power? Those are the questions that never get answered definitively but which we answer contingently through constant conversation.

We all know that over-eating at Thanksgiving dinner can be hazardous for individual physical fitness. We know the solution, no matter how much we avoid it: Smaller portions and more nutritious food.

Under-talking is just as dangerous for collective intellectual fitness. The solution is equally obvious: Larger portions of more robust discussion, debate, and deliberation.
 


Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. He is the author of Arguing for Our Lives: Critical Thinking in Crisis Times (City Lights, coming in 2013); All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film “Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing” (Media Education Foundation, 2009), which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist. 

An extended interview Jensen conducted with Osheroff is online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/abeosheroffinterview.htm. 


Jensen can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html. To join an email list to receive articles by Jensen, go to http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html. Twitter: @jensenrobertw.

By Their Deeds You Shall Know Them: Gaza Ministry of Health Appeals for Justice

Palestinian Ministry of Health Press Statement

The Ministry of Health condemns in the strongest terms the continued Israeli outrages against the citizenry of Gaza. The death toll since 14 November stands at 137, with 1200 injured. 42% of the dead are women, children, and elderly, who also make up 59% of the injured.

The victims of these attacks have been struck down sleeping in their own homes, children have been killed while playing in their garden, adults while driving their cars or motorcycles, shopping at the market, worshipping at the mosque, and going about their lawful work. Some families have been almost entirely annihilated, such as the Al Dallo family.

19 families have suffered in excess of two deaths, including the Al Dallo family (8 dead, 3 injured), the Abo Zoor family (2, plus 20 injured), the Hejazi family (3, plus one critically injured) while others such as the Salah family suffered large numbers of injuries (8, plus 22 injuries in surrounding families.) Family homes, schools, clinics, police stations, supermarkets, restaurants, banks, government offices, sports stadiums, parks have all been hit – no facet of Gaza life has been left unscathed by the deliberate targeting of civilian sites and services by the inhuman Israeli aggressors.

Mosques have been attacked, killing and injuring worshippers.

Families have been attacked in their own homes. Vegetable sellers plying their trade in the street, farmers working their fields, journalists reporting on Israel’s daily atrocities have all been targeted, killed and injured. These are not military targets, these are not legitimate targets – they are civilian targets, and the resulting deaths and injuries constitute crimes against humanity, they are clear breaches of International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law. We thank all of those countries and individuals who have risen up around the world to demand an end to the current carnage in Gaza being perpetrated by the Zionist regime.

We thank our Arab brothers and sisters, especially the Egyptian government and people, who are providing much-needed assistance in the health sphere particularly. We call on all people of conscience to bring pressure to bear on their governments to take concrete and decisive steps without delay, to end this slaughter and to introduce stringent mechanisms to ensure it can never again be repeated.

We demand that the international community, in particular the United Nations, immediately ensure the following: the immediate end to the disproportionate military assault on Gaza and the killing of its citizens, the immediate lifting of the siege of Gaza, the immediate provision of essential medical and humanitarian supplies, and to hold Israel accountable for these crimes before the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Relentless Agony for Syrians as World Watches Looming Finale

World braces for Syrian trainwreck

by Peter Lee - China Matters

[This piece originally appeared at Asia Times Online on November 17, 2012.  It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.]

According to Russia's TASS news agency, a grim milestone was achieved in Syria a few days ago: several peaceful demonstrators in Aleppo were massacred. [1] The twist is that the demonstrators were calling for protection by the Syrian army to end the destruction of the city; they were shot by insurgents.

A single, thinly sourced news item is not needed to demonstrate the profound moral and strategic disarray afflicting the Syrian insurrection as the country totters toward collapse. A handier and more reliable reference point is the abrupt and forcible reorganization of the overseas Syrian opposition at the behest of the United States.

The Syrian National Council (SNC) is now just a junior partner in a broader opposition grouping, the "Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces" (SNCORF). Reportedly, this new group was formed at the insistence of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She is retiring in a few weeks and apparently wished to pull the plug on the ineffectual SNC and replace it with something less overtly Sunni/Muslim Brotherhood-esque. The SNC's major sponsor, Qatar, and the great minds at the Doha branch of the Brookings Institute responded with the marvel that is SNCORF.

SNCORF is striving for rainbow-coalition inclusiveness. The big tent includes secularists, Christians, Alawites, and women - and also 22 SNC/Muslim Brotherhood holdovers - but, for the time being, no Kurds. Also, none of the Western reporting indicated that representatives of the most inclusive and legitimate in-country opposition, the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, led by Hassan Abdul Azim, attended the meeting.

In an attempt to have its communal cake and eat it too, SNCORF announced that this inclusive grouping would be headed by a Sunni cleric, an ex-imam of the Umayyad Mosque, one Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, who appeared in a suit and tie to advertise, if not his secularism, his secular-friendly taste in attire.

A throwback in a suit

Judging from the comments of Asad Abu Khalil , the acerbic "Angry Arab" observer of Middle East shenanigans, the motto for SNCORF and America's Syria policy may well turn out to be "Reorganize in Haste ... Repent at Leisure".

Abu Khalil reported on several interesting items he gleaned from al-Khatib's web postings:

I spent last night reading the writings of ... Ahmad Ma'adh Al-Khatib: a clear follower of the Muslim Brotherhood and a disciple of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi [an important theological mentor to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood]. He has many views that his Western sponsors did not know about. Take his treatise on masturbation here: he maintains that this "sinister habit" causes tuberculosis and tears down the flesh.

Here, Mr Ahmad Ma'adh Al-Khatib calls for Jihad to rescue the ummah [the posting referred to now appears to be inaccessible]. Enjoy him, please, especially those in Western governments which approved him and promoted him without reading a word of his writings.

I am sure that the US Zionists who approved the appointment of Mr Al-Khatib as head of the exile Syrian opposition did not know that he referred to Zionism as a "cancerous racist movement."

Mr Ma'adh Al-Khatib says here [see above note on access to the posting] that Saddam has virtues among them: "that he terrified the Jews".

This kook (who could not have been appointed to the position of preacher in the Mosque of the Umayyads in Damascus without the approval of the Syrian regime intelligence apparatus) here declares that Facebook is a US-Israeli intelligence plot. Read to believe. [2]

Good luck, Secretary Clinton, with that Syrian opposition re-boot.

There was, perhaps, a more significant element to this reorganization that was largely overlooked - the relative absence of Saudi Arabia at SNCORF's coming-out party. The meeting in Doha was orchestrated by the United States, Turkey, and Qatar. Qatar's prime minister keynoted the opening session and "presided" over the expanded meeting of the Syrian opposition. [3]

Apparently, no Saudi Arabian heavyweight attended. That is significant because the reorganization of the Syrian overseas opposition was a reaction against the inadequacies of the Qatar-backed SNC, but also a response to the crisis caused by the mushrooming influence of Saudi-funded jihadis inside Syria.

Foreign efforts to support the insurrection had largely turned into directionless dithering, thanks in large part to Western unwillingness to validate and empower the expatriate and Muslim Brotherhood-dominated SNC with significant amounts of arms. Saudi Arabian Salafists displayed no such qualms about dispatching arms and jihadis to Syria, with the result that extremists have filled the revolutionary vacuum.

News coverage of the uprising now often includes reporting on gruesome atrocities perpetrated by insurgents, the occasional raising of the al-Qaeda flag, and the profound weariness and disgust Syrian citizens are expressing against the insurrectionists as well as the government. With blowback into Lebanon and Turkey, and Israel now firing on Syrian armor, the situation is generally acknowledged to be getting out of hand - and the SNC, never much more than a stalking horse for the Muslim Brotherhood and a convenient propaganda front for the foreign powers seeking to unseat Bashar al-Assad, is definitely not the group needed to bring order out of the chaos.

SNCORF, with its Muslim Brotherhood component sufficiently diluted (or, if you prefer, with its internal politics now satisfactorily factionalized so that the US and Europe can expect to exert a controlling influence on its policies and actions), is being positioned as a suitable and properly vetted vehicle for formal recognition of the Syrian opposition as a government-in-exile and conduit for foreign military aid.

SNCORF might best be regarded not so much as an attempt to level the playing field with al-Assad as an initiative to level the playing field with the Salafist jihadis who have been filling the power vacuum created by the civil war in Syria.

Can the reach of the Salafist jihadis on the battlefield be rolled back so Syria can enter the liberal democratic nirvana promised by the West? The Syrian toothpaste is pretty much out of the tube, Syria appears headed for national collapse, and it is open to question whether SNCORF, even with the superpowers bestowed upon it by its inclusiveness, democratic aspirations, loving coverage in the Guardian, and Western and Gulf Cooperation Council diplomatic and military support, can bring peace and unity back to the torn and bloody nation.

Death squads missing from action

SNCORF has its work cut out for it, and it's worth wondering if Syria's emigres and dissidents - characterized as "reliable technocrats", not "insurrectionists with fists of iron" - can tear the leading role on the Syrian battlefield away from the jihadis and the local bandits, bullies, and heroes who make up the Free Syrian Army and the multitudes of local anti-government militias.

There is one remedy for Islamic extremist insurgencies that is perceived as extremely effective by its US practitioners but is unfortunately out of reach of SNCORF, at least for the time being: death squads. Syria is now at a point similar to that of Iraq in 2006 - a Sunni insurrection has fought the central authority to a standstill, but at the cost of Salafist extremists hijacking local power.

In Iraq, the Sunni opposition to the US occupation eventually fractured as Sunni tribal leaders, threatened by the bloody-minded ambition of their jihadi allies and incentivized by US money, arms and protection, set aside their anti-American, anti-Shi'ite, and anti-Iran sentiments, at least for the time being, turned on the jihadis and cleansed Iraq's Sunni heartland - Anbar Province - of al-Qaeda militants.

The BBC provides some context of this event, the "Anbar Awakening", describing a situation that looks a lot like today's Syria:

But by 2006, in one of the many unintended consequences of the invasion, foreign fighters such as the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had pledged themselves to al-Qaeda and received funding directly from Osama Bin Laden, had come to dominate the insurgency. Their control extended over vast swathes of Iraq.

Their ruthless exercise of power threatened to rip the country apart. ...

For Sheikh Jabbar, desperate times required desperate measures and this was the moment he triggered what would become the Awakening, a military counter-offensive in which he and his supporters joined forces with their former enemies, the Americans, to confront al-Qaeda.

Sheikh Jabbar sought help from the Americans to break al-Qaeda's hold on Anbar province. In late 2006, he arranged a meeting with Colonel John Tien of the US Army in which he asked for weapons and ammunition for his men to take on al-Qaeda. The Awakening had begun, marking a key turning point in the fortunes of Iraq. Although at the time they numbered in the dozens, the forces who would later be known as the Sons of Iraq swelled to a 100,000 or so. [4]

The leaders of the Sunni Awakening in Anbar Province were the leading figures of their communities, tribal big shots with extensive local familial and patronage relationships. They were also working hand in hand with the US military occupation, a rather capable killing machine. This tag-team arrangement helped make the Iraq al-Qaeda hunt a success.

In a study of the Awakening published in the Washington Quarterly, John McCrary quoted the son of one of the Anbar sheiks:

The Coalition Forces has the very strong military ability. The civilians and the tribes, they have a difference that the Coalition Forces doesn't have. It's that they're local - they found and know who comes from outside. They know who are the insurgents and who are al-Qaeda in general, such that there is no more al-Qaeda or anything else. You wouldn't believe me. I'm not exaggerating that in two months, in two months everything was finished. [5]

 Anbar Province, which resisted US pacification for four years, became one of Iraq's safer places after a few months of "Awakening". The US component of this effort was JSOC, the no-holds barred assassination initiative. JSOC was described by Bob Woodward while promoting his Iraq War book, The War Within:

Beginning in the late spring of 2007, the US military and intelligence agencies launched a series of top-secret operations that enabled them to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or so-called special groups. The operations incorporated some of the most highly classified techniques and information in the US government.

Senior military officers and officials at the White House urged against publishing details or code names associated with the groundbreaking programs, arguing that publication of the names alone might harm the operations that have been so beneficial in Iraq. As a result, specific operational details have been omitted in this report and in The War Within.

But a number of authoritative sources say the covert activities had a far-reaching effect on the violence and were very possibly the biggest factor in reducing it. Several said that 85 to 90% of the successful operations and "actionable intelligence" had come from the new sources, methods and operations. Several others said that figure was exaggerated but acknowledged their significance.

Lt Gen Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) responsible for hunting al-Qaeda in Iraq, employed what he called "collaborative warfare," using every tool available simultaneously, from signal intercepts to human intelligence and other methods, that allowed lightning-quick and sometimes concurrent operations.

Asked in an interview about the intelligence breakthroughs in Iraq, President [George W] Bush offered a simple answer: "JSOC is awesome." [6]

Looking at Syria through the lens of what happened next door in Iraq, it would appear that the best way to bring order to the country would be for a transition that would reach beyond intransigent but incapable anti-government emigres to ally in-country moderate Sunni elements with the dominant local military force - in this case, the Syrian Army - and kick off the national reconciliation exercise by a purge of Salafists.

It appears that there were glimmerings of a "negotiated transition", aka deal cutting, with the Assad regime in the early stages of the SNCORF process but unsurprisingly the maximalist "Assad must go/no negotiations" approach prevailed. This is regrettable - at least to people who would like to see a negotiated end to the inconclusive butchery - but understandable.

Flip-flops have their limits

The US and the West are heavily vested in the "Assad must go" position. Presumably, the US could only flip-flop in response to a unanimous declaration in favor of negotiations by the Syrian opposition, but this was not to be:

Some of the last holdouts said they suspected that the agreement was a sly way for the international community to negotiate with Mr Assad about a transition to a new government. So one clause in the agreement specifically bars such talks. [7]

One might speculate that the "last holdouts" for the maximalist charter are not only motivated by overwhelming moral scruples and/or irrational rage against ending Syria's carnage by dialogue with Assad; they are also opposing an attempt to marginalize and subsequently purge extremist Islamists from the redefined movement.

Amidst all this, there was the usual tired effort to shame Russia and the People's Republic of China into solving the West's self-created Syria problem by pressuring Assad.

The PRC's four-point proposal for supporting the UN peace process was, not for the first time, shoe-horned into a West-gratifying narrative of China trying to repair damage to its global reputation caused by Beijing's obstruction on Syria at the UN Security Council. [8]

There are a couple big flaws in this tale of Western neo-liberalism tutelage of the morally obtuse PRC. First, since July 2012 the United States has been exploring the "Yemen solution", ie Assad hands over power to a carefully chosen group of supporters and opponents who perpetuate the status quo albeit in a modified, more democracy-friendly form. Does anybody remember Manaf Tlass, the Syrian military princeling/defector unsuccessfully touted as the great uniter of the loyal and insurrectionist opposition this summer? Maybe not. [9]

US equivocation on its own stance - and drift toward the Chinese position - not only from four months ago but also in the days of haggling leading up to the formation of the SNCORF is not an example or incentive for a Chinese flip-flop on Syria.

Also, as patient and retentive readers of Asia Times Online will also recall, the PRC has been pushing its Syria initiative since early 2012, with the sound, if as yet unrewarded, calculation that its most persuasive Middle Eastern role is as the alternative to democratic chaos for authoritarian governments - aka Saudi Arabia - and managed democracies - aka Iran - in the neighborhood: in other words, leveraging its role as the world's biggest customer for Saudi and Iranian oil to act as the guarantor of economic development and supporter of political stability in the region. [10]

This is a relatively sound geopolitical strategy, especially since the United States is successfully weaning itself off Middle Eastern oil - and the need to share fully and deeply in Saudi Arabia's local security anxieties - thanks to domestic fracking and a coming boom in oil sand crude imports from Canada.

Judging from the journalistic tea leaves, there is no sign that China is abandoning its Middle Way strategy in order to act as the West's clueless trained ape, mindlessly endorsing the merits of externally promoted regime change to its own detriment, a role that that foreign observers for some reason believe Beijing will happily fill in order to gain the approval of the US and European Union.

Unsurprisingly, Xinhua's analysis sniffed that SNCFOR was "dubious", commented unfavorably on its rejection of "dialogue", and also reported on some pushback in-country members of the Syrian opposition who, Xinhua implies, are more qualified to discuss Syria's fate that the emigres in Doha:

Luai Hussain, head of the opposition Building Syria State party, said his party rejects everything that comes out of the overseas-based opposition.

"We reject the formation of any transitional government abroad and any other decision ... and we regard such act as direct and real aggression on Syrians' right to choose their leadership and determine their destinies."

He said his party will mobilize Syrian public opinion to thwart efforts to form a government abroad. "The formation of any interim government abroad would be conducive to increasing division in the Syrian society, and thus would widen the platform of a civil war," he added.

Along with other leading opponents, Hussain did not take part in the Doha meeting apparently because he was not invited. [11]

Xinhua interviewed Luai (who spent seven years in Syrian prison) in Damascus; while Western outlets confide themselves largely to war reporting, war tourism, atrocity journalism, and deriding the Assad government, Xinhua has stepped up its in-country presence in an attempt to promote the visibility and credibility of the PRC's proposed political solution.

Luai advocated "international consensus" to solve the crisis; in Syria-speak, this is the Chinese position of foreign powers ceasing aid to the rebels and switching the international focus from regime change to compelling dissidents to enter the political dialogue track preferred by Russia and China.

If, as appears likely, Saudi Arabia is chafing at the snub administered by Qatar and the United States, the PRC has a chance to present itself as the Kingdom's understanding buddy and redirect King Abdullah's vision toward economics and his country's future as China's energy partner. Perhaps Saudi Arabia will decide its anti-Shi'ite/anti-Iranian crusade has yielded most of the benefits that can be expected, and it is time to ring down the curtain on the extremist-Sunni escapade inside Syria.

However, the idea of imploding Assad's regime is probably irresistible to Riyadh, and in any case the window for happy-talk political solutions is rapidly closing.

Assad's government has lost control of a lot of territory. Judging by its increasing reliance on air power, the government has determined that the battered Sunni conscripts of the regular army and the dubious shabiha paramilitaries are not up to the job of fighting street to street and house to house to get territory back, and the regime is mainly interested in denying key assets and strongpoints to the insurgency by use of jet bombers and attack helicopters. That's not a good augury for the city of Damascus if and when the mayhem moves to the capital from Aleppo.

The initiative in the insurgency appears to lie with aggressive, opportunistic and none-too-popular militant outfits, whose efforts to destroy the Assad regime are frustrated by suspicious Western governments unwilling to give them the money, arms, and support needed to finish the job - and Syria.

Under these circumstances, a political settlement, however desirable, seems unlikely unless a major force - probably not SNCORF, more likely a new Sunni strongman with a taste for order emerging from the Syrian army - tips the scales one way or another.

For the United States and the West - which are primarily interested in finessing their way out of a Syria mess that they, to a significant extent, helped create - the end will come soon enough.

For the PRC, which, for reasons of energy security, is committed to playing the long game in the Middle East, bloody chaos in Syria is just another challenge and opportunity for Beijing to advance its interests in the world's most dangerous neighborhood.

For the people of Syria, it must feel as if the agony will go on forever.





Notes:

1. Syrian insurgents open fire on protestors, Voice of Russia, Nov 9, 2011.
2. Click here for his blog.
3. HE the Prime Minister Presides Over Expanded Meeting of Syrian Opposition, Alarabia, Nov 9, 2012.
4. Iraq's militia leaders reveal why they turned on al-Qaeda, BBC, Sep 29, 2010.
5. The Anbar Awakening, Washington Quarterly, Jan 2009.
6. Why Did Violence Plummet? It Wasn't Just the Surge, Washington Post, Sep 8, 2008.
7. With Eye on Aid, Syria Opposition Signs Unity Deal, NY Times, Nov 11, 2012.
8. China signals more active role in world affairs, USA Today, Nov 9, 2012.
9. Syrian wheel of fortune spins China's way, Asia Times Online, Jul 28, 2012.
10. A Chinese vision begins to emerge, Asia Times Online, Feb 25, 2012.
11. New Syrian opposition bloc wins recognition, role remains dubious, China Daily, Nov 13, 2012.

Israel Deputy Ambassador in Vancouver w/ Jason Kenney Wednesday

EMERGENCY CALL-OUT: PROTEST ISRAEL'S DEPUTY AMBASSADOR - WAR CRIMINALS' REPRESENTATIVES NOT WELCOME!

by vancouverforpalestine.org

Protest Jason Kenney and Israel's Deputy Ambassador Eliaz Luf!

While Israel's bombing attacks have so far killed over 143 Palestinians in the occupied, besieged Gaza Strip, the Israeli Deputy Ambassador to Canada, Eliaz Luf, is coming to Vancouver in order to promote, defend
and support Israeli war crimes. He will be joined by Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, expressing the Canadian Government's support for Israeli war crimes.

Wednesday, November 21
7:00 PM - Outside Temple Sholom
 

7190 Oak Street, Vancouver (Oak and 55th)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/380401652040888/

Israel is besieging a people and continuing an illegal military occupation, while strafing civilians with hundreds of airstrikes. Since November 14 the Israeli military has continuously attacked Gaza with drones, Apache
helicopters, F-16 fighter jets, naval vessels and artillery. On the seventh day of this attack the death toll in Gaza rises to over 143 with over 800 injured. While calls have arisen around the world for a military embargo of Israel, Canada's government has not only failed to condemn the attacks, but instead has affirmed that it "stands with Israel" as the Israeli army continues its deadly campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.

Kenney has been one of the Harper Government's loudest cheerleaders for Israel while ramping up deportations and anti-migrant legislation targeting migrants and refugees; he has also been central in attacks on Arab and Palestinian community organizations in Canada.

COME OUT WEDNESDAY TO TELL ELIAZ LUF THAT WAR CRIMINALS AND THEIR REPRESENTATIVES ARE NOT WELCOME HERE! TELL JASON KENNEY THAT HE DOES NOT SPEAK FOR US!

Questions? Gaza@vancouverforpalestine.org

Where Irresistible Credulity Meets Immovable Bull Shit

Epic Disappointment

by James Howard Kunstler - Clusterfuck Nation

Those inhabiting the economic wish-space got a case of the vapors last week when the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) published an annual report stating that the USA would overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's leading oil producer and reach the long-touted nirvana of "energy independence." The news was greeted in this country with jubilation. Thus, peak credulity meets peak bullshit.


It's been clear for a while that authorities in many realms of endeavor - politics, economics, business, media - are very eager to sustain the illusion that we can keep our way of life chugging along. But under the management of these elites, the divorce between truth and reality is nearly complete. The financial system now runs entirely on accounting fraud. Government runs on the fumes of statistical fraud. The business of oil and gas runs on public relations fraud. And the media runs on the understandable wish of the masses to believe that all the foregoing illusions still work to maintain the familiar comforts of modern life (minus Hostess Ho-Hos and Twinkies, alas).

And so the story has developed that the shale oil plays of North Dakota and Texas, which started ramping up around 2005 - the same year the world hit the wall of peak conventional oil - and the shale gas plays in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio would enable American "consumers" to drive to WalMart effectively forever.

Now, it happens that the particulars of oil and gas production are so abstruse that the editors of The New York Times, The Bloomberg News Service, CNN, and a score of other mass media giants swallowed the IEA report whole, with fanfares and fireworks, and a nation afflicted with doubt about its future swooned into the first week of the holidays in celebration mode - we're soon to be number 1 again, and the future is secure! Have a nice Thanksgiving and Christmas and prepare to sober up in 2013. When the truth finally emerges from this morass of dissimulation, the disappointment will be epic.

Here's why the shale oil story is not the "game changer" that the wishful claim it is: the price required to get it out of the ground (between $80-90 a barrel) will crush the US economy. Since prices are already in that range, the economy is already being crushed. The result is an economy in more-or-less permanent contraction. As demand for oil falls with declining economic activity the price of oil falls - below the level that makes it worthwhile to conduct expensive shale oil drilling and fracking operations.

Meanwhile, in the background, as economies contract and economic "growth" of the type our system requires no longer happens, the problems in finance and banking get a lot worse. This is largely because interest on borrowed money can no longer be paid back. Loans are defaulted on. As this happens, banks become insolvent. Governments play games with public money - including "money" they "create" out of thin air - to prop up the banks. None of it alters the sad fact that there is not enough real money in the system. The result of all these desperate monkeyshines is the impairment of capital formation. That is, the failure to accumulate new wealth. The lack of new wealth, along with declining prospects for the repayment of loans, leads to a shortage of credit, especially to businesses that require large supplies of it to keep gigantic complex operations like shale oil and gas going

Shale oil (and shale gas) share some problematical properties. The cost of drilling each well is a big number, $6-8 million. The wells deplete very rapidly, over 40 percent after one year in the Bakken formation of North Dakota. The oil is not distributed equally over the whole play but exists in "sweet spots." The sweetest sweet spots were drilled the earliest and the quality of the remaining potential drill sites is already in decline.

The current trend shows declining first-year productivity in new wells drilled since 2010 running at 25 percent.

There are over 4300 shale oil wells in the Bakken formation of North Dakota producing about 610,000 barrels a day. In order to keep production up, the number of wells will have to continue increasing at a faster rate than previously. This is referred to as "the Red Queen syndrome" which alludes to the character in Alice in Wonderland who famously declared that she had to run faster and faster just to stay where she is. The catch to all this is that the impairments of capital formation are working insidiously in the background to guarantee that the money will not be there to set up the necessary wells to keep production at current levels. In other words, shale oil (and shale gas) are Ponzi schemes. The story in the Eagle Ford play in Texas is very similar.

I haven't even mentioned the concerns about fracking and its effect on ground water, and won't go into it here, except to acknowledge that it presents an additional range of concerns.

The current price situation in shale gas is different than shale oil. The drilling frenzy in shale gas produced a glut, which drove down prices from a $13 a unit (thousand cubic feet or mcf) to around $2 at its low point earlier this year. That's way below the price that is economically rational to drill and frack for it. The price collapse has played havoc among the companies engaged in shale gas, though it has been a boon to customers. A lot of the drilling equipment has moved to the North Dakota oil fields. There will be less shale gas in the period ahead and the price will go up. It has got to go above about $8 a unit or there will be no reason for any company to be in the shale gas business. But as is always the case in such a correction, the price will surely overshoot $8, at which point it will become unaffordable to its customers. The volatility alone will make the business of shale gas drilling impossible to maintain. Forget about the USA becoming a major gas exporter.

You probably get the point by now, so I will only add a couple of out-of-the-box considerations vis-à-vis the prospect of the USA becoming energy independent.

-- Production is getting so low in the Prudhoe Bay fields of Alaska that the famous pipeline may not be able to operate. If the flow of oil reaches a certain low volume, it takes longer to make the long journey. The oil cools down and gets sludgy and some of the water that travels with it will freeze. This could destroy the pipeline. The capital is not there to retrofit the pipeline for a depleting oil field in a region that is difficult and expensive to work in.

-- Exporting countries (the ones that send us oil) are depleting their reserves and using more of their own oil, resulting in annually declining export rates. China, India, and other still-modernizing nations compete for a growing share of that declining export flow.

-- I have barely hinted at the geopolitical forces roiling behind the sheer business dynamics. But here's an interesting one: the time will come when the US will invoke the Monroe Doctrine to prevent Canada from sending its oil and tar-sand byproducts to nations other than ourselves. Just wait.

Finally, I have one flat-out prediction, one I have made before but deserves repeating: Japan will be the first society to consciously opt out of being an advanced industrial economy. They have no other apparent choice really, having next-to-zero oil, gas, or coal reserves of their own, and having lost faith in nuclear power. They will be the first country to enter a world made by hand. They were very good at it before about 1850 and had a pre-industrial culture of high artistry and grace - though, granted, all the defects of human psychology.
I don't think the US can make that transition in an orderly way.

We're too stricken with techno-narcissism and grandiosity. What troubles me is how we will greet the epic disappointment that waits for us when we discover that the journey to WalMart is over. My guess is that being predisposed to superstition and religious fanaticism, the American public will violently reject science and rationality and retreat into a world of shadows. We're already well on our way. The IEA report will just accelerate things.

Chronicling the Killed and Injured in Gaza

The killed, the injured by Zionist bombings, Deir al Balah, Nov 20

 by Eva Bartlett - In Gaza

Mid-morning we are rocked by an Israeli bombing in Deir al Balah. Running to the empty half of the roof, we see it right away, a thick black plume of smoke rising.

An hour or so later, at Deir’s al Aqsa hospital, the injuries come rolling in: the Zionist army has drone bombed, then F-16d a home not far away, and around the same time has drone bombed a street, killing a Palestinian journalist.


The injured and the dead are delivered by ambulance, car, or whatever is available.



Abu Y, a medic, pulls in, delivers his injured victim, and takes off to the same F-16d house, telling me a fire has broken out in the area.

Two cars screech into the small hospital parking lot to deliver more injured from the F-16ing. A boy is wheeled past and into ICU.

In the ICU, the child moans in pain while stoically allowing the doctors to probe his stomach shrapnel wound. The doctor tells us he’ll need immediate surgery for his stomach and arm wounds. Ironically for all the martyred and injured children throughout the Gaza Strip it is International Children’s Day today.

He tells us so far at least 5 were injured in the F-16ing of the Abu Talaa family home, including 2 children. We later visit the area and see a gaping crater, the home obliterated with all that was inside. A young man pokes at the crater’s edge, under a wall of rubble, trying to find any un-ruined possessions within reach.

An ambulance arrives, in much less of a hurry: it’s victim is dead. The body of journalist Mohammed Beddar, approximately 25 years old, is wheeled into the hospital, back out, and around the side to the mortuary. One of the Palestinian journalists on site to film the martyrs and injured begins to sob when he sees his dead friend and cousin.

Soon after, a middle-aged woman arrives on foot, walking quickly to the emergency room to confirm her fears. She bursts out of the hospital in wails, drops to the ground rolling in her wailing grief that he son has been killed.

An explosion goes off somewhere in the vicinity, but the hospital building blocks the view of any smoke plume.

When the chaos dies down a bit, I look up and notice the streaks in the sky left by Israeli warplanes.

A nurse and a hospital admin are talking. “They’re bombing civilians, it’s getting worse and worse.”

The admin woman tells me of the Abu Khosa family killed yesterday in Bureij, central Gaza. Three young children, killing while playing outside their house in the morning, F-16d.

They speak of Nusseirat today, of kids again playing in the street near which an Israeli F-16 chose to bomb. Ten shrapnel injuries. Children.

“They are targeting children more this time,” says the nurse.

“Around sunset and after, I don’t let any of my children go outside the house, not even the older ones,” says the admin woman.

Emad’s brother, a pathologist, walks past us. He has been working around the clock, going from hospital to hospital for his work on the killed. “I’ve seen 11 martyrs today,” he says. It is only early afternoon.

By evening there is talk over the internet that a truce has been reached. But the drones have multiplied and amplified, and the bombings continued. In Rafah and the north, reports from journalists say the bombing is getting crazy. Bloggers and Tweeters in Gaza City say the coast is being hammered by Israeli warship shelling.

Al Jazeera reports that the truce is no more, not yet:

A Hamas official said on Tuesday that Egyptian efforts to broker a truce with Israel had been held up because the Israeli government had yet to respond to proposals, indicating there would be no ceasefire until Wednesday at the earliest.

“The Israeli side has not responded yet, so we will not hold a (news) conference this evening and must wait until tomorrow,” Ezzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas leader, told Reuters. “The truce is now held up because we are waiting for the Israeli side to respond,” he added

The last morbid death count I saw, on Al Jazeera, was 4 hours ago, bombings ago. It stood at over 120 Palestinians killed since Wednesday. The number of killed and injured Palestinians will have risen since 6 pm.

Junior Sharon Lets Leak the Truth about Gaza Massacre

 

Sharon the Truth Teller

by Gilad Atzmon

Gilad Sharon, son of Ariel Sharon, wrote in the Jerusalem Post that Israel should “Flatten all of Gaza.”

“There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire,” he wrote. “We need to flatten entire neighbourhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.”

Many Israelis and even some Zionists are ‘outraged’ but the truth must be told – Sharon’s views are fully consistent with Zionism, Israeli thinking and some aspect of Jewish culture.

For example, Sharon’s call is fully consistent with some devastating Old Testament’s passages:

‘You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.’ Leviticus, 26:7–8

‘When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations … you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.’ Deuteronomy 7:1–2

‘Do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them … as the Lord your God has commanded you …’ Deuteronomy 20:16

So, both like his real father and his spiritual forefathers, the young Sharon wants to destroy the Gazans, he wants to reduce them and their civilization into dust – thoughts unfortunately embedded in the Old Testament. Though religious Jews following the Talmud rather than the Torah and may be critical of literal interpretations of the Holy book, Gilad Sharon, is a secular Israeli and yet he follows here the most banal and literal interpretation of the Biblical text.

Sharon is also in line with ultra-Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall philosophy. Jabotinsky believed that in the erection of an ‘iron wall’ “which the native (Arab) population cannot break through.” Some would argue that by 1948 Jabotinsky’s Iron wall, became the backbone of Israeli political pragmatism and though largely performed by his political enemies, the Nakba could be seen as the materialisation of Jabotinsky’s ideology.

Sharon’s views are also similar to those expressed this week by Israel’s deputy P.M., Eli Yishai, who contended “we must blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water.”

The young Sharon is clearly a truth teller. He offers us a genuine glimpse into the murderous Israeli psychosis, and the message to be drawn is obvious. It is now time to admit that we cannot grasp the Israeli collective psychosis and fascination with violence and death without a deep understanding of Jewish culture, Jewish supremacy and Jewish tribalism.

For obvious reasons some Jews and even a few Palestinians do not want us to take this route and insist that we avoid any criticism of the Jewishness of the ‘Jewish State’. This bankrupted philosophy would be almost funny if it weren’t so tragic - Elaborating on the root cause of Zionist barbarism is now an elementary humanist obligation.

I guess that we have reached the point of no return. We must now critically examine Jewish politics, Jewish Lobbying, and Israeli crimes in the context of Jewish culture. Such an approach may save the world and hopefully, it might also save many Jews of the shackles of their own heritage.

An Anecdote

I was actually amused to learn today that the notorious Zionist Jeffrey Goldberg, himself an ex IDF concentration camp guard, was amongst the first to denounce Gilad Sharon. Here is how he referred to Sharon’s article on Twitter:

“Gilad Sharon has called on Israel to bomb Gaza to oblivion. I'm semi-surprised the Jerusalem Post published such dreck.”

It is not at all clear at all whether Goldberg opposes Sharon’s views. However, it is obvious that Goldberg is tormented by the idea that Sharon’s view may leak out. ‘I'm semi-surprised the Jerusalem Post published such dreck’ he says. Goldberg believes that the murderous aspects so intrinsic to tribal supremacy are better kept within the ghetto walls. He doesn’t want the Goyim to know. So predictably Goldberg was amongst the first to attack my book, ‘The Wandering Who’, and pursued my endorsers for the exact same reasons. He was very concerned about what people read about Israel, Zionism, Jewish identity politics, and the ideology that motivates himself to serve in our midst as a Zionist agent.


The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics, a glimpse into the minds of the Sharons and the Goldbergs of this world...

Palestinians Painted as "Rats in a Sewer": Israeli Propaganda Reminiscent of Another Age

Israel hijacks Palestinian TV channel with propaganda depicting Hamas leaders as rats

by Ali Abunimah- Electronic Intifada

A video posted on YouTube shows the moment when the signal of the Al-Quds Palestinian satellite channel was hijacked by Israel to show a propaganda message directed against leaders of Hamas.

In the brief Arabic-language animation, a rat in a sewer claims that Hamas leaders have been hiding in sewers “like mice and rats.”

The video was recorded by Asem Abdul Karim.

The Electronic Intifada’s correspondent in Gaza, Rami Almeghari, said that such propaganda would be unlikely to have any impact on people there and is generally regarded with mockery.

In recent days, Israel has carried out deliberate attacks on Palestinian media, including the offices of Al-Quds TV and Al-Aqsa TV among others.

Al-Quds TV cameraman Khader al-Zahhar lost his leg in one of these attacks that have drawn widespread international criticism.

Since Israel launched its current assault on Gaza on 15 November, more than 125 Palestinians have been killed, including more than two dozen children, and more than 800 injured.

While Israel claims to be targeting military infrastructure and combatants, it has attacked, in addition to media, banks, public buildings, police stations and other civilian infrastructure and medics at Gaza City’s main hospital say that most of the casualties they see are women and children.

Israel: Where U.S. Interests Lie

Israel-Palestine: What is the US National Interest?

by Ralph Nader

Israeli elections are coming up in January so it is Palestinian hunting season again. Israeli cynics call it a time “for mowing the grass.”

Out comes the well-worn playbook by Israel’s militaristic government that has worked to silence Israeli politicians and citizens who want a two-state solution. This is an opportunity to use and test advanced weaponry from the U.S., compliments of U.S. taxpayers, and squelch ongoing peace efforts, small and large, by Palestinians, Israelis and international peace advocates.

The playbook’s first chapter is provocation to upset a tense but workable truce with Hamas, the elected government of Gaza. Hamas was encouraged at its creation years ago by both Israeli and U.S. backers to counter the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Bit of a blowback there.

Israeli government leaders are expert provocateurs when they wish to seize land, water or prisoners and upset any movement toward a peace that would create a viable Palestinian state back to the 1967 borders, which includes East Jerusalem. When Israel came into being in 1948, it soon broke a UN truce and doubled its territory by taking the large area known as the Negev desert, whose refugees ended up in the Gaza Strip. Now 1.6 million encircled and impoverished humans, blockaded and under siege by Israel, try to survive in an open-air prison little more than twice the size of the District of Columbia.

Israel’s strategy of breaking cease-fires and truces over the years has been documented by Princeton University history professor emeritus, Arno J. Mayer, in his scholarly book Plowshares into Swords: From Zionism to Israel (Verso, 2008).

In late 2008, Israel broke a months-long truce with Hamas with an attack that took half a dozen lives. Modern Israeli missiles and crude Hamas rockets started flying to and fro. Then Israel invaded the Gaza strip with soldiers to add to its previous incursions – 24/7 electronic and satellite surveillance, omnipresent spies, flyovers, and data mining (down to specific details on each extended family and neighborhood). With their avowed pinpoint bombing, the Israelis destroyed homes, schools, clinics, police stations, clusters of people at bus stops, farms, UN facilities and even hit the American International School – all with the blessing of President-elect Barack Obama.

Observers marvel at the precise knowledge by Israel of who was in what car traveling where in Gaza, before being vaporized. Yet somehow, the second-most modern military in the world could not detect and stop those garages assembling the rockets or the sites firing the crude missiles, which were the rationale for the Israeli invasion.

When the Gaza invasion-massacre ended, there were more than 1400 Palestinian fatalities, including around 300 children, and many thousands of injuries, a population surrounded by destruction and deprived by this illegal blockade-siege of medicines, food, water, electricity and the other necessities of life.

One large extended family in several adjoining homes was ordered by Israeli soldiers to congregate in the largest of the homes. Then the Israelis blew it up. This Samouni family lost about 30 of its members, or more than double the entire fatality toll in Israel, including those soldiers lost from friendly fire.

The current hostilities started in two stages. The first was a back-and-forth that saw an emerging truce broken decisively on November 14 when Israel pridefully blew up a car containing Hamas military chief, Ahmad al-Jabari who actually was leading the negotiations via Egypt with Israel for a longer-range truce.

Back to Israel’s playbook, chapter two can be called the instant, mandatory resolutions by the puppet show in Congress and the automatic one-sided mantra by the White House. “Israel has a right to defend itself,” said President Obama, from the occupied, besieged, defenseless Palestinians, whose lands, water, homes, businesses and freedom of movement are being taken relentlessly by the raiding Israeli government that is not content with possessing 78 percent of traditional Palestine.

More than 1500 Israeli reserve combat officers and soldiers signed a declaration refusing, in their words, “to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.” The founder of Israel, David ben Gurion, candidly declared it “their (Palestine’s) land and we took it.”

So Palestinians do not have a right to try to defend themselves against their cruel, powerful occupiers. Israel is violating several UN resolutions along with international law, according to many experts including Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories. But the U.S. gives Israel its unwavering UN veto cover.

Finally, chapter three of the playbook is to make sure that the Israeli government advocates dominate the U.S. media – the talk shows, the news slants, and the opinion columnists. This is becoming less easy in an internet age. Which might explain that, along with homes, water wells, rescue teams, an ambulance, and other civilian installations, the Israeli air force already has bombed the office building housing Palestinian television studios and hosting media from the western world, including Fox TV. That is one indelicate way to tell these western journalists to get out of Gaza so that the truth about the immense civilian suffering and war crimes can no longer be told by them.

Still, the heroic Israeli progressives and peace advocates would not be silenced, in spite of some Hamas rockets nearing Tel Aviv. A few hundred of them demonstrated in this city, charging the Netanyahu government with provoking the fighting in Gaza to divert attention from conditions of social and economic injustices and civil liberty suppression in their country.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved peacefully, without violence. During quieter times, more than half the Israelis supported a two-state solution. A few years ago, 61 percent of Israelis, polled by a prominent university there, favored negotiations with Hamas. A majority of Jewish-Americans, though unorganized, favor a two-state solution.

In 2002, the Arab League unanimously (22 countries) presented with great fanfare an across-the-board peace treaty with the stipulation that Israel would adhere to UN Resolutions and allow a viable Palestinian state. Again and again, sometimes in full-page ads in U.S. newspapers, this offer was repeated only to receive scoffing and abrupt dismissal by the Israeli government. So, predictably, Washington did nothing.

So what is the alternative? A one-state solution with both Palestinians and Israelis having equal rights? Noura Erakat, who teaches at Georgetown University, framed the dilemma back in August whenshe quoted former prime minister and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak, saying, after leaving his former post, “If, and as long as between the Jordan (River) and the (Mediterranean) Sea there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or nondemocratic…. If the Palestinians vote in elections it is a binational state, and if they don’t vote it is an apartheid state.” His rival, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the same thing.

Awareness of this pathway is leading some extremist Israeli politicians who call Palestinians “vermin” and “rats” to think about the day when they can, with suitable provocations, drive the Palestinians into the desert.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest book is The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Other recent books include, The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood, Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win, and "Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us" (a novel).

Israel's Day of Reckoning Coming: Global Community Cannot Abide the Slaughter of Gaza Longer

World Has Put Up With Zionist Apartheid For Too Long

by Finian Cunningham- The Other Site

The massacre of civilians in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine could be stopped right now with one phone call from US President Barack Obama. One phone call telling the Israeli criminals-in-office that the USD 3 billion annual lifeline of economic and military aid from American tax-payers is being terminated would bring this killing machine to a halt."

Israel’s holocaust of innocents in Gaza has not sated the blood lust of its Zionist rulers, with the death toll rising to over 110 and the injured numbering more than a thousand – less than six days after the latest murderous offensive began.

Preparations for a ground offensive involving up to 75,000 troops threaten a repeat of the slaughter carried out by Israel four years ago in Gaza when more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during a three-week killing orgy.

Then as now, most of the victims are children, their bloodied bodies pulled out from rubble, piled up in morgues; their innocent eyes in a frozen stare at the moment of horror visited on them in their homes.

How can the world tolerate such barbarity? Well, the majority of the world is not tolerating it. Humanity is horrified and aggrieved by these atrocities. All across the world, civic society and a good many governments are mobilizing, condemning Israel’s crimes against humanity.

But the seeming helplessness of the world to put an abrupt end to the holocaust is down to one simple, irrefutable fact. The perpetrators of such evil are supported by the government and ruling class in Washington. In a secondary support role to mass murder are the despicable governments in London, Paris and Berlin. But the ultimate author of this barbarity is Washington.

The massacre of civilians in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine could be stopped right now with one phone call from US President Barack Obama. One phone call telling the Israeli criminals-in-office that the USD 3 billion annual lifeline of economic and military aid from American tax-payers is being terminated would bring this killing machine to a halt.

But there will be no such phone call. Because the Israeli killing machine is an integral part of Washington’s criminal hegemony in the Middle East and beyond. Washington’s imperialist exploitation of other nations’ resources is predicated on its terrorist foreign policy that is embodied by the Zionist regime.

The latter criminal entity cannot be dismantled without first and foremost dismantling the terrorism of Washington, which in turn mandates the overthrow of the American empire of global capitalism.

The blood being spilled, splattered in Gaza is a crime of indelible proportions. It is also a sickening sacrifice that bears important truths about our world.

For a start this criminal entity of Israel is exposed once and for all as an abomination of international law and humanitarian justice. Its continual Holocaust invocation as a carte blanche to commit any atrocity at will and with impunity against Palestinian people and many others is a veil of deception that should now be torn asunder. How dare the terrorists in Tel Aviv forge such a badge of impunity.

This criminal, hypocritical regime of Israel has lost all its claims for legitimacy to exist. For too long, the world has tolerated Zionist apartheid under the cynical cover of “peace process” while Palestinians are robbed off their homeland and their basic material means of existence. This latest onslaught is but the final step over a red line to oblivion; a final step in a long march of atrocities and violations.

To hell with Israel. Through its relentless crimes, Israel has forfeited any right to exist. Those who want to live in peace should do so in the historic land of Palestine. A two-state solution is an affront to international norms and justice. The artificial illegal borders of Israel bequeathed by colonialists and expanded by colonizers should be henceforth rejected and, yes, wiped off the map.

The Western government sponsors of this criminal war machine that is the entity of Israel are exposed in the latest holocaust in Gaza. As condemnations ring out around the world in support of the Palestinians, Washington and its Western allies sit idly, shamelessly, on the UN Security Council.

Both Washington and London cannot bring themselves to utter a word of condemnation against the killing of children and civilians in Gaza. Both pointedly uphold the “right to self-defense” by an Israeli regime that is crushing millions of people under a five-year genocidal siege and which has wiped Palestine off the map for more than six decades.

The United States this week blocked a UN Security Council statement condemning Israel’s violence. US ambassador Susan Rice – who is tipped to become the new foreign secretary replacing Hillary Clinton – used the most twisted logic to say no resolution would be permitted which undermines a ceasefire. However, this nauseating display of hypocrisy is a good thing, for it exposes the cynical, corrupt nature of US government and its Western lackeys.

For months, the US and its Western allies have been denouncing Russia and China for blocking a UN Security Council resolution to sanction the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. Moscow and China have been lambasted for turning a blind eye to violations in Syria – even though much of the violations in that country have been committed by Western-backed mercenaries. All the while, the Western governments have been trumpeting their concern for human rights and international law.

Yet when a clear case of mass murder and human rights violations is now being witnessed in the concentration camp that is Gaza, those same Western governments are silent on the atrocities and the victims. Indeed, they show themselves as the vocal apologists and material supporters of the killers – consistent with what they are actually doing in Syria, despite their fraudulent claims.

Ironically, some commentators claim that the re-election of America’s terrorist-commander-in-chief Barack Obama was a huge snub to Israel’s storm-trooper commandant Benjamin Netanyahu. The claim that the White House and Pentagon global terrorist complex is somehow beholden to Tel Aviv against its better, moral judgment is a dangerous delusion that is now, thankfully, laid bare by the horror unfolding in Gaza and the American government support of that.

To claim that Washington’s nefarious foreign policy is all down to the machinations of Zionist lobbyists and bankers is to fundamentally fail to understand the root cause of violence as a function of the capitalist imperialist system for which the US is the executive power.

The holocaust in Gaza and the sacrifice of innocents spotlights more Western corruption. The Western-dominated United Nations and its puppet general secretary Ban Ki-Moon – also refusing to condemn Israel or to even visit the suffering victims of Gaza – is an organization that is clearly way past is expiry date. This institution under Western control is a disgrace to the vision of a democratic, mutual world.

Its inability to reflect the majority concerns of the world – from the recent overwhelming call by members to put an end to the illegal US six-decade trade embargo on Cuba, to the latest genocide in Gaza – demonstrates beyond any doubt that this world body in its present form must be abolished and replaced with a forum more closely resembling the Non-Aligned Movement.

The holocaust in Gaza also exposes the moral cowardice and bankruptcy of Western mainstream media. These institutions through their sanitizing banalities and affectations of balance are complicit in covering up crimes against humanity, and by doing so prolonging the genocide committed by Western governments and their Israeli war machine.

Voice of America reports how “Israel and Hamas are slugging it out”. The BBC decries how “civilians in Israel and Gaza need a ceasefire”. Reuters reports: “Israel bombed dozens of suspected militant sites in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip… as Palestinians kept up their cross-border rocket fire.” While the New York Times lamented: “Israel and Hamas brushed aside international calls for restraint and escalated their lethal conflict over Gaza.”

Finally, what the Gaza holocaust highlights is the corruption and illegitimacy of Arab leaders. Hezbollah’s secretary general Sayed Hassan Nasrallah has rightly called on the oil-rich Arab rulers to use the world’s number-one commodity as a weapon to demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians and to protest Western-backed Israeli aggression.

But as with so many previous occasions of crimes against humanity on the Palestinians and other Arab people, the venal, corrupt dictators of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Persian Gulf remain shamefully indolent and silent. They are congenitally on the side of the oppressors. These despots are too busy supplying weapons and funding to mercenaries to kill other Arabs in Syria. So is it any wonder that they are indifferent to the murder of Arab women and children in Gaza?

There will be a day of reckoning for the crimes in Gaza. That day is soon arriving.

Palestinian Poet, Ziadah Schools Media

We Teach Life, Sir

by Rafeef Ziadah

 

RAFEEF ZIADAH is a Canadian-Palestinian spoken word artist and activist. Her debut CD Hadeel is dedicated to Palestinian youth, who still fly kites in the face of F16 bombers, who still remember the names if their villages in Palestine and still hear the sound of Hadeel (cooing of doves) over Gaza.