Dubai: Four more Europeans suspected in Hamas official’s killing: Haaretz
The United Arab Emirates has identified four more European passport-holders suspected in the Dubai killing of a Hamas commander last month, a source in the UAE familiar with the investigation said on Tuesday.
“The UAE has identified two British suspects holding British travel documents, and as part of the ongoing investigation has shared the information with the British government,” the source said.
Two more suspects holding Irish passports were also identified, the source added.
The Dubai authorities had already released the identities of 11 people who traveled on forged British, Irish, French and German passports to kill Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a hotel on January 20.
European Union foreign ministers protested on Monday against the hit squad’s use of forged European passports, but stopped well short of blaming Israel for the undercover action.
“The EU strongly condemns the fact that those involved in this action have used fraudulent EU member states’ passports and credit cards acquired through the theft of EU citizens’ identities,” the bloc’s ministers said in a statement.
The bloc’s statement was approved as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was visiting the EU capital of Brussels. He met his British and Irish counterparts, David Miliband and Micheal Martin, and dined with the EU foreign policy supremo, Catherine Ashton.
Lieberman told his Irish counterpart that the Arabs nations blame Israel for anything that happens in the Middle East. He added that there are many other power struggles in the region which could have resulted in the operation.
“The Arabs have a tendency to blame Israel for anything that happens in the Middle East,” he said, adding that the region “has many internal struggles within groups and states which are not as democratic as Israel is.”
Asked whether she would question Lieberman over the Mossad’s alleged involvement in the killing, Ashton said she would “raise a number of things, including that.”
But she stressed that until the matter is cleared up by investigators, the EU would not jump to conclusions.
“We can’t move from a position where some press reports say that something has happened to a position saying: therefore we have to take action,” Ashton said.
She did acknowledge, however, that the member states concerned, which have launched investigations of their own, “have been extremely angry about what has happened.”
Miliband said his Israeli counterpart told him he “had no information at this stage.”
“It is very important that people know that we continue to take this issue very seriously indeed,” Miliband said after talks with Lieberman.
Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday reiterated his condemnation of the assassination and insisted “nothing positive” comes of such killings. He added that France cannot accept such “executions.”
EDITOR: The following item is of great importance and is very comprehensive. Due to its great length, only the first part is included here. To read the whole article use the link below:
Mossad’s most wanted: A deadly vengeance: The Independent
In just 60 years, Israel’s secret service has become a byword for ruthlessness and audacity. As the storm surrounding its Dubai operation intensifies, Gordon Thomas, author of the definitive history of Mossad, reveals the inside story of its most daring hit
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
On Saturday morning, 2 February 2008, a man emerged from the U-Bahn, the city’s railway system, and stood outside the subway exit on the Kurfürstendamm, Berlin’s elegant shopping quarter. He had started his journey in one of the eastern suburbs of the city and its purpose was contained in the briefcase he carried. A car pulled up, the driver opened the passenger door and together they drove off.
Who the man was and what he had been asked to do was known, apart from the driver, to only Meir Dagan and a handful of senior Mossad officers in Tel Aviv. They had patiently waited for the car’s passenger to obtain what they wanted.
Six months before, the driver introduced himself to the man as Reuben. It was not his real name: like all other details about his identity, it remained in a secure room where the names of all current katsas [field agents] were kept in Mossad headquarters. A few days ago, the man had left a message at one of the agreed dead letter-boxes, which Reuben regularly checked, to the effect that he was ready to deliver what he had been asked to provide in return for a substantial sum of euros, half as a down payment, the balance on delivery of what was now in his briefcase.
They were photos of Imad Mughniyeh. After Osama bin Laden, he was the world’s most-wanted terrorist.
Long before the al-Qa’ida leader had launched his pilots against New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington, Mughniyeh had introduced suicide bombers into the Middle East. The Hizbollah terrorist mastermind had read an account of the Second World War Japanese kamikaze pilots in Hizbollah’s own newspapers, Al Sabia and Al Abd, which had praised the pilots for their sacrifices. In the alleys and souks of Beirut, Mughniyeh had persuaded families it was a matter of honour to provide a son, or sometimes even a daughter, for similar sacrifices. They had remained the human weapons of choice against Israel and later in Iraq and Afghanistan. Down the years those who had chosen to die were remembered in Friday prayers in the shadowy coolness of the mosques, after the rhetoric of the muezzin calling for the destruction of all those who opposed Hizbollah.
The deaths of the young bombers were lauded and their memories kept alive. Mughniyeh told their families the souls of their children needed no more, that their suicide bombings would be remembered forever and assured them a place in Hizbollah’s version of Heaven.
Like Bin Laden, Mughniyeh had been hunted across the Middle East and beyond by Mossad, the CIA and every other Western intelligence service. But each time he came close to capture, he escaped, the trail gone cold. Until now. On that cold winter day in February 2008, with a bitterly harsh wind from the Polish steppes whistling through the streets of Berlin, Reuben drove along past the smoke-blackened ruins of the Gedächtnis-Kirche, the church that was a memorial to the Allied bombing raids of the Second World War, a grim contrast to all the other buildings that made the city look like any other European capital.
At some point the man produced a file from his briefcase and, in return, replaced it with an envelope Reuben handed over containing the balance of the fee for the images in the file.
The cover of the grey-coloured document bore the stamp of what was once one of the most powerful agencies in the German Democratic Republic, the GDR, itself at one time the most important satellite nation in the former Soviet Union. The stamp identified the file as once belonging to the Stasi, the security service of the GDR’s Ministry of State Security.
In the 40 years of its existence, the Stasi had employed 600,000 full-time spies and informers, roughly one secret policeman for every 320 East Germans. The Stasi had its own imposing headquarters in East Berlin, interrogation centres around the city, its own hotels and restaurants in the countryside and clinics where only Stasi staff and their families could be treated. One clinic, close to the River Spree, had facilities to perform plastic surgery including facial reconstruction for Stasi agents and sometimes carefully selected members of terror groups with which the Stasi had close connections.
The citizens of East Germany awoke in November 1988 to find the collapse of the Berlin Wall then, with bewildering speed, the resignation of the GDR’s Politburo and the official end of the Stasi’s reign of terror. But not everything had ended. The clinic near the Spree had remained in business, offering its skills to those with the funding to pay for plastic surgery.
The file now in Reuben’s possession contained photos of Imad Mughniyeh which had been taken at the clinic after his surgery. His face looked very different from the one that had last filled the pages of newspapers and magazines after a Hizbollah rally in September 1983 before once more disappearing in 1984, by which time he had established an even-more murderous reputation than any other terrorist of the 1980s.
This was the era when the Venezuelan-born Marxist Carlos the Jackal’s claim to notoriety had begun with the taking of 42 Opec oil ministers hostage in Vienna in 1975. Carlos had then embarked on a reign of terror before Mossad had tipped off French intelligence as to where they could grab him in Sudan and bring him to trial in Paris for his crimes on French soil, where he continues to serve a life sentence.
Like Carlos, Abu Nidal had become another headline-grabbing terrorist after he ordered the gunning down of innocent men and women as they waited to board their Christmas flights in Rome and Vienna airports in 1985. Nidal had finally been killed by a team from kidon, Mossad’s unique unit that conducted legally approved assassinations. But for a quarter of a century Imad Mughniyeh had avoided assassination.
Now, on that February morning, the file in Reuben’s possession could bring closer his death for some of the worst crimes committed on Israel’s doorstep – Lebanon. In 1983, he had plotted the attack against the American embassy in Beirut. Among the 63 dead were eight members of the CIA, including its station chief in the Middle East. A year later, Mughniyeh arranged for the kidnapping of William Buckley, the CIA replacement station chief in battered Beirut.
Next, he arranged the bombing of the US Marines’ barracks near the city’s airport, killing 241 people. In between, he had carried out hijackings and organised the kidnapping of Western hostages, including Terry Waite, who had gone to Beirut to try to negotiate with Hizbollah’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah, to free the hostages Hizbollah already held. Along with Buckley, Waite – the emissary of the Archbishop of Canterbury – had been incarcerated in what became known as the Beirut Hilton, the underground prison beneath the city.
Imad Mughniyeh had been responsible for the murder of over 400 people and the torture of even more. America had placed a bounty of $25m on his head. One by one Mossad’s menume, the Hebrew title by which each director general is known, plotted Mughniyeh’s downfall. Men like the cool Nahum Admoni (1982–1990), the quiet-voiced Shabtai Shavit (1990–1996), the relentless Danny Yatom (1996–1998) and Efraim Halevy (1998–2002), the menume his staff called the “grandfather of spies”, had all chaired endless secret meetings to plan the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh.
Their agents had tracked him to Paris only for him to once more slip away, as he had done in Rome and Madrid. For a while the trail led to Minsk in the Ukraine and then to the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union. There were reports he was in Tehran, living under the protection of the fundamentalist regime. But each time the hunt had petered out. In 2002, Meir Dagan took over Mossad. He did what all his predecessors had done: he studied the growing number of files that listed how close Mossad agents had come to capturing Mughniyeh. At times they had been close, very close. But somehow he had still wriggled free. The suicide bombings had continued. For Dagan it became an article of faith that, as the 10th menume, he would finally terminate Mughniyeh’s reign of terror.
EDITOR: An interesting pr0posal from Harvard academic: Curb Palestinian births!
There is no end to the creativity of Zionist science and imagination, we all know… yet here Mr. Cramer of Harvard harks back to some historical parallels which need not be mentioned for the benefit of intelligent readers… The solution to the Middle East problems is to reduce the number of Palestinians, by curbing births! It can be greatly aided by reducing international aid, he also suggests, and that this would “happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status.” It will also happen faster if Israel continues to block food and medicines. What an ingenious solution! A blinding bolt of light from Harvard! Why didn’t they think about it earlier? It seems clear that some Zionist have already started planning a Final Solution.
Harvard Fellow calls for genocidal measure to curb Palestinian births: The Electronic Intifada
Report, 22 February 2010
A fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Martin Kramer, has called for “the West” to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide.
Kramer, who is also a fellow at the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), made the call early this month in a speech at Israel’s Herzliya conference, a video of which is posted on his blog (“Superfluous young men,” 7 February 2010).
In the speech Kramer rejected common views that Islamist “radicalization” is caused by US policies such as support for Israel, or propping up despotic dictatorships, and stated that it was inherent in the demography of Muslim societies such as Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. Too many children, he argued, leads to too many “superfluous young men” who then become violent radicals.
Kramer proposed that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would “happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status.”
Due to the Israeli blockade, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are now dependent on UN food aid. Neither the UN, nor any other agencies, provide Palestinians with specifically “pro-natal subsidies.” Kramer appeared to be equating any humanitarian assistance at all with inducement for Palestinians to reproduce.
He added, “Israel’s present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim — undermine the Hamas regime — but if they also break Gaza’s runaway population growth, and there is some evidence that they have, that might begin to crack the culture of martyrdom which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men.” This, he claimed, would be treating the issue of Islamic radicalization “at its root.”
The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, created in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, defines genocide to include measures “intended to prevent births within” a specific “national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
The Weatherhead Center at Harvard describes itself as “the largest international research center within Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.” In addition to his positions at Harvard and WINEP, Kramer is “president-designate” of Shalem College in Jerusalem, a far-right Zionist institution that aspires to be the “College of the Jewish People.”
Pro-Israel speakers from the United States often participate in the the Herzliya conference, an influential annual gathering of Israel’s political and military establishment. This year’s conference was also addressed by The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and, in a first for a Palestinian official, by Salam Fayyad, appointed prime minister of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.
Kramer’s call to prevent Palestinian births reflects a long-standing Israeli and Zionist concern about a so-called “demographic threat” to Israel, as Palestinians are on the verge of outnumbering Israeli Jews within Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories combined.
Such extreme racist views have been aired at the Herzliya conference in the past. In 2003, for example, Dr. Yitzhak Ravid, an Israeli government armaments expert, called on Israel to “implement a stringent policy of family planning in relation to its Muslim population,” a reference to the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel.
EDITOR: The EU has woken up, briefly…
More than one month after the murder in Dubai, the EU has made some noise about the events. If this is the measure of the new EU top bureaucracy and it fast response, we should all be greatly worried.
EU condemns use of forged passports in Dubai hotel killing: The Guardian
Israel not directly referred to but statement intended to ‘censure country’ over alleged involvement in Hamas official’s assassination
The EU has strongly condemned the use of forged European passports by the hit squad which assassinated a senior Hamas official in Dubai, but made no direct reference to Israel, whose secret service, the Mossad, remains the main suspect in the murder.
Israel has refused to confirm or deny involvement in the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed in a hotel in Dubai on 19 January.
This afternoon EU foreign ministers released a statement saying: “The EU strongly condemns the fact that those involved in this action used fraudulent EU member states’ passports and credit cards acquired through the theft of EU citizens’ identities.”
Diplomatic sources said that the statement was intended to censure Israel over the country’s alleged involvement even though the Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said last week that there was no proof that the Mossad was behind the killing.
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, also raised the matter of the forged passports in a meeting with his Israeli opposite number today.
The tally of fake passports used by the assassins includes six British, five Irish, one French and one German.
The EU statement comes after Dubai’s police chief said that three of the killers may have used diplomatic passports to enter the country. “There is information that the Dubai police will not make public for the moment, especially regarding diplomatic passports,” Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim told a local newspaper.
Although Miliband pressed Israel for more answers during a 45-minute meeting with Lieberman in Belgium earlier this afternoon, he came away without any new information about possible Israeli involvement.
“I set out the seriousness of the issue to Britain and the need for Britain and Israel to co-operate, and the importance of the investigation the prime minister has announced and the importance we attach to Israeli co-operation with that investigation,” he said. “It is very important that people know that we continue to take this issue very seriously indeed.”
Despite Lieberman’s insistence that he had “no new information at this stage”, Miliband urged Israel to co-operate in a “transparent and clear” way.
The Israeli foreign minister, whose meetings with ministers in Brussels were organised before the assassination controversy broke out, will also be challenged by the Irish foreign minister, Micheál Martin, and will have meetings with French and German ministers.
“Mr Lieberman decided to use the fact that EU foreign ministers were meeting in Brussels to come and hold a series of private meetings on issues of mutual interest,” said an EU official. “But now some ministers want to take the opportunity to try to get some answers on the passport issue.”
However, officials talked down the chances of shedding any light on the role – if any – Israel played in the murder.
Meanwhile, the home secretary, Alan Johnson, confirmed that the Serious Organised Crime Agency was investigating the “apparent use of counterfeit passports” by the hit squad.
The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) which issues passports, said it was satisfied the passport records were real but confirmed they did not match the pictures and signatures on their records.
Johnson said in a statement to parliament: “Following a formal request from the Emirati law enforcement authorities, the Serious Organised Crime Agency is conducting an investigation into the apparent use of counterfeit British passports by those suspected of murdering a Hamas official in Dubai recently.
“The investigation is at an early stage but a number of avenues of enquiry are expected to be followed.
Although Israeli officials would not be drawn on the identity of the assassins, one minister said today that he did not believe Mabhouh’s killing could be termed murder. Public diplomacy minister Yuli Edelstein denied knowing who was responsible for the act, but said that it would be wrong to become “overly emotional” about the death.
“Even if it will turn out that the worst secret service of the worst country in the world had managed to get to that guy, I will still not call it murder,” he told the Henry Jackson Society thinktank at the House of Commons.
“We are talking about the worst murderer in one of the worst terrorist organisations, so let’s not get overly emotional about his death and let’s not start mourning his death.”
More Dubai killing suspects had British passports: The Independent
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
The United Arab Emirates has identified four more suspects, carrying British and Irish passports, in the Dubai killing of a Hamas commander, a source in the UAE familiar with the investigation said on Tuesday.
“The UAE has identified two British suspects holding British travel documents, and as part of the ongoing investigation has shared the information with the British government,” the source told Reuters.
The Dubai authorities have released the identities of 11 people who travelled on forged British, Irish, French and German passports to kill Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a hotel in January.
Goldstone Report back on UN agenda: Ynet
GA to vote on five-month extension for individual probes of Gaza war, Ban asked to report on progress
WASHINGTON – The UN General Assembly is scheduled to convene Friday in order to vote on an extension period of five months for Israel’s internal investigation of Operation Cast Lead as well as the investigation announced by the Palestinian Authority following the Goldstone Report.
According to a resolution submitted by Western countries, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be asked to once again report on the progress of the individual probes to member states after the five month period comes to an end.
The extension period, offered by Arab members, was aimed mainly at keeping the Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of war crimes, on the agenda. Three of the five permanent members of the Security Council – the US, Britain, and France – are opposed to its being brought before the council.
The first resolution on the issue made by the Security Council, which passed on November 5, asked Ban to report on the investigations being conducted by Israel and the Palestinians. His response was that Israel’s probe was ongoing and that the PA had launched one of its own.
A large part of Ban’s report included Israel’s response to Goldstone, which explained the manner in which the military advocate general conducting the probe is independent of the IDF.
The Arab proposal for the five-month extension of the probes calls on Israel once again to “conduct an independent, reliable investigation that complies with international standards of the severe violations of
international humanitarian law, as the committee for the investigation of the facts reported, in order to guarantee the assumption of responsibility and justice”.
A similar demand was issued for the “Palestinian side”, without explaining whether it was aimed at Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. Ban is asked to report on the progress in order for the UN to “weigh additional moves, if needed, by relevant UN bodies, including the Security Council”.
More British passports found in hunt for Hamas assassins: Times online
Hamas militants stand in front of a photograph of late senior Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh during a rally denouncing his killing, in the northern Gaza Strip
Eight forged British passports were used in the assassination of a top Hamas agent in Dubai, it was revealed yesterday, as pressure mounted on Israel to co-operate with European investigations into the identity thefts.
Chris Bryant, Minister for Europe, said that police in Dubai had discovered details of another two fraudulent British passports used by suspected Mossad agents, in addition to the six already cloned from the passports of real-life Britons. The disclosure raises the prospect that there may be more British citizens whose identity was falsely used in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, should the latest documents also be found to have been copied from originals.
Mr Bryant addressed the Commons hours after David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, emerged empty-handed from a showdown with his Israeli counterpart in Brussels, despite a united European front.
The 27 European foreign ministers meeting in Brussels stopped short of naming Israel but called the killing “an action which cannot be conducive to peace and stability in the Middle East” and condemned the use of European passports to carry out the crime.
They said their passports were “among the most secure in the world”, amid fears that friendly Gulf States such as Dubai might consider imposing visa requirements for EU visitors in light of the death. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s bullish foreign minister, said there was “no proof” of Israel’s involvement in the killing. Mr Miliband avoided blaming Israel but said he had asked for co-operation with the British investigation.
Mr Bryant told the Commons that Mr Miliband “said that we stand ready to work with Israel on bringing stability and peace to the Middle East but that we can only do so on the basis of trust and mutual transparency. He underlined the deep discontent felt in this country, in this Government and in this House over this issue”.
Baroness Ashton, the EU high representative, said she intended to raise the passports issue with Mr Lieberman at a dinner meeting last night.
Micheál Martin, the Irish foreign minister, was also given short shrift by Mr Lieberman, who said he was unable to provide any information on the use of five Irish passports. Mr Martin said he had received no formal assurance from the minister that Israel had not been involved: “He indicated very strongly that he had no information whatsoever on the situation in Dubai.”
At least one Irish businessman in Dubai had been “very negatively treated” in the past few days “as there was a presumption that Ireland was involved [in the assassination] in some way”, he said.
Israeli media named the Hamas man suspected by Dubai police of complicity in the assassination as Nehru Massoud, an operative in Hamas’s attempt to smuggle Iranian weapons into Gaza. He is believed to have been in Dubai to meet Iranian sponsors to arrange an arms deal at the time of the killing on January 19.
The Hebrew daily, Maariv, quoted an unnamed Palestinian official as saying that Dubai had requested his extradition from Syria but authorities there had refused.
Israel’s Plans for 2 Sites Stir Unrest in West Bank: NY Times
JERUSALEM — Scores of Palestinians clashed with Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Hebron on Monday, a day after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced plans to include two hotly contested sites — a Hebron shrine and a tomb in another West Bank city — on a list of Israeli national heritage sites.
Both sit in areas that Israel controls and that the Palestinians demand as part of the territory of a future state, and both have been focal points of past violence. Their inclusion on the Israeli list enraged Palestinian leaders and prompted the United Nations special coordinator for the region to express concern.
The Israeli military said that one soldier in Hebron was lightly wounded by rocks hurled by Palestinians. There were no reports of injuries on the Palestinian side.
On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu laid out a $100 million government plan to rehabilitate what he called “archaeological and Zionist heritage sites,” during a special cabinet meeting held in northern Israel at Tel Hai, the scene of a 1920 battle between Arabs and early Zionist settlers.
He said he intended to include the Cave of the Patriarchs, also known as Ibrahimi Mosque, the Hebron shrine revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians as the burial place of Abraham, on the list of about 150 sites. In 1994, a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, fatally shot 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers inside the shrine.
Mr. Netanyahu said he also planned to include Rachel’s Tomb, a shrine just inside the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
“People must be familiar with their homeland and its cultural and historical vistas,” he told the cabinet. “This is what we will instill in this and coming generations, to the glory — if I may say — of the Jewish people.”
Mr. Netanyahu had come under pressure from Israeli rightists to include the two shrines. He said Sunday that the list of sites submitted to the cabinet was neither final nor closed.
But the announcement drew sharp criticism from Palestinian officials and the Fatah party, led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said in a statement on Monday, “The unilateral decision to make Palestinian sites in Hebron and Bethlehem part of Israel shows there is no genuine partner for peace, but an occupying power intent on consolidating Palestinian lands.”
He added that control over archaeological and tourist sites is “part of the continuing Israeli settlement enterprise.”
In a statement on Monday, Robert H. Serry, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said: “These sites are in occupied Palestinian territory and are of historical and religious significance not only to Judaism, but also to Islam, and to Christianity as well. I urge Israel not to take any steps on the ground which undermine trust or could prejudice negotiations.”
Israel’s contemptuous response to Goldstone findings: The Electronic Intifada
Sayed Dhansay, 22 February 2010
After Israel’s devastating attack on Gaza last winter, the UN-commissioned Goldstone fact-finding team and subsequent report accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Released in September 2009, the Goldstone report recommended that both parties conduct impartial, independent investigations into these accusations within six months, failing which, the matter would be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
While both parties to the conflict were cited for possible war crimes, the Goldstone report reserved the majority of its condemnation for Israel because of the vast difference in casualties on the two sides — more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, and 13 Israelis. Four Israeli civilians were killed by rocket fire from Gaza, while more than 900 unarmed Palestinian civilians, including some 320 children, were massacred in Gaza.
Submitted to the UN on 29 January, the Israeli government’s response falls far short of a credible investigation however, and continues Israel’s long-standing policy of refusal to investigate and convict those responsible for crimes committed during its military campaigns.
A fundamental flaw of this “investigation” is that Israel has a military justice system for its armed forces. As stated in the report, Israel’s Military Advocate General’s Corps is “responsible for enforcing the rule of law throughout the IDF [Israeli military].” The three main organs of Israel’s military justice system are the Military Advocate General’s Corps, the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division (MPCID) and the Military Courts — all branches of the Israeli military.
While the Israeli government’s report goes to great lengths to argue that these bodies are “professionally independent” of the armed forces, the fact remains that they are all part of Israel’s overall military establishment, and therefore share a common interest. Furthermore, the fact that Israel’s military courts are located in military bases raises great doubt over whether the same rules of evidence and due process apply as would in public civilian criminal proceedings. Indeed, many human rights organizations have documented that Israel’s military court system does not come close to respecting international norms of justice.
This situation creates a clear conflict of interest, and practically renders the impartiality of such an investigation impossible — the Israeli military is certainly not going to incriminate and punish itself and its leaders. The final decision to institute criminal investigations regarding all complaints against the army rests with the Military Advocate General (MAG). The indisputable bias created by this self-regulating system is obvious throughout Israel’s report.
For example, the Israeli report claims that seven separate incidents were investigated in which “a large number of civilians not directly participating in hostilities were harmed.” According to the report, in four of these incidents, the MAG “found no grounds to open a criminal inquiry.” Included in these four incidents are the bombing of senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan’s home, killing Rayyan and 15 other civilians, and the shelling of the house of Dr. Izzedin Abu al-Aish, which resulted in the deaths of his three daughters and niece. The remaining three incidents are still “undergoing investigation.”
The Israeli government attempts to justify these indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets by claiming that it made thousands of phone calls and dropped leaflets on areas in which the army was operating. The Goldstone report found however that due to the deep shock and widespread damage caused by hundreds of air strikes during the first week of Israel’s campaign, Gaza residents were faced with “the dilemma of not only where to go, but whether it was safe to leave at all.”
The Goldstone report concludes that civilians in Gaza had no objective basis on which to believe that they would be safer elsewhere, because many of the central areas which Israel had instructed civilians to move toward, had suffered “intense aerial bombardment and destruction.”
On 15 January 2009, Gaza City’s al-Quds Hospital was struck by a number of white phosphorous shells. The ensuing fires caused widespread panic and chaos among the sick and wounded, necessitated two evacuations of the hospital under extremely perilous conditions and caused huge financial losses. As a result of the destruction of the hospital’s infrastructure, an eight-year-old girl who had been shot by an Israeli sniper could not receive the requisite care and died. Contrary to claims made by the Israeli government, the Goldstone commission found no evidence that Palestinian resistance fighters used the hospital’s premises to launch attacks against Israeli forces.
The Goldstone report also notes the destruction of three ambulances by Israeli tank fire and heavy damage to a nearby ambulance depot in the same attack. It concludes that by using white phosphorous to directly attack a civilian hospital and ambulances, the Israeli military breached the Fourth Geneva Convention, and violated international law.
The Israeli report devotes just one line to these allegations. While it mentions that there were allegations of ten incidents of its forces opening fire on medical facilities and buildings, it simply concludes that “the MAG found no basis to order criminal investigations of the ten incidents under review.”
Although the Goldstone report notes that white phosphorous is not proscribed under international law for concealing troop movements, the commission labeled Israel’s repeated use of the substance on civilian targets as “reckless.” After noting the horrific injuries and number of deaths caused by its use in Gaza, the commission actually called for serious consideration to be given to banning white phosphorous as an obscurant.
The Israeli government initially repeatedly denied that its armed forces were using white phosphorous. Now, the report says rather casually that “The MAG found no grounds to take disciplinary or other measures for the [Israeli military’s] use of weapons containing phosphorous, which involved no violation of the Law of Armed Conflict.”
One of the main incidents detailed in the Goldstone report regarding indiscriminate attacks by Israeli forces against civilians in Gaza is the shelling of al-Fakhura Street in Jabaliya, where the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) had opened a school for fleeing civilians to take refuge. UNRWA confirmed to the Goldstone commission that the Israeli army was “fully aware” that more than 1,300 civilians were taking refuge in the school.
However, on 6 January 2009, four Israeli mortar shells were fired into the street outside the school, killing 35 civilians, including 11 members of the al-Deeb family. Witnesses described scenes of “chaos and carnage” as at least 40 more persons were injured by the blasts, the situation exacerbated by the difficulties in reaching ambulance services at the time. This incident, like several others, is not even mentioned in the Israeli response.
The Goldstone report devotes an entire chapter to Israeli attacks on the foundations of civilian life in Gaza. It finds that Israeli forces were responsible for premeditated and systematic destruction of food production facilities, water and sanitation services and construction industries, thereby violating the civilian population’s fundamental human rights to food security, means of subsistence and adequate housing. The Goldstone report notes that 324 factories were either partially or completely destroyed, resulting in the loss of 40,000 jobs, and notes that none of these attacks were necessary for the achievement of military objectives.
Following a typical pattern, the Israeli response glosses over these accusations with limited detail and factual evidence. It states that of the 34 major incidents discussed in the Goldstone report, only nine are the subject of ongoing criminal investigations by the MPCID, without disclosing which incidents these claims refer to. In its rebuttal of the Goldstone report’s claims that the Israeli army systematically destroyed Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, the report states simply: “Regarding certain incidents … the MAG has reviewed the entire record and concluded that there was no basis for a criminal investigation.”
The report then lists three incidents of damage to civilian infrastructure, which it claims were the subject of investigations. The Namar Wells, which supplied more than 25,000 persons with drinking water, were completely destroyed by several Israeli air strikes. The Goldstone commission reported that no evidence existed to suggest that Hamas used the wells for military purposes. The Israeli report claims it to be a legitimate target because it was a “Hamas military compound” and the incident thus unworthy of a criminal investigation.
Similarly, the Israeli report claims that the area surrounding the al-Bader flour mills, one of Gaza’s few remaining food production facilities, was “hit by several tank shells when responding to Hamas fire in the area.” This was proven untrue, when several news outlets reported that a UN bomb disposal team had in fact found the remnants of an MK-82 bomb used by the Israeli Air Force in the mill. This incident was also deemed unworthy of a criminal investigation by the Israelis.
The Hamas investigation, also effectively an internal probe, faces the same issue of lack of impartiality. It should be noted however, that while Israel has the deaths of more than 900 civilians to answer for, Hamas is responsible for four Israeli civilian casualties. Furthermore, Hamas strictly abided by the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire for four months preceding Israel’s attack, drastically reducing rocket fire into the country’s south. This resumed only when the Israeli army broke the ceasefire and assassinated six Hamas members on 5 November 2009, in an attempt to lure the group back into hostilities, thereby justifying its upcoming offensive.
In its conclusion, the Israeli report claims to have launched investigations into 150 separate incidents, including 36 criminal cases. More than one year after the offensive however, there have been no criminal convictions or legal cases of note. Aside from two soldiers who were “disciplined” for exceeding their authority by authorizing the firing of explosive shells in populated areas, the Israeli report makes no other specific mention of guilty verdicts.
Israel’s feeble response to the Goldstone report continues the country’s long and consistent history of impunity and unaccountability regarding serious allegations of war crimes made against it. In 1983, the Israeli Kahan Commission found Israel “indirectly responsible” for the massacre at the Palestinian Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut the previous year. Ariel Sharon, the architect of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and then defense minister, was found to bear “personal responsibility” for ignoring and not preventing the massacre. Although he reluctantly resigned as defense minister, he remained in Israel’s Cabinet and would return almost two decades later to become the country’s prime minister, never facing any criminal charges.
And after the Israeli army’s invasion and destruction of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002 — which then UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen described as “horrific beyond belief” — and allegations of war crimes from a number of human rights organizations, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to send a fact-finding mission to the camp. In another callous move to evade international scrutiny, then Israeli prime minister Sharon arrogantly declared that the composition of the UN team was “unacceptable to Israel.” After failing to twist the UN’s arm on the composition of the team and its terms of reference, Israel prevented its entry into the country.
More recently, after the 2006 shelling of Beit Hanoun in Gaza, the UN Human Rights Council established a fact-finding mission led by former South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu. The mission was denied access to Gaza by the Israeli government on three separate occasions. When it finally reached Beit Hanoun almost two years later, the mission concluded that the Israeli attack possibly constituted a war crime. Tutu sharply criticized not only the incident, but also Israel’s “lack of an adequate investigation into the killings.”
The Israeli report into its conduct in Gaza last winter appears to be a haphazard excuse of an investigation, using dual tactics of denial and delay, purely to stave off pressure from the international community. Blatant violations of human rights and humanitarian law are shamelessly denied in the report. In other cases, few details are given about the numerous “ongoing investigations.” The high number of incidents that were merely discarded by the MAG indicates that international standards required for a proper investigation into violations of international law have not been met. Lending further doubt to Israel’s process is the fact that several incidents were not criminally investigated, but probed through internal Israeli army operational debriefings.
The Israeli investigation, conducted without public scrutiny, and entirely within the realm of the army’s structures, lacks credibility, consistency and transparency. An army accused of serious violations of law cannot be expected to impartially investigate itself. Throughout its history, Israel has demonstrated time and again its belligerent disregard for Palestinian human rights and contempt of international law. Its outright refusal to cooperate with the Goldstone commission came as no surprise, and continues a consistent pattern of impunity and unaccountability for egregious war crimes. It is imperative that the international community view the Israeli response to the Goldstone report as a blatant attempt to whitewash its crimes in Gaza, and refer the matter to the ICC without further delay. To do otherwise will only continue to encourage Israeli intransigence and its crimes against the Palestinian people.
Sayed Dhansay is a South African human rights activist and independent freelance writer. He volunteered for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2006 and is an organizer of the South African delegation for the Gaza Freedom March. He blogs at http://sayeddhansay.wordpress.com.
War game shows how attacking Iran could backfire: McClatchy Newspapers
By Warren P. Strobel
WASHINGTON — Here’s a war game involving Iran, Israel and the U.S. that shows how unintended consequences can spin out of control:
With diplomacy failing and precious intelligence just received about two new secret Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel launches a pre-emptive strike against Tehran’s nuclear complex. The strike is successful, wiping out six of Iran’s key sites and setting back its suspected quest for a bomb by years.
But what happens next isn’t pretty.
The U.S. president and his National Security Council try to keep the crisis from escalating. That sours U.S.-Israeli relations, already stressed by the fact that Israel didn’t inform Washington in advance of the strike. The White House tries to open a channel for talks with Iran, but is rejected.
Instead, Iran attacks Israel, both directly and through its proxies in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It misinterprets U.S. actions as weakness and mines the Straits of Hormuz, the world’s chief oil artery. That sparks a clash and a massive U.S. military reinforcement in the Persian Gulf.
This recent war game conducted at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, part of the Washington-based Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, appears to dampen hopes for a simple solution to Iran’s real-world nuclear challenge.
The lesson is “once you start this, it’s really hard to stop it,” said Kenneth Pollack, a former White House and CIA official who oversaw the simulation.
Pollack and others who participated in the day-long exercise late last year are quick to point out that war games are imperfect mirrors of reality. How Iran’s notoriously opaque and fractious leadership would react in a real crisis is particularly hard to divine.
But the outcome underscores what diplomats, military officers and analysts have long said: even a “successful” airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities — setting the program back by two to four years — could come at a tremendous, unpredictable cost.
“It’s … an option that has to be looked at very, very, very carefully,” a senior European diplomat said Friday. “Because we know what the results could be, and they could be disastrous.” He requested anonymity to speak more frankly on the sensitive issue.
Tensions over Iran’s nuclear program rose again this week after the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog reported that the country could be secretly developing a nuclear warhead to be placed atop a ballistic missile. Additionally, Iran has begun enriching uranium closer to the purity level needed for use in a nuclear weapon.
Israel, which sees Iran as a direct threat, has refused to rule out military force, although officials there say they are counting for now on diplomatic pressure. There have even been hints from Sunni Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, that they would look the other way in the event of a strike on Shiite Iran, a historic adversary.
Yet one of the Brookings war game’s major conclusions is that Israel could pay dearly for an attack on Iran.
By the end of the simulation, eight days after the fictitious Israeli strike, Israel’s prime minister, under heavy domestic pressure, is forced to launch a 48-hour air blitz in southern Lebanon to halt rocket attacks from Hezbollah, the militant group sponsored by Iran. Israeli officials know the blitz is unlikely to achieve its objectives, and prepare a larger, costlier operation in Lebanon, including ground forces.
Israel’s relations with the United States, its most important ally, are damaged. To avoid damaging them further, Israel bows to intense U.S. pressure and absorbs occasional missile strikes from Iran without retaliating.
Some members of the “Israeli” team nonetheless felt that setting back Iran’s nuclear program “was worth it, even given what was a pretty robust response,” said one participant. He asked that his name not be used, because under the game’s ground rules, participants are supposed to remain anonymous.
Jonathan Peled, an Israeli embassy spokesman, declined comment on the war game or its outcome.
“All we can say is that Iran constitutes a threat not only to Israel but to the region, to the US and to the world at large, and therefore should be addressed without delay by the international community, first and foremost through effective sanctions,” he said.
The Brookings war game was one of three simulations regarding Iran’s nuclear program conducted in December. The other two, at Harvard University and Tel Aviv University, reportedly found that neither sanctions nor threats dissuaded Tehran from its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.
In the Brookings game, three teams of experts, including former senior U.S. officials, played the Israeli, Iranian and American leadership. They assembled in separate rooms at the think tank’s Washington headquarters. Israeli and U.S. “officials” communicated with each other, but not with the Iranians.
One of the simulation’s major findings was how aggressively the Iranians responded to the attack — more aggressively, some participants felt, than they would in real life — and how Washington and Tehran, lacking direct communication, misunderstood each other.
Iran did not retaliate directly against the United States or U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it struck back at Israel, then attacked Dharan in eastern Saudi Arabia, then began mining the Straits of Hormuz.
“There would be almost no incentive for Iran not to respond” with force, said another participant, a member of the Iranian team. “It was interesting to see how useful it was for Tehran to push the limits.”
Without knowing it, Iran’s last two actions crossed U.S. “red lines,” prompting an American military response.
“No one came out on top — (but) arguably the Iranians,” the Iran team member said.
The Tehran regime was also able to crush its domestic political opposition.
EDITOR: Haaretz turns radical!
The daily Haaretz is Israel’s only broadsheet, an unlikely combination of the Guardian and the Times, the rock of middle class safety. Politically, it has been very careful not to upset Israeli governments over the years. For their editorial (see below) to argue that demonstrations against the occupation and the illegal apartheid wall are “a duty” is something unheard of… I believe this is also a measure of the sea change in Israel, with the state turning fascist and nasty to its Jewish Israeli critics. Jonathan Cook’s excellent article following is dealing with the same topic.
Haaretz: A duty to protest: Haaretz
Posted by admin on Feb 22nd, 2010 and filed under FEATURED COMMENTARIES, IDF/War Crimes, Others. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Haaretz editorial – 22 Feb 2010
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1151415.html
Some 1,000 people took part in last Friday’s demonstration against the separation fence in the village of Bil’in west of Ramallah, marking the fifth anniversary of weekly protests at the site.
Just as on previous Fridays, the police tried to prevent demonstrators from reaching Bil’in, either by detaining them on their way out of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem – a practice that is nothing less than scandalous – or by following them along the route, and then trying to block them from entering the village.
The conduct of the police has been deplorable, as has the recent spate of arrests by the army in Bil’in, during which many of the leaders of the popular committee behind the protests have been detained. Some of them are still in prison – and they don’t belong there.
The protest in Bil’in, and in neighboring Na’alin, is an example of civic, usually nonviolent activity undertaken by Palestinians, Israelis and internationals alike, who are protesting a barrier that has severed villagers from most of their lands. Some of the lands have even been expropriated for the use of a nearby settlement.
Bil’in has become a symbol of a civic struggle devoid of terrorism. Such persistent, ongoing protest action is remarkable. It has even prompted the Supreme Court to rule that the route of the fence should be moved, and that some 170 acres of land be returned to the villagers. Astonishingly, this ruling has yet to be implemented by the state, which is thus displaying brazen contempt of court.
The fact that there are still civilians prepared to invest time and energy in nonviolent protest and popular action carried out by two peoples should be lauded, not suppressed.
Actually, last Friday’s rally was relatively peaceful: The presence of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and numerous journalists made the Israel Defense Forces and Border Police behave less violently than usual.
Only when the protesters began causing damage to the barrier itself did the security forces react, but even then they used riot-control measures rather than firearms. This is how it ought to be, every Friday.
The protests in Bil’in are legitimate. They must be allowed. Protesters must be permitted unobstructed access to the site, and so should security forces, as long as they act with restraint. Shooting at demonstrators – as has happened in Bil’in all too often – is an act perpetrated by only the most nefarious regimes.
Protesting in Bil’in is not just a right. It is a duty.
Jonathan Cook: Israel’s new ‘attack on freedom of speech’: IOA
NAZARETH — The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a “McCarthyite” campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that followed Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say.
In a sign of the growing backlash against the human-rights community, the cabinet backed a bill last week that, if passed, will jail senior officials from the country’s peace-related organisations should they fail to meet tough new registration conditions.
The measure is a response to claims by right-wing lobbyists that Israel’s human-rights advocates supplied much of the damaging evidence of war crimes cited by Judge Richard Goldstone in his UN-commissioned report into Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.
Human-rights groups funded by foreign donors, such as the European Union, would be required to register as political bodies and meet other demands for “transparency”.
Popular support for the clampdown was revealed in a poll published last week showing that 57 per cent of Israeli Jews believed “national-security” issues should trump human rights.
In a related move, right-wing groups have launched a campaign of vilification against Naomi Chazan, the Israeli head of an American Jewish donor body called the New Israel Fund (NIF) that channels money to Israeli social justice groups. The NIF is accused of funding the Israeli organisations Mr Goldstone consulted for his report.
Billboard posters around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and a newspaper advertising campaign, show a caricature of Ms Chazan with a horn growing from her forehead under the title “Naomi-Goldstone-Chazan”.
“We are seeing the evaporation of the last freedoms of speech and organisation in Israel,” said Amal Jamal, head of politics at Tel Aviv University and the director of Ilam, a media-rights organisation that would be targeted by the new legislation. The Israeli political system, he added, was being transformed into a “totalitarian democracy”.
Leading the charge against human-rights groups – most of which are officially described as “non-governmental organisations” – has been a self-styled “watchdog group” known as NGO Monitor. Its activities have won support from the government following the international censure faced by Israel for its attack on Gaza.
The bill, approved by a ministerial committee last week, is the product of a conference staged in the parliament in December by Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s director, and a settler-backed organisation known as the Institute of Zionist Strategies.
A professor at Bar Ilan University, Prof Steinberg presented a report to MPs and ministers that referred to peace groups as “Trojan horses” and argued for imposing constraints on funding from European governments and the NIF.
In a statement at the time, Prof Steinberg said: “For over a decade European governments have been manipulating Israeli politics and promoting demonisation by funding a narrow group of favored non-governmental organisations.”
He has reserved special criticism for advocacy groups for the country’s Arab minority and for Jewish groups opposing the occupation, accusing both of promoting an image of Israel as an “apartheid” state that carries out “war crimes” and “ethnic cleansing”.
According to his report, 16 Israeli peace NGOs received US$8 million (Dh29m) in European funding in the previous three years.
Pressure has been building in the government for action. This month Yuli Edelstein, the diaspora affairs minister and a member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, told reporters the cabinet had been “concerned for a time with a number of groups under the guise of NGOs that are funded by foreign agents”.
One of the MPs who participated in December’s conference, Zeev Elkin, also of Likud, initiated the legislation.
Although the bill will need to pass a vote of the parliament, backing from the government has dramatically increased its chances of success.
According to the legislation, human-rights groups will have to satisfy a long list of new conditions. They include: registering as political bodies; submitting ID numbers and addresses for all activists; providing detailed accounts of all donations from overseas and the purposes to which they will be put; and declaring the support of foreign countries every time an activist makes a speech or the organisation stages an event.
Senior officials in NGOs that fail to meet the requirements face up to a year in jail.
Hagai Elad, head of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, the country’s largest human-rights law centre, said there was “a very hostile political climate” and that freedoms were being attacked “one step at a time”.
“These are classic McCarthy techniques, portraying our organisations as enemies of the state and suggesting that we are aiding Hamas and terror groups.”
He added that NGOs were heavily regulated under Israeli law. “Which leaves me with a troubling question: given that we are already transparent, what is the real motivation behind this legislation?”
Caught in the middle of the campaign against the NGOs has been Ms Chazan, a former dovish MP.
Maariv, a populist newspaper, published a report last month by a right-wing group called Im Tirtzu that blamed Ms Chazan and the NIF for funding human-rights groups responsible for 90 per cent of the criticisms of Israel contained in the Goldstone Report that were from non-official sources.
A counter-report last week suggested that in reality only about 4 per cent of the citations were from NIF-funded groups, and many were unrelated to the Gaza operation.
But the attack on Ms Chazan has rapidly gained traction, with commentators denouncing her in the media and the derogatory billboard posters springing up across the country.
The campaign against the NIF was backed this month by a petition signed by a long list of former generals, including Giora Eiland, the previous head of the National Security Council, and Doron Almog, a recent chief of the army’s southern command.
Ms Chazan has also been sacked by the right-wing Jerusalem Post newspaper after 14 years serving as one of its few liberal columnists, while an article accusing Ms Chazan of “serving the agenda of Iran and Hamas” was distributed to foreign journalists by the Government Press Office.
Ms Chazan said: “They’re using me to attack, in the most blatant way, the basic principles of democracy.”
NIF has pointed out that Im Tirtzu’s funders include Christians United for Israel, a group led by pastor John Hagee, who made the headlines in the US presidential race in 2008 when in a speech supporting contender John McCain he said “Hitler was fulfilling God’s will”.
Livni on Dubai hit: A dead terrorist is good news: Haaretz
Opposition leader and Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni on Tuesday praised the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai last month, marking the first such comment from a top Israeli official.
Tzipi Livni, speaking at the closing panel of the board of trustees of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, said the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was good news, but did not say who was behind the killing.
Authorities in Dubai have said they were nearly certain Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, was behind the death of Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a luxury hotel room in Dubai on January 20.
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“The entire world must support those fighting terrorism: an American, British or Israeli soldier regardless if he is in Gaza or Dubai. The fact that a terrorist was killed, and it doesn’t matter if it was in Dubai or Gaza, is good news to those fighting terrorism,” said Livni.
Also on Tuesday, Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said that the attribution of the Mabhouh assassination to Israel increases the country’s power of deterrence, Army Radio reported.
“These actions deter terrorist organizations, as well as states, who understand the capabilities of Israel’s intelligence,” said Halutz at a conference in Tel Aviv.
Halutz also referred to the assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, which has also been blamed on Israel, saying, “When Mughniyeh was killed, it caused immediate damage to Hezbollah. Beyond the direct result of removing a significant man from the game, it sowed fear in the next in line [to replace him.]”
“Nasrallah has been sitting in a bunker for three years for fear that ‘his soul would be returned to its creator,'” said Halutz referring to the Hezbollah leader.
Israeli politician Livni hails Dubai Hamas killing: BBC
Mr Mabhouh died in his hotel room in Dubai last month
Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni has applauded the controversial killing of a Hamas commander in a Dubai hotel by suspected Israeli agents.
“The fact that a terrorist was killed, and it doesn’t matter if it was in Dubai or Gaza, is good news to those fighting terrorism,” she said.
It is thought to be the first time a top Israeli has made such a comment.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his room on 20 January, having been electrocuted and suffocated.
His alleged killers used fake British, Irish, German and French passports, according to the authorities in Dubai, which released pictures of the suspects, none of whom were caught.
Mr Mabhouh was one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing.
The Israeli secret service Mossad has been widely accused of carrying out the killing but Israel has repeatedly asserted there is no proof its agents were involved.
‘Fighting terrorism’
Mrs Livni, the former foreign minister who leads the parliamentary opposition for the Kadima party, did not indicate who was behind the killing.
“The entire world must support those fighting terrorism,” she told a Jewish conference in Jerusalem.
“Any comparison between terrorism and those fighting it is immoral.”
The current Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, responded to allegations of a Mossad plot last week by saying: “Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies.”
Dubai security cameras picked up 18 members of what local police believe was a hit team.
Diplomatic tension between Western states and Israel has grown over the killing.
Lieberaman Is dying to say it: Al Jazeera TV
Marwan Bishara
When Europe’s blood pressure went up over the use of fake European passports in the assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, changed his line from ambiguity to deniability. There is no proof of Israeli involvement, he retorted. And that is that.
My guess is that Lieberman had to ‘cut the ambiguity’ because the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, does not want to further exacerbate tensions with its European allies against the backdrop of continued illegal Jewish settlements and a deadlocked ‘peace process’.
But Lieberman, the eccentric former nightclub bouncer, is dying to take responsibility for the assassination of Israel’s “enemy combatant” to borrow from the Pentagon’s dictionary.
Or, to paraphrase one of Hollywood’s epics, A Few Good Men, ” … he’s pissed off that he has to hide behind all this … he wants to say that he made a command decision and that should be the end of it”.
Lieberman loves to boast
An immigrant from Moldova who made his way to become Netanyahu’s bureau chief in the mid-1990s, Lieberman made a name for himself in Israeli politics by calling in 1998 for the bombing of the Aswan Dam in retaliation for Egyptian support for the then Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
Lieberman reportedly called in 2002 for the transfer of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their homeland, claiming that there is “nothing undemocratic about transfer”.
The following year, the head of the Yisrael Betainu Party called for thousands of Palestinian prisoners to be shipped to the Dead Sea and drowned there.
In 2006, he called for the assassination of Arab members of the Knesset who met with members of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
And in 2008, Lieberman told Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, to “go to hell”.
Spineless allies
Alas, none of Israel’s spineless allies would provide Lieberman with the opportunity to cough it up or tell them to go to hell; none would come out in the open or in private to question the minister or put the heat on Israel to come clean.
Lieberman is right not to bother. As he told his British counterpart, David Miliband: “If someone would present information beyond articles in the media, we would relate to it … but since there is no such information, there is no need to deal with the matter.”
Instead, the British foreign minister pleaded with Lieberman in the most timid of ways. He asked kindly and politely for Israeli “cooperation” with an investigation into the use of forged British passports.
Miliband even tried appeasing arguably the most extremist leader in Israel – who supports the continued illegal occupation and colonisation of Palestinian and Syrian territories – by suggesting that Israel’s cooperation is important because it has the most to gain from applying the rule of law in the Middle East!
Other Europeans were less timid, but just as indirect. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, condemned the assassination and European foreign ministers condemned forging their passports, but no mention of Israel whatsoever, and no attempt to open serious and frank dialogue with it over the assassination that could put Europeans and European security at risk.
So, as expected, the visit ended with Avigdor Lieberman flatly rebuffing David Miliband’s request for cooperation with the investigation and instead ridiculing journalists for watching too many Hamas Bond movies.
Proving the need for proof
It is not the Bond movies that influence journalists, but every day news.
Europe and the US are more than willing to accuse Iran of developing a nuclear weapons programme with no proof, but hide behind the lack-of-proof excuse to avoid calling out Israel over forging passports and carrying out extra judicial assassinations.
They justify their escalation with Iran on the basis of ‘mounting evidence’, when it is at best circumstantial, but avoid confronting Israel over a far less dangerous accusation, when all the circumstantial evidence leads to the Mossad.
When was proof so important for Western powers to act or even to go to war? Did the Nato allies have proof of Osama bin Laden’s and al-Qaeda’s role in the 9/11 attacks before (or after) invading Afghanistan, or Taliban complicity with the attack? Osama bin Laden’s boasting at a later date hardly counts for proof.
Or, did they have proof of chemical weapons for the invasion of Iraq? Or did they need proof when it could be just as easily manufactured.
As for proof of Mossad’s activity, generally Israel’s policy of ambiguity covers those acts it carries out, not the ones it would not. In other words, Israel uses denial when it does not want to give the impression it carried out an attack, but when it uses ambiguity, as Lieberman did immediately after the attack, it usually means it did.
In the words of the hero of A Few Good Men, Europe needed to shake Lieberman, “put him on the defensive and lead him right where he is dying to go”.
We cannot be neutral on a moving train! Open Letter to the International Geographical Union (IGU): PACBI
As geographers, faculty, students, and people of conscience, we are profoundly dismayed by IGU’s decision to hold its July 2010 regional conference in Tel Aviv, in violation of the widely endorsed Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. We are equally troubled by IGU’s response [1] to the open letter issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which urged the Executive Committee to relocate the upcoming regional conference out of Israel [2].
PACBI’s letter was a compelling reminder that Israel’s academic establishment (and geography in particular) is implicitly and explicitly complicit with the Israeli state’s colonial, discriminatory, and oppressive policies towards Palestinians. As important social institutions they advance, sustain, and provide the intellectual and moral justification for Israeli actions against Palestinian people and their representatives both within Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is noteworthy that “no Israeli university or academic union has ever taken a public position against the occupation, let alone against Israel‘s system of apartheid or the denial of Palestinian refugee rights.”[3] PACBI underlines the prevailing, and deeply disturbing role of Israeli Universities in developing the very weapons and military doctrines used against Palestinians. Moreover, they highlight the tragic irony of geographers holding a conference about “Bridging Diversity in a Globalizing World” in a country built on urban destruction and gradual ethnic cleansing, a state which defines itself as an exclusively Jewish state, not a state of all its citizens, one that continues to violate human rights with total impunity and stands accused of war crimes for its latest offensive in Gaza [4].
The IGU Executive’s response claims that they are “morally and possibly financially bound to honor the commitment the IGU made to its colleagues in Israel” in 2000. Pragmatic impediments to relocate such an event are understandable yet solvable. It is however far less clear what the executive means by the ‘moral’ standard that binds them to ignore the widespread international outcry against Israel’s longstanding mistreatment of the Palestinian people as well as the open calls for support by Palestinians in their quest for basic justice. Against these concrete ethical imperatives the Executive Committee invokes its statutes, which proscribe boycotts, along with the guidelines of ICSU (International Council for Science) on the free circulation of scientists. Yet, we know that statutes are open to amendment in the face of critical circumstances and geographers have, over the last five decades, debunked positivist reductionism and struggled successfully to free our discipline from the false ‘objectivity’ of traditional science. The fact of Israel’s colonial and apartheid system, the oppression of the Palestinian people, including the denial of their inalienable rights, the irrational violence against and enclosure of the people of Gaza along with widespread international condemnation are ample and pressing reasons for cancelling or relocating the Tel Aviv conference.
The IGU Executive says they are concerned that the Boycott forecloses the possibility of debate and feel “the most effective way to resolve policy and political differences allegedly justified by science is through direct and open confrontation of the conflicting ideas and their proponents”. These arguments are based on three crucial misconceptions. First, the assumption that the relationship between Israel and Palestine is a symmetrical one ignores the overwhelming economic, social, military and political power of Israel relative to the poverty-stricken, war-ravaged state of the Palestinian people, their state and its institutions. A historical colonizer-colonized relationship along with the constant threat of military assault robs Palestinians of their basic livelihoods let alone the privilege and right to disagree politically or otherwise. Secondly, the intimation that the Israeli-Palestinian question is about “policy and political differences” and therefore not the concern of geographers since politics and science are two pure and separate spheres is an anachronistic vision of the discipline, and an insult to the very many geographers around the world whose work does not adhere to that simple binary and is ethical, policy-oriented and/ or politically engaged. And thirdly, the suggestion that Boycotts are not effective or legitimate is decisively invalidated by the example of South African anti-apartheid movement, which shows it to be among the most useful and least violent tactics in resisting oppression and injustice at an international level. A rising tide of International support for the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign calls on us to take a similar stance in the case of Israel.
To date all other forms of international intervention have failed to convince or force Israel to comply with international law and to end its repression of the Palestinians. As educators and intellectuals we must take exception to the impunity with which Israel has targeted Palestinian educational rights. Since its establishment Israel’s policies have been aimed at the destruction of Palestinian historical manuscripts, journals and books [5], suppression of academic freedom and closure of Palestinian universities [6], mobility restrictions on staff and students [7], destruction of educational infrastructure [8], systematic discrimination against Palestinian students [9], as well as arrest and deportation of local academic and international staff [10]. The latest example of these policies in our field is the travel ban imposed by Israel on geographer Khalil Tafakji, Director of the Cartographic Section of the Arab Studies Society in Jerusalem, and regular lecturer in international forums about Israel discrimination and ethnic cleansing policies in East Jerusalem [11].
In light of the above, and in the tradition of engaged geographical scholars such as the well-respected late James M. Blaut whose intellectual efforts were guided by solidarity with oppressed people including the Palestinian people and South African anti-apartheid groups, we the undersigned, believe that it is our moral responsibility as scholars, intellectuals and activists to talk truth to power against injustice. In this spirit of international solidarity and resistance to oppression we stand in support of Palestinians’ non-violent anti-colonial struggle through a public campaign of boycott divestments and sanctions.
Historically, geography as a science was established and consolidated in direct service of European imperial and colonial expansion. The discipline’s critical turn in the latter 20th century has worked to expose and repudiate this history and its militaristic and colonial tradition. It is in this spirit that we, the undersigned, collectively petition the IGU Executive Committee to take immediate steps to relocate the July 12 – 16, 2010 regional conference outside Israel. Given the circumstances if the conference goes ahead inside Israel we will not attend or otherwise participate in any manner. We urge you to act promptly and ethically in this matter.
[1] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1126 (see below)
[2] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1126
[3] http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1175
[4] http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf
[5] http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=36
[6] http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/downloads/pdfs/AcademicFreedomPaper.pdf
[7] http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/news/catindex31
[8] http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/news/catindex32
[9] http://www.adalah.org/features/education/New_Data_on_Education_August_2009.pdf
[10] http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/443.shtml
[11] http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11058.shtml
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