As international hysteria is driving the capitalist west into another islamophobic illegal, immoral and illogical military conflict with Iran, based on an Israeli campaign and perceived interests, the voices against this crminal madness are increasing, even within Israel itself. As we know, in the western democracies public opinion makes no difference, as last shown during the buildup towards the war in Iraq. Democracy is a fine things for other people to have, of course, people who are underdeveloped… we in the west are so above such primary needs… Our leaders are in touch both with God and the Truth, so fortunately do not need our views and advice.
Peace with Syria as vital as stopping Iran’s bomb: Haaretz
By Zvi Bar’el,
Ehud Barak said what he had to say, Bashar Assad did not understand or maybe he did, Avigdor Lieberman uttered his usual concoction, Benjamin Netanyahu explained that “we want peace,” and life is good. Everything is all right. This week’s ruckus is over. All that remains is the media circus. Because war, we should recall, is not something Israel does in winter.
The chatter, on the other hand, works all year round and Lieberman is its strategic asset. Lieberman can babble on about the collapse of the Assad family’s rule, swear at Hosni Mubarak and ridicule Jordan. His importance at the Foreign Ministry compares only to that of the Strategic Affairs Ministry under Moshe Ya’alon or the Regional Development Ministry under Silvan Shalom. These three frustrated ministries fall under the category “we want peace” and have transformed chatter into policy.
But Lieberman is not really the problem. The root of evil is the hoax of “we want peace,” because Israel is not really interested in peace with Syria – not at the cost of withdrawing from the Golan Heights. Israel’s working assumption is that there is no rush for negotiations with Syria; our northern neighbor does not constitute a military threat and its regional position does not allow it to rally the support of other Arab countries to carry out a full-blown war. Syria can be threatened without risking damage.
Syria itself “contributed” to this Israeli approach by keeping the border calm for decades, and there is no way to convince Israelis, who understand only Katyushas and Qassam rockets, that Syria is a threat for which a single bed-and-breakfast needs to be removed from the Golan. The Syrian promise for the “fruits of peace” is also shoddy. Compared to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, Syria is not offering any real economic incentives to make peace.
But Syria holds an asset that Israel does not recognize. Peace at this time means the possibility that Israel’s strategic position in the Middle East and the world will change. Syria is a key country along a new axis being formed in the Middle East, which includes Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The backbone of this axis is economic, security and diplomatic cooperation that would replace the old axis of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Iran’s burgeoning political influence in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, the huge amounts of oil still available in Iraq, Turkey’s influence on Central Asia and its control over a gas pipeline to stretch from Iran to Europe, as well as the new link between Saudi Arabia and Syria and Syria’s great influence on Palestinian politics and Lebanon’s Hezbollah – all these may make this axis much more wealthy and influential in the next decade. So a very important arena of interests is forming, not only for Israel.
The United States of Barack Obama has already realized that Syria, with or without peace with Israel, is a country Washington needs to preserve its position in the region and beyond. A U.S. ambassador is expected to be sent to Damascus in the near future, and Europe is negotiating with Syria, not only on economics, but also on an entry point to the entire Middle East. Our friend Silvio Berlusconi should be asked about his view on Syria when his country’s trade with Damascus stands at about $2 billion, some 20 percent of overall trade between Syria and Europe.
Israel, which is used to examining the region through a lens that counts Hezbollah’s missiles and Hamas’ explosive barrels sent to sea, and which considers the prisoner numbers in the Gilad Shalit deal the crux of the security threat, is blind to the region’s strategic developments. The expression “we want peace,” which is void of substance, cannot even begin to express the folly and shortsightedness of Israel, which is shrugging its shoulders at a chance to reach peace with Syria, if for no other reason than to prevent a damaging blow from this new axis.
To this end, we need a statesman, not a comedian. The leader who can make Israelis understand that peace with Syria does not mean eating humus in Damascus but is an existential interest, no less important than blocking Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But this is the kind of statesman we’re lacking. For the time being we have to make do with a thug who cries out – “hold me back!”
The following item is interesting in its economy of prose. A group of parties in the Israeli Knesset wish to annex the area including the new road from Modi’in (settlement right inside the Palestinian area beyond the 1967 lines) and East Jerusalem, and passing exclusively on occupied land. This further annexation is forced by the High Court recent ruling the Palestinians should be allowed to use this road; currently, this road is closed to them, like so many others on their land, being part of the apartheid road and checkpoint system, which segregates some roads for use by Jews only. This long and wide road is almost alays empty (as attested to in the photograph) and dissects the west bank like some huge scar on the landscape, another part of the architecture of occupation and oppression. Annexing the route will make it even easier to continue denying Palestinian use, and will make a now defunct” two state solution ever more of a dead (and buried) duck. This is an obvious result of the full-scale fascisation of Israel and Zionism :
PM delays debate on Route 443 annexation: YNet
Following request by Netanyahu, discussion of MK Matalon’s bill proposal to bypass High Court ruling allowing Palestinians to use Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road taken off agenda until further notice
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested on Sunday that the Ministerial Committee on Legislation rethink MK Moshe Matalon’s bill proposal to annex Route 443 to Israel.
Following his request, the discussion of the bill was removed from the committee’s agenda, and it remains unclear when the discussion will be resumed.
Route 443 connects Modiin with Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and is meant to be open to Palestinian traffic in some three months, following a High Court ruling on the matter.
Since the ruling was given, opposition has been heard from ministers on the Right who say a law should be legislated to bypass the ruling. Sources from the Labor party have objected to such action.
The explanatory pages to the proposed bill note that the need for the law has arisen in the wake of the ruling, which determines that a road that has seen shooting attacks on Israelis in the past must be available to Palestinian use.
MK Matalon claims that opening Route 443 to Palestinians will mean that thousands of Israelis will avoid using it, and those who continue to drive on this road will be putting their lives in danger.
According to Matalon, the proposed bill is intended to alter the legal situation and enable Israelis to drive safely on this major route to the capital, Jerusalem.
“It is sad that there are Israelis who empathize with Palestinians on the pretext of concern for human rights, while the lives and safety of Israeli citizens are not even on their minds,” he said.
UN likely to refer Goldstone findings to The Hague: Haaretz
Arab states set to force debate that would bring Gaza war crimes claims before international court.
The United Nations is likely to refer the findings of the Goldstone report to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, diplomatic sources in New York said on Saturday.
A decision to bring the report on last year’s Gaza war before the court would follow a debate in the UN General Assembly over Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s response to the document last week.
Assembly president Ali Abdussalam Treki announced on Saturday that member states were drawing up a plan of action over Ban’s answer to the report, in which retired South African Judge Richard Goldstone accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes.
Treki, a senior Libyan diplomat, did not give a target date for a debate by the assembly – but the tone of his press release implied that he would push for a full discussion of the issue, diplomats said.
Ban himself is thought not to support a general session, fearing that further criticism of Israel would only delay the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Most UN-watchers believe that Arab member states will demand a plenary session on the report, however.
Senior UN diplomats note, meanwhile, that one consequence of the Goldstone inquiry is that Hamas, which along with Israel issued a formal response, has become a quasi-official actor in the UN arena.
In his report, Ban wrote that Israel had responded to all the accusations against it. But he added that it was too early to say whether recommendations had yet been implemented by Israel and Hamas, as the parties were still conducting investigations.
The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said on Friday that Israel was satisfied with Ban’s statement, which was an “accurate representation” of the Israeli submission.
Hamas on Saturday appeared to backtrack on last week’s apology for harming Israeli civilians in rocket attacks. The Goldstone report accused Hamas of firing rockets indiscriminately at civilians.
The militant group, which controls the Gaza strip, had said previously that its rockets were meant to defend Gazans against Israeli military strikes: “We apologize for any harm that might have come to Israeli civilians,” the Hamas government wrote in an intial reponse to the Goldstone report.
But on Saturday Hamas said in statement that its response the UN had been misinterpreted and contained no apologies. Hamas officials declined to give any further comment.
“Hamas is a terror organization whose main purpose is to attack civilians, so it’s not surprising that they would retract their apology,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Andy David told the Associated Press on Saturday.
“For years Hamas has boasted about deliberately targeting civilians, either through suicide bombings, by gunfire or by rockets,” Palmor said Saturday. “Who are they trying to fool now?”
Im Tirtzu hides behind respectable mask of ‘Zionism’: Haaretz
By Gideon Levy,
Binyamin Ze’ev is turning in his grave once again: A McCarthyite movement has taken his best-known slogan for its name. Im Tirtzu, which deceptively calls itself a “moderate, centrist movement,” gives a bad name to Herzl, a democrat and liberal, who coined the phrase “Im tirtzu, ain zo agada” (If you will it, it is no dream). The group’s latest trick: a dirty war against the New Israel Fund for its funding of 16 organizations that provided documentation used in the Goldstone report.
Oy, gevalt! There are nongovernmental organizations that want Israel to be a better, more just state, and that the New Israel Fund dares to underwrite. Cities were plastered with posters featuring a caricature of NIF president Naomi Chazan wearing a horn – that’s the level that the “movement” behind the campaign sinks to – and with the last name of that reviled figure, Goldstone, added to hers.
Maariv, the tabloid daily that never shrinks from McCarthyism, hastened to publish a ludicrous “expose” that is nothing more than a copy of Im Tirtzu’s report. The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee created a subcommittee to “examine the sources of funding,” media personality Avri Gilad called for Chazan’s dismissal and the Jerusalem Post has already fired her as columnist for the newspaper. It’s exactly how McCarthyism operated.
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There’s no lack of fascist movements in Israel and the wider world, nationalist, militarist and racist organizations that don’t pretend to be anything but. Im Tirtzu hides behind the respectable mask of “Zionism.” Under this camouflage people hunt down all signs of democracy and critical thought. Quiet, we’re shooting, all the time. That is their “second Zionist revolution,” an Israel without the High Court of Justice and without B’Tselem, militarist with neither criticism nor supervision. If that is Zionism, then it’s better to be anti-Zionist.
Im Tirtzu’s founder and chairman, Ronen Shoval, is their handsome patriot – blue-eyed and from the solidly bourgeois suburb of Ramat Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv. He’s not some bearded settler nutcase who burns Palestinian fields. First, he tried his luck with the fight of the reserve duty soldiers after the Second Lebanon War. Then it was permissible to criticize a war, because Israelis died in it. Operation Cast Lead must not be criticized because nearly all those who died in it were Palestinians – and there were a lot of Palestinian deaths. After that struggle died out, this ridiculous Zionist turned to pursuing all demonstrations of criticism of Israel.
The one-time Habayit Hayehudi activist who now tries to wash his hands of the fact – what won’t some people do for their career – once wrote that Israel cannot defend itself without the “protective wall of Judea and Samaria.” This same person, who is completely devoid of all understanding of the essence of democracy, is now crudely going after the New Israel Fund, which since it was founded has distributed $140 million to dozens of NGOs that pursue peace, equality and social justice. Yes, these include charities that believe that Operation Cast Lead wreaked a moral disaster on Israel and acted accordingly. They took statements and published them – in other words they fulfilled their purpose, in a professional and credible manner. Even the Israel Defense Forces relied on their sources.
Just as Richard Goldstone must be thanked for formulating the IDF’s next code of ethics, whether or not we admit it, so, too, the NIF must be thanked for reinforcing democracy. With an atrophied political system, a thwarted justice system, media outlets that engage mainly in brainwashing and an indifferent public – the nongovernmental organizations have become the last keeper of the seal of Israeli democracy. How lovely to show us and the world that there’s still someone left here who operates in a different way; how encouraging to see that there are still alternatives to the official mechanisms. True, they are funded from abroad; no less, by the way, than Im Tirtzu or the right-wing NGOs that expel Palestinians from their homes and award prizes to rebellious soldiers from the right, but Im Tirtzu will not take action against them.
How can we truly know what happened in the Gaza Strip without Breaking the Silence, and how can we know what is happening in the West Bank every day without B’Tselem? But Im Tirtzu doesn’t want us to know; it wants to cover our shame. That, to it, is patriotism, but in reality that is treason. How familiar the remarks sounded this weekend by Iran’s judiciary chief, Ayatollah Sadiq Amoli Larijani, calling for fighting human rights organizations in his country because they “confuse human rights with law and order.” Im Tirtzu and Maariv couldn’t have said it better.
If you will it, Naomi Chazan with the horn on her forehead is the beautiful face of Israel, infinitely more beautiful than Im Tirtzu, which tries to put horns on us all, the horns of a fascist state under the cover of Zionism.
Chazan associates hit back at Jerusalem Post for her dismissal: Haaretz
Associates of Prof. Naomi Chazan attacked the Jerusalem Post on Saturday in the wake of the English-language daily’s decision to fire the former Meretz MK who is at the center of a right-wing campaign against the New Israel Fund, of which Chazan is president.
“The issue now is freedom of speech and freedom of expression,” a source told Haaretz last night. “The paper took a stand against freedom of expression and Prof. Chazan regrets this to the depths of her soul.”
Chazan was informed of her dismissal in an e-mail sent on Thursday by editor in chief David Horovitz. It stated that the newspaper was no longer interested in publishing her columns; Chazan had written a regular column in the Jerusalem Post for more than a decade. Chazan was originally asked to contribute to the paper while she was serving as a Knesset member for Meretz from 1992 to 2003.
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She was “happy to honor the request, in the name of democracy and a multiplicity of opinions,” a source said. The Jerusalem Post and Horovitz declined to comment, as did Chazan herself.
Chazan and the NIF were the subject of a media campaign launched last week by an organization called Im Tirtzu. This followed a newspaper report claiming that 92 percent of negative references to the Israel Defense Forces in the Goldstone report from Israeli sources originated with organizations sponsored by the NIF.
The fund’s grantees include Adalah, Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Yesh Din and the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights. Im Tirtzu launched an explicit campaign against the fund in the wake of report, which appeared in last weekend’s Maariv.
Chazan said Thursday that there is no direct correlation between the positions of the fund and those of the grantees. “We don’t support everything these organizations say, but we support their right to say it. Some organizations’ only sin was signing a call for an independent committee of inquiry,” she said.
“This is an attack against organizations that differ in their opinions about Goldstone. The only thing uniting them is a demand for an independent investigation, and this is totally mainstream. Even [Deputy Prime Minister] Dan Meridor called for such an investigation.”
Meanwhile, a scheduled trip by Chazan to Australia was canceled. The executive director of the Australian, New Zealand and Asia branch of the Union for Progressive Judaism, Steve Denenberg, told The Weekend Australian that the postponement was a mutual decision between the UPJ and Chazan because both realized that the controversy would detract from fund-raising. He said the UPJ was supportive of Chazan as “a human rights activist, academic and progressive Jew.”
Many Israelis, as well as their supporters abroad, conveniently ‘forget’ that Israel is occupying not just the whole of Palestine, but also parts of Syria and Lebanon. Here, Israel’s fascist FM, not for the first time, tells Syria to ‘abandon its dreams’ of getting the occupied territory, the Golan Heights, back. At least he does not play word games, and pretends to want peace, like Barak, Peres and Livni, but clearly states that it is territory, rather then peace, which Israel wantss, so those issues are much clearer with him:
Israel’s Lieberman cautions Syria: Al Jazeera online
Al-Assad said on Wednesday that Israel “is not serious about wanting peace” [File:EPA]
The Israeli foreign minister has cautioned Syria against drawing his country into another war, saying the Syrian army would be defeated and its regime would collapse in any future conflict.
Avigdor Lieberman’s comments on Thursday followed accusations from the Syrian president a day earlier that Israel is “driving the region towards war, not peace”.
The Syrians “have crossed a red line that cannot be ignored,” Lieberman said in a speech at Bar-Ilan University, near Tel Aviv.
“Our message must be clear to [Syrian president Bashar al-Assad]: “In the next war, not only will you lose but you and your family will lose power.”
Lieberman’s comments prompted Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to issue a statement reassuring Syria that Israel seeks peace.
‘No preconditions’
Nir Hefetz, Netanyahu’s spokesman, said the prime minister had discussed the Syria issue with Lieberman.
“The two clarify that the policy of the government is clear: Israel seeks peace and negotiations with Syria without preconditions. Having said that, Israel will continue to act aggressively and persistently to any threat toward it,” the statement from Hefetz said.
In another statement, the prime minister’s office said Netanyahu will ask his ministers to refrain from speaking out about the Syrian issue.
Lieberman, the head of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, has stirred controversy before with statements that Israeli-Arab parliamentarians who meet Palestinian fighters should be executed and that the president of Egypt could “go to hell”.
Eitan Cabel, a member of parliament from the Labor party, urged Netanyahu to get rid of Lieberman, calling the foreign minister a “warmonger who has no honour or wisdom.”
Golan Heights
In his speech on Thursday, Lieberman also advised Syria to abandon its dreams of recovering the Israeli-held Golan Heights.
“We must make Syria recognise that just as it relinquished its dream of a greater Syria that controls Lebanon … it will have to relinquish its ultimate demand regarding the Golan Heights,” Lieberman said.
“All this is just posturing and things will calm down in two or three days since neither Israel nor Syria want to cause a war.”
Eyal Zisser, specialist on Israeli-Syrian relations
Syria seeks the return of the Golan Heights, the plateau Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war, as a precondition for any peace deal with Israel.
Several rounds of indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel in 2008 ended without agreement.
Al-Assad’s comments about Israel not seeking peace came in response to a warning from Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, who earlier this week said the absence of peacemaking with Syria could result in a regional war.
Eyal Zisser, a specialist on relations with Syria at Tel Aviv University, said he believed the Syrians misinterpreted Barak’s comments, which were meant as an argument in favour of renewed negotiations.
Zisser described the heated language between the two neighbouring countries as “posturing”.
“All this is just posturing and things will calm down in two or three days since neither Israel nor Syria want to cause a war,” he said.
Following is the visible end of the Jewish-Zionist Lobby at work, trying to fan the flames towards the coming attack on Iran. Like a huge iceberg, most of its activity is below the waterline, but with so much visible and in the light of the media cameras and michrohones, who needs digging…
This US Senator sounds more and more like his Israeli fascist namesake… So the US will go to attack (or will send Israel to attack) Iran, a country which might, at some point in the future, have nuclear weapond, spurred on by Israel, which have had them for decades, and refuses to allow any inspections! Let us check Israel for Weapons of Mass Destruction NOW!
U.S. Senator Lieberman: Impose sanctions on Iran or attack it: Haaretz
By News Agencies
IAEA chief seeks accelerated talks with Tehran over proposed uranium enrichment outside Iran.
The world faces a stark choice between imposing tough sanctions on Iran to stop its nuclear program, or attacking it, United States Senator Joe Lieberman said Saturday.
Lieberman is the influential chairman of the Senate committee on homeland security. He was speaking a day after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that his country was ready to accept an international swap of uranium, but only under certain conditions.
“We have a choice here: to go to tough economic sanctions to make diplomacy work or we will face the prospect of military action against Iran,” Lieberman told the annual Munich Security Conference.
Top U.S. commanders are already working out how such a strike should be conducted, and although “no-one wants this to happen … unless we together act strongly and do more than talk that is exactly what will happen,” Lieberman said.
A nuclear-armed Iran would provoke chaos in the Middle East, send world oil prices soaring and end any hope of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lieberman said.
IAEA chief seeks ‘accelerated’ dialogue with Iran
Earlier Saturday, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said, after talks with Iran’s foreign minister on a nuclear fuel swap plan, that he sought an accelerated dialogue with Tehran.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Yukiya Amano told reporters after his talks in Munich with Mottaki that dialogue on Iran’s nuclear program is continuing.
Asked if he was confident of a breakthrough, Amano told reporters on the sidelines of an annual security conference in the German city “I prefer not to provide my perspective. Dialogue is continuing, this should be accelerated. That’s the point.”
Meanwhile, Mottaki described his meeting with the IAEA chief as “very good,” but repeated Iran’s insistence on determining the amount of fuel to be exchanged and said it might be less than the 1,200 kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU) which world powers have asked it to part with in one go.
In exchange, Iran would receive uranium of a higher grade which it could use to fuel a Tehran research reactor producing medical isotopes.
“It is very common that in business, the buyer talks and offers about the quantity, and the seller only offers the price,” Mottaki told reporters at the Munich Security Conference.
PA Ambassador: International court must rule on Gaza conflict: Haaretz
The Palestinians want the International Criminal Court to get involved in adjudicating alleged war crimes in the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict, Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour said Friday at the United Nations.
Mansour said that representatives of his government have met several times with representatives of the ICC. But in order for the ICC to take the case, the UN Security Council must request its involvement.
Mansour expressed to journalists his frustration that the council “has not carried out its responsibility” in the case and has not asked the ICC to undertake a separate investigation.
At issue is a set of reports that have been submitted at the request of the General Assembly by Israel and the radical Islamist Hamas detailing independent investigations into the allegations that they committed war crimes in the conflict.
The establishment of independent, credible probes into the allegations of war crimes was one of the recommendations made in the UN Human Rights Council report by South African judge Richard Goldstone last year.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon forwarded the two reports this week to the General Assembly with very little commentary, saying they did not contain enough evidence to indicate whether the Israelis and Palestinians were complying with United Nation demands to investigate last year’s Gaza conflict.
The Palestinian investigation was carried out by an independent counselor from within the Arab League. The Israeli investigation was carried out by its military over the course of the past year.
The Palestinians, supported by various human rights groups, have charged that the Israeli military was not an independent body in the matter and were upset that Ban did not point out the lack of independence of the Israeli report when he sent it to the General Assembly.
Mansour indicated that the Palestinians planned to meet late Friday with ambassadors from nonaligned countries and Arab nations to prepare a protest with Ban over his silence on the matter of lacking independence in the Israeli report. The General Assembly had specifically required that the two reports be independent, and Mansour said this requirement was not fulfilled by the Israeli report.
Amnesty International criticized the matter, saying it was a “missed opportunity.” The Palestinian Human Rights Centre (PCHR) said it was outraged and shocked over Ban’s omission.
Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky said that the UN chief had not been required to analyze the reports from Israel and the Palestinians, but rather to forward the reports to the General Assembly.
Israel: Our Gaza probe in line with international law
Earlier, the Foreign Ministry on Friday defended Israel’s response to allegations of war crimes during the war in the Gaza Strip last year, hours after United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon confirmed having received a full internal report from Jerusalem on the matter.
“This document completely expresses Israel’s commitment to conduct an honest internal probe according to the standards of international law,” the foreign ministry said. “Despite the difficult conditions of fighting against Hamas terror, Israel has stringently abided by international norms and will continue to do in the future – though our foremost obligation is to protect our citizens.”
Ban late Thursday acknowledged having received internal Israeli and Palestinian responses to UN allegations of war crimes during the 2008-2009 war in the Gaza Strip, adding that Israel had responded to every charge brought against it.
In a cautiously worded message to the UN General Assembly, Ban acknowledged Israel and the Palestinian Authority were looking into the behavior of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants as demanded by a resolution the 192-nation assembly approved in November
But Ban withheld judgment on whether the probes were “independent, credible and in conformity with international standards.”
“No determination can be made on the implementation of the resolution by the parties concerned,” Ban said in the letter that accompanied the documents given to him by the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority about their investigations.
One senior Western diplomat described Ban’s letter as “deadpan and procedural.” It was not immediately clear what, if anything, the General Assembly would do in response.
More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died after Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against Gaza to try to end rocket fire against its cities. Critics charged that Israel used excessive and indiscriminate firepower but Israel blamed the militants for hiding among civilians.
The General Assembly resolution was a response to a UN report issued last September by an investigative panel headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone.
The Goldstone report said the Israeli army and Palestinian militants committed war crimes during the conflict from late December 2008 to mid-January 2009 but focused more on Israel.
It also said that if Israel and the Palestinians failed to carry out credible investigations, the matter should be referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Both the Jewish state and the Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, have rejected the suggestion they might have been responsible for war crimes.
“I have called upon all of the parties to carry out credible domestic investigations,” Ban said in the letter. “I hope that such steps will be taken wherever there are credible allegations of human rights abuses.”
Last week, Ban received a document from Israel defending its handling of complaints over its conduct in the Gaza war.
The Palestinian Authority, which has no control over Gaza and played no direct role in that conflict, gave the United Nations details of a commission of inquiry it had set up, along with preliminary findings.
Hamas said it gave the United Nations a response to the Goldstone report rejecting the charges against its fighters. The Hamas response was not included in Ban’s message to the General Assembly.
Israel had refused to cooperate with Goldstone and angrily rejected his findings. Last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the report “distorted, biased and unbalanced.”
But after the General Assembly called on Israel and the Palestinians in November to investigate Goldstone’s charges and asked Ban to report back within three months, Israel decided it would provide the UN chief with information.
Despite its fury at Goldstone’s report, Israel last month paid $10.5 million to the United Nations for damage to UN property during the Gaza war.
In the proposed swap, he said, “we determine the quantity on the basis of our needs and we would inform the parties about our requirements. Maybe it is less than this quantity you have already mentioned [1,200 kilograms] or a little more than the quantity we may need for our reactor.”
From the point of view of the United States and others, the proposed swap would reduce the risk of Iran enriching its low-grade uranium to the degree required for potential use in a nuclear weapon – an intention Tehran denies.
“We discussed and exchanged views on a wide range of issues – views about the proposal that is on the table,” Mottaki said.
“I tried to explain the views of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the Director-General,” Mottaki said.
He was elaborating on comments he made on Friday, suggesting an agreement was close. The United States and Germany on Saturday voiced skepticism about Iran’s intentions and said those remarks had not gone far enough.
Mottaki rejected a questioner’s suggestion that Iran’s leadership was divided over the proposed uranium deal.
“In Iran there is only one voice about the issue. And that is, the exchange of fuel has been accepted and recognized. As I told you before, there have been certain doubts about it, and efforts were made to remove these doubts,” he said.
Mottaki did not address the timing of a proposed swap, a problematic issue in negotiations. On Friday he spoke of a ‘simultaneous’ swap, whereas the six-power group wants Iran first to ship its LEU abroad and then receive it back when sufficiently enriched to use in Tehran reactor.
The IAEA’s last report in November said Iran had registered a total of 1,763 kilograms of LEU, a quantity experts say would be more than enough for one nuclear bomb if it were enriched to the level of 90 percent.
No gaffe: Clinton’s remarks make public a secret US-Israel understanding: AFPAKWar online
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s ostensibly contradictory statement during her recent Middle East visit — declaring in Israel that “There has never been a pre-condition [to freeze the expansion of Israeli colonies in occupied territories]. It’s always been an issue within the negotiations” while stating several days later during a visit to Morocco that there was no change in the American policy — is widely being spun as incompetence. In fact, there is no contradiction in what Clinton said: it is in fact American policy to condone, privately, unsubsidised (“natural”) growth in Israeli colonies (“settlements”), while publicly denying this policy. What Clinton did was to make public this increasingly widely known private policy. Why?
According to the Washington Post (23 May 2009, see earlier post) around 2004/2005, when Sharon was poised to remove “settlers” from Gaza, the neo-cons around Bush stopped Sharon and got Bush to give him a secret understanding — not disclosed to the Palestinians — that Israel could add “settlements” in areas it expected to occupy permanently, as long as the construction was dictated by market demand, not subsidies. This agreement, that some of the larger “settlements” in the occupied West Bank would ultimately become part of Israel — contrary to U.S. policy until then and to the Camp David and Oslo accords, was codified in a letter from former president George W. Bush to former prime minister Ariel Sharon.
The U.S. government has not resiled at least in public from this agreement; whether this has been done in private, orally or in writing, is not known, but is most unlikely. What Hillary Clinton did, in fact, is that she stated in public what the U.S. has assured Israel in private. Was this incompetence? Unlikely: Hillary Clinton is no Sarah Palin. It is much more likely that responding to the Israel lobby’s [see review of the latest book on the subject, whose wholesale import is banned in Europe] pressure on Obama this was a calculated “tilt” toward Israel. By making public America’s private assurances to Israel, effectively America has abandoned support for a Palestinian state, that was dangled by Bush, quite successfully, to weaken resistance by Muslim states to American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is how it is being seen around the world. According to the Indian Express, “Mr Obama … caved in after his own ratings in Israel had slumped, according to some Israeli polls, to as low as 4 per cent.” Gideon Livy, writing in Ha’aretz, concurs, and (in a triumph of hope over experience) recommends that “When Clinton returns to Washington, she should advocate a sharp policy change toward Israel… Washington needs to finally say no to Israel and the occupation. An unambiguous, presidential no.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaves the White House after a meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington, Monday, Nov. 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (Susan Walsh – AP)
Could this have happened in that most curious meeting between an Israeli prime minister and an American president that took place at the White House on 9 November 2009? According to most sources, Obama probably engaged in some hard talk with Netanyahu. Thus the Israeli Army Radio’s take was that Mr. Obama rapped Mr. Netanyahu on the knuckles for his predilection for making self-serving announcements after each meeting, of his victory over the Americans, to the press. This is also how the Jerusalem Post, on the authority of an unnamed U.S. diplomat, viewed the meeting.
The possibility, however, that what appeared as a procedural snub may in fact have concealed “far-reaching understandings” was raised by [former Sharon adviser] Dov Weisglass:
“Clearly, one of two things occurred during the meeting – a severe crisis and deadlock which the sides do not want to make worse by making it public, or far-reaching understandings that may lead to a domestic crisis in Israel, and therefore are not made public either,” [Dov Weisglass] said. “Time will tell which of the two scenarios actually transpired.”
Weisglass may be dissimulating in hinting at hard conditons on Israel (“that may lead to a domestic crisis in Israel”), but he does raise the possibility of “far-reaching understandings” having been reached at the meeting. For a variety of reasons — domestic (an isolated American president, under pressure from the Israel lobby, well entrenched in his administration, from the Republican party, the military-industrial-financial establishment, white supremacists, and other right wing groups) and international (the shifting of focus from Iraq to the “Af/Pak” theatre, privileging West Asia over the Arab Middle East, and military solutions over diplomatic ones, effectively abandoning U.S. support for a meaningful Palestinian state) — Mr. Obama may have capitulated to Israel.
We must remember that it was Dov Weisglass who, on behalf of Israel, negotiated the secret agreement on “settlements” with Elliott Abrams, the former U.S. deputy national security adviser; the agreement, formalised in Bush’s letter to Sharon, that Hillary Clinton is being accused of having revealed inadvertently on her recent trip to the Middle East.
The party continues – the New Antisemitism iscelebrated, studied, analysed and published by Zionist scholars everywhere, until the smoke rises. Among those burning the midnight oil is Anthony Julius, a frenetic supporter of everrything Israeli, and his new book contributes to the festivities. Most of this is sheer tosh and crude Israeli propaganda, confusing anti-Zionism and anti-semitism, intentionally and maliciously. Anne Karpf is almost pointing this out, but is so gentle in her rebuke, you could be forgiven for let it fly by you without visible effect… you could have for a moment thought that it was Jews who were bombed out of their houses, schools and hospitals in January 2009. While Karfpf points out that Israeli politicians are also contributing to the confusion between Jews and Zionists, when they call their state “Jewish” and speak for “all Jews”, she does not point out the corolary – most Jews waste no time or opportunity to back Israel’s crimes to the hilt. If Jewish communities behaved a bit less nationalistically and more humanely and morally, this may well have been noticed by the non-Jewish communities, and would have helped to counter the anti-semitism of idiots, to borrow and twist a phrase from Marx:
Anne Karpf: Anti-Semitism is at the limits of irony: The Independent
Racism against Jews is on the rise, but some of it masquerades as comedy, and that makes it complex to address
Is the closed season on Jews over? Are English Jews facing rising levels of violence and abuse? Anthony Julius certainly thinks so. The lawyer, best known for representing the late Diana, Princess of Wales in her divorce, but also the author of a book on T S Eliot and anti-Semitism, has written a capacious history of anti-Semitism in England, Trials of the Diaspora, out next week. In it he expresses his “provisional judgement” that the situation facing Anglo-Jewry “is quite bad, and might get worse”.
Coincidentally, the report on anti-semitic incidents in 2009 by the Community Security Trust (CST), was published last week. At first view, it makes alarming reading, and seems to confirm Julius’s worst fears. CST recorded 924 anti-Semitic incidents in 2009, the highest annual total since it began recording such incidents in 1984, and – after two years of falling numbers – an increase of 69 per cent from 2008.
But peer closely and the picture is more complicated. The main reason for the surge, CST noted, was the unprecedented number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in January and February 2009, during and after the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Of course, this is no reason to rejoice: if someone is trying to thump you, the fact that they’re screaming that it’s revenge for what Israel is doing in Gaza isn’t going to make you feel a whole lot better. It didn’t help that during Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon, the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “I believe that this is a war that is fought by all the Jews.” If the Israeli government (wrongly) elides Israel with all Jews, it’s hardly surprising if anti-Semites do too.
These days you rarely hear the kind of unthinking middle-class anti-Semitism current in, say, 1961, the year in which An Education, the film based on Lynn Barber’s memoir, was set. Philip French, in The Observer, wondered if the real-life counterpart of the headteacher (Emma Thompson), given to sneering rants about the Jews killing Jesus, would have been really so strident. Yet only a few years earlier, a teacher in my primary school declared one week that all Jews were rich, and the next that the Jews killed Jesus. (My Holocaust survivor parents, angry but also anxious, wrote anonymously to the headteacher. By the following week, the teacher was gone.)
If anti-Semitism of this kind seems to have disappeared altogether, we live in postmodern times where some of what looks like anti-Semitism isn’t, but, conversely, some of what doesn’t look like anti-Semitism in fact is. Consider the “philo-Semitism”, for instance, of Michael Gove and Julie Burchill (“the Jews are my favourites”; “Jews do things so well”). Burchill’s philo-Semitism is a form of anti-Semitism, I’d suggest, because it bunches all Jews together, as though we were a single, uniform entity. The idea that all Jews are wonderful is little different from all Jews being hateful: in both cases Jews are stripped of individual characteristics, and are nothing except Jewish – a view to which most racists happily subscribe. If Burchill, as is rumoured, converts to Judaism, she’ll discover that some Jews are nice and others not – rather like the rest of the human race.
Today racism, it seems, can be ironic. I’ve heard of campuses where non-Jewish students josh their Jewish friends with comments like: “Stop hoarding the milk, you Jew.” Is this too close to the bone, or is it fatally unsatirical to take offence? Some young Jews find it amusing, yet recognise that such playing with stereotypes can only be done between consenting adults – close friends with licence to shock one another.
It is also, they recognise, a dangerous game which, under the guise of playfulness, might also allow the venting of real prejudice. How far is it from Tottenham supporters calling themselves the Yid Army, to Chelsea fans chanting “Spurs are on their way to Auschwitz”, as they do when the teams meet? Some non-Jewish Tottenham fans argue that, on the contrary, their happy embrace of the “Yiddo” label is a way of neutralising anti-Semitism.
But there are limits to irony. Last Monday, a new page opened on Facebook, called “Hi, I’m a Jew. I don’t care about COD [Call of Duty, a video game mostly played by boys] or Periods, I just want your gold”. By Thursday it had 3,040 fans, peddling the hoariest stereotypes of money-grabbing, wealth and noses. Another Facebook page is called “Racist Jokes”. This includes such gems – hold on to your hats – as “What’s the difference between a pizza and a Jew? A pizza doesn’t scream when you put it in the oven”, and “What’s the difference between a Jew and a boy scout? The boy scout came back from the camp.’
That some of these postings are poorly spelt and written is no reassurance. There’s bravado here, of course: teenagers thinking it’s cool to be outlandish, following in a long tradition of crudely anti-Semitic jokes charted by Julius. These latest, though, are amplified by the internet’s reach and anonymity, which not only allows you to reinvent your own identity but see other people’s as equally fictitious.
Those young Jews who have protested have, of course, been accused of lacking a sense of humour (though one young Jew expressed disgust about “Racist Jokes” by commenting: “The person who made it is probs a fucking Paki who needs to go back to their own country”). Yet when a Jewish teenager directly confronted friends who’d signed up to the pages, they apologised and professed themselves ashamed. They’d made no connection between cyber anti-Semitism and the feelings of real, embodied Jews.
Modern anti-Semitism is a complex phenomenon, but Anthony Julius, for all his often thoughtful analysis, ultimately falls back on the elision of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and the notion that the Zionist is the Jew by another name. Perhaps the best way of countering such reductionism is to reverse it: the BNP’s Nick Griffin and the Polish MEP Michael Kaminski have shown that neo-Nazi anti-Semitic sentiments and support for Israel are quite compatible.
We should never be complacent about anti-Semitism, but neither should we allow some Jews to exaggerate it, regard it as inevitable, use it to try and delegitimise criticism of Israel or see it as an altogether different kind of animal from other more socially accepted kinds of racism such as Islamophobia. Those who hate are rarely so discriminating.
Anne Karpf is the author of a family memoir, The War After: Living with the Holocaust (Faber Finds) and co-editor of A Time to Speak Out: Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity
High Court to discuss deportation of peace activists: YNet
Two Spanish, Australian women arrested early Sunday in Ramallah, handed over to Oz unit members. American national, who was with them in apartment, says ’10 soldiers broke in, demanded our passports and then informed the two that they were arrested for not having a valid visa’
Two Spanish and Australian peace activists were arrested early Sunday after Israel Defense Forces soldiers raided the house they were staying in near the West Bank city of el-Bireh in the Ramallah area.
The two women were arrested on suspicion of staying in the area with an invalid visa. The two were taken to the Ofer Base and handed over to members of the Interior Ministry’s Oz unit.
In the meantime, the two women petitioned the High Court of Justice, which decided to delay their deportation from Israel and scheduled an urgent discussion for Monday.
Ryan Olander, an International Solidarity Movement activist from the United States who shared an apartment with the two women and who was also arrested for the same allegations several weeks ago, told Ynet that “10 soldiers broke into the apartment, examined the passports and then informed Ariadna Jove Marti and Bridgette Chappell that they were under arrest on suspicion of not having a valid visa.
‘Israeli attempt to crush resistance’
According to Olander, “The raid is a continuation of Israel’s attempts to crush the popular resistance of the occupation. This is a cynical and despicable attempt to conceal the reality of the occupation and prevent the international community from having access to what is happening here.”
“During the raid they checked our personal belongings and our computers. A Computer belonging to one of the female activists was confiscated, in addition to cameras and other equipment. During the entire process the soldiers did not explain what they were doing. This is illegal,” said Olander.
Peace organizations view the two women’s arrest as an Israeli attempt to hurt the popular struggle and its activists. “Even if their visa is no longer valid, this is not a reason to raid Ramallah,” said peace activist Neta Golan, one of the founders of ISM.
Organization officials claim that members of the Oz unit took part in a Ramallah raid last month as well, during which they arrested a Czech peace activist.
The IDF Spokesperson’s Office said in response, “According to the Central Command, IDF forces arrested in Ramallah women involved in illegal activity, including riots and jeopardizing IDF soldiers and public property. The arrest was carried out in accordance with IDF policy.”