Tag: Israel

March 4, 2010

EDITOR: To understand what is in store for Palestinians, read below. This monster is the creature created by ALL Israeli governments, without exception.

Sheikh Jarrah Jews praise Baruch Goldstein on Purim: Ynet

(Video) Residents of east Jerusalem neighborhood celebrate holiday with songs of praise for Cave of Patriarchs massacre. Left-wing activists plan protest. To see the video use link above.

VIDEO – A video obtained by Ynet depicts Jewish residents of east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood during their Purim celebrations singing songs of praise for Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish terrorist who murdered 29 Palestinians 16 years ago at the Cave of the Patriarchs.

Tensions in east Jerusalem have peaked recently over the building plans in Silwan.

The recent documented Purim festivities were reminiscent of scenes from Hebron. The residents adopted well-known childhood songs in order to praise the massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs carried out by Goldstein.
The video was filmed this past Monday, and shows residents singing and dancing next to their Arab neighbors: “Dr. Goldstein, there is none other like you in the world. Dr. Goldstein, we all love you… he aimed at terrorists’ heads, squeezed the trigger hard, and shot bullets, and shot, and shot.”
One of the leaders of the leftist campaign in the neighborhood, Assaf Sharon, described to Ynet: “The settlers are allowed to hold political activities and aggravating and offensive as could possibly be, and the neighborhood’s original residents, who are still a majority there, are not allowed to do a thing. We saw them enter a house, have a party, and play very loud music.”

Ynet asked the Jewish residents themselves for a response to the songs of praise for Goldstein, but they preferred not to respond.
Left-wing activists plan on holding a demonstration this upcoming Saturday night in protest of the events. “Such an event, which takes place under the watchful eye of the police, needs to make every citizen of Israel lose sleep. Such displays of violence on the part of the settlers are becoming more abundant.
“Therefore, it is important that people come and demand from the government and the Jerusalem municipality to stop the settlement enterprise in the east of the city, which is destroying the delicate fabric of life and is thwarting all possibility for a future peace accord,” said Sharon.

EDITOR: It takes one to know one…

While it is difficult to argue with the statement about Israel, for a Saudi politician to say this carries its humourous weight!

Saudi FM: Israel a religiously oriented culture: Ynet

Prince Saud al-Faisal tells New York Times about enlightened ‘liberal’ trends in his country, compared to ‘extreme’ conservative religious movement in Jewish state

WASHINGTON – Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, whose country is considered one of the most conservative Muslim states, believes his Saudi Arabia is “moving in the direction of a liberal society, while Israel is moving into a more religiously oriented culture.”

Faisal told the New York Times that while Saudi Arabia was moving forward, “what is happening in Israel is the opposite.”
Nationwide crackdown launched on stores selling items that are red or in any other way allude to banned celebrations of Western holiday
The interview was conducted by columnist Muareen Dowd, who arrived in Saudi Arabia for a 10-day visit to examine the improvement in the woman’s status.

Dowd noted in her column that Saudi Arabia was an absolute Muslim monarchy ruling over one of the most religiously and socially intolerant places on earth, and that the country Faisail deemed too “religiously determined” and regressive was the democracy of Israel.
“We are breaking away from the shackles of the past,” the prince said. “We are moving in the direction of a liberal society. What is happening in Israel is the opposite; you are moving into a more religiously oriented culture and into a more religiously determined politics and to a very extreme sense of nationhood,” which was coming “to a boiling point.”

Faisal linked the alleged religious radicalization in Israel with the difficulty to strike a peace agreement with the Palestinians and Arab countries, saying that “the religious institutions in Israel are stymieing every effort at peace.”
Asked about the situation of women in his country and extreme statements made by Muslim clerics, the prince said, “I think the trend for reform is set, and there is no looking back. Clerics who every now and then come with statements in the opposite direction are releasing frustration rather than believing that they can stop the trend and turn back the clock.”

EDITOR: The Show must go on!

For the 359th time (I didn’t really count…) the ‘peace negotiations’ are to start. This is good news for the media, politicians, and T Shirt manufacturers. For the rest of us, especially for the Palestinians, this is really bad news; Israel always used ‘peace talk’ to further its settlements at high speed. Not a single US President could resist the Photo Call round, but there again, Obama already has his Nobel Peace Prize, so what does he care?

Mideast peace talks could begin as early as Sunday: Haaretz

Indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority may begin as early as Sunday, Haaretz had learned. U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell will land in Israel on Saturday night, and the American administration is hoping the sides will declare the beginning of indirect talks the following morning, ahead of the arrival of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Monday.
The foreign ministers of the Arab League announced in Cairo Wednesday they were supporting the American initiative for indirect negotiations, qualifying their support with a four-month deadline. They said no progress will be possible without a complete settlement freeze.

The announcement came after heavy American, Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi pressure was put on the Palestinians and on other members of the League. The pressure also resulted in the Palestinians’ withdrawing a much tougher and reserved statement about the negotiations than the one eventually released. The Arab League decision was not unanimous and was strongly contested by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who went as far as to interrupt when Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, was reading out the statement, to say the decision on entering negotiations rested ultimately with the PA.

The foreign ministers set a four-month deadline for the first phase of indirect negotiations after which the Arab League will assess the progress of the talks and decide whether to offer further support.
The foreign ministers said their decision was a last effort to promote peace through negotiations and was meant to allow the American administration an opportunity to facilitate the process. “Despite the lack of conviction in the seriousness of the Israeli side, the committee sees that it would give the indirect talks the chance as a last attempt and to facilitate the U.S. role,” the statement read.

Moussa stressed that even indirect negotiations are doomed to failure if Israeli measures such as settlement construction continue. He warned that if indirect talks fail to yield results, the Arabs will call for an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting to address the Arab-Israeli conflict and would ask Washington not to use its veto.
The Americans proposed the indirect talks as a way to allow the process to move forward without PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ losing face by being seen as giving up on his demand for a complete settlement freeze. Abbas had also sought the Arab League’s support to preempt Palestinian criticism of the move.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Wednesday in Gaza that he calls on the Arab League to review its decision.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented Wednesday in a Knesset speech that “it seems the conditions for proximity talks are ripening.” He said: “All said and done, the world understands that this government is striving for negotiations. It has made some difficult steps to further these negotiations. It said things and did things,” he said.

The prime minister also slammed the Palestinians for refusing “without justification and no reason whatsoever to reenter negotiations.”
Netanyahu said: “I’ve said before that although you normally need two to tango, in this case you might need three. These negotiations may require some going back and forth, but Israel is not and never was an obstacle to negotiations.”
American Vice President Joe Biden is expected to arrive here on Monday, and the American administration is keen to have the announcement of indirect negotiations before he lands, so he can congratulate the sides and present the talks as an American achievement.

Special envoy Mitchell will mediate the talks, which will be the first formal negotiations after a 15-month hiatus, since before Netanyahu took office. These will also be the first Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to take place under the Obama administration.
Negotiations have been at a standstill as Abbas refused to enter talks so long as any construction takes place in any settlement, including East Jerusalem.
At this stage, negotiations will focus on border issues, with the hope that if these can be resolved, the issue of settlement construction will be next on the agenda, followed by the core issues of the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.

Continue reading March 4, 2010

March 3, 2010

EDITOR: Netanyahu is target of criticism

It is clear from the following items that PM Netanyahu is facing some problems, both at home and abroad. What is interesting, however, is the source of this critique in Israel. While LIvni is quite accurate about Netanyahu’s standing abroad, she conveniently forgets, or prefers to deny the facts about her own government headed by Olmert – the government responsible for mass murder of civilians both in Lebanon (2006) and in Gaza (2008/9). Now if she is to be considered  a liberal, then we surely have lost all yardsticks! A case of avoiding criminal responsibility by pointing at other criminals.

Livni to Netanyahu: With you in power, Israel is a pariah state: Haaretz

Opposition leader Tzipi Livni sharply criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday in a speech made during a Knesset session marking the one-year anniversary of Netanyahu’s ascension to power.

“You worked hard to get to that seat, you waited, you sat in the opposition, you made crafty plans,” Livni said, addressing the premier. “Surely you had an idea of where you wanted to lead the country. But nothing.”
Livni, the head of the Kadima party, also lamented the lack of negotiations with the Palestinians as well as Netanyahu’s economic policies and the biannual budget.
Advertisement
“Since you took control, Israel has become a pariah country in the world,” she said.

Livni’s speech was part of a Knesset session entitled “Israel under the leadership of Netanyahu. To where?”

Livni called on Netanyahu to support Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen in the face of criticism leveled by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is under investigation by police for corruption.
“I asked myself, who is supposed to defend law enforcement officials in Israel? I am giving all the needed support but Mr. Prime Minister you need to do this also, because this is happening in your yard and you have responsibility for all that is happening.

“You are responsible for this disrespect, the crime in the streets and the inability to cope with it. You are the Prime Minister, it is time to act as a Prime Minister, do what is right and give support to who needs it.”
Livni, who earlier in the day met with Supreme Court president Dorit Beinish, also attacked Netanyahu for inaction on the issue of incitement against judges.
“I have differences with the Supreme Court but I will do everything to protect the institution. It is not enough just to talk when shoes are thrown at the Supreme Court president. One needs to act.”

Dubai seeks Netanyahu’s arrest over killing of Hamas man: Haaretz

Dubai’s police chief plans to seek the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the head of the Mossad over the killing of a Hamas leader in the emirate, Al Jazeera television reported on Wednesday.
Dahi Khalfan Tamim “said he would ask the Dubai prosecutor to issue arrest warrants for … Netanyahu and the head of Mossad,” the television said. It did not give details.

Tamim has said he is “almost certain” Israeli agents were involved in the killing of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a Dubai hotel in January, calling for Mossad’s boss, Meir Dagan, to be arrested if it is proved responsible. Tamim said on Monday Mossad had “insulted” Dubai and Western countries whose fraudulent passports were used by suspects in the assassination.
Dubai has asked the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to look into prepaid cards issued by the Meta Financial Group’s MetaBank which the suspects used, a United Arab Emirates newspaper said.
Citing an FBI source, The National newspaper said the investigation would look into any Israeli involvement in the killing.
“Thirteen of the 27 suspects used prepaid MasterCards issued by MetaBank, a regional American bank, to purchase plane tickets and book hotel rooms,” the newspaper said, quoting Dubai police.

MetaBank said it followed proper procedures when it issued the cards.
Authorities told the bank that the suspects appeared to have used stolen passports to get employment with U.S. companies, MetaBank said in a statement on Tuesday. The companies paid the employees with prepaid cards issued by MetaBank and other banks.
MetaBank said it had launched its own review of the matter, and had so far found that it followed all bank and regulatory requirements.
The suspects authorities had identified were not on any list that would indicate their identities were fraudulent, it said.

The UAE, a U.S.-allied Arab state that backs the Palestinian drive for an independent state and an end to Israeli occupation, has no diplomatic relations with Israel.
But it has established low-level political and trade links in recent years, with some Israeli officials attending events in the Gulf Arab state. Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer competed in the Dubai Championships last month.
Members of the hit squad used fraudulent passports from Britain, Ireland, Germany, France and Australia. Residents of Israel with the same names as the suspects, holding dual nationalities, have said their identities appear to have been stolen.
The passport abuse has drawn criticism from the European Union, and some of the governments involved have summoned the Israeli ambassadors to their countries to protest.

EDITOR: Another repeat broadcast of the well-loved soap opera “Peace in the Middle East”

So here they come again… Abbas receives new instructions from the boss in Washington! How many times have we read those infuriating lines, and yet, journalists and editors continue to spew type as if, despite all they have seen, heard and know, this is the ‘real time’! Every new ‘time’ is the first time for them, as well as for the purveyors of the lie in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Mahmoud Abbas given four months to try indirect peace talks with Israel: The Guardian

Arab governments back talks between Palestinian president and Israel, brokered by the US
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been granted four months to try indirect peace talks with Israel through US diplomats. Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been given four months by Arab governments to try indirect peace negotiations with Israel, brokered by the US.

Arab League ambassadors meeting in Cairo today gave their backing to so-called “proximity talks” in which American diplomats will shuttle between the two sides to find common ground and bridge gaps. Israel swiftly welcomed the decision.
Abbas’s Fatah movement is expected to endorse the idea this weekend, paving the way for the first negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis after an impasse of more than a year.
New talks will also be a second chance for Barack Obama, who has so far disappointed Arabs and others by failing to make good on his commitment to give a high priority to the Middle East peace process and by declining to press Israel to make prior concessions.

But there is widespread scepticism about the prospects for success. Israel has the most rightwing government in its history, while Palestinians are divided between Fatah, based in the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, which is under siege and controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas, which opposes negotiations with Israel.
Arab officials were not “convinced by Israeli intentions,” said the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, but “they decided to give an opportunity of four months to the American proposal”.

Diplomats say Abbas had been in two minds over whether to resume talks but wanted to avoid being painted as the side refusing to negotiate – despite having failed to secure his demand for a full settlement freeze from Israel’s Likud prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
“Israel does not want to return to the negotiating table. But it wishes to blame the Palestinian side, saying that the Palestinians do not want to enter into negotiations,” said Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina. “So we must put a stop to this pretext and reveal Israel’s true position before the international community and the American administration.”

Abbas broke off negotiations with Israel in protest at its Cast Lead offensive in the Gaza Strip launched in December 2008.
The effort will be overseen by George Mitchell, Obama’s Middle East envoy, who will need to establish the starting point for talks. Palestinians will want to go back to proposals submitted to Abbas by Ehud Olmert, the previous Israeli prime minister. Those included land swaps that would involve leaving most Israeli settlements in the West Bank, arrangements on Jerusalem and the symbolic return of some refugees. The Netanyahu government has refused to accept what had been agreed as a basis for further negotiation.

The Palestinian president has been under intense US pressure to open peace negotiations with Netanyahu but until now had refused to do so unless Israel freezes all settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, originally demanded by Obama. Israel has only accepted a partial halt on construction for 10 months and has excluded East Jerusalem. The Arab position is that the Palestinians should try proximity talks for four months and then go back to the UN.
In a further sign of the quickening pace of peace process activity, the UN announced that the quartet of Middle East negotiators – the US, UN, EU and Russia – is to convene at ministerial level in Moscow later this month.

Continue reading March 3, 2010

March 2, 2010

EDITOR: The Backlash against Israel

During the long year since the murderous attack on Gaza, many cracks have shown in the broad support for Israel, all around the globe. What was considered quite normal, like twinning with Israeli towns and cities, has come under much liberal examination, with millions of people now being careful to no longer offer Israel such unthinking and uncritical support. The sea change is about, and likely to spread and grow.

Irish town criticised for snubbing Israeli ambassador: BBC

The council said Zion Evrony’s visit was organised without their approval
Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin has criticised an Irish town council’s decision to remove a page signed by the Israeli ambassador from its guestbook.
Carrickmacross representatives voted to remove Zion Evrony’s signature in protest at Israel’s diplomatic record.
Mr Martin said diplomatic representatives should always be treated with respect.
But a local councillor defended the town’s decision, saying he hoped it would send a serious message to Israel.
“I think if a government is responsible for a wholesale disregard for international law then local authorities, as well as our own government, have a responsibility to tell them we expect a higher standard,” Matt Carthy said.
He added that although Carrickmacross is a welcoming town, “it was important that we took a stand”.
Civility
The council’s move follows reports that Irish passports were used by those allegedly behind the Dubai killing of Palestinian militant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in January.
Dubai’s police chief says he is convinced of the involvement of Israeli agents in al-Mabhouh’s death, but Israel says there is no proof.
Mr Martin said that while he understands and shares the “deep concerns” of many in Ireland about Israel’s policies on a number of issues, the action violated a basic tenet of relations between states.
“It is a basic principle of relations between states that we treat each other’s diplomatic representatives with civility and respect, regardless of any policy differences,” he said.
Mr Martin said he has raised concerns about the passport controversy during a meeting with Israel’s foreign minister last week.
He added: “Ambassadors represent not just their governments, but their peoples”.
“The way that foreign ambassadors are welcomed and received in Ireland says something about us as a people.”

EDITOR: Jews are sought! Prizes for finders!

With the founts of immigration in the west drying up, and with North American Jews showing no signs of moving en masse to the promised land, Israel is looking for Jews of any kind just about anywhere this side of the Milky Way. Afghanistan, Mexico, Africa – all have been scoured for groups which can be declared Jewish. In the numbers demographic war which Israel is fighting with Palestinians, it is crucial to remain a majority in Palestine, so any Jews are good Jews for settlements, proper gun fodder for the escalating conflict. This is a BBC ‘good news’ story, of saving Jews from India, and liberating them in Hebron, the very heart of the settlement movement.

Jerusalem Diary: Found tribe: BBC

THE TRIBE NO LONGER LOST
There are some East Asian faces to be seen around Israel. Up in the fields of the far north, by the Lebanese border, or the groves of the far south, en route to Eilat, Thai farm workers rattle past on tractors.
In the big cities, Filipina women offer care to elderly Israelis.
But until I had been to Kiryat Arba, deep inside the occupied West Bank, I had not seen East Asians the other side of the Green Line – the internationally recognised boundary between Israel and the West Bank.
Kiryat Arba is a slightly down-at-heel place these days. It lies next to Hebron, the tense and divided city that exerts a strong historical pull for Muslims and Jews.
The story that we tend to report is the hotly-contested dispute as to whether Jews should be allowed to settle here at all – on what all governments outside Israel regard as occupied territory.
But there is another remarkable and little-told story at play here: the story of Indians from a remote part of that vast country, who have come to this place, believing that they are one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel.
On the side of a plain, pre-fabricated building in Kiryat Arba is a plaque, proclaiming that this is a community centre for “our Bnei Menashe brethren”. The brown-skinned, almond-eyed children playing inside have travelled thousands of kilometres from north-east India.

Rabbi Yehuda Gin stabs his forefinger at a map of the region, sandwiched between Burma and Bangladesh. The story of the “children of Menashe” is that they were exiled from Israel, 2700 years ago, by the Assyrians. Their wandering took them, in the end, to north-east India.
“In the external appearance,” Rabbi Gin says, “it is very hard to prove that we are part of the Israel nation, or part of the tribes.” But he insists that the kipot (skullcaps) which most of the Bnei Menashe men wear symbolise their commitment. “We – having been lost – still adhere to our love for the land of Israel: this is a very, very strong part of the identity of the Bnei Menashe.”

The community centre is named Beit Miriam, after the grandmother of Michael Freund. He set up an organisation, called Shavei Yisrael (Israel Returns), to gather in the communities which he believes are the lost tribes.
“I myself was sceptical,” he concedes. “But once I travelled to the north-east of India and I met with the members of the community and I learned more about their history and their tradition and their customs, I became convinced that they are in fact descendants of a lost tribe – that they do have a deep connection to the people of Israel.”
In a quiet room away from the hectic games of the Bnei Menashe children, Tsvi Khaute takes a prayer-book down from a shelf. He opens to a page from the Shabbat morning service, and the traditional Ayn Keiloheinu prayer, which is sung by Jewish communities around the world. The Hebrew words are the same, but the tune he sings has a distinctly pentatonic, East Asian flavour.

Kiryat Arba is at the edge of Hebron, a regular flashpoint between Palestinians and Jewish settlers

The faith, then, appears to have deep religious roots. But that still leaves the possibility that the Bnei Menashe may have wanted to come to Israel for economic reasons – to improve their standard of living.
Tsvi Khaute insists not. His family, he says, includes a state minister and the head of the secret police.
“We are a well-to-do family. So it is not an economic consideration. If you live outside Israel,” he says, his voice becoming impassioned, “it’s as if you don’t have God.”

Tzvi Khaute is equally certain about his right to live here, on what governments outside Israel regard as an illegal settlement on occupied territory. “Those who claim that Hebron is not Jewish, they don’t know their identity. This is a very, very important place where the Jews belong.”
There is another, more prosaic reason that the Bnei Menashe ended up in Kiryat Arba. Fifteen years ago, it was one of the only Israeli-run councils willing to accept these unusual-looking immigrants.
The international consensus is that Jews should not be settling in Kiryat Arba at all – that it should be part of a new Palestinian state. And if that were ever to happen then the Bnei Menashe’s remarkable story of wandering may well take another turn.

Continue reading March 2, 2010

March 1, 2010

HH: Goldilocks and the Three Bears
HH: Goldilocks and the Three Bears

EDITOR: Israeli Apartheid Week

This week, the BDS campaign is at last spreading far and wide across the globe, through the Apartheid Week campaign. It certainly seems to mark the gradual transformation of pubic opinion on this issue, and predicates a likely political change in the future. This is why the tag on anti-semitism has been automatically attached to this activity by Zionist propaganda makers.

Universities across the globe mark Israeli Apartheid Week: Haaretz

LONDON – A filmmaker, anthropologist and economic researcher are among those headlining events marking what pro-Palestinian organizers have declared as “Israeli Apartheid Week” – and all three speakers are Israeli.

University campuses in more than 40 cities around the world are marking the week with lectures, films, multimedia events, cultural performances and demonstrations.
Since they were first launched in 2005, the events have become some of “the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar,” according to its organizers.

Its aim, they state on their Web site, is to “contribute to this chorus of international opposition to Israeli apartheid and to bolster support for the boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) campaign.”
Though many of the details about those events were not being promoted on the Apartheid Week Web site, it did list several events being offered by Israelis.

Among them is Shir Hever, an economic researcher at the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, who is scheduled to give a series of lectures at the University of Amsterdam entitled “Could the Economic Policies of Israel be Considered a Form of Apartheid?”
In addition, Israeli activist and filmmaker Shai Carmeli-Pollak is screening his 2006 documentary “Bil’in Habibti,” about Israel Defense Forces violence, at Boston-area universities.
Jeff Halper, the Israel-based professor of anthropology who is co-founder and coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, was scheduled to speak on “Israeli Apartheid: The Case For BDS” at Glasgow University.

The participation of several Israelis in the anti-Zionist events is “atrocious,” said David Katz, a member of Britain’s Jewish Board of Deputies who grew up in South Africa and has long fought the comparison between that country’s racial segregation and Israel’s ethnic divisions.
“They are free to do as they please, but it’s atrocious,” he said of the participating Israelis. “I think they don’t understand the analogy they are making… which is insulting to those who suffered under apartheid.”
“It’s like calling things ‘holocaust’ which are not the Holocaust or terming something ‘genocide’ which is not genocide,” said Katz.

As part of efforts to counter the Apartheid Week events, one Jewish charity brought over Benjamin Pogrund, a South African immigrant to Israel who is the former deputy editor of the Johannesburg-based Rand Daily Mail, to speak to British university students about why Israel is not an apartheid state.
“The game plan of those who seek the destruction of Israel is to equate us with South Africa, a pariah state which had to be subjected to international sanctions,” Pogrund has said. “Israelis coming to take part in this week should know better.”

In Canada, the legislature in the province of Ontario unanimously condemned Israeli Apartheid Week, voting for a resolution that denounced the campus events.
“If you’re going to label Israel as Apartheid, then you are also… attacking Canadian values,” Conservative legislator Peter Shurman told Shalom Life, a Toronto-based Jewish Web site.
“The use of the phrase ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ is about as close to hate speech as one can get without being arrested, and I’m not certain it doesn’t actually cross over that line,” he said.

No country would accept Netanyahu’s conditions for peace: Haaretz

By Akiva Eldar
The decision to add the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb to the list of historical heritage sites up for renovation was not made with the intention of inflaming tempers and sabotaging efforts to revive final-status talks with the Palestinians. It was merely a routine move by a rightist government, further proof that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “two states” speech at Bar-Ilan University was a milestone on the road to nowhere. The only difference between “the rock of our existence” that launched the Western Wall tunnel violence in 1996 and the 2010 model is that this time Netanyahu is wearing a mask, trying to pass himself off as peace activist Uri Avnery, with the generous help of Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

The prime minister, as we all know, simply can’t wait for renewed final-status talks to get underway, but Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to back down and is setting “conditions that predetermine the outcome of the negotiations,” as Netanyahu told Haaretz a week ago. Indeed, the Palestinians have made their participation in indirect talks conditional on, in part, a construction freeze during the talks in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem. They have the audacity to claim that it is Netanyahu’s demand to expand settlements during negotiations along with the assertion of Jewish ownership over sensitive sites which are the conditions that predetermine the outcome of the talks.

The Palestinian demand for a total freeze on settlement construction, including that required for natural population growth, is not, in Netanyahu’s words “a condition that no country would accept.” Israel accepted that condition in the road map seven years ago. In an article in the journal of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations in December 2009, Prof. Ruth Lapidoth, recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize for Legal Studies, and Dr. Ofra Friesel write that the Netanyahu government is obligated by the road map, which was ratified by the Sharon government. A former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, Lapidoth stresses that the 14 remarks (not reservations, as they are usually termed) that Israel appended have no legal validity. And since the U.S. government promised no more than to relate “fully and seriously” to these remarks, they don’t have any diplomatic validity, either.

Netanyahu argues that Sharon reached an oral agreement with George W. Bush that the construction freeze would not apply to the “settlement blocs” and that the United States would take into account natural-growth requirements. The prime minister therefore expects the Palestinians to honor not only formal agreements to which they were a party, but also informal understandings reached behind their backs between Israel and America. Yet when the Palestinians demand an acknowledgment of understandings they reached with the Olmert government on a number of final-status principles, Netanyahu says this is a “precondition that predetermines the outcome of negotiations.”

The prime minister also contemptuously rejects the Palestinian demand that the talks be resumed where they were halted in December 2008. He is not prepared to even listen to the parameters for a final-status agreement proposed by Bill Clinton in December 2000. Netanyahu insists he has the right to start negotiations from square one, ignoring every agreement already reached with the Palestinians. He has even forgotten the Wye River Memorandum of 1998, under which he undertook, in Clinton’s presence, to transfer 13 percent of Area C to the Palestinians.

Netanyahu sticks only to those clauses in the interim agreement (Oslo 2) that removed responsibility for the Palestinians’ welfare from Israel’s hands and left Israel in control of Area C (60 percent of the West Bank). And of course, Netanyahu is totally committed to those clauses that require the Palestinians to combat terrorist infrastructure and incitement and refrain from asking the United Nations to condemn the injustices of the occupation.

Netanyahu is setting conditions for negotiations that no country would accept. His opposition to a settlement freeze and his refusal to resume talks where they left off expose his Bar-Ilan declarations as a cunning diversionary tactic. As his chief spokesman, President Shimon Peres, is wont to declare, “You have to tell the people the truth.” The dismal truth is that, behind the mask, Netanyahu is still the same old Bibi.

EDITOR: The Dubai murder story that will not die down

The murder of one Palestinian in Dubai refuses to disappear from the front pages. Is it possible that Israel has gone too far for the general public sensibilities this time? We should not be celebrating too soon. After all, it certainly did go too far during the 22 days of the carnage in Gaza? While the public revulsion aroused by each wave of brutalities seems to subside after some time has passed, there is also a public memory which keeps building up, a memory of the systemic nature of Israeli Zionist methods and means, and to this end the Apartheid Week is crucial. Thus, this growth of the rejection of Israel’s impunity is also important, even, as now, it is only played on a formalistic level.

Australia police expected in Israel to probe Dubai hit passports: Haaretz

Australian investigators are expected in Israel in the coming days to question several dual nationals whose names have been connected to the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month.

Israel agreed to allow two to three Australian police officers to question the dual citizens, after Australia’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday requested approval from the Israeli envoy in Canberra to dispatch the investigators.
Mabhouh was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20 in what police say they are almost certain was a hit by Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Australia last week said it was not satisfied with the Israeli envoy’s explanation about the use of fraudulent Australian passports in the killing, after three people holding Australian passports were listed among 15 new suspects.

Dubai authorities have named 26 alleged members of the team that tracked and killed the Palestinian and said they operated in disguise and used fraudulent British, Irish, French, German and Australian passports.
Media reports last week said that Australian authorities had approached Israel in the 1990s to seek assurances that its passports would not be used in Mossad activities after it was feared Israel had doctored New Zealand passports.
During that meeting, the reports claimed, the Israelis said they condoned such identity theft, with Australian participants describing their response as “enraged self-righteousness.”

On Saturday, investigators from Britain’s Serious Organized Crimes Agency arrived in Israel to interview dual nationals whose names were used on British forged passports tied to the killing.
‘Two suspected Dubai assassins traveled to the U.S. after the hit’
At least two of the 26 suspected members of the team that tracked and killed Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month traveled to the U.S. shortly after his death, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Records show one of the suspects entered the U.S. on January 21 using an Irish passport and another arrived in the U.S. February 14 using a British passport, reported the Wall Street Journal, quoting “a person familiar with the situation.”
Investigators are uncertain whether the two are still in the U.S. Police suspect the alleged hit squad members used fraudulently issued passports, and that the two may have left the U.S. using different travel documents.
Spokesmen for the U.S. State Department and Interpol both declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal report.
People with the same names as many of the suspects live in Israel and say their identities were stolen. The passport abuse has drawn criticism from the European Union, and some of the governments involved have summoned the Israeli ambassadors to their countries to protest.

Israel has not denied or confirmed it played any role but Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said there was nothing to link Israel to the killing.
Dubai police have also identified two U.S. financial companies they believe issued several of the credit cards used by at least 14 suspects in the alleged killing.

Continue reading March 1, 2010

February 28, 2010

US Pushes for War with Iran: Brasscheck TV


Police ‘in Jerusalem holy site’: BBC

The compound contains sites holy to both Jews and Muslims
Israeli police say they have entered a compound in Jerusalem containing the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites.
Police said they entered the compound to disperse at least 20 Palestinians who were throwing stones at visitors.
The site also contains the Western Wall, a sacred site for Jews.
Tensions have been high in recent days following clashes in the West Bank town of Hebron over Israel listing two disputed shrines as heritage sites.
Contested site
A Palestinian official said the group of youths had spent the night in the al-Aqsa mosque to prevent what they believed to be Jewish extremists from praying at the sensitive site.
An Israeli police spokesman said calm had been restored to the compound and visits resumed.
The spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said Muslim men under the age of 50 had been barred from the site, while older men, women of all ages and children had been permitted to enter.

The Jerusalem complex, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount, has long been contested.
Clashes erupted at the site last September after Muslims threw stones at people they believed to be Jewish extremists trying to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque.
A visit to the compound in 2000 by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon, later prime minister, led to clashes that escalated into years of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The compound containing the mosque lies in Jerusalem’s Old City, which has been controlled by Israel since they captured it in the 1967 war.
Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven from the spot in the complex marked by the Dome of the Rock.
The site is holy to Jews because it is where the First and Second Temples were built according to the Old Testament, with the Western Wall still remaining.

GAZA: Avatar on Earth: YouTube

Four policemen wounded at Temple Mount clashes: Haaretz

Four Israeli policemen were wounded by Palestinian stone hurlers on Sunday, as clashes continued after Muslim worshippers barricaded themselves in a mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount compound.

So far, 7 Palestinians have been arrested in the violent riots.

Israel police broke into the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, after Palestinian worshippers hurled stones at non-Muslim visitors of the holy site.
Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police entered the compound when about 20 Palestinians threw stones, but that the protesters had quickly taken cover inside the mosque.
The incident was over quickly, but the area remained tense. In the past, violence at the site – known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary – has erupted into deadly battles.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police dispersed the 20 masked protesters, saying “calm was quickly restored,” and that “about a thousand tourists have since visited the site.”

However, small groups of masked Palestinians continued to clash with police elsewhere in Jerusalem’s Old City and in a nearby neighborhood just outside the walled area.
Police overnight restricted the entrance to the Mosque to a minimum age of 50, and holders of blue (Israeli) identity certificates as a precaution.
Israeli police do not usually enter the area, other than in response to incidents. Police did not enter the mosque.
One protester was arrested as the rock-throwing protests spread to the alleyways of the old walled city, Ben-Ruby added.
Adnan al-Husseini, a Palestinian official in charge of Jerusalem, said Palestinian youths had spent the night at the mosque saying Jewish hardliners had threatened to enter the site.

The holy site has been a frequent flashpoint of violence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Tensions have been on the rise in Jerusalem and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory over stalled peace talks which haven’t convened since before a Gaza war in December 2008.
The incident comes after more than 300 Palestinians in Hebron clashed with Israeli security forces on Thursday, while commemorating the 29 Muslims killed in an attack by Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein at the Ibrahimi Mosque 16-years ago.
Hadash chairman Mohammed Barakeh who joined the Palestinian protestors alongside some 30 more Israelis, criticized Israel Defense Forces soldiers for attacking the peaceful demonstrators, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his recent move to add the Tomb of the Patriarchs to the list of National Heritage sites.
“Netanyahu is an expert at lighting fires, and is turning the wheel backwards by repeating his mistakes from his first cadency as Prime Minister,” Barakeh said following the demonstration.
“The Netanyahu-Barak government is pushing towards a regional explosion in order to damage any chance of progress,” he added.

IDF soldiers attempted to disband the protest by hurling smoke grenades. Barakeh said that they all suffered from smoke inhalation.
Following an outburst of violence in Hebron, where the tomb is located, Khaled Esseleh, the mayor of Hebron, said: “I’m hoping there won’t be more clashes but this is a very sensitive religious issue, and Netanyahu just lit the fire.”
Earlier, the Obama administration criticized Israel for designating two shrines in the West Bank as Israeli national heritage sites.
The criticism came as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she hopes long-stalled peace talks between Israelis and the Palestinians will resume.

Clinton told a congressional committee that groundwork is being laid to restart the talks with the help of U.S. envoy George Mitchell.
She did not say exactly when the negotiations might resume, but her remarks come amid a flurry of U.S. diplomatic activity in the region

Gaza 2009: We Will Not Forget

EDITOR: Egypt’s ugly face

After years of aggression towards the Gaza residents, in order to make the Israeli illegal blockade mosre efficient, and building the steel wall, to stop the importation of food and fuel into the starved strip with more than 1.5 million inhabitants, so punished for exercising their democratic right to vote, now Egypt is to assist Israel crucially by exporting gas to it, rather than deny Israel this crucial resource which it denies the gazans. How depressing.

Egypt lifts ban on gas to Israel: BBC

The supreme court in Egypt has overturned an earlier ruling by a lower court that banned gas sales to Israel.
The new ruling requires that the government should make clear the quantity of gas it exports to Israel and how much it charges.
Lawyers had argued that the gas was being sold at preferential rates.
Egypt’s gas trade with Israel is controversial, as many Egyptians are opposed to links between the two countries – despite a 1979 peace deal.
Some opposition figures in Egypt are against the sale of gas to Israel because they disagree with its policies towards the Palestinians.
This ruling ends a legal battle which stirred up public controversy.
Over a year ago, lawyers had successfully argued for a ban on natural gas exports to Israel, claiming the price was below the international market level.
The supreme administrative court has said that the lower court which made that ruling has no jurisdiction in cases of this kind because they involved state sovereignty.
Pipeline flow
It did add, however, that Egypt should take steps to monitor the price and quantity of its exports ensuring domestic needs are met before selling gas abroad.
Gas started flowing to Israel from Egypt through a pipeline in 2008, under an agreement contracted to last for 20 years.
In reality, supplies were never cut off when there was a court ruling banning sales.
It was ignored by the government, pending a review.
The final legal decision is unlikely to enjoy wide support in Egypt.
Although the country has had a peace treaty with Israel since 1979, Israeli policies in the Palestinians territories make it unpopular with many Egyptians.
During the conflict in Gaza, there were increased calls to stop gas exports.

Gaza: The Killing Zone: YouTube

Continue reading February 28, 2010

February 27, 2010

Palestinians form new faction in Lebanon: Jerusalem Post

By RACHELLE KLIGER
The National Body for the Protection of Permanent Rights opposes negotiations but will not take up arms.

A group of ten Palestinian figures announced the formation of a new Palestinian faction in Beirut on Wednesday.

The organization, The National Body for the Protection of Permanent Rights, aims to preserve the rights of the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and the diaspora, including those living in refugee camps.

“The living condition of the Palestinian people has reached boiling point because of Israeli political obstinacy, and the American support of this,” Bilal Al-Hassan, a Palestinian journalist, writer and co-founder of the organization said at the launching ceremony. “This situation will now be translated into action and advancement.”

The exact nature of the movement’s policies remains unclear but leaders of the organization plan to meet in May to “decide on its actions democratically.”

The movement, which is declaredly independent, opposes negotiations and supports resistance against the Israeli occupation but insists armed combat is “not its objective”.

“There are martyrdom factions for this purpose that engage in resistance and we give them our blessing,” Al-Hassan told the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat.

“By establishing a Zionist entity on Palestinian land, [the Zionists] are targeting Arabs,” the movement’s manifesto says. “Resisting the occupation in all its forms is an obligation, not just a right. Any talks about a just and permanent peace which is based on recovering parts of the land that were occupied in 1967 or even all of it would effectively accomplish the Israeli aim of this war which is to garner acceptance of Israel’s existence and legitimacy, without solving the Palestinian issue and without granting them their rights.”

“Achieving peace between the Arab and non-Arab nations and individuals can be done regardless of their sectarian roots and religious inclinations but peace is not obtainable with the occupation,” it continues. “The Oslo approach is a second nakba [catastrophe], but the difference is that this nakba was furnished by the Palestine Liberation Organization.”

So far, 70 Palestinian figures have signed the movement’s manifesto.

Ali Hweidi, director of the Palestinian Organization for the Right of Return (Thabit) an organization which assists Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, said his organization supported the new initiative.

“Thabit supports this body because it is preserving Palestinian rights,” he told The Media Line.  “This body is a reflection of many years of the Palestinian situation, especially after the Oslo [Accords] in 1993.”

“They’re calling for preserving Palestinian rights, the right of return and for no more settlements in the Palestinian territories,” he said. “At the same time they want a reconstruction of the PLO.  This is the voice of the Palestinians on the ground inside the camps,” he said referring to over 400,000 Palestinian refugees currently living in camps in Lebanon.

Some have questioned whether the initiatives will indeed serve the Palestinian people.

“We have more than 40 secular parties within the Palestinian political spectrum,” Mohammed Dajani, a Palestinian university professor who established Wasatia, a Palestinian movement advocating moderation to achieve coexistence and development, told The Media Line.

“So the question is whether you want one more, or whether you want to bring together most of those small parties under one umbrella to unify efforts,” he said. “What we don’t need is more fragmentation within Palestinian society. If there will be a coalition that will call for unity and will bring hundreds of divided groups, then it will be helpful to promote the Palestinian cause. Otherwise it will cause division.”

Dajani said the Oslo process had its flaws, but warned against dismissing it completely and going back to the drawing board.

“We need to learn from the past,” he said. “I don’t think that establishing a party in Lebanon calling for no negotiations reflects the reality on the ground. If you don’t want to negotiate, how can you accomplish your goals?”

There is a party here that is occupying our land and you have two options,” Dajani explained. “Either you use the military approach, which has failed and will not work, or you take the diplomatic approach. If you take the diplomatic approach how can you achieve goals without negotiating with the other side?”

The new movement was formed on the backdrop of halted talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Negotiations broke off when the term of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ended and Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas added the condition of a total freeze on Israeli building in post-1967 communities. Despite a 10-month building freeze offered by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas maintained that the condition requires an unlimited and absolute freeze that includes East Jerusalem.

Analysts suggest that the stalemate in negotiations is fueling sentiments of frustration among Palestinians with regards to any future solution. The internal Palestinian dispute between Fatah and Hamas is also impeding any movement on the ground.

The founders of the organization include Bayyan Al-Hout, Muhammad Abu Meizar, Munir Shafiq, Salah Al-Dabagh, Bilal Al-Hassan and former Arab Israeli lawmaker Azmi Bishara.

Bishara is a Palestinian Christian who headed the Arab Balad party in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. His resignation in 2007 came against the backdrop of alleged criminal charges including espionage and treason.

Dubai police: We have 100% DNA proof of one assassin: Haaretz

Dubai police said on Friday they have DNA proof of the identity of at least one of the killers of senior Hamas strongman Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in the emirate country last month.

“We have DNA evidence … from the crime scene. The DNA of the criminals is there,” Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said on the Arab satellite television Al-Arabiya.
He said police had “categorical DNA proof on one of the assassins” and fingerprint evidence from several other suspects, providing “100 percent” proof of their identities.
Dubai said it was seeking at least 26 people it suspectd of involvement in the assassination in January.

Last week Interpol added 11 suspected assassins to their most wanted list, all of whom were apparently using forged passports.
The individuals who were charged by Dubai police as responsible for the killing of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh were tagged with “Red Notices,” according to the Interpol’s official website.
The website also specifies that Interpol chose to publish the photos of the suspected assassins since the identities the perpetrators allegedly used were fake, using fraudulent passports to aid them in accomplishing their aim.
Also, the Dubai police chief ahi Khalfan Tamim said Interpol should issue a warrant to help locate and arrest the head of Israel’s spy agency Mossad if the organization was responsible for the killing of a Hamas militant in Dubai.

Meanwhile, a Haaretz probe discovered that the passport photographs of the agents who assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai were doctored so the agents would not be identified.
The discovery casts doubt on claims that the espionage agency that carried out last month’s hit on the senior Hamas operative committed grave errors.
Various features of the people in the photographs, such as eye color or the line of a lip, were changed – slightly enough so as not arouse suspicion at passport control, but still enough that the real agent could not be recognized.

Clinton presses Israel to ease blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza: Haaretz

The United States pressed Israel on Friday to ease its blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, an issue Arab officials have urged Washington to address at it tries to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters she had an extended discussion with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak about the Mediterranean coastal strip, which was severely damaged in an Israeli offensive launched in December 2008.
More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the three-week war in Gaza, which Israel launched following months of rocket fire from the territory into Israel.

Israel has said its blockade of Gaza aims to prevent Hamas, which is hostile to Israel and which seized control of Gaza in 2007, from acquiring weapons or materials that could be used for military purposes.
Some analysts believe the blockade has strengthen Hamas’ hand because of its control over smuggling through tunnels from Egypt. It is also a major irritant to Arab states whose support is vital to resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
“We discussed it at length and Sen. Mitchell and I made clear some of the concerns that we had and some of the ideas about what more could and should be done,” Clinton told reporters after she and U.S. special envoy George Mitchell met Barak. “We hope to see progress there.”

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks stalled after the Gaza offensive. Despite calling the Arab-Israeli conflict a priority from the start of his administration, U.S. President Barack Obama’s efforts have failed to revive them.
The United States has long urged Israel to ease restrictions on Gaza, where building materials, among other things, remain in chronic short supply and have slowed reconstruction for the territory’s 1.5 million residents.
Speaking before his meeting with Clinton, Barak said the issue was complicated by the continued captivity of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was seized in 2006 by militants who tunneled into Israel from Gaza.

Barak told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank Hamas continues to be deterred from launching major attacks on Israel because of the late 2008, early 2009 Israeli offensive but it also continues to rearm.
“They are well-deterred. But still they are accumulating more, longer-range rockets through the smuggling system that goes all the way from Iran through Africa to the Gaza Strip,” he said.
“And the situation is not fully stable,” he added. “We still have the abducted soldier (Shalit) and that complicates some aspects of the normalization of the situation.”

Daniel Levy, an analyst with the New America Foundation think tank, noted Clinton was pressed by senior Arab officials as well as ordinary citizens about the situation in Gaza when she visited the Gulf last week.
“The threat to the peace talks is renewed violence in Gaza… but equally problematic for the United States is what the secretary heard in Qatar and Saudi Arabia … ‘what are you doing for Gaza?'” Levy said. “It undermines the credibility of the United States.”

The administration also lost credibility in the Arab world last year when it appeared to soften its demand for a total freeze on Israeli construction in Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in Jerusalem, a step widely seen as undercutting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
U.S. officials hope Abbas can be persuaded to give up his desire for an absolute halt to settlement construction before resuming talks, particularly if he gets backing from Arab states. They hope this might be forthcoming at an Arab League summit in Tripoli in March

Continue reading February 27, 2010

February 25, 2010

Dubai Murder by Khalin Bendib

Australia warns Israel: Forging passports isn’t an ‘act of a friend’: Haaretz

Australia warned Israel on Thursday that if it was involved in the alleged use of three fraudulent Australian passports in a Dubai assassination it would not be considered the act of a friend, the foreign minister said.
The Canberra government called in Israel’s ambassador after three Australians were named as suspects in the assassination of a Hamas official at a Dubai hotel last month.
Dubai authorities are investigating the use of at least 26 possibly fraudulent passports in connection with the Jan. 19 slaying of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a hotel room in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said investigations were still under way, but the three Australians were also apparently innocent victims of identity theft.

“I made it crystal clear to the ambassador that if the results of that investigation cause us to come to the conclusion that the abuse of Australian passports was in any way sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as an act of a friend,” Smith said.
In an interview with Australian radio, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd also emphasized the severity of the situation. “We will not be silent on this matter. It is a matter of deep concern. It really goes to the integrity and fabric of the use of state documents, which passports are, for other purposes,” Rudd told Australian radio.
“Any state that has been complicit in use or abuse of the Australian passport system, let alone for the conduct of an assassination, is treating Australia with contempt and there will therefore be action by the Australian government in response,” said Rudd.
Dubai police say they are near certain that members of Israel’s Mossad spy agency killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room in January. A list of 11 people suspected in the assassination released last week by Dubai included the names of six British-born Israelis, whose names appeared on forged British passports thought to have been used by the killers.

Dubai on Wednesday identified 15 new suspects in the assassination; Haaretz has learned that 10 of them also share the names of Israelis who hold dual citizenship.

Obvious Role for US Investigators in Dubai Murder Case: Al Jazeera TV

Financial institutions based and incorporated in the United States have now been fingered by Dubai Police as having issued credit cards to some of the now dozens of suspected assassins of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
The fraudulent cards were said to be used to book hotel rooms and pay for air travel.
The firms allegedly involved include Meta Financial Group Inc, based in Storm Lake, Iowa, and Payoneer, a New York-based online payment company that provides pre-paid Mastercards.
Payoneer also has a research and development centre based in Tel Aviv.   (I find it mildly amusing that Payoneer is pimped out on the Birthright Israel website).

I also find the Payoneer connection interesting given that its CEO is Yuval Tal, a former Israeli special forces commando. Mr Tal did not exactly conceal his prior affiliations when he appeared on Fox News during the 2006 Lebanon war. He opined then that “this is a war that Israel cannot afford to lose”.
If Tal or his Payoneer firm are in any way involved in the conspiracy to help a foreign intelligence service (like, say providing Mossad operatives with credit cards), he may soon find himself in his own battle with little prospects of winning – in a US courtroom.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the lead agency with statutory authority and responsibilities for investigating foreign espionage activities on US soil.  It’s a job they take seriously and with a proven record of not shying away from the numerous instances when America’s special ally played foul.

As an initial inquiry, I imagine case agents will subpoena all financial records associated with the fraudulently issued credit cards. This would include the original credit card applications, which requires such things as a delivery address (to mail the card to), social security numbers, dates of birth, and employment information.
If the applications were made on paper, then the documents may contain all manner of evidence, from handwriting samples to fingerprints. There will be a similar trail to pore over if the applications were made over the phone or electronically via computer.
I also smell money laundering, as the money was supposedly dumped into prepaid accounts to conceal its purpose and origination. So US investigators may even want to tap in on the US treasury department’s crack financial investigator, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN).

Don’t be put off by FINCEN’s location in a Northern Virginia building that resembles a toilet seat. They have all manner of ways of putting a ring around financial transactions and credit reports in all reaches of the world.
There is still no word on whether or not the US has begun co-operating.  On paper, there should be no reason why they would not. The Emirates are a friendly country to the United States and a member of INTERPOL. They have also been a key country used by the US administration to apply pressure on Iran, so presumably they want to keep them happy.
It’s not clear if the FBI is silently participating or if its officials are fence-sitting.
If it’s the latter, then they may want to consider the following:  if a foreign national was murdered on US soil with the help of credit cards issued in the Emirates, what sort of co-operation would they demand?

Hamas leader’s son ‘spied for Israel’: The Independent

The son of one of the founders of the Hamas militant group was exposed today as a top Israeli informant who helped prevent dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks.

Mosab Hassan Yousef, codenamed “the Green Prince” by his handlers, was one of the Shin Bet security service’s most valuable sources, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said.
His reports led to the arrests of several high-ranking Palestinian figures during the violent uprising that began in 2000, the newspaper said.
Yousef’s father, Sheik Hassan Yousef, was a founding member of the Islamic militant group Hamas in the 1980s. He is currently serving a six-year sentence in an Israeli prison for his political activities.
The younger Yousef converted to Christianity and moved to California in 2007.

The revelation deals another setback to Hamas, which is reeling from the assassination of a leading member in Dubai last month. There have been reports that an insider assisted the killers.
Yousef’s memoir, “Son of Hamas,” is being published next week in the US.
Yousef could not be contacted for comment, but an excerpt from the book on his Facebook page plugs it as “a gripping account of terror, betrayal, political intrigue, and unthinkable choices.” It describes Yousef’s journey as one that “jeopardised Hamas, endangered his family, and threatened his life.”
It also says Yousef’s relationship with the Shin Bet helped thwart an Israeli plan to assassinate his father.

Yousef told the paper Shin Bet agents first approached him in prison in 1996 and proposed he infiltrate the upper echelons of Hamas. He did so successfully and is credited by Israel with saving hundreds of Israeli lives.
Yousef said he hoped to send a message of peace to Israelis, though he remained pessimistic about the prospects for ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He had particularly sharp comments for Hamas, the Iranian-backed movement that seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 and has been branded a terrorist organisation by Israel and the West.
“Hamas cannot make peace with the Israelis. That is against what their God tells them. It is impossible to make peace with infidels,” he said.

EDITOR: While this is written in the specific UK context, it deals with a global phenomenon affecting the ‘western’ nations as a whole, hence also important in the Middle east context. Gaza and Palestine play a central role in European, North American and Global politics, and used to fan the flames of Islamophobia.

This tide of anti-Muslim hatred is a threat to us all: The Guardian

The attempt to drive Islamists and young Asian activists out of the political mainstream is a dangerous folly

If young British Muslims had any doubts that they are singled out for special treatment in the land of their birth, the punishments being meted out to those who took part in last year’s London demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza will have dispelled them. The protests near the Israeli embassy at the height of the onslaught were angry: bottles and stones were thrown, a Starbucks was trashed and the police employed unusually violent tactics, even by the standards of other recent confrontations, such as the G20 protests.

But a year later, it turns out that it’s the sentences that are truly exceptional. Of 119 people arrested, 78 have been charged, all but two of them young Muslims (most between the ages of 16 and 19), according to Manchester University’s Joanna Gilmore, even though such figures in no way reflect the mix of those who took part. In the past few weeks, 15 have been convicted, mostly of violent disorder, and jailed for between eight months and two-and-a-half years – having switched to guilty pleas to avoid heavier terms. Another nine are up to be sentenced tomorrow.

The severity of the charges and sentencing goes far beyond the official response to any other recent anti-war demonstration, or even the violent stop the City protests a decade ago. So do the arrests, many of them carried out months after the event in dawn raids by dozens of police officers, who smashed down doors and handcuffed family members as if they were suspected terrorists. Naturally, none of the more than 30 complaints about police violence were upheld, even where video ­evidence was available.

Nothing quite like this has happened, in fact, since 2001, when young Asian Muslims rioted against extreme rightwing racist groups in Bradford and other northern English towns and were subjected to heavily disproportionate prison terms. In the Gaza protest cases, the judge has explicitly relied on the Bradford precedent and repeatedly stated that the sentences he is handing down are intended as a deterrent.

For many in the Muslim community, the point will be clear: not only that these are political sentences, but that different rules apply to Muslims, who take part in democratic protest at their peril. It’s a dangerous message, especially given the threat from a tiny minority that is drawn towards indiscriminate violence in response to Britain’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and rejects any truck with mainstream politics.

But it’s one that is constantly reinforced by politicians and parts of the media, who have increasingly blurred the distinction between violent and non- violent groups, demonised Islamism as an alien threat and branded as extremist any Muslim leader who dares to campaign against western foreign policy in the Muslim world. That’s reflected in the government’s targeting of “nonviolent extremism” and lavish funding of anti-Islamist groups, as well as in Tory plans to ban the nonviolent Hizb ut-Tahrir and crack down ever harder on “extremist written material and speech”.

In the media, it takes the form of relentless attempts to expose Muslims involved in wider politics as secret fanatics and sympathisers with ­terrorism. Next week, Channel 4 Dispatches plans to broadcast the latest in a series of undercover documentaries aimed at revealing the ugly underside of British Muslim political life. In this case, the target is the predominantly British-Bangladeshi Islamic Forum of Europe. From material sent out in advance, the aim appears to be to show the IFE is an “entryist” group in legitimate east London politics – and unashamedly Islamist to boot.

As recent research co-authored by the former head of the Metropolitan police special branch’s Muslim contact unit, Bob Lambert, has shown, such ubiquitous portrayals of Muslim activists as “terrorists, sympathisers and subversives” (all the while underpinned by a drumbeat campaign against the nonexistent Afghan “burka”) are one factor in the alarming growth of British Islamophobia and the rising tide of anti-Muslim violence and hate crimes that stem from it.

Last month’s British Social Attitudes survey found that most people now regard Britain as “deeply divided along religious lines”, with hostility to Muslims and Islam far outstripping such attitudes to any other religious group. On the ground that has translated into murders, assaults and attacks on mosques and Muslim institutions – with shamefully little response in politics or the media. Last year, five mosques in Britain were firebombed, from Bishop’s Stortford to Cradley Heath, though barely reported in the national press, let alone visited by a government minister to show solidarity.

And now there is a street movement, the English Defence League, directly adopting the officially sanctioned targets of “Islamists” and “extremists” – as well as the “Taliban” and the threat of a “takeover of Islam” – to intimidate and threaten Muslim communities across the country, following the success of the British National party in baiting Muslims above all other ethnic and religious communities.

Of course, anti-Muslim bigotry, the last socially acceptable racism, is often explained away by the London bombings of 2005 and the continuing threat of terror attacks, even though by far the greatest number of what the authorities call “terrorist incidents” in the UK take place in Northern Ireland, while Europol figures show that more than 99% of terrorist attacks in Europe over the past three years were carried out by non-Muslims. And in the last nine months, two of the most serious bomb plot convictions were of far right racists, Neil Lewington and Terence Gavan, who were planning to kill Muslims.

Meanwhile, in the runup to the general election, expect some ugly dog whistles from Westminster politicians keen to capitalise on Islamophobic sentiment. With few winnable Muslim votes, the Tories seem especially up for it. Earlier this month, Conservative frontbencher Michael Gove came out against the building of a mosque in his Surrey constituency, while Welsh Tory MP David Davies blamed a rape case on the “medieval and barbaric” attitudes of some migrant communities.

As long as British governments back wars and occupations in the Middle East and Muslim world, there will continue to be a risk of violence in Britain. But attempts to drive British Muslims out of normal political activity, and the refusal to confront anti-Muslim hatred, can only ratchet up the danger and threaten us all.

Continue reading February 25, 2010

February 24, 2010

EDITOR: Dubai murder further revelations

It seems that most of the Mossad agents have had a role in this operation… now, before any new addition, already 26 agents were identified on this murder job. It seems they were quite concerned with the followup movie which Spielberg must be already working on – there is a broad canvas for many characters; indeed, there might be a musical there! What with their tennis shorts and hockey sticks, it will definitely be a hit. Question: How many Israelis do you need to kill a Palestinian? Answer: as many as possible, but more if they hold UK passports.

Dubai police identify 15 more suspects in Mabhouh murder: The Guardian

Six new suspects in killing of Hamas official were carrying British passports

Dubai police today identified 15 more suspects wanted over the murder of a senior Hamas official in the Gulf emirate last month, including another six who used British passports.
The announcement brings to 26 the total number of people suspected of involvement in Mahmoud al-Mabhouh’s assassination, which is widely believed to have been the work of Israel’s secret service, the Mossad. Israel has refused to comment on the accusation.
The six new British names are Mark Daniel Sklar, Roy Alan Cannon, Daniel Mark Schnur, Phillip Carr, Stephen Keith Drake and Gabriella Barney.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the government believed their passport details had been fraudulently used in connection with the assassination.
“We can confirm that six more UK passports have been identified. We will seek to make contact with these individuals and offer consular assistance as we have the previous individuals. We continue to work closely with the Emirati authorities. The foreign secretary and others have made clear we expect full Israeli co-operation.”
It was not immediately clear whether the six new individuals were also resident in Israel.
Dubai police say the newly named suspects provided “logistical support” for the operation.

At least three women were involved in the hit, one of whom used a UK passport. Other suspects were travelling on passports issued by Australia and New Zealand.
The total number of UK passports linked to the case has risen to 12, and French passports to five. The suspected hit squad flew in from Munich, Paris, Rome, Milan and Hong Kong.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has described as an outrage the alleged abuse of British passports and an investigation is under way by the serious organised crime agency, Soca. The EU has also condemned passport abuse, without mentioning Israel.

The Dubai authorities said some of those named today were believed to have played preparatory roles in the killing. Many of the suspects had credit cards that were issued by the same US bank.
The authorities have been using immigration records and CCTV images of the suspects to try to piece together what happened in the hours before Mabhouh’s murder.
Israel has said Mabhouh played a key role in smuggling Iranian-supplied rockets into the Gaza Strip and was involved in the abduction and killing of two soldiers 20 years ago.

Hamas leader’s son ‘spied for Israel‘: The Independent

The son of one of the founders of the Hamas militant group was exposed today as a top Israeli informant who helped prevent dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks.

Mosab Hassan Yousef, codenamed “the Green Prince” by his handlers, was one of the Shin Bet security service’s most valuable sources, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said.
His reports led to the arrests of several high-ranking Palestinian figures during the violent uprising that began in 2000, the newspaper said.

Yousef’s father, Sheik Hassan Yousef, was a founding member of the Islamic militant group Hamas in the 1980s. He is currently serving a six-year sentence in an Israeli prison for his political activities.
The younger Yousef converted to Christianity and moved to California in 2007.
The revelation deals another setback to Hamas, which is reeling from the assassination of a leading member in Dubai last month. There have been reports that an insider assisted the killers.
Yousef’s memoir, “Son of Hamas,” is being published next week in the US.
Yousef could not be contacted for comment, but an excerpt from the book on his Facebook page plugs it as “a gripping account of terror, betrayal, political intrigue, and unthinkable choices.” It describes Yousef’s journey as one that “jeopardised Hamas, endangered his family, and threatened his life.”

It also says Yousef’s relationship with the Shin Bet helped thwart an Israeli plan to assassinate his father.
Yousef told the paper Shin Bet agents first approached him in prison in 1996 and proposed he infiltrate the upper echelons of Hamas. He did so successfully and is credited by Israel with saving hundreds of Israeli lives.
Yousef said he hoped to send a message of peace to Israelis, though he remained pessimistic about the prospects for ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He had particularly sharp comments for Hamas, the Iranian-backed movement that seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 and has been branded a terrorist organisation by Israel and the West.
“Hamas cannot make peace with the Israelis. That is against what their God tells them. It is impossible to make peace with infidels,” he said.

Rachel Corrie’s family bring civil suit over human shield’s death in Gaza: The Guardian

Parents want case to highlight events that led to American activist’s death under Israeli army bulldozer

Peace activist Rachel Corrie died while protesting in front of a bulldozer trying to destroy a Palestinian home in Rafah in March 2003. Photograph: Denny Sternstein/AP

The family of the American activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago, is to bring a civil suit over her death against the Israeli defence ministry.

The case, which begins on 10 March in Haifa, northern Israel, is seen by her parents as an opportunity to put on public record the events that led to their daughter’s death in March 2003. Four key witnesses – three Britons and an American – who were at the scene in Rafah when Corrie was killed will give evidence, according the family lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein.
The four were all with the International Solidarity Movement, the activist group to which Corrie belonged. They have since been denied entry to Israel, and the group’s offices in Ramallah have been raided several times in recent weeks by the Israeli military.
Now, under apparent US pressure, the Israeli government has agreed to allow them entry so they can testify. Corrie’s parents, Cindy and Craig, will also fly to Israel for the hearing.

A Palestinian doctor from Gaza, Ahmed Abu Nakira, who treated Corrie after she was injured and later confirmed her death, has not been given permission by the Israeli authorities to leave Gaza to attend.
Abu Hussein, a leading human rights lawyer in Israel, said there was evidence from witnesses that soldiers saw Corrie at the scene, with other activists, well before the incident and could have arrested or removed her from the area before there was any risk of her being killed.
“After her death the military began an investigation but unfortunately, as in most of these cases, it found the activity of the army was legal and there was no intentional killing,” he said. “We would like the court to decide her killing was due to wrong-doing or was intentional.” If the Israeli state is found responsible, the family will press for damages.

Corrie, who was born in Olympia, Washington, travelled to Gaza to act as a human shield at a moment of intense conflict between the Israeli military and the Palestinians. On the day she died, when she was 23, she was dressed in a fluorescent orange vest and was trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home. She was crushed under a military Caterpillar bulldozer and died shortly afterwards.
A month after her death the Israeli military said an investigation had determined its troops were not to blame and said the driver of the bulldozer had not seen her and did not intentionally run her over. Instead, it accused her and the International Solidarity Movement of behaviour that was “illegal, irresponsible and dangerous.”
The army report, obtained by the Guardian in April 2003, said she “was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle’s operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death.”

Witnesses presented a strikingly different version of events. Tom Dale, a British activist who was 10m away when Corrie was killed, wrote an account of the incident two days later.
He described how she first knelt in the path of an approaching bulldozer and then stood as it reached her. She climbed on a mound of earth and the crowd nearby shouted at the bulldozer to stop. He said the bulldozer pushed her down and drove over her.
“They pushed Rachel, first beneath the scoop, then beneath the blade, then continued till her body was beneath the cockpit,” Dale wrote.
“They waited over her for a few seconds, before reversing. They reversed with the blade pressed down, so it scraped over her body a second time. Every second I believed they would stop but they never did.”
While she was in the Palestinian territories, Corrie wrote vividly about her experiences. Her diaries were later turned into a play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, which has toured internationally, including to Israel and the West Bank.

Other foreigners killed by Israeli forces
Iain Hook, 54, a British UN official, was shot dead by an Israeli army sniper in Jenin in November 2002. A British inquest found he had been unlawfully killed. The Israeli government paid an undisclosed sum in compensation to Hook’s family.
Tom Hurndall, a 22-year-old British photography student, was shot in the head in Rafah, Gaza, in April 2003 while helping to pull Palestinian children to safety. In August 2005 an Israeli soldier was sentenced to eight years for manslaughter.
James Miller, 34, a British cameraman, was shot dead in Gaza in May 2003. He was leaving the home of a Palestinian family in Rafah refugee camp at night, waving a white flag. An inquest in Britain found Miller had been murdered. Last year Israel paid about £1.5m in damages to Miller’s family.

Continue reading February 24, 2010