Jerusalem: Endorsing the Right of Conquest
by Stephen Zunes
In a flagrant attack on the longstanding international legal principle that it is illegitimate for any country to expand its territory by military means, the U.S. House of Representatives, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, passed House Concurrent Resolution 152 congratulating Israel for its forcible “reunification of Jerusalem” and its victory in the June 1967 war.
The resolution, passed by a voice vote on June 5 – the 40th anniversary of the Israeli conquest of East Jerusalem and other Arab territories – states that U.S. policy should recognize that Jerusalem is “the undivided capital of Israel.” There is no mention that Jerusalem – which has the largest Palestinian population of any city and which for centuries served as the commercial, cultural, education and religious center for Palestinian life – should also be recognized as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The resolution was sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA), widely recognized as the Democratic Party’s chief foreign policy spokesman, and co-sponsored by such Democratic Party foreign policy leaders as Howard Berman (D-CA), Eliot Engel (D- NY), Robert Wexler (D-FL), Joseph Crowley (D-NY), and Middle East subcommittee chairman Gary Ackerman (D-NY).
Israel has formally annexed East Jerusalem and surrounding lands, unlike the rest of the West Bank, which is either under the control of Israeli military administration or the Palestine Authority. No government outside Israel recognizes this illegal annexation or supports the idea of a Jerusalem united under exclusive Israeli sovereignty. International organizations and leaders of major religious bodies throughout the world have repeatedly stressed the importance of not allowing Israel's unilateral takeover to remain unchallenged. UN Security Council resolutions 252, 267, 271, 298, 476 and 478 – passed without U.S. objections during both Democratic and Republican administrations – specifically call on Israel to rescind its annexation and other efforts to alter the city’s legal status. Given that Article 5 of resolution 478 specifically calls on all UN member states not to recognize Israel’s annexation efforts, the Democratic-controlled Congress is effectively calling on the Bush administration to put the United States in direct violation of the UN Security Council.
Who Controls Jerusalem?
Jerusalem has been conquered and re-conquered more than 37 times in its 3000-year old history. Yet, with the establishment over the past century of clear international legal principles forbidding such military conquests and of international organizations with enforcement mechanisms, there has been a persistent hope that the fate of Jerusalem could – along with other territories seized by the Israeli armed forces – be resolved peacefully and with deference to international law. UN Security Council resolution 242, long seen as the basis for Arab-Israeli peace, emphasizes the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Congress appears to think differently, however.
The bipartisan decision to pass a resolution celebrating Israel’s military conquest at a time when there is a growing consensus among Palestinians, Israelis, and the international community that a shared Jerusalem is imperative for a durable peace appears to have been designed to undermine the peace process. As M.J. Rosenberg, director of the Israel Policy Forum’s Washington Policy Center, observed, "Congress has a role to play in the Middle East...but that leadership is not expressed by resolutions celebrating a war but by using its authority to promote security for Israelis and Palestinians."
Virtually no one would like to see Jerusalem return to its 1948-67 status, when it was divided by sentry posts, barbed wire, and snipers, with neither Israelis nor Palestinians able to cross to the other side. However, there are a number of other options, including making Jerusalem an international city as originally called for by the UN in 1947, creating a joint Israeli-Palestinian administration, or repartitioning the city but with full access by residents and visitors to both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.
For example, the Geneva Initiative – signed by such prominent Israeli officials as former Justice member and Oslo Accord architect Yossi Beilin, former Labor Party Leader Avram Mitzna and former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg (along with equally-prominent Palestinian leaders) – call for Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods and holy sites to be under Israeli control and the Palestinian neighborhoods and Muslim and Christian holy sites to be under Palestinian control, a position that public opinion polls indicate a majority of both Palestinians and Israelis supports.
An overwhelming bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives, however, in a clear rebuke of such initiatives, insists that the entire city be under exclusive Israeli control.
This led to protests by more moderate voices in the House. As Rep. David Price (D-NC) put it in the floor debate prior to the vote, since “the idea of an undivided Jerusalem under sole Israeli sovereignty has not been part of any serious peace proposal . . . in the last several years,” the resolution thereby “undermines U.S. efforts to secure the trust of all sides in the search for peace.” Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) observed how “it has long been understood that a permanent agreement about the Palestinian areas of Jerusalem will be left to final-status negotiations. . . . I think we tread on dangerous territory when Congress adopts positions that run counter to issues that have yet to be negotiated.” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) was among those noting the irony of the House passing what many would label a pro-Israel resolution that “would place Congress out of step with large parts of the Israeli political spectrum.”
The United States, like all other nations with diplomatic representation in Israel, has its embassy in Tel Aviv pending resolution of the status of Jerusalem. However, the Lantos resolution calls on President Bush to unilaterally move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem prior to a peace settlement, despite the president’s recognition, like that of his predecessors, that doing so would sabotage U.S. diplomatic efforts and needlessly evoke enormous hostility throughout the Islamic world. In the eyes of the Democratic-controlled Congress, there is nothing to negotiate: Israel is the undivided capital of Israel by right of conquest.
Israel’s Occupation
Whatever the position of the U.S. Congress might be, however, the fact remains that the residents of East Jerusalem never voluntarily ceded sovereignty to Israel through a referendum or other methods; their part of the city was seized by military force. By any definition, this constitutes a military occupation.
To this day, Israeli occupation forces patrol the streets and engage in ongoing human rights abuses against residents who oppose Israeli rule continue. The Israeli government has confiscated or destroyed homes and other property belonging to longstanding Muslim and Christian residents of the city. Several UN bodies, along with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights organizations have frequently cited Israel for its ongoing violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention in East Jerusalem and surrounding areas. Despite this, the House resolution commends Israel for having “respected the rights of all religious groups” during its 40-year occupation.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration, like the Clinton administration, has refused to raise any objections to Israeli occupation forces banning access by most Palestinians to the schools, hospitals, businesses, and cultural venues of Palestine’s largest city. This ban has caused enormous suffering to the population. And just as the Jordanians refused to allow Israeli Jews to visit their holy sites in the Old City when the Hashemite Kingdom controlled East Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, Israel now severely restricts access by Palestinian Muslims and Christians from the Gaza Strip or the rest of the West Bank from visiting their holy sites in the Old City.
Despite the resolution’s claims to the contrary, those of us who have actually been to Jerusalem in recent years recognize that it is hardly a unified city. One hardly ever sees any Israelis other than soldiers and journalists in Palestinian residential neighborhoods or business districts. During one recent visit, my Israeli cab driver from the airport refused to take me to my hotel in the Palestinian half of the city, instead dropping me off at the pre-1967 dividing line and insisting I get an Arab cab for the remaining ten blocks of my trip.
Unlike the U.S. Congress, the Israeli Knesset did not pass a resolution celebrating the 40th anniversary of the conquest. Indeed, Israel’s elected institutions tend not to commemorate their wars except to honor their dead. As with Israel’s war on Lebanon last summer, Congress is willing to offer near-unanimous support for policies for which the Israelis themselves are willing to engage in serious self-criticism.
Indeed, the congressional resolution celebrating the humiliating defeat of Arab armies will likely only increase anti-American sentiment throughout the Arab world. That victory brought hope to many Israelis that, with the leverage made possible by its conquest of Arab lands, and Israeli withdrawal could be exchanged for a permanent peace agreement with its Arab neighbors. Congress, however, has it made clear in a bipartisan fashion that the most important part of the occupied territories is not subject to negotiation.
Given the centrality of Jerusalem to any comprehensive peace settlement, U.S. policy has made it extremely difficult for a lasting peace settlement to be implemented. As Rep. Price observed, “the only thing likely to fully guarantee Jerusalem as the permanent capital of Israel is the official, international recognition of Israel's neighbors and the entire international community -- and this recognition is unlikely so long as Palestinian claims to their own capital and sacred city are denied.”
What the U.S. Public Thinks
Public opinion polls in the United States show that, unlike most of their congressional representatives, a sizable majority of Americans supports a shared Jerusalem. And fortunately, despite the backing of both the Republican and Democratic leadership, there have been signs that this dangerous and reactionary policy initiative is not universally supported within Congress either. Julie Schumacher Cohen of Churches for Middle East Peace observed that the failure of the resolution to get more than fourteen co-sponsors and the avoidance of a roll call vote “may reflect a lack of confidence in the outcome of such a vote and Congressional weariness with resolutions like these that do not help move the peace process forward and undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts.” Similar resolutions regarding Jerusalem passed by Congress in previous years received even greater bipartisan support.
There is more at stake here than Israeli-Palestinian peace. It is very dangerous, in this era of American military dominance, for such a large majority of Congress to go on record challenging the principles enshrined in the UN Charter that international boundaries be recognized on the basis of law, not the force of arms.
The American public must not allow the Democratic Party, given control of Congress by the voters last November, to squander its mandate by supporting resolutions that not only undermine the rights of Palestinians and the long-term security interests of Israel and the United States, but also undermine important and longstanding principles of international law.
Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus. He is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003.)
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The fictional feel-good vision of the United States and its role in the world
Reinventing Terrorism for Prime Time
That politicians might misrepresent their own views for reasons of expediency and to create a false, more electable persona should not surprise anyone. Senator Hillary Clinton's uncharacteristic revelation on June 4th that she prays every day might be regarded as one such self-serving fiction, only slightly less ridiculous than her assertion that she was a Yankees fan while growing up in Chicago. At least she has never claimed that she invented the internet. But the sham of politics as it is practiced is one thing and wallowing in ignorance is altogether something else, particularly when the ignorance is absolutely bipartisan and relates to an issue that might have genuinely serious consequences. Terrorism is one such issue and the potential blowback from misrepresenting the threat it represents could be catastrophic. Unfortunately, most of the politicians who are running for president just don't get it.
All of the leading president-aspirants from both the Democratic and Republican parties have embraced a fictional feel-good vision of the United States and its role in the world that is positively dangerous because it is so wrong. The story goes something like this: there is a gleaming city on a hill that is called the United States. The United States never does anything bad and is not to blame for anything that happens anywhere at any time. The U.S. has been targeted by evil doers called Islamofascists who hate America's freedoms and who attack our cities for absolutely no reason. Islamofascists also hate Israel, which is a splendid little democracy that the United States has a moral obligation to defend. The war in Iraq is a necessary struggle to keep the evildoers from coming over to the United States to carry out their attacks. If one criticizes the war at all, it is in the context of it being a poorly executed diversion of resources that is impeding the real struggle against the selfsame Islamofascists, which is going on everywhere all the time. Islamofascists have no rights. Torturing them is okay, as long as you don't call it torture and only if it produces "information that saves lives." The United States, already exceeding the rest of the world in military expenditures, must spend even more and build a bigger Army and Marine Corps to be truly safe. And then there is Iran. Manifestly evil and something like Nazi Germany. "All options are on the table," goes and mantra, including pre-emptive war and the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
There are, of course, variations on the theme, though generally speaking there is not much space between the various aspirants to the presidency when it comes to foreign and security policy. Some of the candidates like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards do not use the word "Islamofascist" because it is lacking in political sensitivity. Others like Mitt Romney revel in it. Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt all take the prize for the "America without guilt" syndrome, which sees everything in Manichean terms, enabling one to blame malevolent foreigners for whatever goes wrong in the world. John McCain, in particular, has never seen a war he didn't like.
Two out of three of the leading Republicans approve of torture for terrorism suspects and all three accept the need for extralegal overseas prisons like Guantanamo. Mitt Romney even wants to make Guantanamo bigger. Sadly, such fear mongering apparently plays well in places like South Carolina, where candidate Ron Paul, who dared to speak the truth about much of the above, was heckled. On the Democratic side, only former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel had the courage to criticize the other candidates for their moral relativism and their apparent willingness to repeat the unfortunate Iraq experience.
There are a few things that our leading politicians might consider. One is called "cause and effect," or to put it in Newtonian terms, "every action produces an equal and opposite reaction." Since 2001, the United States has been extremely active on the world stage, often recklessly so, and the action has produced a reaction that has ironically empowered terrorists, not weakened them. Terrorism is a major preoccupation of all the leading candidates yet not a single one deals with the issue with anything but slogans and sound bites. Ron Paul aside, no one has conceded that the terrorists might have some identifiable grievances that serve to motivate them and popularize their cause. Dealing with the terrorism problem in a realistic and effective way rather than simply taking the position that military force generously applied provides some kind of solution is clearly not on the political agenda.
The ultimate failure in U.S. policy has enabled Usama bin Laden to successfully use terrorism as a tool against the United States. He does so for very specific reasons that he has taken pains to enunciate. They are actually a reversal of the Giuliani-McCain-Romney assertion that if we don't get them over there we'll have to fight them in Peoria. Bin Laden attacks the United States precisely because we are over there, not because he is appalled by our sexual promiscuity. As he put it some years ago, if he wanted to attack a country because of its freedoms, he would have selected Sweden.
Bin Laden and the rest of the world are aware, even if the presidential candidates are not, that the United States has used its post-World War Two primacy to invade more countries than all other nations combined. The fact is that in only five years George Bush's go-it-alone America has become one of the most disliked countries in the world, universally reviled as a leading threat to peace. Everyone but America's politicians is seemingly aware that the United States supports corrupt, dictatorial regimes worldwide while at the same time talking hypocritically about promoting democracy. When democracy does occur and the result is unpalatable, as has occurred in Palestine and Lebanon, the U.S. pulls the plug.
And then there is Iran, which is really about Israel because Iran does not actually threaten the United States. The Iran agenda includes pre-emptive military action if necessary and the implicit deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Tehran's alleged weapons program, both issues that should make even the most hardened politician pause. But all the leading candidates have unflinchingly completed their obligatory obeisance to Israel and its principal lobby AIPAC. All have sworn to defend Israel to the last dead American soldier if that should become necessary though not a single one has bothered to make a coherent argument why that should be so beyond the usual assertions about terrorism, which, incidentally, have themselves been carefully crafted by Israel and its lobby to justify the "special relationship." The rest of the world sees it all somewhat differently. Israel is engaged in a brutal occupation that is clearly visible on satellite television nightly. Its repression of the Palestinians is enabled by the United States. If the candidates actually believe that the United States should go to war for Israel no matter what Israel does, perhaps they should say so unambiguously. Ignorance of the negative consequences of the U.S.'s writing of a blank check for Israel, which fuels much anti-American sentiment and terrorism, should not be acceptable.
And then there is the support of all the leading presidential candidates for a larger army. Why on earth would the U.S. need more soldiers? To fight more wars, obviously. The wearing down of the armed services due to never-ending involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted from a series of bad decisions, not because the world's most competent military was inadequate. More bad decisions to invade other places with a bigger army would not constitute a solution and increased resources only invite the politicians to engage in more mischief. Far better a lean and hungry Pentagon. The rest of the world is not confused by the patriotic rhetoric and crocodile-tear concern expressed by the candidates for "our troops." It is simply following the presidential debates to learn "Who's next?" on the Pentagon hit list.
Philip Giraldi is a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues. He is a regular contributor to www.antiwar.com in a column titled “Smoke and Mirrors” and is a Contributing Editor who writes a column called “Deep Background” on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues for The American Conservative magazine. He has written op-ed pieces for the Hearst Newspaper chain, has appeared on “Good Morning America,” MSNBC, National Public Radio, and local affiliates of ABC television. He has been a keynote speaker at the Petroleum Industry Security Council annual meeting, has spoken twice at the American Conservative Union’s annual CPAC convention in Washington, and has addressed several World Affairs Council affiliates. He has been interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Britain’s Independent Television Network, FOX News, Polish National Television, Croatian National Television, al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, 60 Minutes, and Court TV. He prepares and edits a nationally syndicated subscription service newsletter on September 11th issues for corporate clients. Phil is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served eighteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was Chief of Base in Barcelona from 1989 to 1992 designated as the Agency’s senior officer for Olympic Games support. Since 1992, Phil has been engaged in security consulting for a number of Fortune 500 corporate clients. He is currently President of San Marco International, a consulting firm that specializes in international security management and risk assessment, and also a partner in Cannistraro Associates, a security consultancy located in McLean Virginia. Phil was awarded an MA and PhD from the University of London in European History and holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of Chicago. He speaks Spanish, Italian, German, and Turkish.
That politicians might misrepresent their own views for reasons of expediency and to create a false, more electable persona should not surprise anyone. Senator Hillary Clinton's uncharacteristic revelation on June 4th that she prays every day might be regarded as one such self-serving fiction, only slightly less ridiculous than her assertion that she was a Yankees fan while growing up in Chicago. At least she has never claimed that she invented the internet. But the sham of politics as it is practiced is one thing and wallowing in ignorance is altogether something else, particularly when the ignorance is absolutely bipartisan and relates to an issue that might have genuinely serious consequences. Terrorism is one such issue and the potential blowback from misrepresenting the threat it represents could be catastrophic. Unfortunately, most of the politicians who are running for president just don't get it.
All of the leading president-aspirants from both the Democratic and Republican parties have embraced a fictional feel-good vision of the United States and its role in the world that is positively dangerous because it is so wrong. The story goes something like this: there is a gleaming city on a hill that is called the United States. The United States never does anything bad and is not to blame for anything that happens anywhere at any time. The U.S. has been targeted by evil doers called Islamofascists who hate America's freedoms and who attack our cities for absolutely no reason. Islamofascists also hate Israel, which is a splendid little democracy that the United States has a moral obligation to defend. The war in Iraq is a necessary struggle to keep the evildoers from coming over to the United States to carry out their attacks. If one criticizes the war at all, it is in the context of it being a poorly executed diversion of resources that is impeding the real struggle against the selfsame Islamofascists, which is going on everywhere all the time. Islamofascists have no rights. Torturing them is okay, as long as you don't call it torture and only if it produces "information that saves lives." The United States, already exceeding the rest of the world in military expenditures, must spend even more and build a bigger Army and Marine Corps to be truly safe. And then there is Iran. Manifestly evil and something like Nazi Germany. "All options are on the table," goes and mantra, including pre-emptive war and the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
There are, of course, variations on the theme, though generally speaking there is not much space between the various aspirants to the presidency when it comes to foreign and security policy. Some of the candidates like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards do not use the word "Islamofascist" because it is lacking in political sensitivity. Others like Mitt Romney revel in it. Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt all take the prize for the "America without guilt" syndrome, which sees everything in Manichean terms, enabling one to blame malevolent foreigners for whatever goes wrong in the world. John McCain, in particular, has never seen a war he didn't like.
Two out of three of the leading Republicans approve of torture for terrorism suspects and all three accept the need for extralegal overseas prisons like Guantanamo. Mitt Romney even wants to make Guantanamo bigger. Sadly, such fear mongering apparently plays well in places like South Carolina, where candidate Ron Paul, who dared to speak the truth about much of the above, was heckled. On the Democratic side, only former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel had the courage to criticize the other candidates for their moral relativism and their apparent willingness to repeat the unfortunate Iraq experience.
There are a few things that our leading politicians might consider. One is called "cause and effect," or to put it in Newtonian terms, "every action produces an equal and opposite reaction." Since 2001, the United States has been extremely active on the world stage, often recklessly so, and the action has produced a reaction that has ironically empowered terrorists, not weakened them. Terrorism is a major preoccupation of all the leading candidates yet not a single one deals with the issue with anything but slogans and sound bites. Ron Paul aside, no one has conceded that the terrorists might have some identifiable grievances that serve to motivate them and popularize their cause. Dealing with the terrorism problem in a realistic and effective way rather than simply taking the position that military force generously applied provides some kind of solution is clearly not on the political agenda.
The ultimate failure in U.S. policy has enabled Usama bin Laden to successfully use terrorism as a tool against the United States. He does so for very specific reasons that he has taken pains to enunciate. They are actually a reversal of the Giuliani-McCain-Romney assertion that if we don't get them over there we'll have to fight them in Peoria. Bin Laden attacks the United States precisely because we are over there, not because he is appalled by our sexual promiscuity. As he put it some years ago, if he wanted to attack a country because of its freedoms, he would have selected Sweden.
Bin Laden and the rest of the world are aware, even if the presidential candidates are not, that the United States has used its post-World War Two primacy to invade more countries than all other nations combined. The fact is that in only five years George Bush's go-it-alone America has become one of the most disliked countries in the world, universally reviled as a leading threat to peace. Everyone but America's politicians is seemingly aware that the United States supports corrupt, dictatorial regimes worldwide while at the same time talking hypocritically about promoting democracy. When democracy does occur and the result is unpalatable, as has occurred in Palestine and Lebanon, the U.S. pulls the plug.
And then there is Iran, which is really about Israel because Iran does not actually threaten the United States. The Iran agenda includes pre-emptive military action if necessary and the implicit deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Tehran's alleged weapons program, both issues that should make even the most hardened politician pause. But all the leading candidates have unflinchingly completed their obligatory obeisance to Israel and its principal lobby AIPAC. All have sworn to defend Israel to the last dead American soldier if that should become necessary though not a single one has bothered to make a coherent argument why that should be so beyond the usual assertions about terrorism, which, incidentally, have themselves been carefully crafted by Israel and its lobby to justify the "special relationship." The rest of the world sees it all somewhat differently. Israel is engaged in a brutal occupation that is clearly visible on satellite television nightly. Its repression of the Palestinians is enabled by the United States. If the candidates actually believe that the United States should go to war for Israel no matter what Israel does, perhaps they should say so unambiguously. Ignorance of the negative consequences of the U.S.'s writing of a blank check for Israel, which fuels much anti-American sentiment and terrorism, should not be acceptable.
And then there is the support of all the leading presidential candidates for a larger army. Why on earth would the U.S. need more soldiers? To fight more wars, obviously. The wearing down of the armed services due to never-ending involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted from a series of bad decisions, not because the world's most competent military was inadequate. More bad decisions to invade other places with a bigger army would not constitute a solution and increased resources only invite the politicians to engage in more mischief. Far better a lean and hungry Pentagon. The rest of the world is not confused by the patriotic rhetoric and crocodile-tear concern expressed by the candidates for "our troops." It is simply following the presidential debates to learn "Who's next?" on the Pentagon hit list.
Philip Giraldi is a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues. He is a regular contributor to www.antiwar.com in a column titled “Smoke and Mirrors” and is a Contributing Editor who writes a column called “Deep Background” on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues for The American Conservative magazine. He has written op-ed pieces for the Hearst Newspaper chain, has appeared on “Good Morning America,” MSNBC, National Public Radio, and local affiliates of ABC television. He has been a keynote speaker at the Petroleum Industry Security Council annual meeting, has spoken twice at the American Conservative Union’s annual CPAC convention in Washington, and has addressed several World Affairs Council affiliates. He has been interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Britain’s Independent Television Network, FOX News, Polish National Television, Croatian National Television, al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, 60 Minutes, and Court TV. He prepares and edits a nationally syndicated subscription service newsletter on September 11th issues for corporate clients. Phil is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served eighteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was Chief of Base in Barcelona from 1989 to 1992 designated as the Agency’s senior officer for Olympic Games support. Since 1992, Phil has been engaged in security consulting for a number of Fortune 500 corporate clients. He is currently President of San Marco International, a consulting firm that specializes in international security management and risk assessment, and also a partner in Cannistraro Associates, a security consultancy located in McLean Virginia. Phil was awarded an MA and PhD from the University of London in European History and holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of Chicago. He speaks Spanish, Italian, German, and Turkish.
509,000 names on the FBI's "terror watch list"
ABC News report: FBI Terror Watch List 'Out of Control'June 13, 2007 8:55 AM
A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names.
Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror. The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified.
A portion of the FBI's unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to "the entire watch list of 509,000 names," which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force. A spokesman for the interagency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which maintains the government's list of all suspected terrorists with links to international organizations, said they had 465,000 names covering 350,000 individuals. Many names are different versions of the same identity -- "Usama bin Laden" and "Osama bin Laden" for the al Qaeda chief, for example.
In addition to the NCTC list, the FBI keeps a list of U.S. persons who are believed to be domestic terrorists -- abortion clinic bombers, for example, or firebombing environmental extremists, who have no known tie to an international terrorist group. Combined, the NCTC and FBI compendia comprise the watch list used by federal security screening personnel on the lookout for terrorists.
While the NCTC has made no secret of its terrorist tally, the FBI has consistently declined to tell the public how many names are on its list. Because the number is classified, an FBI spokesman told the Blotter on ABCNews.com, he was unable to comment for this story. "It grows seemingly without control or limitation," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000 figure "stunning."
"If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless," he told ABC News. "You'll be capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or terror." U.S. lawmakers and their spouses have been detained because their names were on the watch list. Reporters who have reviewed versions of the list found it included the names of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, at the time he was alive but in custody in Iraq; imprisoned al Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui; and 14 of the 19 Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers, all of whom perished in the attacks.
"There's a reason the FBI has a '10 Most Wanted' list, right? We need to focus the government's efforts on the greatest threats. When the watch list grows to this level, it's useless as an anti-terror tool," Sparapani said.
The USAF's tactics prove that the 'Surge' has failed
US Military Riding the Perfect (Sine) Wave
by William S. Lind
Looking idly at the front page of last Wednesday's Washington Post Express as I rode the Metro to work, I received a shock. It showed a railroad station in Iraq, recently destroyed by an American air strike. So now we are bombing the railroad stations in a country we occupy? What comes next, bombing Iraq's power plants and oil refineries? How about the Green Zone? If the Iraqi parliament doesn't pass the legislation we want it to, we can always lay a couple of JDAMs on it.
It turns out the bombed railroad station was no fluke. An AP story by Charles J. Hanley, dated June 5, reported that
"U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago. … And it appears to be accomplished by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.
"In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press."
Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the "surge" is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: it isn't.
Worse, the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and Gen. Petraeus' best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping Fourth Generation war. To put it bluntly, there is no surer or faster way to lose in 4GW than by calling in airstrikes. It is a disaster on every level. Physically, it inevitably kills far more civilians than enemies, enraging the population against us and driving them into the arms of our opponents. Mentally, it tells the insurgents we are cowards who only dare fight them from 20,000 feet in the air. Morally, it turns us into Goliath, a monster every real man has to fight. So negative are the results of air strikes in this kind of war that there is only one possible good number of them: zero (unless we are employing the "Hama model," which we are not).
What explains this military lunacy, beyond simple desperation? Part of the answer, I suspect, is Air Force generals. Jointness demands they get their share of command billets in Iraq, and with very few exceptions they are mere military technicians. They know how to put bombs on targets, but they know nothing else. So, they do what they know how to do, with no comprehension of the consequences.
In fact, the U.S. Air Force recently announced it is developing its own counter-insurgency doctrine, precisely because "some people" are suggesting air strikes are counterproductive in such conflicts. Well, yes, that is what anyone with any understanding of counter-insurgency would suggest. The Air Force, of course, cares not a whit about the realities of counter-insurgency. It cares only about protecting its bureaucratic turf, its myth of "winning through air power" and its high-performance fighter-bombers, which truly are its knights in shining armor, useful only for tournaments.
Once again, we see the U.S. military riding the perfect sine wave. It will seem as if it is beginning to get things right, only to ride the wave back down again into the depths of unknowing. It brings to mind one of my favorite Bob Newhart skits. Newhart is walking slowly behind a line of an infinite number of monkeys, seated at an infinite number of typewriters, trying to write the world's great books. Bob pauses behind one of the monkeys. "Uh, Fred, come here a minute. I think this one's got something. 'To be or not to be, that is the… gzrbnklap.' Forget about it, Fred."
In this case, the gzrbnklap is airstrikes in 4GW, and the monkey is wearing Air Force blue.
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William S. Lind: He is most widely known as one of the originators of Fourth Generation War (4GW) theory. This theory states that the state has effectively lost its monopoly on warfare, and seeks to address the new challenges posed by this situation. The root of this new phenomenon is the "State's Crisis of Legitimacy," which is also linked to Lind's work at the Center for Cultural Conservatism. Lind served as a legislative aide for the armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr., of Ohio from 1973 through 1976 and held a similar position with Senator Gary Hart of Colorado from 1977 through 1986. He is the author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Westview Press, 1985) and co-author, with Gary Hart, of America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform. Lind worked closely with US Air Force Colonel John Boyd with whom he developed much of his theoretical work and drew much inspiration from. The OODA Loop primarily used in 4GW was described by Boyd. With Bruce Gudmundsson, Lind hosted the program Modern War on the now-defunct satellite television network NET. He has been invited to lecture by the Swedish and Israeli military academies. Lind, an opponent of the Iraq War, has written for the Marine Corps Gazette, and Defense and the National Interest. According to writer Robert Coram in his book Boyd, During lectures on maneuver warfare Lind was sometimes criticized for never having served in the military, for "never dodged a bullet, he had never led men in combat, he had never even worn a uniform" Coram writes that when challenged by an officer, Lind "cut him off at the knees." (Coram 383)
by William S. Lind
Looking idly at the front page of last Wednesday's Washington Post Express as I rode the Metro to work, I received a shock. It showed a railroad station in Iraq, recently destroyed by an American air strike. So now we are bombing the railroad stations in a country we occupy? What comes next, bombing Iraq's power plants and oil refineries? How about the Green Zone? If the Iraqi parliament doesn't pass the legislation we want it to, we can always lay a couple of JDAMs on it.
It turns out the bombed railroad station was no fluke. An AP story by Charles J. Hanley, dated June 5, reported that
"U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago. … And it appears to be accomplished by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.
"In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press."
Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the "surge" is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: it isn't.
Worse, the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and Gen. Petraeus' best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping Fourth Generation war. To put it bluntly, there is no surer or faster way to lose in 4GW than by calling in airstrikes. It is a disaster on every level. Physically, it inevitably kills far more civilians than enemies, enraging the population against us and driving them into the arms of our opponents. Mentally, it tells the insurgents we are cowards who only dare fight them from 20,000 feet in the air. Morally, it turns us into Goliath, a monster every real man has to fight. So negative are the results of air strikes in this kind of war that there is only one possible good number of them: zero (unless we are employing the "Hama model," which we are not).
What explains this military lunacy, beyond simple desperation? Part of the answer, I suspect, is Air Force generals. Jointness demands they get their share of command billets in Iraq, and with very few exceptions they are mere military technicians. They know how to put bombs on targets, but they know nothing else. So, they do what they know how to do, with no comprehension of the consequences.
In fact, the U.S. Air Force recently announced it is developing its own counter-insurgency doctrine, precisely because "some people" are suggesting air strikes are counterproductive in such conflicts. Well, yes, that is what anyone with any understanding of counter-insurgency would suggest. The Air Force, of course, cares not a whit about the realities of counter-insurgency. It cares only about protecting its bureaucratic turf, its myth of "winning through air power" and its high-performance fighter-bombers, which truly are its knights in shining armor, useful only for tournaments.
Once again, we see the U.S. military riding the perfect sine wave. It will seem as if it is beginning to get things right, only to ride the wave back down again into the depths of unknowing. It brings to mind one of my favorite Bob Newhart skits. Newhart is walking slowly behind a line of an infinite number of monkeys, seated at an infinite number of typewriters, trying to write the world's great books. Bob pauses behind one of the monkeys. "Uh, Fred, come here a minute. I think this one's got something. 'To be or not to be, that is the… gzrbnklap.' Forget about it, Fred."
In this case, the gzrbnklap is airstrikes in 4GW, and the monkey is wearing Air Force blue.
-------
William S. Lind: He is most widely known as one of the originators of Fourth Generation War (4GW) theory. This theory states that the state has effectively lost its monopoly on warfare, and seeks to address the new challenges posed by this situation. The root of this new phenomenon is the "State's Crisis of Legitimacy," which is also linked to Lind's work at the Center for Cultural Conservatism. Lind served as a legislative aide for the armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr., of Ohio from 1973 through 1976 and held a similar position with Senator Gary Hart of Colorado from 1977 through 1986. He is the author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Westview Press, 1985) and co-author, with Gary Hart, of America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform. Lind worked closely with US Air Force Colonel John Boyd with whom he developed much of his theoretical work and drew much inspiration from. The OODA Loop primarily used in 4GW was described by Boyd. With Bruce Gudmundsson, Lind hosted the program Modern War on the now-defunct satellite television network NET. He has been invited to lecture by the Swedish and Israeli military academies. Lind, an opponent of the Iraq War, has written for the Marine Corps Gazette, and Defense and the National Interest. According to writer Robert Coram in his book Boyd, During lectures on maneuver warfare Lind was sometimes criticized for never having served in the military, for "never dodged a bullet, he had never led men in combat, he had never even worn a uniform" Coram writes that when challenged by an officer, Lind "cut him off at the knees." (Coram 383)
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The Neocon Threat to American Freedom
The War on Truth and Liberty
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The Bush/Cheney White House, which told the American people in 2003 that the Iraqi invasion would be a three to six week affair, now tells us that the US occupation is permanent. Forever.
Attentive Americans of which, alas, there are so few, had already concluded that the occupation was permanent. Permanence is the obvious message from the massive and fortified US embassy under construction in Iraq and from the large permanent military bases that the Bush regime is building in Iraq.
Bush regime propagandists have created a false analogy with "the Korean model" in their effort to sell the permanent occupation of Iraq as necessary for Iraq's security. More than one half century after the close of the Korean war, US troops continue to be based in Korea, as they are in Germany more than six decades after the end of World War II.
The rationale for the US troops in S. Korea is to remind N. Korea that an attack on S. Korea is an attack on the US itself. The rationale for US troops in Germany disappeared when Reagan and Gorbachev brought the cold war to an end.
There is, of course, no similarity between Iraq and Korea. There was no insurgency in Korea and no attacks on US troops based in S. Korea once the fighting stopped. The presence of US troops in S. Korea has produced many protest demonstrations by South Koreans, but the US troops in S. Korea have had no exposure to combat since the war ended in 1953.
In contrast, the insurgency in Iraq continues to rage and could expand dramatically if Shi'ites were to join the Sunnis in attacks on US forces. Most American military leaders no longer believe the insurgency can be defeated. Permanent occupation means permanent insurgency. Indeed, an attempt at permanent occupation could possibly unify the Arabs in a joint effort to expel the Americans.
The absurd analogy with Korea is so far-fetched that it raises the question whether the Bush/Cheney regime has entered a new, higher level of delusion. Bush cannot keep troops in Iraq permanently unless he intends to remain permanently in the White House. Even some Republicans in Congress are talking about beginning withdrawals of US troops in September. Republicans believe that if withdrawals do not begin, their party will be wiped out in the 2008 election.
The wild card is the neoconservatives and their long-standing alliance with Israeli Zionists. The neoconservatives still have a death grip on the discredited Bush regime. Jim Lobe describes the extensive international organization that the neoconservatives have put into place for the purpose of orchestrating an attack on Iran.
A sane reader might wonder why neoconservatives would want to expand a conflict in which the US has failed. Surely, even delusional "cakewalk" neoconservatives must realize that attacking Iran would greatly increase the threat to US troops in Iraq and perhaps bring missile attacks on oil facilities and US bases throughout the Middle East. An attack on Iran would further radicalize Muslims and further undermine US puppets in the Middle East. It could bring war to the entire region.
The point is that the neoconservatives do realize this. Their defeat in Iraq and Israel's defeat in Lebanon has taught the neoconservatives that the US cannot prevail in the Middle East by conventional military means. As I have previously explained, the neoconservatives' plan is to escape the failure of their Iraq plan by orchestrating a war with Iran in which the US can prevail only by using nuclear weapons. As previously reported, the neoconservatives believe that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran will convince Muslims that they must accept US hegemony.
The neoconservatives have put the elements of their plan in place. They have powerful naval forces on station off Iran's coast. They have convinced President Bush that only by attacking Iran can he prevail in Iraq.
The neoconservatives have rewritten US war doctrine to permit preemptive US nuclear attack on non-nuclear countries . They have demonized Iran as the greatest threat since Hitler. Neoconservatives have invented "Islamofascism," something that exists only in the neoconservative propaganda used to instill in Americans hatred of Muslims. The neoconservatives have dehumanized Muslims as monsters who must be destroyed at all costs. Recent statements by neoconservative leaders such as Norman Podhoretz read like the ravings of ignorant lunatics. Podhoretz has written Muslims out of the human race. He demands that their culture be deracinated.
Neoconservatives, convinced that a nuclear attack will bring Muslims to heel, are ignoring the likely blowback and unintended consequences of an attack on Iran, just as they ignored the likely consequences of their attack on Iraq. If the neoconservatives are mistaken in their assumption that nuclear weapons will cause Muslims to submit to the US, the consequences will be unmanageable.
The neoconservative Bush regime has got away with more than I thought possible, perhaps because most of Congress and the American public cannot imagine the degree of insanity that lies behind the Bush administration. Most Americans who have turned against the regime think that the administration is incompetent, that it jumped to wrong conclusions about Iraq, and that it mismanaged the war and will not admit its mistakes. As every reason Bush gave for the war has proven to be false, people see no point in continuing the struggle.
If Americans understood the enormity of the deception behind the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the pending attack on Iran, Bush and Cheney would be impeached and turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, and AIPAC would be forced to register as a foreign agent.
Just as Goebbels said, some lies are too big to be disbelieved. It is this disbelief that is so dangerous. The inability of Americans to see through the Big LIe to the secret agenda allows the neoconservatives to escape accountability and to continue with their plot.
The neoconservatives also believe that nuclear attack on Iran will isolate America in the world and, thereby, give the government control over the American people. The denunciations that will be hurled at Americans from every quarter will force the country to wrap itself in the flag and to treat domestic critics as foreign enemies. Not only free speech but also truth itself will disappear along with every civil liberty.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The Bush/Cheney White House, which told the American people in 2003 that the Iraqi invasion would be a three to six week affair, now tells us that the US occupation is permanent. Forever.
Attentive Americans of which, alas, there are so few, had already concluded that the occupation was permanent. Permanence is the obvious message from the massive and fortified US embassy under construction in Iraq and from the large permanent military bases that the Bush regime is building in Iraq.
Bush regime propagandists have created a false analogy with "the Korean model" in their effort to sell the permanent occupation of Iraq as necessary for Iraq's security. More than one half century after the close of the Korean war, US troops continue to be based in Korea, as they are in Germany more than six decades after the end of World War II.
The rationale for the US troops in S. Korea is to remind N. Korea that an attack on S. Korea is an attack on the US itself. The rationale for US troops in Germany disappeared when Reagan and Gorbachev brought the cold war to an end.
There is, of course, no similarity between Iraq and Korea. There was no insurgency in Korea and no attacks on US troops based in S. Korea once the fighting stopped. The presence of US troops in S. Korea has produced many protest demonstrations by South Koreans, but the US troops in S. Korea have had no exposure to combat since the war ended in 1953.
In contrast, the insurgency in Iraq continues to rage and could expand dramatically if Shi'ites were to join the Sunnis in attacks on US forces. Most American military leaders no longer believe the insurgency can be defeated. Permanent occupation means permanent insurgency. Indeed, an attempt at permanent occupation could possibly unify the Arabs in a joint effort to expel the Americans.
The absurd analogy with Korea is so far-fetched that it raises the question whether the Bush/Cheney regime has entered a new, higher level of delusion. Bush cannot keep troops in Iraq permanently unless he intends to remain permanently in the White House. Even some Republicans in Congress are talking about beginning withdrawals of US troops in September. Republicans believe that if withdrawals do not begin, their party will be wiped out in the 2008 election.
The wild card is the neoconservatives and their long-standing alliance with Israeli Zionists. The neoconservatives still have a death grip on the discredited Bush regime. Jim Lobe describes the extensive international organization that the neoconservatives have put into place for the purpose of orchestrating an attack on Iran.
A sane reader might wonder why neoconservatives would want to expand a conflict in which the US has failed. Surely, even delusional "cakewalk" neoconservatives must realize that attacking Iran would greatly increase the threat to US troops in Iraq and perhaps bring missile attacks on oil facilities and US bases throughout the Middle East. An attack on Iran would further radicalize Muslims and further undermine US puppets in the Middle East. It could bring war to the entire region.
The point is that the neoconservatives do realize this. Their defeat in Iraq and Israel's defeat in Lebanon has taught the neoconservatives that the US cannot prevail in the Middle East by conventional military means. As I have previously explained, the neoconservatives' plan is to escape the failure of their Iraq plan by orchestrating a war with Iran in which the US can prevail only by using nuclear weapons. As previously reported, the neoconservatives believe that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran will convince Muslims that they must accept US hegemony.
The neoconservatives have put the elements of their plan in place. They have powerful naval forces on station off Iran's coast. They have convinced President Bush that only by attacking Iran can he prevail in Iraq.
The neoconservatives have rewritten US war doctrine to permit preemptive US nuclear attack on non-nuclear countries . They have demonized Iran as the greatest threat since Hitler. Neoconservatives have invented "Islamofascism," something that exists only in the neoconservative propaganda used to instill in Americans hatred of Muslims. The neoconservatives have dehumanized Muslims as monsters who must be destroyed at all costs. Recent statements by neoconservative leaders such as Norman Podhoretz read like the ravings of ignorant lunatics. Podhoretz has written Muslims out of the human race. He demands that their culture be deracinated.
Neoconservatives, convinced that a nuclear attack will bring Muslims to heel, are ignoring the likely blowback and unintended consequences of an attack on Iran, just as they ignored the likely consequences of their attack on Iraq. If the neoconservatives are mistaken in their assumption that nuclear weapons will cause Muslims to submit to the US, the consequences will be unmanageable.
The neoconservative Bush regime has got away with more than I thought possible, perhaps because most of Congress and the American public cannot imagine the degree of insanity that lies behind the Bush administration. Most Americans who have turned against the regime think that the administration is incompetent, that it jumped to wrong conclusions about Iraq, and that it mismanaged the war and will not admit its mistakes. As every reason Bush gave for the war has proven to be false, people see no point in continuing the struggle.
If Americans understood the enormity of the deception behind the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the pending attack on Iran, Bush and Cheney would be impeached and turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, and AIPAC would be forced to register as a foreign agent.
Just as Goebbels said, some lies are too big to be disbelieved. It is this disbelief that is so dangerous. The inability of Americans to see through the Big LIe to the secret agenda allows the neoconservatives to escape accountability and to continue with their plot.
The neoconservatives also believe that nuclear attack on Iran will isolate America in the world and, thereby, give the government control over the American people. The denunciations that will be hurled at Americans from every quarter will force the country to wrap itself in the flag and to treat domestic critics as foreign enemies. Not only free speech but also truth itself will disappear along with every civil liberty.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Top Shia leaders in consultations
Moqtada al-Sadr visits with Ali al-Sistani
(Voices of Iraq) - Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr visited, on Sunday night, top Shiite cleric ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in his office in Najaf and both discussed the latest security and political developments in Iraq, a source from Sistani's office said. "Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr visited, today at 9:30 pm, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and both leaders discussed the political and security situation in the country," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). The source gave no further details. Sadr's visit to sistani today is the first since the young Shiite cleric Sadr resurfaced two weeks ago.
Sheikh Fadhlallah Invited to Iran
TEHRAN, June 12--Top Lebanese Shiite cleric Allameh Mohammad Hossein Fadhlallah has been invited to visit Iran for wide-ranging discussions with officials and religious scholars. An informed source in Fadhlallah’s office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Fars News Agency that the clergy has not responded to the invitation yet. “In an official invitation from Iran, Sheikh Fadhlallah has been invited to visit Iran to discuss different issues,“ the informed source said. Seyyed Ali Fadhlallah, son of Sheikh Fadhlallah, visited Iran last month at the head of a delegation and met with officials. Religious leaders in Qom had invited Fadhlallah on several occasions in the past for religious debates, which he did not accept. The informed source believes that the recent political upheavals in Lebanon prevent the religious leader from making a foreign trip.
(Voices of Iraq) - Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr visited, on Sunday night, top Shiite cleric ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in his office in Najaf and both discussed the latest security and political developments in Iraq, a source from Sistani's office said. "Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr visited, today at 9:30 pm, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and both leaders discussed the political and security situation in the country," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). The source gave no further details. Sadr's visit to sistani today is the first since the young Shiite cleric Sadr resurfaced two weeks ago.
Sheikh Fadhlallah Invited to Iran
TEHRAN, June 12--Top Lebanese Shiite cleric Allameh Mohammad Hossein Fadhlallah has been invited to visit Iran for wide-ranging discussions with officials and religious scholars. An informed source in Fadhlallah’s office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Fars News Agency that the clergy has not responded to the invitation yet. “In an official invitation from Iran, Sheikh Fadhlallah has been invited to visit Iran to discuss different issues,“ the informed source said. Seyyed Ali Fadhlallah, son of Sheikh Fadhlallah, visited Iran last month at the head of a delegation and met with officials. Religious leaders in Qom had invited Fadhlallah on several occasions in the past for religious debates, which he did not accept. The informed source believes that the recent political upheavals in Lebanon prevent the religious leader from making a foreign trip.
Secret UN report condemns US for Middle East failures
The Guardian: Envoy's damning verdict revealed as violence takes Gaza closer to civil war
The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure has "pummelled into submission" the UN's role as an impartial Middle East negotiator in a damning confidential report.
The 53-page "End of Mission Report" by Alvaro de Soto, the UN's Middle East envoy, obtained by the Guardian, presents a devastating account of failed diplomacy and condemns the sweeping boycott of the Palestinian government. It is dated May 5 this year, just before Mr de Soto stepped down.
The revelations from inside the UN come after another day of escalating violence in Gaza, when at least 26 Palestinians were killed after Hamas fighters launched a major assault. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah group, warned he was facing an attempted coup.
Mr de Soto condemns Israel for setting unachievable preconditions for talks and the Palestinians for their violence. Western-led peace negotiations have become largely irrelevant, he says.
Mr de Soto is a Peruvian diplomat who worked for the UN for 25 years in El Salvador, Cyprus and Western Sahara. He says:
· The international boycott of the Palestinians, introduced after Hamas won elections last year, was "at best extremely short-sighted" and had "devastating consequences" for the Palestinian people
· Israel has adopted an "essentially rejectionist" stance towards the Palestinians
· The Quartet of Middle East negotiators - the US, the EU, Russia and the UN - has become a "side-show"
·The Palestinian record of stopping violence against Israel is "patchy at best, reprehensible at worst"
Mr de Soto acknowledges in the report that he is its sole author. It was meant only for senior UN officials, and its wording is far more critical than the public pronouncements of UN diplomats. Last night, Mr de Soto, who is in New York, told the Guardian: "It is a confidential document and not intended for publication."
In January last year, the Quartet called on the newly elected Hamas government to commit to non-violence, recognise Israel and accept previous agreements. When Hamas refused to sign up to the principles, the international community halted direct funding to the Palestinian government and Israel started to freeze the monthly tax revenues that it had agreed to pass to the Palestinians. Several hundred million dollars remain frozen.
Mr de Soto, who had opposed the boycott, said this position "effectively transformed the Quartet from a negotiation-promoting foursome guided by a common document [the road map for peace] into a body that was all-but imposing sanctions on a freely elected government of a people under occupation as well as setting unattainable preconditions for dialogue".
The EU said yesterday that there was an imminent risk of civil war if fighting went on, and UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon urged support for Mr Abbas's efforts "to restore law and order".
In the heaviest day of fighting in Gaza for months, Hamas appeared to make its first concerted effort to seize power in Gaza. There was a wave of co-ordinated attacks, which appeared to overwhelm the larger but less effective Fatah force. "Decisiveness will be in the field," said Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for the Hamas military wing.
Fatah's central committee called an emergency meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and said it would suspend the activities of its ministers in the government. Fatah would pull out of the government if the fighting failed to stop, it said.
For the first time in several weeks, fighting spread to the West Bank when Fatah gunmen attacked a Hamas television studio in Ramallah and kidnapped a Hamas deputy cabinet minister from the city.
The day began with a rocket attack on the private house in Gaza of Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister and a Hamas leader. He was in the building but was not hurt. Fighting spread across Gaza City and within hours Hamas fighters issued warnings over loudspeakers calling on all Fatah security forces to pull out of their bases and return home. At about 2pm Hamas gunmen seized control of several small Fatah bases and one large base in northern Gaza, where there were heavy casualties when Hamas fighters fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at the compound.
Several Fatah officers complained that they had received no orders during the day. Mr Abbas tried calling for a truce, and later Fatah ordered its officers to fight back.
The Americans and Saudis are Behind Attacks in Lebanon
Reading the tea leaves: The tune being played by Westerners and their allies in the region under the guise of preserving international justice is enflaming internal dissention in the land of the Cedar [Lebanon].
Beirut: Since last Thursday, the day that the United States, France and Great Britain filed a motion at the U.N. to ensure the setting up of an international court to judge the assassins of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri , everyone knew that repercussions would not be long to follow in the land of the Cedar.
This is true first of all because this is a particularly sensitive question in Lebanon. It is one of the bones of contention among a number of groups. The majority are gathered under the banner of “March 14th Movement” - also known as the Movement of the Future - centered around the Hariri family - which holds the post of prime minister in the person of Fouad Siniora .
Allied with them are those that support the Lebanese Forces of Samir Geagea , who was recently released from prison after being implicated in a number of massacres, and who is a partisan of the Gemayel family [The Gemayal family has spawned three previous Lebanese Prime ministers, who were regarded as pro-Western ].
[Editor's Note: The March 14th movement came into being exactly one month after the February 14th, 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, when massive demonstrations were held across the country calling for democracy, punishment for the assassins, and an end to Syrian influence ].
The opposition, primarily the Hezbullah Party, the Amal Party and the patriotic faction of General Aoun , rallied its forces under the banner of the “Movement of March 8th” [the date of a protest in favor of Hezbullah and Syrian influence in Lebanon, which occurred the week before the March 14th protests].
These two entities [the Hezbullah and Amal Parties] - momentarily allied due to electoral agreements and even as allies within the government - have split due to conflicting interests: class, religious and geopolitical …
Today the international court, as it has been proposed, has raised the specter of a return of Lebanon's old demons. This is because events that took place over twenty years ago could be rehashed, and if the will for national reconciliation hasn't completely ended, it is in any case politically limited.
THE DEATH OF RAFIK HARIRI
In what one must necessarily label "monkey-business," the Western countries - particularly France and the United States - are playing from a particular song-sheet, which was written after the death of Rafik Hariri. This song sheet is the cantata of U.N. resolution 1559 , played in two parts: The withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon (they arrived in 1986 with the consent of Western nations); and then the disarmament of armed factions - including Hezbullah and other Palestinian groups.
These steps are aimed at isolating anything on the regional landscape that could be construed as an alliance with Syria and Iran, which have been accused of being the source of all evil (hence the axis of evil so dear to George W. Bush). Hezbullah is therefore targeted, both politically and in religious terms.
The Saudi Arabians - Sunnis whose financial interests in Lebanon are obvious - have all but been designated to play the role of policeman, indeed, even as the dispenser of justice. This situation - which the Saudis dearly hope is being accepted as a new way of doing things - is more true in Lebanon than it is in Iraq, where the clash between the region's Shiites and Sunnis is creating a new and dangerous dynamic for the people of the Middle East, and primarily for the Palestinians.
It is in the context of this confrontation and overall tension that the war in Lebanon began in the summer of 2006. The Israeli plans were ready. But their unexpected defeat altered the consequences. The Shiite movement of Hassan Nasrallah came out of the confrontation strengthened, and even in Sunni regions of the Middle East, the Hezbullah leader's performance was appreciated. This aggravated Washington - which sees the specter of Teheran everywhere, but it was also a problem for Riyadh, which intends to defend its interests.
It is with this backdrop, worsened by the gridlock of Lebanese institutions - the resignation of Shiite ministers, which left the government without constitutional legitimacy, and with a Parliament that doesn't convene any longer, which means that the question of Presidential succession cannot be viably resolved for now - that a storm is approaching Lebanon from every direction.
Consequently, it's easy to manipulate and - relying upon international media - encourage people to adopt the dominant thesis, and especially, to help create or activate small religious groups.
YEMENITES FROM BANGLADESH …
In Europe, we have certainly discovered the existence of Fatah Al-Islam. Within a space of two days, this Islamic group killed close to thirty Lebanese soldiers and, being in a Palestinian refugee camp, it has sown disorder and doubt.
There are practically no Palestinians members of Fatah Al-Islam, as has been shown by the identities of those who were cut down by Lebanese forces over the last two days. They are Yemeni, Bangladeshi and others.
All Palestinians organizations have denounced the deception practiced by this group. Yesterday, certain Lebanese newspapers recalled that last February, four members of this group had been detained and confessed to having instigated an attack near Beirut, in a Christian area. But at the time, the authorities did nothing to eradicate the group. In the same way, when one knows how difficult it is to enter a Palestinian refugee camp - whose access points are controlled by the army - one wonders how such a thing could have happened and whose interests it served.
TENSION CONTINUES TO GROW
Part of the answer has been provided by American journalist Seymour Hersh, known for his revelations about all that is hidden in the international card game. He has an extensive network that provides him with information, and he is regularly informed of secrets by former agents from international secret agencies.
In an article published by The New Yorker in March 2007, Hersh shows that a strategy of confrontation in Lebanon, between Sunni Islamists and Hezbollah, is taking shape under the aegis of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney .
An ex-spy for the British secret service, the famous MI6 is quoted. Alistair Crooke, that is his name, created a think tank in Beirut called “Conflicts Forum,” explains why the Lebanese government favors the entry of such combatants onto its territory.
“It could be very dangerous” he says. He quotes one of these extremist Sunni groups: the Fatah al-Islam, which settled in the camp at Nahr al-Bared. There were 200 of them. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests - presumably to take on Hezbullah.”
According to the French ambassador to the U.N., resolution 1559 regarding the international court could be voted on the end of the month. Meanwhile, the tensions in Lebanon grow by the day, the preparations for war against Iran are gathering apace and the Gaza Strip is nothing but blood and fire
source: http://english.wa3ad.org/index.php?show=news&action=article&id=1458
Beirut: Since last Thursday, the day that the United States, France and Great Britain filed a motion at the U.N. to ensure the setting up of an international court to judge the assassins of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri , everyone knew that repercussions would not be long to follow in the land of the Cedar.
This is true first of all because this is a particularly sensitive question in Lebanon. It is one of the bones of contention among a number of groups. The majority are gathered under the banner of “March 14th Movement” - also known as the Movement of the Future - centered around the Hariri family - which holds the post of prime minister in the person of Fouad Siniora .
Allied with them are those that support the Lebanese Forces of Samir Geagea , who was recently released from prison after being implicated in a number of massacres, and who is a partisan of the Gemayel family [The Gemayal family has spawned three previous Lebanese Prime ministers, who were regarded as pro-Western ].
[Editor's Note: The March 14th movement came into being exactly one month after the February 14th, 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, when massive demonstrations were held across the country calling for democracy, punishment for the assassins, and an end to Syrian influence ].
The opposition, primarily the Hezbullah Party, the Amal Party and the patriotic faction of General Aoun , rallied its forces under the banner of the “Movement of March 8th” [the date of a protest in favor of Hezbullah and Syrian influence in Lebanon, which occurred the week before the March 14th protests].
These two entities [the Hezbullah and Amal Parties] - momentarily allied due to electoral agreements and even as allies within the government - have split due to conflicting interests: class, religious and geopolitical …
Today the international court, as it has been proposed, has raised the specter of a return of Lebanon's old demons. This is because events that took place over twenty years ago could be rehashed, and if the will for national reconciliation hasn't completely ended, it is in any case politically limited.
THE DEATH OF RAFIK HARIRI
In what one must necessarily label "monkey-business," the Western countries - particularly France and the United States - are playing from a particular song-sheet, which was written after the death of Rafik Hariri. This song sheet is the cantata of U.N. resolution 1559 , played in two parts: The withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon (they arrived in 1986 with the consent of Western nations); and then the disarmament of armed factions - including Hezbullah and other Palestinian groups.
These steps are aimed at isolating anything on the regional landscape that could be construed as an alliance with Syria and Iran, which have been accused of being the source of all evil (hence the axis of evil so dear to George W. Bush). Hezbullah is therefore targeted, both politically and in religious terms.
The Saudi Arabians - Sunnis whose financial interests in Lebanon are obvious - have all but been designated to play the role of policeman, indeed, even as the dispenser of justice. This situation - which the Saudis dearly hope is being accepted as a new way of doing things - is more true in Lebanon than it is in Iraq, where the clash between the region's Shiites and Sunnis is creating a new and dangerous dynamic for the people of the Middle East, and primarily for the Palestinians.
It is in the context of this confrontation and overall tension that the war in Lebanon began in the summer of 2006. The Israeli plans were ready. But their unexpected defeat altered the consequences. The Shiite movement of Hassan Nasrallah came out of the confrontation strengthened, and even in Sunni regions of the Middle East, the Hezbullah leader's performance was appreciated. This aggravated Washington - which sees the specter of Teheran everywhere, but it was also a problem for Riyadh, which intends to defend its interests.
It is with this backdrop, worsened by the gridlock of Lebanese institutions - the resignation of Shiite ministers, which left the government without constitutional legitimacy, and with a Parliament that doesn't convene any longer, which means that the question of Presidential succession cannot be viably resolved for now - that a storm is approaching Lebanon from every direction.
Consequently, it's easy to manipulate and - relying upon international media - encourage people to adopt the dominant thesis, and especially, to help create or activate small religious groups.
YEMENITES FROM BANGLADESH …
In Europe, we have certainly discovered the existence of Fatah Al-Islam. Within a space of two days, this Islamic group killed close to thirty Lebanese soldiers and, being in a Palestinian refugee camp, it has sown disorder and doubt.
There are practically no Palestinians members of Fatah Al-Islam, as has been shown by the identities of those who were cut down by Lebanese forces over the last two days. They are Yemeni, Bangladeshi and others.
All Palestinians organizations have denounced the deception practiced by this group. Yesterday, certain Lebanese newspapers recalled that last February, four members of this group had been detained and confessed to having instigated an attack near Beirut, in a Christian area. But at the time, the authorities did nothing to eradicate the group. In the same way, when one knows how difficult it is to enter a Palestinian refugee camp - whose access points are controlled by the army - one wonders how such a thing could have happened and whose interests it served.
TENSION CONTINUES TO GROW
Part of the answer has been provided by American journalist Seymour Hersh, known for his revelations about all that is hidden in the international card game. He has an extensive network that provides him with information, and he is regularly informed of secrets by former agents from international secret agencies.
In an article published by The New Yorker in March 2007, Hersh shows that a strategy of confrontation in Lebanon, between Sunni Islamists and Hezbollah, is taking shape under the aegis of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney .
An ex-spy for the British secret service, the famous MI6 is quoted. Alistair Crooke, that is his name, created a think tank in Beirut called “Conflicts Forum,” explains why the Lebanese government favors the entry of such combatants onto its territory.
“It could be very dangerous” he says. He quotes one of these extremist Sunni groups: the Fatah al-Islam, which settled in the camp at Nahr al-Bared. There were 200 of them. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests - presumably to take on Hezbullah.”
According to the French ambassador to the U.N., resolution 1559 regarding the international court could be voted on the end of the month. Meanwhile, the tensions in Lebanon grow by the day, the preparations for war against Iran are gathering apace and the Gaza Strip is nothing but blood and fire
source: http://english.wa3ad.org/index.php?show=news&action=article&id=1458
The secret war against Hizbollah
by Alberto Cruz
06/12/07 "ICH " -- --- - A time-worn adage in journalism says that redundancy enables a better understanding of language, so here we go again : the tree of Iraq stops us seeing the Middle East wood. Absorbed in our navel-gazing, we behave like children covering our ears to stave off a reality we find distasteful. That happens in Iraq when we refuse to acknowledge that there are more variables than are apparent when trying to pin down what is happening in that country and it also happens in Lebanon when reality smacks us in the face. Reality turns up to find us, not asleep, but otherwise engaged.
In less than a year we have witnessed two predictable events whose occurrence nonetheless took many people unawares. The first was the war last summer and now it is happening again with confrontations between the Lebanese army and an apparently Palestinian organization linked to the most orthodox Islam. In an article published on June 13th last year at the very start of the war, I wrote, "In Lebanon there is not an Iraqi-style sectarian confrontation, but Sunni radicalism is on the increase in places like Tripoli and Akkar where it seems Al Qaeda is growing strong." (1)
Like it or not, Al Qaeda's progress in the Middle East is very fast and the terrain is made fertile by the war in Iraq. De facto, Al Qaeda is like the alien in Ridley Scott's film - a creature that grows inside the body feeding on it and when sufficiently strong it attacks its host. Scott could have added a line to the film's credits - "based on real life events". Events that took place in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. The aliens in those days were Islamists from all over the world who arrived in that land with the generous support of the United States and Saudi Arabia and who, after the Soviet withdrawal, evolved into the Al Qaeda phenomenon.
The Al Qaeda alien is now autonomous in Iraq and active on several fronts (against the occupiers, the Sunnis and the Shia whom it fights considering them apostates) but it can still not manage to fend for itself in Lebanon and needs a body on which to feed.. That body may well be Fatah al Islam, an organization that does not openly identify itself as part of Al Qaeda but does say it is "understanding of the brothers" (referring to Al Qaeda) and shares with them their religious and political tenets. Fatah al Islam identifies itself as "followers of the salafiyyah tradition of the Islamic nation", says it has a presence "in the land of Al Sham" (2) and in one of the few known documents of this group, dated in February, calls on muslims the world over to fight against "the enemies of Allah", criticises "apostate leaders" and especially Hamas for having signed the deal with Fatah to secure a government of national unity and accuses Hamas of having made "concessions in the rights of the Palestinians".
What are the reasons for this confrontation with a group inserted into a Palestinian refugee camp, not comprised simply of Arabs of that nationality who in fact are a minority, and an army that stayed on the sidelines during the war with Israel? Here are a few of them.
The Second Report of Ban Ki-moon
On May 7th this year the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, published his second report on Lebanon (the fifth in all since the end of last summer's hostilities). In it he maintained the previous line and drew even further away from the attempted even-handedness of his predecessor Kofi Annan in the report Annan published prior to his retirement in December 2006, the third overall. Nothing is squandered in Ban Ki-moon's report (3) and the accusations against Hizbollah for not disarming and against Syria and Iran are constant throughout the document's 14 pages and 66 points.
Ki-moon repeats to exhaustion that the Lebanese government is "legitimate" (ignoring the fact that the resignation of Shi'ite ministers and one Christian minister render it unconstitutional) thus dismissing protests that have been made since last November calling for a more representative government of national unity; it insists that arms trafficking continues from Syria to Hizbollah (accepting Israeli cliams on that issue and thus giving the all clear to Israel's constant violations of Resolution 1701 through its air force and spy plane flights); and despite having said in the previous report of March 14th this year that the maps defining the Shebaa Farms as either Syrian or Lebanese would be ready in June this year, now he says the map-makers "continue their work" and asks both countries to agree their territorial limits and frontiers. This request is not simply a formula to draw a new line on the map, it is vital to get the UN Security Council to extend the UNIFIL mission on the Syrian frontier so as to control the traffic in arms that, according to Israeli arguments, occurs along the whole length of the border.
Ban Ki-moon's report appeared after a failed attempt by the United States, France and Britain to get a new Security Council resolution on Lebanon in support of the Siniora government and accusing Syria and Iran of continuing to help Hizbollah with arms and money. The attempt to get the resolution passed was stopped by China and Russia and other member countries of the UN Security Council like Ghana and South Africa. In the failed draft resolution, the UN Security Council was asked to form an "independent mission" made up of "a committee of UN experts" to control the border. (4) A mission that was to be made up of European countries and into which were invited Egyptians and Jordanians, the two countries in the area that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.
Once that effort failed it was necessary to show unwilling countries and the world in general that the objectives in view were praiseworthy. No sooner did the fighting in Nahr al Bared begin than accusations against Syria have appeared in practically all the news media. Of Fatah al Islam little is known beyond that it is a splinter organization from Fatah Intifada and from that Syrian patronage is inferred. The Lebanese government and its Western mentors have rushed to accuse Syria of being behind this group with the purpose, they allege, of obstructing the international tribunal investigating the death of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. For almost two years the case of Hariri (a Sunni multi-millionaire closely linked to the Saudi regime and particularly Prince Bandar bin Sultan, now Saudia Arabia's Security Minister) is the only pretext offered by a corrupt neo-liberal government to explain what is happening in Lebanon and is nothing more than a sign of its own corruption and its submission to neo-liberal politics designed by the IMF and the World Bank.
Syria may be involved or it may not. What is clear is that Fatah al-Islam became known in 2006 at the same time as the proclamation of the Islamic State in Iraq by Al Qaeda. And for anyone familiar with the situation in the Palestinian refugee camps it is obvious that the group has nothing to do with Syria.
In the course of a visit to some of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon (Nahr Al Bared, Ein el Helwe, Chatila y Burj el Barajne) in December 2006 during an impressive popular mobilization for a representative national government in Lebanon (5), leading members of the Popular Council that governs Nahr al Bared spoke with me about the existence among them of Fatah al Islam whom they did not describe as a Palestinian organization since it was made up mostly of Saudis, Morrocans, Algerians, Jordanians, Yemenis and Egyptians , "many of them jihadists in Iraq". Other representatives of Ein el Helwe mentioned that after the confrontations between militias of another Islamist organization, Jund al Sham and other Palestinian organizations like Asbat al Ansar, also radically Islamist, which caused two deaths, some members of Jund al Sham moved "to the north" and have joined Fatah al Islam. Compounding the suspicious appearance of this group in Lebanon, even then it was noted that the funding for its growth came from the Saudis and Hariri's own son Saad with the double aim of limiting the prestige of Hamas among Palestinians and also, above all, that of Hizbollah.
The United States' secret war against Hizbollah
Time, an implacable judge, has ended up vindicating people who have been right all along despite the campaigns of the Western mass media. No one can dispute that Hizbollah's victory over Israel is perhaps the most striking event so far in the 21st century, given that it put an end to one of the myths of the 20th Centruy, the invincibility of Israel. It is what Middle East experts are beginning to call the "Hizbollah effect" and it has overturned neocolonial designs in this part of the world. That is why from almost the very moment it acknowledged Israel's defeat the United States has set in motion a secret war against the Lebanese political-military movement.
Various newspapers (the UK Guardian, the Lebanese Daily Star and the US New Yorker for example) have published since January this year news or reports on that issue. In March the journalist Seymour Hersh said that the US Vice-President Dick Cheney, National Security Council adviser Elliot Abrams and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, himself his country's Security Minister, had agreed to fund Fatah al Islam "as a counterweight to Hizbollah". On April 12th, the Daily Star noted that the United States had earmarked US$60m to reinforce Interior Ministry forces and Sunni organizations identified by the paper as "jihadists", without specifically mentioning any of them. Some days later Asia Times gave ample coverage along the same lines, "Iraq has arrived in Lebanon. Hundred of jihadists spread among more than 400,000 Palestinians who live in the refugee camps are joining Ansar al Islam or Fatah al Islam clearly following plans of Al Qaeda and with combat experience acquired on the Iraqi battlefield fighting the US occupation."(6) And Hizbollah itself, via its Al Manar television station confirms the thesis, alleging that the presence of jihadists in Lebanon is part of a US, Israeli and Saudi strategy seeking a regional war between Sunni and Shia which would see the partition of Iraq followed by the partition of Syria and Lebanon. (7)
The US plan is being implemented by Fouad Siniora's government which has not hesitated for a moment to accuse Syria of protecting and arming Fatah al Islam. With this episode, on the one hand strong tensions are built up with the aim of softening the positions of countries critical of US, French and British efforts to secure a new UN Sceurity Council resolution to extend UNIFIL's mission, to control the Syrian frontier under the pretext of arms smuggling and to justify a kind of international tutelage of Lebanon. The new French President Nicolas Sarkozy will have his first test to see if he maintains the policy of his predecessor Jacques Chirac who has received favours and money from Saad Hariri and who in return supported him unconditionally following his father's assassination.
On the other hand, the Lebanese army is being tried out in a role it has not been involved in since the Taif peace agreement, until now : internal repression. What is being seen is the possibility of a future confrontation between the Lebanese army and Hizbollah, which explains why the political military movement has from the outset supported the army. In a somewhat complex statement, Hizbollah has condemned the attacks of Fatah al Islam against the Lebanese army at the same time as it has criticised the government ("we feel there is someone who wants to drag the army into confrontation and bloody fighting to serve well-known projects and objectives") and asked for a political solution to the crisis to avoid more suffering for the already hard-hit Palestinian population of the camps. (8) Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's Secretary General has been more explicit, saying " the problem in the north can be solved politically and judicially in a way that protects the Lebanese army, our Palestinian brothers, a state of stability and peace wihtout turning Lebanon into a battlefield on which we fight Al Qaeda on the Americans' behalf". Nasrallah went even further and categorically said that what imperialism wants is a conflict between Al Qaeda and Hizbollah and "is bringing Al Qaeda fighters from all over the world to Lebanon" to that end. (9)
Nasrallah also said, in a warning to the Siniora government and the forces that support it that "the Lebanese army is the guardian of national security, stability and unity", for which it is respected as the "only institution" able to preserve those things and that an attack on the army is the "red line" whose transgression that Hizbollah will not tolerate by anyone. Furthermore he put his finger on the sore point by affirming that military aid provided by the United States is dangerous and asks the Siniora government "where were these arms when Israel bombed your vehicles and your positions? It is something one has to ask the Lebanese, Palestinian and Arab peoples." Nasrallah has repeatedly accused the Bush administration of unleashing a "fitna" or "fragmentation within Islam" referring to tensions and confrontations between Sunnis and Shia.
But there is more. NATO has in mind building a military base in Qleiat very close to Tripoli - where the Nahr el Bared camp is sited - and to the northern frontier with Syria. It will accommodate a helicopter squadron, special forces units and will train the Lebanese Army and police. (10) The area will already have been visited in mid-April by a team of US, German and Turkish military looking for the ideal location.
The US and its European and Arab allies are doing all they can to avoid the collapse of the Siniora government because that would be seen by the Arab peoples as an unequivocal sign of US decline in the Middle East. For that reason every change in the current correlation of forces in Lebanon (where the Shia population is under-represented in the government despite forming 40% of the coutnry's population) needs to be blocked, which in turn explains Siniora's resistance to the opposition forces' democratic proposals : either a government of national unity or a bringing forward of elections.
The fiasco of the Paris 3 aid commitments
Into this scenario one has to add that the aid (almost US$8bn) promised to the Siniora government by the Western powers and many Arab countries during January's Paris summit not only never came but is in fact generating debt. Treasury minister Jihad Azour has had to recognize that the bogged-down political situation is going to cost Lebanon a billion dollars since the neo-liberal economic measures promised in order to get that aid cannot be implemented. Parliamentary assent is required for that to happen and the opposition is clear that there will be no parliamentary quorum so long as elections are not called or else until a national unity government is installed. One must not forget that Saudi Arabia has big financial interests in Lebanon that cannot proceed so long as the current parliamentary boycott persists.
On May 10th, the Siniora government signed an agreement to oversee Lebanon's State sector spending with the IMF, heavily criticised by Hizbollah, Amal and the Free Patriotic Movement (the biggest Christian organization composed mainly of that religion's middle and lower-middle classes). The instability helps prop up Siniora, hands arguments to those forces pulling the strings from the outside and to some extent confounds the opposition albeit indirectly since in supporting the Lebanese army they are obliged to align themselves to a degree with the government. That is something Siniora's pro-Western, neoliberal administration actively sought since several criticisms have been heard internally of what is considered "complicity with the opposition" by a section of the army, which is mostly made up of Shia.
And with that panorama, a question : if it is of such interest for the UN to enforce resolutions on Lebanon - how long before 194, the right of return of the Palestinian refugees? The Arab League plan dusted off after Hizbollah's victory included this right, but in the negotiations between the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and US and Israeli emissaries, they are already talking of accepting just a symbolic return. The Palestinians, once more history's great pariahs, are turned into exchange currency and cannon fodder.
Notes
(1) Alberto Cruz, "La lección de Hizbulá" http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=34516
(2) Salafiyyah Islam is the tradition of following the first believers of Mahomet's generation. The reference to Al Sham is historical and refers to the area currently comprising Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
(3) Fifth semester report of teh Secretary General on the application of Security Council Resolution 1559 (2004) S/2007/262 of May 7th 2007.
(4) The Daily Star, 20 de abril de 2007.
(5) Alberto Cruz, "Hizbulá lee a Gramsci" http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=43303
(6) The Asia Times, 20 de abril de 2007.
(7) Al Manar, 23 de abril de 2007.
(8) Al Manar, 20 de mayo de 2007.
(9) Al Manar, 25 de mayo de 2007.
(10) Al Diyar, 15 de abril de 2007.
Alberto Cruz is a journalist, political scientist and writer specializing in international relations.
06/12/07 "ICH " -- --- - A time-worn adage in journalism says that redundancy enables a better understanding of language, so here we go again : the tree of Iraq stops us seeing the Middle East wood. Absorbed in our navel-gazing, we behave like children covering our ears to stave off a reality we find distasteful. That happens in Iraq when we refuse to acknowledge that there are more variables than are apparent when trying to pin down what is happening in that country and it also happens in Lebanon when reality smacks us in the face. Reality turns up to find us, not asleep, but otherwise engaged.
In less than a year we have witnessed two predictable events whose occurrence nonetheless took many people unawares. The first was the war last summer and now it is happening again with confrontations between the Lebanese army and an apparently Palestinian organization linked to the most orthodox Islam. In an article published on June 13th last year at the very start of the war, I wrote, "In Lebanon there is not an Iraqi-style sectarian confrontation, but Sunni radicalism is on the increase in places like Tripoli and Akkar where it seems Al Qaeda is growing strong." (1)
Like it or not, Al Qaeda's progress in the Middle East is very fast and the terrain is made fertile by the war in Iraq. De facto, Al Qaeda is like the alien in Ridley Scott's film - a creature that grows inside the body feeding on it and when sufficiently strong it attacks its host. Scott could have added a line to the film's credits - "based on real life events". Events that took place in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. The aliens in those days were Islamists from all over the world who arrived in that land with the generous support of the United States and Saudi Arabia and who, after the Soviet withdrawal, evolved into the Al Qaeda phenomenon.
The Al Qaeda alien is now autonomous in Iraq and active on several fronts (against the occupiers, the Sunnis and the Shia whom it fights considering them apostates) but it can still not manage to fend for itself in Lebanon and needs a body on which to feed.. That body may well be Fatah al Islam, an organization that does not openly identify itself as part of Al Qaeda but does say it is "understanding of the brothers" (referring to Al Qaeda) and shares with them their religious and political tenets. Fatah al Islam identifies itself as "followers of the salafiyyah tradition of the Islamic nation", says it has a presence "in the land of Al Sham" (2) and in one of the few known documents of this group, dated in February, calls on muslims the world over to fight against "the enemies of Allah", criticises "apostate leaders" and especially Hamas for having signed the deal with Fatah to secure a government of national unity and accuses Hamas of having made "concessions in the rights of the Palestinians".
What are the reasons for this confrontation with a group inserted into a Palestinian refugee camp, not comprised simply of Arabs of that nationality who in fact are a minority, and an army that stayed on the sidelines during the war with Israel? Here are a few of them.
The Second Report of Ban Ki-moon
On May 7th this year the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, published his second report on Lebanon (the fifth in all since the end of last summer's hostilities). In it he maintained the previous line and drew even further away from the attempted even-handedness of his predecessor Kofi Annan in the report Annan published prior to his retirement in December 2006, the third overall. Nothing is squandered in Ban Ki-moon's report (3) and the accusations against Hizbollah for not disarming and against Syria and Iran are constant throughout the document's 14 pages and 66 points.
Ki-moon repeats to exhaustion that the Lebanese government is "legitimate" (ignoring the fact that the resignation of Shi'ite ministers and one Christian minister render it unconstitutional) thus dismissing protests that have been made since last November calling for a more representative government of national unity; it insists that arms trafficking continues from Syria to Hizbollah (accepting Israeli cliams on that issue and thus giving the all clear to Israel's constant violations of Resolution 1701 through its air force and spy plane flights); and despite having said in the previous report of March 14th this year that the maps defining the Shebaa Farms as either Syrian or Lebanese would be ready in June this year, now he says the map-makers "continue their work" and asks both countries to agree their territorial limits and frontiers. This request is not simply a formula to draw a new line on the map, it is vital to get the UN Security Council to extend the UNIFIL mission on the Syrian frontier so as to control the traffic in arms that, according to Israeli arguments, occurs along the whole length of the border.
Ban Ki-moon's report appeared after a failed attempt by the United States, France and Britain to get a new Security Council resolution on Lebanon in support of the Siniora government and accusing Syria and Iran of continuing to help Hizbollah with arms and money. The attempt to get the resolution passed was stopped by China and Russia and other member countries of the UN Security Council like Ghana and South Africa. In the failed draft resolution, the UN Security Council was asked to form an "independent mission" made up of "a committee of UN experts" to control the border. (4) A mission that was to be made up of European countries and into which were invited Egyptians and Jordanians, the two countries in the area that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.
Once that effort failed it was necessary to show unwilling countries and the world in general that the objectives in view were praiseworthy. No sooner did the fighting in Nahr al Bared begin than accusations against Syria have appeared in practically all the news media. Of Fatah al Islam little is known beyond that it is a splinter organization from Fatah Intifada and from that Syrian patronage is inferred. The Lebanese government and its Western mentors have rushed to accuse Syria of being behind this group with the purpose, they allege, of obstructing the international tribunal investigating the death of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. For almost two years the case of Hariri (a Sunni multi-millionaire closely linked to the Saudi regime and particularly Prince Bandar bin Sultan, now Saudia Arabia's Security Minister) is the only pretext offered by a corrupt neo-liberal government to explain what is happening in Lebanon and is nothing more than a sign of its own corruption and its submission to neo-liberal politics designed by the IMF and the World Bank.
Syria may be involved or it may not. What is clear is that Fatah al-Islam became known in 2006 at the same time as the proclamation of the Islamic State in Iraq by Al Qaeda. And for anyone familiar with the situation in the Palestinian refugee camps it is obvious that the group has nothing to do with Syria.
In the course of a visit to some of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon (Nahr Al Bared, Ein el Helwe, Chatila y Burj el Barajne) in December 2006 during an impressive popular mobilization for a representative national government in Lebanon (5), leading members of the Popular Council that governs Nahr al Bared spoke with me about the existence among them of Fatah al Islam whom they did not describe as a Palestinian organization since it was made up mostly of Saudis, Morrocans, Algerians, Jordanians, Yemenis and Egyptians , "many of them jihadists in Iraq". Other representatives of Ein el Helwe mentioned that after the confrontations between militias of another Islamist organization, Jund al Sham and other Palestinian organizations like Asbat al Ansar, also radically Islamist, which caused two deaths, some members of Jund al Sham moved "to the north" and have joined Fatah al Islam. Compounding the suspicious appearance of this group in Lebanon, even then it was noted that the funding for its growth came from the Saudis and Hariri's own son Saad with the double aim of limiting the prestige of Hamas among Palestinians and also, above all, that of Hizbollah.
The United States' secret war against Hizbollah
Time, an implacable judge, has ended up vindicating people who have been right all along despite the campaigns of the Western mass media. No one can dispute that Hizbollah's victory over Israel is perhaps the most striking event so far in the 21st century, given that it put an end to one of the myths of the 20th Centruy, the invincibility of Israel. It is what Middle East experts are beginning to call the "Hizbollah effect" and it has overturned neocolonial designs in this part of the world. That is why from almost the very moment it acknowledged Israel's defeat the United States has set in motion a secret war against the Lebanese political-military movement.
Various newspapers (the UK Guardian, the Lebanese Daily Star and the US New Yorker for example) have published since January this year news or reports on that issue. In March the journalist Seymour Hersh said that the US Vice-President Dick Cheney, National Security Council adviser Elliot Abrams and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, himself his country's Security Minister, had agreed to fund Fatah al Islam "as a counterweight to Hizbollah". On April 12th, the Daily Star noted that the United States had earmarked US$60m to reinforce Interior Ministry forces and Sunni organizations identified by the paper as "jihadists", without specifically mentioning any of them. Some days later Asia Times gave ample coverage along the same lines, "Iraq has arrived in Lebanon. Hundred of jihadists spread among more than 400,000 Palestinians who live in the refugee camps are joining Ansar al Islam or Fatah al Islam clearly following plans of Al Qaeda and with combat experience acquired on the Iraqi battlefield fighting the US occupation."(6) And Hizbollah itself, via its Al Manar television station confirms the thesis, alleging that the presence of jihadists in Lebanon is part of a US, Israeli and Saudi strategy seeking a regional war between Sunni and Shia which would see the partition of Iraq followed by the partition of Syria and Lebanon. (7)
The US plan is being implemented by Fouad Siniora's government which has not hesitated for a moment to accuse Syria of protecting and arming Fatah al Islam. With this episode, on the one hand strong tensions are built up with the aim of softening the positions of countries critical of US, French and British efforts to secure a new UN Sceurity Council resolution to extend UNIFIL's mission, to control the Syrian frontier under the pretext of arms smuggling and to justify a kind of international tutelage of Lebanon. The new French President Nicolas Sarkozy will have his first test to see if he maintains the policy of his predecessor Jacques Chirac who has received favours and money from Saad Hariri and who in return supported him unconditionally following his father's assassination.
On the other hand, the Lebanese army is being tried out in a role it has not been involved in since the Taif peace agreement, until now : internal repression. What is being seen is the possibility of a future confrontation between the Lebanese army and Hizbollah, which explains why the political military movement has from the outset supported the army. In a somewhat complex statement, Hizbollah has condemned the attacks of Fatah al Islam against the Lebanese army at the same time as it has criticised the government ("we feel there is someone who wants to drag the army into confrontation and bloody fighting to serve well-known projects and objectives") and asked for a political solution to the crisis to avoid more suffering for the already hard-hit Palestinian population of the camps. (8) Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's Secretary General has been more explicit, saying " the problem in the north can be solved politically and judicially in a way that protects the Lebanese army, our Palestinian brothers, a state of stability and peace wihtout turning Lebanon into a battlefield on which we fight Al Qaeda on the Americans' behalf". Nasrallah went even further and categorically said that what imperialism wants is a conflict between Al Qaeda and Hizbollah and "is bringing Al Qaeda fighters from all over the world to Lebanon" to that end. (9)
Nasrallah also said, in a warning to the Siniora government and the forces that support it that "the Lebanese army is the guardian of national security, stability and unity", for which it is respected as the "only institution" able to preserve those things and that an attack on the army is the "red line" whose transgression that Hizbollah will not tolerate by anyone. Furthermore he put his finger on the sore point by affirming that military aid provided by the United States is dangerous and asks the Siniora government "where were these arms when Israel bombed your vehicles and your positions? It is something one has to ask the Lebanese, Palestinian and Arab peoples." Nasrallah has repeatedly accused the Bush administration of unleashing a "fitna" or "fragmentation within Islam" referring to tensions and confrontations between Sunnis and Shia.
But there is more. NATO has in mind building a military base in Qleiat very close to Tripoli - where the Nahr el Bared camp is sited - and to the northern frontier with Syria. It will accommodate a helicopter squadron, special forces units and will train the Lebanese Army and police. (10) The area will already have been visited in mid-April by a team of US, German and Turkish military looking for the ideal location.
The US and its European and Arab allies are doing all they can to avoid the collapse of the Siniora government because that would be seen by the Arab peoples as an unequivocal sign of US decline in the Middle East. For that reason every change in the current correlation of forces in Lebanon (where the Shia population is under-represented in the government despite forming 40% of the coutnry's population) needs to be blocked, which in turn explains Siniora's resistance to the opposition forces' democratic proposals : either a government of national unity or a bringing forward of elections.
The fiasco of the Paris 3 aid commitments
Into this scenario one has to add that the aid (almost US$8bn) promised to the Siniora government by the Western powers and many Arab countries during January's Paris summit not only never came but is in fact generating debt. Treasury minister Jihad Azour has had to recognize that the bogged-down political situation is going to cost Lebanon a billion dollars since the neo-liberal economic measures promised in order to get that aid cannot be implemented. Parliamentary assent is required for that to happen and the opposition is clear that there will be no parliamentary quorum so long as elections are not called or else until a national unity government is installed. One must not forget that Saudi Arabia has big financial interests in Lebanon that cannot proceed so long as the current parliamentary boycott persists.
On May 10th, the Siniora government signed an agreement to oversee Lebanon's State sector spending with the IMF, heavily criticised by Hizbollah, Amal and the Free Patriotic Movement (the biggest Christian organization composed mainly of that religion's middle and lower-middle classes). The instability helps prop up Siniora, hands arguments to those forces pulling the strings from the outside and to some extent confounds the opposition albeit indirectly since in supporting the Lebanese army they are obliged to align themselves to a degree with the government. That is something Siniora's pro-Western, neoliberal administration actively sought since several criticisms have been heard internally of what is considered "complicity with the opposition" by a section of the army, which is mostly made up of Shia.
And with that panorama, a question : if it is of such interest for the UN to enforce resolutions on Lebanon - how long before 194, the right of return of the Palestinian refugees? The Arab League plan dusted off after Hizbollah's victory included this right, but in the negotiations between the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and US and Israeli emissaries, they are already talking of accepting just a symbolic return. The Palestinians, once more history's great pariahs, are turned into exchange currency and cannon fodder.
Notes
(1) Alberto Cruz, "La lección de Hizbulá" http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=34516
(2) Salafiyyah Islam is the tradition of following the first believers of Mahomet's generation. The reference to Al Sham is historical and refers to the area currently comprising Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
(3) Fifth semester report of teh Secretary General on the application of Security Council Resolution 1559 (2004) S/2007/262 of May 7th 2007.
(4) The Daily Star, 20 de abril de 2007.
(5) Alberto Cruz, "Hizbulá lee a Gramsci" http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=43303
(6) The Asia Times, 20 de abril de 2007.
(7) Al Manar, 23 de abril de 2007.
(8) Al Manar, 20 de mayo de 2007.
(9) Al Manar, 25 de mayo de 2007.
(10) Al Diyar, 15 de abril de 2007.
Alberto Cruz is a journalist, political scientist and writer specializing in international relations.
Your tax dollars hard at work: the 'gay bomb'
No, this is not a joke and its not April 1st. Read this piece from the BBC or this entry to the Wikipedia: the Pentagon was really funding research into creating a "gay bomb", which would make enemy soldiers "sexually irresistible" to each other. The BBC reports that: The plan for a so-called "love bomb" envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among troops, causing what the military called a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.
One should not conclude that the US taxpayer's money is only wasted on utter nonsense. Serious stuff was also being worked on, such as, for example, according to the same BBC article: a "Who? Me?" bomb, which would simulate flatulence in enemy ranks. Indeed, a "Who? Me?" device had been under consideration since 1945, the government papers say. However, researchers concluded that the premise for such a device was fatally flawed because "people in many areas of the world do not find faecal odour offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis".
The article concludes with a statement by Captain Dan McSweeney of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at the Pentagon who said the defense department receives "literally hundreds" of project ideas, but that "none of the systems described in that [1994] proposal have been developed".
It is most reassuring in these times of great fear in the USA (the current "terror alert level" is at a scary "orange") that the defense establishment is exploring all the possibilities to win the GWOT (global war on terror).
No doubt - Osama Bin Laden must be terrified.
One should not conclude that the US taxpayer's money is only wasted on utter nonsense. Serious stuff was also being worked on, such as, for example, according to the same BBC article: a "Who? Me?" bomb, which would simulate flatulence in enemy ranks. Indeed, a "Who? Me?" device had been under consideration since 1945, the government papers say. However, researchers concluded that the premise for such a device was fatally flawed because "people in many areas of the world do not find faecal odour offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis".
The article concludes with a statement by Captain Dan McSweeney of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at the Pentagon who said the defense department receives "literally hundreds" of project ideas, but that "none of the systems described in that [1994] proposal have been developed".
It is most reassuring in these times of great fear in the USA (the current "terror alert level" is at a scary "orange") that the defense establishment is exploring all the possibilities to win the GWOT (global war on terror).
No doubt - Osama Bin Laden must be terrified.
Only in Amerika...
ADL Urges Orthodox Christian Churches To Excise Anti-Semitism From Liturgy
Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.
New York, NY, June 6, 2007 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is urging the world's Orthodox Christian leaders to support a Christian proposal to excise ancient anti-Semitic passages from their liturgy.
ADL cited a declaration by an independent group of Orthodox Christian priests and intellectuals who are calling for their churches to reject centuries-old negative theological positions toward Jews and Judaism, including positions on the State of Israel. The group represents five different Orthodox churches, including Greek, Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian and Ecumenical Orthodox Churches. Some signed the declaration in defiance of their church leadership, according to news reports.
"We call on Orthodox Christian leaders to begin the process now to remove anti-Semitic passages from its liturgy," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "This effort is long overdue. Untold numbers of Jews have suffered throughout the centuries, and today, in some countries where these churches are prominent, Jews are confronted by growing anti-Semitism, because of the failure to address this."
Eric J. Greenberg, ADL Associate Director of Interfaith Affairs, noted that some Orthodox liturgy still refer to Jews as Christ-killers, and that some Easter services include calls for revenge against Jews. He noted that the Roman Catholic Church and several Protestant churches have removed anti-Semitic passages from its liturgy, and that the Vatican repudiated the deicide charge against the Jewish people in 1965.
"We commend the courageous priests and academics who seek to rid their churches of the poison of anti-Semitism," Greenberg said. "Support of this declaration by church leaders would help build a more positive interfaith dialogue between Orthodox Christians and Jews, and help increase religious respect around the world."
Bishop Paul Peter Jesep, U.S. Director of Public Affairs for the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church Diaspora, said he supports the priests' campaign as essential to the future of the Orthodox Church.
"The Church has not done enough to address anti-Semitism," Jesep said, speaking in his individual capacity. "The Liturgy must be modified so that it is brought closer to the teachings of Christ."
The ten-page declaration endorses the eternal connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, and calls for the repudiation of replacement theology, which erroneously contends that God's covenant with the Jewish people is not eternal. "It is time that we called anti-Semitism a grave sin against God and man," the declaration said.
-------
Fort Leavenworth Chaplains Accused of Anti-Semitic Publishing
By Jason Leopold
At the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army base, military chaplains have been holding Bible classes for US soldiers using study guides that appear to be anti-Semitic.
The Fort Leavenworth chaplains have posted these lesson plans on the Internet under a web address that is maintained by the federal government, giving off the appearance that the religious materials in question are endorsed by the Pentagon. Moreover, disseminating the ideology via a government funded web site may violate the law mandating the separation between church and state.
The nonprofit watchdog group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that seeks to enforce the law mandating the separation between church and state in the US military, discovered the documents late last week. The anti-Semitic materials are posted as PDF files at the web site, Command Chaplain Bible Studies, which is maintained by the US Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth.
The Officers Christian Fellowship Neighborhood Study Guides quote portions of the New Testament and were written by Major George Kuykendall, the leader of Fort Leavenworth's Officer's Christian Fellowship (OCF) who died in 1998, according to Chris Rodda, a senior researcher at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Rodda said, "The study guides also encourage soldiers to engage in an unconstitutional level of proselytizing to fellow military personnel in the Fort Leavenworth Community."
In one of the study guides, Galatians, posted on the Fort Leavenworth chaplain web site, the materials refer to Jews as "Judaizers" - persons who without being Jews follow in whole or in part the Jewish religion or claim to be Jews - and claim that "the Judaizers were zealous people much like the zealous Moslems have become today."
The 34-page Galatians study guide deals primarily with "Paul," who the Jews "persecuted," according to the study guide.
"Why did the Jews persecute Paul? Because of his teachings," the study guide says. "The cross was an offense to the Jews. Jesus had victory over the cross (death)."
The study guide then says that anyone who turns from Christianity to Judaism "should be condemned to spiritual death and hell."
"The Judaizers attempted to destroy the two foundations of the Christian religion: a. The Grace of God, and b. The Death of Christ," the Galtatian study guide says, adding that Judaism is a religion of "bondage" and Christianity a religion of "freedom."
In discussing modern day Jerusalem, chaplains ask soldiers to provide an answer to the following question: "How does the present Jerusalem represent slavery?"
A person who answered the telephone at the Fort Leavenworth chaplains' office refused to disclose his name when contacted for comment. The individual, a male, said there have not been prior complaints to the Bible study guides and that "I would not characterize the material as anti-Semitic."
"I guess if you're Jewish you may see it that way, but we're discussing the gospels as it appears in the New Testament," this person said, who added that there was no plan to remove the study guides from the web site. Messages left at the public affairs office at Fort Leavenworth were not returned. Calls to a Pentagon spokesperson were also not returned.
But for Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the religious teachings are not only blatantly anti-Semitic, but he believes disseminating it over the Internet tramples upon the Constitution.
"It's illegal for an arm of the federal government to push this ideology," Weinstein, who is Jewish, said in an interview. "This is the official web site of the US Army, and this is here for everyone to see. Anyone would easily come away with the belief that the US Army endorses these teachings. The last time someone talked about a Jewish problem the way these chaplains are talking about it was in Europe in the 1930s. What these Bible teachings say to me or to anyone participating in these classes is that the US government loves the military but Jews are bad."
Weinstein said he intends to file a lawsuit against the US Army alleging Constitutional violations.
"I'm sick of writing letters," Weinstein said. "This type of fundamentalism needs to stop. This particular violation propagates every vile and wretched stereotype of the Jewish faith."
Weinstein, a former White House counsel who defended the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra probe, has been waging a one-man war against the Department of Defense for what he says is a blatant disregard of the Constitution. He recently published a book on the issue: "With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military." Weinstein is also an Air Force veteran and a graduate of the Air Force Academy. Three generations of his family have attended US military academies.
Since he launched his watchdog organization 18 months ago, Weinstein said he has been contacted by more than 4,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve in Iraq, who told Weinstein that they were pressured by their commanding officers to convert to Christianity.
Weinstein said a right-wing fundamentalist Christian agenda under President Bush has hijacked the military.
"The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids after 9/11 under this administration and this White House," Weinstein said in an interview. "This administration has turned the entire Department of Defense into a faith-based initiative."
Over Memorial Day weekend, Weinstein lashed out at the Air Force for co-sponsoring, along with evangelical Christian organizations, a three-day event celebrating the Air Force's 60th anniversary.
The event, sponsored by Task Force Patriot USA, an evangelical organization, and LifeWay Christian Resources, the publishing house of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), was described by the official publication of the Robins Air Force Base as "an official US Air Force 60th Anniversary event." The paper stated that the religious groups and the United States Air Force "have joined together to create a three-day celebration...."
Plans for the event prompted a forceful response from watchdog groups. In a letter to Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Acting Secretary of the Army Peter Geren, the Reverend Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), called the event "a stunning display of the federal government using vast resources to trumpet a religious celebration."
Lynn added: "Military personnel and veterans come from many religious traditions and no religion at all. So it is wholly disingenuous for the organizers of this evangelical Christian gathering to promote it as a salute to all our troops. It is anything but."
Weinstein is quick to point out that the issues his organization is tackling are not about "Christianity versus Judaism." Rather, they're about keeping rampant fundamentalism out of the military.
But the Biblical teachings at Fort Leavenworth certainly appear to lean heavily on an anti-Semitic and pro-Christian agenda.
In the 14-page study guide Nehemiah, chaplains discuss a portion of the Sanballat, the first high priest of the temple at Samaria, who, according to the Bible study, had to deal with a "Jewish problem." He mocked the Jews' efforts to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in the hopes that they would give up.
The study guide then poses the following questions for soldiers: "How do you interpret Sanballat's reaction to the Jews progress? Anxiety and fear? In light of what we know about the Jews performance today, were his fears reasonable?"
Another question in the same study guide asks soldiers to offer suggestions on a title for the portion of the scripture discussing Nehemiah.
"How would you short-title this portion of scripture?" the study guide asks. "Jews take advantage of Jews?"
The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.
Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
IRAQ: Blood, Sweat and Tears at New U.S. Embassy
By David Phinney*
WASHINGTON, Jun 8 (IPS) - The U.S. Justice Department is actively investigating allegations of forced labour and other abuses by the Kuwaiti contractor now rushing to complete the sprawling 592-million-dollar U.S. embassy project in Baghdad, numerous sources have revealed.
Justice Department trial attorneys Andrew Kline and Michael J. Frank with the civil rights division have been contacting former employees of First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting and other witnesses for interviews and documents, but declined to comment on the investigation other than to say they are looking into allegations of labour trafficking.
The two investigators are said to be looking for actual workers around the world who claim they were misled or pressured to work in Iraq against their will by the company.
Rumors of forced labour in Iraq have plagued First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting for several years, but U.S. government officials have discounted such allegations by workers from Nepal and the Philippines in the past, even as the company continued to rack up contracts now totaling several billion dollars from the Pentagon and U.S. State Department.
Late last year, several U.S. citizens also said they boarded separate chartered jets in Kuwait loaded with work crews from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and Africa holding boarding passes to Dubai, but the planes then flew directly to Baghdad.
More recently, another U.S. citizen told IPS that he was told by workers from Ghana on the embassy site that they thought they would have jobs in Dubai but were then taken to work in Iraq.
First Kuwaiti's general manager, Wadih al Absi, flatly dismisses the accusations as unfounded and false.
"I am telling you that First Kuwaiti has never violated any visa violations or forced people to work," he said during a telephone interview last January. "In the coming months you will see that First Kuwaiti is the best company working in the Middle East."
Since landing the Baghdad project, First Kuwaiti has won additional contracts worth roughly 200 million dollars more for embassy projects in Africa, India and Indonesia. The company also is believed to be competing for another large new U.S. embassy in Lebanon.
Soon after the State Department awarded the Iraq embassy contract to First Kuwaiti in July 2005, thousands of low-paid migrant workers recruited from South Asia, the Philippines and other nations poured into Baghdad to begin building the gargantuan new embassy within two years time. When completed later this summer, it will be the most fortified U.S. diplomatic mission ever constructed, spanning 104 acres on the banks of the ancient Tigris River and holding more than 20 buildings. It will be comparable in size to the Vatican.
But during First Kuwaiti's frenzied rush to the finish the project on schedule, U.S. managers and specialists involved with the project began protesting about the living and working conditions of lower-paid workers sequestered and largely unseen behind security walls bordering the embassy project inside the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.
Among those complaints: construction crews lived in crowded quarters, ate sub-standard food, and had little medical care. When drinking water was scarce in the blistering heat, coolers were filled at the banks of the Tigris, a river rife with waterborne disease, sewage and sometimes floating bodies.
Others questioned why First Kuwaiti held the passports of workers. Was it to keep them from escaping? Some labourers had turned up "missing" with little investigation. One U.S. citizen said labourers told him they had been misled about their job location. When recruited, they were unaware they were heading for war-torn Iraq.
After hearing similar allegations during much of 2006, Howard J. Krongard, the State Department's inspector general, flew to Baghdad for what he describes as a "brief" review on Sep. 15. His review was recently made public after inquires from Aljazeera about the embassy for an upcoming hour-long documentary, and he reported that the complaints had no substance.
"Nothing came to our attention," he wrote in a nine-page memorandum posted on the State Department's Web site. More importantly, after interviewing an unstated number of workers from the Philippines, India, Nepal and Pakistan, Krongard said no evidence was found of labour smuggling, trafficking or other abuses. Krongard makes no mention of an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department of First Kuwaiti and others for such alleged practices and other matters.
One former labour foreman at the embassy site who recently read Krongard's review called it "bulls**t." Another former First Kuwaiti employee viewed it as "a whitewash."
Had Krongard visited earlier than last September and unannounced, he may have witnessed something very different then what his memorandum relates.
"Most of the allegations (from the U.S. citizens) were true before he arrived," claims Juvencio Lopez, who says he was a high-level project manager under the U.S. State Department over the course of two years.
During a telephone interview, he said that protests over First Kuwaiti's bad food, abusive treatment from managers and unsafe working conditions were routine among many of the 2,700 workers during much of 2005 and 2006.
"There were strikes and sit-downs every month," Lopez said. He left Iraq in November 2006 and is now home in San Antonio, Texas. "Sometimes there were almost riots."
Lopez vividly recalls a First Kuwaiti security guard unholstering his 9mm handgun and walking among the squatting protestors telling them to get back to work. Had the guard fallen or workers tackled him to the ground, the gun might have gone off. Lopez said he immediately reported the incident to First Kuwaiti. "Someone could gotten killed or injured," he said.
On another occasion, a company manager roughed up a Filipino worker, sources say. All of the other Filipinos nearby began loudly protesting as bewildered workers from other countries watched. "The workers were from 36 different countries and everyone spoke a different language," Lopez said.
Supplementing Krongard's review, the coalition Multi-National Force inspector general in Baghdad interviewed 36 workers from seven different countries at the new embassy site in December. The MNF-I IG claimed it found no evidence to indicate the presence of severe forms of labour trafficking, but did find that workers from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka reported deceptive hiring practices by recruitment agencies in their home countries.
They said they had been promised higher pay, shorter hours and days off. "A large majority of workers" from the Indian subcontinent incurred recruiting fees of up to one year's salary.
Paul Chapman, a subcontractor working with First Kuwaiti, said he is also struck by the lack of interest in workers that First Kuwaiti had listed as "missing" on its company rosters. Now home in South Carolina, Chapman said seven workers from India, Pakistan and the Philippines "just disappeared."
Fearing they may have been killed and dumped into the Tigris, he began pressing embassy officials overseeing the project to investigate. "They told me to forget about it because the workers had probably found other jobs."
Chapman and others also claim that standard safety procedures on the project frequently went unobserved. Many worked without safety harnesses when off the ground and had no hardhats or boots. Work clothes were dirty and tattered. Those that had them had only one set of work clothes so they were rarely washed. They became dirty and tattered, causing rashes and sores.
Some worked in sandals, others in bare feet. "They had their toes curled around the rebar like birds," Lopez remembers.
"Every U.S. labour law was broken," charged one U.S. foreman, John Owens, who said that he never witnessed a single safety meeting. Once an Egyptian worker fell and broke his back and was sent home. No one ever heard from him again.
"The accident might not have happened if there was a safety programme and he had known how to use a safety harness," said Owen, who left the embassy project last June.
David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington, DC, whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and on ABC and PBS. He can be contacted at: phinneydavid@yahoo.com. An earlier version of this story appeared on iraqslogger.com.
WASHINGTON, Jun 8 (IPS) - The U.S. Justice Department is actively investigating allegations of forced labour and other abuses by the Kuwaiti contractor now rushing to complete the sprawling 592-million-dollar U.S. embassy project in Baghdad, numerous sources have revealed.
Justice Department trial attorneys Andrew Kline and Michael J. Frank with the civil rights division have been contacting former employees of First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting and other witnesses for interviews and documents, but declined to comment on the investigation other than to say they are looking into allegations of labour trafficking.
The two investigators are said to be looking for actual workers around the world who claim they were misled or pressured to work in Iraq against their will by the company.
Rumors of forced labour in Iraq have plagued First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting for several years, but U.S. government officials have discounted such allegations by workers from Nepal and the Philippines in the past, even as the company continued to rack up contracts now totaling several billion dollars from the Pentagon and U.S. State Department.
Late last year, several U.S. citizens also said they boarded separate chartered jets in Kuwait loaded with work crews from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and Africa holding boarding passes to Dubai, but the planes then flew directly to Baghdad.
More recently, another U.S. citizen told IPS that he was told by workers from Ghana on the embassy site that they thought they would have jobs in Dubai but were then taken to work in Iraq.
First Kuwaiti's general manager, Wadih al Absi, flatly dismisses the accusations as unfounded and false.
"I am telling you that First Kuwaiti has never violated any visa violations or forced people to work," he said during a telephone interview last January. "In the coming months you will see that First Kuwaiti is the best company working in the Middle East."
Since landing the Baghdad project, First Kuwaiti has won additional contracts worth roughly 200 million dollars more for embassy projects in Africa, India and Indonesia. The company also is believed to be competing for another large new U.S. embassy in Lebanon.
Soon after the State Department awarded the Iraq embassy contract to First Kuwaiti in July 2005, thousands of low-paid migrant workers recruited from South Asia, the Philippines and other nations poured into Baghdad to begin building the gargantuan new embassy within two years time. When completed later this summer, it will be the most fortified U.S. diplomatic mission ever constructed, spanning 104 acres on the banks of the ancient Tigris River and holding more than 20 buildings. It will be comparable in size to the Vatican.
But during First Kuwaiti's frenzied rush to the finish the project on schedule, U.S. managers and specialists involved with the project began protesting about the living and working conditions of lower-paid workers sequestered and largely unseen behind security walls bordering the embassy project inside the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.
Among those complaints: construction crews lived in crowded quarters, ate sub-standard food, and had little medical care. When drinking water was scarce in the blistering heat, coolers were filled at the banks of the Tigris, a river rife with waterborne disease, sewage and sometimes floating bodies.
Others questioned why First Kuwaiti held the passports of workers. Was it to keep them from escaping? Some labourers had turned up "missing" with little investigation. One U.S. citizen said labourers told him they had been misled about their job location. When recruited, they were unaware they were heading for war-torn Iraq.
After hearing similar allegations during much of 2006, Howard J. Krongard, the State Department's inspector general, flew to Baghdad for what he describes as a "brief" review on Sep. 15. His review was recently made public after inquires from Aljazeera about the embassy for an upcoming hour-long documentary, and he reported that the complaints had no substance.
"Nothing came to our attention," he wrote in a nine-page memorandum posted on the State Department's Web site. More importantly, after interviewing an unstated number of workers from the Philippines, India, Nepal and Pakistan, Krongard said no evidence was found of labour smuggling, trafficking or other abuses. Krongard makes no mention of an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department of First Kuwaiti and others for such alleged practices and other matters.
One former labour foreman at the embassy site who recently read Krongard's review called it "bulls**t." Another former First Kuwaiti employee viewed it as "a whitewash."
Had Krongard visited earlier than last September and unannounced, he may have witnessed something very different then what his memorandum relates.
"Most of the allegations (from the U.S. citizens) were true before he arrived," claims Juvencio Lopez, who says he was a high-level project manager under the U.S. State Department over the course of two years.
During a telephone interview, he said that protests over First Kuwaiti's bad food, abusive treatment from managers and unsafe working conditions were routine among many of the 2,700 workers during much of 2005 and 2006.
"There were strikes and sit-downs every month," Lopez said. He left Iraq in November 2006 and is now home in San Antonio, Texas. "Sometimes there were almost riots."
Lopez vividly recalls a First Kuwaiti security guard unholstering his 9mm handgun and walking among the squatting protestors telling them to get back to work. Had the guard fallen or workers tackled him to the ground, the gun might have gone off. Lopez said he immediately reported the incident to First Kuwaiti. "Someone could gotten killed or injured," he said.
On another occasion, a company manager roughed up a Filipino worker, sources say. All of the other Filipinos nearby began loudly protesting as bewildered workers from other countries watched. "The workers were from 36 different countries and everyone spoke a different language," Lopez said.
Supplementing Krongard's review, the coalition Multi-National Force inspector general in Baghdad interviewed 36 workers from seven different countries at the new embassy site in December. The MNF-I IG claimed it found no evidence to indicate the presence of severe forms of labour trafficking, but did find that workers from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka reported deceptive hiring practices by recruitment agencies in their home countries.
They said they had been promised higher pay, shorter hours and days off. "A large majority of workers" from the Indian subcontinent incurred recruiting fees of up to one year's salary.
Paul Chapman, a subcontractor working with First Kuwaiti, said he is also struck by the lack of interest in workers that First Kuwaiti had listed as "missing" on its company rosters. Now home in South Carolina, Chapman said seven workers from India, Pakistan and the Philippines "just disappeared."
Fearing they may have been killed and dumped into the Tigris, he began pressing embassy officials overseeing the project to investigate. "They told me to forget about it because the workers had probably found other jobs."
Chapman and others also claim that standard safety procedures on the project frequently went unobserved. Many worked without safety harnesses when off the ground and had no hardhats or boots. Work clothes were dirty and tattered. Those that had them had only one set of work clothes so they were rarely washed. They became dirty and tattered, causing rashes and sores.
Some worked in sandals, others in bare feet. "They had their toes curled around the rebar like birds," Lopez remembers.
"Every U.S. labour law was broken," charged one U.S. foreman, John Owens, who said that he never witnessed a single safety meeting. Once an Egyptian worker fell and broke his back and was sent home. No one ever heard from him again.
"The accident might not have happened if there was a safety programme and he had known how to use a safety harness," said Owen, who left the embassy project last June.
David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington, DC, whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and on ABC and PBS. He can be contacted at: phinneydavid@yahoo.com. An earlier version of this story appeared on iraqslogger.com.
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