Will Israel release Marwan Barghouti from jail?

Big news this morning: according to Ha'aretz, Abbas will ask the Israelis to release Marwan Barghouti from jail to help Fatah struggle against Hamas. If so, that would be a rather daring but smart move by the Imperial High Command: Marwan Barghouti is a 'next generation' secular Palestinian leader with far more credibility that imperial stooges like Abbas. Immensely popular among Palestinians, well-spoken and articulate with the press, Barghouti has impeccable anti-Imperial credentials. There is little doubt in my mind that if the Israelis were to release him he would be far more effective at handling the Hamas issue than Abbas and his minions.

According to the Ma'an news agency, Barghouti has just released the following statement from his jail cell:

From my dark, small prison cell, I address the great Palestinian people to do the following:

1. Condemn the military coup against the legitimate Palestinian Authority and its institutions in the Gaza Strip.
2. Consider the military coup by Hamas in Gaza a dangerous threat to the Palestinian unity and cause, a shift in the choice of resistance and the destruction of the principles of partnership.
3. Consider the coup a threat to the democratic process and democratic choice, which led Hamas to win the legislative elections.
4. Fully support the decision to compose a new Palestinian government under Salam Fayyad, hoping it will restore the sovereignty of law and end the state of chaos in order to protect the Palestinian unity.
5. Censure any attacks against people or institutions of the Hamas movement in the West Bank, and absolutely refuse the extension of chaos into the West Bank.
6. Call on President Abbas, as the general commander of the Fatah movement, to appoint a new leadership of Fatah in the Gaza Strip.
7. Dismiss all the leaders of the security services and appoint new leaders capable of reforming and developing the security institutions, relying on professionalism. This will render the security services more efficient in attempts to defend the Palestinian homeland and citizens.

Notice that he demands a complete purge of the gang of thugs usually referred to as "Fatah security services"? That will no doubt prove a very popular move among the Palestinian population who, unlike the corporate press, has no illusions about the corrupt nature of these "security services". This move will also secure Barghouti's power should he come out of jail. And in this lies the main question: will the Israelis release him?

The Israelis have accused Barghouti of being responsible for the attacks of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and of having "Jewish blood on his hands" which, in the self-declared ethno-religious "Jewish state" is, of course, the ultimate crime for which no Israeli politician can ever offer a pardon (non-Jewish blood has such a lesser value in their eyes that some Israelis seriously discuss whether it is permissible for a Jew to receive a blood transfusion from a Goy and, if yes, under what circumstances). To release him would thus be painful, but I bet you that the rabbis could, if needed, justify this by saying that such a huge concession would be permissible if that was done to free Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev (Jewish life being even more precious that Jewish blood).

In itself, such an exchange would have fascinating ramifications as it would require the collaboration of Hamas (in the case of Shalit) and Hezbollah (in the case of Goldwasser and Regev). Again - my bet is that Hamas and Hezbollah would go along with such an exchange, if only to further boost their popularity and because dealing with Barghouthi would be far preferable than dealing with Abbas.

My concern is that the crazies in the Imperial High Command will not agree to this idea. For them freeing Barghouthi would be too much of a price to pay politically and would entail too many risks in the long term. In the latter they would probably be correct as Barghouthi is unlikely to prove an obedient puppet like Abbas.

So the question the Israelis need to ask themselves is this: do they want a real negotiating partner or not? Do they want to secure the release of their three soliders? Do they finally want to stop pretend negotiating with Imperial puppets and get something done with the real representatives of the Palestinian people? Do they want to deal with the last credible secular Arab leader left or would they rather have to deal with the Islamists?

I sure hope they do, but I am afraid they won't.

My conversation with Scott Horton about the Middle-East

Yesterday I had the true honor and pleasure of being interviewed by Scott Horton, the fantastic Libertarian radio talk show host from Austin, Texas. His shows for Radio KAOS 95.5 in Austin are also streamed live the Internet through Antiwar Radio and are available on Scott's excellent blog.

I highly reccommend Scott's show (his list of guests is simply fantastic) and his blog to all those who want to listen to a different, truly American and freedom-loving, perspective on political events inside the USA and the US Imperial policies aborad.

Listen to my conversation with Scott here.

(For those who might not now about it, I also want to highly reccommend the website Antiwar.com which provides both excellent original contents (check out the list of columnists) and reprints of intersting information found elsewhere)

(audio in ogg format here)

You thought that all ADL/AIPAC-type of crazies where in the USA? Think again!

Jewish outrage over Christian sisterly plan with Bethlehem-Palestine

A SYDNEY council`s decision to form a sister city relationship with Bethlehem has outraged members of the Jewish community, who say the move is akin to supporting terrorism.

Marrickville Council, in Sydney`s inner west, has had an in-principle agreement since 2001 with the Palestinian city believed by some Christian scholars to have been the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

The agreement is due to be formally ratified at a council meeting next Tuesday.

Councillor Sam Iskandar said the city had been chosen as a symbol of love, peace and harmony, but the Jewish community says it is anything but.

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff said Bethlehem Council was controlled by members of the terrorist organisations Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which support the killing of Jews.

A delegation from Bethlehem Council is due to visit Sydney in late August to sign the agreement and hold discussions with Marrickville Council.

Mr Alhadeff claimed this could give a platform for Hamas members.

"A Bethlehem delegation could include Hamas members," he said.

"This means an international guest could address a public meeting hosted by this council and call for the destruction of `Israel` and death to the Jews (Zionists)."

He said the council should choose a politically neutral middle-eastern city to foster relations with.

Unaware of Bethlehem’s significance to world Christians, Mr Alhadeff said: "If councils like Marrickville wanted to get involved and promote peace and reconciliation why not choose an Arab-`Israeli` town, so it`s not a partisan position?".

But Mr Iskandar, who chairs the council`s community services committee, said the proposal for Bethlehem to be a sister city had come from residents and had been unanimously passed.

"It was chosen because it was the city which symbolised love and peace and harmony," he said.

"We look at this relationship between Marrickville and Bethlehem to be a very good relationship between the two communities, and we want to send a message that people can work with people and they can have good relations ... and that is the spirit of the sister city movement."

Mr Iskandar said the council would (not) give any funds to Bethlehem Council as part of the arrangement.

The bigger picture for the Middle-East

While Imperial politicians are still entertaining hopes that loud denounciations will make a difference, a "new Middle-East" (to use Condi Rice's expression) is definintely being created by the recent events in Gaza even if it is not at all the Middle-East envisioned by the USA. The following are the main changes which have, and are still, taking place:

1. The Arabs are not afraid of the Empire any more. Robert Fisk once said that, in the past, when the Israelis crossed the border with Lebanon the Arabs used to jump in their cars to drive to Beirut; now when the Israelis cross the Lebanese border the Arabs jump in their cars in Beyrut and drive south to fight. The US debacle in Iraq, the stunning victory of Hezbollah against the IDF, and now the equally stunning defeat of Fatah (and its US/Israeli/Egyptian sponsors) will have a huge psychological effect on the Arab population.
2. The kind of opponent the Empire faces today is very different from what it was in the past. The old PLO/FPLP -type of secular fedayeen has been replaced by a deeply religious resistance fighter who is willing, if need be, to become a martyr (shaheed). This "next generation guerrilla fighter" is also highly patriotic and is not, countrary to Imperial propaganda, under foreign orders: he is fully home grown. Thus, he has no patrons which can reign him in or which can be made to pay for his resistance.
   
3. The leadership of the new religious groups is, quite unlike its secular predecessors, far less susceptible to corruption. For example, even opponents of Hezbollah in Lebanon concede that the Hezbollah leadership is total honest and in not involved in all the money making schemes of the rest of the politicians.
   
4. "Land for peace" as a concept is dead. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iraqi resistance and now Hamas in the Gaza strip have shown that the only way to get land is war.
5. Imperial puppets (such as Abbas, Maliki, Siniora or Karzai) all realize that for all its promises the support of the Empire does not secure their future or safety (think Musharraf here). In fact, the support of the USA has become a kind of political "kiss of death" for any politician in the Middle-East.
6. The huge military-intelligence-security complex put in place throughout the Middle-East to crush any anti-Imperial popular revolt is slowly coming apart. Even the House of Saud or the Al-Sabah family are coming to realize that neither the US military nor their repression apparatus can guarantee their safety.

These are fundamentally new realities to which the Empire has not been able to adapt to so far. Indeed, the options are limited. First, there is the "more of the same" kind of response which, in a knee-jerk reaction, the Imperial leaders have already displayed in response to the events in Gaza. Of course, "more of the same" will, well, bring more of the same results; hardly a viable long-term objective.

The second option is escalation: an attack against Iran, more US troops in Iraq, unleash even more terror against the Palestinian population, etc. This is not much of an option either, being as it is little more than a faster, bloodier, more frantic version, of the "more of the same" plan. It is also totally useless against the type of foe the Empire now faces. Which leaves only one solution: real negotiations with the enemy.

That would mean forgetting about the Abbas', Sinioras and Karzais of the region, and sit down with Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, the Iraqi Shia and Sunni and "negotiate with the terrorists" without preconditions of any kind.

There is no way in hell the US Zionist lobby will ever allow that to happen, so the first step must be taken by those who a) risk the most at waiting any longer and b) those who have the least to fear from the AIPAC/ADL crowd: the Israelis themselves.

Considering how totally terrified of the "Lobby" US politicians are, not to mention that they are cowards in every sense of the word anyway, I expect nothing from them.

The Israeli political system is, however, quite different and while the current choice of Israeli politicians is decidedly uninspiring, more defeats and crises will eventually discredit them in the eyes of the Israeli population. The Israelis, as a people, lack neither courage, nor vision, nor intelligence, nor patriotism and sooner or later a political figure will emerge who will not be intoxicated by the current nauseating mix of crude racism and religious bigotry with prevails in the minds of Israeli politicians and who instead will have gut to tell his people the simple basic truth: that Israel's security can only come from making Israel acceptable as an entity to the peoples of the Middle-East.

So Ahmadinejad will get his way. While Israel - as a country - will probably not be wiped off the map, Israel as a racist ethno-theocratic state relying on terror to impose its will on the rest of the world will not survive the new Middle-East which is being created before our eyes. The only question is now much blood will be shed by the Empire before it comes to terms with this reality

American Orthodox Jew donates 1,5 million dollars to rebuild Palestinian home

by Tovah Lazaroff for the Jerusalem Post

An Orthodox American Jew has donated $1.5 million to fund a campaign against the demolition of Palestinian and Beduin homes throughout Israel and the territories, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions announced on Monday.

The committee plans to use those funds to rebuild as many as 300 Palestinians homes it expects to be demolished this year either by the Interior Ministry, the Jerusalem Municipality or the Civil Administration.

Israel officials argue that Palestinian homes are only destroyed for security reasons or because they were illegally constructed, but ICAHD disputes both those arguments. Director-General Jeff Halper said that the government discriminates against Palestinians and therefore it is very difficult for them to obtain building permits.

Nor does he believe the security argument. "These are not people that have done anything or have been charged with anything. There is no security issues at all in terms of these homes," he said.

"This is really part of a continuing policy of displacement and dispossession" of Palestinians, he added.

He would not give the name of the US donor but said it was someone who did not want to be complicit with the policy of destroying Palestinian homes.

In the last 10 years, ICAHD has rebuilt some 35 destroyed Palestinians homes, but this is the first time that it has embarked on an anti-demolition campaign of this magnitude, in which it plans to rebuild each destroyed Palestinian home. It has already rebuilt five homes in the Jerusalem area and started on another eight, including four in Hebron.

To mark both the start of its campaign and the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, the group held a press event in the Old City in one of the few homes that remains from the Mughrabi Quarter which once stood at the site of the plaza that stretches out from the Wailing Wall.

While there have been few home demolitions in the Old City itself in the last 40 years, Halper said that the first act of the "occupation" in 1967 at the end of the war was to destroy part of the Mughrabi Quarter, including two mosques, to make space for worshipers at the wall.

Bulldozers came at night and 135 families were forced to leave their homes, Halper said. "We are coming back to the place where the occupation began," he said.

Speaking with him was the mukhtar of the Mughrabi Quarter, Mahmoud Masloukhi, whose family had lived there for 120 years. He himself was born in 1933 and grew up in the quarter. In 1967, he had recently remarried.

When he and his family understood that the quarter was being destroyed, they fled with only the clothes on their backs, he recalled. Now all he has left of his ancestral home is a few black and white photographs which he brought with him.

He recalled how at one time, Jews and Muslims lived peacefully together in the Old City. Jews were forced to leave the Old City after the War of Independence in 1948, when Jordan had control of the area. It also destroyed most of the Old City's Jewish Quarter.

After the Six Day War, it was Masloukhi and his family who had to leave. He and his sister are among the few who have returned to the Old City.

As Masloukhi stood with reporters and showed them the photos of his former home, a number of Jewish children in a school located above the courtyard threw large spitballs and water at him and the other people standing below.

Palestinian Affairs: Fatah's final death blow

A commentary by Khaled Abu Toameh for the Jerusalem Post

Why did the Gaza Strip fall so easily and quickly into the hands of Hamas? How come Fatah, which has more than 40,000 armed men there, was defeated despite the millions of dollars and the large amounts of weapons that it received over the past year and a half?

These are only some of the questions that decision-makers in Washington and many European capitals have been asking in the wake of the "military coup" staged by Hamas in the Gaza Strip this week.

While these decision-makers may have been caught by surprise by the Hamas victories, for many Palestinians - particularly those living in the Gaza Strip - the writing has long been on the wall.

Fatah lost the battle for the Gaza Strip not because it had fewer soldiers and weapons, but because it lost the confidence and support of many Palestinians a long time ago.

The decline of Fatah actually began with the day Yasser Arafat died in November 2004.

Since then, Fatah has been dealt one blow after another.

The biggest disaster occurred in January 2006, when Fatah was defeated by Hamas in the parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Fatah lost the vote mainly because of its leaders' involvement in rampant corruption and abuse of power.

Mahmoud Abbas, who succeeded Arafat in January 2005, had run on a platform that promised Palestinians an end to corruption, mismanagement and nepotism. That's why more than 60 percent of the Palestinians then gave him a mandate.

But after Abbas came to power, he did almost nothing to fulfill his pledges. Instead of fighting corruption, he surrounded himself with symbols of corruption and former Arafat cronies.

Instead of ending the anarchy and lawlessness, he promoted notorious warlords, and for the first time, the number of Palestinians killed in internal fighting under Abbas was higher than those killed by Israel. And instead of dismantling gangs and militias, whose members had long been terrorizing the Palestinian public, Abbas rewarded many of them by granting them "military" ranks and placing them on his payroll.

Many voters who went to the ballot boxes in January 2006 wanted to punish Abbas and his Fatah faction for having failed to improve their living conditions on all fronts.

That's why they voted for Hamas. Even some Christians are said to have cast their ballots for Hamas. The name of the game back then was: Let's punish these Fatah thieves and thugs who have been stealing our money and terrorizing us for so many years.

On the eve of the 2006 election, Hamas knew exactly what the Palestinians wanted: an end to financial corruption and good governance. That's why Hamas ran under the banner of Change and Reform. That's also why Hamas put on its list of candidates doctors, university professors, engineers, pharmacists and lawyers. By contrast, the Fatah list did not come up with any new faces.

Hamas won because its leaders promised the Palestinians good governance and an end to anarchy and lawlessness. Hamas also won because there was still a large percentage of Palestinians who believed that "Islam is the solution."

US-backed efforts to undermine the Hamas-led government over the past 16 months have failed, largely because most Palestinians clearly do not regard Fatah as a better alternative to Hamas. In the aftermath of its defeat in the 2006 election, Fatah failed to draw the conclusions and get rid of all the icons of corruption among its top brass. Moreover, Fatah did not engage in any kind of internal reforms, and representatives of the young generation remained marginalized.

Even if free and democratic elections were held tomorrow in the Palestinian territories, it is highly unlikely that Palestinians would vote for the same people they voted out in 2006. Besides, many Palestinians would argue that Hamas did not fail in government; from day one, no one actually gave them a chance to rule.

By openly embracing Abbas and Fatah, Washington has caused them grave damage. The weapons and funds that were supposed to boost Fatah ahead of a confrontation with Hamas have only increased Hamas's popularity on the streets of the Gaza Strip. The public support for Fatah made Abbas and Muhammed Dahlan look, in the eyes of many Palestinians, like Antoine Lahad, the former commander of the pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army. And when a Palestinian sees that the Americans are trying to bring down his democratically-elected government, his sympathies go straight to the government and not to those allegedly involved in the conspiracy.

The writing was on the wall because Hamas had already inflicted heavy casualties on Fatah in previous rounds of fighting over the past year. In addition, it was clear that Hamas was eventually going to take over the entire Gaza Strip, because of the anarchy and disunity among the Fatah-controlled Palestinian security forces and their commanders. It was obvious that Fatah was going to lose, because the masses were not going to take to the streets to defend leaders living in villas and driving luxury cars.

Former World Bank executive appointed Palestinian PM by Abbas

No, this is not a joke. The BBC just reported that Abbas appointed a new prime minister, Salam Fayyad, as Prime Minister of Fatah-controlled Palestine. The BBC helpfully adds that "a former World Bank executive, Mr Fayyad is a well-respected figure internationally" thereby using the code words indicating that this appointment has received the approval of Abbas' bosses in the Imperial High Command. Wikipedia says that "he is seen as pro-Western" and that he also was the IMF's representative in Palestine. Needless to say, he demands that Hamas "recognize Israel".

My take on all this is that this is yet another case of what the French call "la fuite en avant" (the "escape forward"): a situation in which a subject is overcome by panic and "does more of the same expecting different results" (one of the best definitions of insanity). Considering Mr. Fayyad's World Bank, IMF, Fatah and pro-Israel "credentials" we can be sure that the situation in the West Bank will deteriorate even further.

Panic seizes clueless Imperial leaders

Looks like the Imperial High Command has been totally caught off guard by the events in Gaza. Now, a former Israeli IDF Intelligence Deputy Chief - General (ret) Yaakov Amidror says that "Hamastan in Gaza" would endanger all of Israel while the IHT reports that the Bush Administration is considering "accepting the Hamas takeover of Gaza". While this might lead a naive person to conclude that the White House is accepting the endangerment of all of Israel, this really goes to show that the Imperial leaders have developed no common response to the events in Gaza yet. And that, in turn, proves that the recent developments were a surprise of them and that neither the Israeli nor the US intelligence community has any true understanding of what is going on in Palestine.

Predictably - some already blame Al-Qaeda for the events in Gaza while others blame Iran.

I suspect that we will soon hear more statements blaming "foreign fighters" for the Imperial debacle in Gaza. Clearly, the Neocons are clueless as to what to do next.

The myth of the so-called 'Jewish' Lobby laid to rest by Shmuel Rosner Chief U.S. Correspondent for Ha'aretz

(I originally posted this elsewhere on the Internet but since the I just posted an article about an investigation by the Jewish Chronicles revealing that the anti-Israeli boycott in the UK was organized by Jews, I thought I would repost this information on my blog)

A 'Jewish Lobby' in the USA? Most definitely not one representing American Jews. Read this fascinating article from Ha'aretz:

--------

Why do American Jews oppose the Iraq war more than everybody else?

1.

"Jewish Americans are the most strongly opposed to the Iraq war" of all religious groups. Is this a surprise? Not really, but it is now semi-official, after a Gallup analysis (http://galluppoll.com/content/Default.aspx?ci=26677)of 13 surveys from the last two-plus years concluded that Jewish people oppose the Iraq war by a "better than 3-to-1 margin, 77 percent to 21 percent."

2.

Gallup's data is not surprising because it is consistent with many other previous polls. Just look at this (http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nl/content3.asp?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=846741&ct=1740355 )2005 AJC poll: 70 percent of Jews disapprove of the war in Iraq. And in 2003 (http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=838459&ct=1051549), when most Americans still supported the war: 54 percent disapprove.

3.

The Gallup analysis does give us better tools with which to compare the Jewish view to the non-Jewish view. Mormons and Protestants show more support than opposition to the war. Catholics are somewhat more likely to oppose (53 percent) than to support the war (46 percent). The two groups closest to Jews in their opposition to the war: Americans with no religion and black Protestants. "Americans without a religious preference are twice as likely to oppose (66 percent) as to support (33 percent) the war", Black Protestants "show strong opposition to the war" - stronger even than Jewish opposition - 78 percent to 18 percent.

4.

Black Protestants strongly support the Democrats, and one would guess this is the reason for Jews to oppose the war. However, Gallup says otherwise: "A closer analysis of the data shows that Jewish war opposition goes beyond their basic political leanings. Jewish people are more likely to oppose the war than non-Jews of the same political persuasion? Sixty-five percent of non-Democratic Jews oppose the war, compared with just 38 percent of non-Democrats of all other religious groups? These data show that the average American Jew -- even those who are Republicans and may support the Bush administration on other matters -- opposes the war.

5.

It is interesting to compare this conclusion to the break down of numbers from the latest AJC survey (http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nl/content3.asp?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=846741&ct=3152877) of Jewish opinion (2006) according to religious affiliation. These numbers were never made public, but I have them in hand. "Looking back, do you think the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, or should the U.S. have stayed out?" the poll asks. The majority of orthodox Jews said "right" (56 percent), majority of Conservative (32 percent) Reform (73 percent) and "just Jewish" (66 percent) said wrong. The Orthodox tend to be more Democratic (44 percent) than Republican (31 percent) but are the only group in which there is no Democratic majority.

6.

So why would American Jews oppose the war in such numbers?

7.

A while ago, I wrote somewhat critically (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=664758&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1) about the Reform movement resolution to end the war (they are now in the process of having another, more forceful, resolution). Among other things, I didn't like the explanation that was given by the movement's leader, rabbi Eric Yoffie, to an allegation that the Reform resolution is harmful to Israel. "Neither American interests nor the 'security of Jews' are served by an endless war in Iraq that has made the U.S. less able and willing to confront the nuclear threat from Iran and the moral horror of Darfur," Yoffie wrote. My response: "So the whole point of opposing Iraq was for America to be able to confront Iran? This doesn't seem very convincing." It still doesn't. American Jews opposed the war without much regard to the interests of Israel (and I'm not saying the war served the interests of Israel well, just that it wasn't the issue for American Jews).

8.

The new numbers support another argument I made, just two weeks ago, in an article that drew more fire than any other piece I've written in the last several months (Bush the divider of Jews, read herehttp://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=821382&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1): "The Jews of Israel comprise perhaps the most sympathetic group toward Bush in the entire world. They are certainly more supportive than the general American public and may very well be more sympathetic than any particular group of Americans. On the other hand, American Jews constitute one of the least sympathetic groups. A vast majority of them oppose Bush. Indeed, many really loathe him: American Jews have a hard time digesting a reality in which an Israeli prime minister can stand at Bush's side and describe the war in Iraq as an achievement. In fact, it could be said that the Israelis' fondness for Bush actually serves to alienate these American Jews from Israel."

9.

So, do they oppose the war because they oppose Bush, or is it the other way around, they oppose Bush because they hate the war? In 2004, according to some polls (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39745-2004Sep21.html), it was the war pushing them to vote for John Kerry. The Democratic candidate gained 10 percentage points among Jews between December 2003 and September 2004, and "some of its findings suggest that the rising support for Kerry is connected to the war in Iraq".

10.

A while ago, in a dialogue (http://www.slate.com/id/2150931/entry/2150924/) I had (in Slate) with Jeffery Goldberg of The New Yorker, he made a comment that left me speechless. "We American Jews [are] very diaspora-ish, which is to say, we're ironic, and self-deprecating, and violence-averse. I've always thought the reason so many Israelis lack humor is because Israel has an air force. Who needs jokes when you have F-16s?"

But don't American Jews have F-16s, I asked in my response (http://www.slate.com/id/2150931/entry/2151130/) to Goldberg: "Aren't American Jews, being American, a part of this country and the way it exercises its power?... America definitely has [F-16s]- and if American Jews are part of America, it is fair to say that they have them, too."

11.

I was reminded of this dialogue as I was contemplating the possible reasons for which American Jews were against the war. The Gallup analysis falls short in explaining the numbers. "It is unclear why Jewish Americans show such strong opposition to the war," it says. However, one hypothesis it is offering (with no data to back it up) rings true in light of the "we-don't-have-F-16s" comment by Goldberg. "Jews may be less likely than others to favor U.S. military action in general", the Gallup analysis suggests. If most Jews feel detached from American might, as Goldberg's remark suggests, it is absolutely possible that Gallup is right. American Jews (for obvious historical and cultural reasons) are inclined to oppose any war.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=830250&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=3#article830250

-----

which goes to prove the following:

1) the so-called 'Jewish' Lobby is not at all representative of American Jewry
2) the so-called 'Jewish' Lobby is only very representative of the Israeli Likudnik/Kadima/Haredim Jews
3) hence, AIPAC & Co. are representing *foreign* interests (not really big news, I know) and should be told to register as such (which they ain't)
4) criticizing the Zionist Lobby is in no way tantamount to Anti-semitism (unless, of course, one believes that criticinzing *any* Jew for *any* reason is Antisemitic
5) wannabe 'partiotic philosemites' (of the Jaclon kind) are, in fact, supporters of a *foreign* interest group and cannot lay claim to being patriotic in the least

last but not least:

if one wants to read an interesing article about Jewish/Israeli issues one can only find it in the press abroad. In the USA there is a total social taboo on such discussions. So much for the land of the free and the brave...

UK Jews and Israelis behind anti-Israel boycott

Jewish Chronicle investigation reveals Jewish, Israeli academics justify their activity as part of struggle for Palestinian rights, ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories:

Named: boycott ringleaders

By By Bernard Josephs and Nicole Hazan

The JC today identifies the key players in the escalating British campaign to boycott Israel. Our investigation shows that many are Jewish or Israeli, and that they justify their stance as part of the struggle for Palestinian rights and ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

A high proportion are deeply involved in UCU, the University and College Union, which last month sparked an international outcry by voting to facilitate a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Anti-boycott figures suggest that the campaign has been fuelled by a well-organised mix of far-left activists and Islamic organisations. In reality, the main proponents are a loosely knit collection of academics and trade unionists linked to groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for the Boycotting of Israeli Goods, and Bricup, the British Committee for Universities of Palestine.

Israeli Haim Bresheeth, professor of media and culture at the University of East London, seconded the UCU motion, which called for consideration of the morality of ties with Israeli academia and for discussions on boycotting.

Prof Bresheeth told the JC that a boycott was not an easy decision. “I am Jewish and an Israeli, and I don’t wish harm on either side. But how long can this occupation go on?”

Characterising opposition to a boycott as insincere, he added : “What we are asking for is not violent. It is civil action against a military occupation.”

The proposer of the UCU motion was Brighton University philosophy lecturer Tom Hickey, who stressed that should the boycott go ahead, its target would be Israeli universities rather than individual academics. Another speaker for the UCU motion was Richard Seaford, professor of classics and ancient history at Exeter University, whose former pupils include JK Rowling. In 1990, he was a signatory to a campaign against Israel’s law of return. Last year, he refused to review a book for an Israeli journal because of “outrage” at Israel’s “brutal and illegal expansionism”.

Bricup has a large number of Jewish supporters, among them husband and wife Hilary and Steven Rose. Hilary, a professor of social policy at Bradford University, is Bricup’s co-convenor alongside Prof Jonathan Rosenhead. Her husband, an Open University biology professor, is the organisation’s secretary. They have been active in the boycott movement since 2002.

In an online article, Steven Rose wrote: “It really isn’t good enough to attack the messenger as antisemitic or a self-hating Jew rather than deal with the message that Israel’s conduct is unacceptable.”

Prof Rosenhead, of the London School of Economics, hails from a “solid Zionist and Jewish background”. Bricup, he said, had been involved in the discussions about the writing of the UCU motion. “The reaction from the community was what you would expect, but we are looking forward to the debate. It was a triumph that Israel came into existence —but not this Israel.”

Birmingham University lecturer Sue Blackwell, the figurehead of an unsuccessful attempt by UCU’s predecessor, the Association of University Teachers, to force a boycott, pushed through a UCU motion calling for a moratorium on European Union research grants to Israel. In her view, the UCU had put the boycott “back on the agenda”.
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(This makes me wonder whether there is any rational argument which can convince all the Jew-haters out there that Zionism or Judaism are not to be confused with the fact of being born Jewish)

Will the Israelis invade Gaza?

Will the Israelis invade Gaza? Knowing how utterly stupid Olmert and Peretz have proved to be, everthing is possible. But from a military point of view invading Gaza achieves nothing: you get some Israelis killed, you get lots of Palestinians killed, and then you withdraw and you leave Hamas even stronger than it was before. Besides, after the whopping the IDF took in South Lebanon I presume that the troops are not too eager to go into another round of urban warfare.

Grant you - Hamas is not Hezbollah, not even remotely close in fact. But still, fighting in the kind of urban ghetto terrain like Gaza is just not an appealing option. Keep in mind that there are no military valuable objectives. Sure, Hamas took over the main Fatah compounds and I bet you that the Israeli Air Force will take them out shortly, but besides that there is nothing to seize, nothing to control, nothing to destroy other than the Palestinians themselves.

Fighting against elusive combattants amidst 1.4 million people crammed into 130 square miles just makes no sense at all. Also - the Israelis need to realize that there is a real risk of a “contagion effect” to the West Bank. Not militarily - the Israelis have a tight grip on all their (illegal) internal borders - but politically. There are plenty of Hamas sympathizers inside the West Bank which are going to feel encouraged by the events in Gaza. The West Bank is not Gaza, however. Fatah has a much better control over there, the population is comparatively better off and I do not see a repeat of the Gaza scenario for a while. But in 6 months? In a year? Who knows?! This is the Middle-East and things explode really fast there. If I had to make a reccommendation to the IDF General Staff I would reccommend worrying about Lebanon, Syria, the upcoming war with Iran and not about trying to hold on unto Gaza. But with Olmert in power - who knows what these crazies might decide…

Another option is, of course, invasion by proxy: an international peacekeeping force. There are already calls for such an option. Regardless, what matters is that such a force would have to be exactly in the same position as other such forces have been in other conflict areas: either as a "guest" of Hamas, in which case it would do exactly nothing to challenge Hamas, or as an occupying force, in which case it would face the same challenges as the IDF have in the past. Simply put - a peacekeeping force in Gaza solves *nothing*. Frankly, this is yet another delusional concept dreamed up by clueless politicians.

The really amazing thing is: how did Fatah, Israel or the US not get prior warning of this? Or, if the latter two did, why did they not warn Hamas. Or was the infiltration of the US-trained Fatah fighters from Egpypt into Gaza their idea of how to prevent a Hamas takeover? Because if it was - they are mighty stupid to expect Fatah thugs to stand against Hamas fighters. The only chance to prevent what took place would have been to insert several platoon strength mobile combat groups with forward air controllers into Gaza at the main Fatah compounds and ambush Hamas.

If the Israelis and/or the Americans did have prior knowledge of what was about to take place and decided not to take any action at all - then that is again a huge failure of intelligence, but this time not a operational one, but an analytical one. Clearly no doing anything and letting Hamas take over Gaza is a huge strategic blunder the prevention of which was critical for the Imperial strategy in the Middle-East.

That did not happen, and this tells me that the famous US or Israeli intelligence screwed up - as usual, I would add.

The US sufffers another crushing defeat in the Middle-East

The list of US military and diplomatic defeats in its self-declared GWOT (Global War on Terror) in the Middle-East is getting longer and longer.

Nobody seriously doubts that the war in Iraq is totally lost.

Likewise, the war in Afghanistan is going nowhere and the CIA groomed puppet "President" Karzai can, at best, claim to be the mayor of Kabul. In fact, this is what he is called in Afghanistan. The Taliban are back in the provinces and the only parts of the country which are not under their control are under the control of the allies of Russia and, even more humiliatingly, Iran: the Northern Alliance and its Tadjik, Uzbek and Hazara warlords.

Pakistan is more or less overtly supporting the Taliban and doing precious nothing to help its official US ally.

The Empire's GWOT suffered a crushing defeat when Hezbollah totally defeated Israel last summer, both tactically (by, for example, never loosing the control of Beit Jbeil which is right across the border and which even the famed Golani Brigade's commandos could not control) and strategically by maintain its ability to rain rockets on the northern third of Israel to the very last day of the war.

Lebanon is also a mess politically. The so-called "Cedar Revolution" has crumbled, everybody sees Fouad Siniora as the helpless puppet collaborator he is and the Shias of Hezbollah have now the support of the patriotically oriented Christians of General Aoun.

The war plans for an attack on Iran are drawing a huge wave of protests worldwide, from Kuwait to Europe, to South America, and Iran is holding firm in its intention to maintain an IAEA and NPT compliant civilian nuclear program.

The Turks have crossed the border into Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish guerrillas and do not seem to care much about what Uncle Sam has to say about that.

Am I forgetting something here? Probably (like Somalia being a bloody mess and Sudan being next for US intervention).

There is a small, but very ugly, war I want to turn to now: the Empire's war against the Palestinian people.

Remember how the US, Egypt and Israel infiltrated US-trained Fatah goons into Gaza? Well, now the very same goons are being ex-filtrated back to Egypt. In fact, it looks like Hamas has seized complete control of the entire Gaza strip and that, being the "democratic leader" that he is, Mahmoud Abbas decided to sack the Hamas-lead Palestinian government and replaces it by a state of emergency.

How could this have happened?!

Ever since the majority of Palestinians elected a Hamas government in what everybody agrees were free and fair elections the entire Palestinian state has been the subject of what can only be called a blockade (the term "boycott" does not even begin to cover the magnitude of what was done to the Palestinians) and the Occupied Territories were turned into a giant prison camp.

The Israeli Air Force regularly bombed Hamas anyone suspected of being pro-Hamas, its killers organized "targeted executions" of Hamas leaders, the USA and Egypt infiltrated specially trained Fatah thugs into Gaza and financed Mohammed Dahlan's goons to help the "Palestinian Security Forces" and still, Hamas defeated them all. Makes one wonder who is supporting Hamas, doesn't it?

Of course, war pimps like Senator Lieberman or Hillary Clinton would immediately conclude that Iran is behind Hamas and that Iranian weapons are killing all those "democratically minded" Israeli soldiers and Fatah thugs. Unfortunately for this theory, the IDF, Egypt and the rest of the Empire are holding Gaza in an iron grip from the land, sea and air and nothing can come in or out of it without the knowledge and go ahead of the Imperial forces.

One has to conclude that Hamas' support comes from inside Gaza. There is nothing left inside Gaza except one thing: the Palestinian people.

This means the the strength of Hamas comes from the very same Palestinians who democratically elected Hamas in the first place. That also means that when Abbas sends in his "security forces" to fight the "Hamas extremists" (anyone opposed to the Empire's plans is, by definition, an extremist), when Abbas sacks the democratically elected and Hamas-lead government and when Abbas imposes a state of emergency - Abbas is fighting against the Palestinian people.

Unsurprisingly, Abbas, Siniora, Karzai and other such imperial puppets are loathed by their peoples and no amount of Imperial intervention can prevent them from being defeated by their own population.

What will happen next?

I suspect that the IDF does not have the nerves and guts to reoccupy all of Gaza. So the Empire will simply do more of the same: slam Hamas for being a "terrorist organization" (as opposed to Fatah and Israel, I presume), demand that Hamas recognise Israel (not such demands will be made to the "Jewish state"), tighten the blockade around Gaza and further increase the pace of bombings against the population of Gaza. Even more money will flow into the bank accounts of Fatah, more bribes will be offered to Hamas leaders to "see the light" and, eventually, new and democratic elections will be imposed upon the Palestinian people after a "preparatory" state of emergency phase in which Hamas supporters will be killed, disappeared, tortured, etc.

The Empire will further support Al-Qaeda in Lebanon (Ansar al-Islam) while fighting it in Iraq by giving weapons to Baathist Sunnis and, if all else fails, there will always be Iran to bomb or even nuke.

Abbas, Siniora, Karzai and Maliki are on the way out, and everybody knows it - all the Mubaraks and the Musharrafs of the Middle East understand this better than anyone else. So it turns out that Condi Rice was right after all: we are, indeed, witnessing the birth of a new Middle-East.

Nobody will miss the old one.