- OMG - Rivai Ahmad Affandi
The War on Terror
An Israeli occupation soldier aims his gun at the head of a young
Palestinian boy in a street market.
ORIGINAL PHOTO: Hazem Bader, Hebron/Al-Khalil (Occupied Palestinian
West Bank) October 20, 2006.
IMAGE ALTERATION: /anomalous
.............
Short Cuts
Adam Shatz
The London Review of Books
October 2008
If you live in an American swing state you may have received a copy of ‘Obsession’ in your Sunday paper. ‘Obsession’ isn’t a perfume: it’s a documentary about ‘radical Islam’s war against the West’. In the last two weeks of September, 28 million copies of the film were enclosed as an advertising supplement in 74 newspapers, including the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. ‘The threat of Radical Islam is the most important issue facing us today,’ the sleeve announces. ‘It’s our responsibility to ensure we can make an informed vote in November.’ The Clarion Fund, the supplement’s sponsor, doesn’t explicitly endorse McCain, so as not to jeopardise its tax-exempt status, but the message is clear enough, and its circulation just happened to coincide with Obama’s leap in the polls.
The Clarion Fund is a front for neoconservative and Israeli pressure groups. It has an office, or at least an address, in Manhattan at Grace Corporate Park Executive Suites, which rents out ‘virtual office identity packages’ for $75 a month. Its website, clarionfund.org, provides neither a list of staff nor a board of directors, and the group still hasn’t disclosed where it gets its money, as required by the IRS. Who paid to make ‘Obsession’ isn’t clear – it cost $400,000. According to Rabbi Raphael Shore, the film’s Canadian-Israeli producer, 80 per cent of the money came from the executive producer ‘Peter Mier’, but that’s just an alias, as is the name of the film’s production manager, ‘Brett Halperin’. Shore claims ‘Mier’ and ‘Halperin’, whoever they are, are simply taking precautions, though it isn’t clear against what. The danger (whatever it is) hasn’t stopped Shore – or the director, Wayne Kopping, a South African neocon – from going on television to promote their work.
The 60-minute film was first released in 2006 and shown during the mid-term elections on Fox News. Since then it has received top billing at ‘Islamo-Fascism Awareness’ week on American campuses, at Christian-Zionist conferences and at events organised by Republican politicians in Florida. It has found a powerful backer in the real estate magnate Sheldon Adelson, who describes himself as ‘the world’s richest Jew’. The Endowment for Middle East Truth, a neoconservative think tank in Washington DC which recently hosted a series of seminars named after Adelson and his wife, arranged distribution of ‘Obsession’, at a cost in the tens of millions.
The makers of the film, like their subjects, are soldiers of God. Almost everyone associated with it or with Clarion has worked for Aish HaTorah, an ‘education’ group with offices in East Jerusalem and strong links to the settler movement. Clarion was incorporated in Delaware to the New York offices of Aish HaTorah and Rabbi Shore was the director, as well as the founder of its media organisation, Honest Reporting, which campaigns against a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. It’s illegal in the US for nonprofit organisations, or for foreign nationals, to try to influence the outcome of an election.
The film’s chief claim is that 2008 is like 1938, only worse, since there are more Muslims than Germans and they’re more spread out geographically: ‘They’re not outside our borders, they are here.’ Violent raptures and spectacular carnage unfold in slick montages set to throbbing Middle Eastern music: Pakistanis deliriously burning the American flag, Palestinians celebrating the 9/11 attacks, Hizbullah chanting ‘death to America’, clerics praising the ‘magnificent 19’ and the murder of unbelievers, children training to become suicide bombers, the planes crashing into the towers. These images are interspersed with footage of Nazi rallies and Hitler’s speeches. A chapter – narrated by Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s biographer – is devoted to the Mufti’s collaboration with Hitler.
Scary Muslims are everywhere, and the umma stands more united than ever, driven by hatred of infidels and Jews and determined to conquer the West, a civilisation gone soft, weakened by self-doubt, political correctness bordering on treason, and, worst of all, a ‘culture of denial’. Gilbert spells it out:
In the 1930s, the danger of Nazism was there . . . but people thought, well, this is a German problem, it’s a limited problem . . . And I think the same is true today . . . They don’t see that Islamic fundamentalism is a global network and a global problem . . .because if you come to that conclusion – and I’m sure it’s the true conclusion – then you have to do something about it.
‘Obsession’ doesn’t say what we should do – except steer well clear of dialogue and negotiation.
Although there are interviews with the usual ‘terrorism experts’ – Daniel Pipes, Alan Dershowitz et al – the film’s portrayal of the region is mostly left to native informants like Nonie Darwish (a leader of Arabs for Israel and the daughter of a slain fighter from Gaza), Brigitte Gabriel (the Lebanese-Christian author of They Must Be Stopped) and Walid Shoebat, a ‘former PLO terrorist’ who operates under a pseudonym – for security reasons, of course. Shoebat runs the Walid Shoebat Foundation, described on its website as an ‘organisation that cries out for the Justice of Israel and the Jewish people’. He’s made a career of recounting his journey from Islamic terror to Christian Zionism before audiences at Evangelical gatherings and the US Air Force Academy. It’s not clear, though, that he ever laid a hand on anyone. According to a relative, ‘the biggest act of terror he ever committed was to glue Palestinian flags on street posts.’ What is very clear is that, for the makers of ‘Obsession’, having once hated Jews gives you privileged access to the Muslim mind, and not only if you’re an ex-Muslim. Among the film’s authorities on radical Islam is a former leader of the Hitler Youth, Alfons Heck, who says that ‘what the Muslims do to their own children is even worse’ than the things the Nazis did to young Germans – as only a Nazi could know.
If you didn’t receive ‘Obsession’ with your paper, you can watch it on YouTube. It’s been posted by a "former Muslim" whose screen identity is ‘fuckmohammad’.
Comments and faves
iSabra, Pash Mani, henahaxn, Zeynep., and 77 other people added this photo to their favorites.
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
Muslim Children Gassed at Ohio Mosque After Israeli-produced hate DVD "Obsession" Hits Dayton
by Chris Rodda
Sun Sep 28, 2008 at 08:50:29 PM PDT
(From the diaries -- kos)
On Friday, September 26, the end of a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West -- the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail -- were distributed by mail in Ohio, a "chemical irritant" was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, Ohio, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain's supporters has led to -- Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.
Chris Rodda's diary :: ::
I read the story as reported by the Dayton Daily News, but this was after I had received an email written by a friend of some of the victims of these American terrorists. The matter of fact news report in the Dayton paper didn't come close to conveying the horrific impact of this unthinkable act like the email I had just read, so I asked the email's author for permission to share what they had written. The author was with one of the families from the mosque -- a mother and two of the small children who were in the room that was gassed -- the day after the attack occurred.
"She told me that the gas was sprayed into the room where the babies and children were being kept while their mothers prayed together their Ramadan prayers. Panicked mothers ran for their babies, crying for their children so they could flee from the gas that was burning their eyes and throats and lungs. She grabbed her youngest in her arms and grabbed the hand of her other daughter, moving with the others to exit the building and the irritating substance there.
"The paramedic said the young one was in shock, and gave her oxygen to help her breathe. The child couldn't stop sobbing.
"This didn't happen in some far away place -- but right here in Dayton, and to my friends. Many of the Iraqi refugees were praying together at the Mosque Friday evening. People that I know and love.
"I am hurt and angry. I tell her this is NOT America. She tells me this is not Heaven or Hell -- there are good and bad people everywhere.
"She tells me that her daughters slept with her last night, the little one in her arms and sobbing throughout the night. She tells me she is afraid, and will never return to the mosque, and I wonder what kind of country is this where people have to fear attending their place of worship?
"The children come into the room, and tell me they want to leave America and return to Syria, where they had fled to from Iraq. They say they like me, ... , and other American friends -- but they are too afraid and want to leave. Should a 6 and 7 year old even have to contemplate the safety of their living situation?
"Did the anti-Muslim video circulating in the area have something to do with this incident, or is that just a bizarre coincidence? Who attacks women and children?
"What am I supposed to say to them? My words can't keep them safe from what is nothing less than terrorism, American style. Isn't losing loved ones, their homes, jobs, possessions and homeland enough? Is there no place where they can be safe?
"She didn't want me to leave her tonight, but it was after midnight, and I needed to get home and write this to my friends. Tell me -- tell me -- what am I supposed to say to them?"
When acting as a representative of Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), the 501(c)3 non-profit organization that I work for, I cannot engage in political activities. The distribution of Obsession, however, although a political campaign scheme, clearly crosses over into the mission of MRFF. So, I'm going to make two statements here -- one in my capacity as MRFF's Research Director, and another as an individual whose disgust at the vile campaign tactics of John McCain's supporters completely boiled over when I opened up the email about children being gassed.
My statement as MRFF's Research Director:
The presidential campaign edition of the Obsession DVD, currently being distributed by the Clarion Fund, carries the endorsement of the chair of the counter-terrorism department of the U.S. Naval War College, using the name and authority of an official U.S. military institution not only to validate an attack the religion of Islam, but to influence a political campaign. For these reasons, this endorsement has been included in MRFF's second lawsuit against the Department of Defense, which was filed on September 25 in the Federal District Court in Kansas.
My opinion as an individual and thoroughly appalled human being:
John McCain has a moral obligation to publicly censure the Clarion Fund, the organization that produced Obsession and is distributing the DVDs; to denounce the inflammatory, anti-Muslim message of Obsession; and to do everything in his power to stop any further campaign activities by his supporters that have the potential to incite violence.
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
Israelis & McCain Neocons Behind Anti-Islam “Obsession” DVD
by Kurt Nimmo
September 26, 2008
If McCain is elected in November, come January we will see a continuation of the neocon “clash of civilizations” agenda, likely culminating in an attack launched against Iran and possibly Syria. In order to stir up anti-Islam sentiment in the long and artificially elongated wake of September 11, 2001, and stampede voters into McCain’s camp, the neocons have released “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” a virulent and misleading propaganda DVD. As reported earlier this month, the DVD was targeted at nearly 28 million households in swing or “battleground” election states. It was inserted into more than 70 newspapers. The DVD was produced and distributed by the Clarion Fund.
As Ali Gharib, Eli Clifton, and Jim Lobe report, the DVD was a collaborative effort between a “group of hard-line US neoconservatives and former Israeli diplomats.” The Clarion Fund, tied closely to an Israeli organization called Aish Hatorah, teamed up with the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) to produce the video. Aish Hatorah, an Orthodox organization and yeshiva, shares an address with the Clarion Fund.
Like hard-line neoconservatives, EMET opposes any land concessions to Palestinians and takes other hard-line positions identified with Israel’s right-wing Likud Party and the ”Settler Lobby” there. EMET’s website says, “We regard ourselves as ‘intellectual revolutionaries’”….
EMET’s board of advisers includes a list of familiar neoconservative figures, as well as three former Israeli diplomats, including a former deputy chief of mission in Israel’s Washington embassy….
Notable members of the advisory board include prominent hard-line neoconservatives, including former US U.N. Amb. the late Jeane Kirkpatrick; Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum; and the Hudson Institute’s Meyrav Wurmser, the Israeli-born spouse of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top Middle East adviser, David Wurmser.
Other prominent neoconservative members of the board include Center for Security Policy (CSP) president Frank Gaffney; former CIA chief James Woolsey; and Heritage Foundation fellows Ariel Cohen and Nina Shea, who has also served for years on the quasi-governmental US Commission for International Religious Freedom.
In other words, the usual neocon suspects, responsible for launching the manufactured war on terrorism and invading Iraq and facilitating the murder of well over a million Iraqis, are behind the video.
The “Obsession” DVD is an obvious effort to continue propagandizing the American public. “If you heighten the hysteria over national security or terrorism or do anything to make people more fearful, it’s clear they would trend toward McCain because that’s been his mantra throughout the campaign,” explains Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council for American-Islamic Relations. CAIR is petitioning the Federal Election Commission to investigate the Clarion Fund project.
According to Ali Gharib’s research, the Clarion “Obsession” project has direct links to Israelis, most notably the twin Israeli-Canadian brothers Raphael and Ephraim Shore. “Foreign nationals and companies, and domestic tax-exempt 501(c)3 nonprofits are prohibited by federal election law from attempting to sway US elections at any level through either contributions to campaigns or advocacy,” notes Gharib.
Of course, this will not stop Clarion, same as it has not stopped AIPAC from directly influencing American elections and politicians. It appears the neocons will stop at nothing to see their agenda continue under a McCain administration, an agenda with a large target still on the to-do target list: Iran.
In this respect, McCain surely is McBush, or maybe that should be McNeocon. Obama, to be sure, is no friend of the Iranians, but the neocons, under a McCain administration, would have a better chance of reducing Iran to the chaos that is Iraq and most likely with a larger loss of life.
Pash Mani (45 months ago)
stunning! and real..your shots makes journalism more then the journalists
~carie~ (45 months ago)
so sad.
rizzo1 (45 months ago)
fucking hell
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
Meanwhile in America:
AWESOME 90 SECOND VIDEO: The Shiny New Face of American Judaism
As you watch this 90 second video, keep in mind that a few hours after his Hitlerian rant, this odious greaseball lawyer gets drugged and robbed for $100,000 worth of odious greaseabll jewelry by a hot hotel chick. All of which prompted Wonkette to declare:
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. We salute you, wonderful girl thief of Minneapolis. You are America’s Real Hero!"
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
B'TSELEM: Testimonies from Palestinian victims of human rights crimes, 2001-2008
B'TSELEM Video archive: documenting Israeli human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories, 2005-2008
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
"Yisrael Rozen, a senior rabbi in the Gush Etzion settlements south of Jerusalem, published a pamphlet last month in which he said activists in the Peace Now organisation deserved the death penalty. Other right-wing rabbis have been quoted in the local media referring to Palestinians as subhuman or as animals, arguing that as non-Jews their lives are of inferior value.
Lawlessness among the settlers is on the rise, according to the Israeli security forces. Recorded attacks in the first half of this year – at 429 – are up 75 per cent on the previous two years. Even then, the vast majority of attacks on Palestinians go unrecorded. The paper attributed this in part to the fact that few Palestinians bother to report violence when they know that the Israeli police, army and courts rarely enforce the law on the settlers. According to the human rights group Yesh Din, less than one in 10 reported attacks on Palestinians leads to an indictment. Most such cases end later in acquittal. “For all practical purposes, the law is not the law, the settlers are the sovereign, and matters are handled as they decide,” the Haaretz editorial said."
--from "Israeli General lambasts rising Jewish extremism"
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
Israel a breeding ground for Jewish terrorism
by Jonathan Cook, 30 September 2008
The words "Jewish" and "terrorist" are not easily uttered together by Israelis. But just occasionally, such as last week when one of the country's leading intellectuals was injured by a pipe bomb placed at the front door of his home, they find themselves with little choice.
The target of the attack was 73-year-old Zeev Sternhell, a politics professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem specializing in European fascism and a prominent supporter of the left-wing group Peace Now.
Shortly after the explosion, police found pamphlets nearby offering 1.1 million shekels ($300,000) to anyone assassinating a Peace Now leader. The movement's most visible activity has been tracking and criticizing the growth of the settlements in the West Bank.
Sternhell, whose leg was injured in the blast, warned that this attack might mark the "collapse of democracy" in Israel. He has earned the enmity of the religious far-right by justifying the targeting of settlers by Palestinians in their resistance to occupation.
Earlier in the year the professor was awarded the Israel Prize for political science. The settlers' own news agency, Arutz Sheva, ran a story at the time headlined "Israel Prize to go to Pro-Terror, Pro-Civil War Prof."
The shock provoked in Israel by the bombing partly reflected the rarity of such attacks. Most Israelis regard the use of violence by Jews against other Jews as entirely illegitimate, which partly explains the kid-glove approach generally adopted by the security forces when dealing with the settlers.
There are a handful of precedents, however, for these kind of attacks. In 1983, Emil Grunzweig was killed when a right-winger hurled a hand grenade into a crowd of Peace Now activists marching against Israel's invasion of Lebanon. And 12 years later Israelis were left reeling when a religious settler, Yigal Amir, shot dead their prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
Violence directed at the Jewish Left typically peaks during periods when the religious far-right believes a deal with the Palestinians may be close at hand. Rabin paid the price for his signing of the Oslo accords. Equally, Sternhell appears to be the address for settler grievances over the government's ongoing talks with the Palestinians over a partial Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.
Certainly, the mood among the religious settlers has grown darker since the disengagement from Gaza three years ago. A significant number subscribe to the belief that, in betraying what they perceive to be the Jewish people's Biblical birthright to Palestinian territory, the government proved itself unworthy of their loyalty. Others believe that the settlers themselves failed a divine test in not facing down the government and army.
Either way, many far-right settlers are turning their backs on those secular laws that clash with their own convictions. One Israeli observer has noted that these settlers no longer see their chief loyalty to the state of Israel but to the Land of Israel, a land promised by God not politicians.
The pamphlet found near Sternhell's home, signed by a group called the "Army of Liberators," read: "The State of Israel has become our enemy."
The Shin Bet, Israel's secret police, have a Jewish department dedicated to tracking the activities of Jewish terrorists. Unlike the Shin Bet's Arab department, however, it is small and underfunded. It has also proved largely ineffectual in dealing with the threat posed by the far-right.
Jewish extremists who attack Israeli soldiers or Palestinians in the occupied territories, openly incite against Palestinians or express unlawful views rarely face charges, even when there is clear evidence of wrongdoing.
The general lawlessness among the West Bank settlers has reached new peaks, underscored this month when settlers from Yitzhar went on what was widely described as a "pogrom" against Palestinians in the neighboring village of Asira al-Qabaliya. The settlers were caught on film firing live ammunition at the villagers, but the police have so far failed to issue indictments.
Also, often forgotten, the so-called Jewish underground has a history of targeting Palestinians inside Israel, including those with citizenship. A car bomb narrowly avoided seriously injuring the wife of Arab Knesset member Issam Makhoul in 2003. Two years later, in the run-up to the Gaza disengagement, a settler-soldier, Natan Zada, shot dead four passengers on a bus to the Israeli Arab city of Shafa'amr.
Groups such as the Temple Mount Faithful, which seek to blow up the mosques of al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock in the Haram al-Sharif of Jerusalem's Old City so that a third Jewish temple can be built in their place, also face little recourse from the Shin Bet.
By contrast, the Shin Bet's Arab department runs an extensive network of Palestinian informers in the occupied territories and is reported by human rights groups to use torture to extract information from Palestinian detainees.
Inside Israel, the Arab department regularly investigates Israel's own Palestinian citizens, especially the Islamic movements over their donations to charities in the occupied territories. It has also been hounding parties like the National Democratic Assembly of Azmi Bishara that demand equal rights.
Like Palestinians in the occupied territories, Palestinian citizens risk being locked up on secret evidence.
Israel's leading columnist Nahum Barnea noted last week that the Shin Bet's inability to find and arrest Jewish terrorists stemmed from "deliberate policy" and "emotional obstacles" -- his coy way of suggesting that many in the Shin Bet share at least some of the settlers' values, even if they reject their methods.
Prof. Sternhell made much the same point in a radio interview from his hospital bed when he noted that Yitzhak Shamir, when he was prime minister, had defined the Jewish underground as "excellent young men, real patriots."
In this vacuum of law enforcement, the far-right regularly and openly engages in unlawful activities, often without serious threat of punishment. Many of its leaders, such as Noam Federman, Itamar Ben Gvir and Baruch Marzel, all based in Hebron, are believed to have close links to the outlawed Kach movement, which demands the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the region.
Ben Gvir, who leads a group known as the Jewish National Front, denied that his faction was involved in the attack on Sternhell but refused to condemn it.
Although the head of the Shin Bet, Avi Dichter, immediately branded the attack on Sternhell as "a nationalist terror attack apparently perpetrated by Jews," it is noticeable that no Israelis are demanding the demolition of the perpetrators' homes.
That contrasts strongly with the response last week after a Palestinian youth drove a car at a group of Israeli soldiers near the Old City of Jerusalem. Israeli politicians called for the youth's home to be destroyed and his family to be made homeless.
In the general outcry against the bomb attack last week, it was left to Prof. Sternhell to remind Israelis that most Jewish terrorism was in fact directed not at people like himself but at Palestinians.
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
"I heard they gave the Israeli soldier a 14-day sentence. This is a person who not only killed my son, he killed me and my wife. What kind of punishment is that? This is something horrific, what happened to us. I don't wish it upon anyone, not even the soldier. He killed my son. With a cold heart, he killed my son. Everyone should try to put himself in my place. What would happen if something like this happened to the soldier's wife? He'd kill 100 people. My son died and I couldn't help him. What kind of father am I?"
--Mu'uyad Abu Rada, Dead on Arrival
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
"When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad.
Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here.
In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than everything we [South Africans] endured.
The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid. The apartheid regime viewed the blacks as inferior; I do not think the Israelis see the Palestinians as human beings at all.
How can a human brain engineer this total separation, the separate roads, the checkpoints? What we went through was terrible, terrible, terrible -- and yet there is no comparison. Here it is more terrible.
We also knew that it would end one day; here there is no end in sight. The end of the tunnel is blacker than black.
Under apartheid, whites and blacks met in certain places. The Israelis and the Palestinians do not meet any longer at all. The separation is total. It seems to me that the Israelis would like the Palestinians to disappear. There was never anything like that in our case. The whites did not want the blacks to disappear. I saw the settlers [in East Jerusalem]... people who want to expel other people from their place."
-- Mondli Makhanya, editor-in-chief of the Sunday Times of South Africa, after a tour of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, "WORSE THAN APARTHEID"
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
"Israel's pyromania may now have reached the most dangerous point in its history."
--Gideon Levy, Living Forever by Bombardment
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
"To the extent that what we call Israel's "Occupation" is, in fact, a model of human warehousing, it has implications far beyond a localized conflict between two peoples. If Israel can package and export its layered Matrix of Control, a system of permanent repression that combines Kafkaesque administration, law and planning with overtly coercive forms of control over a defined population hemmed in by hostile gated communities (settlements in this case), walls and obstacles of various kinds to movement, then, as Klein writes starkly, every country will look like Israel/Palestine: "One part looks like Israel; the other part looks like Gaza." In other words, a Global Palestine.
This goes a long way towards explaining why Israel is unconcerned about entering into genuine peace processes or resolving its conflict with the Palestinians. By warehousing them it has the best of both worlds: complete freedom to expand its settlements and control without ever having to compromise, as a political solution would require. By the same token, it explains why the international community lets Israel "get away with it." Instead of presenting the international community with issues that must be resolved - violations of human rights, international law and repeated UN resolutions, let alone the implications of the conflict itself - it is instead providing a valued service: it is offering a useful model that can applied to "surplus populations" everywhere, including right at home."
--Jeff Halper, The Palestinians: Warehousing a Surplus Population
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
A general closure will be imposed on the West Bank, commencing Sunday night at midnight, in accordance with Defense Ministry directives and in light of security assessments, the army said. The closure will be lifted at midnight Wednesday, after Rosh Hashana. The army announced that since it regards Rosh Hashana as a highly sensitive time, it would increase its alert level in order to ensure the safety of Israeli citizens.
--Jerusalem Post, Sept 28, 2008
squishband (45 months ago)
thanks T
kylie lambert (Le Cupcake) (45 months ago)
A picture says a thousand words.............
Look at the beautiful inncocent face of the boy.........how could anyone aim a gun at him.......I was horrified with Israel before & still am...& at the lack of recognition for what they are & what they have done, by society!
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
Your question is one that bears serious thought. How COULD anyone aim a gun at a little boys head like that? It's not something a normal person would do, so we have to ask ourselves what it is that has been done to this person that allows him to behave like such a piece of shit? People aren't born like this. They have to be taught this kind of tribalism. What you're seeing is the flipside of Jewish bragging about how Jews are genetically smarter than other people, predisposed to genius, how Jews are more morally upstanding than anyone else, etc. etc. The dark side of ethnic exaltation is that someone has to be put down. And the higher and more inflated the axaltation, the uglier and more violent the subjugation that is required. Pointing a gun at this boy's head, like he's not even human, is the price of believing that one is part of a superior race, a better kind of person, more persecuted, more deserving, more civilized, more noble, more noble. It's a perverse kind of tribalism, taken to the most extreme and terrifying place. It's the logic of zionism, but it is not simply a Jewish problem. It's a very human problem: its the logic of genocide.
The casual, confident contempt you are seeing in this soldier is something you need to THINK about. It's not posted here for you to simply say (correctly) that "that solider is a fucking dirtbag." It's certainly NOT here for you to (incorrectly) say that "all Jews are assholes." It should make you ask some questions about what is going on in Israel that would make this soldier think such conduct is even remotely acceptable - so acceptable that he would proudly do it in front of photojournalists. You should be asking yourself: what is this soldier thinking? How did he get to be like that? Before you turn your attention away, smug in the thought that you would never behave like this, perhaps you should ask yourself what you have in common with him.
Something evil has been fed to this soldier. It is important that you ask yourself what is inside him, because there are at this very moment people attempting to feed the same swill to you.
Muiz Anwar (45 months ago)
not only is this an AMAZING photography but also an important reminder to the world and the news media that their are 2 sides to every story . . . thank you for sharing
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
Israel's endless occupation is a purely one-sided affair, as is decade after decade of sustained ethnic cleansing in the name of zionism.
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
"Those who call themselves 'supporters of Israel' are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction. ...Israel's very clear choice of expansion over security, ever since it turned down [Egypt's former President Muhammad Anwar] Sadat's offer of a full peace treaty in 1971, may well lead to that consequence."
--Noam Chomsky
AnomalousNYC (45 months ago)
Israel laying its yellow brick road to Iran war
By Mohammad Davari and Dex A. Eastman
Press TV - Oct 3, 2008
Israel seems adamant about prodding Americans into a cul-de-sac, despite the vivid picture Iran has painted of the chaos that would follow military action against its nuclear infrastructure.
On September 25, The Guardian claimed that Tel Aviv had long been dead serious about obliterating Iranian nuclear facilities but received the cold shoulder by President George W. Bush in May.
According to the report, Bush told Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a one-on-one meeting on May 14 that he would not agree with plans to launch air strikes against Iran as long as he is in the White House.
The British daily cited senior European diplomats - working for a European head of government - who were let in on the highly-sensitive conversations between Bush and Olmert.
The sources claimed that President Bush was concerned that an Iranian retaliation would include a wave of attacks on US forces stationed in the Middle East.
Although the report does not seem to be a harbinger of doom for the oil-rich Persian Gulf, various developments suggest that a nasty surprise may have been planned all along.
Israeli F-15s and a refueling plane taking part in the maneuver
Olmert was supposedly turned down in early May. And yet Israel conducted a 'dress rehearsal' for an attack on Iran in the first week of June. The issue of the maneuvers was not leaked until mid June.
The prodigious aerial maneuver was held 900 miles west of Israel off the southern Mediterranean island of Crete, roughly covering the distance from Israeli airfields to an Iranian uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.
According to Pentagon sources, the Israeli Air Force employed over a hundred F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, tactical bombers, refueling planes, and rescue helicopters to enact an attack on Iranian nuclear installations.
A major dilemma for Israeli hawks has been the 'game changer' - the sophisticated anti-aircraft S-300 defense system capable of simultaneously tracking 100 targets and targeting planes 75 miles (120 km) away.
Iran has already deployed at least one-hundred S-200 launchers, designed to defend large areas from attacks by bombers or other strategic aircraft. Speculation that Iran may soon be equipped with the surface-to-air system has provoked deep-seated fear among Israeli warmongers.
"This is a system that scares every Western air force," says long-time Pentagon advisor Dan Goure.
"If Tehran obtained the S-300, it would be a game-changer in military thinking for tackling Iran. That could be a catalyst for Israeli air attacks before it is operational," he adds.
Should the S-300 system become operational in Iran, it would effectively rule out Israeli air raids and seriously complicate any US aerial bombings, says George Friedman - the director of leading US private intelligence agency Stratfor.
It seems, however, that Israel sought a remedy in the June exercise as it was carried out in cooperation with Greece, a country that has already deployed the S-300 system. The Greek media reported that the system was 'turned off' during the operation. While it would not be a waste of money to bet against claims made by the various media outlets that failed to lift the lid on the maneuver for days, it is also possible to say that Israel may have used the expertise of the Greeks to prepare against the powerful system.
In mid-July, an unnamed senior Israeli military official cranked up the volume of Tel Aviv war drums, confirming that Israel had begun preparations for an S-300 'counter-measure'.
"The sooner the Iranians get the new system, the more time we will have to inspect the deployments and tactical doctrines. There's a learning curve," the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Another development that steals the limelight from the recent report by The Guardian and raises questions about its authenticity is the US sale of 1,000 highly advanced bunker-buster bombs to Israel.
The US agreed to the sale after an early August visit to Washington by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who demanded that the Israeli Air Force be equipped with a large number of Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28) smart bombs.
During his visit, he also sought permission to use Iraqi air space and requested that the US allow Boeing 767 refueling planes to join the Israeli air fleet.
According to Israeli media, the White House refused to comply with the request over fears that such a measure would be seen as a green light for an aerial strike on Iran. Nevertheless it took only a month for the Bush administration to capitulate to the Israeli demands.
The US confirmation of the sale came just days before The Guardian revealed that President Bush was anxious about Israel's ability to destroy the Iranian uranium enrichment program.
The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), responsible for managing the transfer of military equipments at the US Defense Department, said on September 16 that the Pentagon would provide Israel with 1,000 of its much smaller GBU-39s.
Considering the nearly 900-mile distance between Israeli airfields and Natanz in central Iran, Israel has one shot at retarding Tehran's nuclear capabilities.
A GBU-39 bunker buster penetrating reinforced concrete
With only 50lb (23kg) of high explosives, the satellite-guided GBU-39s have been developed to penetrate fortified facilities located deep underground - such as Iran's nuclear complex in Natanz.
The smart bombs immensely relieve the anxiety of the Bush administration as they enable jet fighters to carry a higher number of bombs instead of a single one-ton bomb.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that the Natanz enrichment facility has been built 8 meters-deep into the ground and is protected by a concrete wall 2.5 meters thick.
GBU-39s are capable of penetrating 6 feet (at least 1.8 meters) of reinforced concrete. The maximum range penetration for simple concrete is far greater.
In addition to the GBU-39s, Israel has at least 100 GBU-28s in its possession, capable of penetrating over 100 feet (30 meters) of dirt or 20 feet (6 meters) of solid concrete.
A September 4 warning by longtime Israel-ally and outspoken French president Nicolas Sarkozy has also come as a shock. He said that Iran's refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment would eventually lead to an Israel-waged war on the country.
The French president (R) warned that the world could wake up one morning and find that Israel has attacked Iran.
"We could find one morning that Israel has struck (Iran)," Sarkozy said, adding that no one would question the legitimacy of such an act of aggression.
Neo-conservatives and far-right think tanks in Washington are the most unlikely people to be surprised by such an attack. They have long persuaded the White House to employ the Bush Doctrine to launch airstrikes against Tehran.
In a recent op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, four prominent neoconservative heavyweights - Richard Holbrooke, R. James Woolsey, Dennis B. Ross and Mark D. Wallace - disregarded the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran to highlight their own reasons why "Everyone needs to worry about Iran".
"Iran is now edging closer to being armed with nuclear weapons, and it continues to develop a ballistic-missile capability," claims the article.
"We believe that Iran's desire for nuclear weapons is one of the most urgent issues facing America today, because even the most conservative estimates tell us that they could have nuclear weapons soon," it continues.
"A nuclear-armed Iran would likely destabilize an already dangerous region that includes Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, and pose a direct threat to America's national security."
The article comes as a mockery considering that the US has justified the worst atrocities known to man by the mere claim that its national security has been threatened.
For a Washington divorced from reality, talk of national security means one thing - interests. Iraq was not an existential threat to America or the Middle East; however, a obsessed Washington thought otherwise.
Iran poses no threat to America and has made no effort to develop nuclear weaponry. And yet Washington supports terrorist groups such as the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) to destabilize the country, claiming that Tehran is the one threatening world stability.
One must ask why countries like America have been able to bend the truth in their favor.
It is no secret that when nuke-owner Israel suffers retaliatory attacks after it starts a war with a larger power, the US will jump ship to rescue the smaller force - a noble gesture considering that there is no military alliance whatsoever between Washington and Tel Aviv.
But one thing is clear! Iran is not Afghanistan, a country torn by decades of civil war, or Iraq, an isolated country under the reign of a dictator.
The Iranian military has been abundantly clear about how it would respond if it were attacked by either Israel or the US.
Various types of Iranian Shahab and Zelzal missiles mounted on mobile launchers
In early July, Iran test-fired its upgraded Shahab-3 missile equipped with a one-ton conventional warhead and capable of hitting targets within a 2,000-kilometer range - which easily puts Israel in its missile reach.
In preparation for Iranian retaliatory attacks against Israel, the White House has further complicated the situation by setting up a powerful missile defense radar in the southern Israeli Negev desert to 'enhance and extend' Tel Aviv's missile deterrence capabilities.
The radar is designed to track ballistic missile warheads through space and provide ground-based missiles with the targeting data needed to intercept them.
Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that the radar 'is one of the most powerful systems available to track medium to long-range missiles'.
A war-obsessed Pentagon has also developed a scheme that would automatically send Americans into battle; it has deployed nearly 120 US military personnel to an air force base to operate the AN/TPY2 radar.
Any retaliation against Israel would thus mean an attack on US soldiers, forcing reluctant Americans into another war.
Over the last two years, several high-ranking Israeli officials have publicly claimed that they would be left with no choice but to take action against Iran the way they know best if the so-called diplomatic efforts fail.
Although Iran continues to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency to prove that its nuclear program is of a peaceful nature, the latest Washington defeat in its confrontation with Moscow over Georgia may encourage independent action on the part of Israel.
Tel Aviv may currently be in a deep political crisis, but the departure of lame-duck Olmert from power and Kadima, Israel's ruling part, may pave the way for incoming Prime Minister Tzipi Livni to unite the Zionists and pull the trigger on Iran.
A war on Tehran could also benefit the unpopular US president; Bush could drive the country into turmoil before leaving office for his Democratic successor, Senator Barack Obama.
Or, he could simply create an exigent situation that only his Republican Party is known to be able to handle, thus leaving the Oval Office to his bellicose "maverick" friend, Senator John McCain.
AnomalousNYC (44 months ago)
You'll note the name of Daniel Pipes mentioend several times above in the discussion of the financial and ideological backers of this DVD. Daniel Pipes' name also came up quite a lot in conjunction with the calculated provocation which took place in 2005 around the mass publication of racist cartoons starting in the Danish Jyllands Post.
Arch-zionist Daniel Pipes is America's most prominent anti-muslim racist, and for his great success in fomenting anti-muslim hatred he was nominated by Emperor Bush to the board of the US Institute for Peace:
The following is how Daniel Pipes was described by Michael Scherer in his May 2003 article, "Daniel Pipes, Peacemaker?"
"Like many other Middle East scholars, Daniel Pipes sees a way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But unlike most of his peers, Pipes sees no room for negotiation, no hope for compromise and no use for diplomacy. "What war had achieved for Israel," Pipes explained at a recent Zionist conference in Washington DC, "diplomacy has undone."
"His solution is simple: The Israeli military must force what Pipes describes as a "change of heart" by the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza -- a sapping of the Palestinian will to fight which can lead to a complete surrender. "How is a change of heart achieved? It is achieved by an Israeli victory and a Palestinian defeat," Pipes continued. "The Palestinians need to be defeated even more than Israel needs to defeat them."
Boards (44 months ago)
you can see the hate in that boys eyes. there is no fear.
thank you for that amazing picture.
resist occupation!
centurion210 [deleted] (44 months ago)
Israeli pointing gun in the direction of a Palestinian = bad; but a Palestinian tool of the Arab world blowing himself up and killing old men and women Jews = good. Nice propaganda pic.
AnomalousNYC (44 months ago)
There is a fundamental difference between the two scenarios you describe. Israeli soldiers pointing guns at Palestinians happens several hundred of times a day, every day, for at least four decades decades. How often do Palestinian soldiers point guns at Israeli civilians? It rarely happens; at most a handful of times a year. Suicide bombing is something that zionists talk about endlessly but which rarely happens in reality. Only one group is militarily occupying the other's land. Only one group has been subjected to sustained ethnic cleansing by the other. The death toll, and the numbers of those hospitalized by actual violence, is overwhelmingly, tellingly one-sided. So far in 2008, for example, there was only one incident in which Israeli children were killed by a Palestinian. In the same period, there were over ONE HUNDRED incidents in which Palestinian children were killed by Israelis. It's this incredible disparity which leads prominent observers, like the former Mideast Bureau Chief of the New York Times, to accuse Israeli soldiers of deliberately targeting children, routinely, for sport.
I find it amusing that you come here accusing me of propaganda when your own comment asserts that I support murdering jews. Who's the propagandist here? Criticizing Israel's endless litany of outrageous crimes against Palestinians is a moral obligation required of every decent human being. I do it because I think its important - particularly at this moment of growing fascism in Israel and US - to oppose all violence against civilians, everywhere, and to stand up for international law and human rights.
Move It Along Ppl (44 months ago)
1 of the most powerful images I've ever seen!
AnomalousNYC (44 months ago)
yeah, kinda hits ya point blank in the face, doesnt it? i liked it because looking at it kinda puts the viewer in the wierdly schizonphrenic position of being right there with the soldier, while simultaneously identifying with his victim.
Kriptonite in real life Samoamax [deleted] (43 months ago)
Hola, soy el administrador de un grupo llamado Emotional impact MyChoice y nos encantaría agregar esto al grupo.
excelent
AnomalousNYC (43 months ago)
"They Are All Hamas": The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza
By JONATHAN COOK
November 17, 2008
The latest tightening of Israel’s chokehold on Gaza – ending all supplies into the Strip for more than a week – has produced immediate and shocking consequences for Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants.
The refusal to allow in fuel has forced the shutting down of Gaza’s only power station, creating a blackout that pushed Palestinians bearing candles on to the streets in protest last week. A water and sanitation crisis are expected to follow.
And on Thursday, the United Nations announced it had run out of the food essentials it supplies to 750,000 desperately needy Gazans. “This has become a blockade against the United Nations itself,” a spokesman said.
In a further blow, Israel’s large Bank Hapoalim said it would refuse all transactions with Gaza by the end of the month, effectively imposing a financial blockade on an economy dependent on the Israeli shekel. Other banks are planning to follow suit, forced into a corner by Israel’s declaration in Sept 2007 of Gaza as an “enemy entity”.
There are likely to be few witnesses to Gaza’s descent into a dark and hungry winter. In the past week, all journalists were refused access to Gaza, as were a group of senior European diplomats. Days earlier, dozens of academics and doctors due to attend a conference to assess the damage done to Gazans’ mental health were also turned back.
Israel has blamed the latest restrictions of aid and fuel to Gaza on Hamas’s violation of a five-month ceasefire by launching rockets out of the Strip. But Israel had a hand in shattering the agreement: as the world was distracted by the US presidential elections, the army invaded Gaza, killing six Palestinians and provoking the rocket fire.
The humanitarian catastrophe gripping Gaza is largely unrelated to the latest tit-for-tat strikes between Hamas and Israel. Nearly a year ago, Karen Koning AbuZayd, commissioner-general of the UN’s refugee agency, warned: “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution”.
She blamed Gaza’s strangulation directly on Israel, but also cited the international community as accomplice. Together they began blocking aid in early 2006, following the election of Hamas to head the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The US and Europe agreed to the measure on the principle that it would force the people of Gaza to rethink their support for Hamas. The logic was supposedly similar to the one that drove the sanctions applied to Iraq under Saddam Hussein through the 1990s: if Gaza’s civilians suffered enough, they would rise up against Hamas and install new leaders acceptable to Israel and the West.
As Ms AbuZayd said, that moment marked the beginning of the international community’s complicity in a policy of collective punishment of Gaza, despite the fact that the Fourth Geneva Convention classifies such treatment of civilians as a war crime.
The blockade has been pursued relentlessly since, even if the desired outcome has been no more achieved in Gaza than it was in Iraq. Instead, Hamas entrenched its control and cemented the Strip’s physical separation from the Fatah-dominated West Bank.
Far from reconsidering its policy, Israel’s leadership has responded by turning the screw ever tighter – to the point where Gazan society is now on the verge of collapse.
In truth, however, the growing catastrophe being unleashed on Gaza is only indirectly related to Hamas’s rise to power and the rocket attacks.
Of more concern to Israel is what each of these developments represents: a refusal on the part of Gazans to abandon their resistance to Israel’s continuing occupation. Both provide Israel with a pretext for casting aside the protections offered to Gaza’s civilians under international law to make them submit.
With embarrassing timing, the Israeli media revealed at the weekend that one of the first acts of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister elected in 2006, was to send a message to the Bush White House offering a long-term truce in return for an end to Israeli occupation. His offer was not even acknowledged.
Instead, according to the daily Jerusalem Post, Israeli policymakers have sought to reinforce the impression that “it would be pointless for Israel to topple Hamas because the population [of Gaza] is Hamas”. On this thinking, collective punishment is warranted because there are no true civilians in Gaza. Israel is at war with every single man, woman and child.
In an indication of how widely this view is shared, the cabinet discussed last week a new strategy to obliterate Gazan villages in an attempt to stop the rocket launches, in an echo of discredited Israeli tactics used in south Lebanon in its war of 2006. The inhabitants would be given warning before indiscriminate shelling began.
In fact, Israel’s desire to seal off Gaza and terrorise its civilian population predates even Hamas’s election victory. It can be dated to Ariel Sharon’s disengagement of summer 2005, when Fatah’s rule of the PA was unchallenged.
An indication of the kind of isolation Mr Sharon preferred for Gaza was revealed shortly after the pull-out, in Dec 2005, when his officials first proposed cutting off electricity to the Strip.
The policy was not implemented, the local media pointed out at the time, both because officials suspected the violation of international law would be rejected by other nations and because it was feared that such a move would damage Fatah’s chances of winning the elections the following month.
With the vote over, however, Israel had the excuse it needed to begin severing its responsibility for the civilian population. It recast its relationship with Gaza from one of occupation to one of hostile parties at war. A policy of collective punishment that was considered transparently illegal in late 2005 has today become Israel’s standard operating procedure.
Increasingly strident talk from officials, culminating in February in the deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai’s infamous remark about creating a “shoah”, or Holocaust, in Gaza, has been matched by Israeli measures. The military bombed Gaza’s electricity plant in June 2006, and has been incrementally cutting fuel supplies ever since. In January, Mr Vilnai argued that Israel should cut off “all responsibility” for Gaza and two months later Israel signed a deal with Egypt for it to build a power station for Gaza in Sinai.
All of these moves are designed with the same purpose in mind: persuading the world that Israel’s occupation of Gaza is over and that Israel can therefore ignore the laws of occupation and use unremitting force against Gaza.
Cabinet ministers have been queuing up to express such sentiments. Ehud Olmert, for example, has declared that Gazans should not be allowed to “live normal lives”; Avi Dichter believes punishment should be inflicted “irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians”; Meir Sheetrit has urged that Israel should “decide on a neighbourhood in Gaza and level it” – the policy discussed by ministers last week.
In concert, Israel has turned a relative blind eye to the growing smuggling trade through Gaza’s tunnels to Egypt. Gazans’ material welfare is falling more heavily on Egyptian shoulders by the day.
The question remains: what does Israel expect the response of Gazans to be to their immiseration and ever greater insecurity in the face of Israeli military reprisals?
Eyal Sarraj, the head of Gaza’s Community Mental Health Programme, said this year that Israel’s long-term goal was to force Egypt to end the controls along its short border with the Strip. Once the border was open, he warned, “Wait for the exodus.”
Hazy Sky (42 months ago)
very powerful and moving
AnomalousNYC (42 months ago)
"Though we must continue to look “down” at Israel’s actions in the Occupied Territories, we must also start to look “up” at Israel’s role in what we call the Pacification Industry to understand why it receives the support from the US and other governments that it does."
--Jeff Halper, source
Liftdianto (42 months ago)
Israel and entire soldiers are really terrorist...they're only brave with unarmed people like child, women, old man..and when faced with true soldier like hizbullah..they're stand behind their military vehicle.
Why...cause, they're worried...weak...
If they're need real sparing partner for battle..try to open weapon conflict with Iran.....
May God destroy Israel completely soon....!!!
cande56755 (42 months ago)
Nice photo journalism...I'm surprised you weren't shot for taking pictures. I'm also surprised about the story"Muslim Children Gassed at Ohio Mosque After Israeli-produced hate DVD "Obsession" Hits Dayton".I haddn't heard about that one. It's tough to get the truth esp when sites like youtube are being dictated by the ADL and people's videos are being deemed inappropriate and racist for reporting on palestine. I also heard that after having their videos deleted that their facebook accounts and some other websites are affected as well.
AnomalousNYC (42 months ago)
Prof. Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law expert at Princeton University, described Israel's siege of Gaza last year, when it was still not comparable in its severity to the current situation, as follows:
"Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy."
AnomalousNYC (42 months ago)
BREAKING NEWS
OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
by Prof. Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
December 31, 2008
The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.
Those violations include:
Collective punishment - the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.
Targeting civilians - the airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.
Disproportionate military response - the airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.
Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.
Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel's escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.
Israel has also ignored recent Hamas' diplomatic initiatives to reestablish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December.
The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.
I remind all member states of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law - regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.
GeirBergh (41 months ago)
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called War Photography, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
Im trying to get a group based on real war pictures up and going. A place for those who want to see war pictures. Hope u can help me get this group going. Thank u.
Geir Bergh
AnomalousNYC (41 months ago)
This is not a war. It's a brutally racist military occupation, motivated by a desire for ethnic cleansing, and which - after decades of Palestinain refusal to leave, is today gradually turning into genocide. Nothing about this is war. Some have begun to use the term "bio-war" or "micro-war" to describe the actions of armies against organizations or groups of people, rathern than against other armies.
AnomalousNYC (37 months ago)
Israel is no longer democratic
By Shulamit Aloni
Ha'artez, May 4, 2009
Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin and philosopher Asa Kasher, two respected men around here, published an article entitled: "A just war of a democratic state," (Haaretz, April 24, Hebrew).
A remark about the first part: There are wars that are necessary for self-defense or to fight injustice and evil. But the expression "just" is problematic when speaking of war itself - which involves killing and destruction and leaves women, children and old people homeless, and sometimes even kills them.
Our sages have said: "Don't be overly righteous." And there is absolutely no question that dropping cluster bombs in an area populated by civilians, as we did in the Second Lebanon War, does not testify to great righteousness. The same thing can be said of using phosphorus bombs against a civilian population.
Apparently, according to the Yadlin and Kasher definition of justice, in order to eliminate terrorists it is just to destroy, kill, expel and starve a civilian population that has no connection to the acts of terror and no responsibility for them. Perhaps had they adopted a more decent and less arrogant approach they would have tried to explain the reasons for the fury and intensity that brought about the shocking killing and destruction, and even apologized for the fact that these exceeded any reasonable necessity.
But after all, we are always right; moreover, these things were done by "the most moral army in the world," sent by the "democratic" Jewish state - and here is the meeting point of the two concepts in the title of Yadlin and Kasher's article.
As for the army's morality, it would have been better had they remained silent and thereby been considered wise. This is because the statistics on the destruction and harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip are familiar to everyone, and not divorced from the oh-so-moral behavior of our army in the occupied territories. In the context of this behavior, for example, the army operates with great efficiency against farmers who demonstrate against the theft of their lands, even when the demonstrations are not violent.
The long-term evidence of abuse by soldiers against civilians at the checkpoints - including repeated instances of expectant mothers who are forced to give birth in the middle of the road, surrounded by armed soldiers who laugh wickedly - is no secret either. Day after day, year after year, the most moral army in the world helps to steal lands, uproot trees, steal water, close roads - in the service of the righteous "Jewish and democratic" state and with its support. It's heartbreaking, but the State of Israel is no longer democratic. We are living in an ethnocracy under "Jewish and democratic" rule.
In 1970 it was decided that in Israel religion and nationality are one and the same (that is why we are not listed in the Population Registry as Israelis, but as Jews). In 1992 it was determined in the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty that Israel is a "Jewish state." There is no mention in this law of the promise that appears in the state's formative document, the Declaration of Independence, to the effect that "The State of Israel will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or sex." The Knesset ratified the law nonetheless.
And so there is a "Jewish state" and no "equality of rights." Therefore some observers emphasize that the Jewish state is not "a state of all its citizens." Is there really a democracy that is not a state of all its citizens? After all, Jews living today in democratic countries enjoy the full rights of citizenship.
Democracy exists in the State of Israel today only in the formal sense: There are parties and elections and a good judicial system. But there is also an omnipotent army that ignores legal decisions that restrict the theft of land owned and held by people who have been living under occupation for the past 42 years. And since 1992, as we mentioned, we also have the definition "Jewish state," which means an ethnocracy - the rule of an ethnic religious community that strictly determines the ethnic origin of its citizens according to maternal lineage. And as far as other religions are concerned, disrespect for them is already a tradition, since we have learned: "Only you are considered human beings, whereas the gentiles are like donkeys."
From here it is clear that we and our moral army are exempt from concerns for the Palestinians living in Israel, and this is even more true of those living under occupation. On the other hand, it is perfectly all right to steal their land because these are "state lands" that belong to the State of Israel and its Jews.
That is the case even though we have not annexed the West Bank and have not granted citizenship to its inhabitants, who under Jordanian rule were Jordanian citizens. The State of Israel has penned them in, which makes it easy to confiscate their land for the benefit of its settlers.
And important and respected rabbis, who are educating an entire generation, have ruled that the whole country is ours and the Palestinians should share the fate of Amalek, the ancient tribe the Israelites were commanded to eradicate. At a time when a "just war" is taking place, racism is rife and robbery is called "return of property."
We are currently celebrating the 61st anniversary of the State of Israel. We fought in the War of Independence out of a great hope that we would build a "model society" here, that we would make peace with our neighbors, work the land and develop the Jewish genius for the benefit of science, culture and the value of man - every man. But when a major general and a philosopher justify - out of a sense of moral superiority - our acts of injustice toward the other in such a way, they cast a very heavy shadow on all those hopes.
AnomalousNYC (35 months ago)
Season of Travesties: Freedom and Democracy in mid-2009
July, 10 2009
By NOAM CHOMSKY
June 2009 was marked by a number of significant events, including two elections in the Middle East: in Lebanon, then Iran. The events are significant, and the reactions to them, highly instructive.
The election in Lebanon was greeted with euphoria. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed that he is "a sucker for free and fair elections," so "it warms my heart to watch" what happened in Lebanon in an election that "was indeed free and fair — not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run. No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran." Crucially, "a solid majority of all Lebanese -- Muslims, Christians and Druse -- voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri," the US-backed candidate and son of the murdered ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, so that "to the extent that anyone came out of this election with the moral authority to lead the next government, it was the coalition that wants Lebanon to be run by and for the Lebanese -- not for Iran, not for Syria and not for fighting Israel." We must give credit where it is due for this triumph of free elections (and of Washington): "Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 -- and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing -- this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter."
Two days later Friedman's views were echoed by Eliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign relations, formerly a high official of the Reagan and Bush I administrations. Under the heading "Lebanon's Triumph, Iran's Travesty," Abrams compared these "twin tests of [US] efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world." The lesson is clear: "What the United States should be promoting is not elections, but free elections, and the voting in Lebanon passed any realistic test....the majority of Lebanese have rejected Hezbollah's claim that it is not a terrorist group but a `national resistance'...The Lebanese had a chance to vote against Hezbollah, and took the opportunity."
Reactions were similar throughout the mainstream. There are, however, a few flies in the ointment.
The most prominent of them, apparently unreported in the US, is the actual vote. The Hezbollah-based March 8 coalition won handily, by approximately the same figure as Obama vs. McCain in November 2008, about 54% of the popular vote, according to Ministry of Interior figures. Hence by the Friedman-Abrams argument, we should be lamenting Ahmadinejad's defeat of President Obama, and the "moral authority" won by Hezbollah, as "the majority of Lebanese...took the opportunity" to reject the charges Abrams repeats from Washington propaganda.
Like others, Friedman and Abrams are referring to representatives in Parliament. These numbers are skewed by the confessional voting system, which sharply reduces the seats granted to the largest of the sects, the Shi'ites, who overwhelmingly back Hezbollah and its Amal ally. But as serious analysts have pointed out, the confessional ground rules undermine "free and fair elections" in even more significant ways than this. Assaf Kfoury observes that they leave no space for non-sectarian parties and erect a barrier to introducing socioeconomic policies and other real issues into the electoral system. They also open the door to "massive external interference," low voter turnout, and "vote-rigging and vote-buying," all features of the June election, even more so than before. Thus in Beirut, home of more than half the population, less than a fourth of eligible voters could vote without returning to their usually remote districts of origin. The effect is that migrant workers and the poorer classes are effectively disenfranchised in "a form of extreme gerrymandering, Lebanese style," favoring the privileged and pro-Western classes.
In Iran, the electoral results issued by the Interior Ministry lacked credibility both by the manner in which they were released and by the figures themselves. An enormous popular protest followed, brutally suppressed by the armed forces of the ruling clerics. Perhaps Ahmadinejad might have won a majority if votes had been fairly counted, but it appears that the rulers were unwilling to take that chance. From the streets, correspondent Reese Erlich, who has had considerable experience with popular uprisings and bitter repression in US domains, writes that "It's a genuine Iranian mass movement made up of students, workers, women, and middle class folks" - and possibly much of the rural population. Eric Hooglund, a respected scholar who has studied rural Iran intensively, dismisses standard speculations about rural support for Ahmadinejad, describing "overwhelming" support for Mousavi in regions he has studied, and outrage over what the large majority there regard as a stolen election.
It is highly unlikely that the protest will damage the clerical-military regime in the short term, but as Erlich observes, it "is sowing the seeds for future struggles."
As in Lebanon, the electoral system itself violates basic rights. Candidates have to be approved by the ruling clerics, who can and do bar policies of which they disapprove. And though repression overall may not be as harsh as in the US-backed dictatorships of the region, it is ugly enough, and in June 2009, very visibly so.
One can argue that Iranian "guided democracy" has structural analogues in the US, where elections are largely bought, and candidates and programs are effectively "vetted" by concentrations of capital. A striking illustration is being played out right now. It is hardly controversial that the disastrous US health system is a high priority for the public, which, for a long time, has favored national health care, an option that has been kept off the agenda by private power. In a limited shift towards the public will, Congress is now debating whether to allow a public option to compete with insurers, a proposal with overwhelming popular support. The opposition, who regard themselves as free market advocates, charge that the proposal would be unfair to the private sector, which will be unable to compete with a more efficient public system. Though a bit odd, the argument is plausible. As economist Dean Baker points out, "We know that private insurers can't compete because we already had this experiment with the Medicare program. When private insurers had to compete on a level playing field with the traditional government-run plan they were almost driven from the market." Savings from a government program would be even greater if, as in other countries, the government were permitted to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical corporations, an option supported by 85% of the population but also not on the agenda. "Unless Congress creates a serious public plan," Baker writes, Americans "can expect to be hit with the largest tax increase in the history of the world -- all of it going into the pockets of the health care industry." That is a likely outcome, once again, in the American form of "guided democracy." And it is hardly the only example.
While our thoughts are turned to elections, we should not forget one recent authentically "free and fair" election in the Middle East region, in Palestine in January 2006, to which the US and its allies at once responded with harsh punishment for the population that voted "the wrong way." The pretexts offered were laughable, and the response caused scarcely a ripple on the flood of commentary on Washington's noble "efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world," a feat that reveals impressive subordination to authority.
No less impressive is the readiness to agree that Israel is justified in imposing a harsh and destructive siege on Gaza, and attacking it with merciless violence using US equipment and diplomatic support, as it did last winter. There of course is a pretext: "the right to self-defense." The pretext has been almost universally accepted in the West, though Israeli actions are sometimes condemned as "disproportionate." The reaction is remarkable, because the pretext collapses on the most cursory inspection. The issue is the right TO USE FORCE in self-defense, and a state has that right only if it has exhausted peaceful means. In this case, Israel has simply refused to use the peaceful means that have been readily available. All of this has been amply discussed elsewhere, and it should be unnecessary to review the simple facts once again.
Once again relying on the impunity it receives as a US client, Israel brought the month of June 2009 to a close by enforcing the siege with a brazen act of hijacking. On June 30, the Israeli navy hijacked the Free Gaza movement boat "Spirit of Humanity" -- in international waters, according to those aboard -- and forced it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The boat had left from Cyprus, where the cargo was inspected: it consisted of medicines, reconstruction supplies, and toys. The human rights workers aboard included Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was sent to Ramleh prison in Israel - apparently without a word from the Obama administration. The crime scarcely elicited a yawn - with some justice, one might argue, since Israel has been hijacking boats travelling between Cyprus and Lebanon for decades, kidnapping and sometimes killing passengers or sending them in Israeli prisons without charge where they join thousands of others, in some cases held for many years as hostages. So why even bother to report this latest outrage by a rogue state and its patron, for whom law is a theme for 4th of July speeches and a weapon against enemies?
Israel's hijacking is a far more extreme crime than anything carried out by Somalis driven to piracy by poverty and despair, and destruction of their fishing grounds by robbery and dumping of toxic wastes - not to speak of the destruction of their economy by a Bush counter-terror operation conceded to have been fraudulent, and a US-backed Ethiopian invasion. The Israeli hijacking is also in violation of a March 1988 international Convention on safety of maritime navigation to which the US is a party, hence required by the Convention to assist in enforcing it. Israel, however, is not a party - which, of course, in no way mitigates the crime or the obligation to enforce the Convention against violators. Israel's failure to join is particularly interesting, since the Convention was partially inspired by the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985. That crime ranks high in Israel and the West among terrorist atrocities -- unlike Israel's US-backed bombing of Tunis a week earlier, killing 75 people, as usual with no credible pretext, but again tolerated under the grant of impunity for the US and its clients.
Possibly Israel chose not to join the Convention because of its regular practice of hijacking boats in international waters at that time. Also worth investigating in connection with the June 2009 hijacking is that since 2000, after the discovery of apparently substantial reserves of natural gas in Gaza's territorial waters by British Gas, Israel has been steadily forcing Gazan fishing boats towards shore, often violently, ruining an industry vital to Gaza's survival. At the same time, Israel has been entering into negotiations with BG to obtain gas from these sources, thus stealing the meager resources of the population it is mercilessly crushing.
The Western hemisphere also witnessed an election-related crime at the month's end. A military coup in Honduras ousted President Manuel Zelaya and expelled him to Costa Rica. As observed by economist Mark Weisbrot, an experienced analyst of Latin American affairs, the social structure of the coup is "a recurrent story in Latin America," pitting "a reform president who is supported by labor unions and social organizations against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite who is accustomed to choosing not only the Supreme Court and the Congress, but also the president."
Mainstream commentary described the coup as an unfortunate return to the bad days of decades ago. But that is mistaken. This is the third military coup in the past decade, all conforming to the "recurrent story." The first, in Venezuela in 2002, was supported by the Bush administration, which, however, backed down after sharp Latin American condemnation and restoration of the elected government by a popular uprising. The second, in Haiti in 2004, was carried out by Haiti's traditional torturers, France and the US. The elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was spirited to Central Africa and kept at a safe distance from Haiti by the master of the hemisphere.
What is novel in the Honduras coup is that the US has not lent it support. Rather, the US joined with the Organization of American States in opposing the coup, though with a more reserved condemnation than others, and without any action, unlike the neighboring states and much of the rest of Latin America. Alone in the region, the US has not withdrawn its ambassador, as did France, Spain and Italy along with Latin American states.
It was reported that Washington had advance information about a possible coup, and tried to prevent it. It surpasses imagination that Washington did not have close knowledge of what was underway in Honduras, which is highly dependent on US aid, and whose military is armed, trained, and advised by Washington. Military relations have been particularly close since the 1980s, when Honduras was the base for Reagan's terrorist war against Nicaragua.
Whether this will play out as another chapter of the "recurrent story" remains to be seen, and will depend in no small measure on reactions within the United States.