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Editorial: World Cup: Zidane - Materazzi : Italy's Shameful Win
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
11 July 2006
As a rule, I don't do football; never liked sitting around watching other people do stuff; would rather be doing stuff myself. That rule, naturally, extends to soccer which - to an American - is like "football lite." Just to illustrate the point, let me tell a little story.
Last year we had to run up to Paris for a business meeting. When we were on the way to the hotel where the meeting was to take place, we had to pass the Ritz at the Place de Vendome. At that precise moment, there was a gaggle of paparazzi out front waiting for something. Since we were early (planning for getting lost), we decided to stop and see what was going on. Everytime someone appeared at the door of the Ritz, the paparazzi started to buzz, but after the person would appear, not being the "right one" they were waiting for, the buzz died down. This happened several times and we watched from a position that was approximately 100 feet from the door.
Finally a young couple came out and all the flashbulbs started going off signalling to us that these were the folks that the paparazzi were waiting for. They ran up like a gaggle of geese going for a plump bug and surrounded this couple. I noticed the woman signing a couple of quick autographs before the Ritz doormen more or less pushed the little crowd back and helped the couple into the waiting car. They then sped away and all the paparazzi jumped onto little motoscooters and raced off down the street following the car.
We had no idea who we had just seen. But, there were a few people standing around in the square so I went up and asked them "who was that?" They told me "David Beckham." I said "Who's David Beckham?" They looked at me like I was from Mars and said, "You know, the soccer STAR!" I said "Well, that explains it. I don't do soccer..."
And so it was - until last Sunday.
Now, let me explain that my husband used to play soccer and is something of a fan, but for the most part, since I don't "do" ball games, he has mostly given it up. However, with the World Cup going on, there was no way he was going to miss it. So he - and the SOTT Team (all soccer fans) - faithfully gathered around the telly for every match. Alternating with our conversations about the world news we cover every day, there was the compelling subject of the World Cup. I would have had to have been a stone to not be affected.
And so, on Sunday night, when everyone went in to watch the game, they urged me to finally give in and give it a go; after all, it was a historic match: France vs. Italy!
As soon as it was established that France would play Italy, my husband predicted Italy would win. Why? I asked him. "Because they deserve a win after voting out Berlusconi" was his absolutely logical answer.
Of course, I wanted France to win. Sure, I was glad that Italy had the good sense to get rid of that pirate Berlusconi, but I am loyal to the country where I have made my home. I love France without reservation and find myself highly irritated when anyone criticizes the country they all want to visit. I mean, get this: the Brits constantly criticize France, but where do they all want to go on their holidays? Where do they all want to retire? France, of course! They have fouled their own country and have the nerve to criticize a people who have created a culture and lifestyle that THEY all want! I mean, what is UP with that? The French are what makes France what it is. Get it?!
Anyway, back to last Sunday and the World Cup. This was the very first soccer game I had ever watched in my entire life. I was proud of that record, but I willingly broke it to see France whip Italy's buns.
And that is what would have happened... of that, I am convinced.
Now, I think all readers will agree that I am not a soccer expert based on what I have written above. But I did raise 5 children and I know a little bit about human behavior and how to teach people to get along and play fair. As far as I could see, the game was basically fair though the Italian team did seem to be quite a bit more - well - aggressive. At one point, I even commented that they looked and acted like a swarm of bloodthirsty mosquitoes. Everyone in the room laughed and said, "yeah! you're right!" I also noticed that there was a lot more hair on the Italian team. Having visited Italy last fall, I noticed that then as well. Italian men seem to be kind of stuck in a 70s hairstyle time-warp. But maybe that's just "Retro" nowadays. I did wonder if they had all the hair so as to have a way to transport grease so they could wipe their hair and smear it on the ball, but I remembered that's baseball. In soccer, you aren't supposed to use your hands. If you want to get a really good idea of what I am talking about, and about Materazzi in particular, just watch these three video clips: One Two Three Four
Notice in video number Two, how Materazzi "pretends" to miss kicking the ball on more than one occasion. Anybody with eyes can see that he INTENDED to kick the other player. He didn't "miss." In another clip, he tries to act like he's just clumsy and deliberately drags his foot over the other player's privates. Over and over again you see Materazzi deliberately using his body as a weapon against other players, obviously intending to inflict as much damage as possible in order to remove them from the game. He plays soccer like a psychopath. The guy is a menace to the sport. Video number Three shows just what a dirty player Materazzi really is. He should be banned from soccer for life.
Well, anyway, there they were, acting like pesky mosquitos, climbing all over the French team, giving me the fidgets with their concept of personal physical space. The French team was holding up against this type of smarmy activity, keeping their mind on the game and doing as well as one can do in the face of what was clearly Attila the Hun style soccer playing. (They even had a guy with a pony tail who LOOKED like Attila!) And then, it happened: the incident that the whole world is buzzing about: Zizou butted one of the Italian players in the chest with his head, knocked the guy down, and that was all she wrote. Game over. Zidane was red carded, and the Italian team was assured their victory.
So, there I was, watching this live on TV and the instant they played the replay of the incident, showing Materazzi grabbing onto Zidane like a bloodsucking parasite, pinching his nipples (you'll have to replay it slowly to see this) Zidane brushing him off and trying to keep his focus on the business at hand, walking away, and Materazzi's mouth moving, I could see that whatever he said made Zidane snap.
It was a shame. Zidane should have known that the Italians would pull a trick like that just to try to get him out of the game. As all the soccer playing people in the room informed me, it's standard operating procedure to try to get your opponent to lose it by taunting them. Apparently, it happens all the time.
But in this case, I think the situation was just a little bit different.
With many conflicting versions of events circling on the internet and in the world’s media, The Times enlisted the help of an expert lip reader, Jessica Rees, to determine the precise nature of the dialogue that caused Zidane to react in such a manner.
After an exhaustive study of the match video, and with the help of an Italian translator, Rees claimed that Materazzi called Zidane “the son of a terrorist whore” before adding “so just f*** off” for good measure, supporting the natural assumption that the Frenchman must have been grievously insulted.
As the son of two Algerian immigrants, the 34-year-old is proud of his North African roots, dedicating France’s 1998 World Cup win to “all Algerians who are proud of their flag and all those who have made sacrifices for their family but who have never abandoned their own culture”, so such a slur would certainly explain, if not justify, his violent response.
When asked about the allegations on his return to Rome, Materazzi issued a vehement denial, while sources close to the player emphasised that he had not been accused of racism before, pointing to his close friendship with Obafemi Martins, the Nigeria and Inter Milan striker.
“It is absolutely not true,” Materazzi said. “I did not call him a terrorist. I’m ignorant. I don’t even know what the word means. The whole world saw what happened on live TV.” [...]
With the racial allegations particularly sensitive, the other speculative suggestions as to Materazzi’s offending words were no less offensive, also focusing on Zidane’s father, Smaïl. Zidane is close to both of his elderly parents, who live in a house he bought for them outside his native Marseilles, and is thought to have phoned his mother every day during the tournament.
Another explanation being widely circulated yesterday was that Materazzi had insulted the memory of one of Zidane’s closest confidants and former coaches, Jean Varraud. The former AS Cannes coach died of cancer shortly before the tournament.
With Materazzi denying all such charges, sources close to the Italy defender even claimed that he had been insulted. Several Italian newspapers claimed yesterday that Zidane had insulted the Inter Milan player’s mother, with Materazzi retorting that the Frenchman “made love to his sister”. [The Times]
Yes, the whole world saw what happened on TV. I saw it too. First of all, just by watching the incident as it happened, it was clear to me that Materazzi was deliberately trying to get under Zidane's skin and Zidane was making a mighty effort to not let it affect him. The very fact that Materazzi was grabbing onto him in the way he did showed such a stunning lack of consideration that I was appalled. After all, not too much earlier, Zidane had taken a bad fall and injured his shoulder. The medics had tended to him, but it was clear that he was in pain. So Materazzi pulling on his arm the way he did must have been physically painful, to which he added his insults.
Certainly, what Zidane did was against the rules and being taken off the field was the correct response. But, as a mother, I would have sent Materazzi to the corner for provocation and probably would have washed his mouth out with soap.
But there is more to this than just a little foul mouthed agitation. Notice that the Times said:
After an exhaustive study of the match video, and with the help of an Italian translator, Rees claimed that Materazzi called Zidane “the son of a terrorist whore”
The Times wasn't the only news organization that hired a lip reading expert.
Zidane's moment of madness may have been provoked by Materazzi calling his sister a prostitute, according to report on brazilian televeision chanel Globo.
Fantastico, a programme on globo, employed a lip-reading experts who said footage showed the Italian twice insulted Zidane' sister. The programme claimed materazzi made the same comment twice using a "coarse word" at the french player.
So we think that "whore" was probably used, and we notice that the Brazilian expert doesn't tell us what the "coarse word" was; must have been "terrorist."
Now, just think about this for a minute. In this day and time, when George Bush and the Neocons have made the word "Muslim" synonymous with "terrorist," when members of the Muslim faith have been subjected to treatment that is rapidly rivaling what Hitler did to Jews, to call someone of the Muslim faith a terrorist amounts to about the most racist and xenophobic a remark anyone could make. Can you imagine the uproar that would be raging around the globe if Zidane had been Jewish and Materazzi had made an anti-Semitic remark?
Notice Materazzi's disingenuous defense: "I did not call him a terrorist. I’m ignorant. I don’t even know what the word means. The whole world saw what happened on live TV."
Yeah, Materazzi, the whole world saw it and experts in lip reading say you called Zidane a terrorist. And if you don't know what the word means, then you better go back to primary school and learn to read and write. And while you are at it, take some classes in "how to act like a human being."
Speaking of acting like a human being, another commentator has written about the Zidane situation as follows:
The story of the 2006 World Cup has been the resurrection of France. After a lackluster performance in its first two games, the French team shocked the football watching world--otherwise known as "the world"--by upsetting Spain and then dethroning Brazil, the second time in three World Cups the French have knocked off the global kings of "the beautiful game."
While hundreds of thousands of people celebrated on the Champs-Elysées following France's stunning turn-around, not everyone was feeling the joy. Proud racist and leader of the ultra-right wing National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, could not resist defiling the moment. Le Pen decried France's multi-ethnic team as unrepresentative of French society, saying that France "cannot recognize itself in the national side," and "maybe the coach exaggerated the proportion of players of color and should have been a bit more careful."
Le Pen and others of his ilk do not recognize themselves in a team whose leader is of Algerian descent--Zinedine Zidane--and whose most feared striker is black--Thierry Henry. Le Pen used to torture Algerians for the French military in the 1950s and it turns his stomach that his team reflects France's (and Europe's) colonial past, with players from Cameroon, Guadalupe, Senegal, Congo, Algeria, and Benin among other countries.
Le Pen's efforts to use the pitch as a battleground for his Neanderthal views about immigration and Islam have not gone unanswered. After his latest comments, France midfielder Lilian Thuram said, "Clearly, he is unaware that there are Frenchmen who are black, Frenchmen who are white, Frenchmen who are brown. I think that reflects particularly badly on a man who has aspirations to be president of France but yet clearly doesn't know anything about French history or society.... That's pretty serious. He's the type of person who'd turn on the television and see the American basketball team and wonder: 'Hold on, there are black people playing for America? What's going on?'" [...]
Le Pen does not have the market cornered on racism in the sport. So-called fans, throwing banana peels and peanuts at star players of African descent, have plagued European soccer this past season. For much of the World Cup, such assaults did not occur. But before the June 27th game against Spain, the French coach, Raymond Domenech, said Spanish fans were "making monkey chants" as the French team left their bus. The incident evoked memories of an outrageous racist diatribe against Thierry Henry delivered by Spanish coach Luis Aragones to "inspire" his team before a match against France a couple years ago. When Franch defeated Spain last week, it was more just desserts for Aragones and another bitter pill for Le Pen. [...]
Anti-Arab and Moslem sentiment is by no means monopolized by Le Pen and his cronies on the far right.
No doubt about that.
So, Materazzi got rid of his rival and Italy won almost by default.
I'd be ashamed to have to win a game that way.
But then, what do I know about soccer?
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Editorial: The Influence of Israel and it's American Lobby over US Middle East Policy
Presented by Jeffrey Blankfort at the Islamic Human Right Commission Conference, School of Oriental and African Studies, London
July 2, 2006
The apparent ability of Israel, one of the world's smallest countries, to shape the Middle East policies of the world's remaining superpower has been a source of puzzlement, conjecture, and constant frustration on the part of those fighting for justice for the Palestinians and for the peoples of the region, as a whole.
One of the roots of this unique historical phenomenon may be found in the interpretation of a 120-year-old US Supreme Court decision that afforded corporations the same rights as individual American citizens.
One of those rights is the freedom of speech that is guaranteed by the 1st amendment to the US Constitution.
Thanks to the extraordinary degree of corruption that was manifest in American society in the late 19th century, financial contributions to political candidates came to be seen by the court as expressions of political speech and thus under the court's protection.
This has resulted in the American political system becoming one of never-ending and ever more costly political campaigns, and, without question, the most corrupt among what are generally described as "advanced countries." The Supreme Court's decision, reaffirmed over the years, opened the door to well funded "special interests' and their lobbies and has allowed them, through what amounts to legal bribery, to shape the foreign and domestic policies of the United States.
By 1907, the American author, Mark Twain would write that there was only one "native criminal class in America-Congress" and a decade later, the humorist Will Rogers would joke, " America has the best Congress money can buy."
In the beginning it was the railroads and the steel companies who paid the going price and then came the lumber, oil and construction companies, the weapons and automobile manufacturers, the airplane and communications industries, and what are euphemistically known as the health providers--the doctors, the hospitals and the pharmaceutical manufacturers who have made sure that Americans would be the only citizens in a developed country that have no national health service.
In the arena of foreign policy, no lobby has proved more powerful than that of the organized American Jewish community in support of Israel; what is generally referred to as the Israel Lobby and in the halls of Congress, simply as "the lobby."
Its power is all the more impressive when one realizes the lobby represents no more than a third of America's six million Jews.
The dedication and single-mindedness of that one third, however, stands in stark contrast to the lack of involvement by the overwhelming majority of Americans in a system for which they long ago lost faith and respect. This has made the lobby's task much simpler than it might first appear. It is also why unconditional support for Israel will likely remain the only issue in which Democrats and Republicans submerge their hostilities and march in lock step together like trained circus animals. Not only do pro-Israel measures usually receive 400 votes of the 435 member House and up to 99 of a 100 in the Senate, but when it comes to foreign aid, Congress has frequently voted to grant Israel more money than a president has requested and to pass legislation favorable to the lobby over his opposition.
Since 1985 the amount of direct aid has fluctuated between $3 and $3.5 billion while unpublicized extras in the Pentagon budget have tended to raise that figure considerably higher.
The total today is estimated to be at least $108 billion.
This figure does not include the costs of $19 billion in loan guarantees to Israel since 1991, the billions of taxpayers dollars invested in Israeli government bonds by union pension funds, individual states and county and city governments, nor the billions in tax-exempt donations by American Jews to quasi governmental Israeli agencies and charities since Israel became a state.
The state of the US economy has never been a consideration. When funds have been unavailable for essential domestic programs, such as in 199l, when six out of ten U.S. cities were unable to meet their budgets and several states their payrolls, Israel received, over the first president Bush's wishes, an additional $650 million in cash as part of the Gulf War emergency spending bill. In September 1992, after stubbornly resisting for a year Israel's request for $10 billion in loan guarantees, but with a difficult election against Bill Clinton just two months away, Bush went along with Congress's demand that Israel's request be approved. It was too late to help him at the polls.
This is not only a tribute to the millions of dollars contributed to national political candidates by wealthy American Jews but a testament to the fear that AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel's officially registered lobby, has instilled in members of Congress who have neither a personal interest in supporting Israel nor a sizeable Jewish constituency.
"If there was a secret ballot, aid to Israel would be cut severely," a Congressman described as pro-Israel told the New Republic's Morton Kondracke in 1989. "It's not out of affection any more that Israel gets $3 billion a year. It's from fear you'll wake up one morning and find out than an opponent has $500,000 to run against you."
The lobby, however, is more than AIPAC, which, alone, would be unable to exert such power. There are, in fact, more than 60 organizations, from small to large, engaged single-mindedly, in promoting Israel's interests in the US while marginalizing, intimidating and silencing its critics. Its targets include Jews opposed either to Israel's existence as a Jewish state, such as myself and others who are simply outraged by Israel's continuing occupation and theft of Palestinian land, and the deadly means with which both are carried out, held in check only by the mild restraints of the international community.
Some 52 of these organizations belong to Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, which is supposed to the voice of American Jewry.
Along with AIPAC, the two largest and most influential of them are the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, and the American Jewish Committee, or AJC. Representatives of the major organizations meet every month to plan strategy for that month. Nothing can be left to chance.
The ADL began in 1914 as an offshoot of the nation's oldest Zionist organization, B'nai B'rith. Its mission was to defend Jews from anti-Jewish acts and words. It still does that, but anti-Jewish racism ceased to be a serious problem in the US years ago and the ADL's chief task today is gathering information on critics of Israel, what it calls the "new anti-Semites" and smearing them in the public media.
Fourteen years ago, its information gathering went too far. A raid by the San Francisco police on ADL's San Francisco office revealed that the organization was conducting a major private spying operation across the United States. In the San Francisco area alone, its agent had illegally compiled files on more than 600 organizations and 12,000 individuals, myself among them. These were not just Arab-American, Palestinian and Muslim groups, but Black, Latino, Asian, Irish, and trade unions, as well.
There was a special category for the anti-apartheid movement which given Israel's ties with apartheid South Africa, was not surprising, but the ADL spy was also passing that information on to a South African intelligence agent along with reports on black South African exiles living in the area.
Pressure from influential local Zionists convinced city officials not to bring the ADL while the organization promised it would stop its spying activities. There is no reason to believe it has done so. Today, it works very closely with police departments across the country, educating them on so-called "hate crimes" and routinely sends groups US police officials on free trips to Israel to learn how to respond to "terrorist attacks." This doesn't bode well for what is left of America's civil liberties.
The American Jewish Committee was founded by German Jews in 1906 and was firmly anti-Zionist until the events of the Second World War and the Jewish Holocaust led it to change its position. Today, it is the lobby's unofficial foreign office, and until recently was largely content to work behind the scenes pressuring foreign governments in behalf of Israel. It began flexing its muscles more publicly two years ago when it opened an office in Brussels to lobby the European Union.
The AJC now has weekly meetings with a high official if not the chief of state of a EU member government and one can already see the effect. Over the past year the EU has moved away from its relative support for the Palestinians and adopted one position after another that reflect Israeli demands
A number of other important components of the lobby will not be found in the President's conference, including 117 Jewish community relations councils, 155 Jewish federations, and several powerful "independent" Washington think tanks such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a creation of AIPAC; the American Enterprise Institute, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, founded after the attack on the World Trade Center..
When one adds to what I have mentioned so far, the Jewish religious bodies that also lobby for Israel, it should be obvious that there is no other ethnic or religious group that comes close to being so intensely organized, except, perhaps, the Christian Zionists, but the scope of their activities is relatively limited. This is but one of several things that distinguish the Israel Lobby from other powerful US special interest lobbies, apart from the fact that it represents the interests of a foreign country. All are important to understanding its success.
The first, of course, is its money. It is impossible to know exactly how much of it Jews contribute to American politicians, but it is far more than any other group.
The difficulty occurs because groups monitoring the data categorize contributions according to the financial sector of the donor, which, in the case of Israel, tends to disguise the goal of the contributor. For example, the Communications industry in the US is dominated by Jews, most of whom are known supporters of Israel. When they contribute to the Democrats or Republicans, however, that money is not attributed to the Israel Lobby, but to the Communications industry. This applies to the Banking and Wall Street Financial houses that are also largely Jewish, as well as to other sectors of the business world.
Haim Saban exemplifies this problem. An Egyptian-born Israeli-American billionaire and media owner, Saban, in 2002 gave the Democratic Party $12.3 million, $7.5 in one chunk. This was two million dollars more than the Exxon corporation gave the Republican Party over a 10-year period but rated no more than a few inches in the NY Times. Saban, a good friend of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, has also made large contributions to AIPAC.
He also established the Saban Center on the Middle East at the Brookings Institute, turning that once independent think tank into another component of the lobby. Saban's $12.3 million, however, was not considered to be Israel lobby funding.
What is considered as pro-Israel money is largely restricted to funds from some three dozen pro-Israel PACs or political action committees and their members. PACs are groups that are licensed to collect donations and pass them on to politicians supportive of the particular interests of the industry, trade union, or non-profit organization that formed the PAC. What distinguishes the pro-Israel PACs from the others is that they disguise their identity to avoid the prying eyes of the media and the public. They do this simply by not mentioning Israel in their name. Thus we have the Northern Californians for Good Government, St. Louisans for Good Government, the Desert Caucus, Hudson Valley PAC, and NATPAC, etc. This has led to them being referred to as "stealth PACs" by a former State Department official.
Moreover, unlike other PACs, they only contribute to candidates in other states.
For example, the Desert Caucus will send money to congressional candidates or an incumbent Senate or House members in Illinois or New Jersey, based solely on their positions on Israel. This has led critics of the lobby to portray them as Israel Firsters. That is meant to indicate that they are more concerned with the welfare of Israel than they are with that of their fellow Americans.
The way I measured pro-Israel political contributions was to go to the web site of Mother Jones magazine, a pro-Israel liberal monthly. In 1996 and 2000, it compiled lists of the top 400 individual donors to both political parties. What I found was that in 2000, 7 of the top 10 donors, 12 of the top 20, and at least, 125 of the top 250 were Jewish, most of which went to the Democrats. In other words, at least 50% and even higher among the larger contributors. It is an extraordinary figure you realize that Jews make up but 2.3 % of the American population.
The 50% overall figure corresponds to estimates from within the Democratic Party as well as Jewish organizations although some speculate the figure is as high as 70%.
The extent of these contributions, coupled with those from trade unions that are strongly pro-Israel at the leadership level and which have invested at least
$5 billion in Israeli government bonds, have made the Democratic Party, into what American law professor Francis Boyle recently called, "a front for AIPAC."
While maintaining a formidable presence in the nation's capitol, so much so that it is referred to in Congress simply as "the lobby," AIPAC gathers its strength from its grass roots cadres and that of other Jewish organizations with which it networks in every state and major city in the United States. Its operations are carried out by a staff of 165, a healthy $47 million annual budget, and offices across the country. What affords it a special advantage is that it is considered a domestic lobby and not required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
This gives its lobbyists access such registration would prohibit, such as taking part in Congressional committee hearings, drafting or vetting legislation that concerns Israel or the Middle East, and placing its interns as volunteers in the offices of members of Congress where they serve as AIPAC's eyes or, if you prefer it, spies.
Few AIPAC staff members actually lobby. Most provide research materials, talking points, and speeches for members of Congress or help prepare AIPAC's Near East Report, a four-page bi-weekly that is essential reading on Capitol Hill. At a local level, in addition to contributing money, AIPAC members voluntarily provide their expertise to competing candidates in congressional elections, so whoever wins, Israel is assured of a supporter.
AIPAC's annual conference in Washington each Spring is a major event of the political season. In 2005, 4,000 of its members attended along with 1000 student guests. The keynote address is usually given by the President, the Vice-President or the Secretary of State. This year it was Vice President Dick Cheney who was greeted with may rounds of applause and a standing ovation. As a tribute to the lobby's power, approximately half the members of Congress attend, including the Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate and the House. Predictably, their speeches reflect their personal loyalty and of America's unbreakable commitment to Israel. The names of the congress members who show up are publicized on AIPAC's web site, which enhances their status among major Jewish donors.
As important but rarely publicized are regional lunches and dinners that AIPAC holds across the country, to which local political leaders-- mayors, supervisors, city council members, police chiefs, district attorneys, school superintendents, etc, are invited. The speakers at these events will usually be a US Senator or a governor from another state. What is interesting is that the media is never invited nor informed of their appearance, neither where the event takes place nor in the speaker's state.
As a follow-up, those favored public officials will soon find themselves invited on all-expense paid trips to Israel provided by local Jewish community relations councils, federations or other community organizations. There they meet the prime minister, defense minister and the IDF Chief of Staff, tour Israel and a West Bank settlement, and visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. It is from such so-called "civil servants" that new members of Congress invariably emerge and so the personal relations established between them and influential Jewish community activists through these trips are mutually beneficial.
Politicians, from Congressional candidates to the president, frequently travel to Israel to gain the support of Jewish voters back home.
George W. Bush made his only trip to Israel before deciding to run for President in what was widely viewed as an effort to win pro-Israel voters' support. California Governor Arnold Shwarznegger and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a non-practicing Jew, did the same.
Once in Congress, members can be assured of more free trips to Israel arranged through the American Israel Education Fund, a foundation set up by AIPAC for that purpose. In 2005 alone, more than 100 members of Congress visited Israel, some several times.
It should be noted that few politicians think it necessary to make such a political trip to Mexico prior to or even after an election, despite the fact that Mexico is far more vital to the US economy and is the genuine homeland of many more millions of Americans. But then, there is no Mexican lobby with similar political or financial clout.
AIPAC does not contribute directly to congressional or presidential campaigns but it does advise its members and the pro-Israel community as to where their money can be the most effective, whether through individual contributions or through one of the PACs.
An important hallmark of AIPAC's power is its ability to get the signatures of at least 70 U.S. senators on any letter it wishes to send to a U.S. president when they believe he is not acting in Israel's best interests. One of the most notable was the letter of 76 of them addressed to President Gerald Ford on May 21, 1975 after Ford had suspended aid to Israel and was about to make a major speech re-assessing the US-Israel relationship and calling on Israel to return to the 1967 borders. The letter warned Ford against making any changes in the strong US-Israel relationship. Ford never gave the speech and no president has dared to make such a threat again.
Mitchell Bard, a former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report, explains that the source of the lobby's power is that "Jews have devoted themselves to politics with almost religious fervor." Though the Jewish population in the United States is roughly six million, or a little over 2 % of the U.S. population, almost 90 percent live in twelve key electoral college states.
"These states alone," writes Bard, "are worth enough electoral votes to elect the president. If you add the non-Jews shown by opinion polls to be as pro-Israel as Jews, it is clear Israel has the support of one of the largest veto groups in the country."
Bard points out what has been obvious to political observers for years. Jewish political activism obliges members of Congress to consider what a mixed voting record on Israel-related issues may mean to their political future. There are no benefits for those who openly criticize Israel and "considerable costs in both loss of money and votes from Jews and non-Jews alike." For a member of Congress, even to call for even-handedness towards both the Israelis and Palestinians is enough to be targeted for defeat.
Consequently, politicians at every level of government tend to be more responsive to the concerns of Jewish voters than to the larger segments of their constituencies who pay more attention to "reality" TV, soap operas, professional sports, and their mobile phones than they do to electoral politics.
While the fact "that the campaign contribution is a major key to Jewish power...[is] one of the worst-kept secrets in American Jewish politics," as JJ Goldberg, noted in his book, "Jewish Power, it was not considered enough by Israel's supporters in the years immediately following Israel's establishment. What was thought necessary was for Jewish groups to create a supra-organizational structure that would work to ensure that no sector of American life would be immune from its influence.
Although this structure has evolved over time and while the scope of its activities have expanded and become more sophisticated, its modus operandi has remained largely unchanged.
This was revealed in a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing in 1963, a time when U.S. financial assistance and political support for Israel was minimal compared to what it would become, and it was still possible for at least one elected legislator to publicly criticize Israel on the floor of Congress. The retaliation would come later. Thus, in May 1963, Sen. J.W. Fulbright, an Arkansas Democrat, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations initiated a series of hearings concerning the activities of foreign agents in the US to determine if more restrictive laws needed to be put in place.
Among the groups under investigation were those of the young Israel lobby, including the supra-organizational structure or umbrella group, the American Zionist Council (AZC), and AIPAC that at the time was little more than a one man organization.
At the time, the AZC was comprised of eight other groups; only two are major players today, the extreme right-wing Zionist Organization of America, and the Women's Zionist Organization of America, better known as Hadassah. As the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs, AIPAC had been launched in 1951 as the lobbying arm of the American Zionist Council, but separated itself from the AZC in 1954 so as not to jeopardize the tax-exempt status of the other organizations by its lobbying efforts. It dropped "Zionist" from its name and became AIPAC in 1959. The separation was largely cosmetic. While AIPAC would focus its efforts on Congress, the other groups would take their lobbying for Israel along the length and breadth of American society.
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This became clear from the program of a single committee of the AZC that was presented at the Senate hearing. It should be noted that at the time Israel was under no external danger and the Palestine Liberation Organization did not exist.
The Americam Zionist Council's Committee on Information and Public Relations would carry "on a major part of its work through highly specialized subcommittees composed of professionals in specific areas of activity who volunteer their services..." Its targets for the 1962/63 budgetary year were magazines, and their editors; TV, radio and films;
Christian religious groups; academia, at every level; the daily press; book publishing and promotion; expanding its already active speakers bureau; liaison with organizations, both on the national and local levels, especially those with an international relations programs with special attention to "the Negro community;" "issuance of special material and guidance on controversial issues such as Arab refugees, Syrian-Israeli situation, etc.," subsidizing trips to Israel for "individual public opinion molders to help provide them with an experience in Israel...and organizing tours "in which public opinion molders will participate [and] provide suitable arrangements in Israel for handling American visitors;... counteracting the opposition" (which was minimal at the time but they were taking no chances), "the monitoring and counteraction of all activities carried out here by the Arabs, American Friends of the Middle East and other hostile groups" and finally number twelve labeled "Miscellaneous," which included "Answering requests for information and providing suitable literature for the many thousands of requests annually received."
Those were their targets 44 years ago. Let's see how far they have come,
The first item was magazines and cultivating their editors.
While a several of the most important magazines of that day are no longer published, those that exist today such as Newsweek, Time, US News & World Report, and the Weekly Standard are either Jewish owned or managed with Jews furnishing a substantial portion of their editorial staffs. While the fact that someone is Jewish does not necessarily mean he or she is an active Zionist, my observations, over the years, indicate that most are sympathetic to Israel and, at the very least, for their own self-interest, will know how to spin a story.
Television, Radio and Films were dominated by Jews then, but are more strongly in support Israel now, from ownership, to management, to news direction. This is a prime source of pro-Israel propaganda and influence.
Christian religious groups have been a challenge for the lobby as various denominations have, over the years, sought to take a balanced position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. This, for Zionists, is an act of "anti-Semitism." By and large, however, the Zionists have made sure their relations to the most of the Christian denominations is one in which Christian guilt for centuries of Jewish persecution is never far from the table. Their biggest success has been with the addition of the Christian evangelicals to the ranks of the Zionist movement, which provides massive voter support in rural America where few Jews live.
Among the more liberal denominations, the Zionists have had to work overtime recently to keep the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists, from approving or implementing plans that would have them divest from US companies profiting from the occupation.
Academia has long been a major battle ground between the Zionists and supporters of Palestine. In recent years, the battle over divestment and what can or cannot be taught about the Israel-Palestine conflict have been the main issues. The Zionists had already been extremely active before the present intifada but shortly after Israel was widely criticized for its attack on, Jenin in April 2002, 26 of the campus groups led by Hillel and off-campus organizations, led by AIPAC, the ADL and the AJC formed the Israel Campus Coalition. They have so far been able to turn back all attempts at divestment on the universirt campuses as they have in the churches.
In the battle over teaching content, the ADL had a head start. In the early Eighties, it became the first organization to publish a list of pro-Arab professors and activists and distribute it to their members and to the media. The most recent group, Campus Watch, went so far as to put their addresses on its web site until obliged to remove them.
In the academic arena, the AJC and Campus Watch have been pushing Congress to pass legislation that would require monitoring of Middle East studies in the universities to make sure that professors are not indoctrinating their students with anti-Israel or anti-US "propaganda." Since this would clearly violate the 1st amendment and curtail the free speech of professors in the classroom, the legislation is stalled in the Senate.
Most recently, the lobby scored an important victory when it was able to prevent Yale university, the nation's oldest, from hiring University of Michigan professor and Middle East expert, Juan Cole, even though Cole had been recommended by the university's hiring committees. His crime? He is critical of Israel and of the lobby and a supporter of the Palestinians.
Conquering the daily press has been at times a contest, but the lobby has emerged a clear winner. With ownership of the two most influential papers in the country, the New York Times and the Washington Post historically in Jewish hands, with pro-Israel columnists for both of those papers syndicated in hundreds of other papers across the country, the pro-Israel position is the only one that America reads on both its editorial and op-ed pages.
The news, as well, is given a pro-Israel slant but this is not enough for the Zionist media monitoring groups, CAMERA and Honest Reporting. They accuse both papers of having an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bias. This, of course, is nonsense, but it serves to keep them in line.
Any survey of book titles will reveal yet another success of the lobby. While there have been a plethora of books about Israel and Jewish culture, nothing has been more successful than promoting books about the Jewish holocaust and the output appears to be never-ending. Moreover, it is the rare American child that can go through public school without an intense study of the holocaust through the diary of Ann Frank. For them, that is the story of the Second World War. More time, in fact, is spent by American school children studying the holocaust than the genocide of the Native Americans and the three and a half centuries of slavery and the decades of racism that followed. Before they get out of college students will also have read and experienced the maudlin recriminations of Eli Wiesel against the non-Jewish world for not coming to the aid of the Jews. Wiesel is now a permanent fixture on the American cultural scene.
I'll not go through all the rest of AZC's program except to point out that its liaisons with the African-American community, and more recently with the emerging Latin-American population, have been of major importance to the lobby's leadership. While left-wing Jews played important roles in America's civil rights struggles, controlling the black political agenda and determining its leadership have long been major goals of the lobby. It has succeeded in achieving both. Contributions from wealthy pro-Israel Jewish businessmen provide key financial support for black churches and keeps their pastors quiet, while providing campaign funding and key data bases for aspiring black politicians insures their loyalty to their donors, if not to Israel. Those who refuse to genuflect to the lobby, which required their withholding of criticism when Israel was providing arms to apartheid South Africa, find themselves accused of "anti-Semitism" and targeted for political extinction.
What remains today is what I have called "the invisible plantation." The only member of Congress not on that plantation at the moment is Cynthia McKinney from Atlanta, Georgia. They defeated her in 2002 for criticizing Israel and the war on Iraq but she battled back to regain her seat in 2004, much to the unhappiness of not only the lobby but also the Democratic Party.
They are gunning for her again in Georgia's July 18 primary.
Finally, and what is most disturbing, what distinguishes the Israel Lobby from all the others is that it has no significant opposition.
In fact, it was only this spring, with the publication of a paper entitled The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy in the London Review of Books by Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Steven Walt, of Harvard, that the subject of the lobby's power and influence over US Middle East policy became an acceptable subject for public debate.
In their paper, the professors asserted, with considerable evidence, that US support for Israel over the years has not been in America's national interest and the present war in Iraq was essentially initiated in Israel's behalf and argued, effectively, against the notion of Israel serving as "strategic asset" of the US at the present time.
That the article had to come to light in London, after being rejected by the Atlantic magazine in the US, is a telling commentary on the degree to which discussion of the lobby has been a taboo subject in American political circles.
Those circles include not just the supporters of Israel and the politicians and the media over which they maintain their influence, but the American left and its leading icon, Prof. Noam Chomsky. While praising the two professors for having raised the issue, he proceeded to casually dismiss their thesis without addressing its key points.
This was no surprise. For more than 30 years, in countless books, speeches, and interviews, Professor Chomsky has maintained that Israel is a "strategic asset" of the US, that it serves as Washington's "cop on the beat" in the Middle East, and that the lobby is not really a factor in Washington's foreign policy deliberations. It only seems so, he insists, because its positions tend to agree with those of America's ruling elites. It is also important to note that he strongly opposes any form of economic pressure being brought against Israel, be it, boycott, divestment, or South African type sanctions.
With so much invested in his position Professor Chomsky is not about to change his mind at this point. Nor, apparently, will other professors such as Stephen Zunes who have rigidly adopted his viewpoint.
But what is more important and unfortunate, that has also been the position taken by the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements. Rather than welcoming the opportunity to criticize or even discuss the lobby's role that has been afforded by the Mearsheimer-Walt paper, they have either ignored it or, like Chomsky and Zunes, insisted that the problem is not the lobby, but US imperialism (as if the two were mutually exclusive) which is an easy target but provides little foundation for concrete political action. The fact that the Palestine support movement in the United States has been an utter failure to this point in time, I believe, can be traced, in a large part, to its refusal to acknowledge the power of the Israel lobby and to challenge that power either locally and nationally.
It is interesting to note that in 1971, three years before Chomsky published his first book on the subject, Roger Hilsman, who had been a State Department official in charge of intelligence under the Kennedy administration wrote :
"It is obvious to even the most casual observer, for example, that United States foreign policy in the Middle East, where oil reigns supreme, has been more responsive to the pressures of the American Jewish community and their natural desire to support Israel than it has to American oil interests."
Stephen Green, whose ground-breaking research into State Department documents, was incorporated in his superb book, Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with Militant Israel," put it in a more nuanced way:
"Since 1953," he wrote, "Israel, and friends of Israel in America, have determined the broad outlines of US policy in the region. It has been left to American presidents to implement that policy, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and to deal with tactical issues."
The late Professor Edward Said did not mince words on the issue. In 2001, in his contribution to The New Intifada, entitled, appropriately, "America's Last Taboo," he rhetorically asked: "What explains this [present] state of affairs? The answer lies in the power of Zionist organizations in American politics, whose role throughout the "peace process" has never been sufficiently addressed-a neglect that is absolutely astonishing, given the policy of the PLO has been in essence to throw our fate as a people into the lap of the United States, without any strategic awareness of how American policy is dominated by a small minority whose views about the Middle East are in some ways more extreme than those of Likud itself.
And on the subject of AIPAC, Said wrote:
" [T]he American Israel Public Affairs Committee-AIPAC-has for years been the most powerful single lobby in Washington. Drawing on a well-organized, well-connected, highly visible and wealthy Jewish population, AIPAC inspires an awed fear and respect across the political spectrum. Who is going to stand up to this Moloch in behalf of the Palestinians, when they can offer nothing, and AIPAC can destroy a professional career at the drop of a checkbook? In the past, one or two members of Congress did resist AIPAC openly, but the many political action committees controlled by AIPAC made sure they were never re-elected... If such is the material of the legislature, what can be expected of the executive?"
Professor Said's opinion, like the others, fell on largely deaf ears.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that in the absence of any organized public opposition and the abject default to it by those purporting to support the Palestinian cause, the Israel Lobby has had no trouble maintaining its control over the US Congress, and essentially US Middle East policy while making the political costs of any president that opposed it, a predictable defeat at the polls on election day.
Every president beginning with Richard Nixon has made at least a half-hearted effort to get Israel to leave the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, not for the benefit of the Palestinians, but to improve America's regional interests and each has been thwarted by the lobby.
The exception was Jimmy Carter, a political outsider, who forced Menachem Begin to evacuate the Sinai in exchange for the Camp David peace treaty with Egypt and in 1978, to rub it in, ordered him to withdraw his troops from Lebanon after Israel's first invasion of its northern neighbor.
The lobby was not pleased with Camp David and with Carter's other efforts to pressure Israel and he paid for it at the polls in 1980 when he received only 48% of the Jewish vote, the lowest for any Democrat since they started keeping count.
Given the situation, I have described, the outlook for changing American policy in terms of providing even a modicum of justice to the Palestinians is not bright.
What is left for us to do is explain why and to challenge those on our side who stubbornly control the message to face the truth or get out of the way.
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Editorial: War crimes: Israel's offensive against peace
By Alain Gresh
Le Mondo Diplo
The 1949 Geneva Conventions state, in article 54 of their additional protocol: "Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited". It is also "prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population". That means that the Israeli army's latest offensive in the occupied territories amounts to war crimes; it includes the blockade of the civilian population and their collective punishment, the bombing of Gaza's $150m power station, depriving 750,000 Palestinians of electricity in the intense summer heat, and the kidnapping on the West Bank of 64 members of the political wing of Hamas, including eight cabinet ministers and 22 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. On 5 July the Israeli government said it would expand its military operation in Gaza.
Israel has violated another principle of international law in this offensive: proportionality. Article 51 of the protocol forbids "an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated." Can saving one soldier's life justify destruction on this scale?
The Israeli government has negotiated prisoner exchanges several times: in 1985 Israel freed 1,150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for three of its soldiers captured by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). Negotiations are more likely to obtain the release of Gilad Shalit than military attacks which, on the contrary, risk bringing about his death. Israel know this: Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz has told the cabinet that military action alone will not secure the release of Shalit (Haaretz, 3 July 2006).
An editorial in Haaretz on 30 June 2006 said: "Bombing bridges that can be circumvented both by car and on foot; seizing an airport that has been in ruins for years; destroying a power station, plunging large parts of the Gaza Strip into darkness; distributing flyers suggesting that people be concerned about their fate; a menacing flight over Bashar Assad's palace; and arresting elected Hamas officials: The government wishes to convince us that all these actions are intended only to release the soldier Gilad Shalit." The editorial concludes: "As one who knows that all the Hamas activists deported by Yitzhak Rabin returned to leadership and command positions in the organisation, Olmert should know that arresting leaders only strengthens them and their supporters. But this is not merely faulty reasoning; arresting people to use as bargaining chips is the act of a gang, not of a state." (1)
In reality, as the Israeli media has revealed, this offensive was planned a long time ago; that includes the arrest of leading Hamas officials, starting with ministers and legislators. The purpose was not just to get rid the Hamas government elected in January but all form of Palestinian authority. That was the thinking behind the disengagement plan devised by Ariel Sharon, then Israel's prime minister, and continued by his successor, Ehud Olmert: in order to draw Israel's borders unilaterally it was necessary to tell the world that there was no Palestinian interlocutor.
This strategy started well before Hamas' electoral victory: throughout 2005, when Mahmoud Abbas was governing the Palestinian Authority (PA) with a Fatah majority, Sharon systematically refused to negotiate with him and went ahead with the construction of the separation wall - flouting the ruling of the International Court of Justice. His policy of unilateralism flew in the face of the core achievement of the Oslo accords. This was the conviction that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies in bilateral negotiation between the Palestine Liberation Organistion (PLO) and Israel; the agreement signed on 9 September 1993 by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat confirmed that belief, affirming mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO.
The Hamas victory in the January elections made it easy for the Israeli government to hot up its propaganda war on the familiar "there is no Palestinian interlocutor" theme. The United States and the European Union put three conditions on the new Palestinian government: to recognise Israel, stop all armed attacks and accept the agreements reached between previous Palestinian governments and Israel. They then suspended their direct aid, greatly increasing the sufferings of the Palestinian population who had foolishly voted the wrong way. They show limitless tolerance towards the Israeli government, which refuses to recognise the right of the Palestinians to an independent state on the territories occupied in 1967, uses state terrorism against civilians and failed to fulfil its undertakings under the Oslo accords. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European commissioner for foreign affairs, even hailed the Israeli government's unilateral policy as a brave decision.
It is surely no coincidence that the present offensive came just as all the Palestinian movements (except for Islamic Jihad) signed a joint declaration (2) accepting the establishment of a Palestinian state on all the territories occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital - an implicit recognition of Israel. The Israeli government wanted to stamp out any new Palestinian opening towards peace. It had done the same in 2002, when an Arab summit in Beirut endorsed a plan that proposed recognition of Israel in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state; the Sharon government responded, on the pretext of a suicide attack, with a generalised offensive against the occupied territories.
But Operation Summer Rain, the poetic name of the present Israeli offensive, shows the failure of its unilateral policy. The withdrawal of the Israeli army from the West Bank and Gaza without negotiations with the Palestinians cannot lead to peace. And in the West Bank, where Israeli settlements and Palestinian population are inextricably linked, any unilateral evacuation can only lead to further violence.
Translated by Wendy Kristianasen
(1) «The government is losing its reason», Haaretz, 30 June 2006.
(2) «The Prisoners' National Conciliation Document», Palestine Center, 28 June 2006.
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Editorial: The Age of Irony
Reem Al Faisal, Arab News
It is tragic to witness the transformation of a victim into the worst perpetrator of that which he suffered from in the past. But this is what is unfolding before our eyes.
This statement is evidently clear in its meaning and intent. The entire world knows that what I have in my mind is the Israelis and their loss of all sense of morality and reason. They have descended, without any inhibitions, into unprecedented savagery directed against the defenseless Palestinians.
Rarely have a people suffered under such brutality that they are denied the very essence of their humanity.
Seen through the prism of the Israelis and the Western press and the elite, the Palestinians never die or are maimed. Their homes are never destroyed nor their infrastructure is decimated. Their leaders are never assassinated or abducted. No, the Palestinians can't suffer or feel pain or bear the weight of oppression; they simply fade away and are never heard of again.
It is truly ironic that the words of Shylock are far more apt today to describe the Arab than the Jew and it is even more ironic that the hand which kills, destroys and tortures is that of a Jew and that its victim is the Arab who has been the Jew's cousin, friend, neighbor and colleague not for decades but centuries. Arabs are the one people who never committed pogroms at any time in history against Jews or built gas chambers to cast the Jews into or ghettos to imprison them in.
Instead the Arab has received the Jew and honored the Jew in his land and protected him from the predatory West and this not for decades but centuries and, hopefully, this will continue.
There can be no age more ironic than the one we live in whereby the victim has turned into the criminal and the innocent are condemned for being victims and nothing more.
Today, any Arab who stands up for the right of the Palestinians to exist as human beings (whether he does it verbally, physically or financially) is branded and condemned as a terrorist or as encouraging terrorism by the West, Israel and even some Arab governments. Our own people have turned into jailers and torturers in the employ of the West. Censoring our media, restricting all kinds of demonstrations condemning the actions of the Israelis against our Palestinian brothers.
The absurdity of the Arab world has reached such heights that certain people in our region refuse to meet the legally elected representative of the Palestinian people but rush to hold meetings and shake hands with the Israeli leaders.
Now, at this moment what is the reaction of the Arab leaders and the Arab League to the ethnic cleansing going on in Palestine? Their answer is one of defiant inaction, an aggressive surrender to the inevitable massacre of the Palestinians. The Palestinians are the first people to be exterminated live on TV. We could call it the Big Brother Holocaust, the reality TV of ethnic cleansing.
However, the greatest criminals are not the Israelis, for they are only following the natural instincts of a colonizing and thieving nation at any given moment in history or place. No, the real responsibility for the depth of depredation which the Palestinians suffer today lies at the door of every Arab. They might not bear the direct criminal responsibility for what is happening in Palestine but they surely bear the moral responsibility.
They know they can stop the tragedy; yet, they take no action and opt simply to change the TV channel and watch the World Cup.
- Reem Al Faisal is a Saudi photographer. She is based in Jeddah.
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Editorial: Fascism: An American reality
By Larry Pinkney
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jul 6, 2006, 01:07
The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word fascism as "a philosophy or system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic control, a strong centralized government usually headed by a dictator, and often a policy of belligerent nationalism." Moreover, and most importantly, it also defines fascism clearly and succinctly as "oppressive or dictatorial control." There are those who will sarcastically say that the political/social situation in and with America is not "that bad," when in fact things are far, far worse.
Whether or not one chooses to define this increasingly all-encompassing suppression of people in America as authoritarian, totalitarian or fascist is a ridiculously moot point for the overwhelming majority of people who have lost or are losing their already limited freedoms, their livelihoods and their very lives to the organized repression of this hypocritical, cynically racist and genocidal American state apparatus. The organized and sustained political, economic, social and cultural repression being waged by the American state against its own citizens and persons globally is nothing short of fascism.
At this precarious period in history, with repression intensifying on all levels, quibbling about whether or not America is technically fascist amounts to intellectual masturbation. The fact is that the internal and external repressive policies of the United States of America have already destroyed -- and continue to decimate -- millions of people inside America and throughout the world. Especially is this true with respect to the vast majority of people of color in the ghettos, reservations and barrios of the U.S., as well as in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Caribbean and elsewhere.
Contrary to the well perpetuated myth, fascism is not limited to storm troopers blatantly goose-stepping down streets and alleyways, engaging in bloody search and destroy missions. Germany's fascism under Adolf Hitler differed from Italy's fascism under Benito Mussolini, but they were both fascist nation states. Fascism has different forms, all of which are equally deadly, all of which must be identified, seriously resisted and stopped.
Complacently insisting that the organized state repressive apparatus of, in and by the United States must not be defined as fascism is incredibly dangerous, especially at this point in history. It's a bit like quibbling with a person who is in the death throes of drowning that he is not actually drowning but merely suffocating! No matter how it is defined, the person is dying, and immediate action is needed to save his or her life!
Whether it is defined as blatant fascism, benign fascism or so-called creeping fascism, it is still fascism; and if left unchecked, the end result is precisely the same: total and utter disenfranchisement under an authoritarian, repressive state apparatus. The urgency of this reality in America cannot be overstated.
The enormous internal and external destruction of peoples and cultures around the world caused by the fascistic policies of the United States -- cloaked in a mythical democracy -- have wreaked more havoc, misery and destruction upon peoples nationally and around the world than the blatantly fascist regimes of World War II Germany and Italy combined. Notwithstanding the over 100 million Black people who had previously been murdered as victims of Europe and America's African "legalized" slave trafficking, it should be remembered that many years subsequent, Adolf Hitler, in his published book "Mein Kampf," made it quite clear that the idea for waging the horrible genocide against Jews and other so-called "undesirables" had been borrowed from none other than the earlier genocide waged by the United States against the indigenous -- so called "Indian" -- peoples of America.
Ironically, many pundits of that 1930s era confidently and incorrectly argued that due to Germany's achievements in culture, politics, the arts and technology of that period, the unthinkable could never happen there. Obviously, they were wrong. Nevertheless, the enormous horrors inflicted by fascist Germany and Italy upon the world pale by comparison to those carried out by the much larger, deadlier and far more sophisticated United States of America, whose internal and external "news" and information propaganda machine would make the former fascist German and Italian propaganda machines green with envy.
Thus, to compare the contemporary United States, or any of its leaders, to the former fascist leaders Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini is utterly missing the point, as the U.S. is much, much worse, and its global power is far more encompassing and devastating.
It is important not to be fooled by the feigned surprise on the part of some at the limited, tip-of-the-iceberg revelations about U.S. torture, internal spying by the U.S. government and corporations, the militarization of the judicial process, massive national voter disenfranchisement and the demonstrated de facto contempt by the U.S. government and corporations for the Black victims of Hurricane Katrina, etc. Substantively, virtually none of these systemic practices are new but now are integrally part and parcel of an increasingly blatant form of American fascism.
No matter what individual may be the nominal "leader" of the United States, or what political party -- Republican or Democratic -- is in power, fascism has undeniably become an American reality. No matter what name or under what guise America cloaks its fascist policies, the undeniable fact is: America's own style of fascism is a reality here and now.
It is no wonder that Austrian born Arnold Schwarzenegger demonstrated no compunction or inhibition whatsoever in repeatedly and openly expressing his "admiration" for German fascist leader Adolf Hitler before going on later to become the Republican Party's governor of the state of California (see "Events Related to Schwarzenegger.")
Moreover, there is no sustained and overwhelming outrage and incensed repudiation of Schwarzenegger from the leadership of either the Democratic or Republican parties regarding his arrogant and chilling admiration for a fascist leader who was directly responsible for the dehumanization and murder of millions of people. A distinctly American version of fascism has taken root in this nation, and has created a political climate wherein politicians can openly embrace with admiration past fascist leaders without seriously jeopardizing their own political careers.
Furthermore, other than as an increasingly obvious propaganda tool to further its global hegemonic objectives, America's cynical racism and hypocrisy has made a meaningless mockery of words and phrases such as democracy, legality, freedom, fair judicial process and justice. This is a reality which most of the peoples of the world outside of the United States have already acknowledged.
Attempting to minimize the precariousness of the political situation in this nation by denying the reality of fascism in America does not change or stop it. Maintaining, like ostriches, the denial of fascism's active, significant existence and role in the American body politic, actually strengthens its stranglehold on the people of this nation and world. Only by removing our heads from the sand, facing up to, organizing against, resisting and struggling for systemic change here and now is there the real hope, for ourselves and for people around the world, of stopping and dismantling this fascist onslaught. Indeed, we can ill afford to do otherwise.
Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Email him at Lecconsult@aol.com.
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Editorial: Inequality and Plutocracy in America
by Rodrigue TremblayJuly 10, 2006
"Democracy [is] when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers."
Aristotle, (384-322 BC)
"Money becomes evil not when it is used to buy goods but when it is used to buy power... economic inequalities become evil when they are translated into political inequalities."
Samuel Huntington
One of the greatest benefits of a well functioning democracy is its capacity to bring about change: change of government, change of policies, change in the distribution of income and wealth, etc., and to avoid stagnation and immobilization. In any society, the tendency is for a few to concentrate power and wealth in their hands, leaving the many in a situation of dependence and despondency. The right to vote and to engage in political activity changes the balance of power in a country and opens the door for the establishment of a government, in Lincoln's words, "of the people, by the people, and for the people." However, too great a concentration of wealth inevitably brings forth corruption in government and a concentration of the tools of propaganda, both of which constitute the greatest threats to democracy.
The United States is technically a democratic republic, its leaders being elected at certain intervals. Economically, it is also a wealthy country, being endowed with a large and freely functioning domestic market. However, this is also a country where income and wealth inequalities are on the rise and where there is still a lot of poverty.
Some socio-economic indicators show that income and wealth inequalities are rising in the U. S. -For example, in 2005, chief executive officers (CEOs) in the United States earned 262 times the pay of an average worker, the second-highest level in the 40 years for which there is data. In other words, a CEO earned more in one workday than an average worker earned in the entire year. This was not always the case: In 1980, a CEO earned 42 times the average worker's pay, and the ratio was 85 times in 1990. Wealth concentration and poverty follow income inequality. Today, the richest one percent of Americans owns 40 percent of the nation's household wealth. On the other hand, one in five American children lives in deep poverty, while economic opportunity and the chances for social mobility are reduced for an ever-growing proportion of children.
The likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top five percent of income earners is just one percent, according to "Understanding Mobility in America", a study by economist Tom Hertz from American University. By contrast, a child born in a rich family had a 22 percent chance of also being rich as an adult. In other words, the chances of getting rich are about 20 times higher if one is born rich than if one is born into a low-income family. Even for children born in middle-class families (family incomes of $42,000 to $54,300), their chances of one day attaining the top five percent of income earners are only 1.8 percent. This is lower than in most other democratic countries. For example, intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.
One of the main reasons for poverty in the USA is the high proportion of American families, even among those who have at least one member who is working, who have no health plan whatsoever. A study by the Commonwealth Fund indicates that, in 2005, 41 percent of American workers did not have health insurance coverage. This amounts to an estimated 48 million American adults who spent any time uninsured in the past year. As a consequence, more than half of uninsured Americans either had problems paying their medical bills or had to go into debt to pay them. This is in a country where health care spending is climbing by more than 7 percent per year.
Another reason for increased income inequality in the future is the shift taking place in pensions for workers. An established trend in many companies is to reduce, freeze or eliminate pensions for ordinary workers, while increasing the pensions reserved for executives.
There are social and political consequences when income and wealth disparities become too great. A wealth aristocracy can appear that will demand special privileges in controlling various institutions, not the least of them being the government.
Presently, ultra right-wing politicians, with the support of ultra conservative media, are busy building a wealth aristocracy in the United States. They are busy cutting taxes for the very wealthy and for large corporations, while reducing assistance, pensions and social services to the very poor. They are content tilting the tax code in favor of the very rich and against the working poor, while freezing the minimum wage and lowering-and even abolishing-the tax on large fortunes. Meanwhile, middle- and working-class families are being priced out of college education for their children, because of cuts in government grant aid and the failure to extend the college tuition tax deduction. The end result will be a work force badly prepared for the 21st century. That may be what the conservatives really want, i.e. an uneducated work force which can be more easily manipulated.
The move toward an obscene concentration of wealth was reinforced, on June 22, 2006, when the House of Representatives, supposedly there to represent the people, passed a law to substantially cut the estate tax, by an estimated $750 billion for the first 10 years of implementation, after 2010. President George W. Bush has sought the complete repeal of the tax on large inherited fortunes, even though his administration has built up public deficits and the public debt by $1.3 trillion, between 2002 and 2005.
As a consequence of rising income and wealth inequalities in the U. S., politics has become more and more a rich man's game, supported by an army of lobbyists and their campaign cash, and a concentrated media spin machine. For example, in the 435-member House of Representatives, 123 elected officials earned at least one million dollars in 2005, according to released financial records made public each year. In the U. S. Senate, one third of them are millionaire income earners. By comparison, less than one percent of Americans make seven-figure incomes.
In conclusion, the United States seems to be moving more and more away from a government "of the people, by the people and for the people", towards a government of and for the rich and influential.
Rodrigue Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Also visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/
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Editorial: Democracy, Mexican Style - Part II
by Stephen Lendman
There's much happening in Mexico in the aftermath of the nation's most contentious election ever, but it began many months before the first vote was cast. The popularity of leftist opposition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) scared the ruling National Action Party (PAN) enough to get them to try to deny him the right to run for president in the election just concluded. In April, 2005, a commission of four members of the Chamber of Deputies (Mexico's Congress) held there was sufficient cause to suspect Obrador committed a crime when he ordered the construction of a service road to a hospital ignoring a judge's order against doing it. Obrador said he was just widening the road and stopped when he learned of the court order. The full Chamber ignored his explanation and then voted to strip him of his government immunity from prosecution so he could be indicted, have to stand trial and be constitutionally barred from holding or running for high office. The transparent scheme didn't work because the people of Mexico wouldn't tolerate it and turned out in mass street protests to support him.
That mass support succeeded in getting the ruling PAN to back down from its attempt to keep Obrador off the ballot but not in the shoddy campaign tactics they decided to use against him. Because of his popularity, Obrador was a serious candidate who would likely win easily in a fair election. But there's nothing fair about Mexican politics where the notions of dirty tricks and hardball tactics could have been invented. From early on in the campaign, the Mexican corporate media and ruling business-friendly right wing parties attacked Obrador viciously as an evil twin of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, falsely accusing him of receiving campaign funds from the Venezuelan President and being guilty of corruption during his time as mayor of Mexico City. The ads also accused him of being a "danger" for Mexico. In addition, government instigated street violence in an attempt to break a teachers strike in Oaxaca and to disrupt events in San Salvador Atenco created tension, stoked fear and were effectively used as political and PR tools to turn enough of the public against Lopez Obrador to erase his once insurmountable lead in the polls to a slim one on election day - an advantage easily overcome with the shenanigans the ruling party had in mind to use to assure its candidate won.
But Lopez Obrador was lucky PAN officials and their conspiratorial Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) allies didn't intend for him what state officials plotted and pulled off against two other noted state adversaries in the past who paid dearly. General Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican peasant rebel leader who supported agrarian reform and land redistribution in the battles of the Mexican Revolution (a Mexican Simon Bolivar), was assassinated by government troops in 1919. Then in March, 1994, leading opposition candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio met the same fate on the campaign trail in Tijuana. Obrador survived the shabby scheme to keep him off the ballot, was able to run as the opposition candidate, and only paid the price of a defeat at the polls (so far) in an election clearly stolen from him.
At this point Lopez Obrador is not going gentley "into that good night." Given the clear election irregularities, he's demanded the ballot boxes be opened and all votes be recounted manually. He has every right to ask for that and more with what already is known about the fraud committed against him. The preliminary vote totals were manipulated to show PAN candidate Felipe Calderon would be the winner, initially 3 million votes were never counted and only in hindsight 2.5 million of them were added to the totals, 900,000 supposedly void, blank and annulled ballots were declared null, discarded and never included in the official totals, 700,000 additional votes disappeared from missing precincts, thousands of voters were denied their franchise in strong Obrador precincts and much more.
In addition, it was learned that Felipe Calderon's brother-in-law Diego Hildebrando Zavala wrote the vote-counting software, and it's already been hacked. This new discovery is especially disturbing as whoever controls the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) computer systems can manipulate the vote process, control which votes get counted, which ones don't, and what the final vote tally will be. The opportunity and temptation for fraud was therefore in the hands of the declared winner's close family member and ally with every reason to believe he'd take full advantage. Why wouldn't he and the ruling party as well given the history of Mexican elections and the underhanded and hardball tactics the country's entrenched power interests are known to use. They'd never be willing to give up what they've always had an iron grip on and won't if they can get away with their scheme. But the way to stop them is with a full, vote-by-vote independently supervised manual recount and do it before any cast, counted or discared votes are manipulated or destroyed. That's the only antidote for computer fraud as well as to be able to salvage and include in the total as many of the known uncounted and valid discarded votes as possible. It all sounds like Florida, 2000 deja vu all over again, but we know how that one turned out.
Still, Lopez Obrador said he'll contest the election and demand a full recount. If he follows through on his challenge, he'll have to await a ruling by the Electoral Tribunal, known as Trife, which has until September 6 to consider his case. The new president takes office on December 1 so it's possible the electoral challenge will succeed. In the past, Trife has reversed some local elections including one in Obrador's home district of Tabasco in 2000, but it's very unlikely to reverse this one given the overwhelming pressure against it which in Mexico may include real and intimidating physical threats officials take very seriously.
The people of Mexico may have other ideas though. As many as 500,000 Obrador supporters (the corporate media lied and reported 100,000) held a mass protest demonstration against the announced election outcome in Mexico City's huge Zocalo plaza on July 8 to demand a full recount. The huge crowd chanted "No to fraud," and "You're not alone," as Lopez Obrador announced plans for a "national march for democracy" to begin on July 12 in each of Mexico's 300 election districts, converging in Mexico City on July 16, again in the Zocalo. He also accused President Fox of violating Mexican law that stipulates a president can't endorse or campaign for a candidate which the PAN did by running government sponsored advertisements touting its achievements. He went on to call President Fox a "traitor to democracy" and said the "stability of the nation" is at risk if a full vote recount isn't taken. Mr. Obrador also told an assembled news conference "I am going to defend our victory. This isn't over." The people of Mexico who support him certainly hope so.
The July 2 elections were also to elect members of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies. According to the official IFE count on July 7, the PAN won 206 of the 500 seats, followed by For the Good of All coalition consisting of the PRD and smaller Workers Party (PT) and Convergence Party with 160 seats. The Alliance for Mexico comprised of the PRI and small Green Ecological Party of Mexico (PVEM) won 121 seats. An incomplete final count in the Senate projected the PAN with 53 seats, 38 for the PRI coalition, 36 for the PRD coalition and 1 for PANAL.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Israel - Nazi Germany Revisited
The Wahbas' last meal
Haaretz
11/07/2006
It's a direct hit by the second missile fired by the excellent Israel Air Force pilot, and it comes right into the dining room through the ceiling. Fatma, three months pregnant, is killed on the spot by the shrapnel that hits her spine. Her brother, Dr. Ahmed, is also killed. His daughter-in-law miscarries her child, the little girl Farah is moderately injured and the baby of the family, Khaled, is critically injured in the head.
A puddle of blood collects on the floor.
They'd all sat down to have lunch at home: The mother Fatma, her daughter Farah, 2; her son Khaled, 1; Fatma's brother, Dr. Zakariya Ahmed; his daughter-in-law Shayma, who was nine months pregnant; and the 78-year-old grandmother. A family gathering in Khan Yunis in honor of the uncle, who'd arrived home six days earlier from Saudi Arabia.
A big boom is heard outside. Fatma hurriedly scoops up the littlest one and tries to escape into an inner room. But another boom follows immediately. This time it's a direct hit by the second missile fired by the excellent Israel Air Force pilot, and it comes right into the dining room through the ceiling. Fatma, three months pregnant, is killed on the spot by the shrapnel that hits her spine. Her brother, Dr. Ahmed, is also killed. His daughter-in-law miscarries her child, the little girl Farah is moderately injured and the baby of the family, Khaled, is critically injured in the head. A puddle of blood collects on the floor. Only the grandmother is unhurt. It will be many minutes before the ambulance arrives. This was the last meal of the Wahba family.
In neighboring Rafah, taxi driver Mohammed Wahba is transporting a family of vacationers to the beach. He hears about the disaster on the radio. His cell phone rings and on the line is his brother Nidal, the father of the family that was hit. "Come quick to get me," the father shouts. The two brothers rush to the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where they see the horror.
Before he became a cab driver, Mohammed worked for nine years at Tel Aviv University as the maintenance man for the Faculty of the Arts, and later for the Faculty of Law. He lived on Einstein Street in Ramat Aviv, and knew many professors by name. It's been 10 years now since he was permitted to enter his second city, Tel Aviv. Now he's here, having sat for 10 days in a row at the bedside of his toddler nephew, who is in grave condition in the intensive care unit at Dana Children's Hospital next to Ichilov.
Little Khaled is unconscious, paralyzed and on a respirator, wounded in the head by shrapnel from the missile. "I don't know who to blame. If it's the pilot, or whoever gave the order to attack. Who bears the responsibility?," he asks in his excellent Hebrew. The targeted assassination, which was aimed at a vehicle carrying members of the Popular Resistance Committees that was driving down the street, and fell instead right on the family in the middle of its lunch, he calls "an accident."
His brother Nidal, now a widower, calls all the time from Khan Yunis to ask how his unconscious son is doing. The Coordination and Liaison Office has already called to say the child will have to be brought back to Gaza, due to lack of funds to keep him hospitalized in Israel. The father and uncle are terribly worried about what that would mean. This week, Ibrahim Habib of Physicians for Human Rights tried to prevent the child from being returned to Gaza.
The Wahbas tried for years to have a child. They underwent fertility treatment in Gaza and finally, two and a half years ago, their daughter Farah was born. Khaled was born a year later. Nidal is a metallurgical engineer who studied in Germany and works as a supervisor in the professional schools in Gaza, and Fatma was a teacher. He is 40, she was 36. Their house is located under the "Welcome to Khan Yunis" sign at the northern entrance to the city, on the highway between Gaza and Rafah. Israeli tanks will probably be rolling down the road before long, but two weeks ago Wednesday, all was quiet in the city as the family sat down to a special lunch to celebrate the uncle's return from Saudi Arabia.
Mohammed was driving his cab through the streets of Rafah. Thirty-five years old, he was born in Rafah's Yavneh refugee camp and at the age of 14 came to Tel Aviv University, where he worked in the Student Association cafeteria. When he grew up, he became the maintenance man for the Faculty of the Arts. He lived in a rented room in the apartment of an elderly man named Yaakov Kleiner, on Einstein Street. He remembers the cigars favored by faculty dean Arnon Zuckerman and the times of the classes given by guest lecturers Haim Yavin (Thursday afternoon) and Rafik Halabi; he remembers student Zvika Hadar and theater professors David Zinder, Tom Levy and Hana Taragan. He especially enjoyed the international student film festival the department held every year. "It was so nice there," he says. He remembers the security people there, too, though not their names. And Livio Carmeli and his film archive.
From the Gilman Building, he remembers Prof. Israel Gershoni, and from the Faculty of Law, he remembers professors Eliezer Lederman, the late Menashe Shava, Kenneth Mann and Shlomo Shoham. All were very friendly to him. It was the best time of his life. In 1994, when entry to Israel was limited to married men with families, and he was still single, this nice period of his life came to an end. There was just one more time that he was able to enter Israel, and then he went directly to the Ramat Aviv campus. It was in 1997, right after his marriage, and he enjoyed a day full of memories. He hadn't been back since, until now, when he finds himself waiting by the door of the pediatric intensive care unit. Prof. Lederman has promised to come visit him.
It was the longest day of the year, June 21. At about 4:30 in the afternoon Mohammed Wahba was driving a family to the Rafah beach, not far from the ruins of Rafiah Yam, when a report came on the radio about another targeted assassination attempt. At first, the announcer said it was the "Barbawi family" that was hurt, and Mohammed was somewhat relieved. He didn't know them. But later, on his way back from the sea, the report was that a pregnant 36-year-old teacher named Fatma had been killed.
His heart skipped a beat. There was only one pregnant teacher named Fatma in Khan Yunis he thought - his sister-in-law. And then his brother Nidal called: "Did you listen to the news?" "No, I didn't hear it," he lied, to avoid scaring his brother. A brother-in-law who works at Nasser Hospital also called and confirmed Mohammed's worst fears. It was his brother's family that had been hurt by the missile. He picked up Nidal from the center of Rafah and together they drove to the hospital in Khan Yunis. Khaled was in critical condition, with extensive bleeding in the brain. Fatma and Dr. Ahmed were already dead. Farah was wounded in the back by shrapnel. Khaled was immediately taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza, where surgeons operated on his head. The grandmother told them afterward that she'd tried to lift Khaled off the floor, and that's when she'd seen that her daughter and son had been killed.
The intervention of a family friend, an American who lived for years in the Shabura camp in Rafah and called from America, led to Khaled being transferred to the hospital in Tel Aviv. The Light to the Nations organization, an American foundation, promised to pay for the treatment. Not the IDF, not the air force, not the Defense Ministry.
On Sunday, three days after the event, Khaled was transferred to hospital in Israel, accompanied by his uncle Mohammed. This week his condition was described as close to hopeless and the family was told he'd have to be taken back to Gaza. The doctors told Mohammed that "the situation is out of our hands." A spokeswoman for Ichilov Hospital said his condition is critical as a result of the injury to his head. At the beginning of the week, the defense minister's adviser had not replied to the request from Physicians for Human Rights that Khaled not be returned to Gaza. The boy's uncle, Mohammed, is convinced that bringing the child back to Gaza will seal his fate.
The IDF Spokesman, this week: "The IDF attack on June 21 was directed against a terror cell that was on its way to perpetrate a terror attack. The attack was carried out shortly after two previous aerial assaults in which, for various reasons, uninvolved Palestinian civilians were hurt. In this assault, lessons learned from previous assaults were already implemented, as far as going to greater lengths to ensure that no civilians are within the risk area.
However, for reasons that are not yet entirely clear, one of the two missiles that were fired deviated from the target at which it was directed. The result of this deviation was a strike on a residential building located dozens of meters from the target, a building occupied by the Palestinian civilians who were harmed.
"It should be noted that the method used by the IDF in performing such missions has been proven over the years as accurate and cautious, and in the majority of cases enables the IDF to act against terror organizations and activists who deliberately take shelter among and act from within a civilian population, under the cover of a population that is not involved in its activities.
"It should be emphasized that in a situation in which it is clearly seen that there is a risk to the population that is located near the target, the planned assault is then canceled, even when it is clearly known that the object of the attack constitutes a serious threat. Unfortunately, in ongoing combat of this sort, accidents happen and innocent civilians are harmed. We regret this, yet the responsibility lies entirely with the terror organizations and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority which does nothing to stop them.
"When the investigation of the incident is completed, the findings will be presented to the chief of staff."
"They always said the helicopters were the smartest weapons. Suddenly, it's the dumbest weapon," says Mohammed, bleary-eyed. "It's happened to other families, too. I don't know when it will stop. If it keeps on like this, I don't know how it will end. Who can put a stop to it? Only the two peoples. They're the ones with the pain and the suffering. Not the governments or the leaders. Only the peoples can put an end to this business. The Israelis and the Palestinians. Olmert's son doesn't serve in the army and Haniyeh's son doesn't go around with a rifle opposing the occupation."
How does it feel to be back in Tel Aviv?
"It feels quiet and safe here. Not like in Gaza. There, you feel unsafe all the time. Don't forget I'm a cab driver. Maybe they'll attack the car in front of me or behind me? It's like how I heard it was for you during the time of all the terror attacks."
His brother Nidal is in a bad state. He lives on coffee and cigarettes and suffers attacks of fury and anxiety. "What happened, happened, and who's gone is gone, but what about this boy?" he said to his brother this week on the phone. Every half-hour Mohammed enters the intensive care room to check on his nephew's condition. Khaled lies there unconscious, stitches criss-crossing his tiny head and tubes sticking out of his mouth and body. Mohammed says Khaled has actually moved a little bit in the past couple of days.
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UN warns of Gazans' struggle to survive
Conal Urquhart in Gaza City
Monday July 10, 2006
The Guardian
- Israeli forces destroy water tanks and mains
- Operation will continue indefinitely, says Olmert
The population of the Gaza Strip is "struggling to survive" as a result of Israel's two-week assault, according to the UN, with water and electricity shortages and the breakdown of the sewerage system leading to the pumping of raw sewage into the sea.
"Daily life is a misery. Ordinary people are struggling. We are running around trying to put plasters on everything," said John Ging, the head of operations of the UN agency which looks after Palestinian refugees. "It's a dangerous and desperate situation and it's a myth that there is no humanitarian crisis."
He said in the north of Gaza Israeli forces had shot and destroyed rooftop water tanks and mains, while in the south more than 1,000 people had been forced to leave their homes. Rafah had no electricity because the army would not allow the UN to fix a minor fault, while the rest of Gaza had electricity for six hours a day.
Israeli forces began attacking Gaza after Palestinians captured Corporal Gilad Shalit in a raid on June 25. They have bombed a power station and roads, and killed more than 40 people, including civilians, in an attempt to secure his release and suppress rocket fire at Israel.
Yesterday Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, rejected criticism and said the operation would continue indefinitely. "We're talking about a war that will continue for a long time and it is complicated," he was quoted as saying during a cabinet meeting. "This is a war for which we cannot set down a timetable and we can't say how long it will continue."
An Israeli aircraft fired a missile at militants in Rafah yesterday but missed, killing a bystander and injuring four others.
Meanwhile, Ayman Hajaj buried his mother, brother and sister after they were killed by an Israeli missile that hit their garden as they drank tea outside on Saturday. Mr Hajaj, 28, said he had walked into the garden to see a flash of light and hear a deafening bang. He looked down and saw his mother and sister lying dead, then caught sight of his brother, whose arms were almost hanging off his body. "I was in a daze and my ears were ringing. I walked through the bodies for 10 metres before I realised what had happened. Four of my brothers were lying injured. I lifted one and carried him outside and an ambulance was already there."
Mr Hajaj's family live close to Karni crossing, where goods enter and leave Gaza. Israeli forces entered the area on Saturday and there has been sporadic fighting. Mr Hajaj said the family had stayed inside when it seemed dangerous but went to the walled garden at around 7.30pm to roast corn and drink tea. Witnesses believe that an Israeli unmanned aircraft fired the missile.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said the air force had fired a missile at a group of gunmen and it had hit them.
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Palestinian official says Gaza in humanitarian crisis
www.chinaview.cn 2006-07-11 17:43:47
RAMALLAH, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Tuesday that the Gaza Strip was in a humanitarian crisis against the backdrop of an ongoing massive Israeli offensive.
Terming the situation in Gaza as "a true humanitarian crisis", Erekat said, "We confirm to the world that there is a hard and complicated humanitarian crisis for 1.4 million Gazans who suffer sharp shortages of food, medicine and electricity."
The senior Palestinian official also urged international aid organizations to beef up their activities in Gaza.
"We have to work on all levels (to solve the crisis)," said Erekat, adding that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had flown to Jordan on late Monday for talks with Jordanian King Abdullah IIon Tuesday.
Abbas will urge Jordan to exercise its influence on Israel to end the military operation in Gaza, said Erekat.
"The president is making contacts with Arab and foreign countries in a bid to solve Gaza's plight in peaceful and diplomatic ways," he added.
Israel has shut down crossings on the Gaza borders as its forces pressed ahead a massive ground and air offensive in the Gaza Strip to free an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Palestinian militants and prevent Palestinian militants from firing rockets onto Israel.
Israeli airstrikes have damaged the only power plant in Gaza and key infrastructure including roads, bridges and main water and electricity supply lines.
Aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza if the Israeli offensive and sealing of Gaza continue.
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Israel 'terrorizing' entire Palestinian nation, say British Jews
July 7, 2006
IRNA
Some 300 prominent British Jews Friday condemned Israel for its brutal invasion of Gaza and urged the UK government to achieve an immediate ceasefire.
The Zionist regime is "using its enormously superior military might to terrorize an entire people," they said in a full-page petition published in the Times newspaper.
"Bombing power stations and cutting off fuel supplies deprives people of electricity, refrigeration, pumped drinking water and sewage disposal services. It holds hostage hospital patients on life support systems, or undergoing dialysis," the petition said.
The well-known British figures, describing themselves as Jews for Justice for Palestinians (Jfjfp), included playwright Harold Pinter, film director Mike Leigh, historian Professor Eric Hobsbawn, and actor Miriam Margoyles as well as a large number of academics.
They said that Israel was trying to present an isolated incident regarding the capture of a soldier, while ignoring their "regular snatching of Palestinians from their home."
There were "thousands" of Palestinians held without trial, including women and children.
Jfjfp spokesman Dan Judelson said the prominent Jews "simply do not see how Israel can defend attacking civilian targets such as water works and power supply."
"There are those in the community who say that Jews should not criticize Israel. But Israel is damaging itself through this kind of action," Judelson said.
He told the BBC that many people believed the attacks on Palestinian infrastructure "were less about liberating Cpl Shalit and more about seeking a pretext to over-throw Hamas."
Their petition criticized the response by the US and its allies in calling for restraint as "desperately inadequate."
It was a situation that requires "determined action by the international community," it warned.
"We watch with horror the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. Everything reasonable must be done to secure Corporal Gilad Shalit's safe release but nothing Israel is doing contributes to that aim," it warned.
The Jewish leaders called on the British public to write to their MPs to demand that the UK government breaks its silence and acts "to achieve an immediate ceasefire."
Their community leaders were also urged to write to the Israeli Embassy to "make them understand their actions are wrong, their explanations unconvincing."
Comment: As we noted in yesterday's editorial, "Zionist Israel, The True Enemy Of The Israeli People", the Zionist Israeli government is not acting on the will of the Israeli Jewish people, it is acting on its own agenda which is putting the lives of ordinary Jews in serious peril.
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Israel batters Gaza with airstrikes, death toll hits 52
Adel Zaanoun
AFP
July 11, 2006
GAZA CITY, Gaza -- Israel battered the Gaza Strip with fresh airstrikes on Tuesday as troops stood poised to launch more incursions in a deadly offensive that has killed more than 50 Palestinians in a week.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defended the operation, aimed at securing the release of an abducted teenage soldier and halting rocket attacks, despite widespread international criticism that the assault has been disproportionate.
A Palestinian security officer was killed and six people were wounded in the latest Israeli airstrikes hitting northern Gaza, medical sources said, as the punishing aerial campaign moved into a third week since the soldier's capture.
The raids - which the Israeli military said targeted rockets and a "cell about to launch them" - came just one day after nine Palestinians died from Israeli fire around the impoverished and radicalized Gaza Strip.
The dead man was named as Ahmed Shahid. Medics said that he was struck by a missile fired toward a car. The army said that the attack targeted a vehicle used to reach a rocket-launch site and loaded with rockets in the Beit Hanun area.
The local head of Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Abu Ghazal, was in the targeted vehicle but managed to escape unharmed, said a spokesman for the group, an offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement.
A 12-year-old boy who was wounded in an airstrike on July 6 died of his wounds, bringing to 52 the number of Palestinians killed in the operation, on top of one Israeli soldier who was killed by friendly fire during clashes.
Despite the mounting death toll, defense sources said that the government had given the military authority to continue, and if necessary, intensify the offensive, with infantry and armor poised to carry out "in-depth" incursions.
Approval was granted during consultations late on Monday between Olmert and defense minister Amir Peretz.
Troops are still massed on the eastern and northern borders of the densely-populated Gaza Strip, as well as stationed east of Gaza City and in the south near a defunct airport.
Olmert was on Tuesday to confer again with military commanders to discuss the offensive, the largest operation since Israel pulled out of Gaza last September.
The prime minister has refused to negotiate with Hamas or free Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit, vowing that the assault will continue "in places, in time, in measures" at Israel's convenience.
Khaled Meshaal, the exiled political chief of Hamas, which formed a Palestinian government last March, insists that the captured soldier at the heart of the crisis will not be freed without a swap for prisoners jailed in Israel.
"I think that once the Qassam [rocket] shooting will be stopped and the terrorist actions against innocent civilians will be halted altogether, there will be no need for any Israeli action in Gaza," Olmert said.
Aid groups have expressed concern about the difficulties of providing assistance to 1.4 million people living in Gaza following months of financial crisis and the suspension of direct Western aid to the Hamas-led government.
The European Commission announced on Tuesday that it was sending emergency fuel supplies to Gaza through an international mechanism set up to meet basic Palestinian needs after the West cut direct aid to the Hamas-led government.
The fuel, the first aid to flow through the mechanism, was sent to public hospitals for use in generators after the Israeli air force last week destroyed electricity transformers at the only power plant in the territory.
Israel has said that its troops are likely to be in for the long haul, but denied that the offensive aimed to topple the Hamas-led government, boycotted by the West and whose offices have been directly targeted in the operation.
Hamas' armed wing claims to be holding the soldier, along with two other militant groups, the Popular Resistance Committees and the Army of Islam, since the conscript was abducted during an attack on an army post on June 25.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was due to arrive in the region on Tuesday for separate talks with Olmert and Abbas on a trip that he hopes will help calm tensions.
Comment: 52 Palestinians dead! Many of them civilians! Allegedly for ONE Israeli soldier??! Who will stop Israel from committing Genocide as the world sits and watches?!
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'Apartheid Israel' worse than apartheid SA
Mail and Guardian Online
10 July 2006
Johannesburg, South Africa - The "apartheid Israel state" is worse than the apartheid that was conducted in South Africa, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) president Willie Madisha said on Monday.
He said Palestinians were being attacked with heavy machinery and tanks used in war, which had never happened in South Africa.
Cosatu and other organisations supporting Palestine have called on government to end diplomatic relations with Israel and establish boycotts and sanctions such as those against apartheid South Africa.
Israel has launched several attacks on Gaza, bombing its main university and firing missiles that have killed Palestinian bystanders.
This follows the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinians.
"We see no justification for this attack," said Palestinian ambassador to South Africa Ali Hamileh.
He said while the whole world was talking about one Israeli soldier, more than 10 000 Palestinians were being kept in Israeli jails.
"My leadership made it clear ... the soldier can be released immediately if Israel responds to mediation. The demand for exchange of prisoners is justified by international law. We are not demanding something unacceptable," he said.
Professor of political science Virginia Tilley said South Africa was one of the only places where a vision had been brought forward to address collective punishment of perceived inferiority.
"I can't imagine a better beacon in that struggle than this country and it has stood back. If there is any moral authority in South Africa, it must come into play now," she said.
Madisha said Israel should be seen as an apartheid state and the same sanctions must be applied that were established against South Africa.
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Big Papers Spin Coverage Of Palestine
Znet
Patrick O Conner
5/7/2006
One element fueling the current crisis in Gaza is the ongoing failure of US corporate media coverage of Israel/Palestine. US policy, public opinion and mainstream media coverage of Israel/Palestine are all dangerously biased towards Israel. Media coverage both reflects and influences policy and public opinion. Media coverage of events in Gaza again illustrates how the US mainstream media privileges the Israeli narrative, and frequently ignores both Palestinian experiences and international law, providing the US public and policymakers with only part of the story.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted that he intended to commit war crimes in Gaza, telling his cabinet that he wanted "no one to be able to sleep tonight in Gaza". Olmert thus officially acknowledged Israel's policy of collectively punishing 1.4 million Palestinians, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. But none of the US' three leading newspapers - The New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times - reported Olmert's statement, even though it was widely quoted around the world.
In the last week, these three leading US papers all also published editorials strongly supporting Israel's right to "retaliate" after the capture of an Israeli soldier. Their editorials never mentioned a single element of Israel's brutal 10 month siege on Gaza. In a reminder of The Washington Post's editorial advocacy of the Iraq war, The Post took the most belligerent position, applauding Israeli "restraint" and approving an Israeli overthrow of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Although the major newspapers have published some good articles reporting Palestinians' views in the last days, their overall bias towards Israel has been glaring.
On July 2 Ehud Olmert told his cabinet that, "I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza. I want them to know what it's like" in Israel's communities near Gaza that have been hit by Palestinian Qassam rockets. His statement referred directly to Israel's practices of waking Palestinians in the middle of the night by repeatedly flying jets overhead that create sonic booms, and of shelling Gaza at night. Additionally, Israel keeps Gazans awake at night with worry about poverty, siege, imminent attack, and lack of electricity, water, fuel and food. Olmert's statement was widely reported in the Israeli media, and by the Associated Press, The Chicago Tribune, The International Herald Tribune, and the UK's Guardian, among others. A google news search for his quote yields 279 articles, mostly from newspaper websites around the US. Some of these papers undoubtedly printed this story.
Yet there was no hint of Olmert's words in LA Times or Washington Post. The New York Times' coverage is more interesting. New York Times' correspondents Steven Erlanger and Ian Fisher reported the quote in an on-line article that was also published in the International Herald Tribune. However, the quote never appeared in the Times' print edition. The Times' editors seem to have decided that Olmert's words were not "fit to print," and deleted them from their journalists' report. The conspicuous absence of such a widely reported and telling quote raises the possibility that the leading US papers actively avoid printing information that makes Israel look too obviously bad.
What is certain is that the leading US papers generally omit the frameworks of human rights and international law as well as related concepts like collective punishment, and proportionality, all of which have been consistently violated by Israel. On July 3, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem specifically criticized Olmert's statement, saying that, "The use of sonic booms flagrantly breaches a number of provisions of international humanitarian law. The most significant provision is the prohibition on collective punishment. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention... categorically states that "Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited." In addition to criticizing sonic booms, Human Rights Watch noted on June 29 that "The laws of war prohibit attacks on "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population." Israel's attack on Gaza's only power plant is in violation of its obligation to safeguard such objects from attack."
Though collective punishment of Palestinians has historically been a cornerstone of Israeli policy, and characterizes Israel's siege of Gaza, the US' three leading papers have used the phrase "collective punishment" just four times since heightened crisis began on June 25. Each paper cited the same statement by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas once, and The New York Times also quoted a Palestinian grocery store owner. These same newspapers printed the phrase "collective punishment" a combined total of only six other times this year in their reporting on Israel/Palestine. Since June 25 those papers used the words "terrorism" or "terrorist" 28 times to describe Palestinians, while using "occupation" only six times to describe Israeli actions. Citations of the illegality of Israeli settlements, the Wall, home demolitions, detention of Palestinians, and many other measures are similarly rare. While these newspapers do document the humanitarian crises that Palestinians endure, they generally avoid suggesting that Palestinians have rights like Israelis, or that there is an accepted body of law that should be applied not just to Palestinian attacks, but also to Israeli actions.
Similarly, in taking positions on the current crisis, these newspapers' editorial boards completely erased Israel's most recent human rights violations. All three papers blamed only Hamas. The New York Times June 29 editorial noted "reckless Hamas provocations," and The Washington Post's July 1 editorial "Hamas's War" highlighted Hamas' "acts of terrorism and war." Writing as if history began with the June 25 capture of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinian attack materialized from thin air, none of their editorials even hints at Israel's disproportionate violence - Israel's 39 year military occupation; the 176 Palestinians killed in 2006, many of them civilians and children, compared to 16 Israelis killed; 8300 Israeli shells launched into Gaza this year compared with 840 Palestinian rockets launched towards Israel; on-going Israeli land seizure; or Israel's tightening siege of Gaza. Only The New York Times mentioned that Hamas was now breaking a unilateral 16 month truce. Israeli newspaper editorials have been more nuanced and balanced than these US editorials.
None of the editorials noted that Palestinians killed and captured Israeli soldiers implementing a siege of Gaza. None noted the irony that Palestinians were holding a single Israeli soldier prisoner, while Israel is holding 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, many civilians held without due process, and some enduring tortu