| Author | Message | | Guest | |  | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2002 8:43 am Post subject: Ominous signs |
| Ominous signs
Arab News Editorial 11 November 2002
Little can contribute to a Middle East peace following the announcement of early general elections in Israel. The American “road map” leading to a Palestinian state and security for the Israelis — already a daunting task to implement — now faces certain delay and an uncertain outcome. Before the elections, though, comes even more uncertainty as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon must first fight to defend his leadership of the Likud Party against the challenge from former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two have already embarked on a course of confrontation that is expected to last until their fate is decided at Likud primaries later this month. It promises to be a tough campaign as seen by the uncompromising stand already taken by Netanyahu after he was sworn-in last week as interim foreign minister. “I promise you one thing,” Netanyahu told Israeli television. “By the end of 2003 there will not be a PLO terror state created here.” Netanyahu’s campaign strategy is to pose as being tougher than Sharon toward the Palestinians — a hard act to follow but not necessarily for Netanyahu. He failed to implement a single item in the 1998 Wye River peace accord with the Palestinians that he signed and now rejects the idea of a Palestinian state being set up at all. And he also believes that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat should be deported. As prime minister, Netanyahu said he would never compromise on the issue of land for peace and he stayed true to his word. While former leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres had supported the return of land to the Arabs as a means of winning security, Netanyahu’s view was that security was paramount.
Netanyahu was in fact one of the most right-wing prime ministers in Israel’s history. And since his removal from power in 1999 he has moved even further to the right in his views on the Palestinian issue. So aggressive has been Netanyahu’s position that US officials are unwilling to treat his statements as simply campaign rhetoric. They have been studying the text of his comments after he was quoted as telling reporters that President George W. Bush’s proposals were not currently on the agenda. Daniel Kurtzer, the US ambassador to Israel, was forced to hold an impromptu meeting with Sharon last week about his foreign minister’s remarks. Sharon assured Washington that the early elections will not halt discussions on Bush’s road map to eventual Palestinian statehood. Sharon was of course, projecting himself as the embodiment of responsibility and restraint whereas he is no less a hard-liner than Netanyahu with regard to the Palestinians. The record speaks for itself. His 20-month-old national unity government reconquered the West Bank, destroyed the Palestinian Authority and killed over 1,600 Palestinians. What if Netanyahu was to defeat Sharon in a run-off for the Likud leadership and the same public was to return him as prime minister at the head of a more hawkish government?
Such a scenario is likely. Since the outbreak of the intifada, there has been a rightward shift in Israeli society and as a result, Netanyahu could emerge victorious and the hoped-for three-year timetable for peace would be vulnerable in the extreme. The Israeli poll is a hurdle even if the Israel-Palestinian conflict was the only crisis in the Middle East. But any peace progress is further complicated by the other crisis — Iraq. The Security Council resolution might have brought Washington and Baghdad a step closer to war, not peace. In the event, the Arab-Israeli peace process might grind to a complete halt as America turns its attention elsewhere. US inaction will thus simply fuel suspicions that it is preoccupied by Iraq at the expense of resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. And what Israel’s role will be if war breaks out will have a direct bearing on how any peace initiative will eventually play out. | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2002 12:00 pm Post subject: Apocalypse Soon |
| Apocalypse Soon
by Ann Pettifer
Dissident Voice
November 8, 2002
____________________
At the end of August, Jonathan Freedland -- a senior journalist at the
Guardian, a liberal British newspaper -- interviewed Britain's Chief Rabbi,
Jonathan Sacks. It caused a furor: a voice that does not echo the party
line is not tolerated. The scholarly Sacks belongs to the Orthodox wing of
Judaism and was well known in the 1980s for being Margaret Thatcher's
favorite clergyperson: there was the shared admiration for Victorian family
values and neo-liberal economics. Rabbi Sacks never embarrassed his Prime
Minister with crusades for social justice, and on issues like homosexuality
he was impeccably Levitical. Within his own faith community his support for
the state of Israel was unwavering; not a single word of criticism ever
passed his lips - until now.
In his conversation with Freedland, Rabbi Sacks was emphatic about how
besieged Israelis felt. Sickened by suicide bombing, he expressed
frustration with the Palestinians for not seizing the prospects for peace
which he felt were offered by the Oslo agreement. But then Sacks did the
unthinkable - he volunteered a temperate, cautious even, reading of
Israel's 35-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It doesn't square,
he said, with Yahweh's admonition, repeated 36 times in the Mosaic books:
"You were exiled in order to know what it feels like to be exiles." Sacks
sees the current situation as "nothing less than tragic." The occupation is
forcing Israel "into postures that are at odds with its deepest ideals." To
underscore his point he quotes the 12th century Jewish sage Maimonides:
"Israel did not long for the Messiah so it could lord it over other
nations."
His remarks created a rumpus, both inside Israel and across the diaspora.
There were calls from the Jerusalem Post for Sacks' resignation. He had
made himself irrelevant, the paper thundered. Other rabbis pronounced his
statement "far beyond the pale." The attacks were surprisingly hostile and
left Sacks shaken. Gerald Kaufmann, a Member of Parliament for more than 30
years, shrewdly observed that Rabbi Sacks had not encountered Jewish abuse
before, had never been called a self-hating Jew as he, Kaufmann, often has
-- as when he announced that he would not be visiting Israel again until
the occupation ended. (In a film he made for the BBC, Kaufmann pays lyrical
tribute to his first visit in the 1960s.) However, in a follow-up piece,
Jonathan Freedland went on to commend Rabbi Sacks for coming down on the
right side of the issue. History, said Freedland, is certain to judge the
occupation harshly and he called upon the rest of the Jewish world to
decide where it stands on "this folly."
A couple of years ago, just before the second intifada, I had the
opportunity to visit Gaza. On the day after our arrival in Israel -- the
spouse was there to lecture on post-apartheid South Africa -- we had the
chance to accompany a small group of progressive Knesset members to Gaza.
They were going to gather evidence from Palestinian fishermen being
harassed by young conscripts in the Israeli navy. On a very cold March day,
we listened as these barefoot men told their harrowing stories. Very early
in the morning and again late in the afternoon, we had also observed the
rituals of Palestinian humiliation at checkpoints in which the parallels
with apartheid South Africa were obvious.
The gut-wrenching poverty of the area was thrown into high relief by the
settlements we passed: neat villages behind high walls, razor wire and gun
emplacements. Settler children were in colorful costumes for the feast of
Purim. On our side of the barricades exhausted looking Palestinian children
rode or drove scrawny donkeys. A few days later, the University where the
spouse had lectured sent a car to drive us from the Negev to Jerusalem. Our
host, an old friend, was with us. The Israeli driver asked her, in Hebrew,
if it would be OK for us to take the route through the Occupied
Territories, which we did. At one point a toxic smell wafted through the
open windows and I wondered out loud about its source. Our driver made a
jocular remark, again in Hebrew, which our companion translated: "He says
it's dead Arab -- an Arab graveyard." The racism was reflexive.
The vitriol leveled at Rabbi Sacks surprised me, and it was almost
certainly coming from Jews who have never witnessed the Occupation first
hand. I thought such harsh treatment was reserved for the likes of an
Israeli friend who actively opposes the Likud government and writes
excoriating pieces on the occupation for the Israeli and American press.
(Now back in Israel, he had come to Notre Dame to work for his doctorate --
after having done military service, in the course of which he sustained a
severe combat injury from a grenade.) The abuse this man gets goes way
beyond being called a self-hating Jew. I have seen some of the e-mails.
They are vile. From the safety of his perch in the natural sciences at
Notre Dame, a Jewish professor wrote: "Please do us all a favor and visit
all the discos, pizza places, dining halls, malls and super markets you
can. Perhaps one of these days you will be in the path of those liberators
of Palestinian suffering and be blown right out of this world." And someone
who guest lectures at synagogues and to Jewish organizations in South Bend
tells me that very senior people often wish my friend dead -- in the most
graphic of terms.
Such barbaric attempts to silence the critics of occupation are inexcusable
and, moreover, inexplicable given that Israeli colonialism and the settler
communities appear to have won the political battle in Israel and, more
importantly, in the US. AIPAC (the American Israeli Public Affairs
Committee -- otherwise known as the Israeli lobby) has spent vast amounts
of money on politicians, Republicans and Democrats, to ensure that Israel's
government gets to write its own ticket. The real coup, however, has been
in the Pentagon where Jewish-Americans Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and
Richard Perle are calling the shots. Not only do these men back the
right-wing Likud Party's policies on the Occupied Territories and the
settlers, they helped to formulate them. Douglas Feith, in a previous
incarnation as policy chairman of the National Unity Coalition for Israel,
argued that Israel should re-occupy all land ceded to the Palestinian
Authority, even as he acknowledged that "the price in blood would be high."
This sentiment is not very different from one expressed by the ultra-right
leader of Israel's National Religious Party and quoted in Freedland's
Guardian piece: he called Israel's Arab citizens "a cancer to be removed."
(To which Rabbi Sacks responded, to his credit, "God forbid.")
Furthermore, the Pentagon troika has skilled propagandists in Jewish
neo-cons like the ubiquitous David Brooks and William Kristol, both at the
influential Weekly Standard which has become a wholly owned subsidiary of
the Pentagon. And, as an article in The Nation points out, the editorial
page at the Washington Post is also resolutely in the Pentagon's corner.
Now Perle, Woflowitz and Feith are planning the war against Saddam Hussein,
at the end of which the issue of the Occupied Territories, they hope, will
be settled once and for all in Israel's favor. Anatol Lieven, a senior
associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing in The
London Review of Books, argues that another Gulf war would be
"breathtakingly reckless." The push is coming from men, in Washington and
Jerusalem, obsessed with power who "take an extremely unreal view of the
rest of the world and are insensitive to the point of autism when it comes
to the character and motivation of others." Still, Lieven says, should
things go wrong and war ignite a conflagration in the Middle East, it might
at least trigger a discussion and bring into the open "the calamitous role
of the Israeli lobby" in US politics.
The lobby has been successful in getting the media and politicians to
change the subject whenever debate about weaponsofmassdestruction (as Gore
Vidal now calls them) turns to Israel. An unstated assumption is that
Israel, as a rational polity, can be trusted never to do anything rash or
vengeful. This, I think, underestimates the rabid strain of Jewish
fundamentalism in Israeli politics. Some years ago, I was part of a
Jewish-Christian dialogue in which participants were drawn from the
University and the local community. I still recall the chilling response
from an Israeli rabbi - a visiting scholar in the Notre Dame Theology
Department - during an energetic discussion of the Occupied Territories.
The rabbi insisted they were necessary for Israel's security and went on to
warn that should Israel ever feel threatened, it would not hesitate "to
bring down the whole Temple." His threat, not in the least veiled, was made
in the context of Israel being a nuclear power.
A last word on the dangers posed to world peace should go to a Californian
rabbi, Haim Dov Beliak , who studied at the Merkaz Harav yeshiva in Israel
when it was the ideological center for the settler movement. He is quoted
in a sober analysis (published recently in the National Catholic Reporter)
of the apocalyptic, Christian Zionist movement which supports both the
Occupation and the settlements. Rabbi Beliak is troubled that "the American
public knows little about the settlers; there is a profound lack of
curiosity about them." They are, he believes, "deeply problematic because
they are going to cause World War III. They are not dealing with normal
political reality. There is a complete denial of any rights Arabs might
have."
** Ann Pettifer is a freelance writer and the publisher of Common Sense,
the alternative newspaper at the University of Notre Dame. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2002 3:16 pm Post subject: JINSA ZIONIST EXTREMIST (LEDEEN) MENTIONED BELOW |
| Bush is intent on painting allies and enemies in the Middle East as evil
By Robert Fisk
10 September 2002
The crucial question remains: is the Iraqi President mad as well as bad?
Just as Americans are recovering from the harrowing television re-runs of the 11 September attacks, their President is going to launch the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since the British and French parcelled out the Arab lands after the 1914-18 war. When he addresses the United Nations on Thursday, George Bush will be threatening not only Iraq – which had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes against humanity in New York and Washington – but Syria, Iran and, by extension, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The Syrian Accountability Act, which accuses Damascus of supporting "terrorism", will come into force as President Bush is speaking and will follow only days after the State Department branded the Lebanese Hizbollah as the "A-team of terrorism", more dangerous even than Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida. Like Iraq, the Hizbollah had nothing to do with the 11 September attacks – indeed, they were among the first to condemn them – but the White House now seems set on painting allies and enemies alike in the Middle East as a focus of evil.
Only The Nation among all of America's newspapers and magazines has dared to point out that a large number of former Israeli lobbyists are now working within the American administration and the Bush plans for the Middle East – which could cause a massive political upheaval in the Arab world – fit perfectly into Israel's own dreams for the region. The magazine listed Vice-President Dick Cheney – the arch-hawk in the US administration – and John Bolton, now under-secretary of state for Arms Control, with Douglas Feith, the third most senior executive at the Pentagon, as members of the advisory board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) before joining the Bush government. Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, is still an adviser on the institute, as is the former CIA director James Woolsey.
Michael Ledeen, described by The Nation as "one of the most influential 'Jinsans' in Washington" has been calling for "total war" against "terror" – with "regime change" for Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. Mr Perle advises the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld – who refers to the West Bank and Gaza as "the so-called occupied territories" – and arranged the anti-Saudi "kernel of evil" briefing by Laurent Murawiec that so outraged the Saudi royal family last month. The Saudi regime may itself be in great danger as the princes of the House of Saud attempt to seize more power for themselves in advance of the depart-ure of the dying King Fahd.
Jinsa's website says it exists to "inform the American defence and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East". Next month, Michael Rubin of the right-wing and pro-Israeli American Enterprise Institute – who referred to the outgoing UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson as an abettor of "terrorism" – joins the US Defence Department as an Iran-Iraq "expert".
According to The Nation, Irving Moskovitz, the California bingo magnate who has funded settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, is a donor as well as a director of Jinsa.
President Bush, of course, will not be talking about the influence of these pro-Israeli lobbyists when he presents his vision of the Middle East at the United Nations on Thursday.
Nor will he give the slightest indication that the region is, in the words of its own kings and dictators, a powder keg of resentment and anger. The tectonic plates of the Arab world are now grinding with increasing violence. Into this political earthquake zone, Mr Bush now seems intent on leading his country, with his loyal British ally.
Most of today's Arab nations were fashioned out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France in the aftermath of the First World War – and Palestinians still blame Britain today for supporting the formation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Both European nations stationed tens of thousands of troops across the region, suppressing Arab revolts in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon – itself created by the French at the request of its Christian Maronite community. The whole colonial framework led to the loss of tens of thousands of lives before both the British and French retreated from the Middle East.
Now President Bush seems set on following the colonial powers into the region for another military and political adventure – ostensibly to spread "democracy" among those nations it most despises (Iraq, Palestine and Iran) but in fact more likely to increase American control of an increasingly anti-Western Arab world.
The Arabs themselves warn that this will lead to massive instability and widespread violence. The Israelis – and their allies in the US administration – are hell bent on the whole shebang. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2002 9:58 am Post subject: Zionist Lackey Pat Clawson Pushing Iraq Invasion |
| Zionist Lackey Pat Clawson Pushing Iraq Invasion
I keep seeing this horrible Pat Clawson (who is war hawking to invade Iraq) interviewed on CNN and other programs.. Then I went to the Institute that he is affiliated with, and it couldn't be more Zionist:
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/ | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
