America can now imprison, torture and shoot American citizens at will:

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02102010.html

As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui an American citizen of Pakistani origin might have been the first.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Her three young children were with her at the time she was abducted, one an eight-month old baby. She has no idea what has become of her two youngest children. Her oldest child, 7 years old, was also incarcerated in Bagram and subjected to similar abuse and horrors.

Siddiqui has never been charged with any terrorism-related offense. A British journalist, hearing her piercing screams as she was being tortured, disclosed her presence. An embarrassed U.S. government responded to the disclosure by sending Siddiqui to the U.S. for trial on the trumped-up charge that while a captive, she grabbed a U.S. soldier’s rifle and fired two shots attempting to shoot him. The charge apparently originated as a U.S. soldier’s excuse for shooting Dr. Siddiqui twice in the stomach resulting in her near death.

On February 4, Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a New York jury for attempted murder. The only evidence presented against her was the charge itself and an unsubstantiated claim that she had once taken a pistol-firing course at an American firing range. No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier. No evidence was presented that a weapon was fired, no bullets, no shell casings, no bullet holes. Just an accusation.
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oh and read this about how the American army just shoots unarmed students ( of course they make a fuss when Iran just arrests students,) the incident is called the kent state massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Jeffrey Miller transferred to Kent State University from Michigan State in 1970. He was a smart kid and had many friends. When first arriving at Kent State Miller pledged Phi Kappa Tau fraternity and became a member. On May 4, 1970 he was shot and killed by an Ohio National Guardsmen in the Kent State shootings. Miller was part of a large group of unarmed students who gathered on the Kent State campus to protest the U.S. war efforts, especially the recently announced invasion of Cambodia. At some point the guardsmen became agitated and fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others. There was a significant national response to the incident and many students all over the U.S. conducted a walk out and strike. Jeffrey Millers last photograph is truly a sad site. John Filo was on campus the day of the shooting and took some iconic images. One of them was the Pulitzer Prize-winning picture of a young girl screaming while leaning over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller. It is one of the most famous pictures in U.S. history and shows the realism of the event. Jeffrey Miller was a kind hearted passionate man who was murdered at a young age. I strongly feel that the final picture of Jeffrey is a fitting tribute to his life and has helped teach a generation about an important cause.

Barack Obummer

There was a time when the Arab world, and indeed the whole world was transfixed by a black man running for president. It was quite a novelty, a historical first. Could this really be happening? Had America finally changed? Had it buried the hatchet of a violent past and transcended it’s deep rooted, just under the surface racism? I’ll admit, I was taken aback by all this too, the cynic in me receded for a while and I was beginning to see a glimmer of distant light. All that changed of course, when I discovered that Barack Obama was white, yes white ….

As white as John McCain’s hair infact . So what gave him away? was it the utterly pathetic protestations he made every time a neo con alleged that he was a closet Muslim? well yes, that was a start, being offended at being called by your own middle name “Hussein”, and going out of your way at every opportunity to prove that you weren’t a no good terrorist moslem was a definite put off. But the straw that broke the democratic donkey’s back wasn’t that, it was something far more sinister. Seeing Obama assume the ass kissing poodle position, kneeling n’all at Aipac and in the Israeli Knesset, pledging his eternal obedience and loyalty to his Israeli masters and fervently denouncing the Palestinians they are oppressing, really drove home the point that Obama is no different than any other politician America has had over the last 60 years. The only change Obama is bringing into the WASP club of elitist American politics is a darker shade of white. That’s what Obama is, just a darker shade of white. And that’s only on the outside, on the inside he’s just as corrupt, power hungry and hypocritical as the next Washington hopeful.
You see black color is only skin deep. To be truly black you have to share in the collective culture, history and aspirations and ideals of the black community, and It’s very obvious that Obama does not. I’m not saying that you have to be radical, and I’m not saying that Black culture in America has an actual coherent political movement. What I’m saying is that the essence of Black American culture is the struggle for equality and rights, the struggle to overcome oppression and degradation, that’s the soul of the black American movement, and it certainly does not go well with supporting a fascist state, and denying an oppressed people their basic human rights. Oh but that doesn’t bother our miracle boy very much, he’s got way too many starry eyed naive college students willing to believe his crap about change we can be deluded into right now….. but the novelty will wear off soon when they discover that he’s just another puppet, then the buzz will turn to a low, and Barack Obama will become Barack Obummer.

It’s not a question of the lesser of two evils, It’s just as South Park puts it, American elections are always a race between a turd and a douche. I’m hoping the douche will win, at least he’s honest about being a war mongering geriatric Israeli tool.

Barack Obummer

Oh well, it seems to be another case of “you never miss it till it’s gone away”. Bye bye Mr. Blair, we’ll miss how you steadfastly supported the U.S while it bombed people and invaded countries. Who can forget all the good times we had together? Iraq, Guantanamo, AbuGhreb, the C.I.A abductions and tortures….oh those were the times, we had so much fun. And now forever shall they be assigned to history, as part of your legacy to the world. A legacy of a shriveled pathetic man, who pursued his religious ideology with Machavelian zeal, to the point of murder and destruction, disregarding the wishes of his own people, and readily sacrificing their sons in a pointless war. Your average run of the mill despot I’d say, but chillingly reminiscent of his own sworn enemy, AlQaeda.

“Blair” ponder that word carefully…..say it again slowly, relishing all the sylables…. Bbbb-Laaaayy-rrrr …. what does it remind you of? don’t know? clueless? Here’s an interesting fun experiment you can try, turn on your tape recorder, and record the previous Bbbb-Laaaayy-rrrr. Now play it back to your grandma, or favourite relative, which ever happens to be closer, ask them what they think that sound is…..

9 out of 10 times the answer will be: ” sounds like a sick dog vomiting a turd it’s just eaten”…(the other 1 time your chosen relative would have been too deaf to hear it, repeat experiment and change relative).

Footnotes:

Don’t bomb us please, Aljazeera staff say

Blair’s antics

Follow the trial of memo leakers

segolene royal

Maybe I wouldn’t be so upset if Segolene Royal wasn’t so hot……. then again when I think of the other candidate, I can see that I’m upset for all the right reasons!

I’m upset because someone who calls the frustrated, unemployed children of immigrants “scum”, and orders their beating and arrest without addressing any of their issues, is hardly worthy of leading the nation which brought Liberty, Equality and Fraternity to the world….then again, when you consider just how much “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” the French brought to their former African colonies, suddenly it becomes fitting that a fascist prick such as Sarkozy should lead the French, keeping in tradition with the long line of countless mad despots that France has had throughout the centuries… louises, Napoleons et all….

So it seems the French are gearing up for another round of native bashing, albeit this time right at home on French soil. Sarkozy is calling on immigrants in France to be “more French” to integrate into French society. Now what in Gods name can that mean? Most of these unfortunate immigrants were born in France, and lived there their entire life. Perhaps it means that they have to wear berets, eat more frogs with their baguettes, and sip Château Margaux while munching on a slice of Camembert on the porch of their cottage located in a quiet rural spot in the countryside? I actually think that most immigrant youth would love to grow up to be wine sipping middle class poofs like their “true French” counterparts, if only someone would give them a job, help them out of their poverty and stop treating them “like scum”.

Congratulations Mr. Sarkozy, yet again the score in Europe, as was before in the States and Australia, is: common sense -nill, bigoted gits- 1…

More pics of Siggy:

segolene royal

segolene royal

segolene royal

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segolene royal

Cho Seung-hui AKA Lara Croft!

32 dead in Virginia and the world is in uproar. It makes front page headline news in all the international media for 5 days. heads of state and foreign ministers send condolences, candlelight vigils, mass rallies, cries for change, harrowing eye witness accounts, video footage, reports , documentaries, analysis……all of the world’s press descends on Virginia Tech….

100 people a day are massacred in Iraq… hardly anyone notices….just another by-topic to include somewhere in the news broadcast…. just this week 178 people were blown to bits in car bombs in Iraq… where are the candle lit vigils for those people? where are the outpouring of grief? where are the letters of condolences from heads of state? where are all the voices calling for change and something to be done?

Ofcourse, the massacre in Virginia and the massacres in Iraq have one thing in common, they were both caused by a crazed, deranged individual…….in one case it’s a student, in the other it’s a president!
The real irony is that apart from the obligatory increase in flags that Americans resort to when they’ve “been had”, there’s almost no serious steps being taken to insure that a “mini-Iraq” doesn’t happen again in the states. Americans are still wondering how it could have happened….! as if it doesn’t happen every other month! the only real talk of taking action, is directed at stopping deranged nuts before they start going Rambo, just another f****d up misfit from the Americana/holywood/media/mtv pop culture delusion where everyone is supposed to be white, good looking, rich and successful. Those who fail to fit into this distorted category and aren’t pretty enough or rich enough view themselves as worthless or find themselves being outcasts ….which leads to head cases like Mr.Cho Seung.

As if the fact that 200 million guns amongst the populace wasn’t a valid reason……nah, it’s the fault of a crazed lunatic….he did it, not the guns…..can you then please explain to me how that very same crazed lunatic could have killed 32 people if he was armed only with a kitchen knife?

Watching these events unfold in the states is more than pathetic, it’s quite sickening. what valid reason can there be for American people to be the most heavily armed population in all of human history? What argument for gun ownership can possibly out weight the consequences for it? the countless massacres and gun related deaths?

Not content with keeping their violent murder culture to themselves, Americans are now exporting violence wholesale to the world….Iraq is currently the unlucky recipient, but it’s coming soon to a country near you…..

Wake up people, Virgina x3 is happening everyday in Baghdad……

قررت أن أكون مواطناً مثاليا وبذلك سأكون كالنعامة أغرس رأسي في التراب ولا أرى شيئاً، ولا أزعج أحداً بعد هذا اليوم وهذا يعني بأنني سأكون مرضي الوالدين والسلطة السورية معاً، فلن أتحدث بعد هذا اليوم عن الفساد الذي يستشري في جميع دوائر الدولة الاقتصادية والسياسية والإدارية وغيرها من الدوائر الفاسدة لأنني سأكون عائقاً أمام الاستثمارات الأجنبية والعربية في وطني الذي يقدم لي كل ما احتاجه من وسائل الرفاهية ولا أحرم وطني من المساعدات والقروض الأجنبية وحتى لا أتهم بتهمة نشر الأخبار الكاذبة وإثارة البلبلة بين المواطنين وتعاقبني الأجهزة الأمنية على فعلتي هذه . 

لن أتحدث بعد هذا اليوم عن استبداد السلطة وقمعها للمواطن ومنعها حتى الماء والهواء عنه ولن أقول أنها تمارس أبشع أنواع الظلم عليه في سبيل الحفاظ على المكتسبات التي نالها بطرق غير شرعية، وتستبد كل من يحاول أن يرفع صوته في وجه الاستبداد، وتمارس سياسة الوصاية على المواطن عبر كم الأفواه وخنق الكلمة الحرة حتى تكون السلطة السورية راضية عني وتقول بأنني مواطن صالح من الدرجة الأولى ولست طالحاً كبقية الناس الذين يتهمون السلطة السورية بالاستبداد 

لن أتحدث بعد هذا اليوم عن التغيير الديمقراطي في سوريا وسأطالب الجميع بعدم التحدث عنها ، لأن هؤلاء الذين يطالبون بالتغيير هم أناس مرتبطون بالخارج وعملاء للإمبريالية الصهيونية والرجعية ويحاولون زعزعة الاستقرار الذي يتسم به مجتمعنا وسأكون مع هؤلاء الطلبة والأجهزة الأمنية التي تخرج في قمع الاعتصامات حتى أنال شهادة حسن السلوك من الأجهزة الأمنية التي تسهر ليلاً نهارا ، صيفاً شتاءاً لحماية المواطن السوري من هذه الثلة التي تنادي بالتغيير الديمقراطي ، وسأتدرب على التصفيق منذ هذه اللحظة لأكون بين المصفقين والمزمرين والمطبلين لسياستنا الحكيمة وأحفظ عن ظهر قلب مقولة لا للتغيير ، نعم للأجهزة الأمنية بجميع فروعها . 

لن أتحدث بعد هذا اليوم عن التخلف والأمية ومناهج التعليم وهجرة الطلبة والعلماء إلى الدول الغربية وسأغمض عيني عن القرى القصبات الخالية من وسائل الخدمة والصرف الصحي ، ولن أقول بأن الجامعات السورية لا تستوعب هذا الكم الهائل من الطلبة وأن المتخرجين أصبحوا متسولين في الشوارع بحثاُ عن فرص العمل حتى لا أتهم بالكذب والنفاق والثرثرة 

لن أتحدث بعد هذا اليوم عن الاقتصاد السوري الذي يستطيع أن ينافس أقوى الدول العربية وهو ينهب من قبل بعض المتنفذين في الدولة ، وأن البترول السوري محفوظ في أيدي أمينة حتى لا يكون مصيري كمصير عارف دليلة عالم الاقتصاد الذي حكم عليه عشر سنوات وهو في نهاية عمره ، لن أقول أبداً بأن هناك ملايين الدولارات لكبار المسؤولين في البنوك الأوربية ويستطيع شراء حي بأكمله في أجمل عاصمة أوربية 

أقسم بالله العظيم لن أتحدث بعد هذا اليوم عن الفقر والجوع الذي يتعرض له الشعب السوري وسأقول بأن قصة 30 % الذين يعيشون تحت خط الفقر هي أكذوبة غايتها النيل من سلامة وطننا واستقراره ، وأن أي موظف سوري يستطيع أن يؤمن مستقبله ومستقبل أولاده وأحفاده من خلال الراتب الذي يتقاضه ، ولا أحد في وطني يرتشي ، لن أفتح فمي وسأغمض عيني مرة أخرى أمام هؤلاء الضباط الذين يملكون المزارع والفيلات والمعامل والمصانع والحشم والخدم ( العساكر ) لا بل سأقول بأنهم يسهرون لحماية الوطن والمواطن وأموالهم تلك هي من تعبهم وجهدهم وعرقهم لأكون مواطن من رتبة الخمس نجوم أمام الأجهزة الأمنية 

لن أتحدث بعد هذا اليوم عن الأكراد المجردين من الجنسية حسب الإحصاء الاستثنائي لعام 1962 لا بل سأقول وأحفظ عن ظهر قلب وأردد بأن هؤلاء جاؤوا من تركيا فاحتضنتهم الدولة السورية ومنحتهم الأراضي الزراعية وسمحت لهم بامتلاك البيوت والعقارات التجارية والتوظيف في الدوائر الحكومية واستكمال الدراسات الجامعية والنوم في الفنادق السورية ، وأن محمد طلب هلال لم يقدم مشروعاً يوصي بأن تعمد الدولة إلى تهجير الأكراد إلى الداخل مع التوزيع في الداخل مع ملاحظة عناصر الخطر أولاً فأول وتطبيق سياسة التجهيل أي عدم إنشاء مدارس أو معاهد لأن بنائها أثبت عكس المطلوب بشكل صارخ وسحب الجنسية السورية منهم ومن ثم تهجيرهم وسد باب العمل أمامهم حتى نجعلهم في وضع غير مستقر وغير قادرين على التحرك كي يكونوا أمام الرحيل في كل وقت ، ولن أقول بأن العقلية الشوفينية عربت أسماء القرى والمدن الكردية إلى عدنانية وعمرانية وقحطانية وإلى آخر القائمة المعربة 

لن أتحدث أبداً عن عدد السجون المنتشرة على طول البلاد وعرضها لأنها بنيت خصيصاً لمعاقبة المجرمين والثرثارين من أمثال رياض الترك وعارف دليلة وأنور البني وميشيل كيلو ورياض سيف ومأمون الحمصي وكمال اللبواني وغيرهم من الحقودين أصحاب الألسن الطويلة ، ولا أحد في سجون الأجهزة الأمنية يتعرض للتعذيب لأنه ممنوع حسب الاتفاقية الدولية لمناهضة التعذيب التي صادقت عليها سوريا لا بل سأقول بأن الذي يمارس التعذيب ( وهو نادر جداً ) يتعرض للعقوبة والمسائلة من الجهات الأعلى مسؤولية ويفصل من وظيفته التي حصل عليها بالانتخابات الديمقراطية عن طريق صناديق الاقتراع ، وأن السجون في سوريا هي من أفضل المدارس التعليمية ؟ فهل يستطيع أحد أن ينكر بأن أغلبية المترجمين السوريين هم من خريجي السجون السورية التي أصبحت أكثر من المدارس والمشافي 

سأتوب بعد هذا اليوم ولن أتحدث عن حقوق الإنسان في سوريا ، ولن أطالب باحترام المواثيق الدولية لأن الأجهزة الأمنية هي التي تصنع الإنسان من لا شيء ، وأنا أتحدى جميع المدافعين عن حقوق الإنسان بأن يقولوا أو أن يلمحوا بعدم عدالة الأجهزة الأمنية في التعامل مع المعتقلين فجميع المعتقلين سواسية في التعامل الإنساني والأخلاقي في المفارز الأمنية ؟ 

لن أتحدث بعد هذا اليوم عن المادة الثامنة من الدستور السوري والتي تجيز لحزب البعث قيادة الدولة والمجتمع والجبهة الوطنية الكرتونية ولن أطالب بتعديلها أو تغييرها – لا سمح الله – فهذه المادة أصبحت من التراث الوطني والقومي للشعب السوري وجزء لا يتجزأ من المبادئ السامية التي انطلقت عليها أفكار حزب البعث الحاكم لا بل سأقول بأن قانون الأحزاب هو أمر تافه لا معنى له ، فلماذا تزداد عدد الأحزاب وتزداد معها الصراعات فالشعب السوري كله حزب واحد وجبهة واحدة ويدا واحدة ، ثم لماذا تزداد عدد الجرائد والمطبوعات ويكثر اللعي والحكي الفاضي فهناك ثلاث جرائد رسمية ( الثورة – تشرين – البعث ) تستطيع تغطية الأخبار المحلية والعربية والدولية لا بل لكل منها ملحقها الثقافي أيضاً . 

لن أتحدث بعد هذا اليوم عن حالة الطوارئ والأحكام العرفية في البلاد منذ عام 1963 ولن أقول بأن الشعب السوري هو رهينة بيد السلطة في صراعها مع إسرائيل حسب ما تدعي هي ، ولن أتحدث عن المنتديات التي أغلقت في كل من دمشق وحلب والقامشلي وغيرها من المحافظات السورية 

وأخيراً لن أتحدث أبداً عن سوريا بعد هذا اليوم وسأغير موجة كتاباتي للحديث عن جنوب السودان وموريتانية والصومال لأكون مواطناً صالحاً 

مرفوع الهامة أمشي منتصب القامة أمشي 

وأنا أمشى

وأنا أمشي 

وأنا أمشي 

Churchill made the claim in a 1937 article entitled “How The Jews Can Combat Persecution,” three years before he started leading the country.
He outlined a new wave of anti-Semitism sweeping across Europe and the United States, which was followed by the deaths of millions of Jews in the Holocaust under the German Nazi regime.
“It would be easy to ascribe it to the wickedness of the persecutors, but that does not fit all the facts,” the article read.
“It exists even in lands, like Great Britain and the United States, where Jew and Gentile are equal in the eyes of the law and where large numbers of Jews have found not only asylum, but opportunity.
“These facts must be faced in any analysis of anti-Semitism. They should be pondered especially by the Jews themselves.
“For it may be that, unwittingly, they are inviting persecution – that they have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer.”
The article adds: “The central fact [that] dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew is that the Jew is ‘different.’
“He looks different. He thinks differently. He has a different tradition and background. He refuses to be absorbed.”
Elsewhere, Churchill praised Jews as “sober, industrious, law-abiding” and urged Britons to stand up for the race against persecution.
“There is no virtue in a tame acquiescence in evil. To protest against cruelty and wrong, and to strive to end them, is the mark of a man,” he wrote.
The article was discovered by Cambridge University historian Richard Toye in the university’s archive of Churchill’s papers.
At the time, Churchill’s secretary cautioned him it would be “inadvisable” to publish it and the article never saw the light of day.
Churchill was voted the greatest Briton ever in a nationwide poll held by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 2002.

copied !!!

On Israel’s “Right to Exist”

By JOHN V. WHITBECK

Now that the Palestinian civil war long sought by Israel, the U.S. and the EU appears on the verge of breaking out, it may be timely to examine the justification put forward by Israel, the U.S. and the EU for their collective punishment of the Palestinian people in retaliation for their having made the “wrong” choice in last January’s democratic election — the refusal of Hamas to “recognize Israel” or to “recognize Israel’s existence” or to “recognize Israel’s right to exist”.

These three verbal formulations have been used by media, politicians and even diplomats interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing. They do not.

“Recognizing Israel” or any other state is a formal legal/diplomatic act by a state with respect to another state. It is inappropriate — indeed, nonsensical — to talk about a political party or movement, even one in a sovereign state, extending diplomatic recognition to a state. To talk of Hamas “recognizing Israel” is simply sloppy, confusing and deceptive shorthand for the real demand being made.

“Recognizing Israel’s existence” is not a logical nonsense and appears on first impression to involve a relatively straightforward acknowledgement of a fact of life — like death and taxes. Yet there are serious practical problems with this formulation. What Israel, within what borders, is involved? The 55% of historical Palestine recommended for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947? The 78% of historical Palestine occupied by Israel in 1948 and now viewed by most of the world as “Israel” or “Israel proper”?

The 100% of historical Palestine occupied by Israel since June 1967 and shown as “Israel” on maps in Israeli schoolbooks? Israel has never defined its own borders, since doing so would, necessarily, place limits on them. Still, if this were all that were being demanded of Hamas, it might be possible for it to acknowledge, as a fact of life, that a State of Israel exists today within some specified borders.

“Recognizing Israel’s right to exist”, the actual demand, is in an entirely different league. This formulation does not address diplomatic formalities or simple acceptance of present realities. It calls for a moral judgment.

There is an enormous difference between “recognizing Israel’s existence” and “recognizing Israel’s right to exist”. From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to acknowledge that it was “right” that the Holocaust happened — that the Holocaust (or, in the Palestinian case, the Nakba) was morally justified.

To demand that Palestinians recognize “Israel’s right to exist” is to demand that a people who have for almost 60 years been treated, and continue to be treated, as sub-humans publicly proclaim that they ARE sub-humans — and, at least implicitly, that they deserve what has been done, and continues to be done, to them. Even 19th century U.S. governments did not require the surviving Native Americans to publicly proclaim the “rightness” of their ethnic cleansing by the Pale Faces as a condition precedent to even discussing what reservation might be set aside for them — under economic blockade and threat of starvation until they shed whatever pride they had left and conceded the point.

Some believe that Yasser Arafat did concede the point in order to buy his ticket out of the wilderness of demonization and earn the right to be lectured directly by the Americans. In fact, in his famous statement in Stockholm in late 1988, he accepted “Israel’s right to exist in peace and security”. This formulation, significantly, addresses the /conditions/ of existence of a state which, as a matter of fact, exists. It does not address the existential question of the “rightness” of the dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian people from their homeland to make way for another people coming from abroad.

The original conception of the formulation “Israel’s right to exist” and of its utility as an excuse for not talking to any Palestinian leadership which still stood up for the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people are attributed to Henry Kissinger, the grand master of diplomatic cynicism. There can be little doubt that those states which still employ this formulation do so in full consciousness of what it entails, morally and psychologically, for the Palestinian people and for the same cynical purpose — as a roadblock against any progress toward peace and justice in Israel/Palestine and as a way of helping to buy more time for Israel to create more “facts on the ground” while blaming the Palestinians for their own suffering.

However, many private citizens of good will and decent values may well be taken in by the surface simplicity of the words “Israel’s right to exist” (and even more easily by the other two shorthand formulations) into believing that they constitute a self-evidently reasonable demand and that refusing such a reasonable demand must represent perversity (or a “terrorist ideology”) rather than a need to cling to their self-respect and dignity as full-fledged human beings which is deeply felt and thoroughly understandable in the hearts and minds of a long-abused people who have been stripped of almost everything else that makes life worth living. That this is so is evidenced by polls showing that the percentage of the Palestinian population which approves of Hamas’ steadfastness in refusing to bow to this humiliating demand by their enemies, notwithstanding the intensity of the economic pain and suffering inflicted on them by the Israeli and Western siege, substantially exceeds the percentage of the population which voted for Hamas in January.

It may not be too late to focus decent minds around the world on the unreasonableness — indeed, the immorality — of this demand and of the verbal formulation on which it is based, whose use and abuse have already caused so much misery and threaten to cause more.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer, is author of “The World According to Whitbeck“. He can be reached at: jvwhitbeck@awalnet.net.sa

By JOHNNY BARBER

Jesus is a terrorist, there ain’t no one can doubt it. Born in Bethlehem, what more need I say about it? Thirty foot concrete barriers, soldiers armed with guns, being born in Bethlehem just ain’t much fun. Jesus stands on the corner, throwin’ stones at tanks. Israeli soldiers don’t hold back, they ain’t shootin’ blanks. Jesus stands defiant, a David ‘gainst Goliath. Jesus is a terrorist, he ain’t allowed to pass. Being born in Bethlehem, life is over fast.

Jesus is a terrorist, he ain’t allowed to pass. You know what they’re teaching, in those Christian schools in town. He’s learning hate against the state, and what it means to martyr. Jesus is a terrorist, he don’t need Jimmy Carter. Jesus knows all ’bout them virgins. That ain’t no lie they tell ya, once you pass them pearly gates, it pays to be a fella!

Jesus is a carpenter, but he’s not allowed to work. He passes time carving trinkets for those Christian tourist folk. They come and kiss the ground where Jesus once lay swaddled. They bargain him down, then they just turn on back around. They close their eyes to the soldiers, they close their eyes to the wall. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, don’t stand any chance at all.

Jesus rode a donkey once, straight on through to Jerusalem. Today, Jesus ain’t got a prayer, he’s not allowed to pass. Jesus can’t stoop low enough to kiss the soldier’s ass.

The tourists come back home, blind as before. They go to church, and they sing their songs, and look up on the wall. Jesus still is hangin’ there, saving them from the fall. But just like Judas, they turn their backs, no one heeds his call.

Cause Jesus is a terrorist, but don’t you worry none. It’s just a name they give you when you’re Palestinian. A savior born in Bethlehem- it’s quite a story, but just not rightcause Jesus is a terrorist, don’t you worry ’bout his plight.

Today, the people of Bethlehem are imprisoned behind a thirty-foot high concrete wall, unable to move. The Christian community cannot travel to Jerusalem to pray at the church of the Holy Sepulchre- a short, twenty-minute drive from Bethlehem. The Israeli military occupation, nearing its 40th year, has strangled the economy as well as the people living in the Holy Land, and there is no end in sight. The people are constantly at risk, not even their homes are safe, no sanctuary available- anywhere. The checkpoints and the military incursions are constant reminders that the life of a Palestinian in Bethlehem is cheap. And the Christian community, as well as the world, looks on in silence. At this time of year, as we remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus, may all Christians, and all people of faith, raise their voices and demand justice for the good people of Bethlehem and Palestine.

The occupation must end.

Seriously, this makes you think twice about the credibility of such organizations…

http://www.counterpunch.com/cook11302006.html

Would HRW Have Attacked Martin Luther King, Too?
Palestinians Are Being Denied the Right of Non-Violent Resistance?

By JONATHAN COOK

in Nazareth

If one thing offers a terrifying glimpse of where the experiment in human despair that is Gaza under Israeli siege is leading, it is the news that a Palestinian woman in her sixties — a grandmother — chose last week to strap on a suicide belt and explode herself next to a group of Israeli soldiers invading her refugee camp.

Despite the “Man bites dog” news value of the story, most of the Israeli media played down the incident. Not surprisingly: it is difficult to portray Fatma al-Najar as a crazed fanatic bent only the destruction of Israel.

It is equally difficult not to pause and wonder at the reasons for her suicide mission: according to her family, one of her grandsons was killed by the Israeli army, another is in a wheelchair after his leg had to be amputated, and her house had been demolished.

Or not to think of the years of trauma she and her family have suffered living in a open-air prison under brutal occupation, and now, since the “disengagement”, the agonising months of grinding poverty, slow starvation, repeated aerial bombardments, and the loss of essentials like water and electricity.

Or not to ponder at what it must have been like for her to spend every day under a cloud of fear, to be powerless against a largely unseen and malign force, and to never know when death and mutilation might strike her or her loved ones.

Or not to imagine that she had been longing for the moment when the soldiers who have been destroying her family’s lives might show themselves briefly, coming close enough that she could see and touch them, and wreak her revenge.

Yet Western observers, and the organisations that should represent the very best of their Enlightenment values, seem incapable of understanding what might drive a grandmother to become a suicide bomber. Their empathy fails them, and so does their humanity.

Just at the moment Fatma was choosing death and resistance over powerlessness and victimhood — and at a time when Gaza is struggling through one of the most oppressive and ugly periods of Israeli occupation in nearly four decades — Human Rights Watch published its lastest statement on the conflict. It is document that shames the organisation, complacent Western societies and Fatma’s memory.

In its press release “Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks”, which was widely reported by the international media, HRW lambasts armed Palestinian groups for calling on civilians to surround homes that have been targeted for air strikes by the Israeli military.

Noting almost as an afterthought that more than 1,500 Palestinians have been made homeless from house demolitions in the past few months, and that 105 houses have been destroyed from the air, the press release denounces Palestinian attempts at non-violent and collective action to halt the Israel attacks. HRW refers in particular to three incidents.

On November 3, Hamas appealed to women to surround a mosque in Beit Hanoun where Palestinian men had sought shelter from the Israeli army. Israeli soldiers opened fire on the women, killing two and injuring at least 10.

And last week on two separate occasions, crowds of supporters gathered around the houses of men accused of being militants by Israel who had received phone messages from the Israeli security forces warning that their families’ homes were about to be bombed.

In language that would have made George Orwell shudder, one of the world’s leading organisations for the protection of human rights ignored the continuing violation of the Palestinians’ right to security and a roof over their heads and argued instead: “There is no excuse for calling [Palestinian] civilians to the scene of a planned [Israeli] attack. Whether or not the home is a legitimate military target, knowingly asking civilians to stand in harm’s way is unlawful.”

There is good reason to believe that this reading of international law is wrong, if not Kafkaesque. Popular and peaceful resistance to the oppressive policies of occupying powers and autocratic rulers, in India and South Africa for example, has always been, by its very nature, a risky venture in which civilians are liable to be killed or injured. Responsibility for those deaths must fall on those doing the oppressing, not those resisting, particularly when they are employing non-violent means. On HRW’s interpretation, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela would be war criminals.

HRW also applies a series of terrible double standards in this press release.

It refuses Palestinians the right to protect homes from attack, labelling these civilians “human shields”, even while admitting that most of the homes are not legitimate military targets, and yet it has not said a word about the common practice in Israel of building weapons factories and army bases inside or next to communities, thereby forcing Israeli civilians to become human shields for the army.

And HRW prefers to highlight a supposed violation of international law by the Palestinians — their choice to act as “human shields” — and to demand that the practice end immediately, while ignoring the very real and continuing violation of international law committed by Israel in undertaking punitive house demolitions against Palestinian families.

But let us ignore even these important issues and assume that HRW is technically correct that such Palestinian actions do violate international law. Nonetheless, HRW is still failing us and mocking its mandate, because it has lost sight of the three principles that must guide the vision of a human rights organisation: a sense of priorities, proper context and common sense.

Priorities: Every day HRW has to choose which of the many abuses of international law taking place around the world it highlights. It manages to record only a tiny fraction of them. The assumption of many outsiders may be that it focuses on only the most egregious examples. That would be wrong.

The simple truth is that the worse a state’s track record on human rights, the easier ride it gets, relatively speaking, from human rights organisations. That is both because, if abuses are repeated often enough, they become so commonplace as to go unremarked, and because, if the abuses are wide-ranging and systematic, only a small number of the offences will be noted.

Israel, unlike the Palestinians, benefits in both these respects. After four decades of reporting on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, HRW has covered all of Israel’s many human rights-abusing practices at least once before. The result is that after a while most violations get ignored. Why issue another report on house demolitions or “targeted assassinations”, even though they are occurring all the time? And, how to record the individual violations of tens of thousands of Palestinians’ rights every day at checkpoints? One report on the checkpoints once every few years has to suffice instead.

In Israel’s case, there is an added reluctance on the part of organisations like HRW to tackle the extent and nature of Israel’s trampling of Palestinian rights. Constant press releases denouncing Israel would provoke accusations, as they do already, that Israel is being singled out — and with it, the implication that anti-Semitism lies behind the special treatment.

So HRW chooses instead to equivocate. It ignores most Israeli violations and highlights every Palestinian infraction, however minor. This way it makes a pact with the devil: it achieves the balance that protects it from criticism but only by sacrificing the principles of equity and justice.

In its press release, for example, HRW treats the recent appeal to Palestinians to exercise their right to protect their neighbours, and to act in soldarity with non-violent resistance to occupation, as no different from the dozens of known violations committed by the Israeli army of abducting Palestinian civilians as human shields to protect its troops.

Women vounteering to surround a mosque become the equivalent of the notorious incident in January 2003 when 21-year-old Samer Sharif was handcuffed to the hood of an army Jeep and driven towards stone-throwing youngsters in Nablus as Israeli soldiers fired their guns from behind his head.

According to HRW’s approach to international law, the two incidents are comparable.

Context: The actions of Palestinians occur in a context in which all of their rights are already under the control of their occupier, Israel, and can be violated at its whim. This means that it is problematic, from a human rights perspective, to place the weight of culpability on the Palestinians without laying far greater weight at the same time on the situation to which the Palestinians are reacting.

Here is an example. HRW and other human rights organisations have taken the Palestinians to task for the extra-judicial killings of those suspected of collaborating with the Israeli security forces.

Although it is blindingly obvious that the lynching of an alleged collaborator is a violation of that person’s fundamental right to life, HRW’s position of simply blaming the Palestinians for this practice raises two critical problems.

First, it fudges the issue of accountability.

In the case of a “targeted assassination”, Israel’s version of extra-judicial killing, we have an address to hold accountable: the apparatus of a state in the forms of the Israeli army which carried out the murder and the Israeli politicians who approved it. (These officials are also responsible for the bystanders who are invariably killed along with the target.)

But unless it can be shown that the lynchings are planned and coordinated at a high level, a human rights organisation cannot apply the same standards by which it judges a state to a crowd of Palestinians, people gripped by anger and the thirst for revenge. The two are not equivalent and cannot be held to account in the same way. Palestinians carrying out a lynching are commiting a crime punishable under ordinary domestic law; while the Israeli army carrying out a “targeted assassination” is commiting state terrorism, which must be tried in the court of world opinion.

Second, HRW’s position ignores the context in which the lynching takes place.

The Palestinian resistance to occupation has failed to realise its goals mainly because of Israel’s extensive network of collaborators, individuals who have usually been terrorised by threats to themselves or their family and/or by torture into “co-operating” with Israel’s occupation forces.

The great majority of planned attacks are foiled because one member of the team is collaborating with Israel. He or she not only sabotages the attack but often also gives Israel the information it needs to kill the leaders of the resistance (as well as bystanders). Collaborators, though common in the West Bank and Gaza, are much despised — and for good reason. They make the goal of national liberation impossible.

Palestinians have been struggling to find ways to make collaboration less appealing. When the Israeli army is threatening to jail your son, or refusing a permit for your wife to receive the hospital treatment she needs, you may agree to do terrible things. Armed groups and many ordinary Palestinians countenance the lynchings because they are seen as a counterweight to Israel’s own powerful techniques of intimidation — a deterrence, even if a largely unsuccessful one.

In issuing a report on the extra-judicial killing of Palestinian collaborators, therefore, groups like HRW have a duty to highlight first and with much greater emphasis the responsibility of Israel and its decades-long occupation for the lynchings, as the context in which Palestinians are forced to mimic the barbarity of those oppressing them to stand any chance of defeating them.

The press release denouncing the Palestinians for choosing collectively and peacefully to resist house demolitions, while not concentrating on the violations committed by Israel in destroying the houses and using military forms of intimidation and punishment against civilians, is a travesty for this very same reason.

Common sense: And finally human rights organisations must never abandon common sense, the connecting thread of our humanity, when making judgments about where their priorities lie.

In the past few months Gaza has sunk into a humanitarian disaster engineered by Israel and the international community. What has been HRW’s response? It is worth examining its most recent reports, those on the front page of the Mideast section of its website last week, when the latest press release was issued. Four stories relate to Israel and Palestine.

Three criticise Palestinian militants and the wider society in various ways: for encouraging the use of “human shields”, for firing home-made rockets into Israel, and for failing to protect women from domestic violence. One report mildly rebukes Israel, urging the government to ensure that the army properly investigates the reasons for the shelling that killed 19 Palestinian inhabitants of Beit Hanoun.

This shameful imbalance, both in the number of reports being issued against each party and in terms of the failure to hold accountable the side committing the far greater abuses of human rights, has become the HRW’s standard procedure in Israel-Palestine.

But in its latest release, on human shields, HRW plumbs new depths, stripping Palestinians of the right to organise non-violent forms of resistance and seek new ways of showing solidarity in the face of illegal occupation. In short, HRW treats the people of Gaza as mere rats in a laboratory — the Israeli army’s view of them — to be experimented on at will.

HRW’s priorities in Israel-Palestine prove it has lost its moral bearings.

http://www.counterpunch.com/finkelstein11292006.html

Rush to Judgment
Human Rights Watch Must Retract Its Shameful Press Release

By NORMAN G. FINKELSTEIN

Even by the grim standards of Gaza, the past five months have been cruel ones.

Some four hundred Palestinians, mostly unarmed civilians, have been killed during Israeli attacks. (Four Israeli soldiers and two civilians have been killed.) Israel has sealed off Gaza from the outside world while the international community has imposed brutal sanctions, ravaging Gaza’s already impoverished economy.

“Gaza is dying,” Patrick Cockburn reported in CounterPunch, “its people are on the edge of starvation.A whole society is being destroyed.The sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal. “

“Gaza is in its worst condition ever,” Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz, “The Israeli army has been rampaging through Gaza–there’s no other word to describe it–killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling indiscriminately….This is disgraceful and shocking collective punishment.”

Predictably Gaza teetered on the precipice of fratricidal civil war. “The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other,” Amira Hass wryly observed in Ha’aretz, “They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called ‘what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.’”

It is at times like this that we expect human rights organizations to speak out.

How has Human Rights Watch responded to the challenge? It criticized Israel for destroying Gaza’s only electrical plant, and also called on Israel to “investigate” why its forces were targeting Palestinian medical personnel in Gaza and to “investigate” the Beit Hanoun massacre.

On the other hand, it accused Palestinians of committing a “war crime” after they captured an Israeli soldier and offered to exchange him for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. (Israel was holding 10,000 Palestinians prisoner.) It demanded that Palestinians “bring an immediate end to the lawlessness and vigilante violence” in Gaza. (Compare Amira Hass’s words.) It issued a 101-page report chastising the Palestinian Authority for failing to protect women and girls. It called on the Palestinian Authority to take “immediate steps to halt” Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.

Were this record not shameful enough, HRW crossed a new threshold at the end of November.

After Palestinians spontaneously responded to that “unknown voice on a cell phone” by putting their own bare bodies in harm’s way, HRW rushed to issue a press release warning that Palestinians might be committing a “war crime” and might be guilty of “human shielding.” (”Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks”)

In what must surely be the most shocking statement ever issued by a human rights organization, HRW indicted Palestinian leaders for supporting this nonviolent civil disobedience:

Prime Minister Haniyeh and other Palestinian leaders should be renouncing, not embracing, the tactic of encouraging civilians to place themselves at risk.

The international community has for decades implored Palestinian leaders to forsake armed struggle in favor of nonviolent civil disobedience. Why is a human rights organization now attacking them for adopting this tactic?

Is it a war crime to protect one’s home from collective punishment?

Is it human shielding if a desperate and forsaken populace chooses to put itself at deadly risk in order to preserve the last shred of its existence?

Indeed, although Israeli soldiers have frequently used Palestinians as human shields in life-threatening situations, and although HRW has itself documented this egregious Israeli practice, HRW has never once called it a war crime.

It took weeks before HRW finally issued a report condemning Israeli war crimes in Lebanon. Although many reliable journalists were daily documenting these crimes, HRW said it first had to conduct an independent investigation of its own.

But HRW hastened to deplore the nonviolent protests in Gaza based on anonymous press reports which apparently got crucial facts wrong.

Why this headlong rush to judgment?

Was HRW seeking to appease pro-Israel critics after taking the heat for its report documenting Israeli war crimes in Lebanon?

After Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech in 1967 denouncing the war in Vietnam, mainstream Black leaders rebuked him for jeopardizing the financial support of liberal whites. “You might get yourself a foundation grant,” King retorted, “but you won’t get yourself into the Kingdom of Truth.”

HRW now also stands poised at a crossroads: foundation grants or the Kingdom of Truth?

A first step in the right direction would be for it to issue a retraction of its press release and an apology.

HRW executive director Kenneth Roth “commended” Israel during its last invasion for warning people in south Lebanon to flee–before turning it into a moonscape, slaughtering the old, infirm and poor left behind. It would seem that Palestinian leaders and people, too, merit some recognition for embracing the tactics of Gandhi and King in a last desperate bid to save themselves from annihilation.

Email HRW Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson–whitsos@hrw.org – and HRW executive director Kenneth Roth–RothK@hrw.org.