Major British supermarket chain announces boycott of produce made in West Bank settlements - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
The anniversary of the day Baghdad fell nine years ago during the US-led invasion of Iraq also marked the anniversary of the massacre in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin by Jewish forces 64 years before.
Ironically, in the month that Israel has arranged world-wide celebrations to mark its 64th birthday on 26 April this year, Palestine has marked the 64th anniversary of this butchery and carnage, even as almond and olive blossoms and spring flowers fill the slopes of the village where this happened with fragrant life.
The anniversary also marks the beginning of the policy of "cleansing" Palestine's villages by Jewish forces, aiming at the destruction, diminution and fragmentation of what was once Palestine.
The Deir Yassin massacre marked the first time Jewish forces had gone on the attack, setting a precedent and causing a weeping wound in the collective Palestinian soul. Since then, year after year, Palestinian homes, farms, orchards, livelihoods, and even fishing grounds have been destroyed or separated by Israel's security wall, an "iron curtain" that has descended across the land.
One graphic description of the attack on the village of Deir Yassin comes from the diaries of the then Swiss representative of the International Red Cross, Jacques de Reynier, who was the first to reach the site. He was let in by an "enormous German-born member of the Irgun," who told Reynier he owed his life to the Red Cross.
The Jewish Irgun and Stern gangs had denied any involvement in the events at Deir Yassin and had accused Ha Haganah ("Defence"), the Jewish paramilitary organisation that operated in Palestine under the British mandate, of having carried it out. Haganah subsequently became the core of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
Monday, 30 April 2012
Deir Yassin Remembered : Information Clearing House
Deir Yassin Remembered : Information Clearing House
The anniversary of the day Baghdad fell nine years ago during the US-led invasion of Iraq also marked the anniversary of the massacre in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin by Jewish forces 64 years before.
Ironically, in the month that Israel has arranged world-wide celebrations to mark its 64th birthday on 26 April this year, Palestine has marked the 64th anniversary of this butchery and carnage, even as almond and olive blossoms and spring flowers fill the slopes of the village where this happened with fragrant life.
The anniversary also marks the beginning of the policy of "cleansing" Palestine's villages by Jewish forces, aiming at the destruction, diminution and fragmentation of what was once Palestine.
The Deir Yassin massacre marked the first time Jewish forces had gone on the attack, setting a precedent and causing a weeping wound in the collective Palestinian soul. Since then, year after year, Palestinian homes, farms, orchards, livelihoods, and even fishing grounds have been destroyed or separated by Israel's security wall, an "iron curtain" that has descended across the land.
One graphic description of the attack on the village of Deir Yassin comes from the diaries of the then Swiss representative of the International Red Cross, Jacques de Reynier, who was the first to reach the site. He was let in by an "enormous German-born member of the Irgun," who told Reynier he owed his life to the Red Cross.
The Jewish Irgun and Stern gangs had denied any involvement in the events at Deir Yassin and had accused Ha Haganah ("Defence"), the Jewish paramilitary organisation that operated in Palestine under the British mandate, of having carried it out. Haganah subsequently became the core of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
The anniversary of the day Baghdad fell nine years ago during the US-led invasion of Iraq also marked the anniversary of the massacre in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin by Jewish forces 64 years before.
Ironically, in the month that Israel has arranged world-wide celebrations to mark its 64th birthday on 26 April this year, Palestine has marked the 64th anniversary of this butchery and carnage, even as almond and olive blossoms and spring flowers fill the slopes of the village where this happened with fragrant life.
The anniversary also marks the beginning of the policy of "cleansing" Palestine's villages by Jewish forces, aiming at the destruction, diminution and fragmentation of what was once Palestine.
The Deir Yassin massacre marked the first time Jewish forces had gone on the attack, setting a precedent and causing a weeping wound in the collective Palestinian soul. Since then, year after year, Palestinian homes, farms, orchards, livelihoods, and even fishing grounds have been destroyed or separated by Israel's security wall, an "iron curtain" that has descended across the land.
One graphic description of the attack on the village of Deir Yassin comes from the diaries of the then Swiss representative of the International Red Cross, Jacques de Reynier, who was the first to reach the site. He was let in by an "enormous German-born member of the Irgun," who told Reynier he owed his life to the Red Cross.
The Jewish Irgun and Stern gangs had denied any involvement in the events at Deir Yassin and had accused Ha Haganah ("Defence"), the Jewish paramilitary organisation that operated in Palestine under the British mandate, of having carried it out. Haganah subsequently became the core of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
Act now: more Palestinian hunger strikers in hospital with serious health problems
Act now: more Palestinian hunger strikers in hospital with serious health problems
Yesterday, Palestinian lawmaker and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Ahmad Saadat was moved to Ramleh prison hospital by the Israeli Prison Service, according to Maan News Agency.
Saadat joined the mass hunger strike which started on 17 April. One day earlier, Muhammad Halas was moved to an Israeli hospital after 12 days without food, according to Maan. More than 60 days ago, Palestinian political prisoners Bilal Diab and Thaer Halaheh went on hunger strike to protest their administrative detention.
Yesterday, Palestinian lawmaker and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Ahmad Saadat was moved to Ramleh prison hospital by the Israeli Prison Service, according to Maan News Agency.
Saadat joined the mass hunger strike which started on 17 April. One day earlier, Muhammad Halas was moved to an Israeli hospital after 12 days without food, according to Maan. More than 60 days ago, Palestinian political prisoners Bilal Diab and Thaer Halaheh went on hunger strike to protest their administrative detention.
Food Stamps In Crosshairs Of Republicans' Plan To Save Military : Information Clearing House
Food Stamps In Crosshairs Of Republicans' Plan To Save Military : Information Clearing House
So instead, the House has embarked on a seldom-used reconciliation process. Its aim is to have at hand an alternative to the sequestration on the theory that the Senate will not want to allow the defense cuts either, and won't have its own plan.
In a memo sent to members Wednesday instructing them how to write their reconciliation bill, Republicans picked a number of targets, including extracting $80 billion from federal workers and $44 billion from health care. In all, it identifies $78 billion to cut in 2013, and details around $300 billion over 10 years.
But the memo spends the most time targeting the exploding cost of food stamps, on which more Americans rely than ever, at greater expense to the government than ever before.
Each month during fiscal 2011, an average of 45 million mostly poor Americans received benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, at a cost of $78 billion to the federal government. Last year's SNAP participation represented a 70 percent increase from 2007, and the highest enrollment the program has ever seen. In that time, the cost of the program more than doubled.
So instead, the House has embarked on a seldom-used reconciliation process. Its aim is to have at hand an alternative to the sequestration on the theory that the Senate will not want to allow the defense cuts either, and won't have its own plan.
In a memo sent to members Wednesday instructing them how to write their reconciliation bill, Republicans picked a number of targets, including extracting $80 billion from federal workers and $44 billion from health care. In all, it identifies $78 billion to cut in 2013, and details around $300 billion over 10 years.
But the memo spends the most time targeting the exploding cost of food stamps, on which more Americans rely than ever, at greater expense to the government than ever before.
Each month during fiscal 2011, an average of 45 million mostly poor Americans received benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, at a cost of $78 billion to the federal government. Last year's SNAP participation represented a 70 percent increase from 2007, and the highest enrollment the program has ever seen. In that time, the cost of the program more than doubled.
The NSA Is Watching You : Information Clearing House
The NSA Is Watching You : Information Clearing House
The NSA Is Watching You
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
April 27, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- Three targeted Americans: A career government intelligence official, a filmmaker and a hacker. None of these U.S. citizens was charged with a crime, but they have been tracked, surveilled, detained—sometimes at gunpoint—and interrogated, with no access to a lawyer. Each remains resolute in standing up to the increasing government crackdown on dissent.
The intelligence official: William Binney worked for almost 40 years at the secretive National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. spy agency that dwarfs the CIA. As technical director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, Binney told me, he was tasked to “see how we could solve collection, analysis and reporting on military and geopolitical issues all around the world, every country in the world.” Throughout the 1990s, the NSA developed a massive eavesdropping system code-named ThinThread, which, Binney says, maintained crucial protections on the privacy of U.S. citizens demanded by the U.S. Constitution. He recalled, “After 9/11, all the wraps came off for NSA,” as massive domestic spying became the norm. He resigned on Oct. 31, 2001.
Along with several other NSA officials, Binney reported his concerns to Congress and to the Department of Defense. Then, in 2007, as then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was being questioned on Capitol Hill about the very domestic spying to which Binney objected, a dozen FBI agents charged into his house, guns drawn. They forced aside his son and found Binney, a diabetic amputee, in the shower. They pointed their guns at his head, then led him to his back porch and interrogated him.
Three others were raided that morning. Binney called the FBI raid “retribution and intimidation so we didn’t go to the Judiciary Committee in the Senate and tell them, ‘Well, here’s what Gonzales didn’t tell you, OK.’ ” Binney was never charged with any crime.
The filmmaker: Laura Poitras is an Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker, whose recent films include “My Country, My Country,” about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and “The Oath,” which was filmed in Yemen. Since 2006, Poitras has been detained and questioned at airports at least 40 times. She has had her computer and reporter’s notebooks confiscated and presumably copied, without a warrant. The most recent time, April 5, she took notes during her detention. The agents told her to stop, as they considered her pen a weapon.
She told me: “I feel like I can’t talk about the work that I do in my home, in my place of work, on my telephone, and sometimes in my country. So the chilling effect is huge. It’s enormous.”
The NSA Is Watching You
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
April 27, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- Three targeted Americans: A career government intelligence official, a filmmaker and a hacker. None of these U.S. citizens was charged with a crime, but they have been tracked, surveilled, detained—sometimes at gunpoint—and interrogated, with no access to a lawyer. Each remains resolute in standing up to the increasing government crackdown on dissent.
The intelligence official: William Binney worked for almost 40 years at the secretive National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. spy agency that dwarfs the CIA. As technical director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, Binney told me, he was tasked to “see how we could solve collection, analysis and reporting on military and geopolitical issues all around the world, every country in the world.” Throughout the 1990s, the NSA developed a massive eavesdropping system code-named ThinThread, which, Binney says, maintained crucial protections on the privacy of U.S. citizens demanded by the U.S. Constitution. He recalled, “After 9/11, all the wraps came off for NSA,” as massive domestic spying became the norm. He resigned on Oct. 31, 2001.
Along with several other NSA officials, Binney reported his concerns to Congress and to the Department of Defense. Then, in 2007, as then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was being questioned on Capitol Hill about the very domestic spying to which Binney objected, a dozen FBI agents charged into his house, guns drawn. They forced aside his son and found Binney, a diabetic amputee, in the shower. They pointed their guns at his head, then led him to his back porch and interrogated him.
Three others were raided that morning. Binney called the FBI raid “retribution and intimidation so we didn’t go to the Judiciary Committee in the Senate and tell them, ‘Well, here’s what Gonzales didn’t tell you, OK.’ ” Binney was never charged with any crime.
The filmmaker: Laura Poitras is an Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker, whose recent films include “My Country, My Country,” about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and “The Oath,” which was filmed in Yemen. Since 2006, Poitras has been detained and questioned at airports at least 40 times. She has had her computer and reporter’s notebooks confiscated and presumably copied, without a warrant. The most recent time, April 5, she took notes during her detention. The agents told her to stop, as they considered her pen a weapon.
She told me: “I feel like I can’t talk about the work that I do in my home, in my place of work, on my telephone, and sometimes in my country. So the chilling effect is huge. It’s enormous.”
The Children of Fallujah - the Hospital of Horrors : Information Clearing House
The Children of Fallujah - the Hospital of Horrors : Information Clearing House
April 27, 2012 "The Independent" - - The pictures flash up on a screen on an upper floor of the Fallujah General Hospital. And all at once, Nadhem Shokr al-Hadidi's administration office becomes a little chamber of horrors. A baby with a hugely deformed mouth. A child with a defect of the spinal cord, material from the spine outside the body. A baby with a terrible, vast Cyclopean eye. Another baby with only half a head, stillborn like the rest, date of birth 17 June, 2009. Yet another picture flicks onto the screen: date of birth 6 July 2009, it shows a tiny child with half a right arm, no left leg, no genitalia.
April 27, 2012 "The Independent" - - The pictures flash up on a screen on an upper floor of the Fallujah General Hospital. And all at once, Nadhem Shokr al-Hadidi's administration office becomes a little chamber of horrors. A baby with a hugely deformed mouth. A child with a defect of the spinal cord, material from the spine outside the body. A baby with a terrible, vast Cyclopean eye. Another baby with only half a head, stillborn like the rest, date of birth 17 June, 2009. Yet another picture flicks onto the screen: date of birth 6 July 2009, it shows a tiny child with half a right arm, no left leg, no genitalia.
Friday, 27 April 2012
Robert Fisk: The Children of Fallujah - families fight back
"He needs multiple surgery outside Iraq. It's a dysfunctional problem. He has no hearing in his left ear. They told me he has to be six before they can remove cartilage from his chest wall to put in his ear. All operations have to be outside Iraq to beautify the ear and give him his hearing." And all the while his father talks, five-year-old Sayef Ala'a sits obediently on the sofa beside us, doing as his father tells him, moving his head to show us the scrappy bit of flesh that constitutes his left ear, tipping his head to one side so we can take pictures of it. Compared to other children with birth deformities, Sayef Ala'a is lucky. He can see, breathe, walk, run, play and listen to his father and friends with his right ear. And he is a little boy of much courage. "He hasn't learnt much yet – that's because he hasn't been to school," his father says. "I'm worried he would be bullied at school. He's a child, but sometimes he comes to me and says he knows he has a deformed ear; but it doesn't matter, he says, because he has no other problems. He is shy but he doesn't mind seeing you." And here the father points at us as we sit beside his son on the sofa. "But no other foreigners come to see him." Like others in Fallujah, Sayef Ala'a's father, who is a businessman, hopes that NGO officials will turn up at his door one day and offer the boy a foreign visa, medical treatment abroad, education. It is a dream that will never be realised – not so long as even the Iraqi government takes no interest in the deformed children of Fallujah.
Revolution In The Air: John Pilger speaks @ Marxism 2012 : Information Clearing House
Revolution In The Air: John Pilger speaks @ Marxism 2012 : Information Clearing House
Revolution In The Air
John Pilger Speaks At Marxism 2012
Marxism 2012: Revolution in the air hosts radical journalist, writer and film-maker John Pilger for a fascinating session on the mass media and propaganda.
Back for his fourth year, Pilger says about the Marxism conference:
Posted April 27, 2012
"Marxism in Melbourne is now Australia's premier festival of debate and free speech on issues that are either excluded from or suppressed by the mass media: issues such as the government's agenda for Indigenous Australians, Palestine and propaganda in its many disguises."
Pilger is recognized the world over for his investigative journalism. His many awards include:
- British Academy of Film and Television Arts - The Richard Dimbleby Award
- American Television Academy Award ('Emmy')
- International Reporter of the Year
- Journalist of the Year
Marxism 2012, hosted by Socialist Alternative (AU) and the International Socialist Organisation of Aotearoa (NZ) was held over the Easter long weekend at the University of Melbourne. It hosted a wide variety of international guest speakers involved in struggles all around the world and a record attendance of 925, cementing it as Australia's largest left wing political conference. The weekend featured over 60 sessions of discussion and debate on ideas to challenge capitalism in the midst of one of the worst economic crises in history and the shining inspiration of revolution across the Arab spring.
Revolution In The Air
John Pilger Speaks At Marxism 2012
Marxism 2012: Revolution in the air hosts radical journalist, writer and film-maker John Pilger for a fascinating session on the mass media and propaganda.
Back for his fourth year, Pilger says about the Marxism conference:
Posted April 27, 2012
"Marxism in Melbourne is now Australia's premier festival of debate and free speech on issues that are either excluded from or suppressed by the mass media: issues such as the government's agenda for Indigenous Australians, Palestine and propaganda in its many disguises."
Pilger is recognized the world over for his investigative journalism. His many awards include:
- British Academy of Film and Television Arts - The Richard Dimbleby Award
- American Television Academy Award ('Emmy')
- International Reporter of the Year
- Journalist of the Year
Marxism 2012, hosted by Socialist Alternative (AU) and the International Socialist Organisation of Aotearoa (NZ) was held over the Easter long weekend at the University of Melbourne. It hosted a wide variety of international guest speakers involved in struggles all around the world and a record attendance of 925, cementing it as Australia's largest left wing political conference. The weekend featured over 60 sessions of discussion and debate on ideas to challenge capitalism in the midst of one of the worst economic crises in history and the shining inspiration of revolution across the Arab spring.
How Obama Recycled a Lie about Iran : Information Clearing House
How Obama Recycled a Lie about Iran : Information Clearing House
April 26, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- In June 2007, Middle East expert and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole remarked that bad translations can sometimes start wars. Professor Cole, in this case, was referring to the misleading, yet widely circulated mistranslated remark by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a speech in 2005 — in which he is purported to have said that Israel should be “wiped off the map.”
April 26, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- In June 2007, Middle East expert and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole remarked that bad translations can sometimes start wars. Professor Cole, in this case, was referring to the misleading, yet widely circulated mistranslated remark by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a speech in 2005 — in which he is purported to have said that Israel should be “wiped off the map.”
Why I Refused to Return to Fight in Afghanistan's Brutal Occupation : Information Clearing House
Why I Refused to Return to Fight in Afghanistan's Brutal Occupation : Information Clearing House
Why I Refused to Return to Fight in Afghanistan's Brutal Occupation
The Taliban clearly has broad support from Afghan people. Conscientious objection is a right and obligation in a failed war
By Joe Glenton
April 27, 2012 "The Guardian" - - Recent attacks in Kabul confirm the occupation is falling to pieces. Claims about "decisive years" and "turned corners" are little more than cant. Instead for all their lack of air power, drones and high-tech equipment, the Taliban are gaining ascendancy.
The ability to attack up to seven different locations, to hold one for 20 hours, and to attack the fortified compounds of the occupiers and local supporters cannot sensibly be read as a sign that the insurgency is losing ground. Fighting in Afghanistan is seasonal and the Kabul attacks were the season's opening game.
No insurgency can survive without broad support from the local population. The insurgent relies upon the people for intelligence, support, safety and more. The fact that insurgents now control great swaths of the country virtually unchallenged tells us the people have been lost, partially due to the occupiers' bumbling efforts. The argument that Afghans are rejecting the Taliban falls flat.
Why I Refused to Return to Fight in Afghanistan's Brutal Occupation
The Taliban clearly has broad support from Afghan people. Conscientious objection is a right and obligation in a failed war
By Joe Glenton
April 27, 2012 "The Guardian" - - Recent attacks in Kabul confirm the occupation is falling to pieces. Claims about "decisive years" and "turned corners" are little more than cant. Instead for all their lack of air power, drones and high-tech equipment, the Taliban are gaining ascendancy.
The ability to attack up to seven different locations, to hold one for 20 hours, and to attack the fortified compounds of the occupiers and local supporters cannot sensibly be read as a sign that the insurgency is losing ground. Fighting in Afghanistan is seasonal and the Kabul attacks were the season's opening game.
No insurgency can survive without broad support from the local population. The insurgent relies upon the people for intelligence, support, safety and more. The fact that insurgents now control great swaths of the country virtually unchallenged tells us the people have been lost, partially due to the occupiers' bumbling efforts. The argument that Afghans are rejecting the Taliban falls flat.
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
The Cost of a Nation of Incarceration : Information Clearing House
The Cost of a Nation of Incarceration : Information Clearing House
Nationwide, the numbers are staggering: Nearly 2.4 million people behind bars, even though over the last 20 years the crime rate has actually dropped by more than 40 percent.
(CBS News) Is it fair to call the United States the "incarceration nation"? That's what some experts say. And even some veteran law enforcement and correction officials think something's gone wrong. Our Cover Story is reported now by Martha Teichner:
Nationwide, the numbers are staggering: Nearly 2.4 million people behind bars, even though over the last 20 years the crime rate has actually dropped by more than 40 percent.
(CBS News) Is it fair to call the United States the "incarceration nation"? That's what some experts say. And even some veteran law enforcement and correction officials think something's gone wrong. Our Cover Story is reported now by Martha Teichner:
A New Record is Set for Military Spending : Information Clearing House
A New Record is Set for Military Spending : Information Clearing House
April 23, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- On April 17, 2012, as millions of Americans were filing their income tax returns, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released its latest study of world military spending. In case Americans were wondering where most of their tax money — and the tax money of other nations — went in the previous year, the answer from SIPRI was clear: to war and preparations for war.
World military spending reached a record $1,738 billion in 2011 — an increase of $138 billion over the previous year. The United States accounted for 41 percent of that, or $711 billion.
April 23, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- On April 17, 2012, as millions of Americans were filing their income tax returns, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released its latest study of world military spending. In case Americans were wondering where most of their tax money — and the tax money of other nations — went in the previous year, the answer from SIPRI was clear: to war and preparations for war.
World military spending reached a record $1,738 billion in 2011 — an increase of $138 billion over the previous year. The United States accounted for 41 percent of that, or $711 billion.
How Liberty Was Lost : Information Clearing House
How Liberty Was Lost : Information Clearing House
April 24, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- When did things begin going wrong in America?
“From the beginning,” answer some. English colonists, themselves under the thumb of a king, exterminated American Indians and stole their lands, as did late 18th and 19th century Americans. Over the course of three centuries the native inhabitants of America were dispossessed, just as Israelis have been driving Palestinians off their lands since 1948.".......
April 24, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- When did things begin going wrong in America?
“From the beginning,” answer some. English colonists, themselves under the thumb of a king, exterminated American Indians and stole their lands, as did late 18th and 19th century Americans. Over the course of three centuries the native inhabitants of America were dispossessed, just as Israelis have been driving Palestinians off their lands since 1948.".......
Monday, 23 April 2012
First forced eviction of Palestinian family in Jerusalem's Beit Hanina to make way for Jewish settlers
First forced eviction of Palestinian family in Jerusalem's Beit Hanina to make way for Jewish settlers
On 18 April, the Palestinian Natsheh family was evicted from their home in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighborhood in the north of occupied East Jerusalem The eviction was carried out by the Bailiff’s Office with police back-up. Beit Hanina’s first forced removal left two parents and nine children homeless.
On 18 April, the Palestinian Natsheh family was evicted from their home in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighborhood in the north of occupied East Jerusalem The eviction was carried out by the Bailiff’s Office with police back-up. Beit Hanina’s first forced removal left two parents and nine children homeless.
Sunday, 22 April 2012
MI6, Gaddafi and the mosque sting to lure al-Qaeda terrorist
MI6 and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan intelligence service set up a radical mosque in a Western European city in order to lure in al-Qaeda terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal. The operation, which had the potential to backfire if a terrorist cell launched an attack using the location as a base, was run behind the backs of Western allies in the chosen city. The joint operation, which was undertaken as Britain attempted to secure a deal with Col Gaddafi to reopen diplomatic relations, shows how closely Britain's Secret Intelligence Service was prepared to work with his regime's spies despite widespread allegations of human rights abuses. At the time, Britain was encouraging Col Gaddafi to give up plans for weapons of mass destruction. Four months later, the dictator and Tony Blair, then prime minister, struck the 2004 "deal in the desert" which ended Libya's pariah status. The cooperation extended to recruiting an agent to infiltrate an al-Qaeda terrorist cell in the Western European city, which cannot be named for security reasons.
Why America Needs the Left -- In These Times
Why America Needs the Left -- In These Times
From the beginning of the American republic, most of the country’s thinkers and politicians have argued that our nation neither had nor needed a Left.
Historians of the so-called liberal consensus school argue that the United States has simply always enjoyed agreement on such matters as private property, individualism, popular sovereignty and natural rights. Others claim that the country never developed the leftist working class or peasantry seen in other nations, a claim often termed American exceptionalism. Still others say that the country doesn’t need a Left because it already believes in, or has even achieved, such goals as democracy and equality – a view held by Cold War liberals and neoconservatives.
From the beginning of the American republic, most of the country’s thinkers and politicians have argued that our nation neither had nor needed a Left.
Historians of the so-called liberal consensus school argue that the United States has simply always enjoyed agreement on such matters as private property, individualism, popular sovereignty and natural rights. Others claim that the country never developed the leftist working class or peasantry seen in other nations, a claim often termed American exceptionalism. Still others say that the country doesn’t need a Left because it already believes in, or has even achieved, such goals as democracy and equality – a view held by Cold War liberals and neoconservatives.
Methodist Church divestment group forcefully rejects American Jewish Committee attack
Methodist Church divestment group forcefully rejects American Jewish Committee attack
Members of United Methodist Church have responded forcefully to an attack from Rabbi A. James Rudin, the “senior interreligious adviser” of the American Jewish Committee, just as the Church’s upcoming national conference is to vote on a major initiative to divest from companies profiting from Israeli occupation and human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Writing in The Washington Post, Rudin belittled the divestment initiatives in the Methodist and other Protestant churches as “pointless,” and deployed the now standard tactic of trying to divert attention away from Israel by berating church members for a “biased double standard that judges Israel much more harshly than its neighboring nations and terrorist organizations including Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Not taking the bait
United Methodist Kairos Response (UMKR), a group organizing in favor of the divestment initiative rejected Rudin’s criticism in a statement sent out by email:
“It’s unfortunate that Rabbi Rudin chose to avoid addressing the substantive issues around divestment, like Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestinian land and denial of Palestinian freedom, instead focusing on canards like the size of church membership,” said UMKR member Connie Baker. “If Rabbi Rudin is truly interested in inter-religious dialogue as he claims, we invite him to meet with us to discuss what we are doing and why we are doing it, instead of publishing op-eds attacking us.”
UMKR also refused to take the bait, implied in Rudin’s article, that church divestment initiatives were motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment:
UMKR members have always been, and remain, dedicated to inter-religious dialogue and cooperation with Jewish and other religious groups. In fact, the United Methodist divestment proposal has support from many Jewish groups around the world. UMKR has worked with Jewish and Israeli partners from the beginning of our efforts on divestment. The struggle to end Israel’s occupation, like all civil rights struggles before it is an interfaith effort. Deep and lasting interfaith friendships are being formed as we stand together for equality and human rights.
According to its website, UMKR is “a grass roots effort to respond to the ’Kairos Palestine Document.’ This document is an urgent plea from Christians in the Holy Land for decisive action in support of a just peace. It is a powerful call to churches around the world to stop talking about peace and take real steps to make peace happen.”
Assadwashing
Rudin’s editorial attempted to use what Jamil Sbitan has dubbed “Assadwashing” to distract attention from Israel:
Why are some Protestant church leaders so intent to single out Israel for financial punishment and public condemnation while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is slaughtering his own citizens? While Egypt’s once promising quest for democracy is threatened by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood? While Hezbollah effectively controls the fragile Lebanese government?
Of course the obvious answer is that whatever anyone thinks of those countries or movements, the United States government imposes varying degrees of unilateral and international sanctions on them.
Israel, meanwhile, receives billions of dollars per year from the US government and enjoys complete diplomatic, political and legal impunity and even encouragement as it commits crimes. It is that unique impunity – the singling out of Israel for special treatment by the United States government – that has compelled Methodists to act.
Members of United Methodist Church have responded forcefully to an attack from Rabbi A. James Rudin, the “senior interreligious adviser” of the American Jewish Committee, just as the Church’s upcoming national conference is to vote on a major initiative to divest from companies profiting from Israeli occupation and human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Writing in The Washington Post, Rudin belittled the divestment initiatives in the Methodist and other Protestant churches as “pointless,” and deployed the now standard tactic of trying to divert attention away from Israel by berating church members for a “biased double standard that judges Israel much more harshly than its neighboring nations and terrorist organizations including Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Not taking the bait
United Methodist Kairos Response (UMKR), a group organizing in favor of the divestment initiative rejected Rudin’s criticism in a statement sent out by email:
“It’s unfortunate that Rabbi Rudin chose to avoid addressing the substantive issues around divestment, like Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestinian land and denial of Palestinian freedom, instead focusing on canards like the size of church membership,” said UMKR member Connie Baker. “If Rabbi Rudin is truly interested in inter-religious dialogue as he claims, we invite him to meet with us to discuss what we are doing and why we are doing it, instead of publishing op-eds attacking us.”
UMKR also refused to take the bait, implied in Rudin’s article, that church divestment initiatives were motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment:
UMKR members have always been, and remain, dedicated to inter-religious dialogue and cooperation with Jewish and other religious groups. In fact, the United Methodist divestment proposal has support from many Jewish groups around the world. UMKR has worked with Jewish and Israeli partners from the beginning of our efforts on divestment. The struggle to end Israel’s occupation, like all civil rights struggles before it is an interfaith effort. Deep and lasting interfaith friendships are being formed as we stand together for equality and human rights.
According to its website, UMKR is “a grass roots effort to respond to the ’Kairos Palestine Document.’ This document is an urgent plea from Christians in the Holy Land for decisive action in support of a just peace. It is a powerful call to churches around the world to stop talking about peace and take real steps to make peace happen.”
Assadwashing
Rudin’s editorial attempted to use what Jamil Sbitan has dubbed “Assadwashing” to distract attention from Israel:
Why are some Protestant church leaders so intent to single out Israel for financial punishment and public condemnation while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is slaughtering his own citizens? While Egypt’s once promising quest for democracy is threatened by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood? While Hezbollah effectively controls the fragile Lebanese government?
Of course the obvious answer is that whatever anyone thinks of those countries or movements, the United States government imposes varying degrees of unilateral and international sanctions on them.
Israel, meanwhile, receives billions of dollars per year from the US government and enjoys complete diplomatic, political and legal impunity and even encouragement as it commits crimes. It is that unique impunity – the singling out of Israel for special treatment by the United States government – that has compelled Methodists to act.
Saturday, 21 April 2012
US Muslim: I Was Tortured at FBI's Behest in UAE
US Muslim: I Was Tortured at FBI's Behest in UAE The Associated Press American Muslim blames the FBI, saying he was tortured at their behest in United Arab Emirates AP Yonas Fikre, a Portland, Oregon Muslim American talks to media at his lawyer's office in Stockholm, Sweden, April 18, 2012. After a 2010 trip to visit family in Khartoum, Sudan, Fikre claims to have been detained and tortured. Put on a FBI no-fly list, Fikre is now unable to return home to the U.S. (AP Photo / Claudio Bresciani) By MALIN RISING and STEVEN DUBOIS Associated Press 4/18/12, 1:15 PM EDT A Muslim American seeking asylum in Sweden claimed Wednesday he was detained at the U.S. government's request while in the United Arab Emirates last summer, tortured in custody and interrogated about the activities of a Portland, Oregon, mosque. Yonas Fikre told a news conference Wednesday that he was held for 106 days and was beaten, threatened with death and kept in solitary confinement in a frigid cell. The 33-year-old, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Eritrea, says he had attended the same mosque in Portland as a man who has been charged in a plot to detonate a bomb in the northwestern U.S. city. He moved to Sudan in 2009 and later to the United Arab Emirates. He went to Sweden, where he has relatives, after being released from detention on Sept. 15. Fikre, who converted to Islam in 2003, is the third Muslim man from Portland to publicly say he was detained while traveling abroad and questioned about Portland's Masjid-as-Sabr mosque. Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali American who is awaiting trial on a charge of plotting to set off a bomb in downtown Portland in November 2010, occasionally worshipped there. A decade ago, seven Muslims with ties to the mosque were arrested following a failed effort to enter Afghanistan and fight U.S. forces. Fikre says he met Mohamud a handful of times, but wouldn't call him a friend or even an acquaintance. Fikre says he was arrested on June 1 in the United Arab Emirates and taken to a prison in Abu Dhabi, where he was questioned about
Has Ron Paul Sold Out To Israeli Lobby? : Information Clearing House
Has Ron Paul Sold Out To Israeli Lobby? : Information Clearing House
While there’s no evidence Israel’s attack prevented Iraq from acquiring a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. intelligence, it was likely an important factor that played into Saddam Hussein’s subsequent decision to move his nuclear program underground and seek to develop an Iraqi nuclear deterrent to further Israeli aggression. An interagency intelligence assessment on the consequences of Israel’s attack stated that it “could be a watershed event in the Middle East” by adding “new strains” to “US-Arab relations” and sparking an “arms race” in which “Arab leaders will intensify their search for alternative ways to boost their security and protect their interests” (much the same observation that Rafsanjani made in 2001). Israel’s own possession of nuclear weapons made its actions all the more destabilizing. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan had “dispelled the ambiguity that surrounded Israel’s nuclear program by acknowledging Israel’s capability to produce nuclear weapons, and the raid on Iraq has laid Tel Aviv’s challenge before the Arab world in clear terms.” Saddam Hussein responded “by suggesting that world governments provide the Arabs with a nuclear deterrent to Israel’s formidable nuclear capabilities. His message to other Arabs is that they can have no security as long as Israel alone commands the nuclear threat.” In line with the view of the international community as reflected in the U.N. resolution, the assessment stated that Israel’s attack seriously damaged international efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. “A related consequence of the raid is damage to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to the IAEA safeguards system”, which would “probably have a detrimental impact”. Contrary to Israeli assertions “that the IAEA safeguards system is a sham”, the assessment made a similar observation as the U.N. resolution that “The Iraqis have had the support of most IAEA members because of general acceptance that international and bilateral safeguards over Iraq’s program were sufficient to guard against the diversion of fissile material for a nuclear device.”
While there’s no evidence Israel’s attack prevented Iraq from acquiring a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. intelligence, it was likely an important factor that played into Saddam Hussein’s subsequent decision to move his nuclear program underground and seek to develop an Iraqi nuclear deterrent to further Israeli aggression. An interagency intelligence assessment on the consequences of Israel’s attack stated that it “could be a watershed event in the Middle East” by adding “new strains” to “US-Arab relations” and sparking an “arms race” in which “Arab leaders will intensify their search for alternative ways to boost their security and protect their interests” (much the same observation that Rafsanjani made in 2001). Israel’s own possession of nuclear weapons made its actions all the more destabilizing. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan had “dispelled the ambiguity that surrounded Israel’s nuclear program by acknowledging Israel’s capability to produce nuclear weapons, and the raid on Iraq has laid Tel Aviv’s challenge before the Arab world in clear terms.” Saddam Hussein responded “by suggesting that world governments provide the Arabs with a nuclear deterrent to Israel’s formidable nuclear capabilities. His message to other Arabs is that they can have no security as long as Israel alone commands the nuclear threat.” In line with the view of the international community as reflected in the U.N. resolution, the assessment stated that Israel’s attack seriously damaged international efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. “A related consequence of the raid is damage to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to the IAEA safeguards system”, which would “probably have a detrimental impact”. Contrary to Israeli assertions “that the IAEA safeguards system is a sham”, the assessment made a similar observation as the U.N. resolution that “The Iraqis have had the support of most IAEA members because of general acceptance that international and bilateral safeguards over Iraq’s program were sufficient to guard against the diversion of fissile material for a nuclear device.”
WikiLeaks Supporters Plan US Foundation to Restore Funding : Information Clearing House
WikiLeaks Supporters Plan US Foundation to Restore Funding : Information Clearing House
WikiLeaks Supporters Plan US Foundation to Restore Funding
Whistleblowing website's backers look to break 'bank blockade' 500 days after Visa, MasterCard and PayPal blocked donations
By James Ball
April 21, 2012 "The Guardian" -- High-profile US supporters of WikiLeaks are planning to establish a foundation to break the 500-day "banking blockade" that has disrupted donations to the whistleblowing website.
WikiLeaks was forced to suspend many of its publishing operations in October last year after Visa, MasterCard and PayPal refused to process supporters' donations to the website, reducing its donation income by about 95%.
The move, which came after the US senator Joe Lieberman called on US companies to cut off services to WikiLeaks, was called a blockade by the organisation's editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, and came without any legal orders or actions against the site.
WikiLeaks Supporters Plan US Foundation to Restore Funding
Whistleblowing website's backers look to break 'bank blockade' 500 days after Visa, MasterCard and PayPal blocked donations
By James Ball
April 21, 2012 "The Guardian" -- High-profile US supporters of WikiLeaks are planning to establish a foundation to break the 500-day "banking blockade" that has disrupted donations to the whistleblowing website.
WikiLeaks was forced to suspend many of its publishing operations in October last year after Visa, MasterCard and PayPal refused to process supporters' donations to the website, reducing its donation income by about 95%.
The move, which came after the US senator Joe Lieberman called on US companies to cut off services to WikiLeaks, was called a blockade by the organisation's editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, and came without any legal orders or actions against the site.
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
How Wealth Reduces Compassion : Information Clearing House
How Wealth Reduces Compassion : Information Clearing House
In order to figure out whether selfishness leads to wealth (rather than vice versa), Piff and his colleagues ran a study where they manipulated people’s class feelings. The researchers asked participants to spend a few minutes comparing themselves either to people better off or worse off than themselves financially. Afterwards, participants were shown a jar of candy and told that they could take home as much as they wanted. They were also told that the leftover candy would be given to children in a nearby laboratory. Those participants who had spent time thinking about how much better off they were compared to others ended up taking significantly more candy for themselves--leaving less behind for the children.
In order to figure out whether selfishness leads to wealth (rather than vice versa), Piff and his colleagues ran a study where they manipulated people’s class feelings. The researchers asked participants to spend a few minutes comparing themselves either to people better off or worse off than themselves financially. Afterwards, participants were shown a jar of candy and told that they could take home as much as they wanted. They were also told that the leftover candy would be given to children in a nearby laboratory. Those participants who had spent time thinking about how much better off they were compared to others ended up taking significantly more candy for themselves--leaving less behind for the children.
Tarek Mehanna: punished for speaking truth to power : Information Clearing House
Tarek Mehanna: punished for speaking truth to power : Information Clearing House
April 15, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- On 12 April, Tarek Mehanna was found guilty of conspiracy and of giving material support for terrorism and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. The prosecution accused Mehanna of translating statements for al-Qaida and of disseminating pro-jihadist material on the internet. Mehanna maintains that he does not support the world view of al-Qaida, though he is unapologetic for supporting the rights of Muslims to defend themselves against their oppressors – in this case, US and British soldiers. The American Civil Liberties Union has said that the verdict against Tarek "undermines" free speech, while the prosecution holds that Tarek was "conspiring to support terrorists" and "for conspiring to kill Americans overseas".
April 15, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- On 12 April, Tarek Mehanna was found guilty of conspiracy and of giving material support for terrorism and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. The prosecution accused Mehanna of translating statements for al-Qaida and of disseminating pro-jihadist material on the internet. Mehanna maintains that he does not support the world view of al-Qaida, though he is unapologetic for supporting the rights of Muslims to defend themselves against their oppressors – in this case, US and British soldiers. The American Civil Liberties Union has said that the verdict against Tarek "undermines" free speech, while the prosecution holds that Tarek was "conspiring to support terrorists" and "for conspiring to kill Americans overseas".
Sunday, 15 April 2012
And Then They Came For The Muslims : Information Clearing House
And Then They Came For The Muslims : Information Clearing House
And Then They Came For The Muslims
By Roqayah Chamseddine
April 15, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- 29-year-old Tarek Mehanna, a United States citizen and graduate from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, was recently sentenced to seventeen and a half years in prison, followed by seven years of supervised release, on federal criminal charges of “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and providing or attempting to provide material support to terrorists.”
Mehanna, through instant messages and emails, communicated his opposition of U.S. military operations in the Middle East and openly criticized what he viewed as “the oppression of Muslims in the United States”; as per his defense council, Tarek had been under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to his knowledge, since approximately 2005 wherein he was periodically interviewed and monitored:
“The FBI has monitored a large amount of Internet-based text conversations that involve Tarek. The instant messages reveal that Tarek was aware of the monitoring activities, or at least believed that they were occurring. Despite this awareness, he did not cease speaking online. He discussed the monitoring activities with his friends and correspondents, and he was repeatedly clear as to why he would not stop his online activities: he was breaking no laws.”
In US v. Mehanna the State’s case largely relied on allegations of his watching videos about “jihad”, discussing his views about suicide bombings online, translating texts readily available on the Internet, and looking for information about the 9/11 attackers.
And Then They Came For The Muslims
By Roqayah Chamseddine
April 15, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- 29-year-old Tarek Mehanna, a United States citizen and graduate from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, was recently sentenced to seventeen and a half years in prison, followed by seven years of supervised release, on federal criminal charges of “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and providing or attempting to provide material support to terrorists.”
Mehanna, through instant messages and emails, communicated his opposition of U.S. military operations in the Middle East and openly criticized what he viewed as “the oppression of Muslims in the United States”; as per his defense council, Tarek had been under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to his knowledge, since approximately 2005 wherein he was periodically interviewed and monitored:
“The FBI has monitored a large amount of Internet-based text conversations that involve Tarek. The instant messages reveal that Tarek was aware of the monitoring activities, or at least believed that they were occurring. Despite this awareness, he did not cease speaking online. He discussed the monitoring activities with his friends and correspondents, and he was repeatedly clear as to why he would not stop his online activities: he was breaking no laws.”
In US v. Mehanna the State’s case largely relied on allegations of his watching videos about “jihad”, discussing his views about suicide bombings online, translating texts readily available on the Internet, and looking for information about the 9/11 attackers.
Drone death in Yemen of an American teenager
SANAA, YEMEN— With the house still quiet with slumber, the 15-year-old left a letter for his mother begging forgiveness, then crawled out a second-storey kitchen window and dropped to the garden below.
Abdulrahman al Awlaki crossed the front yard past potted plants and a carnival ride graveyard — Dumbo, Donald Duck, an arched seal balancing a beach ball — debris from his uncle Omar’s failed business venture to install rides in local shopping malls.
The family’s guard saw the grade nine student with a mop of curly hair leave the front gate at about 6:30 a.m. that morning on Sept. 4. Abdulrahman then made his way to the gates of Bab al-Yemen to catch a bus to a cousin’s house in Shabwa province in the south.
As he crossed the desert on his six-hour journey, his family awoke to news of his disappearance.
“He wrote to his mother, ‘I am sorry for leaving in this kind of way. Forgive me. I miss my father and want to see if I can go and talk to him,’ ” said the boy’s grandfather, Nasser al Awlaki, as he sipped tea in his lavish home. “ ‘I will be coming back in a few days.’ ”
Abdulrahman al Awlaki crossed the front yard past potted plants and a carnival ride graveyard — Dumbo, Donald Duck, an arched seal balancing a beach ball — debris from his uncle Omar’s failed business venture to install rides in local shopping malls.
The family’s guard saw the grade nine student with a mop of curly hair leave the front gate at about 6:30 a.m. that morning on Sept. 4. Abdulrahman then made his way to the gates of Bab al-Yemen to catch a bus to a cousin’s house in Shabwa province in the south.
As he crossed the desert on his six-hour journey, his family awoke to news of his disappearance.
“He wrote to his mother, ‘I am sorry for leaving in this kind of way. Forgive me. I miss my father and want to see if I can go and talk to him,’ ” said the boy’s grandfather, Nasser al Awlaki, as he sipped tea in his lavish home. “ ‘I will be coming back in a few days.’ ”
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Gunter Grass accuses Israel of plotting to 'wipe out' Iran
Gunter Grass accuses Israel of plotting to 'wipe out' Iran
BERLIN - Controversy-courting German Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass published a poem Wednesday in which he accused Israel of plotting Iran's annihilation and threatening global security.
The 84-year-old longtime leftist activist wrote in "What must be said" that he worried Israel "could wipe out the Iranian people" with a "first strike" due to the threat it sees in Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
"Why do I only say now, aged and with my last ink: the atomic power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace?" reads the poem, which was published in the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Grass answers that Nazi Germany's "incomparable" crimes against Jews and fears of accusations of anti-Semitism kept him from openly criticizing Israel.
But now, "tomorrow could already be too late" and Germany could become a "supplier to a crime," referring to a deal sealed last month for Berlin to sell Israel a sixth nuclear-capable Dolphin-class submarine.
"I admit: I will be silent no longer, because I am sick of the hypocrisy of the West".
Israel slammed the poem.
"What must be said is that it belongs to European tradition to accuse the Jews of ritual murder before the Passover celebration," said Emmanuel Nahshon, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli embassy in Berlin, in a statement.
"It used to be Christian children whose blood the Jews used to make matza (unleavened bread), today it is the Iranian people that the Jewish state purportedly wants to wipe out."
Nahshon said Israel was "the only state in the world whose right to exist is publicly doubted".
"We want to live in peace with our neighbours in the region. And we are not prepared to assume the role that Gunter Grass assigns us in the German people's process of coming to terms with its history."
Grass, author of the renowned anti-war novel "The Tin Drum," sparked outrage in 2006 when he revealed, six decades after World War II, that he had been a member of the notorious Waffen SS.
Such is Grass's status in German cultural life that Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert was asked about his criticism of the submarine sales to Israel at a regular government press conference.
"In Germany, the freedom of artistic expression applies, as, fortunately, does the freedom of the government not to comment on every work of art," Seibert said.
Henryk M. Broder, a prominent German Jewish columnist, accused Grass in light of his poem of being "the prototype of the educated anti-Semitist."
"Grass has always had a problem with Jews but he has never articulated it as clearly as with this 'poem,'" Broder wrote in the daily Die Welt.
Israel, the sole if undeclared nuclear power in the Middle East, has said it is keeping all options open for responding to Iran's nuclear program, which it says is aimed at securing nuclear weapons, posing an existential threat to the Jewish state.
Iran, whose president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently questions Israel's right to exist, has consistently denied that its sensitive nuclear work is aimed at making weapons.
© Copyright (c) AFP
BERLIN - Controversy-courting German Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass published a poem Wednesday in which he accused Israel of plotting Iran's annihilation and threatening global security.
The 84-year-old longtime leftist activist wrote in "What must be said" that he worried Israel "could wipe out the Iranian people" with a "first strike" due to the threat it sees in Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
"Why do I only say now, aged and with my last ink: the atomic power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace?" reads the poem, which was published in the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Grass answers that Nazi Germany's "incomparable" crimes against Jews and fears of accusations of anti-Semitism kept him from openly criticizing Israel.
But now, "tomorrow could already be too late" and Germany could become a "supplier to a crime," referring to a deal sealed last month for Berlin to sell Israel a sixth nuclear-capable Dolphin-class submarine.
"I admit: I will be silent no longer, because I am sick of the hypocrisy of the West".
Israel slammed the poem.
"What must be said is that it belongs to European tradition to accuse the Jews of ritual murder before the Passover celebration," said Emmanuel Nahshon, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli embassy in Berlin, in a statement.
"It used to be Christian children whose blood the Jews used to make matza (unleavened bread), today it is the Iranian people that the Jewish state purportedly wants to wipe out."
Nahshon said Israel was "the only state in the world whose right to exist is publicly doubted".
"We want to live in peace with our neighbours in the region. And we are not prepared to assume the role that Gunter Grass assigns us in the German people's process of coming to terms with its history."
Grass, author of the renowned anti-war novel "The Tin Drum," sparked outrage in 2006 when he revealed, six decades after World War II, that he had been a member of the notorious Waffen SS.
Such is Grass's status in German cultural life that Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert was asked about his criticism of the submarine sales to Israel at a regular government press conference.
"In Germany, the freedom of artistic expression applies, as, fortunately, does the freedom of the government not to comment on every work of art," Seibert said.
Henryk M. Broder, a prominent German Jewish columnist, accused Grass in light of his poem of being "the prototype of the educated anti-Semitist."
"Grass has always had a problem with Jews but he has never articulated it as clearly as with this 'poem,'" Broder wrote in the daily Die Welt.
Israel, the sole if undeclared nuclear power in the Middle East, has said it is keeping all options open for responding to Iran's nuclear program, which it says is aimed at securing nuclear weapons, posing an existential threat to the Jewish state.
Iran, whose president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently questions Israel's right to exist, has consistently denied that its sensitive nuclear work is aimed at making weapons.
© Copyright (c) AFP
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Uprooting 30,000 Bedouin in Israel - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
Uprooting 30,000 Bedouin in Israel - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
Beer-Sheva, Israel - "It is not every day that a government decides to relocate almost half a per cent of its population in a programme of forced urbanisation," Rawia Aburabia asserted, adding that "this is precisely what Prawer wants to do".
The meeting, which was attempting to coordinate various actions against the Prawer Plan, had just ended, and Rawia, an outspoken Bedouin leader who works for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, was clearly upset. She realised that the possibility of changing the course of events was extremely unlikely and that, at the end of the day, the government would uproot 30,000 Negev Bedouin and put them in townships. This would result in an end to their rural way of life and would ultimately deprive them of their livelihood and land rights.
Rawia's wrath was directed at Ehud Prawer, the Director of the Planning Policy Division in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office. Prawer took on this role after serving as the deputy director of Israel's National Security Council. His mandate is to implement the decisions of the Goldberg Committee for the Arrangement of Arab Settlement in the Negev, by offering a "concrete solution" to the problem of the 45 unrecognised Bedouin villages in the region.
An estimated 70,000 people are currently living in these villages, which are prohibited by law from connecting any of their houses to electricity grids, running water or sewage systems. Construction regulations are also harshly enforced and in this past year alone, about 1,000 Bedouin homes and animal pens - usually referred to by the government simple as "structures" - were demolished. There are no paved roads in these villages and it is illegal to place signposts near the highways designating the village's location. Opening a map will not help either, since none of these villages are marked. Geographically, at least, these citizens of Israel do not exist.
History
The State's relationship with the Bedouin has been thorny from the beginning. Before the establishment of the state of Israel, about 70,000 Bedouin lived in the Negev. Following the 1948 war, however, only 12,000 or so remained, while the rest fled or were expelled to Jordan and Egypt.
Under the directives of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, many of the remaining Bedouin were uprooted from the lands they had inhabited for generations and were concentrated in the mostly barren area in the north-eastern part of the Negev known as the Siyag (enclosure) zone. This area comprises one million dunams [one dunam = 1,000m2], or slightly less than ten per cent of the Negev's territory. Through this process of forced relocation, the Negev's most arable lands were cleared of Arab residents and were given to new kibbutzim and moshavim, Jewish agriculture communities, which took full advantage of the fertile soil.
After their relocation and up until 1966, the Bedouin citizens of Israel were subjected to a harsh military rule; their movement was restricted and they were denied basic political, social and economic rights. But even in the post-military rule of the late 1960s, many Israeli decision makers still considered the Bedouin living within the Siyag threatening and occupying too much land, so, despite the relocation that had been carried out in the 1950s, the state decided to find a better solution to the "Bedouin problem".
The plan was to concentrate the Bedouin population within semi-urban spaces that would ultimately comprise only a minute percentage of their original tribal lands. Over the course of several years, government officials met with Bedouin sheikhs and reached agreements with many of them. In a gradual process, spanning about 20 years, seven towns were created - Tel-Sheva, Rahat, Segev Shalom, Kusaife, Lqya, Hura and Ar'ara.
In some cases, Bedouin were already living where the town was built, but the large majority of the Bedouin were relocated once again and moved into these Bedouin-only towns. Some did it of their own volition, while others were forced. The price that most families had to pay for their own displacement was hefty: renouncing the right to large portions of their land and giving up their rural way of life.
For many years following the establishment of each town, the Bedouin residents were not allowed to hold democratic elections and their municipalities were run by Jewish officials from the Ministry of Interior. The towns also rapidly turned into over-crowded townships, with dilapidated infrastructure and hardly any employment opportunities. Currently, all seven townships, which are home to about 135,000 people, are ranked one on the Israeli socio-economic scale of one (lowest) to ten (highest), and are characterised by a high unemployment, high birth rates and third-rate education institutions.
After years of indecision, the government appointed Prawer to try, yet again, to solve the "Bedouin problem" once and for all. His mandate is to relocate the Bedouin who had been unwilling to sign over their property rights and remained in unrecognised villages. The government's justification for not recognising these villages is that they are relatively small (ranging from a couple of hundred to several thousand people) and are scattered across a large area, all of which makes it difficult, in the government's view, to provide them with satisfactory infrastructure. In the name of modernism, then, the government wants to concentrate the Bedouin in a small number of towns.
Wadi al Na'am
After meeting Rawia, I drove to Wadi al Na'am, an unrecognised Bedouin village located about 20 minutes south of my house in Beer-Sheva. I wanted to ask some of the people there what they think of Prawer's Plan.
Along the highway, I passed literally hundreds of Bedouin dwellings made from tin panels, scrap wood and canvas. Chicken, sheep, goats and donkeys adorned the terraces. I was again struck by Bedouin wheat pastures because they are not irrigated, and the height of the stalk depends on the amount of rain that falls during a given year; it is easy to identify a Bedouin pasture because the stalk is miniscule when compared with "Jewish" wheat, which receives plenty of water.
Although I had been to Wadi al Na'am a few times before, I suddenly felt unsure about where I was supposed to turn off the highway and called Ibrahim Abu Afash to ask for directions. "Don't you remember," he said, "at the road sign pointing towards the electricity plant take a left and I will wait for you on top of the hill."
I followed Ibrahim's Subaru on dirt roads for about ten minutes until we reached his shieg, a large tent towering over a concrete floor covered with rugs, a row of mattresses and pillows scattered along the perimeter. In the middle of the tent, there was a hole in the concrete, with an iron pot of tea simmering over burning coals. Ibrahim sat on a mattress next to his brother Labad and right behind them were a few young men smoking Israeli cigarettes and drinking tea.
Ibrahim is the sheikh of Wadi al Na'am. When he was young he served as a scout for the Israeli military, which may explain why his Hebrew is better than mine. After a few niceties, he cut to the point.
"I met Prawer and he is a good man," he said, and then added that "often good men, do bad things."
"The fact that Wadi al Na'am, like many other unrecognised villages, is located right under electricity grids and next to central water pipes and that we were never allowed to connect our homes to these basic services is no doubt a criminal act of discrimination."
"You know," he continued, "in the past two decades, several dozen single-family Jewish farms have been established throughout the Negev and more recently, ten new Jewish satellite settlements have been approved and will be constructed on Bedouin land near the Jewish town Arad. Incidentally, at least two unrecognised Bedouin villages, al-Tir and neighbouring Umm al-Hiran, are due to be emptied of their combined 1,000 residents to make way for these new Jewish communities."
Ibrahim did not mention that in the northern Negev there are already 100 Jewish settlements scattered about, each one home to an average 300 people, but he nonetheless managed to underscore that Prawer's scheme is biased at its very core. And even though he never came out and said that the true motivation behind the plan is the desire to Judaise the land, it is obvious that this is indeed the objective. There is no other feasible explanation for why the state does not relent and legalise the unrecognised villages.
The Bedouin as a threat
As he was formulating the plan, Ehud Prawer met many Bedouin in order to understand the complex issues involved in trying to provide a solution to the unrecognised villages. Years of service within Israel's security establishment have led him, however, to relate to Bedouin less as individual bearers of rights and more as a national risk that needs to be contained.
Working closely with Prawer are a few people who, like him, were for many years part of one of Israel's security arms. His right hand man, Doron Almog, is a retired military general, while Yehuda Bachar, chairman of the Directorate for the Coordination of Government and Bedouin Activities in the Negev, was a senior officer in Israel's police force. Not coincidentally, before submitting the plan to the government, Prawer asked Yaakov Amidror, the Director of the National Security Council, to provide his stamp of approval.
The fact that the life experiences of almost all of the people responsible for providing a solution for the unrecognised Bedouin orbited around issues of security is not a minor matter, since for them the Bedouin are first and foremost an internal threat. The "Bedouin problem", accordingly, has little to do with rights and much more to do with managing risks.
Algorithm of expropriation
Ironically, the plan Prawer drafted and the proposed law based on the plan do not really address the problems of these villages.
"If the state is so adamant about not recognising the villages in their existing locations, I would have at least expected Prawer to state clearly that the government will build a specific number of villages and towns for the Bedouin, to specify exactly where they will be located, and to promise that they will be planned so as to take into account the Bedouin's rural form of life," Hia Noach, the Director of the Negev Co-existence Forum, explained in an interview.
"Instead, the plan, which will soon become law, focuses on creating an algorithm for dividing private property among the Bedouin, while discussing in a few ambiguous sentences the actual solution for the unrecognised villages. Isn't it mysterious that the plan dealing with the relocation of the Bedouin does not include a map indicating where the Bedouin will be moved to?"
Prawer's algorithm is an extremely complex mechanism of expropriation informed by the basic assumption that the Bedouin have no land rights. He is aware that, in the 1970s, as Israel was relocating Bedouin to townships, about 3,200 Bedouin filed petitions to the Justice Ministry, claiming rights over property that had belonged to their family for generations.
All in all, they petitioned for a million and a half dunams, of which 971,000 were claims regarding property belonging to individuals, and the remaining half a million dunams were land that had been used by communities for pasture. Over the years, the Ministry of Justice has denied claims relating to two thirds of the land, which means that, currently, property claims amounting to about 550,000 dunams, or four per cent of the Negev's land, are still waiting to be settled.
Prawer's plan aims to settle all the remaining petitions in one fell swoop. Ironically, though, his underlying assumption is that all such claims are all spurious. At the very end of the government decision approving the Prawer Plan (Decision 3707, September 11, 2011), one reads:
"The state's basic assumption over the years … is that at the very least the vast majority of the claimants do not have a recognised right according to Israeli property laws to the lands for which they have sued … By way of conclusion, neither the government decision nor the proposed law that will be brought forth in its aftermath recognise the legality of the property claims, but rather the opposite - a solution that its whole essence is ex gratia and is based on the assumption of the absence of property rights."
The strategy is clear: Take everything away, forcing the Bedouin to be grateful for any morsel given back. And this, indeed, is how Prawer's algorithm of expropriation works.
First, only land that is disputed (meaning land that families filed suit for 35 years ago) and that a family has lived on and used consecutively (as opposed to pasture areas that have been collective) will be compensated with land, but at a ratio of 50 per cent. So if a person has 100 dunams, lived on this land and planted wheat on it for the past three-and-a-half decades, this person will be given 50 dunams of agricultural land. Most of this newly "recognised land" will not be located on the ancestral lands, but at a location wherever the state decides.
Second, cash compensation for land that had been petitioned for, but held by the state and therefore not used by Bedouin will be uniform, regardless of the location of the land and whether or not it is fertile, remote or attractive.
Third, the rate of compensation will be about 5,000 shekels ($1,300) per dunam, a meagre sum considering that half a dunam in a township such as Rahat costs about 150,000 shekels ($40,300). The cost of a plot is important, since the families will have to buy plots in the towns. If a Bedouin landowner has five or six offspring, by the time he buys plots for the family, he will be left with little, if any, land for agricultural use. Finally, Bedouin who filed land claims and do not settle with the state within five years will lose all ownership rights.
To where?
Hia Noach estimates that of the existing 550,000 dunams of unsettled land claims, about 100,000, which is less than one per cent of the Negev's land, will stay in Bedouin hands after the Prawer Plan is implemented. But this, she emphasises, is only part of the problem. Another central issue has to do with the actual relocation. Where will the Bedouin be moved to and to what kind of settlement? These are precisely the questions Ehud Prawer is yet to answer.
One detail that has become public knowledge is that the unrecognised Bedouin will be relocated east of route 40, which is the Negev's more arid region situated close to the southern tip of the occupied West Bank. While this part of Prawer's plan is reminiscent of Ben Gurion's strategy of concentrating the Bedouin within certain parameters in order to vacate land for Jews, it may be the case that there is something more sinister at hand. If there are ever one for one land swaps with the Palestinians in the West Bank, what could be more convenient for the Jewish state than handing over some parched Negev land with a lot of Bedouin on it?
Regardless of what the Bedouin think about this scheme, the government is going ahead with the plan and has decided to allocate about $2bn for relocating 70,000 Bedouin. Incidentally, this is more or less the same sum that was allocated for relocating the 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The government has also stated that about $300m will be allotted to the existing townships, indicating that at least some of the Bedouin will be moved to these dilapidated municipalities.
It is unclear how people accustomed to living off agriculture and raising sheep will make ends meet once they are forcefully relocated. This is not merely a theoretical concern, considering that the majority of Bedouin who moved to the first seven towns never succeeded in socialising to more urban life. There are talks that three more towns will be created, but if history is any indication, it is unlikely that these will be any better suited for the Bedouin's rural form of life.
Before leaving Wadi al Na'am, I asked Ibrahim what he thinks will happen if they do not reach an agreement with the government. He paused for a moment and then replied that he does not want to think about such an option, adding that "they will not put us on buses and move us, they will simply shut down the schools and wait. When we see we cannot send our children to school we will 'willingly' move".
This is how forced relocation becomes voluntary and how Israel will likely represent it to the world.
A version of the article also appeared in the London Review of Books.
Neve Gordon is the author of Israel's Occupation. He can be reached through his website.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Beer-Sheva, Israel - "It is not every day that a government decides to relocate almost half a per cent of its population in a programme of forced urbanisation," Rawia Aburabia asserted, adding that "this is precisely what Prawer wants to do".
The meeting, which was attempting to coordinate various actions against the Prawer Plan, had just ended, and Rawia, an outspoken Bedouin leader who works for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, was clearly upset. She realised that the possibility of changing the course of events was extremely unlikely and that, at the end of the day, the government would uproot 30,000 Negev Bedouin and put them in townships. This would result in an end to their rural way of life and would ultimately deprive them of their livelihood and land rights.
Rawia's wrath was directed at Ehud Prawer, the Director of the Planning Policy Division in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office. Prawer took on this role after serving as the deputy director of Israel's National Security Council. His mandate is to implement the decisions of the Goldberg Committee for the Arrangement of Arab Settlement in the Negev, by offering a "concrete solution" to the problem of the 45 unrecognised Bedouin villages in the region.
An estimated 70,000 people are currently living in these villages, which are prohibited by law from connecting any of their houses to electricity grids, running water or sewage systems. Construction regulations are also harshly enforced and in this past year alone, about 1,000 Bedouin homes and animal pens - usually referred to by the government simple as "structures" - were demolished. There are no paved roads in these villages and it is illegal to place signposts near the highways designating the village's location. Opening a map will not help either, since none of these villages are marked. Geographically, at least, these citizens of Israel do not exist.
History
The State's relationship with the Bedouin has been thorny from the beginning. Before the establishment of the state of Israel, about 70,000 Bedouin lived in the Negev. Following the 1948 war, however, only 12,000 or so remained, while the rest fled or were expelled to Jordan and Egypt.
Under the directives of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, many of the remaining Bedouin were uprooted from the lands they had inhabited for generations and were concentrated in the mostly barren area in the north-eastern part of the Negev known as the Siyag (enclosure) zone. This area comprises one million dunams [one dunam = 1,000m2], or slightly less than ten per cent of the Negev's territory. Through this process of forced relocation, the Negev's most arable lands were cleared of Arab residents and were given to new kibbutzim and moshavim, Jewish agriculture communities, which took full advantage of the fertile soil.
After their relocation and up until 1966, the Bedouin citizens of Israel were subjected to a harsh military rule; their movement was restricted and they were denied basic political, social and economic rights. But even in the post-military rule of the late 1960s, many Israeli decision makers still considered the Bedouin living within the Siyag threatening and occupying too much land, so, despite the relocation that had been carried out in the 1950s, the state decided to find a better solution to the "Bedouin problem".
The plan was to concentrate the Bedouin population within semi-urban spaces that would ultimately comprise only a minute percentage of their original tribal lands. Over the course of several years, government officials met with Bedouin sheikhs and reached agreements with many of them. In a gradual process, spanning about 20 years, seven towns were created - Tel-Sheva, Rahat, Segev Shalom, Kusaife, Lqya, Hura and Ar'ara.
In some cases, Bedouin were already living where the town was built, but the large majority of the Bedouin were relocated once again and moved into these Bedouin-only towns. Some did it of their own volition, while others were forced. The price that most families had to pay for their own displacement was hefty: renouncing the right to large portions of their land and giving up their rural way of life.
For many years following the establishment of each town, the Bedouin residents were not allowed to hold democratic elections and their municipalities were run by Jewish officials from the Ministry of Interior. The towns also rapidly turned into over-crowded townships, with dilapidated infrastructure and hardly any employment opportunities. Currently, all seven townships, which are home to about 135,000 people, are ranked one on the Israeli socio-economic scale of one (lowest) to ten (highest), and are characterised by a high unemployment, high birth rates and third-rate education institutions.
After years of indecision, the government appointed Prawer to try, yet again, to solve the "Bedouin problem" once and for all. His mandate is to relocate the Bedouin who had been unwilling to sign over their property rights and remained in unrecognised villages. The government's justification for not recognising these villages is that they are relatively small (ranging from a couple of hundred to several thousand people) and are scattered across a large area, all of which makes it difficult, in the government's view, to provide them with satisfactory infrastructure. In the name of modernism, then, the government wants to concentrate the Bedouin in a small number of towns.
Wadi al Na'am
After meeting Rawia, I drove to Wadi al Na'am, an unrecognised Bedouin village located about 20 minutes south of my house in Beer-Sheva. I wanted to ask some of the people there what they think of Prawer's Plan.
Along the highway, I passed literally hundreds of Bedouin dwellings made from tin panels, scrap wood and canvas. Chicken, sheep, goats and donkeys adorned the terraces. I was again struck by Bedouin wheat pastures because they are not irrigated, and the height of the stalk depends on the amount of rain that falls during a given year; it is easy to identify a Bedouin pasture because the stalk is miniscule when compared with "Jewish" wheat, which receives plenty of water.
Although I had been to Wadi al Na'am a few times before, I suddenly felt unsure about where I was supposed to turn off the highway and called Ibrahim Abu Afash to ask for directions. "Don't you remember," he said, "at the road sign pointing towards the electricity plant take a left and I will wait for you on top of the hill."
I followed Ibrahim's Subaru on dirt roads for about ten minutes until we reached his shieg, a large tent towering over a concrete floor covered with rugs, a row of mattresses and pillows scattered along the perimeter. In the middle of the tent, there was a hole in the concrete, with an iron pot of tea simmering over burning coals. Ibrahim sat on a mattress next to his brother Labad and right behind them were a few young men smoking Israeli cigarettes and drinking tea.
Ibrahim is the sheikh of Wadi al Na'am. When he was young he served as a scout for the Israeli military, which may explain why his Hebrew is better than mine. After a few niceties, he cut to the point.
"I met Prawer and he is a good man," he said, and then added that "often good men, do bad things."
"The fact that Wadi al Na'am, like many other unrecognised villages, is located right under electricity grids and next to central water pipes and that we were never allowed to connect our homes to these basic services is no doubt a criminal act of discrimination."
"You know," he continued, "in the past two decades, several dozen single-family Jewish farms have been established throughout the Negev and more recently, ten new Jewish satellite settlements have been approved and will be constructed on Bedouin land near the Jewish town Arad. Incidentally, at least two unrecognised Bedouin villages, al-Tir and neighbouring Umm al-Hiran, are due to be emptied of their combined 1,000 residents to make way for these new Jewish communities."
Ibrahim did not mention that in the northern Negev there are already 100 Jewish settlements scattered about, each one home to an average 300 people, but he nonetheless managed to underscore that Prawer's scheme is biased at its very core. And even though he never came out and said that the true motivation behind the plan is the desire to Judaise the land, it is obvious that this is indeed the objective. There is no other feasible explanation for why the state does not relent and legalise the unrecognised villages.
The Bedouin as a threat
As he was formulating the plan, Ehud Prawer met many Bedouin in order to understand the complex issues involved in trying to provide a solution to the unrecognised villages. Years of service within Israel's security establishment have led him, however, to relate to Bedouin less as individual bearers of rights and more as a national risk that needs to be contained.
Working closely with Prawer are a few people who, like him, were for many years part of one of Israel's security arms. His right hand man, Doron Almog, is a retired military general, while Yehuda Bachar, chairman of the Directorate for the Coordination of Government and Bedouin Activities in the Negev, was a senior officer in Israel's police force. Not coincidentally, before submitting the plan to the government, Prawer asked Yaakov Amidror, the Director of the National Security Council, to provide his stamp of approval.
The fact that the life experiences of almost all of the people responsible for providing a solution for the unrecognised Bedouin orbited around issues of security is not a minor matter, since for them the Bedouin are first and foremost an internal threat. The "Bedouin problem", accordingly, has little to do with rights and much more to do with managing risks.
Algorithm of expropriation
Ironically, the plan Prawer drafted and the proposed law based on the plan do not really address the problems of these villages.
"If the state is so adamant about not recognising the villages in their existing locations, I would have at least expected Prawer to state clearly that the government will build a specific number of villages and towns for the Bedouin, to specify exactly where they will be located, and to promise that they will be planned so as to take into account the Bedouin's rural form of life," Hia Noach, the Director of the Negev Co-existence Forum, explained in an interview.
"Instead, the plan, which will soon become law, focuses on creating an algorithm for dividing private property among the Bedouin, while discussing in a few ambiguous sentences the actual solution for the unrecognised villages. Isn't it mysterious that the plan dealing with the relocation of the Bedouin does not include a map indicating where the Bedouin will be moved to?"
Prawer's algorithm is an extremely complex mechanism of expropriation informed by the basic assumption that the Bedouin have no land rights. He is aware that, in the 1970s, as Israel was relocating Bedouin to townships, about 3,200 Bedouin filed petitions to the Justice Ministry, claiming rights over property that had belonged to their family for generations.
All in all, they petitioned for a million and a half dunams, of which 971,000 were claims regarding property belonging to individuals, and the remaining half a million dunams were land that had been used by communities for pasture. Over the years, the Ministry of Justice has denied claims relating to two thirds of the land, which means that, currently, property claims amounting to about 550,000 dunams, or four per cent of the Negev's land, are still waiting to be settled.
Prawer's plan aims to settle all the remaining petitions in one fell swoop. Ironically, though, his underlying assumption is that all such claims are all spurious. At the very end of the government decision approving the Prawer Plan (Decision 3707, September 11, 2011), one reads:
"The state's basic assumption over the years … is that at the very least the vast majority of the claimants do not have a recognised right according to Israeli property laws to the lands for which they have sued … By way of conclusion, neither the government decision nor the proposed law that will be brought forth in its aftermath recognise the legality of the property claims, but rather the opposite - a solution that its whole essence is ex gratia and is based on the assumption of the absence of property rights."
The strategy is clear: Take everything away, forcing the Bedouin to be grateful for any morsel given back. And this, indeed, is how Prawer's algorithm of expropriation works.
First, only land that is disputed (meaning land that families filed suit for 35 years ago) and that a family has lived on and used consecutively (as opposed to pasture areas that have been collective) will be compensated with land, but at a ratio of 50 per cent. So if a person has 100 dunams, lived on this land and planted wheat on it for the past three-and-a-half decades, this person will be given 50 dunams of agricultural land. Most of this newly "recognised land" will not be located on the ancestral lands, but at a location wherever the state decides.
Second, cash compensation for land that had been petitioned for, but held by the state and therefore not used by Bedouin will be uniform, regardless of the location of the land and whether or not it is fertile, remote or attractive.
Third, the rate of compensation will be about 5,000 shekels ($1,300) per dunam, a meagre sum considering that half a dunam in a township such as Rahat costs about 150,000 shekels ($40,300). The cost of a plot is important, since the families will have to buy plots in the towns. If a Bedouin landowner has five or six offspring, by the time he buys plots for the family, he will be left with little, if any, land for agricultural use. Finally, Bedouin who filed land claims and do not settle with the state within five years will lose all ownership rights.
To where?
Hia Noach estimates that of the existing 550,000 dunams of unsettled land claims, about 100,000, which is less than one per cent of the Negev's land, will stay in Bedouin hands after the Prawer Plan is implemented. But this, she emphasises, is only part of the problem. Another central issue has to do with the actual relocation. Where will the Bedouin be moved to and to what kind of settlement? These are precisely the questions Ehud Prawer is yet to answer.
One detail that has become public knowledge is that the unrecognised Bedouin will be relocated east of route 40, which is the Negev's more arid region situated close to the southern tip of the occupied West Bank. While this part of Prawer's plan is reminiscent of Ben Gurion's strategy of concentrating the Bedouin within certain parameters in order to vacate land for Jews, it may be the case that there is something more sinister at hand. If there are ever one for one land swaps with the Palestinians in the West Bank, what could be more convenient for the Jewish state than handing over some parched Negev land with a lot of Bedouin on it?
Regardless of what the Bedouin think about this scheme, the government is going ahead with the plan and has decided to allocate about $2bn for relocating 70,000 Bedouin. Incidentally, this is more or less the same sum that was allocated for relocating the 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The government has also stated that about $300m will be allotted to the existing townships, indicating that at least some of the Bedouin will be moved to these dilapidated municipalities.
It is unclear how people accustomed to living off agriculture and raising sheep will make ends meet once they are forcefully relocated. This is not merely a theoretical concern, considering that the majority of Bedouin who moved to the first seven towns never succeeded in socialising to more urban life. There are talks that three more towns will be created, but if history is any indication, it is unlikely that these will be any better suited for the Bedouin's rural form of life.
Before leaving Wadi al Na'am, I asked Ibrahim what he thinks will happen if they do not reach an agreement with the government. He paused for a moment and then replied that he does not want to think about such an option, adding that "they will not put us on buses and move us, they will simply shut down the schools and wait. When we see we cannot send our children to school we will 'willingly' move".
This is how forced relocation becomes voluntary and how Israel will likely represent it to the world.
A version of the article also appeared in the London Review of Books.
Neve Gordon is the author of Israel's Occupation. He can be reached through his website.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Sunday, 1 April 2012
Man Whose WMD Lies Led to Iraq War Confesses All : Information Clearing House
Man Whose WMD Lies Led to Iraq War Confesses All : Information Clearing House
http://v.imwx.com/v/mrss/news/595624.mov
April 01, 2012 "The Independent" - -A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.
"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.
He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression."
The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003.
http://v.imwx.com/v/mrss/news/595624.mov
April 01, 2012 "The Independent" - -A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.
"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.
He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression."
The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003.
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