Islamic Jihad faction fires projectiles at Israeli towns

September 15, 2006

Ma'an – The Al Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for launching one homemade projectile into north Sderot, an Israeli town north of the Gaza Strip, and also for firing two homemade projectiles into Netiv Ha'asara, also north of the Strip, on Friday morning.

In a statement, the Brigades said that the launching operations were in response to the ongoing Israeli aggressions. They said that they will continue their resistance and the launching of projectiles at Israeli "settlements" until the liberation of the Palestinian territories.

Zionist Occupation Forces (ZOF) Escalate Attacks on Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)

Funeral prayer for Mohammad Abu Reida (killed by occupation forces on Sep 8, 2006)

• Zionist Occupation Forces (ZOF) Escalate Attacks on Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)
• 
  11 Palestinians, including a child and a man and his on, were killed by ZOF.
• 
  5 of the victims were extra-judicially executed by ZOF in Rafah and Jenin.
• 
  67 Palestinian civilians, including 16 children and a woman, were wounded by the ZOF gunfire.
• 
  ZOF launched a series of air strikes on a number of houses in the Gaza Strip.
• 
  ZOF conducted 37 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
• 
  ZOF arrested 39 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
• 
  10 houses were destroyed by ZOF in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.
  ZOF raided an Islamic charitable society in Tubas.
• 
  6 houses were transformed by ZOF into military sites.
• 
  ZOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT; ZOF have imposed a tightened siege on the Gaza Strip and there have been shortages of foodstuffs and fuels; and ZOF positioned at a various checkpoints in the West Bank arrested 4 Palestinians, including Head of the Presidential Guard in Ramallah.
• 
  ZOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall in the West Bank; they confiscated 152 donums of land in Bethlehem; and 467 olive trees located behind the Wall in Qalqilya were burnt.
  
  Summary
  
  As the international community has remained silent, ZOF have continued to wage a full scale offensive on the Palestinian people, especially in the Gaza Strip. During the reported period, ZOF have continued their attacks on Palestinian civilians and property.
  
  Zionist violations of international law continued in the OPT during the reported period (31 August – 6 September 2006):
  
  Killing:
  
  During the reported period, ZOF killed 9 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. On 2 September 2006, ZOF killed a man and his son during an incursion into the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun. On 5 September 2006, ZOF extra-judicially executed 4 Palestinians in two separate attacks in Rafah. Three other Palestinians, including a child, were killed by ZOF in separate attacks, in which ZOF used excessive force. In addition, 51 Palestinians, including 12 children and a woman, were wounded by the ZOF gunfire.
  
  Thus, the number of Palestinians killed by ZOF in the Gaza Strip since 25 June 2006 has increased to 226, including 47 children and 12 women. In addition, 726 others, mostly civilians, including 196 children, 27 women, 4 paramedics and 4 journalists, have been wounded.
  
  ZOF also launched at least two air strikes on two houses in the Gaza Strip belonging to Palestinian resistance activists. These houses were destroyed, and a number of neighboring houses and civilian facilities were severely damaged. ZOF intelligence officers ordered owners of these houses by phone to evacuate their houses.
  
  In the West Bank, two Palestinians were killed by ZOF. On 31 August 2006, killed a Palestinian during an incursion in the old town of Nablus. The victim was described as the leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Fatah movement, in the West Bank. On 6 September 2006, ZOF extra-judicially killed a member of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad, in Jenin. In addition, 16 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children and two paramedics, were wounded by ZOF gunfire.
  
  Incursions:
  
  ZOF conducted at least 37 military incursions into Palestinian communities, during which they raided dozens of houses and arrested 39 Palestinian civilians. In addition, ZOF raided a charitable society in Tubas village, southeast of Jenin. ZOF conducted incursions into Beit Hanoun and Khuza’a village. They killed a number of Palestinian civilians, arrested 3 others, razed at least 50 donums of agricultural land and destroyed 6 houses completely and a number of others partially.
  
  Restrictions on Movement:
  
  ZOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Occupied East Al-Quds.
  
  In the Gaza Strip, ZOF have imposed a strict siege on the Gaza Strip. They have closed its border crossings as a form of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians. ZOF have closed Rafah International Crossing Point, even though they do not directly control it. They have prevented European observers working at the crossing point form reaching it. ZOF have closed commercial crossings of the Gaza Strip, especially al-Mentar (Karni) crossing. As a consequence, the economic situation inside the Gaza Strip has further deteriorated and many goods have been lacked in markets. During the reported period, ZOF partially reopened al-Mentar (Karni) crossing. ZOF have also continued to close Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip. In addition, ZOF have prevented Palestinian fishermen from fishing.
  
  In the West Bank, ZOF have tightened the siege imposed on Palestinian communities in the West Bank. They have isolated Al-Quds from the rest of the West Bank. ZOF positioned at various checkpoints in the West Bank have continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians. ZOF have continued to separate between the north and south of the West Bank. During the reported period, ZOF positioned at various checkpoints around imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians. During the reported period, ZOF positioned at various checkpoints in the West Bank arrested 4 Palestinians, including Head of the Presidential Guard in Ramallah..
  
  Annexation Wall:
  
  ZOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall inside the West Bank. During the reported period, ZOF issued a military order seizing 152 donums of land in Um Salmouna village, south of Bethlehem, to be used for “military purposes to establish a fence and a number of secure roads.” According to local sources, the seizures of land aims to construct a section of the Wall in the area, and establish a settler bypass road. On 2 September 2006, fire broke out on areas of agricultural land in Nabi Elias village, east of Qalqilya, which are isolated behind the wall. As a result, 467 trees were burnt. According to Palestinian farmers, the incident was an arson attack. ZOF also used force to disperse a peaceful demonstration organized by Palestinian civilians and international and Zionist peace activists in protest to the construction of the Wall in Bal’ein village, west of Ramallah.

Jaish Al Mujahideen Group IED attack on Tractor Trailer Truck

September 13, 2006

Video

The Jaish Al Mujahideen Group released a video on an Islamic forum frequented by the resistance of an IED attack on an Tractor Trailer supply truck in the area of western Baghdad.

The Politics of Fear in US Elections

15, September, 2006

Abdus Sattar Ghazali, Arab News


If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy: James Madison - The fourth US president, 1751-1836.

Six days before the 9/11 commemorations, President George Bush opened the fall election campaign season with a hard- hitting speech on national security amid flagging public support for the war in Iraq. In a sharp rhetoric, President Bush said that Al-Qaeda and its allies were intent on global domination and creating a "radical Islamic empire" that stretches from Spain to Iraq. While comparing Bin Laden with Hitler, he said: "Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them." To send the message home, Bush mentioned Bin Laden 17 times in the 44-minute speech. Ironically, any mention of Osama Bin Laden was absent from the White House report, titled "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism" released the same day.

President Bush's comments came just eight weeks before the midterm elections with the GOP control of the House and Senate hanging in the balance. Bush's approval ratings have been sagging and he has come under fire from conservative critics who have argued that his "war on terror" was too squishy, and losing impact with mainstream America.

According to Harris Interactive Poll, President Bush's approval rating is just 34 percent. President Bush's approval rating is 38 percent in a Newsweek poll. Harris Poll also indicated that if elections for Congress were held today, 45 percent of Americans say they would vote for the Democratic candidate and 30 percent would vote for the Republican. The Newsweek Poll indicates that right now 53 percent of Americans would like to see the Democrats win control of Congress, compared to just 34 percent who want the Republicans to retain control. Most Americans are angry about "something" when it comes to how the country is run, and they are more likely than in previous years to vote for a challenger this November, according to a CNN poll of Sept. 4.

Hence, in an effort to bolster sinking public opinion about the unpopular war in Iraq and other national issues, President Bush and Republican leaders see "national security" or "fear factor" as their biggest advantage over Democrats.

Three things can be expected from Bush's speech, according to a new study by three Columbia University researchers: The media will repeat the president's remarks. Public fear of terrorism will increase. And the president's poll numbers will rise. Those have been the effects of presidential pronouncements on terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, they added.

Officials in government and law enforcement also can have an effect on the public's perception of terror risk when their statements are magnified by the media. In February 2003, for example, the percentage of people saying they were very worried about a terror attack "soon" stood at 18 percent. One month later, after the alert had been raised and lowered, it stood at 34 percent.
The official with the greatest ability to shift opinion on terrorism, the researchers found, is Bush, whose statements in the media about terrorism correlated highly with increases in the public's perception of terrorism as a major national problem - and with increases in his approval ratings.
At the beginning of July 2002, for example, approval of the president's handling of terrorism was around 79 percent. After television coverage of one statement by Bush and seven public statements by administration officials about the terrorist threat, the president's rating rose to 83 percent.
In June 2004, approval for the president's handling of terrorism had fallen to 50 percent. One month later, after an increase in television coverage of Bush's comments on terrorism, that number had risen to 57 percent.

Larry Beutler, director of the National Center on the Psychology of Terrorism in Palo Alto argues that there are findings suggesting that the administration's use of the alert system increased inordinately before the election and each time it did, Bush's numbers went up about 5 percent.

The Columbia University research is seen a "damning indictment of the media's bloodlust." Matthew T. Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. says: "When you have media organs viewing fearmongering as a payday, senior politicians seeing fearmongering as sound political strategy, and terrorists considering fearmongering as a victory unto itself, where are citizens expected to find a voice of reason?"

However, Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, one of the researchers pointed out: "This public panic benefits the terrorists whose work is made easier by an overactive government response that magnifies their efforts. In an odd way this puts the government and the terrorists in league with one another," he said. "The main loser, alas, is the terrified public."

"The real new thing here is the mere threat, heavily mass mediated, achieves at least part of what actual terrorism achieves," Nacos said. "(Terrorists) want to intimidate, they want to spread fear and anxiety, and they want to take influence through the public on government officials."

While the president warns of enduring terror threat, the Democrats are playing up the fear factor albeit in a different way.

A group of top Democrats held a press conference just before Bush's speech to release a report that they said showed the president's approach to terrorism to be a failure. "Under the Bush administration and this Republican Congress, America is less safe, facing greater threats, and unprepared for the dangerous world in which we live,'' said Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader in the Senate. "This new report is a stunning indictment of Bush foreign policy, and it makes a clear case for the new direction we need to keep America safe."

Sharon Burke, director of the Third Way National Security Project that compiled the report, said that the study showed that the number of Al-Qaeda members had grown from about 20,000 in 2001 to about 50,000 today, and that terrorist attacks worldwide were up sharply. The number and power of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan are also on the rise, she said, while the strength and readiness of the American military have been drained by the war in Iraq. "The numbers show that the president's strategy is not working,'' she said.

The one point on which both reports agreed is the growth of small terrorist cells that operate outside of centralized organizations like Al-Qaeda.

A new counterterrorism strategy released on Sept. 5 by the White House compares the fight to the long struggle against communism during the decades-long Cold War, and shifting the focus from Al-Qaeda to decentralized networks of extremists. It describes Al-Qaeda as a significantly degraded organization, but outlines potent threats from smaller networks and individuals motivated by Al-Qaeda ideology, a lack of freedom and "twisted" propaganda about US policy in the Middle East.

The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism reflects the intelligence community's latest analysis of the evolving nature of the threats from widely dispersed "Islamic extremists" who are often isolated and linked by little more than the Internet. It describes President Bush's "freedom agenda" of promoting democracy as the leading long-term weapon against them.
The document describes the influence of US policy in the Middle East as minimal, portraying the Iraq war and the renewed Arab-Israeli strife as sources of deceptive propaganda for terrorist ideologues. Terrorism, it says, "is not simply a result of hostility to US policy in Iraq . . . Israeli-Palestinian issues . . . (or) our efforts to prevent terror attacks."

"The terrorism we confront today" springs from several sources, including an "ideology that justifies murder" and that blames "perceived injustices from the recent or sometimes distant past," the strategy says. That ideology, it says, preys upon populations that "see no legitimate way to promote change in their own country" and whose "information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories."

Amid the stepped up rhetoric on national security, a Bush administration-proposed legislation was introduced in the congress on Sept. 7 aimed at protecting the officials authorizing cruel, inhuman treatment retrospectively. The new legislation will apply to any conduct by any US personnel, whether committed before or after the law is enacted.

Under the proposed law, the administration could potentially subject any non-citizen accused of supporting terrorist activity, anywhere in the world, to the second-class justice system of military commissions. This is because there is no requirement that those brought before the proposed military commission have any relationship to an actual armed conflict as commonly understood. According to the Human Rights Watch, under this legislation, even the proverbial old lady in Switzerland who gave money to a charitable arm of a terrorist organization could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant," placed in military custody, and tried by a military commission for providing "material support to terrorism."

The Bush administration is in a hurry to pass this legislation before the November elections in which the Republicans fear losing control of the congress.

- Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the executive editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com

UN Getting A Little steamed?

Checkpoint Closure Document that Israel is Going against the Oslo Peace Accord

Since the beginning of the Oslo Peace Process Israel has consolidated its policy of closure introduced in 1991 and has imposed a strict siege on the Occupied Palestinian Territories preventing everybody from moving freely, including workers, student and medical patients. Furthermore the closures are inflicting severe damage to local businesses and their trade relations. As a result, the Palestinian economy has suffered great losses, unemployment numbers have risen dramatically and so have the number of Palestinians living below the international poverty line. The closure policy is a violation of Article 33 under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as several Articles of the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In addition, the UN Committee Against Torture has found, that the Israeli government's closure policy "may, in certain instances, amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" in violation of Article 16 of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment[1].

The Fourth Geneva Convention

Art. 33. No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.Pillage is prohibited.Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

Article 16
1. Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article 1, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in article 10, 11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture of references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

2. The provisions of this Convention are without prejudice to the provisions of any other international instrument or national law which relates to extradition or expulsion.


International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Article 1
1. All people have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

2. All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.

3. The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having responsibility for the administration of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.

Article 12
1. Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence.

2. Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own country.

3. The above mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those which are provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present Covenant.

4. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.


International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Article 6
1. The State Parties to the Present Covenant recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right.

2. The steps to be taken by a State Party to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include technical and vocational guidance and training programmes, policies and techniques to achieve steady economic, social and cultural development and full and productive employment under conditions safeguarding fundamental political and economic freedoms to the individual.

Article 11
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living standards. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent.
(…)

Article 13
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to education. They agree that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity, and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. They further agree that education shall enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society, promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations and all racial, ethnic or religious groups, and further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(…)

Article 15
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone:
(a) To take part in cultural life;
(…)


[1] Our underlining.

_____

Link:

Closures

Violations of Palestinian Children's Rights

Palestinian children play in Khan Younis refugee camp Photo: PCHR field worker

Introduction:

Since this article was fist published and with the recent onslaught by the Israeli Military the conditions for children is desegregating.

Palestinian children are the most tragic victims of the Israeli occupation policy: Their collective childhood is stolen as they are subjected to traumatic incidents which leave mental as well as physical wounds they will carry for the rest of their lives. On an almost daily basis Palestinian children are subjected to humiliating treatment at checkpoints, bombardment from Apache helicopters and F16 fighters and shelling from tanks. Furthermore, they are often prevented from reaching their schools or from going to hospitals due to the internal closures. In more severe - but not rare - cases children experience loss of their homes when Israeli bulldozers destroy them as an act of collective punishment for so-called "security reasons". Closure has prevented Palestinian men from working in Israel; the resulting high unemployment rate has had a severe impact on the living standard of children – according to a survey released in August 2002 by USAID and Care International 19.7% of all Palestinian children between 6-59 months suffer from anemia, 9.3% of the total population suffer from malnutrition.


The World Bank estimated in February 2002 – before the Israeli Operation Defensive Shield and Operation Determined Path and the following periods of closures and curfews - that 84.6% of Gazan families and 57.7% of West Bank families live below the international recognised poverty line at 2 dollars per day. This dire economic situation - and in cases where the father is either dead or disabled - often forces children to start working from a young age in order to help support the family.

The impact on the mental health of Palestinian children has been catastrophic. A 2001-survey conducted by Gaza Community Mental Health Programme on children living close to major checkpoints in Khan Younis and Rafah in Southern Gaza shows that 54.6% of the children show symptoms of severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). More than 50% had seen dead or injured people – in 23% of the cases the person was a family member.

The Israeli government's actions that have caused such trauma constitute violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as grave breaches - namely war crimes - of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The most central sentence in the conventions is "the right to life" - a right that is violated far too often by the Israeli army that uses not only rubber bullets but also live ammunition and tear gas against stone throwing children.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has collected material on the issue “Violation of Children’s Rights” in order to give interested readers an adequate picture of the impact of the Israeli occupation policy on Palestinian children.

Links:

Convention on the Rights of the Child

Statistics

PCHR Press Releases

PCHR Images: Gazan Children's Daily Life

Articles and Feature Stories in the International Media

External Material

Photo Essays of Israeli Human Rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Pictures of house demolitions, razing agricultural lands, and destruction of public property during the Israeli military operation in El-Maghazi (19-21 July 2006)

Note:

Poking around on the net like I do sometimes, I ran across this photo essay and thought it would also be particular interest for you to see also.

More Photo's

This was taken during the Israeli military operation in Beit Hanoun (16-17 July 2006)

'Gaza is a jail. Nobody is allowed to leave. We are all starving now'

Published on Friday, September 8, 2006 by the Independent / UK

by Patrick Cockburn

A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.

Many people are being killed by Israeli incursions that occur every day by land and air. A total of 262 people have been killed and 1,200 wounded, of whom 60 had arms or legs amputated, since 25 June, says Dr Juma al-Saqa, the director of the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City which is fast running out of medicine. Of these, 64 were children and 26 women. This bloody conflict in Gaza has so far received only a fraction of the attention given by the international media to the war in Lebanon.

It was on 25 June that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was taken captive and two other soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants who used a tunnel to get out of the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of this, writes Gideon Levy in the daily Haaretz, the Israeli army "has been rampaging through Gaza - there's no other word to describe it - killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately". Gaza has essentially been reoccupied since Israeli troops and tanks come and go at will. In the northern district of Shajhayeh they took over several houses last week and stayed five days. By the time they withdrew, 22 Palestinians had been killed, three houses were destroyed and groves of olive, citrus and almond trees had been bulldozed.

Fuad al-Tuba, the 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm here, said: "They even destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep." He pointed sadly to a field, its brown sandy earth churned up by tracks of bulldozers, where the stumps of trees and broken branches with wilting leaves lay in heaps. Near by a yellow car was standing on its nose in the middle of a heap of concrete blocks that had once been a small house.

His son Baher al-Tuba described how for five days Israeli soldiers confined him and his relatives to one room in his house where they survived by drinking water from a fish pond. "Snipers took up positions in the windows and shot at anybody who came near," he said. "They killed one of my neighbours called Fathi Abu Gumbuz who was 56 years old and just went out to get water."

Sometimes the Israeli army gives a warning before a house is destroyed. The sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal.

But it is not the Israeli incursions alone that are destroying Gaza and its people. In the understated prose of a World Bank report published last month, the West Bank and Gaza face "a year of unprecedented economic recession. Real incomes may contract by at least a third in 2006 and poverty to affect close to two thirds of the population." Poverty in this case means a per capita income of under $2 (£1.06) a day.

There are signs of desperation everywhere. Crime is increasing. People do anything to feed their families. Israeli troops entered the Gaza industrial zone to search for tunnels and kicked out the Palestinian police. When the Israelis withdrew they were replaced not by the police but by looters. On one day this week there were three donkey carts removing twisted scrap metal from the remains of factories that once employed thousands.

"It is the worst year for us since 1948 [when Palestinian refugees first poured into Gaza]," says Dr Maged Abu-Ramadan, a former ophthalmologist who is mayor of Gaza City. "Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are allowed to leave it. People are already starving. They try to live on bread and falafel and a few tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves."

The few ways that Gazans had of making money have disappeared. Dr Abu-Ramadan says the Israelis "have destroyed 70 per cent of our orange groves in order to create security zones." Carnations and strawberries, two of Gaza's main exports, were thrown away or left to rot. An Israeli air strike destroyed the electric power station so 55 per cent of power was lost. Electricity supply is now becoming almost as intermittent as in Baghdad.

The Israeli assault over the past two months struck a society already hit by the withdrawal of EU subsidies after the election of Hamas as the Palestinian government in March. Israel is withholding taxes owed on goods entering Gaza. Under US pressure, Arab banks abroad will not transfer funds to the government.

Two thirds of people are unemployed and the remaining third who mostly work for the state are not being paid. Gaza is now by far the poorest region on the Mediterranean. Per capita annual income is $700, compared with $20,000 in Israel. Conditions are much worse than in Lebanon where Hizbollah liberally compensates war victims for loss of their houses. If Gaza did not have enough troubles this week there were protest strikes and marches by unpaid soldiers, police and security men. These were organised by Fatah, the movement of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, which lost the election to Hamas in January. His supporters marched through the streets waving their Kalashnikovs in the air. "Abu Mazen you are brave," they shouted. "Save us from this disaster." Sour-looking Hamas gunmen kept a low profile during the demonstration but the two sides are not far from fighting it out in the streets.

The Israeli siege and the European boycott are a collective punishment of everybody in Gaza. The gunmen are unlikely to be deterred. In a bed in Shifa Hospital was a sturdy young man called Ala Hejairi with wounds to his neck, legs, chest and stomach. "I was laying an anti-tank mine last week in Shajhayeh when I was hit by fire from an Israeli drone," he said. "I will return to the resistance when I am better. Why should I worry? If I die I will die a martyr and go to paradise."

His father, Adel, said he was proud of what his son had done adding that three of his nephews were already martyrs. He supported the Hamas government: "Arab and Western countries want to destroy this government because it is the government of the resistance."

As the economy collapses there will be many more young men in Gaza willing to take Ala Hejairi's place. Untrained and ill-armed most will be killed. But the destruction of Gaza, now under way, will ensure that no peace is possible in the Middle East for generations to come.

The deadly toll

* After the kidnap of Cpl Gilad Shalit by Palestinians on 25 June, Israel launched a massive offensive and blockade of Gaza under the operation name Summer Rains.

* The Gaza Strip's 1.3 million inhabitants, 33 per cent of whom live in refugee camps, have been under attack for 74 days.

* More than 260 Palestinians, including 64 children and 26 women, have been killed since 25 June. One in five is a child. One Israeli soldier has been killed and 26 have been wounded.

* 1,200 Palestinians have been injured, including up to 60 amputations. A third of victims brought to hospital are children.

* Israeli warplanes have launched more than 250 raids on Gaza, hitting the two power stations and the foreign and Information ministries.

* At least 120 Palestinian structures including houses, workshops and greenhouses have been destroyed and 160 damaged by the Israelis.

* The UN has criticised Israel's bombing, which has caused an estimated $1.8bn in damage to the electricity grid and leaving more than a million people without regular access to drinking water.

* The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says 76 Palestinians, including 19 children, were killed by Israeli forces in August alone. Evidence shows at least 53 per cent were not participating in hostilities.

* In the latest outbreak of violence, three Palestinians were killed yesterday when Israeli troops raided a West Bank town in search of a wanted militant. Two of those killed were unarmed, according to witnesses.

Palestinian casualty statistics report for Summer 2006

During an incursion to Bethlehem,a girl, shot by Israeli soldiers, is carried to safety(Ma'an/Magnus Johansson)

September 14, 2006

Gaza - Ma'an - The Palestinian Center for Human Rights has published a report detailing Palestinian casualties and Israeli assaults as follows:

263 Palestinians were killed between 25th May 2006 and 13th September 2006, including 51 children and 12 women.

983 were injured, including 277 children and 37 women.

80% of the casualties fell during Israeli invasions or as a result of air and artillery raids.

253 air-to-ground missiles were launched by F16 fighter planes, mostly on civilian targets.

Buildings of the ministries of interior, foreign affairs and national economy, in addition to the Prime Minister's office were destroyed.

The power generating station, which provides 45% of the total power, and pumps domestic water in Gaza, was targeted and destroyed.

6 bridges and many main roads were destroyed, in addition to the mutilation of hundreds of hectares of agricultural lands.

Hundreds of Palestinians (exact number still unknown) were arrested, including 9 government ministers and 31 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Link:

On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Has Bush’s Cheese Slid off His Cracker?

After removing barriers that kept faith-based charities from receiving public money, the Bush/Cheney campaign asked churches to turn over membership directories and distribute literature


Bush says U.S. seeing religious reawakening

September 13, 2006

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush believes the United States has embarked on the latest great religious awakening of its history.

Bush, who counts on religious conservatives as a key base of political support, was quoted as saying on Tuesday that the United States appeared to be undergoing a cultural change on the scale of that seen in the 1950s and '60s.

"There was a pretty stark change in the culture of the '50s and the '60s. I mean, boom. But I think something is happening here," Bush said at a roundtable with conservative columnists. His words were reported by the National Review magazine.

"I'm not giving you a definitive statement -- it seems like to me there's a Third Awakening with a cultural change," Bush said.

Historians have pointed to periods such as the early 1700s and early 1800s, as times in which religious movements were particularly significant in America.

Those eras are referred to as Great Awakenings, although there is disagreement on how many there have been. In one such period, in the 1730s and 1740s, religious revivals in the United States coincided with similar movements in Germany and England.

An awakening in the 1800s is credited with helping to inspire the movement to abolish slavery in the United States.

Bush, a Methodist, often talks about the importance of faith in his life. Some critics seeing this as crossing a line between religion and politics, and his frequent references to religion are viewed with particular unease abroad.

Amid growing U.S. concerns about the Iraq war, The National Review article linked Bush's rejection of a pullout to his religious faith.

"I know it upsets people when I ascribe that to my belief in an Almighty, and that I believe a gift from that Almighty is universal freedom. That's what I believe," Bush said.

In the movie called, “The Green Mile,” a man known as Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison) seen on the right; became like a man that was comatose and a fellow guard made the remark " I think this boy’s cheese, has slid off his cracker," because of what appeared to be mental illness and Percy ended up in Briar Ridge Mental Institution.

‘Muslims Need to Be Media Savvy’

Siraj Wahab, Arab News

JEDDAH, 14 September 2006 — Muslim businessmen should buy into global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world, said information ministers from Muslim countries at a conference that began at Jeddah Conference Palace yesterday.

Information ministers and officials meeting under the umbrella of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) said Islam faced vilification after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Tackling the rising tide of Islamophobia in the United States and Europe is one of the main points being discussed by the information ministers at the two-day gathering, which was formally opened by Crown Prince Sultan yesterday.

“We need to come up with a joint action to face up to the challenges of our time, especially with the rise of hate crimes and Islamophobia in the West and the confusion resulting from the unfortunate mixing up of Islam with terrorism,” said OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu.

“Muslim investors must invest in the large media institutions of the world, which generally make considerable profits, so that they have the ability to affect their policies via their administrative boards,” he said. “This would benefit us in terms of correcting the image of Islam worldwide.”

The idea met instant approval from Saudi journalists.

“The suggestion has come a little late in the day, but as they say it is never too late to mend,” said Khaled Batarfi, managing editor of the Jeddah-based Al-Madinah newspaper.
Incidentally, this was the exact conclusion of Batarfi’s dissertation from the University of Oregon in 1999.

“During my research on the US media bias toward Israel, I discovered that the friends of Israel in the US had bought huge stakes in the media outlets there and this was done very methodically and with the specific purpose of shaping US opinion in favor of Israeli policies,” he added. “They realized this very early on.”

According to Batarfi, another good idea of reaching out to the Western world would be to come up with the English versions of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya television news channels.

“They are well-established and professionally-run channels but they are in Arabic,” Batarfi said. “If they were in English I am sure it would do a world of good in presenting a correct picture of Islam and Muslims to the outside world.”

Faiza Ambah, a respected Saudi journalist whose bylines appear regularly in the Western press, said the idea of buying into the Western media outlets in itself was good.

“But more important than that is to make our own media outlets more credible,” she told Arab News. “It is not that people in the West and the US are not reading our newspapers and not watching our television channels. They are. But they are generally seen as state-run publicity tools. We need to make them credible for the outside world to take them seriously. This requires serious effort.”

Ambah felt the Arab and Muslim media were long on rhetoric and short on credibility: “We need to turn our media outlets into credible sources of information. Once we do that we will automatically be heard by the outside world.”

A Western journalist based in Riyadh and who has been covering the region for international news agencies for 10 years said the idea of buying stakes in Western media outlets was valid, “but then it shouldn’t have been announced publicly. It will only alarm the other side and create unnecessary friction. It should have been done rather discreetly.”

He felt the Western media outlets would be on guard against any hostile takeover bids originating from this idea of creating a Muslim voice in the mainstream Western media.
According to Reuters news agency, Prince Alwaleed ibn Talal owns 5.46 percent of media conglomerate News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-run group behind the Fox News Channel. The US channel is widely perceived as promoting right-wing views on issues ranging from US foreign policy to immigration and as being no friend of Arabs or Muslims.

“Despite Prince Alwaleed’s stake in Fox, nothing has stopped its rabid anti-Arab and anti-Muslim tirade which is such a shame,” the Western journalist pointed out.

Earlier this week, Culture and Information Minister Iyad Madani was blunt in his criticism of the Arab and Muslim world media.

“In Bosnia, in Nigeria, in Mindanao, did any of the Arab or Islamic media people go there?” Madani asked. “Our media establishments lack fieldwork. I don’t mean any offense, but coming to attend this press conference and reporting about it in the newspaper tomorrow is the easiest thing. The difficult part is to go to Mindanao to cover a major catastrophe.”

Does Senator George Allan Care about You?

Senator George Allen

Introduction

by Housewife4Palestine

Just a little food for thought, as the American elections is coming closer and more is coming foreword to who the future candidates may really be. The hot topic’s for candidates seems to be relations with the Middle East and especially the war in Iraq.

To even race relation’s in America, which sound’s like America in their war on Racism is take two giant leap’s backwards to the 1950’s and 1960’s.

A country is supposed to move foreword and prosper not fall to its knee’s in despair.


VA-SEN: Blistering New Ad Hammers Allen Over Body Armor Vote

By Greg Sargent

Don't miss this powerful new ad. An independent group called Vote Vets -- which describes itself as a PAC for electing candidates "critical of the execution of the war in Iraq" to Congress -- has just unleashed a TV advertisement slamming GOP incumbent Senator George Allen over what it claims is a recent vote of his against funding body armor for troops in Iraq. The ad, which a group spokesman claims will run in major markets through Sunday, features a soldier back from Iraq named Pete Granato. "Senator George Allen voted against giving our troops this," Granato says, holding modern body armor up to the camera. "Now it's time for us to vote against him." If you want to see someone really going on offense against the GOP on national security, be sure to watch this ad. More on this later.

Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs

Secretary Michael Wynne says nonlethal weapons should be tested on U.S. civilians before being used on the battlefield.

September 12, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

"If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press."

The Air Force has paid for research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service is unlikely to spend more money on development until injury problems are reviewed by medical experts and resolved.

Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices.

On another subject, Wynne said he expects to choose a new contractor for the next generation aerial refueling tankers by next summer. He said a draft request for bids will be put out next month, and there are two qualified bidders: the Boeing Co. and a team of Northrop Grumman Corp. and European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., the majority owner of European jet maker Airbus SAS.

The contract is expected to be worth at least $20 billion (€15.75 billion).

Chicago, Illinois-based Boeing lost the tanker deal in 2004 amid revelations that it had hired a top Air Force acquisitions official who had given the company preferential treatment.

Wynne also said the Air Force, which is already chopping 40,000 active duty, civilian and reserves jobs, is now struggling to find new ways to slash about $1.8 billion (€1.4 billion) from its budget to cover costs from the latest round of base closings.

He said he can't cut more people, and it would not be wise to take funding from military programs that are needed to protect the country. But he said he also incurs resistance when he tries to save money on operations and maintenance by retiring aging aircraft.

"We're finding out that those are, unfortunately, prized possessions of some congressional districts," said Wynne, adding that the Air Force will have to "take some appetite suppressant pills." He said he has asked employees to look for efficiencies in their offices.

The base closings initially were expected to create savings by reducing Air Force infrastructure by 24 percent.

Bush Weepy? Who Are They Kidding?

Mourning in America

September 13, 2006

By DAVE LINDORFF

The New York Times, in lead article on Monday headlined (on the jump) "Bush Mourns 9-11 at Ground Zero," reported that a "visibly moved" president laid a wreath Sunday at the memorial in the hole that is what's left of the World Trade Center, saying, "Laura and I approach tomorrow with a heavy heart."

I'm sorry, but there's no way this disaster of a president, this serial trasher of the Constitution, this slaughterer of 100,000 innocent Iraqis, this waster of nearly 30,000 American lives (the dead and the maimed victims in uniform of his pointless invasion of Iraq), was mourning anything. My guess is that he thanks god every day of his sorry administration for the events of 9-11, which rescued his presidency from history's toilet.

Remember, on September 10, 2001, George Bush was being widely written off as a failed president. His poll numbers were falling faster than Enron stock, he was becoming a national joke for the number of days he spent vacationing, and his political strategist, Karl Rove, was in a tizzy trying to figure out an angle to salvage things.

Then came those hijacked planes, and the smoking ruins on Wall Street and at the Pentagon, and suddenly Bush had it made. He really didn't have to do anything. The country needed a leader to rally around, and Bush, with the help of his trusty speechwriters, gave them that leader by default.

Karl Rove, his strategy dilemma solved, made Bush's administration 9-11 24/7. It was "War on Terror" time in America. In short order, the U.S. was at war in Afghanistan, with B-52s and B-2s carpet bombing one of the poorest countries in the world, the USA PATRIOT Act was stripping Americans of their two-centuries old birthright of free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from government spying, the right to a speedy trial by a jury of peers, the right to an attorney, the right to face their accusers, and any Democrats who expressed concerns about the direction the country was going were labeled cowards and "supporters of the terrorists."

And then there was the invasion of Iraq-something Bush and Cheney had dreamed of doing since before they took office, but had not figured out how to get the country to buy into.

On September 11, 2001, it all fell into place for this intellectually deficient and morally stunted man who in 2000 actually lost the election for president, but who found himself in the White House anyhow, thanks to the conniving of five unprincipled Supreme Court Justices willing to place loyalty to party ahead of loyalty to the People and the Constitution.

I'll be generous and assume that Bush is serious when he says he is a religious guy and that his God talks to him, but I'll bet you anything that when little he talks back to Big Him, as he did when he prayed Sunday at New York's St. Paul's Chapel and Monday at the National Cathedral, he offers fervent thanks for that terrible day.

Without it, he would not have had a Republican majority in the Congress in 2002, and without it, he would not have been returned to the White House in 2004.

Bush didn't even have the grace to wait until the day of the fifth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks had ended to go from fake mourning mode into attack mode, once again appropriating the tragic deaths of over 2900 Americans to launch into a defense of his indefensible and disastrous war in Iraq, which his own generals say is going to hell. Nor did he wait until the day had passed to return to attacking Democrats.

In an address to the nation broadcast nationally at 9 pm on 9-11 (which the Times curiously headlined "Bush urges unity in a continuing war" in a report the next day), Bush attacked those calling for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Said Bush, "the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out the terrorists would leave us alone. They will not leave us alone."

Never mind that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, as even the President has been forced to admit, and as the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has belatedly confirmed.

Fortunately, this fake "war on terror" that the president has wrapped himself up in, is starting to wear thin with the American public, as is his increasingly strained effort to link the fiasco in Iraq with that other fake war.

That may explain the sincere look of serious reflection on the normally twisted cynical face of Vice President Dick Cheney during a moment of silence at a Monday ceremony at the Pentagon. The Vice President, who like Bush surely hasn't been genuinely mourning 9-11, may well have been brooding over the train wreck that this administration is becoming, in large part because of Cheney's own mad obsession with military adventurism and presidential power grabbing.


Both he and Bush may even have been praying on Monday that the next anniversary of the 9-11 attacks doesn't see them both in the dock being impeached for their crimes.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's new book, "The Case for Impeachment",co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is due out May 1.

How I Was Targeted as a Terrorist

My Adventures with the FBI

September 13, 2006

By JIM BENSMAN

I was sitting at home on July 31st when the phone rang and the caller ID said Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI wanted to know if they could come to my place and talk to me. So I asked what he wanted to talk to me about.
It all started a few days earlier when I went to a public hearing on the Army Corps of Engineers proposal to build a fish bypass for a dam by me on the Mississippi River.

The Army gave a powerpoint presentation. They showed the initial alternatives they considered including dam removal. When they discussed this alternative they had a picture of a dam being blown up (as that is how you remove a dam). Then they indicated the alternatives under consideration which did not include dam removal.

When it came time for public comments, I indicated they should develop the dam removal alternative. I pointed out how the dams cost the tax payers billions of dollars and do all kinds of massive environmental damage. The local paper misquoted me as saying, "Jim Bensman of Alton said he would like to see the dam blown up and resents paying taxes to fix dam problems when it is barge companies that profit from the dam."

So when the FBI told me they were investigating me as a terrorist because of that story, I was shocked. How stupid could the FBI be to think a terrorist would go to a public hearing and announce their plan to the Army. Certainly any intelligent person could figure out even if the quote was correct it was obviously meant for the Army to blow up the dam to remove it.

I asked the FBI why they were wasting their time on something this stupid. He told me they have to investigate everything. So I brought up when I got a threatening letter in the mail (I suspected it was from someone with the Forest Service). I took the letter to the FBI. They refused to investigate. The agent said my file indicates that was because the US Attorney said there was not a case. But there is a case here?

Their complete stupidity (it is no wonder they blotched the 911 attacks) would be funny if it was not for the Patriot Act, signing statements, secret spying programs, etc. When it is this easy to get labeled as a suspected terrorist, Bush's claims that they are only spying on suspected terrorist does not give me any comfort.

After talking to me for a while the FBI asked if it was OK for him to come to my place and talk to me if his boss wanted this. I told him I did not know. So he told me he was going to put down that I was not cooperating.

So I consulted an attorney on what to do. I was advised to send the FBI a copy of the Army's powerpoint presentation so they could see the Army was talking about blowing up the dams.

I then talked to the FBI agent again and he told me the investigation was closed and I am not on any terrorist list. He indicated there is something in my file that indicates I was talked to. The FBI agent was indigent that I would think the FBI would do something like this for political purposes. I asked why they were investigating Quakers for their antiwar activists and brought up past abuses such as Dr. King.

Finally, he told me it was the Army Corps of Engineers who called him. If true, that explains a lot and I can understand why they would investigate if the Army asks them to. He would not tell me who called the FBI.

There is no way anyone in the Corps could possibly think I was a terrorist. I've been fighting the dams and in their face for decades. The Army, more than anyone, would know even if it was a correct quote the context was I wanted them to consider the alternative the Army developed to blow up the dam. The person who ran the meeting emailed me, "NO one from the Corps that knows you or that was at the meeting was concerned in the least. When I heard of the FBI goings on I was more than surprised." The reporter whose story the FBI cited told me, "That is just crazy. I don't see how anyone in that room would have taken your comments in a negative, threatening way considering your seemingly humorous demeanor, joking, etc. while still making your point about barges footing the bills, etc. and preferring the dam go away. What a ridiculous waste of government time on all their parts."

This clearly is an outrageous abuse of power and a violation of the First Amendment. Furthermore, if the FBI is harassing citizens to further the Army's political agenda, they are not working to catch the real terrorists.

Jim Bensman works for Heartwood in Alton, Illinois.

Israeli soldiers fire live ammunition at children in Manger Square, Bethlehem;

Clashes in Bethlehem (MaanImages)

September 12, 2006

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Israeli troops and military vehicles stormed the centre of the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Tuesday afternoon.

In Manger Square, in front of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition, sound bombs, tear gas and rubber bullets at children and youths throwing stones and empty bottles. Over twenty Israeli jeeps and armoured vehicles took up position in the centre of Bethlehem.

A 14-year old boy called Mohammed Omar Shawariya was killed in the clashes and a 25-year old female bystander called Najah Theeb Boujah was injured. She is being treated at the Hussein Hospital in Beit Jala. At least three others are reported to be injured.

Palestinian security sources reported that dozens of Israeli military vehicles entered the city from the north and west and besieged a number of houses in the Ma'ali Valley and Al Ain neighbourhoods.

The Israeli army announced around 7pm that they had arrested Ali Salahat, who they claim to be a 'wanted' Fatah faction leader.

Clashes were ongoing several hours later, including fierce confrontations between Palestinian gunmen and the Israeli soldiers. Palestinian youths began throwing Molotov cocktails at the Israeli soldiers as Israeli troops fired at the Church of Nativity, the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

It was reported around 7pm that Israeli bulldozers had arrived to demolish the house of the 'wanted' Palestinian.

Eighteen of the imprisoned Palestinian politicians may be released Today

The kidnapped Cabinet (MaanImages)

September 12, 2006

Bethlehem - Ma'an - The Israeli military court at Ofer intends to release 18 of the imprisoned Palestinian politicians on Tuesday, the undersecretary for the prisoners' affairs ministry, Mr. Ziad Abu Ain, told Ma'an.

According to Israeli radio, the politicians to be released will include Dr. Abdul Aziz Adwaik, the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC); Issa Al-Ja'abari, the Minister of Local Governance; Khalid Abu Arafa, the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs; and Sheikh Nayef Rajoub, the Minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs.

The Israeli radio station 'Voice of Israel' reported that the judge at Ofer military court refused to extend the detention of the Palestinian officials despite appeals by the Israeli attorney general to keep the officials detained until the legal measures against them are completed.

The court decided to release the officials for a fine of NIS 25,000 (US $5,700) each and gave the prosecution, the Israeli attorney general, 48 hours to appeal against this decision.

Earlier, Mr. Ziad Abu Ain told Ma'an that the judge at Ofer military court had informed the lawyers defending the kidnapped Palestinian officials that they intend to release 18 of them on Tuesday. Abu Ain said that he expects some developments which may change this fact, but he expressed his hope that all the officials will be released.

The Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, Talab El Sana, who is one of the lawyers defending the Palestinian parliamentary officials, expected that the court might accept the lawyers' point of view that the seizure of the officials is a political issue, not a legal one.

El Sana told Ma'an that "I expect the Israeli court to accept the point of view of the lawyers and to release them".

El Sana clarified that he decided to join the lawyers' team as he believes that the court is a political issue and that the arrest is illegal. He said, "It is the duty of parliamentary members in the world to show solidarity wit the Palestinian Legislative Council members and to reject the Israeli arrogance and the policy of power and punishment".

El Sana accused Israel of "seizing the officials due to the refusal of the Hamas government to recognize Israel and also due to the capture of the Israeli soldier in Gaza in order to exchange him for them". He ended, "this is not the act of sovereign state".

The 18 officials were kidnapped in a major Israeli swoop on the West Bank at the end of June following the capture of the Israeli soldier, Cpl Shalit, by armed Palestinians on the edge of the Gaza Strip. Seven cabinet ministers were seized in this operation and the deputy prime minister, Dr. Nasser Ash-Sha'er, was taken prisoner on 19 August. If the above mentioned officials are released, the minister of finance and the minister of planning will be the remaining jailed ministers.

Update:

Israeli prosecution revokes decision to release 18 of the detained Palestinian politicians today as planned

9/11 on an American Twenty

A Palestinian shows how a folded twenty dollar bill appears to show the World Trade Center buildings on fire.

Which Middle East?

 

No, Mr. President, I’m Not Feeling Safer After 5 Years of War on Terror

Five years after 9/11, the Bush administration has run out of troops, ideas and political capital. But there’s still plenty of Kool-Aid in the White House fridge.

That’s why President Bush was able to assure us this week that “America is safer” after five years of the war on terror.

Safer? Do you feel safer?

Right after 9/11, America had the world’s sympathy. Since then, anti-US sentiment has increased sharply. Militant Islam used to be a “niche ideology,” as Brookings Institution fellow Ivo Daalder put it. But today, thanks to the invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration’s nasty little habit of torturing detainees, militant Islam is an ideology with millions of adherents. That doesn’t make me feel safer.

Right after 9/11, we had the world’s strongest military. But the administration sidelined our military leaders whenever their advice was politically inconvenient, and we now have lost more Americans in Iraq than we lost on 9/11: At least 2,662 troops and 136 US government contractors. We’re forcing exhausted reservists into back-to-back tours of duty, and military recruiters are struggling to meet their quotas. That doesn’t make me feel safer.

If anything, the war on terror seems to have been perversely designed to drive more recruits into Al-Qaeda’s waiting arms. On Wednesday, Bush defended what he euphemistically referred to as an “alternative set of procedures” for detainees who remain “defiant” in the face of ordinary interrogation methods. These “alternative” techniques have included mock executions, “water-boarding” (simulated drowning) and induced hypothermia. Do we think this is going to win any hearts and minds in the Islamic world?

The Bush administration doesn’t even seem capable of heeding its own advice on how to fight terrorism. Since 9/11, the administration has insisted that the war on terror is “a new kind of war.” In an earlier era, the classic war was between two or more states with clear governance structures, defined territories and armies under hierarchical command. The goals were clear: You sought to take over the enemy state’s territory, destroy its military and, if necessary, oust its leadership. Once that was done, the enemy’s surrender was more or less inevitable, the war was over and the victor could head home.

But Bush has insisted, in countless speeches, that fighting terrorism requires “new ways of thinking” because “doctrines designed to contain empires, deter aggressive states and defeat massed armies” aren’t appropriate for combating global terrorist networks. It’s an excellent point — and our anti-terror efforts are backfiring in part because the administration keeps ignoring it.

In Afghanistan, for instance, our goal was to eliminate Al-Qaeda. But with the rout of the Taleban, Afghanistan’s de facto government, Bush administration officials apparently decided that the important part of the war was over.

They were wrong; that was just the easy part. But administration hawks were eager to move on and invade another state, so they diverted troops and resources to Iraq. Osama Bin Laden slipped away, and we never followed through on our pledge to bring stability and human rights to the Afghan people either. The predictable result? Afghanistan is again deteriorating into violence and instability. The Taleban is back, suicide bombings are on the increase and US troops are dying in Afghanistan at a faster rate than before. That doesn’t make me feel safer either.

Then there’s Iraq. Why did we go to war in Iraq, a state that had nothing to do with 9/11? Well, when your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Despite all the rhetoric about “new ways of thinking,” the administration seems unable to break old state-centric habits. We went to war in Iraq because Iraq, like Mt. Everest, was there. And we approached the Iraq war as if it were 1941, not 2003. We had a fine plan for pummeling the Republican Guard, taking Baghdad and ousting Saddam Hussein — but no plan for preventing postwar Iraq from deteriorating into civil war or becoming a terrorist training ground. No, Mr. President, I’m not feeling safer. The administration’s war planners are yesterday’s men: They talk tough, but they never learned the lessons of Vietnam, much less the lessons of 9/11.

Effective counterterrorism means more than just beating the war drums. If we really want to make this nation safer, we need to get serious about human intelligence — gained not through torturing the people we capture but through investing in the linguistic and cultural skills we’ll need to understand the Islamic world. And we need to address the political grievances that drive ordinary people to support terror in the first place.

Not interested? Fine, have some more Kool-Aid. Just don’t try to make the rest of us drink it too.

9/11: Five Years Later: Muslim Community In Brooklyn Thriving

September 11, 2006

After September 11th, a backlash against Muslims and stricter deportation rules forced thousands of people in one Brooklyn community to flee. But five years later, the situation has changed. NY1's Jeanine Ramirez filed the following report.

American flags are displayed along Coney Island Avenue in an area known as Little Pakistan. For many, it's a sign that the community is here to stay. That definitely wasn't the case after September 11th when community leaders say tens of thousands of Pakistanis moved out of the neighborhood and out of the country. Some because of backlash, others because of stricter deportation policies. Dozens of businesses in the area shut down. But now five years later, there's re-investment in the community.

"Like six months after 9/11, the business goes down and everything but slowly, slowly, this come back and now it's good," says Quisar Chaudhry. "All the Pakistani community is good now. They're happy in this area."

Razvi founded the Council of Pakistan Organization Community Center after 9/11 to help Pakistanis with immigration issues. But after the mass exodus of Pakistanis, other immigrants started moving in and needed help too. So Razvi expanded his services, including English and computer classes. And decided to change the center's name to Council of People's Organization to be more inclusive. He says as he continues to grow, he'll now be reaching out to teenagers in the area.

"When we ask the kids what do they want to do when they grow up, they tell us they want to become a yellow cab driver or they want to work in a restaurant, because that's all they see. And we want to make sure we work with the youth to develop them; that there's more," he says.

And Razvi predicts more and more Pakistanis will be calling this area home.

"This is their stepping stone," he says. "This is going to be their Ellis Island always. From JFK to Brooklyn."

- Jeanine Ramirez

Robert Fisk: American and Muslim: six million people in search of an identity

Seattle businessmen, students, Miami housewives... Well, what did I expect, asks Robert Fisk at the Chicago Muslim convention

Published: 03 September 2006

A guy with brown eyes and dark skin and a thick American accent walks up to talk to me. I guess he's an Iranian, possibly a Pakistani. Where're you from, I ask? "Austin, Texas," he replies. Fisk foiled again. But where do you originally come from I ask him? "I was born in Newark, New Jersey." Fisk clears his throat. Where does his family originally come from? I'm beginning to feel like the man from Homeland Security, racially profiling my new friend. "Lahore," he replies laconically and I try to make amends. The only beautiful city in Pakistan, I say, and he smiles witheringly at me.

And I go on making the same mistake at the conference hall where the biggest annual convention of American Muslims - perhaps 32,000 of them - is meeting for a weekend of speeches and discussions that run all the way from drug addiction to Condi Rice's "new" and bloody Middle East, from banking without interest to the Bush administration's use of torture and yes, of course, the after-effects on Muslims of the international crimes against humanity of September 11, 2001.

You from Jordan I ask? "Denver, Colorado," the young woman replies. Born in San Diego. Family, yes, from Jordan. From Lebanon, I ask another? "Buffalo, New York." Actually, the family was from Syria.

It takes a while to realise that I'm playing the game of so many American non-Muslims in the aftermath of the plane hijackings. I'm sniffing for the world's enemies only hours after President George W Bush went into paranoid mode while addressing the American Legion in Salt Lake City. He had just claimed that America is fighting "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century" and then jumped on the crumbling old arguments of pre-Second World War appeasement to bang the Hitler drum as well.

Oddly, it's the Muslim converts rather than the Muslim-born Americans who are toughest on Bush. "He wants eternal war," a young man with a brown beard but very bright blue eyes - yes, he was from Vermont - hissed at me. "He talks shit and we have to listen to this and promise to be non-violent or someone will point the finger at us." All agree that the most pernicious element to the latest Bush rant is his gift to Israel of placing Ehud Olmert in the ranks of his "war on terror", quite specifically linking Israel's slaughter of Lebanese civilians in July and August to his own manic project by stating that combatants from Iraq and Lebanon "form the outlines of a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology".

I search for the anger amid these thousands of Muslims, businessmen from Seattle and students from Harvard and housewives from Miami. It's there, I know, but as an Armenian friend of mine remarks in the afternoon, they seem happy. And it's true. There are more smiles than expressions of contempt, more babies in backpacks and prams than posters of pain. In fact there aren't any posters at all. But I suspect I know the truth. On their own, as thin minorities in the towns and cities of the United States, America's Muslims - perhaps six million of them - can feel under siege, distrusted and even hated.

At the convention centre, however, they are in a self-confident majority, Sunnis for the most part - America's Shias, who may be in the majority over all, don't have the same organising abilities at present - who blithely ignore the officers of the Illinois state police and the Chicago cops' bomb squad. I watch them, guns swinging at their hips, go from stand to stand, occasionally inspecting the boxes of books piled against the walls. Just who, I wonder, do they think is going to bomb Muslims in Chicago?

Salam al-Marati - he is one of the few Muslims I meet who actually was born in the Arab world, in the Baghdad suburb of Qadamiyeh - is director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a Los Angeles advocacy group which repeatedly urges American Muslims to work with the authorities against violence but who sees other dangers and other targets for Muslim political anger: the pro-Israeli lobbyists who ostentatiously insist that the vast majority of American Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding but that a "network of Islamic terror" exists across the nation.

Daniel Pipes is a bête noire, as is Steven Emerson, a freelance journalist who grinds out article after article about the "American jihad" for such august papers as The Wall Street Journal, which, by the way, more and more reads like The Jerusalem Post. Emerson and his work are taken apart by al-Marati and his colleagues in a widely circulated booklet entitled Counterproductive Terrorism: How Anti-Islamic Rhetoric is Impeding America's Homeland Security.
"Those representing pro-Israeli groups continue to intimidate and marginalise those who are critical of Israeli policies by claiming this is pro-terrorism," al-Marati says with a mixture of anger and weariness. "This is to the detriment of America, to the detriment of countering terrorism."

Maher Hathout, originally from the Cairo suburb of Qasr el-Aini and an MPAC advisor, is, if anything, even more angry. "We are that group of Americans who are not intimidated," he says. "You go to the campuses, and the Muslim students are the most outspoken. They are asking - we are asking - how we can get the average American who knows the truth about the Middle East to have the guts to speak it. Our job is to say: 'Shame on you. You criticise your President. But when you speak of Israel,you whisper.' What has happened to the home of the brave?"

MPAC - which is operating in Chicago under the auspices of the distinctly pro-Saudi Islamic Society of North America - has produced a handbook called the Grassroots Campaign to Fight Terrorism, which quotes from the Koran ("Whoever killed a human being... it shall be as if he had killed all mankind") and advises its supporters that "it is our duty as American Muslims to protect our country and to contribute to its betterment".

"But what is the American-Muslim identity?" al-Marati asks. "Our religious values and our American values are not incompatible. There is no dissonance between the founding principles of America and Muslim values. Unless we have this identity, we will be trapped. We will end up creating Muslim ghettoes in America."

Sometimes, though, these men and women remind me of nothing so much as the more ardent members of the Israeli - or Armenian - lobby: fluent, just a little bit over-eloquent, passionate - and I wonder if one day they may get a little loose with the facts.


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Here were 32,000 Muslims saying they were proud to be Americans